Delicious Minutiae

I’ve been away for awhile.  Not in jail or the looney bin or anything, but things got busy and all of a sudden more than a year went by.  I fully intended to resurrect the blog on the one year anniversary of the last post, but I think we can all deal with that particular deadline coming and going.  If you can’t hang with my tardiness, we probably shouldn’t be pretend online friends anymore.  Just saying.

I was thinking about posting last week after a nice drive into Evanston and a super first day of fall co-op.  My kids are 9 and 6, so still pretty young.  My 6 y-o, E,  commented on how many businesses were closed through one stretch of our drive where we were going from one expressway to another, but had to cut across a town.  We did the carschooling thing and talked about the economy and how people and businesses are really struggling right now…  etc.  He asked some interesting questions, offered some opinions, and seemed satisfied with our conversation.  We had a beat of silence and he told me, “And please stop singing with the music.”  I am not the fifth Beatle, nor do I have permission to pretend I ever will be.

Fast forward a week and we have this morning.  A stark contrast to last week.  I was a lunatic!  Things were going fine until time got away from me.  Time does that with me.  We’re not even pretend friends, online or anywhere.  With only a few minutes of spare time left, I lost my freaking mind.  Our stuff was everywhere, N needed some game instructions printed but I couldn’t find the correct version to print, dice wound up under the car for his probability class, my lunch packing assistant combined two portions of ham in one baggy.  One. Baggy.  !!  The mind boggles.  How are two kids going to eat ham from one baggy, I ask?  The car was full of empty cub scout popcorn boxes, but my nine year old had something in his hand and didn’t think to put it down to uncover his seat…  It was a problem without a solution, I tell you.  I believe that’s when the dice liberated themselves under the car, actually.  I may or may not have stormed into the house like a bratty teenager while announcing, “I’m taking my iPod!  You know, the one you gave me as a gift but never let me use??”  That’s a bucket of gratitude in action.  I’ve never been prouder of myself.  Never.

We (I) finally got our (my) shit together and I pulled out of the garage…and hit Jeff’s car in the driveway.  Gently.  It was like a kiss.  From someone with a communicable disease.  I just calmly rolled down the window and told him, “I think I may have just hit your car, but just a little.”  I could see his jaw clench as he stood in the garage wishing me ill.  Wishing me gone.  Maybe wishing himself gone?

The important thing to remember is we were finally on our way to one of the kids favorite activities of all time.  We were all subdued as we began our journey.  It was ten minutes before I even put the Beatles on, and E didn’t even remind me of things I forgot.  I thought the kids were sleeping, it was so quiet.  Without the Buddy Holly or Big Bopper plane crash details, we would have said it was the Day (morning) the Music Died, in a nutshell.  We recovered pretty quickly though, or should I say *I* recovered pretty quickly.  It’s been a lovely day at co-op, as usual.  I think I need to work on a few life skills going forward, including I need to definitely plan ahead a little better.  Usually I have everything ready and a list of the last minute things that need doing.  I just go down the checklist and that works for me. I didn’t have a checklist, N threw something at me I wasn’t ready for, I was tired…  Blabbedy-blah, yadda, yadda, excuses, etc.

But number one on my list is to say sorry to Jeff for not being the better half this morning.  I wasn’t even the better quarter.  Or half quarter.  I was the worst eighth teaspoon.  We might need to switch to kooky metric to quantify my lameness.  I am sorry and I’ll try not to run into your car again, too.  Or diss your hoarding of my kindof gift.

It was an exceptional day, minus the nonsense that launched it.  I’ll try to post more often, but seriously the wheels are falling off the bus and my blog might be evidence of that going forward.  I don’t know if that’s such a swell idea.