My Mirage of a Plan for My Life

I try to have my life under control, really I do! I am not the most organized, but usually I at least have a plan for our days. Then we hit days like yesterday and I realize that my plans are really a mirage. My plans are just a vision of what I would like my day to look like that quickly evaporate as soon as someone else enters the picture.

Yesterday afternoon, as mentioned, I was going to get my hair cut-actually cut and highlighted. The sweet girl that cuts my hair is 3 weeks from delivering her first baby. She is super swollen, and as a result, a little slower than normal. So, I left the salon LATE with cut and highlighted wet hair. I had to go pick up Nathan from his club after school a little early so that he could go help our neighbor with her kids. It's his after school job usually on Tues. and Thurs., but she asked for him on Weds. this week. No problem, I had told her he would be a little late due to my haircut, but now I was even later than anticipated. I got to Nate's school and asked for him to be paged, but the P.A. system was down. I had to search the school for him since he was collecting recycling and could be in ANY ROOM IN THE SCHOOL! I spent almost 30 minutes searching, asking each and every kid I saw if they knew where Nathan was. FINALLY, I found him. I was about 10 seconds from standing in the lobby and screaming his name as loud as I could! He, of course, had a friend with him.

"Mom, could we take Brady home?"

Well, what could I say? Sure, we could take Brady home. Where does Brady live? Oh, only 10 minutes past our house in the wrong direction. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but Grammy had to get the other kids off the elementary school bus and I didn't want to leave them at her house too long. Besides that, I felt sure the puppy was ready to go out. On the way to taking Brady home, Nate called our neighbor and she no longer needed him to come...it was too late. (Sorry Denise, I really tried!) We got to Brady's house and before I could say anything, Nathan disappears into the house to "just see it for a minute". It took me 10 minutes to get him back out to the car and on our way home.

We got home, and I have to go to the bathroom badly by now. I came in the house, let the dog out of his crate and don't even get to the front door to let him out before Kaylyn is ringing the doorbell. I open the door to a panicked little girl saying, "Momma, I HAVE to talk to you!". Meanwhile, the dog has gone out the door with no supervision. Thank goodness, he really had to pee and came back in for his treat. Kaylyn proceeds to tell me, in the span of about 24 seconds all in one breath:

A boy at school really likes her and gave her a pair of earrings today. She likes this boy, but only as a friend, so she didn't feel she could keep the earrings. She sent them back to him via another boy because she didn't want to hurt his feelings. The boy that likes her was really upset, buried the earrings on the playground, and was crying at school. Can we please go back to the playground dig up the earrings so she can give them back to him again. And, by the way, did she do the right thing and how can she make him feel better?

Ummmmm, can I go to the bathroom before I solve this crisis? Please? I really have to go!

So, we talked about what Kaylyn should say to this boy (thank you for thinking of her, she really likes him just as a friend-but a nice friend, she appreciated him thinking of her, she is sorry she hurt his feelings, etc.) and she called him and talked to him. Then we load everyone up in the car and went back to the playground to find the earrings. Of course, this wasn't an easy job, but Kaylyn wasn't leaving until they were found. It ended up that I called the boy's mom-she, of course had no idea that he was giving earrings to Kaylyn...and they were his sister's earrings!-and they agreed to meet us at the playground to dig up the earrings. That boy worked really hard to bury them-without a shovel-because they were about 4 inches deep! Thankfully, they were found, the kids played on the playground for a little while and then we came home so that I could...

...Make dinner. I was making tacos. As I am browning the ground beef, I noticed that it smells funny. Apparently my ground beef had gone bad and in the rush to get it going, I hadn't noticed until it was browning. Of course, I didn't have another pound of ground beef, so I trekked over to Grammy's to beg for beef. She, of course, had some so I started dinner for the second time-after I threw away the first ground beef and washed the pan and utensils. At some point, Gary came in and mentioned how hungry he was and hoped we didn't have to wait until 7:00 to eat. Guess what time dinner hit the table? YEP, you guessed it, 7:00 it was. So sorry, Honey, I really did try to get it done sooner!

All in all, it wasn't a bad day. I was thrilled to get a haircut and highlights. I was glad to take Brady home. I enjoyed having extra time in the car with Nathan. I was super proud of Kaylyn for doing the right thing and being concerned about hurting some one's feelings. The kids had been wanting to play on the new playground at school for weeks, and we finally got the chance. I had been wanting tacos for a couple of days and finally got them. It wasn't a bad day, it just wasn't what I had planned.

Someone out there, please tell me you have days like these? Anyone?