Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Somebody's Got a Case of the Mondays

I loved the movie Office Space. I have never had a dreary, dead end job before, so the "case of the Mondays" never really applied to me.

Then, this week happened.

I usually do a good job of prepping our family the week before a time change, adjusting bedtimes a bit at a time so that it's never an issue and the kids are not affected. However, this week I completely forgot, so Monday morning was a bit, well, rough.

Yup, we missed the bus. I had to drive Emma to school, which is only about four miles, but with today's gas prices, that four mile trip cost approximately seventeen dollars. I wasn't too thrilled.

I had some stuff to drop off at the school anyway, so it really wasn't a big deal. However, due to the fact that we had such a rough morning, I was sans make-up. Not really my favorite thing, since without make-up, I look pretty darn scary. Seriously, my under-eye circles are so dark that I have been asked on more than one occasion if my husband has an anger problem.

True story.

Anywhoo, we headed out to the van, my arms loaded with stuff, and realized that I had removed all the car seats the day before and put all the seats into the floor. (Can I just say, I love Stow and Go?) It only took a couple of minutes to put everything back together, but those precious few minutes pushed us from driving to school to suddenly we were driving to school late.

Oh, well. Whatever.

We all got in and left. A bit down the road, I heard Grant: "Mommy, we going to pre-school?" "No, baby, you have preschool tomorrow. We are just taking Emma to school today." Grant: "But, Mommy, we going to pre-school?" I got a touch frustrated. I really don't like it when they don't listen the first time. "No, Grant, we are just taking Emma to school today." Grant: "but, Mommy, why are we going to pre-school?"

That's when it hit me. I was driving to pre-school, not to Emma's school. Whoopsies. I guess I was on auto-pilot.

That's when the line from Office Space started going through my head. "I guess somebody's got a case of the Mondays!"

Drat.

I turned around and headed back toward Emma's school. Complete opposite direction, but luckily not too far away. As we were about to pull out on the main road, I heard Drew: "Mommy, I not buckled!"

Whoa.

I thought I buckled him before we left, but I can't swear to it. I mean, the kid has super-powers, so I wouldn't be shocked to discover that he could unbuckle himself. He can open every other childproof device we have tried, so why not?

The thing is, I was about to pull out on a 50 mile an hour, two lane road that is actually the deadliest road in the county. Not a great idea to do that with a kid unbuckled from his car seat.

There wasn't another car in sight behind me, so I just stopped at the stop sign and got out to buckle him. Of course, as soon as I did, a big truck magically appeared out of nowhere and pulled up behind me, so I hastily buckled Drew's seat, while shouting "I'm sorry!" like they could actually hear me over the road noise and the sound of their engine with all the windows closed. I hit the door close button, jumped in my seat, and took off.

My van is awesome that it has power sliding doors. I love it. However, starting to drive while the door is still in the process of closing itself by sliding forward really doesn't work too well.

Hello, inertia. Nice to see you.

Under the force of me gunning it from the stop sign to try and not delay the truck behind me any longer, the door motor could not properly function. Which means, it just tried to close itself but failed, leaving my adorable two year old screaming in delight at the fact that semi trucks were flying by right next to him and his door was wide open. I was so thankful that I had just put all the seats back in, which meant that I had previously gathered all the papers, fast-food wrappers, Capri-Sun pouches, empty bottles of Vitamin Water, and most of the cheerios that usually litter the van floor, so there was not an explosion of trash flying from my van.

Thank heavens for small favors.

I pulled over as soon as I could, and shut the door for real. The motor was starting to smell hot from all it's over-exertion, so I quickly prayed I had not wrecked it. Then we headed to school.

Drew screamed. He liked having the door open. He protests things loudly lately.

