Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Parenting

The Funny Thing About Softball

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When I agreed to coach Wanda’s itty bitty softball team, I had no idea what I was in for. I signed up under duress and with serious stress and doubts about my ability to pull it off.

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It turns out that all you need to be a softball coach at this age is patience, a bit of organizational ability, and love for the girls. And dang. They are so lovable. I’m a bit blown away by how much I’m enjoying managing this team. It doesn’t hurt that the parents are great and jump in and cover for me where I’m weak… like in anything that relates to doing the sportings.

One of my favorite things about coaching is watching the girls learn and process this new sport. Here are a few of the highlights from last week’s games:

They’re learning to bat a live ball for the first time and they’re hitting more than I expected but it’s still very new and often when they do it looks like they hit more by accident than on purpose.

Last week one of my cute girls was up there swinging the bat, and when the ball hit her bat, she was so shocked she didn’t even run. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes got huge, and when we finally convinced her to run to first, she ran all the way there with biggest smile on her face and then covered her mouth both hands. Total shock and awe.

The way the game works at this age, every girl gets to bat every inning until she hits the ball. Then we retire the inning. So, while most girls are only allowed to advance one base per hit, the last batter gets to circle the bases for a home run every time. On the last batter, the defensive players are supposed to throw the ball to home and then the catcher can tag everyone out as the empty the bases.

We’d never practiced with a catcher before our first game so the concept of catching the ball at home and then tagging girls out is totally new and each girl, as she takes her turn as catcher seems highly confused by this.

When Wanda got her first turn as catcher, our pitcher threw her the ball after the last batter. Wanda looked around for it, which is hard in all that gear, picked up the ball, dropped it in the ball bucket and went back to her position behind the plate to chillax. All the parents are yelling, “Tag her Wanda! Tag her with the ball,” and Wanda’s looking at us like we’ve lost our minds.

Another cute player figure out that she needed to tag the girls out but the girls did not want to be tagged, so they ended up running in zig-zags and circles back and forth over the baseline and around home plate in a crazy game of tag.

My absolute favorite catcher play came, however, when one little girl got impatient for her outfielders to retrieve the ball that was hit.

“Tag em with a ball?” she thought, “Hmm. Why wait for that specific ball when I’ve got a whole bucket full of balls right next to me.” Like any good problem solver, she just grabbed a new ball and started tagging girls out with it. This reminds me of my mom keeping an extra spoon in her chair when we played spoons and pulling it out when she needed to. Genius.

Now, after one game Wanda proudly informed me that she had learned how to eat sunflower seeds at the games. I was surprised by this pronouncement because sunflower seed eating is actually a pretty advanced skill. Nope. Wanda has it nailed. Video evidence below.

ERRRRRRR…. I Don’t Think it Goes That High

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Wanda wasn’t feeling great when she woke up yesterday morning. She had a 102 fever and said her tummy hurt. Who am I to send a walking biohazard into a building full of children on the cusp of spring break? Not a terrorist. So I kept her home, gave her some watered-down Gatorade, and got to work blogging in my pajamas.

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Early afternoon I made her turn off the Power Rangers and she quickly drifted off to adorable sicky sleep. But when she woke up, she looked horrible. She started sobbing that her tummy hurt and her skin felt hot to the touch. When I asked her to show me where it hurt, she pointed to her lower right side and moaned. I had her try to use the restroom while I Bing-ed “What side is the appendix on?”

Soon she was yelling for me to help her because it hurt too bad to get off the toilet. As I lifted her from the throne, I could tell her fever was really out of control and the forehead thermometer confirmed, 105.8!

Now, for normal kids this is insanely high but I’ve measured Wanda at over 107 in the past and anything under 103 is no big deal for her. However, combined with the side pain, I thought I should at least make an appointment with our pediatrician.

