I Hate When That Happens

Don't you hate it when your perfect day runs away from you?

You wake up with energy and excitement and a schedule full of activities. You put on your gym clothes and skip the shower...excited to work out while your little ones are in their gymnastics class. You get the big kids off to school and clean up the morning mess.

Then you take a look at your fourth child--who looks sicker and sicker by the minute and realize you must call the pediatrician about the strange rash and dark circles around his eye.

Of course, they don't answer the phone the first few times you call, then they put you on hold for 15 minutes and when you finally speak to someone--they don't have an appointment until tomorrow. So you take the appointment and decide to wait it out. Thirty minutes later you start getting that desperate mommy feeling, call them back and BEG them to see you. She says OK drop everything and come right now.

So you put on some clothes, swipe on some lipstick, do the ponytail and head out the door. You wave a fond goodbye to the shower and know you will feel slimy all day long.

Turns out, the doctor is not too worried about the face rash (excema)...but is alarmed by the circular rash on his leg and sends you to the blood lab to test for Lyme Disease.

You hold your little guy tightly as they tie the rubber tube around his arm. He makes it through without a wimper, but you are ready to burst into tears.

After tucking the twins in for a nap, you head down to the computer to Google Lyme Disease. You spend 30 horrifying minutes looking at all the worst-case-scenarios and imagining all of them happening to you. Right now.

As you are engrossed with the folks on CDC.com, the phone rings. It is your oldest son's special ed teacher, calling to say that he may/may not have punched a girl in the stomach. The two of you discuss the possibilities, causes and consequences. It ends on a positive note, until you walk into the kitchen to find this...

and this...

and this.

After 45 minutes of time-outs, clean-ups and melt-downs...you go upstairs to find this in your master bathroom...

and this in your children's bathroom...

If each of these small tragedies happened on separate days, you might have been able to laugh and even write a humorous post on your blog for posterity.

But not today. And, as you look at the calendar and realize:

1. In the next 11 days, your children have a total of 2 full days and 3 half-days of school.
2. Your husband will be out of town for 5 of those days.
3. There are only 38 shopping days left til Christmas.

...you do the only thing you can possibly do--call your mother, burst into tears and beg her to fly cross-country to help you.

And, because she is the wonderful person that she is, she drops everything and agrees graciously to come. And, because your husband is equally wonderful, he goes directly to Delta.com and books the flight.

So, although the perfect day got away...it has a (sort of) happy ending.

And, in the meantime, I would love to hear from anyone who knows anything about: Lyme disease, wall repair and getting Nestle Quik out of carpet.