Back to School Face Plants

This pic is a pretty good representation of how I have felt for most of this past week. Let me explain.

Monday, I completely missed the fact that I was the duty parent for playschool – was late, and was wearing stupid clothes because I was expecting to go home to change after I dropped off Ruby (I was so grateful that I had reluctantly chosen to put on a bra that morning!)

Tuesday evening, I was supposed to show up for playschool toy wash – big deal if you don’t show….AND I FORGOT!!!!!  Jord worked over the weekend and has been working late nights this week so I was on my own with the kids and I just got busy with homework and supper and cleaning and making sure the kids were all playing nicely without destroying the house and I didn’t remember until I checked my calendar (an hour after the toy wash ended)!! My heart sank, I got an unhappy sounding email from the toy wash person and it bothered me so much that I couldn’t fall asleep until 3:30am that night.

Which was unfortunate because I had to be up early the next morning to take my oldest son to a 7:20am orthodontist appointment.

So, early Wednesday morning I rushed off to the orthodontist office, stopped the car in front of the orthodontist office, and told my son to run in ahead of me –he had NO IDEA which door to go in…which I thought was weird until I realized – I drove to MY orthodontist in Sherwood park – a good 45 mins away from Oliver ‘s orthodontist in south Edmonton. So the plan for Jord to drop Ruby and Ben off at school was off because Jord needed to get to work as early as he could and so I picked up the two kids and we all headed to Oli’s ortho appointment together.

Boys were an hour late for school – Ruby didn’t make it to preschool. And I ended up grabbing  school lunches at a scuzzy convenience store which Oliver said we shouldn’t tell anyone about because then people would think we were a dud family if they knew we were the kind of people who picked up school lunches at convenience stores.

The rest of Wednesday was a blur of driving my kids to a cello lesson, soccer practice, piano lesson and cubs. Thankfully my mother in law was able to drive my oldest to his second ortho appointment after school to pick up his retainer, and my brother in law was able to pick my middle son up from soccer practice.

It was crazy – but I pulled it off. On three hours of sleep. So that night I was kind of feeling like a hero, thinking to myself  “You know, everyone makes mistakes but overall, I think I’ve got things pretty much together now.” I was feeling like that until Thursday morning when I woke up to find throw up beside my youngest’s bed (which she had tried to clean up herself). After cleaning it up properly, I told my middle to practice his cello and that’s when I realized that I had left the cello in the car. Overnight. In minus 30(Celsius) weather. When I looked at it inside the house, the cello was so cold I could see a cloud of vapor coming from it as it reacted to the warm air around it. I thought to myself “I’ve killed the cello!!!!” That morning I nursed it back to life by constantly wiping the condensation that was dripping off of it as it thawed.

And then I felt sick too.

But today (Friday) I’m feeling better. And there have been no major catastrophes (yet). And I’ve learned some lessons – like I need to set way more alarms in my phone when I have important things in the calendar. And that I can never put the cello in the back of the car where it is easy to forget.

And that I can survive a lot of failure.

And I can even find some lovely moments of joy too, in between the face plants (even though face plants always hurt.)

Maybe your first week back to school went off without incident. If it did – I am so happy for you. But if it was anything like mine here are some pics that might cheer you up a little.

And this, because it’s funny.