We made it to school only two minutes late. We parked illegally along with five other cars and headed into the office. When your kid is late, you have to check them in to the office, and they get a pass to go to class. Of course, due to the time change, the line to check the kids in stretched all the way out of the school office and into the hall. At least I wasn't the only one who couldn't get their kid to school on time, but there I was, looking like the Bride of Frankenstein in front of the entire office staff, half the PTO, several parents, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Perfect.

I got everything dropped off, sent my darling daughter to school, and headed for home.

I made sure everyone was buckled first, though.

Happy Monday! (Yes, I know it's now Wednesday. You don't actually think I could blog about something on the same day it happened, do ya? I mean, I haven't even blogged the first day of school yet. For last year. A-hem.)

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Trials and Tribulations of C. C. D. G.

I think I have mentioned in the past that I am completely in love with Costco.

I love all the great stuff, being able to buy food cheaper, and now that we have the size family we do, being able to buy food in the quantities we need. A bundle of five dozen eggs? I'll take two!

Also, their hot dog-and-a-soda-for-$1.50 is fantastic for our family. We can barely eat at home that cheap, and the kids love it.

But the best part of Costco is their little girl holiday dresses.

Oh, let me tell you, these dresses are wonderful. Every Christmas and Easter, they have a great selection of well made, adorable, floofy dresses that make the little girl in me swoon, and makes my daughter beg, plead, and bat her eyelashes that she can get the dress of her dreams.

Truly, the best dresses you will find. Mucho bonus points for the fact that they are less than $20, compared to the $30-$80 of the other stores.

Swoon.

Every year, Holly and I buy our daughters Costco dresses. The girls love it because we can pick out similar styles but not have the girls be matchy-matchy. We call each other from Costco: "The dresses are in! I got the red one with long sleeves!"

There is one thing we are not as fond of in the whole Costco-Christmas dress-adventure, and that is the introduction of Costco-Christmas-Dress-Glitter into our homes. Now, this is not the normal amount of glitter that comes on a glittery-little-girl dress, this glitter is, well, Costco-sized.

Costco Christmas Dress Glitter will now, forevermore, be dubbed C. C. D. G. Mainly because I'm too lazy to type that out.

The first time your darling child dons one of these amazingly beautiful creations, she will spin and twirl and dance like the beautiful fairy tale princess she is. And, almost like a fairy tale, C. C. D. G. will fall from the dress, leaving a trail wherever she goes.

Seriously. The floor will look like Tinkerbell and the Tooth Fairy got in a catfight, and the ensuing scuffle between these two nemesises (nemesi?) left a trail of horror everywhere, till you find the place that your child sat on the ground and rolled around a little Tinkerbell exploded and died, disappearing into a mass of glitter.

It will be everywhere, and last for months. It's worse then those ridiculous birthday cards that some annoying and insensitive people put confetti in, so that you open it and all this confetti falls out and scatters, and no matter how well you clean it up, you will find little pink hearts in random places for months, if not years.

A-hem. Anywhoo.

We have tired a lot of ideas. Washing the dress first works well, but the glitter will still be everywhere. Last Christmas, Emma wore her cousin Lily's dress from last year, in the hopes that the glitter that was going to release from the dress would have already done so. It didn't work.

When we go to my parent's house for Christmas dinner, we have an incredibly wonderful formal dinner. It's lovely, it's insanely delicious, and it's fun to be able to use the nice china and drink from a water goblet. And by the end of dinner, where your children are learning to keep their napkin in their lap, and occasionally wipe their mouth with it, you will have a child whose napkin from-the-lap-to-the-face routine will result in a face that is covered in Costco Christmas Dress Glitter. There will also be some C. C. D. G. on the face of the boy who is across the table and three seats down. I don't know how that happens. The Glitter has magical powers. Maybe it's the result of a curse from killing Tinkerbell, I don't know.

Costco needs to either make more dresses without glitter, or I need to start the fashion of putting clear packaging tape over the dress to begin with, in hopes of containing the C. C. D. G.

Come on, Costco. Help me out here. I think I have some glitter in my eye.