I'm Losing My Mind

Before seven o'clock this morning, Cameron had a black eye, and there was a bent plastic golf club in the trash.

And that was just the first fiasco.

Actually, you know what? I'm lying. The morning started going downhill at like 5:20 when Colin came into our room - where everybody was sleeping and would have continued to sleep for at least another hour - whining that he couldn't find his notebook.

His. Notebook.

At five. Twenty. In the morning.

"We'll find it when we get up," I hissed. "Now go back to bed for a little while before you wake your brothers."

Of course, that was met with an even louder bawl, which woke the entire household. And when my children wake up early, they act like it's some special occasion on which they get to run around like crazed animals. But not before Cameron said, "I pooped on the sheets!"

There's a special sinking feeling reserved for sentences beginning with "I pooped." Y'all know the feeling. The good news? He had only peed, leaking through his Pull-Up. The bad news? He had leaked on my fresh clean sheets. The same sheets I washed less than twelve hours ago.

So anyway, in the midst of all this, I was just trying to get it together. You know how crappy you feel in the morning when you have a cold? Yeah - that's me today. My chest was itchy and tight, throat scratchy, head congested, mouth parched. Ugh.

I stumbled into the bathroom to put my contacts in, at which point I noticed a rip in one. When I tried to swipe it out of my eye, I ended up swiping it somewhere up under my eyelid where I couldn't even see it any more. And that's when Cameron's black eye happened, Colin swinging that stupid plastic golf club carelessly and whacking his little brother in the face. Of course it had to occur while my contact lens was lost and orbiting my eyeball. Thank goodness Curtis hadn't left for work yet.

The rest of the getting-Colin-ready-for-school process went similarly. Through the one nostril I can (barely) breathe out of, I noticed a poop smell, which I discovered was emanating from not one but two dog piles in the laundry room. While I was cleaning that up, Cameron got into an industrial-sized bottle of baby lotion. Colin whined. I dropped a carton of eggs on the floor (luckily only a few of them broke). I spilled pancake syrup. Colin whined. I couldn't find the kids any clean socks despite the fact that I just had the laundry caught up yesterday. Colin whined. Just as we were ready to walk out the door, it was the baby's turn to frickin' poop.

By the time I got everyone fed, dressed, changed, and ready to load in the car, I was so frazzled that I couldn't think straight. Which is why when I got out of the car at the school to get Colin out, I felt an arctic blast of cold air and realized with horror that I HAD FORGOTTEN TO GET MYSELF DRESSED. Here I was in the dropoff lane, at the busiest time of morning, surrounded by kids. Other parents. Teachers. Wearing ...

... a stretched-out, pancake-batter-encrusted blue camisole ...

... black maternity culottes. Yes. Let me repeat that. MATERNITY. CULOTTES. (I'm not even pregnant.)

... flip-flops.

Did I mention it was like 40 degrees this morning?

I immediately had that "OMG WTF" startled feeling and seriously fought the urge to dash back into the car and hide. I was halfway around the vehicle though, and decided to play it off like I totally meant to come to school in my skimpy, dumpy sleep ensemble. Face burning, I got Colin out of the car, handed him his backpack, and sent him off with a hug and kiss - and then hightailed it back into the Jeep, where I prayed all the way home. Because did I ever tell you about my Jeep? It's a piece of crap. There's something wrong with it but it's too expensive to fix at the moment, so we only drive it back and forth to school since you can't go over like 30 miles per hour or it makes this horrible knocking sound. Every day I stress out as I tootle to the school and back, hoping that my sloppy jalopy won't kick the bucket while I'm en route with three kids in tow.

Anyway, that's been my morning up to this point. And it's only 8:45. So far, since we got home from dropping Colin off, Cameron and Coby have been good and played well together ... but with the way today has gone, I can't help but worry that it's some sort of calm before the storm.

Wish me luck. I think I'm gonna need it.

  

 

UPDATE: The rest of the day went a little more smoothly ... until this afternoon when I picked Colin up from school. I won't elaborate on how, lest you think I was smacked upside the head with the "Stupid Stick," but I managed to ...

... lock my two little ones into the car, and myself out of it.

Panicked, I called Curtis. "Help!" I squealed into the phone, and told him what I'd done.

Curtis is always cool and levelheaded even in the face of an extreme freakout - it's one of the things I love most about him (almost making up for the fact that he regularly leaves me stranded without toilet paper). "Use the window, remember?" he said in a calming tone rarely heard outside of a psychiatrist's office.

And that's when I was flooded with relief. Because, you see, sometimes it is actually a blessing that my Jeep is a piece of poo. The front windows are broken, so they don't roll down - the glass is just, like, sitting in there. Sometimes the windows slip down, which is why they are held in place with ... wait for it ... wadded strips of paper. Yes, I know. It's the equivalent of wearing glasses with a big piece of tape over the nosepiece. (Any PayPal donations will go directly to a "fix-my-crappy-Jeep" fund. Promise.)

Today, though, it was actually a GOOD thing - because I shimmied the window right down and was able to unlock the door and get my kids out. Crisis averted.

At least I was dressed this time ...