I'd run away and join the circus


...but I don't think I'd notice any difference.

So, just another Monday morning.

Although I didn't take a nap yesterday afternoon, I still had trouble falling asleep and staying that way last night. Was awake for well over an hour after I laid down. Woke back up an hour and a half later. Woke up an hour before the alarm went off and couldn't go back to sleep.

I stumbled downstairs, semi-somnambulent, and opened the dishwasher only to discover that while I did put soap in it last night, I didn't run it. Argh. Every decent glass in the house was in there, dirty. I fished some old plastic ones out of the back of the cabinet, made the kids' bacon on a regular plate instead of in the microwave bacon pan (and burned it) and used salad forks for people eating scrambled eggs. Waited on tenterhooks until the second Hubs turned the shower off and cranked the dishwasher on fast -- it's kids-laundry day (that's seven or eight loads) and the dishwasher has a bad habit of taking three hours to run a 90-minute cycle.

I don't handle unhappy surprises like that very well first thing in the morning, but I was managing to work around it and not snarl at anyone until Daughter came downstairs. In a household of not-morning people, she is the most not-a-morning person of us all. I'm not certain if it's simply being a teenage female on top of it, or if she's just got the most severe case. Anyway, she came into the family room and immediately snarled at #2-Son, who'd been sitting nearly-catatonic watching the morning news until breakfast was ready, as is his morning routine. And he snarled back. And I snarled at the both of them to shut up. Happy Monday.

Then #1-Son came downstairs in a t-shirt and jeans. Daughter snarled at him that the wind-chill was below freezing, and that he needed to wear long sleeves. He considers bare arms a constitutional right (those are the jokes, people; laugh already) and is pretty much of the same mind about bare legs and toes, which is probably half of why he's jonesing to go to school at Caltech so badly. (We won't tell him that I have personally seen it snow in L.A. It didn't stick.) He snarled at Daughter; I agreed with her and we snarled back and forth for a bit, with #2 chiming in with his patented "That is so not fair" because he feels about the same way as his older brother about skin exposure.

Daughter has decided that eating breakfast with #2-Son is an affront unto her sensibilities (ok, he does occasionally chew with his mouth open) and refuses to come to the breakfast table until he's finished, or nearly. #2, being autistic, believes that things should be done in the same order and manner and at the same time every day, and frets more and more loudly the longer she puts it off. She was in such a wonderful mood this morning (/sarcasm) that she went upstairs and sorted her dirty laundry rather than be on the same floor of the house with #2 while he ate / fussed.

Then, when it was finally time to throw them out of the house, there was much kerfluffle over how heavy a coat people should be wearing. I told #1 he could wear his windbreaker if he would pull his shirt sleeves down (he spends all winter with them shoved up above his elbows, in protest of being made to wear long sleeves.) He stuck his head out the front door and opted for his winter coat. What-ev-er, as long as it comes home this afternoon. Then #2-Son was pulling the edges of his windbreaker together and when I said he ought to zip it, informed me that the zip was broken. Why does nobody tell me these things? Luckily, we'd just purchased his older brother a new windbreaker because he hated the lining in his old one -- it's fleecy, and tends to cause shirtsleeves to wrinkle up in one's armpits -- so there was the old one available for #2.

But finally they were gone.

Now here I sit, waiting for the dishwasher to finish so I can take a shower (it's not the lack of pressure so much as the surprise temperature changes I don't care for) so I can start the laundry. It's not quite 8:00 AM.

How are you today?

Posted: Mon - October 27, 2008 at 07:56 AM   Home         | | View Technorati reactions

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