Day Off / Off Day

This post is not for the feint of heart. Note this disclaimer duly and read on at your own peril.

So, for those of you valiant readers taking this journey with me, instead of telling you how NOT to reply, as I sometimes do ("don't reassure me"), I encourage you to tell me exactly where I went wrong this time ("Will you ever learn to stop tempting fate?").

Was it:
a. the clothes?
b. the paper towels?
c. the husband's fault?
d. all of the above?
e. none of the above?

Today, Wednesday morning, the sun rose bright and cheerfully on our corner of urban landscape. I, tired of dressing like TLC's What Not to Wear's next best candidate, decided to put on pants NOT made out of denim, and a top you could get away with calling a blouse, just to see the look on the faces of my astonished colleagues. For Rooster, I got out the cute outfit his grandma just sent him for his birthday. The Peaches? A DRESS. Why not look nice on such a lovely day?

Uh, huh, I hear some of you voting already.

I packed us all up for our day -- 3 lunch boxes, bills to mail, books for the car, work stuff... then, I thought, I should put more tissues and paper towels in the car because you never know when we'll need them.

More voters shake their heads with the certain knowledge of how I brought this all on myself... I can hear it from here.

We piled in the car remarkably ON TIME , and the daddy gave everyone kisses. He looked through my open window at me and said, "The rooster had a good morning, didn't he?"

The final blow.

We made it exactly halfway to school.

It's 9:30, and let me cut to the chase. I have vomit in my car, poop in my bath tub, and two kids screaming for popsicles. The boy caused all the messes, but must feel at least a little better now, as he is endlessly jumping up and down screaming, "Octopus!" as he watches, "Go Diego, Go!" The girl, not the "sick" one (yet), is suddenly sneezing so much and so hard that her hair is stuck to her face. With these symptoms, she has gone from way too clingy for her age to way too clingy for a kid half her age, and has only left my hip long enough to devour the popsicle I finally gave her.

Suffice it to say, the lunches are back in the fridge -- we're expecting a day of Pedialyte and popsicles. We're all in our sweatpants, and I'm rolling up the sleeves of my tshirt. I've got some disinfecting to do.