Pig poop and pearls

We lost our childcare Tuesday morning. Abruptly, and in ugly fashion.

The bridge wasn’t just burned – it was atomized, and the canyon walls blasted another thousand feet apart, and, well.

I think it would be easier to build a car-carrying suspension bridge across the Grand Canyon out of dental floss than it would be to fix this thing.

The husband and I spent the rest of the week working from home so we could deal with the crazy drop off and pick up schedules (four kids, three schools, four different schedules, oy) and start scrambling around for replacement care.

…so…many…phone…calls…

And then of course, since these big chunks came out of the middle of the day for all that, we ended up having to work into the night to make up for them.

It has been a rough, rough week. I feel like I’ve been put through a wringer, twice, and not hung up to dry but hurled into a corner to quietly mildew.

Fortunately, I was already planning some time off today and next week.

Unfortunately, my plans for that time did not include ferrying the Denizens all over the place; and my budget didn’t account for the startup costs of new centers and programs; and my time off is unpaid time off; but, on the bright side, none of my plans were non-refundable.

Sigh.

But just when I was starting to worry that we weren’t going to be able to make this thing work, everything just sort of fell into place.

We found placement for the three younger ones, all at the same center, even Captain Adventure. They didn’t blink, blanch, or bluster about his autism. They just asked for a copy of his IEP and delicately mentioned that they’d need to meet him before enrolling him. Then they showed us the various ways they deal with kids with special needs, and I was all, Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need to kiss you right now…

The bus is being rerouted to the new center. Eldest is comfortably settled into the after school tutoring program at her school – which goes until 6:00 and should take some of the heat off us at night. Nothing says “awesome” like getting home at 6:30 at night only to find that your child has spent all her homework time at the sitter’s house doodling unicorns or anime in the margins of her book, but hasn’t actually done line one of her math homework...

And, at the end of the day, we’ll be paying about $140 less a month for all of it. Which I suspect is the Universe’s way of saying, “Ooooooh, did I just totally kick you in the teeth? Wow, sorry about that…here…have a cookie…”

I feel like I fell into a vat of pig poop and came up with a fistful of pearls right now. It was a helluva week. I’m exhausted, strung out, sad when I’m not pissed off, glad that the kids are happy with their new places, wishing The Incident never happened but kind of glad it did...in the same way I guess you’d be happy you got stabbed in a drunken brawl, if the doctor sewing you up happened to notice a cancerous tumor while he was at it and whisked it off your backside for you.

Wow, it was so lucky that that guy slashed my butt with that broken beer bottle…uh, wait…

I can’t wait to put this whole thing into the rearview mirror.

And if I’m really lucky…I’ll actually get one of my three days of personal time off next week, uh, you know…off.

(I know. I’m trying not to get my hopes up. I think it would be just asking for it if I did…)