today, not so hot, but not so cool either

"Moooooooooommmm!!!!!!"
"yes?"
"Mooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!"
"What? Wait a sec...."
"Moooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"I'm here, I'm here, what is it?" I ask as I arrive at the bathroom door.
"I accidentally pooped in the bathtub!"

"That's it!" I turn on my heel and cross back across the house. I'm having a time out. Not with wine or valium, just by myself, in my own quiet, clean bathroom, with my yoga magazine. Just for a moment. Because the day is not over. Close, but no, I am not done yet.

This morning did not bode well. My first words were "why on earth do those people insist upon waking us each morning by talking so loudly right into our ears?" I was joking, lamely, referring to the alarm clock, set on NPR. After one round of the snooze button, I slid myself off the foot of the bed, and stumbled into the kitchen, only to discover that rather than getting to take a precious minute to make coffee before waking the boys, I had to walk Suki, because Max was unable to drag himself out of bed early enough to do so.

"Up late?" I asked, already knowing he had been, since I'd heard him helping himself to ice cream at 11:53 last night.

"No, I was in bed by twelve"

"That's no ten oclock. I guess no more facebook for you."

"Ten o'clock was unrealistic, mom!" he called after me as I strode out the front door with Suki.

I doubled back to yell through the front door:

"You were the one who said you'd be going to bed at ten o'clock, Max, not I. You said you could manage facebook and homework and everything else and still get up and walk her in the morning. And apparently spending time on facebook is more important than keeping your promise to me of walking her on the mornings that you are here. So that is why I am upset."

And then Suki and I went and watched a beautiful sunrise, or at least I did, and I tried to feel grateful for the opportunity to see it. I really tried. It was very lovely to look at, but I had stuff I should have been doing, to stay on schedule, so that the boys could make it to the bus stop on time.

Which they did not. So there went 45 minutes of my day, until the time I dropped them and their lunches and backpacks off at school, turned around and reached home again. But not until I had found (1) yesterday's clothes squished under the toilet, which was full of unflushed urine, (2) wet bath towels on the bedroom floor, trying to send roots into the moist carpet beneath them (3) one child's shoe, necessary for school, but without a mate in sight and (4) a missing lunchbox and 5) old banana peels glued to the floor in the living room, and dried banana pulp smeared on the leather couches.

I suddenly realized that my fun idea of taking kickboxing today was ill timed and ill conceived. But I had promised to be at the J to return a cell phone left in my backyard by a small child on Friday night. Even though it is out of character for me, I texted the news of my change of plan. A momnent later, the phone rang, loudly, which was strange, because it was the land line ringing, and I was still sitting in my minivan in the driveway. What a stroke of luck! Someone had left the phone on the ground in the tall weeds growing at the side of the driveway. As I hit talk, the battery went dead, meaning I had found it just in time - what brilliant luck! I ran inside and grabbed the other receiver and heard the voice of the recipient of my recent text. Turns out all of us would-be kick boxers really need to go grocery shopping today. It's not just me. Which makes it not so bad.

I went inside and began doing laundry and dishes and bringing in the remains of the raccoon party that took place on the lanai after dark, including a feast of our leftover scraps from a Chipotle dinner which we had enjoyed al fresco and which evidently nobody had cleared after Paul and I dashed out the door to the High school open house. Looks like Raccoons are not very impressed by plain cheese quesadillas either.

At midday, after I'd returned from Costco, my husband called and prefaced his remarks by explaining that he was experiencing, through no fault of mine, a great and overwhelming sadness coloring everything today, which I should keep in mind when I hear what he has to say. So that was a lovely chat, albeit a bit better than the one we had as he was trying to back out of the garage and go to work this morning.

I did four loads of laundry, two loads of dishes and sorted and tossed out some layers of the great piles of paper that dominate our household's interior landscape. No, they really do. I posted a facebook status about housework and grocery shopping getting in the way of living and as I worked, snippets of solidarity trickled onto my virtual wall, reminding me again that I was not alone.

