I Think I Missed December

You know the phrase about time flying when you're having fun. Apparently it also flies when you're a mom. Or at least that's the excuse I'm using right now. I've been late for the entire month of December, and with Christmas in only a couple days (it's December 22 today, right? I don't even know the date right now!) I'm not even close to being ready. Somehow, it will come together, but I haven't quite figured out how yet.

So rather than wrap Christmas presents, I'm taking a break from the must do's to muddle over the proof that I'm this late.

Top Ten Pieces of Evidence That I've Forgotten It's December

10. I just wrote out my Christmas cards. It's 9pm on Christmas Eve Eve Eve. There's about a 0.00001% chance of anyone receiving the cards before Christmas. Oops.

9. The only reason I was able to write Christmas cards tonight is because I bought two huge boxes of Christmas cards majorly clearanced last year after Christmas. It only took me thirty minutes to figure out where I had hidden them.

8. I'm still collecting addresses from friends who I know have moved. One friend just called with his new address, so I'm down to only two friends whose cards have no addresses.

7. The cards I wrote for the most part have no pictures in them. I went online at Costco.com today to order cards or pictures to put in the cards, but they wouldn't be ready until 11am tomorrow. Knowing this wouldn't happen, I didn't even bother to order them. Fortunately, my mom had ten extra wallet sized pictures of the wee ones that we'd had taken for her cards last month that she had dropped off with me last week (because, you know, her cards were done by December 1). It only took me 30 minutes to figure out where I'd hidden them. Hint: they were sitting on top of the box of Christmas cards I'd bought last year.

6. I did fortunately have letters to go in each of the cards, and no, this didn't happen only because I happened to have nine sheets of my holiday stationary left over from last year. I actually remembered last weekend that we would need new stationary, so I stopped at the store Sunday afternoon to pick some up. Not willing to pay $3 for 25 sheets at Target, I went to Office Max. The good news is that their Christmas stationary was 25% off. The bad news was that they had only one design left. And it was pretty ummmm not my style. But I bought it anyway, and my lovely Christmas letter is written on it.

5. I am to bring a side dish to my aunt and uncle's for Christmas Day. That's as far as I've gotten. I have no idea what I'm making. I have no idea what ingredients I need. All I know is that it won't be a sweet potato dish since another aunt is bringing sweet potato hash. Any suggestions?

4. I'm hosting Christmas Eve Italian dinner at my house. I traditionally make a lasagne, Caesar salad, baguettes, and a dessert of some sort. I have no lasagne noodles. I have no ricotta. I have no greens. I have no lemon. I have no idea what I'm making for dessert. Guess who's heading to the store tomorrow!

3. I haven't wrapped a single present. I have bought several presents for several people, but I don't have a complete inventory of what I have still have to pick up. You already heard about my issues with the Crayon Maker. My husband isn't getting two of the presents I was planning on because the only store that sells them has neglected to call me back. And I never gave the pictures to Elizabeth for the photo bracelet. Apparently tomorrow I'm also spending much of the day wrapping presents and doing some last minute shopping.

2. Oops. I just realized that on Christmas Day when we go to my aunt and uncle's house, I will need to have presents for my cousins' three children. Apparently I also need to figure out who else I need presents for. And hope that I'm struck by inspiration quickly.

And the number one reason I know that I've forgotten it's December? This is what we were doing yesterday.

On the plus side, I don't have to worry about our tree drying out and dropping needles all over the place before the garbage company picks up trees in January this year!

Tell me I'm not alone... what have you forgotten to do this year?

PS Don't forget about my two giveaways: my LOFT $200 gift card giveaway is ending on 12/25. And my $200 VISA gift card giveaway ends the following week.

I've Found The Source

Well, I think I've finally found the source of the time warp in my house. This explains so much. I never have to feel badly about being late again. Time moves differently in my house, and it isn't my fault.

I blame my dishwasher.