So I called. And his nurse told me to get to an ER quickly. Just like me and Bing, she was vibing appendicitis. So I rushed around like an unshowered maniac, grabbing my purse and phone charger and some grown-up clothes. Five minutes later the nurse called back to make sure she had told me the correct ER and to encourage me to leave as soon as possible.

We zoomed. But it takes about 45 minutes to get from our house to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and my red-hot bubs cried off and on all the way there. “It hurts, Mom!”

I feel so helpless when one of my children is in pain and there’s nothing I can do about it. I was doing what I could, which was praying and driving faster than the law allows. I also texted my family on the way out the door and they all said they’d send up a prayer as well.

We pulled into the ER parking lot and I loaded Wanda and her barf bowl and Gatorade into the softball gear wagon and wheeled her into the hospital, red hot and whimpering. The check-in nurse commented on how awful she looked, took our insurance card and sent us to the lobby to wait.

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For twenty minutes I watched Wanda become absorbed in a Disney movie and slowly but surely the violent red flush of her cheeks disappeared and her skin color returned to normal.

“Wanda,” I asked, “How does your tummy feel now?”

“It still hurts a little.”

“On the right side?”

“No. Just kind of in the middle.”

They called us back. They took her temperature.

99.9

Magically. Healed. By. The. Hospital. Lobby.

The intake nurse looked at Wanda. And then back at me. Then back at Wanda.

She asked all the questions and Wanda answered them like a person who should stay in for recess and maybe miss school just to be safe, but not someone who needed to be taken to a doctor and certainly not the ER.

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I was relieved, truly, that she was feeling better. And if me looking like a hypochondriacish idiot was the price I had to pay for her health, I was willing to pay it. Grudgingly.

They gave her the world’s most expensive popsicle and, as a bonus, she got to pee into a cup and all over my hand.

When the doctor asked me again how high her temperature had been at home, I told him 105.8 and he startled and asked what kind of thermometer I had used. I pulled it out of my purse to show him.

“I don’t think they go that high,” he responded.

“They sure do. They don’t get an error until 108.”

He had no response to that.

I texted my family to tell them that all was well except for the fact that I looked like an idiot. He said they must all be really good prayers if their prayers could bring her back from the brink of death that quickly.

I decided not to share the prayer hunch with the ER doctors but I did wonder how I would ever know if she had been miraculously brought back from the brink by divine intervention. I tend to be more of a Heavenly-Father-please-help-my-daughter-no-wait-she’s-fine kind of person. This could use more in-depth pondering.

Everyone was super nice to me, the way you’re nice to a crazy person. And, according to the supervising ER doctor, it was good that we came in, just in case. Apparently, there have been several cases of this crazy stomach virus in the ER lately. The cramps are intermittent, localized, and extremely painful, accompanied by high fevers.

They look like appendicitis.

The doctor said she had watched kids have acute episodes that had totally faked her out and she’d ordered all kinds of tests that turned up nothing, only to have the kids seem fine half an hour later.

Such is the humbling life of a mom. You sacrifice your pride for the safety of your kids, people who delight and terrify you every day.

On the bright side, at least they discharged her just in time to hit rush hour traffic so we’d have plenty of time to take a rare look at the gorgeous mountain that was showing up against the clear Seattle sky.

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When I checked her temperature this morning, she was back up to 104.9. Or not. I don’t think the thermometer really goes that high. But I should probably shower this time, just in case.

Leprechauns and Expectations

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The Leprechauns must be stopped. That much is clear.

I think the unicorn blood we’ve smeared over our front door is working because we’ve been largely spared their antics, some green milk here, shamrock-colored toilet water there. It’s just harmless fun at our house.

But others are not so fortunate and sadly my kids have been affected by what Leprechauns are doing at their friends’ houses.

When fifth-grader Magoo came downstairs this morning, he looked intensely in my eyes and said, “I wonder what the Leprechaun brought us.”

“Um… I’m pretty sure nothing,” I said, “Leprechauns don’t bring gifts to this address.”

“Oh,” he looked deflated.

