Calgon, Take Me Away!

It's been one of those days. Tuesdays are always the pits because John is in Houston all day and all evening. I only have to be a single mom three nights a week, and I can't hack it. Well, I feel like I rallied somewhat at the end, but no mommy awards coming down the pipe today, friends. No human being honors either. And I'll be giving an account for this one for sure.
5:00-awaken, coffee
5:10-nurse baby
5:30-dress
6:00-leave for mail run
7:15-decide to read magazine while I wait for my mail to be sorted. I'm thinking that this will be a special treat to read in peace and quite for 45 minutes, but just end up fighting envy because these celebrities are completely godless and living lives of absolute selfishness and dissipation and they are STINKING rich. Way to let your joy be robbed, Jess. John pulls up and sheepishly climbs out of my parent's car. The point of me doing the mail run was to let him get an early start on Houston traffic. He missed the bus stop and had to bring the kids down anyway. By this time, I'm STARVING, he brings me a single serving of pound cake from the gas station. DO NOT EAT ANYTHING FROM A GAS STATION. You have no idea how many points values are in those things! I only ate half the piece and it was 6 points.
8:30-arrive home and chat with my parents who got up before sun rise so my kids could get to school and they could bring us a vehicle, because we still don't have money to fix our van.
9:00-nurse baby
9:15-begin cleaning living room, which I cleaned Saturday, and is a pig sty AGAIN! Two loads of laundry, put away breakfast leavings, clean exersaucer of crusted spitup, etc.
10:00-dress M and baby
10:10-need to check with neighbor across the street and make sure she is still planning to watch my kids after school for an hour. Ian and Marina are riding their bikes in our driveway. I remind them that they are not to ride them outside the picket fence, which they know, because we play out there every day and I tell them every day not to do that and I show them how far they can go and where they must stop and I remind them constantly not to get any closer to the road and not to ever chase a ball into the road or follow someone into the road or cross without an adult holding their hand and my life is a broken record of the same instructions over and over again...I say, "I'm going across the street to speak with Mrs. Kristen for a minute. You don't need to come. No, just play here. I can watch you from across the street. I'm watching you. Look, don't follow me. Don't come close to the road. You know not to go past the fence." I cross the street (by the way, our house is in a school zone and might see 5 cars roll down it on a busy morning), I knock on the fema trailor door. We exchange pleasantries, "How was your Thanksgiving? Fine, and yours?" And I have one eye trained on my driveway, because deep down, I know. I know she will not be able to stand it. She will not be able to stand such a clear cut, simple, in-your-face-obey-me command, and I was RIGHT. As soon as she thinks I am absorbed in my conversation she is pedaling maniac style to the road, past her brother, past the parked van, and PAST THE FENCE. So I'm hollering like a drunken fish wife at her to STOP to get her rear end back in that driveway and park that little hiney on the porch bench because I'm coming to tear it up in just a minute....."WAAAAAAAAAA!" the siren yell. All in front of my neighbor who is lost as a goose and who I've been trying to build a friendship with for a year now. And it has been all uphill work because she thought--strike that thinks--people who went to church were all either nut jobs or hypocrites. What's that I hear? Is that the sound of a testimony being flushed down the toilet?
10:30-Take care of the aforementioned bizniz.
11:00-feed children.
11:30-feed myself
12:00-read books to toddlers
12:30-send them off for naps, nurse burp diaper and tickle baby
1:00-lay down for my own little siesta.
1:15-but I think it must be 3:00 because there is a party going on down the hall. "Oh my, I can barely pull my eyes open. A two hour nap and it feels like I just laid down. What wrong with me? You gotta wake up..." And I'm draggin out of bed, putting on my shoes, and puttering into the kitchen for a glass of water. The kids are bouncing around me in a decidedly anti-postnap manner. I look at the clock. IT IS 1:15??!! On the best of days, Fiona (Marina's alter ego) needs at least a two hour nap! And today is not the best of days. 30 minutes is not going to cut it. "GRRRR! Ian, I know you are behind this! You went into her room and woke her up and you two have been in there playing and carrying on. You get in that bed right now...Both of you!" Take care of some Bizniz with him.
1:25-O.K., Jess, get it together, you can salvage this day. It could be worse. At least they didn't wake the baby...
1.5 seconds later-DING DONG! Our super sonic door bell sounds in the back hall. Right by the baby's room. He immediately begins to stir. It had better be Ed McMann at that door. Nope. My mentally handicapped neighbor. She is in her mid forties, but has the mind of a six year old. She comes over about four times a week during the day. Can I tape some pictures together for her, can I staple this for her, do I have bandaids in the house, can I read this note for her. Today's emergency was a Christmas ornament that needed hot glue. She can't touch them guns. They get hot and burn her. Can I work a one of them guns? Yes, of course I will V, but honey, do you remember? Please don't ring the bell during the day. Remember? Just knock softly. The baby takes naps and the door bell wakes him up. By now there are blood curdling screams emanating from the nursery door. She looks at me confused. But, Miss Jessica, I think your baby is awake right now. And I could not hold back a note of exasperation. Yes V, he is awake now because you woke him up when you rang the door bell. She probably didn't understand the sentence, but the frustration she instantly registered. Her eyes filled with tears. Oh, Miss Jessica, I so sorry. Please forgive me. I promise I won't do that no more. I real, real sorry. You been so nice to help me...She is hugging me. Me, the SCUM OF THE EARTH. I have made a mentally handicapped person cry. You don't get much lower than that.
1:30-go pick up baby and we cry together on the sofa. I hear a slamming noise. Could that be the child I plainly told to lay in her bed? Why yes, it is. She was told to lay in bed and has decided to disobey. But it wasn't good enough for her to disobey; she needed my attention drawn to the disobedience. More BIZNIZ.
2:00-abandon all hope of a nap. Put two kids in back yard to play (what they wanted all along.) Put baby in now clean exersaucer where he commences to vomit. Sit down at table with view of backyard and work on my Walk Thru The Bible application. Yes, that would be me, the SCUM OF THE EARTH, filling out a job app for a teaching position with Walk Thru The Bible. A job in which people would pay MONEY for ME to teach THEIR CHILDREN the BIBLE! The truly scary thing is that I just might get the job. Because girlfriend KNOWS the Bible. Which just proves that it's not what you know, it is what you do.

Can I please start this day over?