It's my pity party, and I'll cry if I want to

It's my pity party, and I'll cry if I want to
18 March 2009

This is a recap of yesterday’s events:

I don’t do bad days.  Every day for me is great – so obviously you get varying degrees of great, but great none the less.  I really am a “the glass is half full” kind of person.  Actually to be perfectly honest, I’m just so glad there even is a glass!  Today however, even I will admit that today was not stellar for me.  In fact today was particularly eeeuuuwww!!!

It started off the same as every other day.  In fact, it started off better.  Grant volunteered to take the kids to school for me today, which meant that I could sleep until 6h15 (positively late for me in the week), as opposed to the usual 5h40.  Bleeding luxury!  But it all started going a bit pear-shaped late morning.  I had my two-man cleaning crew in to clean my Jumping Castles, which meant that I had to periodically check up on them, supervise and advise.  And then I got stuck into doing a bit of Jumping Castle admin – Income Statements, filing receipts, you know that type of thing.  I needed to leave home by 12h15, as I had to fetch Cole slightly earlier from school as opposed to the normal school closing time which is 12h30.  The reason for this is that Cole has swimming lessons starting at 12h40, which gives me a very narrow margin of 10 minutes to get him there, dressed in his cozzie, make a bathroom call and put his goggles on before his lesson starts.  I absolutely hate being late as a rule, and even more so when it’s for a very expensive activity that I’m paying for and that only lasts a mere 20 minutes.

Added to that, I had to do a few errands before leaving for the school run, so timing was of the essence.  A very silly client gave me a Cash cheque instead of the cash.  I don’t do cheques.  So, I had to go to Standard Bank to cash the cheque, go to the Pick ‘n Pay Centre in the Strand, because I needed to get eye make-up from the cheapie make-up shop, go to Postnet to post my brother-in-law, Robin’s, parcel for this birthday (for those of you not in the know, he turns the big ‘five-oh’ on Sunday – and yes, I know my parcel will be arriving late, but I thought better late than never, hey!), I had to go to PNA to get a bubble envelope for said parcel for Robin and quickly nip in to Pick ‘n Pay for a few groceries.  I also had to go to the seamstress in the Strand to drop off a few clothes that needed alterations and mending, as well as drop off Luke’s Cubs uniform with her so that his LEAPING WOLF badge could be sewn on.  I don’t do sewing of badges.  I pay her R5 per badge, with a huge happy smile on my face.

Now the Leaping Wolf badge is the Holy Grail of Cubs.  It is the most important badge in a Cub’s whole Cubbing career.  It is the badge that they spend four years working on to complete and it is their ticket to the wonderful world of Scouting.  Now, I’m not all that keen on Scouting, simply because it is really going to bugger up every Friday evening for me for the next few years and you all know what a rip-roaring social life I have.  Okay, so seriously, I don’t really have the whole rip-roaring social life thing going for me, but it’s just going to be a plain old pain in the ass.  It is from 19h30 until 21h20 every Friday evening.  And that does not include all the additional activities over weekends and so forth that they never tell you about beforehand.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m very happy that Luke has an interest in a fun cultural activity like this and I’m quite happy to have him doing something like this rather than cruising the Mall as so many other kids want to do.  And it does also mean that he’s not playing on the computer or sitting in front of the TV.  So basically “Yes, Scouts is great for the kids, but really sucks for the poor unsuspecting parents karting them about!”. 

Tiny, wee little problem, is that I seem to have misplaced Luke’s Leaping Wolf Badge.  I put it in a nice safe place, where I always put things of this nature and after two fruitless days of searching, said badge was still missing.  So, perhaps not such a tiny, wee little problem, but more of a big, big problem and I really am to blame, as I put it somewhere ‘safe’, you see.  I phoned Akela at Cubs and explained my dilemma to her and she said that Head Office was normally not all that keen to reissue a badge of this kind, as they were so sought after.  She would see what she could do, but basically I had to keep on looking.  Which I did – again.  So I spent a lot of time unpacking and looking in all the little holes and hidey places I had already looked in before.

Eventually realising that my time was running out, I decided to ‘quickly’ head off to do my errands.  In my wisdom, I thought that I would do the whole Pick ‘n Pay Centre thing first.  Got the make-up – check.  Got the bubble envelope – check.  Went to PNA and they wanted to charge me R93 to post Robin’s R50 gift snail mail, so they advised me to go to the Post Office instead.  Got the groceries at Pick ‘n Pay – hectically long queue and a trainee cashier, but eventually got the groceries – check.  Bummer – no time for the rest of my errands now!

Quickly nip home to get Cole’s costume and towel and to make lunch for the kids to take with to school as they have sport, etc. on after school and we’ll only get home again at about 14h45.  Race like a maniac to fetch Cole from school.  Race like a maniac to swimming lessons – only about 2 minutes late.  Realise that I can’t pay the deposit for Cole’s swimming lessons for next term as I had not had time to cash the bloody cheque at Standard Bank!  Apologise humbly to swimming coach and promise to pay on Thursday.  Swimming lessons finish at 13h00 and so does Amber at school.  So quickly, quickly, quickly dress Cole and try and be patient while he tries to strap HIMSELF back into the car before racing like a maniac to meet Amber at Beaumont.  Arrive at Beaumont at 13h15.  Realise that I can’t buy Amber a pair of winter school pants (the uniform shop is only open between 13h30 and 14h30 every Tuesday and Thursday) because I had not cashed the bloody cheque at Standard Bank!!!  Winter is rearing its ugly head and it’s getting very cold now in the mornings and she needs a pair of long pants.  Bugger!!!  It had been my intention to wait at Beaumont for the hour between Amber finishing school at 13h00 and Luke finishing school at 14h15.  I had wanted to start doing Amber’s homework with her as well as buying her a new pair of winter school pants.