This surprised me because for the past several years, as Leprechaun activity around our town has escalated to the point of total Pin-sanity, we have been continually spared. It’s not as though last year the Leprechaun swept in like an abusive husband, trashing our house and leaving reconciliatory gifts, but then forgot about us this year.

No.

Green milk.

Every year.

That’s all she wrote.

So Magoo continued, “I’ll go check my shoes… just in case… to see if he filled them with Rolos or gold coins.” Again the intense eye contact, pleading, hopeful.

The heck? I bought you Lucky Charms and offered you spinach eggs (WHICH ARE GREEN!!). What more do you want from me?

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I do not understand the magic of Leprechauns.

Santa and the Easter Bunny bring gifts, symbolic of the gifts of the Savior. The tooth fairy brings money in exchange for harvested body parts. These make sense to me. But Leprechauns?

They trash your house or school room and then I guess feel bad about it so they leave you gold or high fructose corn syrup or adorable hand-made prizes as seen on Pinterest.

What’s next, a Flag Day Gollum who burns your house down and then leaves you a new car or fills the charred remains of your socks with diamonds?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I’ve come up with a plan.

Next year.

For St. Patrick’s Day.

I think I may go crazy and dye the milk green. I think the kids will love it.
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Sometimes Good Food Tastes Good

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I’ve been dieting and REALLY NOT DIETING and then dieting again for most of my adult life. I fluctuate in size and in most other measures of health and I work hard to shield my kids from my food weirdness. However I’m sure I shield them less than I intend to and it’s not ideal.

I’m a vegan.

Nope. I’m Paleo.

I eat whatever I want, dangit!

Whole 30 for life.

Chocolavores unite!

What my kids see is just food. On the table. Some of it’s good. Some of it’s less so. They know I’m always cooking some weird new thing and they mostly accept it, although sometimes with grumblings and rumblings.

Often, when I’m trying something new, I make two complete meals, one for me that I tell the kids is to help my body be healthier, and one for them to keep them happy.

Currently I’ve stripped it back to a Drops of Awesome approach to diet and nutrition. I try to rack up as many good choices as I can and I don’t stress too much about the junk that slips in now and then. It’s working at the moment, in that I’m not stressed about food and it’s become like a game to see how many vegetables and tablespoons of flax seed I can consume each day.

So you’ll see my plate overflowing with roasted vegetables and chicken and my kids are piling up on white rice and cheese. Everyone’s happy.

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However, I was recently reading Jonathan Bailor’s book, The Calorie Myth, an exploration of hundreds of medical studies about how our bodies actually evolve with diet and exercise. It had a section about helping our kids form good habits with food and I thought, “If I’m trying to eat more vegetables, lean meats, and good fats because that’s the healthiest way to eat, why did I give up the battle of encouraging my kids to do the same?”

They may not be having problems with health or fitness now, but if they keep eating the way they are, they will have problems in their future. It’s a difficult thing to figure out because, if anything, my kids struggle with being underweight, so I feel justified filling them up with empty calories to bulk them up when what I should really be doing is helping them eat more, higher-quality foods.

The problem is, I’m willing to eat healthful food simply because I know it’s good for me. My kids expect things to taste good. So, the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on adapting favorite recipes to make them a few Drops of Awesome better for everyone. I’ve had some hits and some misses, but more hits and it’s encouraging.

Yesterday when the kids got home from school, rather than letting them get their usual bowl of breakfast cereal, I spread lettuce leaves with a Greek yogurt dip they like, filled them with sliced turkey breast and made little roll-ups. They all gave me the stink-eye at first. But every one of them ended up loving the new snack.

Then for dinner I took a family favorite, cheeseburger pie, made it crustless, and changed the topping. Instead of topping it with a bunch of cheddar cheese, I topped it with a little cheddar cheese, some low-fat cottage cheese, an egg and several egg whites, and broccoli florets.

