The alarm woke me up at 6:40 this morning. I was having an angry dream. I was cooking breakfast for some jerk I didn't even know. He wanted French Fries covered in gravy with some sort of Sherry glaze on top (ugh!). I was slinging things around. I even broke a dish making that unknown bastard his breakfast.
And then I was awake, listening to the bantering of the radio personalities.
I heard the garage door open, and I walked downstairs in a groggy haze. I curled up on the couch and half slept, half listened to my husband as he talked about what was on his plate for the day while he ate cereal, then poptarts, then put on his uniform piece by piece.
By 7:00 I was still exhausted and could have easily fallen back into a deep sleep, but I knew I had to wake my oldest up for his shower. The poor kid was just as sleepy as I was. But he got up, like a good boy, and took his typical alarmingly long "Hollywood shower". Then he woke his brother up, and they scrambled downstairs for breakfast.
They got new Nikes ($34 for both pairs!) this weekend, so they were eager to wear the new shoes that don't crunch their toes. Socks and shoelaces were flying as I tried to hurry them along.
We were running late. I remembered to make out the checks to the school for their lunches. The kids wouldn't be happy if they weren't allowed to eat. They'd remember that and bitch about it as adults, I'm sure. I was too late to make out the checks for the school pictures ($45 for 1 8x10, 2 5x7s, and a sheet of wallets, per kid!...extortion!), though.
The kids were eating Lucky Charms slowly and with measured artful movements, as if it were a lazy 2 hour brunch.
"We've gotta go in 2 minutes!" I pleaded with them. Xavier finished up and took off looking for his backpack. Orian continued to sip milk from his spoon in the most nonchalant way a 5 year old can manage.
"You're done! Go, Go, Go! Get your backpack, baby!"
Xavier couldn't find his backpack. He thought he remembered taking it upstairs (Why? I have no idea). It wasn't up there. It was missing. I ran upstairs and approached his playroom door. Closed. Hmmm. Interesting.
I opened it up, and there are no words to describe the horror I was confronted with. DVD cases. A stray dirty shirt. Action figures, some in various stages of dismemberment. Crayons. Books. Controllers. Papers. More papers. Lots more papers. To call their room dirty, or even filthy, would be an insult to filthy, disgusting rooms. It was like a trash can and a toy box had vomited simultaneously. Ugh.
No time to bitch at the kids. Gotta find the backpack.
I shut the door carefully and ran into the other bedroom. Messy, but not too frightening. Some dirty laundry in the closet (Why? Again, I don't know) and a toy or two on the floor. Not bad. And in the corner...the backpack! Yes!!
I escorted Xavier's backpack down the stairs and slid it onto his bony little shoulders. Success.
I grabbed Orian's backpack and started to put it on his back. Then I decided to check it. You know, like I should have done the Friday before last...when Spring Break actually began? Ok, I'm a bad mom. No, not bad. Lazy. I'm a lazy mom. In his backpack was a sheet listing his homework for Spring Break. WTF? Spring Break homework in Kindergarten? Oh, well. Too late now.
We headed out the door and made it across the street when I stopped dead in my tracks.
Wait a minute...
Why are there no people outside? No moms? No dads? No kids? No strollers? My mind flashed back to the Spring Break homework sheet. "We want to continue where we left off when school starts again on April 4...no forgetting please!!"
I forgot. We experienced forgetting. But that wasn't the alarming part of my little flashback...it was something else. Something big. Bigger than forgotten reading exercises or numeral recognition or unpaid for school portraits or tardy slips.
Dammit, I could have slept in.