I Don't Like-a Mondays

Today couldn't have felt more like a Monday if a piano fell from the sky and landed on my head.

It started with something simple... Just a quiet alarm from the other room at 5:00 am. Nathan started seminary last week. Hence, the world begins before the sun has the nerve to peek over the horizon. For some reason, Nathan had to walk back and forth in the hallway for a full 30 minutes while he waited for his new carpool to arrive, which means the wood floors creaked beneath him for 30 minutes straight just outside my door. Not the most pleasant sound to greet the new day, but I remained cool. Hey! At least he got up and got ready without me having to nag him. But at 5:40 he came into my room and said, "It's 5:50 and my carpool's not here." (Note the time discrepancy here.)

My response: "Whatever. If they're not here by 6:00 then you are missing seminary and we'll find out what's up with the carpool."

...10 minutes elapse...

"Sorry, Mommy. I was wrong about the time last time. NOW it's actually 5:50 and they're still not here."

Same answer given... just as there is a knock at the door and he's off to seminary. Crisis averted.

So now I am super-chipper and LOVING the new day, because I am SUCH a morning person, she said in a manner dripping with sarcasm. Tossing and turning ensues until the next alarm sounds at 6:20. I then get up and rouse Hayden, who has missed two days of school from a nasty cold. Today was to be his triumphal return to the classroom.

NOT TODAY IT ISN'T!!!

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Let me back up to Saturday afternoon. Wayne and I had decided to take a walk to the Santa Monica Promenade and enjoy a little alone time. Nathan and Hayden stayed home with simple instructions: they were allowed to play on the X-Box, provided they completed their chores by the time we returned home. We checked up on them periodically and all seemed great. Then as we walk in the door, I notice the game console and T.V. are off (which is really weird, given their free pass from both parents), and Hayden is sobbing on the couch, nursing a puncture wound in his armpit which he sustained (get this...) by doing laundry!!! (Ah, the cruel irony!) Apparently, while sorting the laundry, he slipped and fell into the hamper, which has a wire frame scaffold supporting a cloth exterior. So one of the vertical components of the frame had protruded from the framework and wound up in Hayden's armpit meat. OUCH!!! So we cleaned out the wound with peroxide and dressed it with Neosporin and kept our eye on it throughout the weekend.

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Back to the Monday morning o' fun... Now Hayden's wound is infected and oozing pus, despite our best efforts to prevent such things. Super. And now Wayne is mad, because he wishes I had taken him to the E.R. on Saturday, which I refused to do because they would have made me wait 6 hours for a tetanus booster and a band-aid and charged me the $150 copay to do so.

So while he's upset, he goes to move the clothes iron, which he failed to notice is scorching hot, and attempts to pick it up with his only opposable thumb, which makes a sizzling noise and blisters almost instantaneously from tip to palm. (I'll leave out the dialog that ensued, as it was understandably a bit colorful.)

So while I try to nurse Hayden's wounds and dress Wayne's wounds, I am still trying to get ready for work. So I go to get in the shower and there is no hot water. Which is super-fun for me, because I usually run the water so hot that I walk out of my showers with a red streak down my back. Not today! It's shivering and yipping and pulling out my hair as I rush to wash my unmanageable locks before I suffer hypothermia.

As my teeth chatter away, it is decided that Hayden will miss another day of school so that he may go to the doctor, and Wayne will take him and try to maneuver the steering wheel with his eight intact fingertips.

I leave as things finally seem to be resolving and normalcy can return. I sit pensively on the bus, trying to distract myself with a book, only to find I am rereading the same words over and over without comprehension. I get to the clinic, put my game face on, and pretend everything is hunky dory. After all that rushing around, a quick look at my schedule reveals that my first patient has canceled, and the rest of my day is bound to be more of the same.

The cool, professional exterior melts away, and I confide in the secretary of the morning's events ...and I went home. Thank you, Esme for your sympathetic suggestion to do so!

Here's to Tuesdays. May they be gloriously uneventful!!!!