(More than) Fourinarow.net

After a four-day weekend, you’d be thinking I’d be doing the happy dance as I woke the children for school this morning.

Ha.

First of all, I woke up a bit crabby.  I’ve started a new low carb diet and I dreamed that I had just ruined everything by eating a great big bagel.  I was relieved upon waking and discovering that it hadn’t actually happened, but that relief only lasted until the first needy child screamed in my ear as we tried to get the tangles out of her hair.

Another child couldn’t find his belt, which was ALL. MY. FAULT.  He attempted to resolve the situation by sitting at the breakfast table sulking.

Someone else had to have a band-aid with Neosporin applied to his foot before he could even think about getting ready for school.

Amazingly, we all made it through an uneventful (for us) breakfast, before the havoc began again.

As one child fought with another, a banister spindle got broken, which is  AWESOME, because we needed something else to repair in this house.

A different child spent the last few minutes of the morning searching for the school supplies and papers he had emptied out of this backpack over the weekend in order to use it as a weapons pack.  And another finished the social studies homework she’d forgotten all about.

As I hollered to everyone that it was time to go, I couldn’t get Cheerio back in the house.  Damn squirrels.  I’d leave her, but she barks and wakes the few neighbors that haven’t already been woken by my children.  After getting half the kids out the door, she showed up.  Covered in mud.

I did a quick clean up of the dog and hustled the remaining children to the van.  I got the baby buckled and very carefully settled myself into the driver’s seat (I hurt my back yesterday).  And discovered that I had no keys. [Insert profanities here.]

I trudged through the mud to our secret spare key location (because, believe it or not, I’ve done this before), snagged the key, ran into the house, grabbed my keys off the table and headed out again.  I stashed the spare and again carefully settled myself into the driver’s seat.

To discover that my van key was missing from my key ring.  REALLY?!?  How does this happen?

Jack was ready to hop on his bike and get to school that way, but I 86′d that idea, ran BACK into the house and grabbed an extra set of keys, making SURE the van key was there.

Finally, we were on our way.  I opened the van door in front of school and shoved everyone out.  Just in time.

I texted Dan and asked if he knew about the van key, as he’d had the van checked on over the weekend.  (Yes, the car needs work, too).  He replied that Maria might know, as she had been playing with my keys yesterday and said that one fell off.  Funny how she hadn’t mentioned that when I was expressing my frustration earlier.

That key could be anywhere.

Well, for a while now it’s just me and Andrew.  Who keeps pulling a bar stool up to the fridge to play with the water dispenser.

But, at least he’s distracted himself from turning the computer off on me.