I’m going to tell you about my worst day ever in 42 years, 1 month and 2 days of life. I won’t be upset if you snicker, because after a while it does start to get ridiculous, but at the time I was a majorly upset camper.
5:30 am – I get up and visit with Jay while I eat my breakfast. I’m going walking after he leaves for work and I have to have something on my stomach.
6:30ish – Drive up to Crystal’s porch to pick her up for walking. She has a headache so she’s going back to bed. Ok, fine, no problem. I have my mp3 player in my fanny pack and I’ll just listen to tunes while I walk.
6:40ish – Drive by the theater per hubby’s request to see if Harry Potter is playing this weekend in our little town. NUMBER ONE: No, Harry Potter is NOT in our little theater which means hubby is not going to be happy because we have to go nearly to Tulsa.
6:45ish – Get out of car at walking trail, pull out the mp3, pull out the earbuds & get them settled in my ears, and push the on button…… and push the on button…… swear, and push the on button….. NUMBER TWO: I’ve got to walk without tunes. No big deal, some would say. But if I don’t have a conversation or some tunes to distract me, then all I do is feel that my knee hurts, and my ankles hurt, and I have a cramp in my foot, whine, whine, whine.
7:15ish – Get in car after spending 30 minutes walking and inventorying all my aches and pains and go home.
8:30ish – I’m happily looking at emails after taking a shower and Rachel (11) walks through, shoulders slumped, bored look on her face, why is she even awake? "Rachel, whatcha doing?" NUMBER THREE: "I’ve got to get my CHORES done before I can do anything ELSE" (imagine this in a low, monotone). She’s walks around slumped and slams the dryer door and pours the dog food as LOUDLY as she can, and sighs heavily as she straightens up the living room, then stomps through the house back to her room to clean it up before she watches TV. NOW, I’m starting to get a little tense. We’ve just changed up the chore situation and both kids have super bad attitudes about it.
10:00ish – NUMBER FOUR: I can’t even relate how this happened because I got so angry I’ve blocked most of it. Highlights: Daniel said things like, "This is not worth any amount of money, any amount of allowance to do!" "This sucks! This is stupid!" I said things like, "It’s not any different than the rest of the world cleans house." "It would only take a few minutes if you’d just DO IT." "Use the instructions, follow the instructions." At one point he went and laid on the couch. I asked him if he was refusing to do his chores and he wouldn’t answer me. I told him if he didn’t DO his chores then he was refusing. And more words were exchanged. And eventually after about 30 minutes of hateful back and forth’s (on his 16th birthday, no less) I actually swore at one of my kids for the first time ever, "If you don’t do everything exactly like it’s on the list this day is gonna be so F***** for you!" He shut up and got to work.
12:00 – Chores are done. I need to go to Pawnee (45 minutes away) to pick up meds. The kids say if I’ll take them to Movie Gallery and Wal-Mart they’ll go with me. Go to Movie Gallery, go to Wal-Mart, go to Pawnee. "Mom, how long are we going to be at the clinic?" "Should just be a few minutes because I called them in. I just have to get someone’s attention. This trip will be mostly driving." "Well, can we get a snack and eat it while you wait because I’m hungry and we can’t eat in the car?" "Sure, honey, that’s fine."
1:20 – I got my meds pretty quickly, then went to sat with the kids while they finished their snacks. NUMBER FIVE: I took out the print-out and noticed they didn’t have one of my meds – one I can’t go off of suddenly. I go back to the pharmacy, he looks on the computer as says I didn’t have any refills left. Strange, because I have 4 meds written by the same doctor at the same time with the same amount of refills all the time. "We can look at your chart to verify what the doctor wrote," he says. "Okay," I said.
1:30 – I’m at registration having requested my chart be sent from medical records to pharmacy. "How long do you think it will take," I ask. NUMBER SIX: The clerk’s eyes just go wide. "A long time, I take it?" I said. "Between one and two hours for your chart just to get there. Then however long pharmacy takes."
1:30-3:40 NUMBER SEVEN: Waiting, notice I’m missing one more med and alert the pharmacist, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, one magazine in the waiting room, visit the rest room, play on the medical information computer, Daniel’s PSP runs out of battery
3:40 – "Is my chart here yet?" "Yes, it’s in line"
4:00 – Got my meds; heading home in a rush because I have people coming at 7:00 and I have to get two cakes made, iced, and decorated before then!
4:45 – Rushed into the house, which felt like a blast furnace! I hadn’t turned the AC on because I didn’t know we’d be gone so long! NUMBER EIGHT: I now have no choice but to turn on the oven and make two cakes in a 95 degree kitchen.
Time becomes irrelevant from this point on:
NUMBER NINE: I can’t find my mixer – anywhere! Oh – there’s the Cuisinart; I’ll use that!
NUMBER TEN: I pour cake mix, eggs, and oil in the Cuisinart bowl – and realize I didn’t put the blade in. Rachel gets me a big mixing bowl and I pour/scrape everything in the big bowl (great, more dishes to wash). I rinse the Cuisinart bowl inside and out, then put the blade in, and pour/scrape everything back into it.
NUMBER ELEVEN: I can’t remember or figure out how to put the top assembly on the Cuisinart and I don’t know where the book is! It took a full five minutes for me to figure is out. Okay, mix, mix, mix, mix, mix, for a couple of minutes. That should be good, let’s go to the pan.
NUMBER TWELVE: I start pouring/scraping the cake mix into the cake pan, and …. Wait, there’s not even enough to cover the bottom of the pan,… and it’s really thick!.... I wonder if I should have added some water to this. Yep, needs water. Pour/scrape back into Cuisinart bowl (after making sure the blade is in). Add water, mix, mix, pour, scrape, and stick in the oven. It only took me 45 minutes to make cake from cake mix.
Cake #2 – I’ve made all the mistakes, right? This one should be…..a piece of cake!
The blade’s in the bowl. In goes the oil, the water, the cake mix, and NUMBER THIRTEEN just as I start to crack an egg I notice water on the counter, and it’s coming from underneath the Cuisinart bowl! The water is coming out from underneath the bowl! THE WATER IS COMING OUT FROM UNDERNEATH THE BOWL! Rachel says she doesn’t know why, and I don’t know why. "I wouldn’t have this problem if I knew where my mixer was!"
"Oh," says Rachel’s little sweet voice, "You mean this one up here?" And she opens a cabinet and shows me a hand-held electric mixer!!!!!!!
"That’s not the one I was looking for, but that’ll do. Grab that big bowl up there."
I quickly whip up the second cake and get it into the oven. This was not exactly the learning experience about make a cake that I wanted it to be for Rachel!
The party’s good. I’m just so stressed I can hardly think.
Then Crystal reminds me about a couple of magazines I was going to give her, and that reminds me of a catalog I was going to give her. She found one of the magazines and NUMBER FOURTEEN it took about 20 minutes to find the other, and I never did find the catalog.
8:30pm – NUMBER FIFTEEN I can’t find my bedtime medicine and my own whining is getting on my own nerves. I have to get into my "extra" supply of medicine.
8:55pm - NUMBER SIXTEEN I can’t find the stupid cat’s stupid hairball medicine and the whining has increase in volume. I decide Sadie can hack for one night.
9:00pm – I CAN find my bed, I DO close my eyes, the blankets are soft, ….. and the whining stops as the dreams begin.