I held my breath. This was a major overhaul. But they all, LOVED it. Even the pickiest, Wanda, asked for seconds. And in the family prayer, Magoo said he was thankful for all the yummy food I’d been making lately.

We’re making progress.

The cherry on the top came at lunch today when I surprised Wanda with leftovers. She hates leftovers on principle. However, today she was ecstatic to eat her “new favorite meal,” the healthier version of cheeseburger pie.

“I like this better than mac and cheese!” she said. High praise, my friends. “What’s the real name of this dinner? I want to know because last summer in swimming lessons my teacher had me yell out my favorite food when I did a cannonball at the end of class and if she has me do that again next summer, I want to yell, ‘THIS THING!’”

THIS THING, indeed. Drops of Awesome.

The Wait is Over Little Afghan Girl

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Last year I took this picture at one particularly bleak, rainy, underwater baseball game. It’s a typical picture. Wanda. Watching people do cool stuff she’s not old enough for yet.

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When I showed it to Dan, he pointed out the unintentional similarity to the famous National Geographic cover of the Afghan Girl.

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She was a refugee.

Wanda feels like that sometimes, lost, displaced, denied basic rights like eating donuts for every meal.

She sits. And she waits.

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When you’re the youngest, you do a lot of waiting.

Waiting for your turn to play soccer.

Waiting for your turn to learn piano.

Waiting to ride the school bus.

Waiting to learn to read.

Wanda has always been my portable child. She was practically born on the soccer field. I was pregnant for the first half of the season, waddling to Laylee and Magoo’s games and practices four times a week. I gave birth and then brought her to games for the second half of the season. And every season since.

And basketball. And dance. And volleyball. And baseball. And math competition. And piano recitals. And band concerts. And science fairs. The list goes on.

Sometimes she gets antsy and people might think she’s impatient. I think she just used up a lifetime of patience in five years. She is done waiting.

This year it’s her turn.

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She started kindergarten with a bang, running off the bus so fast when it arrived at the first day of school that she didn’t even see me standing there with the camera.

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And she plays soccer like her mom. What she doesn’t have in skill, she makes up for in charismatic brutishness. And she’s having the time of her life.

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Yesterday Laylee and Magoo were whining about having to watch her soccer game in the rain, her soccer parents while I attended a meeting at the middle school. I laughed and told them it was the circle of life. It’s Wanda’s turn now.

Red Wagons and Knuckerholes

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I’d been planning all my life for the first day of school, or at least all month. I often say, “DOWN WITH PERFECTIONISM!” But then there’s this small part of me that really really wants to just be perfect. Because that would make life easier and then I wouldn’t have to be obsessed with perfection anymore because I would have already achieved it. It’s like when you can’t stop playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii until you beat the game and then you never think about it again. That’s how I see my life being when I achieve perfection, total Zen.

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We had planned the heck out of the first day of school, family meetings, calendar items, to-do lists, backpacks packed and clothes laid out two days early.

But when the day actually came, we ended up forgetting things, losing lunch boxes, running over little red wagons with the van, showing up late to kindergarten assessments because we were so busy trying to do all the morning routines perfectly, praying that the kindergarten teachers were not assessing personal hygiene because we forgot to brush our new kindie’s hair.

When the day ended, I popped on Facebook and saw all my friends post pictures of their kids on the first day. And they weren’t just pictures. They were pictures with props.

Framed art that said what grade they were starting.

Actual, flippin’ ART. In frames. That said what grade they were starting.

Why is this a thing? Why?

Anyway. I took a picture of the wagon I ran over. So that’s something. And I learned a new fake swear, thanks to our friends at Dragon Tales. So that’s something else.

When I signed out of the school, Wanda discovered this book in a basket in the office.

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She asked me to read it. I really really needed to find out what a knuckerhole was so I sat down and read it to her.

It turns out that a knuckerhole is a magical tube you can jump though that basically takes you to nowheresville where you sit and think about how you should have done a better job cleaning your bedroom until a dragon saves you and takes you to the fireworks show.

