A Perfect Day

Do you ever have days where you wake up and everything just goes smoothly, and you feel like you are on top of it all? And you go to bed thinking, "wow, what a perfect day!"

Me neither.

On Thursday I thought I was having one of those days, though.

I woke up, got everyone off to school, with prayers said, lunches packed, papers signed, shoes on, and time to spare. I was showered, dressed, make-up on, nice hair, earrings in. The weather was nice, the kids were happy. I even felt brave enough to go grocery shopping.

In the grocery store, the kids were well-behaved, despite all the comments about how full my hands were (seriously, at least six separate people on that one trip, and two of the kids were at school...) I remembered to bring my list with me to the store, and I actually got everything on the list. There was only one moment of seething anger (when I noticed that yet another food item had reduced the weight in their standard package while keeping the price the same. rrraaarrrgh!)

I successfully comforted my daughter when she found her 'pet' worm dead in the hot car, and I successfully convinced my kids to eat a yummy lunch that did NOT include peanut butter and jelly for once. We even had good bonding time, reading books after lunch, and my barely-verbal toddler tried to repeat some of the words with me.

I was able to start chopping dinner vegetables before kids got home from school -- while tutoring my friend's daughter in math. Then my baby went down for a nap just in time for me to finish dinner preparations, and I let it finish cooking while I gave my son his practice spelling test. I was all ready to put our (healthy!) dinner on the table, take twenty minutes to eat, and shuttle kids off to baseball practice. Perfect!

That's when it happened. The phone rang.

I was on the phone for less than five minutes, and to be fair, the destructive behavior probably started while I was giving the spelling test. Either way, by the time I got off the phone, my 8-year-old was on his way downstairs, soaked and screaming. My daughter and toddler had been gleefully dumping water all over each other and the bedroom carpet. The carpet was soaked; they were soaked; there was water all over the bathroom. Wet, wet, wet.

SO... I let out a blood-curdling scream... then we got out lots of towels for the floors, changed clothes, opened the windows, went to baseball practice, and came home to our now-cold dinner.

And that's what I get for thinking I could have a perfect day. Thank goodness for microwaves.