Writings from the black pit of despair

Sometimes it's hard to maintain a positive attitude about things.  Sometimes the bad stuff knocks you down like a snowball and just rolls downhill with you,  picking up other stuff along the way until it crashes at the bottom in one big heap of badness.


I was exhausted yesterday.  I cut the dog's walk short and came home and laid down.  I slept about 2 hours. I had to get up and go to Costco.  Got home just in time to unload the car, grab the dog and his leash, and hustle off to get the girls from school.
Walking home Thing 2 offered to take the dog's leash from me.  She wasn't paying attention, the dog trotted ahead to try and get the stick Thing 1 was holding for him, and the leash popped out of Thing 2's hand.
She started screaming.  She said it scared her.  My asking "what's going on?  Why are you upset?" was like throwing grease on the fire.  She kind of calmed down by the time we got home, partly, I think, because Thing 1 and I basically ignored her.  But she was primed and ready for trouble.  She told me later she'd had a horrible day at school, too.


Tuesdays are our busy days.  We don't have much time between walking in the door from school and hustling out the back for gymnastics.  For several reasons I had decided to take the dog, and went out to load him up.  The girls were dragging their feet, stopping to converse about something or other.  So we were just a little bit late out the door to Thing 2's gymnastics class, and as we were leaving Thing 1 announced she was starving.  Add a couple more minutes to our lateness.
After I dropped Thing 2 off at gymnastics, I had to take Thing 1 to art.  Only they weren't meeting at the regular classroom, they were having a special out door class.  Stupid me forgot the map.  The last outdoor class they had was at Sugarhouse Park.  So we went there.  And drove around, walked around, looking for the class.  Finally 5 minutes after the class started I loaded her into the car and we drove to the classroom, where the art school director gave us a map to where they would be.
By the time we got there it was nearly 1/2 an hour late for art, and nearly time for me to be picking up Thing 2 from gymnastics.  Thing 1 was sobbing because she'd missed her favorite part of art class, and she was embarrassed to have been crying, and she assured me several times she wouldn't want to stay to the class even if we found it.  The favorite part of her week, totally ruined.
We pulled up and saw that class was being held at the dog park.  She changed her mind.  She wiped her tears and sprinted out to the class.  By the time I'd exchanged phone numbers with the teacher (in case there was a problem) it was already time for me to be picking up Thing 2.
I drove like a madwoman to the gym, but by the clock I was 12 minutes late picking her up.  I went into the gym to get her and found her sitting on one of the mats.  She held it together until I hugged her, then she burst into tears.  She cried that she was worried I wouldn't come, and was embarrassed that she was there all alone, and she knew everyone was staring at her.  She had several other laments but I forget what they were. She was beyond miserable.
I drove back to the dog park, since we'd left the dog there with Thing 1 and I figured she should be drawing, not worrying about him. It had gotten cold, Thing 2 wiped her eyes and decided to play at the playground for a minute.  The other kids in the art class came over to the playground and started playing.  Apparently it was too cold to draw, but not too cold to play.  I went into the dog part to fetch the dog and talk to the teacher for a minute.  The next thing I knew Thing 1 was running to get me because Thing 2 had gotten hurt.  Thing 2 was standing outside the gate, which she let swing open. I'm watching as a dog went trotting toward the open gate.  I lunged, missed, sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the gate, the gate swung open and bonked Thing 2 on the head, and the dog trotted out into the grass.  Luckily the teacher was right behind me and she called to the dog, who came back into the dog area.  Thing 2 was really sobbing by now.  She had been on the teeter totter, and had gotten bumped halfway off, and the other kids hadn't stopped.  She was hanging half off the teeter totter and they'd kept going.  She assured me they were "SMILING" and earlier one of them had told her to GO AWAY.  She was way past miserable in some horrible black pit of despair, gloom, and never ending agony.

Usually on Tuesdays with everything else going on, I take the kids out to dinner somewhere so I don't have to cook.  But Thing 2 was still sobbing, and I wasn't going to take her anywhere like that.  Since part of this was my fault, with me forgetting to get the map for the drawing class, I told them we were skipping dinner, going right to dessert, and I would make some "Bad Day Good Cupcakes."
Since my only cake mixes were flavors the girls didn't like I ended up making cupcakes from scratch, making a mess of half the kitchen, and the cupcakes came out of the oven around 7:30.  Sigh.  The kitchen's still kind of a mess.
The kids had to have a bath, and got to bed around 9:00, and the only reason it was that early was because I was standing behind them half the time reminding them of what they should be doing.  (No, not nagging... reminding.  Nicely.  Repeatedly. That's not nagging, is it?)
I went to bed myself at 10:30, which if you know me you know is amazingly early.
Hubby called at midnight as he landed in Denver.  I barely woke up enough to talk a little before I rolled over and went back to sleep.


I told the girls that sometimes bad days are actually good because they remind us how good the good days are.


But sometimes bad days are just bad.