Manic Monday

Mondays.  Don't you just love them?  I should-- it's Terence's day off usually so it should be kind of like a weekend right?

OK, maybe not.  Yesterday felt like I was trying desperately to keep on a treadmill set to a 10 mph pace or something.

I think I was running from 5 am until 11 pm.  (Well, maybe until about 10:30, when I climbed into the bathtub.)  And it was just one of those days.

Highlights:

• Volunteering in B's class and getting an opinion on B possibly having dyslexia
• S discovering yet another marker. (Where does she keep finding them?  I thought I had them hidden on a high shelf.)  She decorated herself quite thoroughly-- as well as the wall and the window in the front room.
• Spending 30 minutes making a menu and grocery list that I then lost somewhere between parking the car and walking into the store.
• An epic homework/battle of wills afternoon with both girls.  I wanted to scream or cry or run away.  Or all three.
• Spending an hour searching my cupboards for a missing part to my food processor so I could make zucchini bread.
• Deciding what the heck, sorting through and tossing out about 30 pieces of tupperware-like stuff that don't have lids anymore.  (This really put me behind when it came to dinner.)
• Attempting to cook dinner, make zucchini bread, and bake brownies all at the same time while S alternated between chucking things off the kitchen table and crying while holding on to my legs.
• Patiently holding it together through a FHE where I couldn't even hear one word out of five of Terence's lesson.  (He's lost his voice, and the kids weren't at their most reverent.)
• Biking after dark lit up like a Christmas tree.  It was my only chance for exercise, but it makes Terence so nervous when I ride the bike in the dark that he has decorated it with multi-colored LED lights.  It gets a bit distracting for the rider . . . but I bet I provided entertainment for some of the neighbors who happened to be out that late.
• Making the mistake of reading a post that someone linked to on my facebook feed that included such charming gems of comments such as "religion is evil" and "sterilize a conservative a day-- the world will be a much safer place."  Needless to say reading such muck ended my day on a very low note.

And my favorite adventure of the day?  Drumroll, please. . . .

• Losing K in Walmart when I had a cart full of groceries and less than 30 minutes to get checked out, loaded, and up to the school to pick up the older kids.  At first I wasn't worried but after having roamed up and down the grocery aisles four times with no sight of him, I started to get panicky.  I managed to hold it together though.  (At one point an employee saw me looking up the aisles and asked if she could help my find something, and I said, "Yes, my 4 year old!"  She laughed a bit and said she couldn't help me there.  I think she thought I was making a joke.)  Eventually, I found him with one of the managers.  All she had been able to get out of him was that his mom was wearing a white shirt.  (Helpful.)  I've got to get that kid to practice saying my full name.

I really needed a break today after all that.

I didn't get it.

Now I'm off to try and sew a mob cap and edit M's biography on Carol Burnett.  Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get into bed by 11!