I prefer to think of it as an awesome new slang term for pretty much whatever.

Ex. Why did Zack take such a cheap shot and punch Wheezy in the knuckerhole?

Or

Shut your knuckerhole!

Maybe

Why in the knuckerhole did someone put the red wagon behind my car wheel?

Or

Stop being such a knuckerhole and load your lunch dishes in the dishwasher.

So, we decided to send that day down the knuckerhole and started over. And the school year is actually off to a pretty decent start at this point. I still haven’t taken first day of school pictures for all three kids because I’m not done crocheting doilies that say which grades each of them are starting. But I am at peace with that.

It’s Only Routine, Ma’am

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Brandon Mull obviously has kids because he’s using some quality subliminal messaging in the third book in his Five Kingdoms series. All the cool kids in the ultra-modern realm of Zeropolis use the slang term “tidy” to mean good, awesome, sick, buck, or super fly. What are those darn kids saying these days in the magic-deficient earthen-type world? Cause in Zeropolis they say “tidy.”

“Wow. Your new spikey blue hair cut is super tidy.”

“You are good at the techno-baseball. That was a tidy catch you made with your glove of catching.”

“Your room looks so good since your mom made you throw away everything that you hold dear. Tidy!”

I like Mr. Mull.

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We made it through spring break with very few injuries although Wanda described her adventures as “discovering new kinds of scabs.” She says she doesn’t fall down on purpose and she doesn’t like getting hurt, but one good thing is she can always discover new kinds and shapes of scabs… “and that’s good!” Love the attitude.

Another thing that’s good is throwing out half your belongings and that’s just what we did in the kids’ rooms and with their stuff throughout the house. Their rooms look awesome and they actually want to be in them so everyone is happy but the mice who are looking for the crumbs and plates of food I found under their beds. The mice and bugs hate everything about our spring break adventures. P.S. We have never had mice in the kids rooms, but oh how they would love it there.

Now, the whole week wasn’t as epic as the 12-hour clean-a-thon day one. We slept in some and played a ton of games but we made it through every category of stuff and now I’m on to the rest of the house. Today I emptied every darn thing out of the freezer and deep freeze for the first time in the nine years we’ve lived here.

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I found a can of frozen juice with an expiration date of 2007. We have purchased two new refrigerators since 2007 and the can of juice has moved from one to the other to the other. Yes. That happened. But now it is on its way to the happy landfill in the sky and I am left with only food I would actually consider preparing for my family.

It’s strange that I would keep horribly freezer-burned food for years because, “I don’t want to waste it.” But the truth is, if it’s got a greenish tint, is covered in frost, and I would never, even in a zombie apocalypse, consider serving it to my family, then it’s already wasted. Now, keeping it in there just wastes my energy and space.

It’s the same with any item I purchased and am just hanging onto because I feel guilty about wasting money. I wasted the money the minute I bought it. Now I get to choose if I let that poor choice determine the way I live indefinitely.

I have the same issue with food on my plate or in the fridge. I frequently overeat in the name of not wasting food. Truthfully, the food waste is even greater if I eat something my body doesn’t need or want. Would I rather waste the food in the trash can or waste it in my body as if I’m some sort of living breathing food disposal unit? Because it hangs a-ROUND once I place it in my body. And not in a good way.

So now that the kids’ rooms are done and the kitchen is done and my clothes are done, I start on all the rest of the house and as I start on all the rest of the house I feel the need to put some solid habits in place to care for the things I’ve been blessed with and the people I love.

I’m starting simple.

Three non-negotiables, as recently brought to my remembrance by StressFreeHomemaking.com.

1. One load of laundry from start to finish every day, folded, put away. It may sound strange, but I think my problem was I was cleaning too much laundry on any given day. Cleaning it’s the easy part. I couldn’t keep up with the folding and putting away.

2. Dishwasher run each night and unloaded first thing in the morning. I’m pretty good at this already but I’m going to try running it every night regardless of how full it is so I can start the next day with a clean slate.

