I'm having a bad day

This morning I woke up, looked at the clock and realized three things: 1.) The alarm was set for 6:30PM, not AM, and therefore did not go off, 2.) It is now almost 7AM and I normally leave for school in 20 minutes, and 3.) my nine-month old alarm clock, who is normally up by 5AM every day, chose THIS VERY DAY to sleep in. Crap.

I went into the kid's room to rouse my sleeping angels. Bella was grouchy and wouldn't get out of bed, and Bubba and everything around him was soaked in pee. Lovely.

I changed Bubba and made breakfast for Bella. I took that moment to attempt to make a pot of coffee, and in my hurry I somehow managed to fling a heaping tablespoon of coffee grounds all over the kitchen. It was so bad that I actually had to pause and marvel at how very aerodynamic coffee grounds are, because they went everywhere. Even though I knew it was only a tablespoon, it looked like more like a good solid cup. And of course, in the thirty seconds it took me to get the broom, Bubba found them and wallowed in them, so I had to sweep the floor and dust him off.

While Bella was finishing her breakfast I went to the dryer to get her uniform out and discovered that the clothes were still damp. It was now 7:10. Crap. I turned the dryer on and hoped for the best. We got everything else done that we could (tooth brushing, hair-fixing, backpack packing) so that all she would have to do is hop into her clothes and we could leave.

While we were waiting for the clothes to dry, I was instructing Bella on her lunch money. Lunch is $3, and there was a $1 fee due this morning for glow sticks for the Christmas program finale (I know, I can't wait). All I had was a $10 bill. So I said, "I'm giving you $10. When you get your change back from lunch, put $1 in this envelope and give it to your teacher, and bring the rest of the change home". Bella paused for a moment and then said, "Why am I giving my teacher a dollar?". Sigh. "I'm giving you a $10 bill for lunch. Hot lunch costs $3. How much change will you get back?". Bella considered this for a moment. "Three dollars?" She guessed. Sigh again. Me: "What is ten minus three?". Bella: "Three, I just told you". Great. "When you get your change back, just put a dollar in this envelope and give it to your teacher". She agreed, but reluctantly.

Her uniform was dry by about 7:30, so she hastily dressed and we ran to the car. I was weaving my way through our narrow little apartment complex road when in front of me, there were three ducks crossing the road. Slowly. Painfully slowly. And a car was parked in front of the building in front of them, blocking me from veering around them. So I had to stop and wait, and I tell you: in my impatience, it was agony. Time was ticking away, and these ducks were leisurely sauntering across the road. One stopped and sniffed at something, the other two paused for some other reason, maybe conversation, who knows. After what seemed like an eternity, they were finally out of harm's way and I zipped past them. Stupid ducks.

Bella's school is about 3-1/2 miles from our house. There are eight traffic lights in those 3-1/2 miles, and without exaggeration, every single one of those lights was red when we got to it. Bella even noticed and commented on that fact, in between bemoaning our lateness. "I'll bet they're saying morning prayer right now, mom, and I'm missing it". And this jewel from about two miles away: "I think I just heard the bell from here, mom". No, I don't think so.

I got Bella safely to school (on time, too, so ha!) and was navigating traffic on my way home when I noticed an odd smell. A glance at my dash told me why: the car was overheating. Looooovely. We made it home without exploding - well, the car didn't explode, but my temper was on the verge. I decided to let the car (and my attitude) cool down before messing with it.

We got inside and I started trying to get everything together to get Bubba ready to go to my MIL's and myself ready to go to work. And nothing was going my way - I knocked a half gallon of milk onto the floor, and the dishwasher leaked everywhere (it was a bad day for my kitchen floor), a fact I discovered when I slipped and fell in the puddle it left. It was not my morning.

I managed to shower and get ready for work, and bustled myself and Bubba out to the car when I remembered the whole overheating situation. I put Bubba in his seat, rolled the window down a bit and popped the hood so I could add some more coolant (I have a leak). I gathered up my coolant and my water and looked down at the engine and.....couldn't immediately recognize where the coolant went. And I got very mad at myself.

In my defense, it is a new (to me) car, and I had not monkeyed around with the engine at all up to this point. I had a basic idea of where the coolant would go, but I wasn't 100% positive, and I don't play around with stuff like engine fluid. With my luck I would have added coolant to the brake fluid reservoir and slammed into a tree later when I tried to stop. So I tried calling my husband, who is in Panama City Beach visiting and playing golf with his old roommate, and of course he didn't answer his phone.

I ended up calling a friend who, after a brief description of where I thought it might go, assured me that I was most likely putting the coolant in the right place. The whole time I was dealing with that, Bubba was in the car screaming his head off, which made me rush, which caused me to spill coolant everywhere (including on myself), which made my mood even darker than it was before. So I was pretty irritated by the time I dropped Bubba off. I was bringing him in to my MIL at 9AM, which is the very time I was supposed to be at work for a meeting.

So I take off from my MIL's house and head for work and get stuck behind a school bus that is stopping EVERY SINGLE BLOCK for roughly eight blocks. And at each stop about 8 kids had to file onto the bus then sit down. It was like the duck situation, only it took longer. I actually developed a little bit of heartburn sitting behind that stupid school bus.

BUT....despite all that, we all got where we needed to go, mostly on time, and we were safe (except that one little slip and fall in the kitchen), so it could have been worse. And if I keep telling myself that, maybe I can get out of the funky mood I've been in.

Here's hoping.

**POST-POST UPDATE**

I stopped by Jennifer's blog - The Conversion Diary - and after reading the post there, I feel really small and petty. I whined incessantly for paragraphs and paragraphs about what a rough morning I had, and then you have someone dealing with something like this mother dealt with. I have been thoroughly chastened.