Projectile Sweating: Go!
I'm sure most of you recognize Cathy, my least favorite comic strip character, and her weird projectile sweating. Today kind of sucked, so I actually felt a smidge of kinship towards Cathy with all her glandular problems. (This is going to be a self-indulgent and excruciatingly detailed post, so I won't be offended if you only pretend to have read it. Go ahead, skip to the end and sympathize as if you read the middle.)
First, we all woke up in a candy haze, and I with a headache that had materialized overnight. Probably from candy overconsumption, since it has been awhile since I overindulged. Life doesn't stop for a glutton's headache, so I got the kids ready for the morning carpool, packed G's lunch, dressed D, packed them into the sardine tin and left.
As I left, I realized that last night at the Halloween party we went to, somebody (most likely somebody under 3 feet tall) had pilfered my housekeys off of the caribiner I keep them on. I knew I'd be going back to that house today to fill in for my friend's babysitter, so I just left the house unlocked. Fortunately, the thief left my car keys alone, so I was able to drive G and her obnoxious carpool-mate to school on schedule.
The drive was very peaceful. And, by peaceful, I mean "punctuated by obnoxious carpool-mate screaming." So I turned up the radio (Bob & Sheri in the morning! how very suburbanite mom of me!) and tried to get there as quickly as possible, before OCM drove me completely batty. After I dropped G and OCM off at school, I ran a couple of errands and returned home to put up some gates for D so I could rest and shake the headache before I had to babysit at 11. For some reason, as I left the car and went into the house, it seemed like a good idea to lock the van. Remember this detail, it'll be on the quiz later. (Yes! Those of you who are reading the middle will know about the quiz, and the ones who skip ahead to the end won't! Crafty, eh?)
At 10:50, I figure it's as good as it's getting, so I get D ready and start looking for my keys. Not on the kitchen table... not on the TV stand... not in any of the bags I've used in the past couple of days... shit. My keys are gone. I had to have them to get into the house, though, right? Oops. No, the house was unlocked because Tiny Thief had removed my housekeys from my caribiner. I got a familiar sinking feeling in my guts. It's familiar because, as some of you may know about me, I am REALLY FUCKING STUPID when it comes to keys and losing them and locking them in places. It has happened before, more times than I want to admit. I haven't actually locked them in a vehicle in a long time, though.
(That graph has nothing to do with my post, I just read somewhere that it helps to break up long bits of text with interesting graphics. I got that one from The Sneeze, where I first learned of Cathy's projectile sweating problem. http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000079.php )
So I'm in a bind now. I'm supposed to meet the babysitter at my friend's house at 11, but by the time I figure out what I've done it's 11:05. I don't have the babysitter's home number, and plus, she's probably waiting for me in my friend's driveway. I call my friend's house anyway, just in case the sitter went inside before I got there (she usually works in her own home) but she doesn't pick up when I leave messages. Shit. I call Triple A to see if I can join really quick and have them come unlock me. The AAA girl wants to transfer me to sales so I can pay for a membership, but all of my payment options are (you guessed it) in the car.
This brings me to my first digression. WTF is AAA thinking here? Wouldn't there be something of a market there, consisting of people who lock their keys in their cars and need help quickly, think first of AAA but can't pay until afterwards because they've locked their wallets away with their keys? The AAA lady was so spectacularly unhelpful that I'm ashamed to say I yelled "Well THANKS A LOT!" and slammed down the phone. It wasn't really her fault, but it seemed that way at the time.
I try another locksmith-- he's in the middle of a lock change in the rural part of the county, and can't get here for an hour. I didn't yell at him.
Finally, the sitter calls me-- my friend must have given her my number, just in case. So I apologize profusely and give her directions to my house so she can bring my friend's son to me. She sounds a little hassled because I think she is probably going to be late to her appointment, but I figure I can't really worry about that right now. After all, my problem is solved!
Another problem promptly materializes-- my friend doesn't have a cell phone, so I need to call her at work to let her know that her son is now at my house instead of her house so she doesn't panic when she gets there.
(God, this is long and boring. I think I changed my mind about the quiz. But don't tell the ones who skipped this part, okay?)
So my friend works at the middle school my kids would go to if I were inclined to send them to the shitty middle school we're districted into. She is a GATE resource teacher for all of the gifted 6th graders, of which there are roughly 100. That's just the gifted ones. I think they get bar code tattoos when they enter this school. Anyway, I call the front desk. I get an answering machine. (At a school!! What if I was a parent??) I try again, and again, no answer. Finally I figure I need to leave a message, so I leave one and start waiting for the call which I hope will happen soon.
In the meantime, D and my friend's son, who is 5 months older than D, are fighting like little weasels. It's full-on screaming and ripping of hair. D doesn't want to share any of his toys, so I try to find a good-mommy way to say "stop being a dipshit and share your toys." And wait for that call, which never comes. Finally, I figure I need to call back, so I plug the boys into the electronic babysitter so I have a chance of actually completing this phone call. I hit redial, and I actually get a human being this time. Again, I explain that I need to speak to my friend. The woman on the line says "is that a student?" Cue projectile sweating! No, I say, patiently for the moment, it's a teacher. She's the 6th grade GATE teacher. She goes, "okay, let me transfer you." Thanks, I say, and I wait with the muzak for a moment before hearing ringing, followed by ANOTHER answering machine-- FOR THE FUCKING ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT.
WTF?! The athletic department?? Oh, it's on now. I hang up, call back, and yell at the receptionist. I am PRETTY FREAKING SURE that my friend the GATE TEACHER is not in the ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT. And I need to talk to her VERY SOON because I HAVE HER SON and SHE NEEDS TO KNOW WHERE TO PICK HIM UP. Could you find someone who KNOWS THE STAFF who can find her for me please?? To her credit, she responds very kindly that if I will give her a message, she will go on foot to find my friend and have her call me.
I would have totally smoked a joint at this juncture, had one materialized before me.
Finally, and this is a real anticlimax I'm sure, my friend calls me and arranges to pick up her son, and she brings me a couple of chocolates from the school because she can hear that I am stressing about her child and she feels bad that I did her a favor that turned out to be such a pain. She is a good friend. And my story is done, but for one more Cathy graph:
Boy, that Cathy sure sweats a lot, huh?