Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty, I'm Free At Last!

Ok, so by free, I mean free for like three hours a day. At the most. But still, this beats the snot out of last year when I had the wee ones on opposite schedules for preschool. Dumbest move I've ever made -- parents, please don't think it's a good idea to have one child in the am and one in the pm. It's not. Really not.

Mister Man started school last week, and Little Miss headed off this week.

Last Friday (because, ya know, school started on Monday), I got a call letting me know that her bus would be picking her up at 8:05am. I asked what time it would be dropping her off, as my mom needed to know. Uhh, they didn't know. They guesstimated that it would be 55 minutes after her school got out because the bus was picking her up 55 minutes before school started. Solid logic.

At 8:05, we were waiting outside, and I'd completed picture taking. Time out for pictures... Awww, isn't she cute?







At 8:20, the "big kid" bus came by, so I knew there was no excuse about traffic that would keep her bus from arriving. So I called the bus company. And got a busy signal.

*sigh*

I called a friend of mine who was possibly on our route to see if the bus had picked up her son yet. She was driving in, but yes, the bus had stopped by her house ten minutes before.

*sigh*

I finally got through to the bus company and "oh, no -- she's the fourth pickup, so 8:05 is the time the route starts, not when she'll be picked up. She'll be picked up much later. We don't know exactly when yet. But her bus is on its way and should be there any moment now."

Grrrr.

At 8:40, I called them again. The bus really is on its way. They promise. I mention that I have to start work at 9am and would have driven her in had I known that the bus would be this late.

At 8:57, the bus pulls into my driveway. Yes, school starts at 9am.

I ask the bus driver if this is the time I should expect (after three years of not once having either child get to school on time, I've had it. If the bus isn't going to pick her up on time, I'm making an issue of it again. I refuse to lose 15-20 minutes of class time on a daily basis). She says that no, she isn't actually the normal bus driver. She just had the route shoved into her hands at 7:55 and had to figure out where she was going after that. It should be more like 8:20 or 8:25.

Oh, and the Q-vest that I'd specifically talked to the bus company about on Friday to confirm that it would be there on Friday even though I'd marked it on the bus form? Yeah, it wasn't there. Fortunately, the bus driver had a spare harness, but it's too big for her and not what she was supposed to have. In fact, today is Day Five, and the drive her home bus driver still doesn't have one.





But on the plus side, I had a massage on Wednesday morning. Everyone should start ever day like that. Forever. And today, I had an almost two hour brunch with a friend of mine.

I'm liking this freedom. And I promise, next week I'm making it to the gym. At least once.