13 Feb So you had a Bad Day

We all have these, where nothing goes right, nothing, not one thing, or so it seems. I had one of those today. It started badly and that’s never good. We had no school-lunch food in the pantry. Monday morning and this mama’s cupboard was bare like barely cereal for breakfast bare.

So, after the usual morning mayhem and sweetness of family life, I piled my three bright buttons into the car and headed to the supermarket. After a mad dash up and down the aisles I piled everything onto the conveyor-belt only to stand there and think of all the other things I needed, like laundry powder. I’d run out on Saturday and had a rather large mountain forming in my laundry room. As I stood contemplating this, I did a quick internet banking transfer and hoped to complete it before the checkout operator finished scanning everything, but she was too fast and I didn’t quite make it. So now it looks like I’m texting, or Insta-gramming or something. But I’m not. I think she tapped her fingers on the counter. Oh well.

Out in the car the lunches were ‘made’, croissants, muffins, fruit, crackers and nuts. Done.

Promptly one child announced, “I forgot my laptop”, the next, “I forgot my maths”, and “I forgot my dance gear”. Massive eye roll. I do a mental summation of the dilemmas at hand, the child who is laptop-less could make do with a classroom one for the day (so that child is dropped off without much fuss),  but the forgotten maths will result in a homework detention and the absent dance gear will be met with the ‘no gear no dancing’ policy. I give the “this is the only time this year I am doing this” speech, and promptly return home for these. Good mama, bad mama, I don’t know, who cares? I did the kind thing today, but I won’t be doing it tomorrow.

Two more children dropped at two more schools. Three down, me to go.

I’d used my parents car in the weekend and needed to return it to their place and collect my own. The hike across town at this time of day was not pretty. By now I’m feeling slightly ill, possibly due to the fact that I’d forgotten breakfast, somehow.

I get to my car. It’s out of gas, almost. I risk it and make it to my local, the one where someone actually pumps your gas for you. Bless them.

I successfully start my working day. It mostly goes well, educating families and cherubs and Au Pairs across the city and out into the countryside. It’s only slightly frustrating when one has driven for nearly an hour to get to a remote rural property and there’s no answer at the door, this only happened once today.

I’m still feeling ill. It’s unbearably hot. My car is filthy from muddy potholes on country roads so I pull in to another gas station to get a car wash. At the last minute I decide to wind down my windows to fold in the mirrors, what was I thinking? it had started already!! Next minute I’m showered in soap and water. I laugh out loud, literally.

When I get to one school for the afternoon pickup I’m greeted with, “He had quite a big accident today”. I don’t want to know! He must be ok? I silently pray, and then think “It can’t be that bad? I mean, you didn’t call?”.He is ok, only he’s sporting a massive graze down the side of one leg. Apparently he’d gotten his foot caught on the top of a rock wall as he was about to jump off it,  but he’d fallen head first over the wall, and was left hanging by the foot that was caught in the rocks at the top. Go figure? Boys!.

And so on, and so continued the day.

No matter what, we always have a choice. We can get mad, look for someone to blame, try to get even, or pass on anger by our actions or words. We laugh or cry, or sometimes do both somedays, and that’s ok, just a bit of multi-tasking really. I have wisdom from my mama to fall back on regarding this day, she’d say “There’s always someone worse off than you”. How true. My day was crap, but somewhere someone elses was worse, way worse. You know what they say, “Not every day is good but there is good in every day”. Gratitude is a powerful practice. You are breathing. You have people around you who care. You are influential. You can. It’s important to remind ourselves of what we have to be grateful for. There is so much. I love my little fam and they love me. We eventually all made it home in one piece. The grazed leg had successfully used a classroom laptop and was happy as Larry, the dancer was all danced out and now floating in the pool, and homework was getting done. We all cracked up at the speech entitled “Let’s make Room 28 great again”. And life was good. We ate Lasagne for dinner, the kiddos fave.