So don't stop reading me just because I've temporarily become psychotic.

Do you know that classic Yiddish fable It Could Always be Worse?

No?

Well, I can't find a good link to it, so you'll have to remain ignorant. What were you, raised in a barn?

Fine. Here, is a synopsis from Sandi's Book Reviews with reference to the tale as retold by Margot Zemach.:

It could always be worse is a Yiddish folktale. "Once upon a time in a small village a poor unfortunate man lived with his mother, his wife, and his six children in a little one-room hut." Needless to say life was not easy in the crowded small hut. When the man could take no more of the crying and quarreling, he went to his Rabbi for advice. The Rabbi listened and thought. He asked if the man had "any animals, perhaps a chicken or two?" When the man answered in the affirmative, the Rabbi told him to "take the chickens, the rooster, and the goose into your hut to live with you." The man followed the Rabbi's advice. Life in the hut got worse and the man again visited the Rabbi. Eventually the Rabbi had the man take all the animals he owned into the hut with his family. When the man went back the last time to complain, the Rabbi told him to take all of the animals out of the hut. Of course, now it seemed quiet and peaceful with just people in the hut. "With just my family in the hut, it's so quiet, so roomy, so peaceful...What a pleasure!" said the man to the Rabbi.

This is my version today, which, unbelievably, involved, no poultry at all. And also, no rabbis.

Day begins at 5:30. Migraine is immediate.

I am recovering from a weird illness  and I am really, really tired, but, gratefully, I am a little better every day, so I am trying to be peppy. In an effort to move things in this direction, I have worn hot pink knee socks over black tights.

7:30 AM: Leave Child #2 at home, currently able to walk only with the use of crutches, and suffering from chronic tension headaches due to muscle stress and pain, to sleep. He is with my mom. Yay for moms.

(Yes, I am recovering from hepatitis for no reason and my son is a gimp. This is what my life is like right now. Don't judge.)

Out of time, so I decide to delegate.

Ask Husband and Mother to please coordinate how it will work for my Child #3 to be retrieved from school and by whom, how Child #2 will be transported to therapy appointment with Husband at 12:30 and how Children #2 and #3 will arrive simultaneously from separate locations, at Doctor's office at 2:30 for an appointment that will entail A) a re-check of sprained meniscus and B) flu shots for both children.

(Got this? No? Me either.


This appointment will likely involve Child #3 needing to be held down by multiple adults to prevent him from running screaming from the room.


Plus therapy and the evaluation of injury to my Soccer Star.


Kind of combo package.)

I ask Mom and Husband to PLEASE convey instructions to me on my part in this craziness. By way of text message.

Go to work.

Beat head repeatedly against computer screen as I try to understand how to use the latest version of Excel to do a task I have never needed to do before, using Mac OS, which I don't know how to use, and a server system that I don't understand, to do tasks that I badly needed to complete in the recent or ancient past.

Celebrate minor successes.

At some point, receive text from Husband with info on after school plans, which I think I understand. Race off to next obligation. Yay for husbands.

Image by Nate Steiner

Notice I have accidentally erased all of one student's data and replaced it with another's and that all of the spreadsheets are headed with the same teacher's name, inexplicably.

Call tech support, as directed by site IT personnel, to retrieve standardized testing data on my students.

Get hold music for five minutes followed by being hung up on, at which point I am out of time again.

Test three students, to discover, yet again, and with a still greater sense of urgency, that I need a time turner right now in order to be able to do my job because I cannot provide services to reasonably sized groups of children within the allotted time without it.

Perhaps the PTA would fund this purchase?

Blood pressure rising, rising, rising.

Return to data entry.

Remember to ask for help.

Receive offer of help from wonderful colleague, only to lose the use of my room due to complete wild card circumstances, at the EXACT moment that this help was available, so as to render it unavailable, while I have to wait outside in my hallway, helpless.

Fail.

O.K. I admit it. I am just not getting out of here at 12. But I can deal with that.

Call Mom. Tell her I have to work late to get some of this done, so she won't see me. She says, "Yes, but aren't YOU picking up Mikalh?"

SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RUN down to his classroom five minutes late. Which, in the history of LIFE, I have never been, to get my kids because I am compulsively, hopelessly, irrationally committed to being early.

Feel my sense of self shatter into several small pieces held together under the barest veneer of shit-maintaining normalcy.

by MyAimisTrue

Get Child #3 to Mom. She drives off to get Child #2 to Husband.

Call Best Friend. Cry. For an hour.


Tell her AT LEAST I am meeting with the teacher who runs my program tomorrow at 10 and she will help me.

Piece the Shit together just a bit.

At some point, Child #2 is delivered home. And I plunk him back in the car and take him to pick up Child #3. Ask Mom to follow me to the doctor for 2:30 appointment, stay while Child #3 gets shot and take him away. There is shrieking and there is restraint, but, I was smart enough to have Mom bring her own car.

And she takes him. Bravo for moms.

(Then chickens start walking all over the kitchen counters!!!!!!!!)


Doctor says: Sprained meniscus now has fluid under knee cap, unexpected levels of pain.

Xrays.

Worry.

Orthopedic referral.

Tomorrow.

At 10. (When my life-saving meeting is.)

Got home at 4:30.

Too late to cook and get Child #1 to Tae Kwon Do at 6pm.

Eat out.

by ImagesofMoney

But my husband can go to the appointment.

So I can have my meeting.

But I feel like a crappy mom.

I miss when I just had the migraine.

The upshot is I think I believe in God now and that God wants me to give over trying to control anything and just ......

...........If you can answer the just, give me a call.

I will write something funny tomorrow.

I am thinking about writing a post on swearing. So don't stop reading me just because I've temporarily become psychotic.