By 12:38, I was ready to add violin practice into my juggling act, which is always a nice addition. Today this was a true bright spot of my day, but I didn't get far, because when I would stop playing to write new fingerings and bowings into my part I felt my eyelids drooping, my head wanting to nod forward sharply. It was almost 2:30, and I was going to have to go to school to pick up the kids because i had promised them round trip door to door service today, in celebration of I know not what - Mommy's martyrdom day? Yes, I suppose so.

I loaded up my van for the after school errands, and set my iphone to wake me at 3 pm just in time to pop up, slip on sandals, splash cold water on my face and hop back into my chariot, ready to pay the water bill en famille, return S.D.'s white ceramic serving platter which, I had determined, after it had now spenting months floating around my kitchen, was really going back to her today.

I curled up on the french loveseat in my front hallway, a strange choice to be sure as it is much less wide than I am long - so, clearly not for comfort's sake, but possibly because it was close to the front door. More likely it was just the first soft thing I saw after deciding to lie down. A few minutes into being horizontal, I was suddenly in a dream state. I know this because in my dream i was lying on a mat on the grass and I wanted to move my mat nearer to something or somebody, so I tried to squunch it forward a bit, which woke me with me with a start. I almost fell onto the ground, but did not. I rearranged myself and settled back to try to rest deeply, when my iphone sounded loudly in my ear. Not, as I first suspected, to alert me to its being 3 o'clock. I saw instead that it was a call from a dear friend with whom I had played phone tag all day. I sighed and put the still ringing phone onto the floor, seeing that I had 15 minutes left for a third attempt to rest.

Instead, I got up, took care of a few more things, and went to get the kids. Outside school, I saw several of my Mommy friends, who, when I stopped to chat with them, remarked that I was seeming like a bit of a smart aleck today. Which is a nice way of asking me why I am so bitchy, or at least calling it to my attention. Oh geez.

While we chatted, Isaac fell and began screaming bloody murder. Apparently in an impromptu game of touch football he had fallen hard, landing his butt on a small sharp stump, but who leaves such things on the front lawn next to an elementary school. It's almost like putting barbed wire on a playset. Because when 5, 6, and 7 year old boys come out into the sunlight after 8 hours in lock up, they want to tumble and roll and tackle each other onto the closest patch of grass. Which is perhaps why their house has been on the market for almost a year. Hmmm.

Well, Isaac screamed more and more loudly, even after I kissed him and offered to administer a big dose of ice cream immediately upon our return home. Which to do so required skipping payment of the water bill or return of the platter. We went right home and did homework with ice cream on the side, which was not a bad an interlude, when you consider that it's all relative. And that the water bill is not due until the 30th. I just really want to pay it while there is enough money in our account, and before it gets lost. I also want to stop looking at it and being reminded of the morning recently when I awoke to see, through the bedorom window, a gushing hose, flooding a goodly part of the back yard and adding about $100 to our usual bill.

Good things happened today. A positive phone chat about Max with my ex-husband. A flutist agreeing to play duets with me for the local music club. A donation of more music very graciously received by another local women's charity. My "little" boys both loving the camouflage cargo pants I found for them at Costco, which means that at this moment, they each have multiple pairs of pants WITHOUT ANY HOLES IN THE KNEES. The beautiful sunrise is still ingrained in my mind's eye, as are the good natured and radiantly beautiful smiles of my friends outside the elementary school.

I need to soak in the positive energy from all of that, bask in gratitude for it, but I am exhausted. After the poop-in-the-shower announcement, I decided not to accompany the kids as they canvas the neighborhood with coupons to sell to raise money for their school. I told them that in my current state (bitchy, unshowered) I would only be a liability, not an asset, to them as a sales force. So instead, I am sitting here venting, after consuming a dark chocolate covered almond milk popsicle, which was delicious.

Max is out on a driving lesson, and Paul is giving a talk in Kettering, but the sales boys should be back any minute. And do you know what? I'm really looking forward to storytime. I know it will be sweeter than chocolate.