Catching Up

Oh, where to begin....

Somehow, this last week my life bounced back to how crazy it was before "the incident" in December. I was kind of enjoying the slower pace and the house has certainly been cleaner than it used to be, especially since I've started feeling better these last couple of weeks.

Wednesday was the first of one of those days. I had Activity Days at 4:00, a Visiting Teaching appointment at 5:00, Morgan's basketball game at 5:45 and then Ally got her orange belt in Karate at 7:30.

I forgot one important thing that was vital to the success of getting to everything on time. I forgot to factor in travel time between activities, especially taking the Activity Day girls (and one reluctant little brother in our case this week) home. I was then 15 minutes late to my Visiting Teaching appt. and this was one that I really needed to be there for. She is going through some major stress. I also had to leave early to get Morgan to her b-ball game because she freaks out a little about being late (I wonder where she gets it from) so I wanted to get her there on time. I then missed the beginning of her game to go home and check on Ally and Austin and hurry and get them fed so we could catch the last 10 minutes or so of Morgan's game.

From there we went home, found Hal and went straight to Ally's Belt Promotion ceremony. It started late and it ran VERY LONG. I was starving and exhausted by the time we got home. Somewhere in the middle of all that I came down with a headache.

(Do you like her Pittsburgh Steelers shirt under the karate gi? The guy is Adam Smith, her "Sensei".)

Thursday, we started out again. First I took Austin to Story Time at the library. While we were still there, Ally got out of school early for Parent Teacher conferences. We picked her up and went straight to the orthodontist, then to King's for a new binder for her (and lots of candy for both Ally and Austin, which reminds me that she owes me money!). Next was the beauty supply place in my never-ending quest to become somewhat beautiful (actually, I needed clear fingernail polish for an Activity Day activity that is coming up). After that, we rushed home because I needed to pick Morgan up at the high school where she went after school for a Track meeting.

Next up was Parent Teacher conferences, but, since Morgan was home I only had to take Ally, so that was a lot better. Parent Teacher conferences are a whole different ballgame with Ally than they were with Morgan. We have to actually discuss things with the teachers so it takes a while. Ally is so smart and she consistently tests well, she is just so not motivated right now to actually do any homework. We took so much time at the school that I had to stop between teachers and run Ally to karate, which is, luckily, relatively close by. Then I headed back for more conferences, including one that I wish she could have been there for. Ally has the same P.E. teacher that I did in junior high but Ally likes P.E. a lot more than I did. The teacher, fortunately, likes Ally a lot more than she liked me back then too, which is a big plus since the conference was for Ally and not me.

After I was done, I rushed back to get Ally and then we all got home and I hurried and whipped up some dinner and we actually all ate together at about 6:45, which is only 15 minutes after Hal usually gets home on a normal day. Whew.

So Friday rolled around and I was feeling rather lazy. Instead of doing the things around the house that I should have caught up on, I spent lots of time on Facebook instead. Every time I do that I just get mad at myself. I had all sorts of crazy private messages from different people (one from a guy who knows my brother-in-law, but I didn't really know, that kind of freaked me out) so I responded to some, left some alone and sent a couple of messages out myself. I always wonder if I'm annoying people when I send private messages.

Ally had the day off, so I was also trying to talk her into doing something productive. Instead, for some reason, she took all the pens in the house apart. She had a huge stack of the skinny middles sitting on the kitchen table. I told her to put them all together and then didn't really think any more of it. Big mistake. An hour or so later, I went past the table and there were all these little gummy bits kind of sitting there. I asked her about it and she said she used the Magic Eraser to clean something. Finally it clicked in my head and I got looking a little closer. There were ink stains all over one side of the table still and not only that, the Magic Eraser had taken the finish off of the table where she'd used it. There are big, dull marks all over the one side and there are STILL ink stains where she didn't erase them.

Some days I can almost understand why some people beat their kids. (But please don't quote me on that. I wouldn't like to be turned in to Child Protective Services.)