Do you ever have a day like this? You get a ton of tiny little things done, but you accomplish nothing? I had once of those days today.... let me bore you with a detailed play-by-play:
6:50 hear the girls bickering. Great. I just *LOVE* waking up to the sound of bickering.... Spend the next 15 min cuddling with BB in my bed while trying to direct Dumpling to get dressed. She picked out her dress the night before, but for some reason, she is DEMANDING red undies, which she does not own. Then she wants Little Mermaid underwear, but not the regular ones, the polka dot ones, which are nowhere to be found. There are, however, at least 25 other pairs, all a combination of various princesses and polka dots.....
7:05 make it to the kitchen and turn on the espresso machine. For some reason, I feel like it will be particularly important to drink my entire cup today. Spend the next 25 making sure Dumpling eats a resemblance of a nutritious breakfast (dry Cheerios, a frozen yogurt tube and some grapes).
7:30, the negotiations begin. She MUST finish eating in the next 10 min if we are going to make it to school on time. I make her lunch and hunt down the library book she has to return. I manage to finish my coffee and as a bonus this morning, I find time for an English muffin with peanut butter. This will turn out to be a very good thing later on.
7:50 running around looking for shoes. Not the pink shoes! Not those ones! Noooooo! Settle on the yellow shoes with bows. This is what happens when you bring home 24 pairs of shoes from China.
7:58 pull out of the driveway and leave the house. Please mark this time down.
8:02 Car pool stop. Pick up the second chatty 4 year old. Spend the next 15 min driving to school listening to them argue about who has the best princess Halloween costume, who had a Cinderella dress first, who can chew gum and who can't (Dumpling has to wait til she's 5)....
8:15 start looking for a parking spot in the drop off zone. Have to drive around the block. Deposit the girls the their respective classrooms and jump back in my car. Drive the reverse path home, checking out that fancy Westmount estates.
8:32 arrive home. Find BB getting dressed. Help her finish getting ready, find some shoes (she doesn't care quite as much) and then wrestle her into the car seat.
8:42 Begin the second drive to the same freaking school.
9:00 Deposit BB in her classroom and stick around for about 10 min to make sure she is all settled. Head over to Home Depot to buy light bulbs for the store.
9:15 Home Depot. Standing in the light bulb section. Cannot remember the size of the bulbs in the tracks 16 feet in the air. Pick a size that looks right and put 10 of them in my cart. Get to the cash and am convinced they are too big. Quick run back to the department and switch them for the smaller ones.
9:50 arrive at work, luckily there is a spot right in front of the store.
10:05 chat with employee, look up at the ceiling. the light bulbs are too small.... OF COURSE! because with the height, the very big bulbs look smaller.... argh! Decide to finish laying down the rubber-mat winter flooring instead and spend an hour on my hands and knees peeling the back of double-sided carpet tape and cursing a lot.
11:00 leave work and return to Home Depot to exchange the light bulbs. The guy in the section gives me an "I told you so" look, but the thing is, he DIDN'T tell me! He could have saved me a trip! notice yellow gas light. Sure!
11:30 stop by the grocery store and purchase pre-cut cheese and washed grapes and a small slab of cheese-less pizza.
11:45 Beach Ball's school, Pick her up. She did well today, no crying. She even let them change her diaper.
12:00 stop at only full-service gas station left in this part of town. Because with a kiddo in the car, I don't like to get out to pump myself. Spend the time filling up preparing lunch for BB. Feed her the grapes and cheese. She thinks it's Da Bomb to eat in the car.
12:10 waiting for the amazing babysitter at the subway station. Tear off a piece of the cheese-less pizza and feed it to BB.
12:25 Babysitter is now in the car, we head home. I explain to her how I decided to feed BB in the car so she wouldn't be starving by the time we got home. Turn around, BB dead asleep in the car seat!
12:45 having deposited my 2 passengers home and put BB in her crib, I head back on the road and head to the dentist.
1:00 teeth cleaning. A small cavity we have been watching for over a year is tender during the cleaning, so we schedule an appointment in 2 weeks to have it fixed.
1:45 am done with the dentist and head back home, making a small detour to the fabulous Asian 2$ store where I find Dumpling a sweet Bento Box to take her lunch to school.
2:15 HOME!!!!!! but not for long. Dumpling has a doctor's appointment at 3. So I sit with the girls in the attic for a few minutes and watch them color. Babysitter fills me in on their moods. convince Dumpling to leave her coloring behind and guess what? Get back in the car and head to the doctor's office, which is one block away from the school!!!!
3:00 I swear my car knows how to get here on it's own. I have now been at this intersection 5 times today.
3:30 the doctor is running late and I suddenly realize that I have not put anything in my mouth since I left this morning. And Dumpling is a tad hyper. Fun! She is put on iron supplements and a nose spray for the nose bleeds. Head back home. Stop for a coffee because at least it's a full serving of milk.
4:15 this is it, this time I am home for good..... help get Dumpling ready for her weekly gymnastics class (her one and only activity) she decides, thankfully, that she doesn't want me to take her, she wants to go with the babysitter. So hubs drives them and I am alone with BB for 45 min. I sit on the couch and sing her some songs.
5:15 hubs returns and offers to make dinner if I will go pick up Dumpling. For a moment, I want to strangle him. Back in the car? Is he nuts? But it's better than cooking, so I watch yesterday's episode of The Hills and veg for the first time today.
5:45 back in the car, fetch Dumpling return home.
6:20 dinner. Feel like crap.
Now, most of my days are not like this. Actually, they are rarely like this. But when the are... ARRGGGHHHH! I was actually supposed to give my monthly talk at the adoption agency tonight but it was canceled because of low registration. Thank Goodness!!!!
On a happy note, it's days like this that make me very happy my car is a hybrid! At least I didn't spend the day polluting too much.
Any wine left over from the other night? If not, there must be other bottles. Hope tomorrow is better for you.
Posted by: Herb Urban | October 16, 2007 at 10:21 PM