My dishwasher runs an eighty-two minute cycle from start to finish -- or so it says on the digital timer on the front. I have photographic evidence that this is the source of my problem. Check it out:



See, I started the cycle at 11:41am.



I checked it at 12:08pm. Twenty-seven minutes later, and:



Bummer. My dishwasher still thinks we have eighty-two minutes left. It's made zero progress. I gave it lots of extra time. It's now 1:49pm. That's an hour and forty-one minutes later -- one hundred one minutes for those who think better this way. Is my eighty-two minute cycle done?



Nope, we still have sixteen minutes left. Hmmmmm.



Yep, it's finally done. See the nice green dot light?





And it's only 2:07. See? My eighty-two minute cycle took one hundred forty-six minutes. Now ummm, I'm late for meeting a friend for a late afternoon snack. Gotta run! I don't know where the time went!

Let's Do The Time Warp Again!

Every day, I go from my kitchen into the garage and into my car. By the time I make it into my car, I've lost at least six minutes. At first, I thought this was the wee ones' fault. You know how kids dawdle. But then I realized that this happens when I'm on my own headed to work, too.

I look at the clock in the kitchen, and it's 6:13. I grab my stuff, put my shoes on, and by the time I turn on my car, it's 6:22. In the grand scheme of things that's not the biggest problem except that traffic really starts to increase after 6:15.

The worst though is on Sundays. Sunday school starts at 9:05am. The church is literally five minutes door to door. If I start getting shoes on at 8:48, that should give me plenty of time to get to Sunday School on time, right?

Not really.

Or when Little Miss's bus picks her up at 8:40 and Mister Man needs to get to daycare/kindergarten by 9am. Plenty of time, especially as he usually gets his shoes and coat on by himself so he can come outside and see Little Miss onto the bus and wave goodbye. All we have to do then is grab his backpack and her blanket and head out the door.

It's frequently 9:02 when I'm pulling out the garage, and I can't figure it out.

How about when I have a yoga class at 6pm on Monday nights? That's fun because I get to fight rush hour traffic, so I always allow myself a little over a half hour to get there instead of my usual twenty minute jaunt. I get home from work a little after five and say hi to the wee ones who are usually eating dinner. I ask them how their days were, then gather my yoga mat and gym bag. I make sure to start my collecting of items by 5:14.

I turn on the car, and it's 5:25. And by the time I make it up to the yoga studio, it's after 6 and the class has started.

What gives? When I open the door to my garage, am I knocked unconscious by something on a daily basis for six minutes? Is there a time portal as I step through the actual portal? Do I get stuck in slow motion as I try to leave the house?

There has to be a rational explanation, right? And it couldn't be that the clock in the kitchen is wrong. Definitely not that.

Someone Doesn't Like Me!

Someone just had it in for me today. Fortunately, they thought this morning’s yuck was enough, so the rest of the day wasn’t so bad. That or it was just someone else’s turn to have things go wrong.

First of all, I was exhausted this morning because someone didn’t put the cats in the basement last night, so they were meowing outside the kids’ rooms most of the night. I love my buddies, but until the kids are mature enough to sleep with cats, they unfortunately have to go into the basement at night. Bums me out, but … I’ve learned.

I suppose technically I could have gotten up and put them in the basement when I realized they were mewling for attention. But once I get out of bed, I’m up for hours. I have a better chance at falling back asleep – 15% vs 0% – if I don’t get out of bed. So I suffered through it.

Until Mister Man came climbing on top of me to complain that there was a kitty in his room that was irritating him – his words, not mine. I told him to walk into the bathroom, then run really fast back to his room and close the door since the cats looooove to follow him into the bathroom. Unfortunately, only one cat was gullible enough for fall for that. Roar stayed in his room.

Ten minutes later, we again had Mister Man climbing on top of me to convince me I needed to get Roar out. At that point, Roar jumped into the bed, too, so I rolled over and told him to go back to bed. Except Meow had then gotten into the room. Once he’s in, he knows he shouldn’t be there and scoots under the bed, only making ventures out when he’s sure it’s safe.

