Monday treatments

I guess that TECHNICALLY this is a Typical Monday.

I.e., my mind was a raging forest fire of stress last night and the Jetta has a flat* and thus I had to drive M to the train station so that we could both get to work today, which, as this is my early day, meant that we both had to leave by seven (ha), which, bless my MIL's heart, meant that she would take the kids to school, so that in order to keep her from having to go far above and beyond the call of duty, meant that the kids had to be out of bed, dressed, combed, and fed before we left.

The feat was accomplished, though, and with a minimal amount of crying/ hissing, even if the kids were both lying on their backs waving their arms and legs in the air like drowsy pink pillbugs when we walked out the door. So that was good, and un-Mondayish. And I have a new-to-me espresso maker in my office with me today: also un-Mondayish (although I am still perfecting the ratio of grounds to water). However, the most important thing: today is not yesterday, and for that I am glad.

Yesterday, inspired by a vague charitable impulse, I decided to drive to Fort Collins with the kids. Si could do a playdate with his old friend from first grade, Helen could...tag along, and I could pick up my MIL from the memorial service she was attending and drive her home. Furthermore, that would put the four of us out of the house for half the day so that M could get some work done. Win-win-win, right? Except that in my misty-eyed bumbling charitableness, I sort of forgot about me, and how there was very little in this long-ass thankless drive for me, and how such imbalance, while perhaps good for my soul, is not at all good for my mood. In painful addition, Helen was coming off a sleepover with a friend from her preschool whom she hasn't seen for several weeks. So: two quarreling kids, a long-ass drive, a sense of martyrdom, and vexation that I wasn't even doing something that anyone had asked me to do but had actually brought this all upon myself.

Yeah. It was a long drive. We weren't even out of Denver proper before I'd started to rant about money. The drive back was even longer and I actually pulled over (into a gas station, not by the side of the highway) at one point to clear my head and also show the kids I was serious about not provoking/kicking/screaming/pinching/tattling. ("How about I buy them some McDonalds?" offered my MIL at this juncture, which I angrily refused, a sort of compressed display of 75% percent of our conversations on child-rearing/ life). Ugh. I felt like a bully-mother-martyr--a person who has her place but certainly wasn't why I'd planned the outing in the first place.

On the positive side, though, Si got to see his old friend, and while they're sort of obviously growing apart, he still laughs more with this old friend than with any of his newer friends. They spent the last half of the afternoon telling each other gross-out jokes and laughing hysterically. Also, did I mention my espresso machine in my office? Now I just need a breadmaker (set to "muffin") and a comfy couch for naps, and I wouldn't have any reason to leave.


*We've apparently fallen into a Bermuda Triangle of brokenness.