some days are just STUPID!

I'll just let you know right up front -- I have no pictures and this will mostly be a grouchy post.

First, though, something un-grouchy :-) Yesterday was Seth's OT appointment. He seldom cooperates anymore at his therapy appointments, and yesterday wasn't an exception to that new rule. Occupational therapy involves a lot of sitting still and concentrating on using little fingers or pudgy hands to complete a rather difficult task such as picking pennies up off the floor and putting them into the tiny slot of a piggy bank. WELL, my sweet Seth is just NOT a sit still kind of kid unless he's strapped into a chair and has no choice but to be still. And even then, he doesn't always do what he's supposed to do -- choosing, for instance, to throw the pennies across the room instead of putting them in their container. Yesterday, though, he topped the hilarious charts in his uncooperative activities. He climbed up onto the platform of a little slide, signed "sleep," and lay down. Then he popped up, signed "wake up," and started doing something that resembled a mixture of the chicken dance and the Axel Rose kick-your-feet-from-side-to-side dance. I wish so badly that I'd had my video camera for that one!!!!

Now on to the topic to which I alluded in the title of today's blog: some days are just STUPID! Today is one of those days! (Click on those green words, by the way, if you want to.) First of all, I had nothing easy to give the kids for breakfast (I know -- WAA!). I handled that one pretty well -- I made some super-delicious banana muffins (while the kids kept fighting, interrupting, and complaining about wanting to eat NOW). All I needed to do after breakfast was clean up the kitchen, start the laundry, brush Seth's and my teeth, make my bed, make a picnic lunch of pbj's and chips (sounds like quite a list, but it CAN all be done in a 1/2-hour). But TODAY, that list took over TWO HOURS! We finally pulled out of the driveway to head for a park at 11:30 a.m. Now here comes the super-stupid parts:

We pulled up to an elementary school playground. We started to get out of the van, but stopped when we saw a stray cat. We're all ok with pets that people introduce to us, reassuring us while holding them that their pets are very nice. Stray animals, however, make us quite nervous. Not only would this particular cat refuse to be scared off, it followed us all the way through the parking lot, around the school, and into the playground. Some girls at the playground started playing with it, so maybe it belonged to them (or maybe their mothers never warned them about playing with stray animals). Another family playing there had brought their dog (I'm sure you can predict the outcome of this part of my story). There was a fight, scary to some of us. We decided to pack up and leave (the killer mosquitoes were also a factor in this decision). We drove around to another school playground and a nearby park, but the kids were whining (one of the most annoying sounds in the world, by the way -- almost equal to nails on a chalkboard or styrofoam), so we just went home. One hour and my last gallon of gas WASTED!

But the day could still be salvaged, right? In our own back yard, we can have a picnic, no one has to watch Seth because I've pretty much "Seth-proofed" the back yard, we can play badminton or basketball, we can run through the sprinkler or fill up the baby pools or slide on the slip-n-slide. But today, no matter what activity the kids chose to do, they whined and argued. I just really wanted to sit back and relax and enjoy the sunny day -- maybe even eat my lunch, bake in the sun, and read. NO -- running here and there to break up fights, clean up messes (Seth likes to throw his food around these days, plus he has a runny nose), set up the slip-n-slide, get towels because the fighting ended the slip-n-slide session . . . Just when I thought everyone was finally situated and I could sit down, I noticed the odor floating in the air around my sweet Seth.

Another un-grouchy detail: I did finally get to eat my lunch and later lie down to bake and read two whole chapters while Joel read inside and the other three rested in the shade on my swing :-)

Now it's time to eat, but I haven't even started making dinner and don't have a clue what to make because it's too warm to turn the oven on and I don't feel like cooking anyway (that's a daily truth, not just a stupid-day complaint). Looks like it'll be grilled hot dogs (probably no buns, though) and mac-n-cheese. I'm hoping the minerals I make the kids drink every morning contain the nutrients that they should be getting in veggies because I think I've forgotten to feed them any vegetables now for about a week -- now that I've confessed that, though, surely I'll remember to nuke some frozen spinach or lima beans.