Week 18 -- Found it!

What week IS this? I don’t even know but I don know we are halfway through it already. This morning I am up at 6:30 expecting at least half an hour to myself but Sailor wakes and follows me to the bathroom. He wants me to come back to bed but I cannot. At 7:00 our friend Taylor is coming over to stay for the morning while her brother Mac goes in for some minor surgery. I make pancakes for the occasion. Mac wakes and comes to the kitchen. His nose woke him, he tells us. He smells our pancakes, which I have slipped Sailor’s dead banana from yesterday into. It is past 7:00. I wonder at our little friend’s tardiness. Sometime after 7:30 I call to check on their early arrival’s status. She is still sleeping, her mom tells me. She arrives just after 8:00, right at the moment when I finally decide to go to the bathroom. The boys enthusiastically answer the door and proceed to spend the morning making noise and acting silly. Mac is showing off and I remind him that this is a friend we see all the time and that there is no reason to show off. My mom comes up to play hide-and-seek while I take Mac to school.

When I return I follow my never-ending cell phone around answering biz calls and then I vacuum until my vacuum cleaner tires out. Sailor and Taylor run around the house carrying as many stuffed backpacks as they can. When we are ready to leave a short while later these are the same children who protest having to carry their own backpacks of clothes and lunchboxes to French class. “Why do I have to carry this?” the little girl asks me, after I call her to me 4 times to come get said backpack. It is packed with Sailor’s clothing. Today is pajama day in French class so the two are dressed in footy pj’s. Sailor’s white t-shirt sticks out at the neckline of his green and blue striped pajamas. Taylor is wearing white pajamas adorned with pictures of motorcycles. No doubt a hand-me-down from her brother. She looks cute. But when I ask her if she has undies on underneath her pj’s she tells me she does not. I send her off with Sailor to Sailor’s room, instructing Sailor to find her some undies. I pack them each a bag of clothes for later in the afternoon. I am sure this little girl can wear a sweater and jeans of Sailor’s without too much fuss. I drop the children. We are so late we find the teacher wandering around looking for us. The other girls in the class is late as well.

I spend a lovely hour sipping tea with my favorite French mom and her adorable baby. Then fly back to pick up the children, late again. I don’t like to wait. So I am always late. I figured that out the other day.

A few things I remember from the first days of this week: On Sunday night the kids and I are settled in bed to watch something on DVD. I make macker cheese and serve it on a tray so we can all hang out together. Sailor has requested ketchup on his macker but now denies the request, in typical Sailor fashion. He tells me he is going to eat my macker and I can eat his. I remind him that I don’t like ketchup. “Just deal with it,” he says, as plain as can be.

Thursday is Harass SuperMommy Day. We wake early enough for the children to play and for me to not have to rush around or yell at anyone or even prod anyone to get ready. We simply have enough time. Clothes were set out last night. Pancakes from yesterday are in the fridge. Mac’s lunch is half made. It’s an easy morning. I even have time to shower, dress, and dry my hair before I head out to do the garbage cans. We leave early and walk slowly to the car. It feels nice to take our time for a change. We pull around to the side of the school. I slide my car in between Claire and Sophie’s mom’s car and someone else’s car. There are too many minutes left to just hop out and leave my car there. So I look for my gloves. I unstrap Sailor from his car seat. I gather Mac’s lunch box and backpack. Our school’s crossing guard, Officer Dick, who according to many wears a halo and according to me lives up to this name I have given him for the sake of his anonymity, saunters over to the car queue, flapping a handful of parking tickets. “Don’t park there again or I’ll give you another ticket,” he warns in my direction. I don’t know what he is talking about because he has never given me a ticket (except maybe in his dreams). “I’m trying to drop my child off at school,” I call back. He flaps his parking tickets again in my direction. Mac and Sailor are ordered back into the car. We drive off, me spewing a list of expletives that my children repeat with gusto when I have my sister on speaker phone a few minutes later. I will have to warn them about the possibility of getting soap in their mouths for saying the words I say. I will have to learn to watch what I say around my loyal children. The children choose a DVD to watch while I attend my 10:00 meeting in the ‘burbs. The reason why we chose to drive to school today. At 10:10 I overhear the secretary calling the drug rep I am supposed to be meeting with. I never called her, the rep tells the secretary. I never called her?! I was never meant to have called her. This meeting was arranged through the doctor’s office. I was asked to come meet with this lady. And she knows nothing of the meeting. We get back in the car and return to school. It is after 11:00 a.m. and Mac wants to stay home with Sailor and me. I tell him how fun it’s going to be to go to school so late. We have a chat with the office ladies, who are much nicer to me than they were 4 months ago. Mac doesn’t want to go upstairs alone. I ask the office ladies to call one of his classmates down to fetch him. I have learned how they run things here. They decide it will be too disruptive and offer me a pass “just this once” to take him up myself. We have all learned to play the game. I am so sick of this shit!

Sailor plays nicely while I answer my constantly ringing phone for the next hour or so and I tell him that when I am done we will play. But by the time I am done it is 12:30 and I call Sailor to the table for lunch. He refuses to eat. The clock ticks. He stomps around crying about the game he wants to play. I bundle him for school. Fetch my purse. Find him unbundled. I rebundle him and take his hand. He cries all the way to school. I know he is tired and now probably hungry but he napped in the car on the drive back from the 'burbs and he refused his lunch. He is still sobbing when we get to school. He wants to go home to go potty. I escort him into the school’s tiny bathroom. “

I’m done,” I tell the teachers. “Just leave him,” the teachers tell me. I know they are right from a teacher’s perspective, but from a mom’s perspective it’s just too much. “School is not working out for me,” are Sailor’s exact words and I just don’t know what to do to make him like it. And I hate to leave my baby hysterical. I get half an hour at home and am about to make myself some popcorn when my sister’s call for caffeine comes in and I make the Starbucks run. When I pick up Sailor from school he is happy. Until I ask him if he had fun. He says, “Yes,” and I say, “See, I knew you would.”
“I mean I didn’t,” he rebuts.
And then he climbs into his brother’s car seat. Which, to my knowledge, is not safe for him. And it’s raining/snowing and getting dark. We have to go back to the art studio to help my sister with class, where I have left Mac 15 minutes earlier. Sailor refuses to leave Mac’s carseat. I climb into the backseat and attempt to move him. It takes what seems like 10 minutes to hoist him into his own seat and strap him in. He is giddy and laughing hysterically at his folly. I remain calm and say nothing. I struggle with him. Hurt my hand. Drop my sunglasses from my head. There is nothing I can say to this child to make him understand how angry he is making me and I don’t have it in me to yell at him. When he is strapped in I kiss him and return to the driver’s seat. “What did you bring me?” he asks. Is he kidding me? The child is an all-out Jekyll and Hyde. He proves it over and over for the rest of the evening until I finally bring him to his bed. Which he leaves and returns to my room to disrupt Mac’s attempts to study and correctly spell words such as temperature, piece, peace and meteorologist. For heaven’s sake! “Where do you belong?” I ask him while he sits on the floor playing with his pajamas. “IN MY ROOM!” he screams and runs off. He falls asleep in his own bed for the first time in weeks. I am wiped!