Saturday, May 26, 2012

Calls from Cleveland & Mommy's Moments of Mortification


(I wrote this one a few days ago, but never got around to finishing it completely til now)
Last week was one of those weeks when by Thursday, I finally felt like I had gotten into my groove and I could check off the week as a success.  I felt great.  I was keeping it together and accomplishing a lot.  Hooray!  I was conquering this mom thing and if I had an annual review, it would have been stellar.  Juggling a ton of stuff, but managing not to drop any balls.  The three amigos(Jimmy, Sawyer, & Bart) and I were finishing up our jaunt through Wally World(Walmart) and for once, they stayed fairly calm throughout the entire store.  My phone rang with some bizarre Cleveland number and I ignored it and turned the ringer down.  Twenty minutes later as we were in line and I was unloading items onto the conveyor belt, the same number was calling.  I actually answered it this time and heard a voice on the other line: “Hey, Cami.  It’s Julie.”  I paused for a long moment trying to figure out at first which Julie.  One of my best friends “Julie” lives in California and as far as I knew she was not on any trip.  Another of my “Julies” organizes the group of homeschool girls who I teach.  The mom of one of Josie’s best buds at school is another of my “Julies”.  Then this Julie continued: “I have Josie with me” and it dawned on me that this was yet another of my “Julies”- a friend from high school who happens to teach computer at Josie’s school.  Ding! Ding!  Then she continued to tell me that Josie did not actually have Daisies and she had been trying to get a hold of me that she would just keep Josie with her in her classroom until I could get there.  And the third DING!  TKO.  Losing mommy moment.  I felt mortified looking at the time and realizing it was already a half hour after school got out.  What felt like a ball pit worth of balls in the air all came falling down to hit me on the head.  I babbled a million apologies and thank yous and promised to hurry on my way.  Then Josie’s teacher called to make sure I had talked to Julie.  Again, profuse apologizing and thanking.  Then the painfully SLOW cashier took an eternity and a pack of light bulbs fell off the conveyor belt and shattered into thousands of pieces behind me on the floor.  It was a nice touch to add to the freak out I had going on inside my head.  I had already been debating if I should just leave all the stuff and go back later, but could not deal with any more stress and knew that my friend would understand that since I knew Josie was safe and with people she liked, I desperately needed to pay for these diapers and other non-exciting kiddie items.  It is pretty much a given for anyone in the D.C. metropolitan area that the moment you decide you need to get somewhere quick, there manages to be as much traffic and as many red lights as possible.  Thus a half hour later and an hour plus after school got out, I made it to pick Josie up.  I had thought about bringing a six pack bribe for said friend, but that most likely would have gotten broken by the goonies.  I actually ran up and hugged my friend before I hugged Josie- probably seemed funny, but Josie was fine and I was just so happy to have someone who gets my flaky moments and pitches in to help me.  I did scoop my Monkey up and give her a huge hug right after.   Mommy’s note to self- always answer calls from random numbers if any or all of the four children are not attached to me at the time!

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