Sliding in sideways...

I am having a bad week. I know they happen, but gee whiz. This is just not a good week. This has been the kind of week wherein I have had relatively simple lists of stuff I need to get done…and almost none of it has actually been accomplished.

Also? We ran out of vodka, while I’m still on a $100 a week budget. Next week I’ll have my more normal budget back but right now, when I need vodka? I CAN’T FRICKIN’ AFFORD IT.

I KNOW!

It’s like, the Cosmos just hates me, or something. Thank Dog we still have some beer out in the garage, yo?

So, what kind of crazy have I been having this week? Eh, the usual, plus one ear infection, one autism assessment (because timing is everything, and ear infections are mandatory before assessments) and one ‘teacher in-service’ day (all Denizens home, all day, barging into whatever I’m doing as if they are being pursued by starving mountain lions shrieking, “Mommy!” and then either forgetting what they wanted or realizing that I’m going to say ‘no’ so they’re trying to modify their demand to something more feasible before finally giving up by saying, “I forget!” and wandering off) (it’s wonderful, really it is…) – all made that much more exasperating by the fact that we are going on a nice, peaceful, no-kids vacation tomorrow evening.

Yes, that’s right! We’re going away! To celebrate our eleventh anniversary, and also the fact that I have managed to not drop dead for forty straight years now! My girlfriends are coming for the weekend, and then my parents are coming for a couple days into the week, so that we can have an actual vacation-as-such. Alone-together. With more than twenty-four hours between long drives!

I know! That is just all like, whoa. And also eeeeee! And some junk like that. I had to be talked into going, and I’m still actually working on being happy about going. I mean, I am. How could I not be happy? We’re going back to the Scene of the Crime© - Disneyland.

We got engaged there.

On the Matterhorn.

Yes way! The man proposed marriage, on a rollercoaster. ON the rollercoaster. Not ‘in front of’ or ‘while in line for’. After we had boarded and the ride had started.

And then I’m surprised at the life we lead. Oy.

Anyway, I’ve given us a budget of $250 cash-money for the trip, which is actually a lot more generous than it sounds. I’ve already covered the hotel with reward points, and will hopefully be picking up some Disney gift cards tomorrow from another mom who is swapping me some of my wide assortment of local cards (whaddya want, I gotcher Sears, I gotcher Bath & Body Works, got a Target in here somewhere, Starbucks, anybody want Starbucks, I gotcher Starbucks right here…name your poison, I gotcha covered…) – so really, all I have to pay with actual money-from-my-checking-account is gas there and back again, and any food we buy off-site (where we can’t use the gift cards) (that I might not actually get, if she forgets, or changes her mind, or can’t find them or whatever) (do you know that crazy woman actually said she would give me one of her $100 Disney cards for a $50 Sears card?! I hope she rethinks that one…or that I have the moral fortitude to decline…because that IS highway robbery) (although, you know…maybe I could give her the Sears card AND offer to watch her daughter some night so she and her husband can go out? It’s a thought…a cheap mutually-beneficial thought…).

But. Naturally. The process of getting ready to go on a vacation for four whole days, during which other people will be staying in the Den, is enough to put me in the funny farm. Do we have enough juice, and bread, and medications? Where are the sheets for the hideaway bed, and do we have any decent towels we can put out?

Plus this is apparently National Overwhelm Parents With Paperwork week, and the girls all have been dragging home forms and questionnaires and the like from school. I have spent so many hours stuck in my office chair this week, it is ludicrous…meanwhile, the dust bunnies are threatening a military coup from beneath the beds and the bathrooms are going to be condemned any minute now.

Heh. Yeah. I can just imagine how bad that would actually have to be. “We’re sorry, but this space is way too nasty to be used as a bathroom, you’ll have to go somewhere else to deposit your waste...”

Captain Adventure’s assessment went well, or at least, as well as can expected. No real news, of course, because like any other medical thing they don’t want to tell you anything right then and there. Oh no. Whoever you’re talking to is not the person who makes these judgment calls. It’s like buying a car – there’s some mysterious Guy in the Back who tells the sales person what deals can or cannot be struck. “Let me go ask our finance guy,” they say, and disappear for fifteen minutes. Or a few days. Or, if it is a medical thing, four months.

I have come within a hair of canceling the whole trip about nine times in the last few days, mostly because I am so bone-tired that I’m about ready to just not give a @*&^@ about anything else. You know what I mean? I’m just this close to just tossing in the towel on the whole deal. Running that extra load of laundry so we can have all our shirts? Finding the luggage? Packing? Putting together the medical information for the Denizens “in case” (which I personally believe actually wards off disaster, in a kind of reverse-psychology magic: if those minding them have everything they need in case of emergency, there will be no emergency)?

Feh.

If he wants it done, my husband can jolly well do it. Me? I’ll be out back chain smoking (which should be worth the price of admission, since I haven’t had a cigarette in about, oh…geez…fifteen years? I can only imagine what chain smoking would do to my system now…) and lining up the tequila shooters (wait…I think we’re out of tequila, too. IS THERE NO END TO MY SUFFERING?!).

You know…I talk such a good story. But I had two (2) homemade Cosmos the other night? Wiped. Out. Seriously. I was all like, “Oooooh, I’m gonna go ahead and make m’self another one because it is my birthday {sip, sip} WHOOPEEEEEEzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”

Pathetic. Ya know, back in the day…but that’s another story for another time.

And now, I need to go find a gift bag for the layette, which I did actually finish this morning! That’s right! In spite of everything else I should have been doing, I “found time” to finish the last bootie this morning (never let it be said that I do not have my priorities straight!). This is such a cute little set…I definitely need to get it up on Ravelry. I hope she enjoys it. And that her baby doesn’t grow into it in August and out of it again by November…