I'm having three of those days

Ever have one of those days? I seemed to be having three of them yesterday.

It was a simple schedule. Take Kate to work, come home and do the first day of our Olympic unit study with Rose and Christy, vacuum and clean the loveseat, rest for a bit, then do a bit of IC work on my way to pick Kate up, come home, make dinner and throw "Flight of the Navigator" on for the kids.

These simple days never work out like they should. Why is that?

How it actually went: Take Kate to work. Bless her heart, she's so organized and prepared. Her uniform is clean and pressed, her lunch is packed and waiting for her in the fridge, she wakes me and her sisters up in ample time to go and has breakfast waiting for us! What a gem!

First day of Olympic unit: This is a computer-based unit, taking liberal advantage of the official Olympics website. Hm. Internet's down. What now? Move on.

Vacuum and clean the loveseat: Vacuum breaks. No problem, get the back-up from downstairs and finish. Can't find all the pieces to the steam cleaner. Wake up Blair, the last one who used the machine, who, bleary-eyed, finds all the pieces after about an hour of muttering under her breath and reorganizing the cleaning supply closet. Think she'll take it as a lesson to put things away properly? Unlikely.

Internet's up, so I get the girls going on the unit study. We do a little together, then they go off to do some research. Great! I can start cleaning the loveseat! But, it's almost lunch time. Okay, put on the potatoes, cook the sausage, rinse and chop the kale then clean part of the loveseat while it's simmering.

Carpet cleaner breaks. I was planning to clean the loveseat today, then the living room and hall carpet tomorrow. Drat. They're so grimy, too. While I'm fighting with that machine, trying to determine the problem, the sausage burns on the stove. Aargh. No problem. I'll just cut off the burnt part and keep moving forward.

Lunch is done, time to rest a little. Nope. Juice spill on dining room carpet. Argument between two siblings turns nearly physical. Wii won't connect and John needs to communicate with a friend now. Downstairs bath mat mysteriously turns up moldy and must be washed now. "And while you're at it, Mom, I have nothing to wear tomorrow..." Child assigned lunch dishes stalls and procrastinates until long after scheduled time.

Time to go to my IC work, but the kids are all still a little touchy. So, instead of leaving them here to play in the pool, they all pile in the car with me and get an early dinner out on the way home from picking Kate up. Who fainted at work. Again. (Like her mom, she just doesn't do heat.) And what is that scary sound the car is making when it shifts from first to second gear? Skip the drive-thru, let's get the car home to rest before it falls apart on the road.

I get dinner made with few problems, but nobody likes it. Whoever heard of a kid not liking pizza?? Okay, so it's stuffed zucchini, but if you close your eyes and hum "That's Amore," it kinda tastes a little like pizza!

Put on the DVD, and it's one of the very, very few "problem" disks we have received from Netflix. Kids agree on a video tape, but the VCR is broken. Five quick rounds of Boggle and it's off to bed for everyone.

Except me. Screwdriver and manual in hand, I set out to fix the carpet cleaner. I can't, but I do discover that it's only the handheld part that is not working. The actual carpet part is working fine, so I wind it up and clean the grimy hall carpet. I'm not gonna let this day get me.

I don't hit the sack until well after midnight, and tomorrow is a big, long, errand running day. But the day didn't eat me alive and for that I'm very happy.