I finally gave up and got out of bed. I looked for the spray bottle on the stairs where I’d left it. Nope. Next, I peeked in the kids’ bathroom. Nope. I tried our bathroom – you know, where it actually belongs. Nope. I finally asked hubby where it was. On Mister Man’s nightstand, of course. *sigh*

Needless to say, I got the cat out of the room, but then the clock watching started for me. I debated turning on the tv or the light to read (if you saw my nightstand, you’d understand the need to read). I decided against it and decided to just try to sleep. Deep breaths. Counting backwards from 200. Drinking some of my water. Nothing. No idea when I finally fell back asleep, but I know I did because the alarm freaked me out when it went off.

Oddly, Mister Man did not want to wake up when I went to go get him. Poor guy was exhausted, too, but he doesn’t have the Mommy Fortitude that I do. Turned his light on to start the process of waking him up and checked on Little Miss. She had a poopy diaper needless to say, which I knew simply by opening her door. Although she did tell me three times, she really didn’t have to.

Once I got her changed, my hands washed, her dressed, and her hair done, Mister Man was still not awake. I had to do the dressing for him, which of course meant that we were now running late – and my snoozing the alarm twice had nothing to do with it, I swear!

Good news is that both kids ate breakfast fairly quickly, so we could start getting shoes on before Miss Deana got there to pick up Mister Man. Except Little Miss required another trip upstairs for a diaper change. Fortunately Miss Deana was running late this morning, so we actually had time to go inspect the daffodils and tulips that were coming up.

Just as I was opening the garage door to start putting Little Miss inside to shave some time because Miss Deana was running too late, she pulled up. Mister Man got on the bus, Little Miss got into the car – without a fuss – and away we went. I was looking at the clock and thinking that things were actually going well. Until I realized that I’d forgotten Little Miss’s backpack at home. I went back to get it, and we were on the road again!

I hit every red light on the way to her school, somehow. It’s a ten minute drive, generally, but I have 5 stoplights. And not only did I hit lights, but two of them required me sitting through more than one signal.

We also cross the railroad tracks twice. Because we had to go back for the backpack, all the school buses were headed back to their yard, which is right near her school. So three school buses ahead of me turned, stopped at the tracks to open their doors, then went forward. By the time we turned onto the next street, I had six buses ahead of me that all had to go across the tracks.

Of course, as I turned onto that street, I noticed that traffic was really backing up. Then I looked ahead and saw a freight train going across the tracks. Now, were I using my head, I’d say that I had just crossed tracks two to three minutes prior and there were no gates or sign of a train. Knowing that the trains that go through are typically very long, I should have turned around and gone the “sneaky” way. None of that dawned on me until much later, however. I’ve never had a freight train go by on my way to preschool, so that really threw me. (And I'm now really against the company buying the tracks and putting 25-40 trains through a day vs the 5 we have now!)

Seven minutes later (and yes, preschool had started by then), the caboose went by, and the traffic slowly started to move. Until the six buses had to stop to go across the tracks. And the light turned red. I kept looking at the clock and hoping that I’d at least be there before they locked the doors for the morning.

When I got to the preschool, I assumed that I’d at least find an easy parking spot (see previous post), but that was not to be. Apparently, this was Parents-Hang-Out-After-Dropping-Off-Your-Kids Day today and no one informed me. But we found a spot on the street, and we got there before they locked the doors, although she was the last one into class today.

I was fairly irritated by that point, and only part of it was due to sleep deprivation, I think. I hate being late, and it’s one of the things where:
a) had I remembered the backpack
b) had I put Little Miss into the car earlier
c) had I not hit so many red lights
d) had someone not decided they hated me today,
then I would not have been stuck by the freight train, and we would have been totally on time!

But! I found a silver lining. I didn’t get pulled over by a cop (the fact that I wasn’t exactly speeding probably improved my odds, but still – that would have been the icing on the cake!).