3. Dinner planned and ingredients thawed every night for the following day. There’s something embarrassing about how shocked I am every single night that we need to eat something around 6pm. Again?! We just ate dinner yesterday!!

I’m also doing my best to follow a basic weekly cleaning routine. I’ve looked at several and this is the one I’m using for now because it’s simple and the printable is cute.

I’ll let you know my progress and how long the routines last. Consistency is hard, unless it’s consistently eating chocolate. I can do that.

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When All Else Fails, Discard All of Your Personal Effects

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When I was little my mom would make us clean our rooms. It was a bitter wind that blew on room cleaning days because… how dare she? She taught us life skills and we wept bitterly.

Now I have kids of my own and I’ve taken room cleaning to a whole new level. It’s a level born of necessity. It’s a level born of not doing a thorough cleaning or decluttering in the nine years we’ve lived in this house. It’s a level that combines the Grinch with Dr. Robin Zasio from Hoarders. On their walls I left nothing but hooks and some wire.

I recently read an AWESOME book about decluttering, nay THE awesome book about decluttering, I’ve read a few and this one is true. What I like so much about her approach is that it’s less about getting rid of stuff and more about choosing to keep the things that bring you joy and only the things that bring you joy. You can have something and it can be nice or useful but if it doesn’t spark joy, you don’t need it. She also talks about how to let go of things with gratitude once they’ve fulfilled their purpose in your life. It’s very Zen.

Thank you for being such a fun pair of socks and fulfilling your purpose by being on sale for a dollar. I had so much fun purchasing you and wearing you once. Goodbye.

Thank you for being a fun scarf that I received as a gift. I felt very loved and surprised when I received you. That feeling of love and surprise were your reason for existing. But that doesn’t mean I have to like you or feel guilty for not wearing you every time I walk past you in my closet. Farewell.

So, I’ve been decluttering for weeks, prepping for spring break when the real fun would start. And it started today. All of these steps are to be accomplished with the kids’ assistance.

Step one. Wash all the laundry in the entire world so we’d know what clothes we had.

Step two. Remove everything from my children’s rooms but their furniture and their clothes, which we heaped up on their beds. Books are lined up along the walls in the hall to be sorted later. Everything else is staged in various rooms throughout the house by category.

Step three. Deep clean every crevice and baseboard and vacuum under the furniture.

Step four. While moving furniture to clean, agree that the kids can put their furniture anywhere they want it, even if, especially if, that furniture placement is completely an ordinance of crazy town.

Step five. Sort their clothes one piece at a time, donating anything that doesn’t fit, doesn’t look good, or doesn’t make us feel happy.

This is where we stopped tonight after working pretty much solid from 9am to 9pm.

Steps six through a billion. Repeat the sorting process with one category per day throughout spring break, taking time each afternoon to do something fabulous as a reward. By fabulous I mean getting a free ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry’s on the 14th because it’s free ice cream day or buying new bedroom curtains at IKEA on Friday if we’ve gotten all of our cleaning done.

The trick here is that they love their newly cleaned and stripped rooms so much that I’m hoping they will be loath to add too much junk back into them and I think it’s working. A few choice quotes from today:

Wanda – “Hey mom. It’s weird. I actually like cleaning.”

Laylee – When asked to choose one thing she’s thankful for to add to our family prayer, she said, “I’m thankful for cleaning.”

Yes. That happened. I did not faint or cry. I didn’t even twirl my mustache or cackle with glee. I just added it to the ever-living prayer. We are thankful for cleaning. Yep. Because that’s a thing that average 12-year-olds say all the time.

Magoo – I want to add as few things back to my room as possible because it’s awesome right now.

