Scenes From My Day: A Journey Through Choices

I started my day pissed off.  I didn't sleep really well.  I have a busy week coming up.  Lots of classroom volunteering, play dates and we are hosting 40 parents from Gloppy's preschool here for a cocktail party on Wednesday night (pray for me).  My house was a disaster.  I was not looking forward to my day.

This week is Red Ribbon Week at Lolly and Frostine's school.  Which means they spend the week learning about "making healthy choices" and doing silly things like "wear your clothes inside out and be healthy from the inside out!" Or my favorite, "sock it to bad choices by wearing crazy socks to school!"  It's actually a great program and my kids love it.  As I was packing their lunch boxes, they asked for "healthy food" and "no candy!"   So here are some snapshots of my day and some of the good and bad choices I made.

Breakfast went well fairly well despite by foul mood.  We were not running late, but we didn't really have time to dilly dally either.  All day on Sunday my kids had been working on these.  Rather than clean it all up before I went to bed on Sunday night, I left it all out on the coffee table.  That was a bad choice.  Of course once they stared in on that project, they were not too enthused about getting dressed and brushing teeth.  Once I finally pulled them away for craftville, we were too late to walk to school and I hadn't gotten myself dressed.  Luckily their school has a drop-off and I didn't need to get out of the car.

On the days Gloppy has preschool, I have a little over a half an hour after I drop off the girls to get Gloppy to school.   Sometimes we go get coffee, but today we choose to come home and get dressed.  That was a good choice since his school doesn't really frown kids in their pajamas, but I don't think they appreciate mom's in their pajamas.  Sid the Science Kid was on, so I let him watch it while I did the dishes.  We have just enough time to get dressed and get to school when the show is over.   

For some reason, Gloppy picked today to throw a monster temper tantrum when I asked him to get dressed.  It was awful.  I was frustrated because I had a lot to get done in my 2.5 hours of free time and he was starting to cut into my freedom.  I tried everything I could think of... I bribed him with candy, cookies and Diet Pepsi (yikes!!).  I begged, I cried, I let him pick out his own clothes.  He was crying like I was asking him to cut off his leg!  He finally tore off his clothes and cried and cried and cried some more.  He finally put his clothes on when I threatened to throw his blankie in the trash and leave without him.  It broke my heart to see his naked little body come after me to rescue his blankie.  He put on new underwear that he chose himself and a new pair or clothes that he chose himself.  As a final dig to me I think, he put his clothes on backwards.  He said, "I'll put these on, but only the wrong way."  I chose not to care.  I think this was a good choice.

By the time we got to school, I was a wreck.  He was crying the whole ride to school saying he didn't want to go.  When I asked him why, he said none of the kids like him.  That was like a stab to the heart.  I think he gets overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the other kids when he just hobbles around on his bad leg.  He agreed to go in and check his cubby for pictures, then he wanted to go home.  Once we were inside he picked up a truck and said good-bye to me.  By the time I got to the parking lot, I was emotionally drained and started crying.  Actually, I was sobbing.  I ran into the mom whose little boy I was supposed to take home for a play date.  Hooray!  I'm sure it instilled a lot of confidence in her that the mom taking her some home was crying in the preschool parking lot.  Not a great choice.   She is actually a very cool mom.  She gave me a hug and plate of cookies!  I told her I would be fine by pick up.

After spending my 2.5 free hours running around cleaning up my house so my cleaning lady could clean my house later that afternoon I ran out the door for preschool pick up.  There are two "choice" parking spaces in their tiny parking lot and I like to get their early to get one.  I don't really care that much about parking spaces, but Gloppy freaks out if I don't get one of those specific spaces.  As I was rushing out the door, I asked myself, "what the hell are you doing?"  I could have five more minutes of free time.  Who is the mommy here?!  He will have to learn to deal with a sub-par parking space.  Score one for mommy.  That was a good choice.

Later on in the evening I was reading blogs and I came across this post.  Reading it was a good choice.  She is delightfully funny.  It got me thinking about how many times someone may have written a blog post about me after a random encounter in the grocery store, at school or where ever.  I hope it was a funny post.

I also chose to watch some TV.  Warren Sapp dancing the hustle makes me happy.  

I choose to be happy.