Friday, May 13, 2011

Take That, Agent Jack Bauer

Starting 24 hours ago...

The girls and I went to the mall for some light shopping since Keith is in Las Vegas for the week and they wanted to get new outfits for Lydia's preschool program. We were having such a good night! We found cute clothes, on sale; everyone was getting along having fun! On the way home we swung by Steak N Shake for burgers then came home and watched The Voice and went to bed…ahhh…doesn’t that sound like a perfect evening?!? It really was!

I got the kids to bed (mine) with very little hassle and then I started tooling around the house doing the mom thing for a few minutes when I went out in the garage to get something and saw my car doors open. My immediate thought was “oh no, I bet my battery is dead!” because my car battery tends to die when the girls leave the doors open since the car lights up like a Christmas tree. I quickly started the car, yay it ran, and turned it back off.

A couple of hours later I went in the garage again and heard “click…click…click...click…” in very rapid succession. It sounded like when you’re trying to start a car and it won’t turn over because the battery is dead, only I wasn’t trying to start the car and the keys were in the house. I popped the hood and sure enough it was coming from under there. (that was as far as my assessment went!) I came in, got the keys and tried to start it again and got NOTHING! Not even a clicking sound, NOTHING!

I freaked out a little because the next day was going to be busy and I didn’t plan on having car problems! I went into action trying to come up with a backup plan. I sent texts to friends asking if their husbands would come jump my car since I didn’t have another car here to jump off of, I sent other texts to friends asking if they’d take Lydia to school in the morning in case I didn’t get the car started in time. I texted neighbors asking if they’d swing by and plug in and I got NOTHING from ANYONE! (not entirely true, one of my neighbors did text that he was in Chicago and couldn’t come over) I started freaking out a little more...(okay, a lot more!)

I called Keith, near tears, in Vegas, and said “my car won’t start, I can’t get ahold of anyone, I have a busy day tomorrow, I don’t know what else to do…” in one long breath on his voicemail.

Two hours later at 11:32pm, I got a text that said “it’s extremely loud what did you need is it urgent”

I replied, halfway mad, more helpless and frustrated than anything, “never mind, I’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Earlier in the day Hadley and Lydia gone to the dentist and Hadley had a loose tooth pulled, so sometime during the night the tooth fairy was going to have to get her act together and shove something under the pillow. The tooth fairy made three attempts to do so and each time was greeted by a wide eyed little girl saying “what’cha doin’?”

Did I mention Hadley and Lydia were both asleep in my bed?!?

I came to the living room and ate a bowl of ice cream, in misery, and watched mindless TV. (Don’t judge, the Real Housewives of Orange County actually made me feel a little better.)
When the show went off, the tooth fairy made another, this time successful, attempt to make the tooth swap! It was 2am when this FINALLY took place!

I crawled in bed with my two little sleeping cherubs and the dog and went to sleep. Ahhh…much needed night’s sleep at 2am!

I fell right to sleep and woke up to something wet on my toes, at 4am. “dangit Belle, quit licking my toes! You’re disgusting!” Only, it wasn’t her licking me…she was throwing up on my feet. CRAP! I roll her out of bed, shove the kids around until I’ve gotten everything that she’s touched stripped off the bed (the kids NEVER WOKE UP!) grab clean blankets and cover everyone back up, after all it’s only 79 degrees in the house, and I desperately go back to sleep.

At 6am I wake up, WIDE AWAKE, from stress. I decide to get up and as I’m sneaking out of the bedroom I step in dog pee! It really shouldn’t have surprised me because what typically happens when Belle gets sick is she has a seizure, throws up, then pees somewhere. It’s just that usually I’ve had more than four hours of sleep and I’m a little more alert.

I decide to use my time wisely and send out a couple of texts because I still haven’t heard back from anyone, no one answers these either. I get dressed and do my thing til 7am when I wake Hadley up and get her ready for school. I return from the bus stop around 8am and call my mechanic. This man has daughters and a wife and God bless him, he has the patience of a saint! He calmly talks me off the ledge and tells me to get my car started and bring it in.

I call Ms. Dawn at church and spill the entire saga to her and she says she’ll find someone to help me out. She calls Mark and asks him to help and a few minutes later I’m rescued! The car was running and I’m ready to go, only I’m not…I get Lydia dressed and ready for school and I gather up the bed spread and all the dry cleaning and head out. I might as well make the trip count and I was scared to turn the car off because I didn’t know if it would start again so I ran a few errands before taking her to school.

Around 9am I start calling rental car places and I’m looking online at Enterprise (whom I will NEVER rent from again because of today!) and the prices in Carmel are $18/day for an economy car but over by my mechanic the price is $27/day. I call Enterprise and try to talk them into giving me the better price and they refuse and basically tell me I’m lying, that they don’t ever have cars for that price! Even though the message playing when I was on hold mentioned $9.99 weekend rentals, but I guess that’s just a fairy tale too! We had a little verbal altercation and I called PJ, my mechanic back. He assured me I could rent a car from him and I’d be okay.

The funny part of the rental car call is that as I was dialing, I dialed the wrong number. I called some woman in Hawaii who says “aloha, I’m going to have to call you back” then hangs up. Oops! I later get a text from that number that says “Hey! Sorry I missed your call but normal people sleep at 2:30am. Did you forget I live in Hawaii? J Talk to you soon!”

Umm…I don’t know who in the heck she thinks I am but God bless her for being so kind!

Got to the mechanic, got the rental, getting back on track! Yahoo!

Everything seemed to be falling back into place. We got the girls hair done, we went to dinner, and went to Lydia’s preschool end of year program. (Which she ROCKED!)

Then, I got the news from the mom of a little girl that had been here for a play date this week…the little girl has lice! UGH! In my desperation to keep everyone busy while Keith has been out of town, we’ve had LOTS of play dates. LOTS. Unfortunately this little girl’s dad found lice on her tonight and since she’d been here she felt obligated to tell me.

I want to start by being very clear; I have no blame what so ever for the little girl or her mommy! In fact, I sympathize, very much, with her sweet momma. However, that doesn’t make it any less frightening and frustrating!

So, I’m digesting this on the way home and the girls are in the backseat of the rental car bickering and being down right mean to each other over a to go cup of Fresca. I said “Hadley, just give me the cup!” So she does, and in my frustration I jerk it out of her hand and try to throw it out the window when the wind catches it and it flies all over me, the car, everything in the car, and the windshield, before finally going out the window.

Yes, I know littering is bad. Yes we live in Carmel and that’s a major faux pas but for crying out loud can’t I catch a break today!?! (I guess the good news is that I didn’t hit a Carmel police officer with my littering! Ha!)

Lydia begins chanting “mommy you blittered, mommy you blittered.” I tearfully reply, “I know, Lydia, mommies mess up sometimes too” then I sob my way home!

Needless to say that when I told the girls to put their pajamas on and go to bed, I didn’t get much flack about it! The thought mommy was a basket case and it would be best to avoid her!

Oh, and tomorrow…it’s Friday the 13th!

So, take that, agent Jack Bauer! You aint seen nothing till you’ve spent a day in my life!

No comments:

Post a Comment