A friend of mine, Christine, was also waiting at Beaumont with her youngest child, until her eldest two finished at 14h15.  So I asked her if she wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Amber and Cole while I quickly nipped to the bank to finally cash the bloody cheque.  Amber and Cole were happily playing and eating their rolls and fruit that I had packed in for them and were quite okay with me leaving them.  Now just yesterday, Grant went to our old neighbour – a real sweetie called Geoff who saves all his recycling for us to hand in at Beaumont.  We’re big time into recycling.  Saving the planet and all that.  Grant collected a 2 months’ supply of newspapers from Geoff, for me to hand in at school.  It was 122kg worth of newspapers.  I know this, because I had to weigh it.  So just before I dashed off to the bank, I thought I’d quickly show my friends Gail and Christine the monstrous heap of goodies that I had received for recycling.  As I opened my boot, about 84kg worth of newspapers fell out.  It was a very windy day.  There we were – three adults and four kids running around like mad, picking up papers strewn all over the road.  The problem then, was the fact that once we loaded everything back into the car, we could not get the boot closed.  Eventually Christine had to get into the car and try and grab papers from the inside, while I slammed the boot shut and then we simply threw the remaining 38kg of newspapers through the back door into the boot.

Left Amber and Cole with Christine and quickly went to Standard Bank to cash the bloody cheque.  Stood in a quite a long queue, got to the front and realised that it was in fact an FNB cheque!!!  Oh my friggin hat!!!  Gave a long suffering sigh, walked over to FNB and eventually cashed the bloody cheque, only after a lengthy process of calling the signatories up on the computer screen as the signature on the cheque looked a bit dodgy.  Or course it looked dodgy.  Why wouldn’t it?

By this stage I was quite frazzled to say the least and I thought that I really and truly deserved a packet of Nik Naks from the Café next door.  Nik Naks are forbidden fruit, especially as I diet every week (weekends are snacking time).  But after the whopper of a day I’d had, I thought it was well deserved.  Walked back to my car to see a traffic cop stick a R200 parking fine onto my car window.  Now had I not stopped for the Nik Naks, or not gone to Standard Bank, or realised it was an FNB cheque, or cashed the bloody cheque first thing in the morning, or not gotten out of bed in the first place…

Mission finally accomplished, I raced back to Beaumont.  Opened the car boot to drop off the newspapers at the recycling and 84kg of newspapers fell out of my boot – AGAIN!  Eventually got all the newspapers handed in at recycling, fetched Amber and bought her a new pair of winter school pants.  Waited for Luke to finish school and realised that there was yet again another unscheduled cricket practice for Luke for which we were not prepared.  And we had not brought any of Luke’s cricket gear to school in any rate.  Sooo not doing cricket today, my boy!  Sorry for Beaumont’s under 11B team!

Drove back home at a sedate and calm pace, pondering the rest of my day.  I decided that it would be best if I didn’t operate any heavy machinery under the circumstances.  I was really likely to injure myself with my luck.  Cooking was out of the question, as I was sure to start a fire in the kitchen.  Thought it would be best to just wallow in self-pity on my bed for the remainder of the afternoon.  I had it all planned out – how I was going to buy myself a nice big Kit Kat chocolate (I mean I had already cheated once and would another time really matter?), lock my bedroom door and get engrossed in my new book.  Came back to reality with a harsh crash when I realised that I still had to go and mail Robin’s parcel.  Which reminded me that I couldn’t seem to find it.  Mentally retraced my footsteps and recalled putting it down at the till at Pick ‘n Pay.  Another huge sigh.  I also had not yet dropped off the goodies for the seamstress.

So instead of resting and relaxing, I spent a fun filled afternoon, going to Pick ‘n Pay (again) and retrieving my parcel, going to the Post Office (now there’s a fun outing if ever you need one), and dropping off the sewing with the seamstress.  And for pudding on my fan-friggin-tastic day, what did I do you might ask?  Well, I helped Luke with his essay on his favourite food, supervised an advert he had to make for his English project – he made an ad for a Flame Board (it’s like a J-Board type of thingy that he designed – his logo is “Don’t be lame, ride the flame!”).  Amber and I did phonics, reading from her Kathy and Mark book, flash cards, reading from her reading file, counting in two’s, counting in ten’s and writing out all the number names.  Phew!  I also watched Cole endless and tirelessly jump on his Pogo stick because “Mommy, I can do it so well now!”.

I think as a nightcap before going to bed I'll just stick needles in my eyes!

And you know what?  To add insult to injury, it wasn't even that cold this morning and Amber ended up going to school in her skorts again!

Luke proudly showing off his Leaping Wolf badge, before it went missing.