Water Falls

Since blogging always sends some (vaguely) related song pulsing through my head on repeat, I have to use restraint to not always use that song as my post title.  Can you guess what the actual song running through my head is?  Maybe by the end of the post…

Wednesday was a day.  A DAY.  That kind of day. Oh yes…just one of those days.

We have been getting very little sleep for the past week for a myriad of reasons and it seemed to have finally hit me in full force Wednesday morning.  So when I walked into the kitchen and the first thing I saw was the image below, I wasn’t too pumped for my day.

Top o’ the morning to ya, Annie!  Aren’t you excited to wash us all by hand before you even begin to think about cleaning the rest of the house and doing activities with your kids?!?!  Aren’t ya?  Aren’t ya???

Frankly, I would have preferred waking up to an all white hotel room full of Calla Lilies and a beach breeze blowing gently through my balcony door.  But today, these dishes were my reality and I had to face them.  So I scrubbed them (perhaps harder than they liked) and then went about cleaning the rest of the house while the boys hung out with our live-in, unpaid babysitter.

At 11:00, we rushed over to the YMCA so that I could take my kickboxing class while the boys went to the playroom.  By 1:00 we were on our way home.  Those two hours or travel/gym time were the most successful of the day.  I should have just stopped while I was ahead and put everyone (including myself) to bed at 1:00 pm.

I did put Xavi down for his nap once we got home and a friend and her two sons kindly picked up Carlitos to go to the playground with them for the afternoon.  Actually, this was also a pretty nice treat.  I had time to shower and even to blow dry and straighten my hair.  Pretty special.  But then I pushed it, as I am wont to do.  I tried to fit in a nice little mani/pedi on myself.  I had all finger nails and one set of toes done when Xavi woke up.  He watched me finish the rest.  Then the friend who had Carlitos called to double check about our plans to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Members Rose Garden Picnic that evening. Intelligently, (or so I thought) I picked up the bag of nail polish and brought it into the kitchen with me to discuss the travel plans with her, leaving Xavi in the living room with Barney.

When I returned to the living room 4 minutes later, here is what I saw:

Barney, you are fired.

This photo does not even accurately portray just how much YELLOW NAIL POLISH was in a pool on our floor.  There was also a large amount on his jeans, shirt and both couches.   Apparently I left one stray bottle of polish on the couch by mistake and Xavi decided he wanted his toes to look like Mommy’s.

Ahh, yes, the desirable specialty pedicure where they also paint in between each toe.  All the rage right now.

Obviously, telling my friend that we would be on our way over in 5 minutes was false.  By the time I cleaned up all of the nail polish we were way behind schedule.  Once we arrived and started to get the whole crew ready to go catch the bus I realized that I had forgotten our membership card.  Eight minutes later I had finished sprinting home and had returned, card in hand.  Once we wrangled all four kids outside so that we could walk to the bus, the event had already begun and I was already getting text messages from a friend about how fun it was.  Awesome.  We shouldn’t be far behind.  We grabbed the kids sandwiches from the corner deli and herded them toward the bus stop as quickly as we could, even managing keep our wine from sloshing out of our red cups.  We were golden!

Actually, not so much.

We missed the bus by 4 minutes and had to wait another 15 for the next one.  This is when we really started noticing the dark clouds looming from the North.  You’d be surprised what you can ignore when you’ve spent over an hour stuck in a comedy of errors while herding cats kids.  We got on that bus and we went to that Botanic Garden and we marched our little troupe all the way to the other end, where the event was.   And those clouds just kept looming, cruelly.

The kids made hats right away as we kept looking up that jerky sky.

It was a bit more Frantic Hodgepodge than Thoughtful Design, but the kids were happy.  Every parent knows that is ultimately the bottom line.

Then we shoved their deli sandwiches at them and ordered to Chew!  Chew fast little ones!

This is called ‘providing photographic evidence that we were good parents and took you to stuff’ even if sometimes you were only there for a very rushed five minutes.’  Also, I would just like to say that I think Carlitos looks quite dapper in that fancy hat.

People were definitely leaving by this point as we began to hear thunder in the distance.  The Cherry Esplanade looked like this as I was unwrapping Carlitos’ juice straw:

And like this by the time I was onto Xavi’s straw:

Eery.

We were the last to hold out.  With only 7 minutes until the winners were announced for the kids’ hat contest, we kind of thought we had a corner on those prizes…until we noticed that even the people in charge of the event were gone.   Still, we shrugged out shoulders and tried to convince each other that the rain could ‘totally just pass around us.’

Yeah.

As the rain started to fall, we scrambled to pack up and head all the way out of the garden.  Within 20 yards we were all drenched.  We still had a good half mile to go.  I was so, so, so excited that I had taken the time to straighten my hair.  So excited.  Don’t you just love that?

Since I do so much teasing and joking on here about my kids, I do feel it necessary to point out that as soon as we started walking, Carlitos gave his umbrella to his friend because he had a hood and his friend didn’t have an umbrella or a hood.  That kid knows how to make his mama proud.

Soaked to the bone.

Xavi, not to be outdone, showed his solidarity by simply holding his coat and umbrella, rather than using them.

I’m giving him credit by saying he made his choice based on solidarity with the rest of us.  Otherwise, it just looks like he is very unintelligent.  I am certain that’s not the case, Xavster.

We somehow managed to hail a cab and fit everyone in it.  There were warm showers, comfy pajamas and only the need for one story before everyone was snoring.

I guess you sometimes need the bad to appreciate the good.  The rain to achieve the rainbow…like my camp counselor wrote in my autograph book in 3rd grade.

You were so right, Becky!  The depth and accuracy of Australian camp counselors in the 80’s – astounding.

They are basically as genius as TLC.  Sometimes it’s just one of those days.

But honestly, it really does make the good days that much sweeter.