Monday, August 30, 2010

How to Start the School Year

5:45am: Wake in panic because after spouse's alarm went on AN HOUR AGO he reset mine for an hour later rather than 30 minutes later.

5:50am: Drag self from bed. Do the various stretches necessary to lubricate the joints of a body that has been through 4 car accidents and one zipline incident.

6:00am: Enter living room where spouse is watching reruns of "Married With Children."  Roll your eyes over the programming choice and consider banging your head on the wall because you've had the argument for the last 7 years about the generally distracting nature of the TV being on when certain offspring are getting ready for school.  Since last year it's been specifically about the wonderfully edifying nature of this particular program and the merits of beginning one's day with the image of Al Bundy's hand down his pants.

6:15am: Bid adieu to spouse and offspring as they depart for the bus stop and work.

6:23 am: Listen to the sound of a bus pulling away as you pour yourself some cereal.

6:30am: Receive the first text of the year informing you of forgotten papers/lunches and requesting delivery.  Curse a blue streak because there is no one in your house you need to censor yourself for.  (This is where I should have stood my ground and simply refused to acknowledge the text or respond with something akin to, "Tough luck.  Have a great day."  In my weakened state I did not do so. Damn fool that I am.)

6:45am: Finish breakfast and peruse email a few minutes. Amuse yourself with thoughts of delivering the forgotten items in your ratty bathrobe and with your hair standing on end as a deterrent to future requests.  Opt for a 100% rate hike in delivery charges to offspring because you don't have time to run there and come back to dress for work. (Yes, I really do charge them for forgotten items.  The first year I made enough to pay for a one hour full body Swedish massage at the end of the year.  I sent the kids a thank you note afterward.  They had conniptions.)

7:00am: Take a tepid shower because the water heater is still not fully rewarmed since the children drained it.  Dress, gather lunch for work, make bed, gather forgotten kid crap.

7:45am: Depart for school.  Dodge deer, squirrels, dogs, students & parents, school buses, construction vehicles, potholes, tourists, and one impossibly slow delivery truck on the way to school and proceeding on to work.


8:15am: Arrive at work.  Survey the fallout from missing all but one day last week due to hospitalized child.  Give thanks for an understanding boss.  Apologize to coworkers.  Listen to the insanity that was work last week.

8:30am: Breathe deeply, smile, and greet the first patient who shows up 30 minutes before we are technically even open.


9:00am-Noon: Work.


Noon to 12:30pm: Wonder how long the last patient will linger before you can have the weekly staff  meeting before you can have lunch.


12:30-1:00pm: Staff meeting where the doc's make note of the highly entertaining new patient who followed you from your former office because she got wise to their dubious practices and went looking for you specifically.  Laugh at Dr. Hubba Hubba because said new patient is now trying to play matchmaker for him after taking pictures of him with her phone to text around to all the available laydeez.

1:00pm-1:45pm: Lunch.


1:45pm-3ish: Work while trying not to be completely skeeved out by a coworker who got a rather realistic looking fake moustache out of a bubble gum machine and who is now sporting it while calling herself "Bruce" and conducting herself in a manner which makes Al Bundy look like the epitome of a gentleman.  It's like a car wreck....extremely disturbing but impossible to look away.  When the topic turns to other areas where people may sport fake hair and whether or not anyone would wear a wig down there define the word "merkin" for you coworkers. Astonishingly, they will not marvel at your vocabulary or breadth of knowledge but will insist your awareness of such things indicates great unwellness.

3ish-5ish pm: Work. Take a call from Calypso announcing she made it through the entire day but isn't sure she can do the same tomorrow.  Listen to the list of roadblocks she encountered while trying to get her medical excuse accepted and the further documentation she needs to be allowed to carry a fricken water bottle from class to class.

5ish-7:00pm: Continue with normal duties and prepare for the next day.  When Milton comes in for his appointment thank him again for the conversation of a week ago and let him know how timely a thing it was.  Bask in the big smile that crosses his face when he realizes the impact he had.

7:00-7:30pm.: Discover your numbers are off when balancing the drawer.  Rectify that.  Complete office cleaning.  Lock the door behind you and depart for home.

7:50pm:  Arrive at home and realize you forgot to leave a note for anyone to put the frozen lasagna in the oven earlier.  Pour yourself a bowl of cereal because that's all you have time for before taking the kids out to dump $98 on binders, folders, notebooks, pens, pencils, highlighters, jump drives, etc because each teacher has his or her own idea about the supplies required for respective classes and woe to the student who has a folder rather than a binder or vice versa but no one can let you know until the first day of school what their particular preferences are.

8:00pm: Depart for aforementioned shopping expedition.

9:15pm: Return home. Have what looks like the amount of paper responsible for the deforestation of Brazil handed over for parental signatures and information to be filled out. 

9:30pm: Threaten to take off at the knees, by way of a million paper cuts performed with this ream, the son who is harping over the speed at which you are filling out papers...because so help me God this day started with you forgetting your crap which meant I forgot to leave a note asking for some food to be heated up so I inhaled cold cereal in order to have time to drag us all to the store and pick over the remnants of school supplies and stand in line with a zillion other frazzled parents.  And WHYYYYY did I do this????  Because I am a human mother who is following the meaning of life, which is to love, rather than adhering to the hamster way and eating my young because they are annoying me!

