Scrolling Saturday and A Stupid Post

I have been absent. I feel bad. But I swear my brain fell out somewhere between Tuesday and yesterday. I tried to write blog posts a few times and nothing worked. I seriously applaud those of you who post great things every day. I can't seem to manage it.

HolleeAnn over at The Vasquez3 has participated a few times in Scrolling Saturday. To quote the nice people over there, I am to "go and find yourself an unloved and virtually unwanted, archived post. Give it a little smoochie. And...display it for your new friends to see. " I can do that. Even tonight when I am tired and brain challenged. And after all, it's still Saturday for a few minutes.

So here we go. Originally posted September 5, 2007, I give you

One Flat Tire, One Dead Battery, Three Trips to the School and A Whole Lot Of Stupids

When I woke up to Gracie tickling my feet 45 minutes before we usually crawl out of bed to get ready for school, I figured it was going to be one of those stupid days. I was right. I don't know about you, but 45 minutes may just as well be four hours when you are as sleep deprived as I am lately.

Gracie may have been raring to go, but Isaac was as grumpy as I felt when I yanked him out of bed, and he didn't hide it as well as I did. That catapulted Gracie into her "gotta bug him till his teeth hurt" routine which only made matters worse.

For breakfast I burned four sets of freezer waffles before I got it right, and then I couldn't find the syrup so the kids ate freezer waffles with butter and powdered sugar on them for their "most important meal of the day". I prayed it wasn't already time for them to talk about the food pyramid in school.

About a half an hour before the first bell (Gracie informed me recently that it isn't a bell, it's a "Doooooooooooooo" sound. She was kind of disappointed that there wasn't someone clanging a giant bell every morning signaling that school was starting. Since she's never seen Little House on the Prairie, I haven't a clue where she got that idea)I went out to my trusty mini-van to grab something and noticed the front right tire was almost completely flat.

Usually this would be a problem, but since flat tires seem to plague any car that I drive, Jon bought me a mini air compressor that works via the cigarette lighter. Now, no matter where I happen to be I can get air in my tire, albeit extremely slowly.

That is, if the car starts at all.

Stupid battery in my stupid van stupid died again. Stupid. Stupid is a bad word in our house by the way, so you can tell by my cussing tirade that I was pretty mad at the way the morning was going.

I could have hunted down a neighbor to help me out, but I didn't. Instead I flew into the house and irrationally grabbed the kids, their backpacks, the jogging stroller and my red flip flops and we started walking. Fast.

On the way up the hill (which seemed a whole heck of a lot steeper this morning than the day I muled the princess bike up it), Gracie decided that she wanted to walk into her class by herself. Admittedly, even though I knew it would be easier as far as Evie and the stroller were concerned, I was a little sad at first. Then I looked down and remembered my choice outfit for the morning and decided that this growing up thing couldn't have happened at a better time.

For me. Not for Gracie.

She changed her mind. "Maybe tomorrow", she said. So I hoisted my now spit up covered, stinky baby out of the stroller, ignored the up and down outfit assessment I got from a teacher standing outside, and we went in. On our way to the class another teacher stopped us to make goo-goo eyes at Evie. Gracie's response to the attention was to make the baby "talk" by moving her chin and bottom lip up and down and saying weird things in an equally weird voice. Neat.

By the time I got out of the school and was back on the road home I was so done with the day. Evie slept. I said 'stupid' under my breath a bunch of times to the rhythm of my flip flopped footsteps.

Our stroller trip was repeated two more times because of Kindergarten and my stubborn-ness as far as seeking out a neighbor with a not dead battery to help me.

When we got Isaac on our last run, we also brought home a friend who I had agreed to watch for the afternoon. This kid has a mom with a car that never breaks down and never runs out of gas (once last year when I was taking the same kid to school we ran out of gas and had to walk the rest of the way). He thought walking home was the best thing that had happened all day, and showed it by leaping to touch trees every five feet or so along the way.

Eventually his enthusiasm for our pedestrian adventure started to rub off, and at one point he and Isaac, in near perfect sync, commando rolled across the sidewalk from the crosswalk. It was pretty rad. Gracie ran the whole way shrieking "I win!" every time we had to stop at a light or an intersection. Isaac wasn't moved by her victories.

"The only reason you're winning is because no one else is playing!" True enough, but I really had to resist the urge to defiantly look at him and raspberry the air. I sort of Mommy-glared at him instead because I'm a grown up.

Stupid car. Stupid battery. Stupid red flip flops that gave me blisters on the bottoms of my feet.

Stupid.