To my credit, I was DJ-ing some wicked sick tunes while we cleaned and I let the level of silliness climb about 86.3% higher than I’m generally comfortable with. I also helped them move their furniture into (and I cannot emphasize this enough) possibly the weirdest and most-likely-to-make-Feng-Shui-certified-home-decorators-bludgeon-themselves-with-their-own-energy-cures configurations possible. Because I am the nicest and most chill mom ever and because I had the nicest and most chill mom ever who let me do wickedly stupid things with my furniture when I was a kid and because Laylee said moving things around would make it feel like a whole new room and I could not argue with that.

Twelve hours and one category in and we’ve gathered 2 big black garbage bags of trash and 3 big black garbage bags of donations. And Laylee is thankful for cleaning. So basically the apocalypse is nigh. Stock up on wheat and ammunition.

Wherein I Ramble About Pie and Loss and Being Apprehended by the Police

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I am blogging while I wait up for Laylee to get home from her evening activities and then I’ll sleep. I was going to wait up for the pies to cool but I don’t know that it’s worth it. Because there are no pies. Only pie soup with floating meringue. Two hours of my life in a dish with floating blobs of meringue.

And I’m good at pie. I SLAUGHTER AT PIE. But not this time. Because this time it matters. This time I’m making pie for two pie competitions, one at Magoo’s school that he desperately wants to win and one at Dan’s work that I desperately want to win because he’s in his new job with his new co-workers and I don’t know anybody and I have this irrational desire to win Stay-at-Home-Mom/Wife, Microsoft edition. It’s not a thing, but in my special brain-world it is and if I’m going to place in the top 3, I at least need to be able make a freaking pie. Right? Right?

I want to punch myself in the face for typing that because truly? Truly? Who cares? No one. And tomorrow not even me, I guarantee. But in this moment I’m epically sad about losing at pie.

I did good things today. Drops of Awesome were everywhere, but I ended the day exhausted, with liquid pie guts in a dish and I say, “Serve me up a different day, please. Because I’m sending this one back to the kitchen.”

The weather was gorgeous.

One of my kids left the house this morning seething with hormonal rage, aimed at no one in particular but flowing in my general direction. My throat hurt. I had a writing deadline and the post was taking me forever.

By 9:45am, I had heard that someone I care about had passed away, I had gone out in public unshowered and with Wanda looking like a pajama-clad orphan and I’d been pulled over by the police for speeding on a street where Dan has told me no fewer than 30 times to slow down because I would likely get pulled over for speeding.

Preschool, road construction, baseball practice, errands, more road construction, lateness, tween rage, nothing for dinner, trashed house that was clean YES-TER-DAY, instrument practice, play rehearsal, homework, shoes and backpacks everywhere, WAY more shoes and backpacks than there are humans living in my house. Way more. Like I could start a shoe and backpack emporium for people who like shoes with shredded laces because no one under the age of 30 in this family will ever EVER tie their shoes. They just let the laces drag behind them until they wear down to the length they want. Like beaver teeth.

And then Magoo and I spent two hours that I didn’t really have making lemon meringue pies from zest-and-squeeze-your-own-lemons scratch and the lemon fillings wouldn’t set at all. It was like yellow water in soggy hand-rolled crusts. And I blopped the meringue on top and baked them anyway because I was so mad at those pies, I thought a good fifteen minutes in a hot oven would serve them right.

And while I was typing this rant, Laylee came home from her rehearsal and I told her about my day and I cried a little and I told her sometimes it’s hard being the mom. And she said, “Your friend died and you got picked up by the police. That’s a hard day for anyone.” And she hugged me and told me she loved me.

And I loved her more.

I feel better now and I considered letting this post die on my computer without seeing the internet light of day. Because I am Drops of Awesome lady. I’m an author and a public speaker. I think positively. I love myself fully and never ever want to put my kids to bed at 5pm and hoover all the chocolate in Washington State. But that’s not always the case.

Sometimes I’m Drops of Awesome lady. And I’m tired.

And I’m fed up.

And I’m not rational at all.

And I murder pies.

And I thought you should know.

My little tween mom-substitute told me I should go to sleep. I think she’s right. Everything will look better in the morning.