A story about a day

Our story begins at 12:30 am, when I was awakened from a much-needed deep sleep by death-is-upon-me screaming coming through the baby monitor. This NEVER happens, so I quickly made my way to Clay's room. Upon opening the door, I was hit square in the nostrils with a foul, foul odor. With only the hall light on for guidance, I reached for my sobbing Itty Bitty. He was soaked, and I could tell in the dim light that he had been vomiting in his bed. I spent the next thirty minutes getting him calmed down, cleaning him up and changing his bedding. He went back to bed without another peep, but I lay awake wondering what in the world I was going to do about CC. Since today was the last day of CC for the semester, I had some extra responsibilities and the kids had their hearts set on being there with their friends. I finally convinced myself that it could simply have been something Clay ate and that things would be better in the morning and I would make my decision then. Well, at 7:00 am it was clear that things were not much better. The only difference was the end that was producing the foul odors. So, I went through the process of cleaning up the child and changing the bedding once again. I knew I couldn't take him to CC and expose the other kids to whatever this might be, but I wrestled with whether to shirk my responsibilities and disappoint the older children. While stewing about what to do, I started packing lunches, reminding people to get their water bottles and backpacks, and loading an incredible amount of paraphernalia into the van--which included our regular massive amount of gear, as well as lots of last-day stuff: teacher gifts, three batches of cookies for various class parties and much, much more. Thirty minutes later, I was on the phone with my father-in-law, desperately asking if there was any way he and my mother-in-law would be willing and able to take on a sick kiddo for the day. They happily agreed, and soon arrived at the house to pick up Clay and take him to their house. I can't tell you how thankful I was! I then made another phone call to the CC director to let her know we would be a little late.

On the way, the cute little teacher gifts (potted plants) spilled their contents all over the floor under Max's feet. Ruth was close to tears, thinking her gift for her teacher was ruined. Max was close to tears as he realized he was going to have to step in that dirt in order to exit the vehicle. And I was close to tears because I had a sick kid, I was running late and now I had dirt all over my van.

We finally arrived at CC, where I single-handedly unpacked all the gear, so that the kids could go on in to the assembly time. It took For-Ever. Then, I had to set up my classroom, interrupting a class already in progress in order to procure another table. When everything was done, I turned my class over to a sub, so I could test two young ladies, individually, on all of the memory work from the whole year. I finally stepped back into my classroom five minutes before class ended--just in time to give out the participation certificates and special treats I had brought.

The afternoon was going along smoothly, until I had a chance to meet a mother visiting our campus with thoughts of joining us next year. We chatted for a while, and then I kicked in to "director mode," telling her I had registration forms, if she was interested. I walked her through the forms and explained everything as best I could, and she very sweetly listened and acted interested, and then said to me, "I actually designed these forms." Turns out, she was one of the very first directors in the state of Texas. And, she's going to be on my campus next year as I fumble my way through my first time to direct anything. Awesome.

I made it through the rest of the day just fine and then rushed Ruth over to piano lessons. It wasn't until Ruth came out of the lesson that I realized she had gone in without any shoes on. That was a first. And I still don't know what possessed her to do that. It was just another awesome aspect of the day.

Then, we were off to pick Clay up at my in-laws. Somewhere along the way I picked up a killer headache. Fortunately, my sweet father-in-law offered to make dinner for us, and I didn't put a fight. Dinner was obviously going to be way too hard for me to pull off tonight. Another bit of good news was that my in-laws reported that Clay had been happy and healthy all day and seemed to be completely over all his tummy troubles.

But, the minute we walked in the door at our house, he proved that the tummy troubles were not completely behind us. Even now, I seem not to be able to get the stench out of my nose.

I got him cleaned up and put to bed, and then turned my attention to the packing that needs to be done before we can leave on our trip tomorrow. And Jeff got home in the midst of that. Woohoo! Just the bright spot I needed. Unfortunately, I have yet to get back to the packing. Or to vacuuming up the spilled dirt in the van. Or to a million other things that need to be done before we leave. And, frankly, I'm thinking about just ignoring all that stuff. Though, I'm having a hard time ignoring the 4-year-old crying (still!) because he doesn't want to go to bed.

If you need me this weekend, I'll be on the beach. With a fruity little drink in my hand.

The End.