Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Too Little, Too Much

Today has totally been a day when I hit my max of what I could handle. It's funny how that works. Some days, I can roll with the punches, no problems at all. Other days, it just takes nothing at all for me to hit overload. Today I maxed out. And, of course, it was all just the stuff of life.

We had Brownies today. The girls just would NOT keep their butts in the seats (like I should expect that, they're in first grade. If they ever sit down at ALL during a meeting, I should be impressed). We planned too many crafts for the time allowed, and Patti and I hadn't gone over them well enough together to be on the same page as to what the end result of the craft should be, so they got a bit messed up. The girls were fine with it, but *I* was upset because they didn't come out the way they were supposed to. And the parents showed up and we were still working on crafts, so the ending friendship circle and songs and stuff totally got cut out. And then we were still trying to clean up and parents were grabbing girls and going, so stuff got left behind, and girls didn't get signed out properly, and we were trying to answer questions and the girls who were left were running around the room shrieking....you know, regular first-grade-Brownie stuff, that usually I can roll with. Today I just felt like shrieking myself and hiding in the closet.

So then we FINALLY got out of there, and I couldn't find Mark, and then when I sent Kira around to the playground to collect him, my stupid car wouldn't start. It's been acting up lately, and I've been using my parents' ancient van for regular transportation, but the Intrepid started so I figured I could take it to the school and back. Well, I got it TO the school. But not back. So I called my dad and he drove up (20 minute drive) to get me and take me the three miles to my house, and I finally got him to understand that my car REALLY REALLY NEEDS TO GO TO THE MECHANIC. So tomorrow morning I have to go back to the school and see if the car will start, and if so drive it directly to the mechanic's. (and then have my parents meet me at Mike's--the mechanic--and drive me BACK to the school to pick up the van. As Kira said, "That sounds like a lot of running around.") So now I will have an unknown amount of money going out to get the car HOPEFULLY fixed so I can rely on it, because I need to have a car I can trust.

And this, of course, after I *just* paid out $2800 to have the new drainpipe installed from my basement. I'm really very glad to have the new drainpipe, because I hate worrying every single time it rains, whether my basement will flood, and how many of the EIGHT sump pumps I have down there will have to be running at any given time (only ONE of which can actually get plugged in in the basement...the rest have to be run from extension cords all over my first floor, since putting two in any one socket seems to guarantee a fuse blowing). And, of course, that one that is plugged in all the time is the only one where the automatic kickon works, so there's constant checking of water levels in the basement, and manually turning on and off pumps....it sucks. And the old pipe appeared to actually bring water IN to the basement, instead of draining it out. But the new pipe is bigger, has a better gravity feed angle, and should just generally work better. And really, $2800 is a major bargain considering I *didn't* have to pay to have the road ripped up to have the pipe run across the road, since the town was ripping up the road to install a new culvert anyway, so the guy who was doing that just ran my new pipe over at the same time. So I didn't have to pay for all the extra ripping up. Which would have probably run me closer to $10,000. So it's better. And a bargain. (I'll keep reminding myself of this, until the ouch of the $2800 bill fades.)

And from the pipe rant we can move on to the Halloween time crunch, where the Carnival is on Friday and I still haven't finished Kira's costume, despite having had the materials since August, I believe. I have the dress *itself* done, the wings are finished, wand made (although I would like to reinforce it, the dowel seems to be cracking), crown is done, her trick-or-treat bag is sewn, I just need to finish tacking the teeth appliques to the overskirt and get the shoes painted. I've done three coats of silver on them so far and it's still not looking right, so I think I'm going to get some silver spray paint and see how that does. Of course, they're just shoes, they're not really going to show under the dress, I *could* just go with it. We'll see. I'll focus first on the teeth.

Also a part of the Halloween crunch, besides the costume stuff (including if Mark doesn't get his camo pants in the wash tomorrow morning, he's going to have to go naked, since I don't go get his laundry out of his room anymore and tomorrow night he'll be at his dad's, coming home Thursday after school, I'm NOT doing laundry in a panic Thursday night, and Friday he has to pretty much wear his costume to school because he has STAR after school and gets back at 5:30 and the carnival starts at 5. He's going as an Army guy, so the T-shirt & camo pants is actually okay for him to wear all day (in fact, he wore it last week as just an outfit, and it inspired his costume choice, since until that day he wasn't going to wear a costume at all).

AND I got an email today asking if I could bring in a healthy treat for the first grade party on Friday. So I have to go shopping and get stuff to make that. And Monday we're having another Brownie meeting, and I'm snack mom for that, too, so need to get all that stuff.

But anyway, now we're stretching into next week's stress, and I'm trying to limit myself to the current week. :D

The car thing was what put me up and over. That, and coming home and getting a good look at the disaster my house currently is. I had a small meltdown and the kids took care of a little of their stuff, but there's still crap everywhere. Hopefully I can get most of it taken care of tomorrow, so I can breathe.

Now that I have done another one of my endless vents over not much at all, I am going to go TRY to relax. Kids are in bed, I think I'm gonna shut the house down for the night and go curl up in bed with a book and a Xanax. mk

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