22 comments:

Midlife Roadtripper said...

This is the first year I didn't have a child go off to public school. I've waited for 21 years. Then, guess who got to go instead. Me - the substitute teacher. No papers to fill out however. That's a relief.

Bijoux said...

The bright side is, you have a bus stop to send them to. Since our levy failed, I am now the bus driver. At 6:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Good times.......

furiousBall said...

you know what's crazy, we still haven't started our school year yet over here across the Delaware! My kids' first day isn't until the 7th!

Craig said...

Your husband watches 'Married With Children' at 6AM? That's. . . well. . . my mother always said, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"; so, moving on. . .

Our (now retired) school principal used to call it 'helicopter parenting'. . . You really should try the "Darn it! Whatcha gonna do?" approach to the forgotten stuff. Whatever trouble he gets into probably won't be fatal. And he'll learn to manage his own affairs much more effectively. . .

And you know, I forget exactly where I came across it (and I'm not sure I'd admit it if I remembered), but it was just in the last few months that I encountered the word 'merkin' for the first time in my life. . . Major piece of worthless information, right there. . .

Craig said...

And now that I think of it, I think it would be great fun to play 'merkin' in a Scrabble game, and wait for someone to challenge it. . .

Anonymous said...

sounds like a full day to me...so the hair piled on your head...is it as big as Peg Bundy's?

Cricket said...

Our first day wasn't too bad, considering. On the other hand, mine are still young enough that I pack their backpacks myself, and usually don't do too badly.

Can't wait for the teen years. Ugh.

We're easing into it: #1 starts school and soccer this wk, DW starts next Tues. #2 starts 9/15, I think. Staggered is good.

"The Hamster Way" - sounds like a good title to me...

Anonymous said...

You know, at this point if you ate your young you'd get several meals worth. On the other hand, they'd be much less tender than if you'd done it years ago.

S said...

Did she eat any of the babies?

Reading this just makes me glad that I have just one child, and she is enough, let me tell you...hey how come you never warned me, mom of 2 teen daughters?
Becoming rapidly grey, or pink...lol

The other thing that really makes me crazy is, if you cant use the shower, and there are 2 kids and a dad up already, why cant you sleep in later? And also, why didn't your husband wake you up since he was already there and sabotaged your alarm clock? And what channel is Married With Children on? My favorite is the one where ted goes to the dentist and boy he really needed to go...

PS Hows the savings acct going for Trini vacation?:D

♥♥♥

S said...

Craig is hilarious and The Hamster Way lol im dyin here!

Commander Zaius said...

Because I am a human mother who is following the meaning of life, which is to love, rather than adhering to the hamster way and eating my young because they are annoying me!

I heard someone say once that once parents become grandparents they get to laugh at what their grandchildren inflict on their offspring. Its a much delayed revenge but I figure it is no less sweet.

Craig said...

If it's not just entirely too much. . .

A friend of mine used to say that grandchildren are our reward for not killing our teenagers. For the longest time, I thought he was just being facetious. . .

Craver Vii said...

1:45PM - 3ish (vocabulary)
It kills me when I use the proper word for a thing and some dumb bunny says, "speak English." ...Especially when they don't speak more than one language... barely that, even!

It's not fair that I have to share my oxygen with them.

Suldog said...

Teachers who demand specific supplies for students, when suitably near alternatives are available and cheaper, should be an accepted defense for homicide.

(M)ary said...

Oh. There is SO much to comment on here! Where to begin?
Your life is so rich with commentable stories.

Well, I will start with school supplies and the specific nit picky requests of some teachers. I took an 'enrichment' course at the local college and asked registration for the supply list. When I got to class, the teacher had a different supply list which included one big ticket item which was supposed to be included in the cost of the class. Goodness, no learning could be done without our supplies but could they tell us ahead of time the correct needs??!!
So, supply list issues NEVER end, apparently.

(M)ary said...

Ps...I like the charge method for delivery service. It sounds like a good compromise between jumping when someone else has forgotten something and blowing them off just to teach a lesson.

Moosekahl said...

Ok...I would have never ever made it to school if I had to be on the bus by 6:15 in the morning. That should be illegal!

(M)ary said...

PS..I am impressed that u know the word merkin!

Anonymous said...

OMG Somehow I thought that drama was gonna stop when you made it to work....I guess I forgot what it was like. I have only one left in his last year of school and he manages pretty well by himself. God bless you all! Mothers must be Gods gift to EVERYONE!!

G-Man said...

Unplug Your Cell phone Trini...

Kat said...

Whew! Right now I am thanking my lucky stars that my boys are still in elementary school. Even though one of my poor dears threw up at school today (the very first day) right before I picked him up. At least he made it to the bathroom sink instead of yakking on the classmate in front of him, like his brother did last year.

Jocelyn said...

All right, you just made me happy (sorry!): this year we don't have to wade through the flurry of forms and papers to sign. Yee-haw!