Here’s how the morning went:
5:40am i continue to regret the highly yelped hole in the wall Mexican place i tried the night before. As I lay in bed recovering from the aftermath, i begin to think of all the bills i’ve procrastinated paying.
and, by the way, thank goodness for instant bill paying straight from a computer and no more writing checks out the exact day you have to send them so they arrive in the nick of time
I debate whether or not I should get up and plan out the morning in my brain. Thirty minutes later I bite the bullet to get up and just begin the day.
My daughter is awake and whimpering at the window as my mom drives away to work. I speak quietly to her and convince her to lay back down since it’s still dark out.
It works!
I pay all the bills, i get a hot steamy cup of Keurig Mocha with my Mexican Cinnamon Chocolate creamer
mmmmmmm
and the morning is looking good despite the early hour
I decide to make a nice breakfast for the kids – and m’self – and serve it up piping hot and yummy.
Just to continue the rainbows and butterflies, everyone actually EATS the food! It’s like i’ve woken up in an alternate universe! The kids even have some extra play time before school drop off. My son coaxes his sister in his room and wants to show her Thundercats on his TV. They play well for about twenty minutes. Then reality kicks everyone in the arse.
I hear him yelling at her “Say you’re sorry! Say YOU’RE SOOORRRRYYYY!!!!” and she’s chuckling at him.
I go and break it up and all hell breaks loose. He tries to whip a toy snake at me, which i promptly remove from his white-knuckled grip.
A few minutes later he daringly exits his room. I tell him calmly to go back and finish picking up his cell room.
Amazingly, the glow from the morning success is still fresh in my brain and I haven’t lost my patience yet. I’m still calmly talking to him despite his eyes turning red and his tongue forking.
It’s at the point he decides to sass me back and wisely turns and runs away.
I call him back to me to face me and he begins yelling louder and louder, I take the bait and begin shouting, and the tornado of doom looms and surrounds us.
….. we go through the apology & consequence rigamaroll and finish getting ready for school.
It’s fantastic to send your kid to school fresh off a loud and chaotic time out/lecture episode. The whole way i’m trying to remain calm and send him off reasonably well.
On the short drive home i’m thinking to myself, “Self; I would really love to get to a point in my life where we are not the craziest, loudest, and most embarrassing family on the block.”
Like, seriously. I know there’s a window or sliding door cracked the duration of all the yelling. It’s really no wonder the neighbors do not speak to me anymore. They do not respond to birthday party invites for the kids, either. They look at me and speak to me like they have one foot in their front door and one hand on the phone ready to call CPS.
Or maybe it’s just my imagination.
I’m about at the end of my CPS scenario when i pull into my driveway. I see an older woman walking with an elderly man down the sidewalk and think nothing of it. I push my button to open my daughter’s door as i begin to get out of the van.
The elderly man begins walking towards the van. He’s peeking around the door from ten feet away trying to look in. The woman waves me down, as i’m still in the front seat, and says “Close the door, he’s very agitated today.”
Not words i expected to hear. I shut the door just as the man walks up to her door.
The woman is talking gently to the man telling him in a heavy Eastern European accent, “No, come on, let’s go.”
He puts his face up to the passenger front window and says, “Call the police, please. She is holding me and they have my wife.”
…..
… . … seriously?! This is how the day is really going to go?
I almost looked around for cameras, as i’m simultaneously trying not to panic. When did i get training for this scenario?! Thankfully my daughter was busily playing with a toy in her carseat.
The car is covered in rain from last night. The man takes his hand and wipes away the water on the window so i can see him and he can see me even better. So now he repeats himself and it’s all happening in HD to me. His gnarled aged hands, his thick square brown-rimmed glasses, his big gapped teeth with a desperate and lost hallow expression on his face pressed to my passenger window.
“please. please call the police.”
the woman, trying to appease him, says, “Ok. I call police. I call 911 for you. Come vis me now.”
and just as calmly as he’s pleaded with me, he begins to open the passenger door… because it unlocked when i opened my daughter’s door and i was trying not to be paranoid, trying not to panic, and trying not to do anything to set Grandpa Loon off even more. As i said, as sad as the whole thing was, he was pretty calm.
I just said, “No no no. Shut it.” The woman gently took his arm and shut the door, to which i promptly locked it. three times.
That’s when my daughter clued into the scenario and began chanting, “No, i don’t want him to come with us, mommy!”
and the caretaker was able to walk him away from my driveway and down the street. Yes. They were walking now in the middle of the road. I watched them go as he tried to shove the woman away from him. I waited until he was far enough away to give me time to get my kid out of her car seat and into the house where we dead bolted the door.
And as i flipped my lock I realized what the universe was showing me. There’s crazy, and then there’s KrAzY. It’s so sad to look into the eyes of desperate desolation. For his own protection, his mind was trying to help him cope with a reality that was obviously not appealing. I hope he really wasn’t being held against his will by an Eastern European Scientific Experimental Senior Home in a residential neighborhood in the Northwest.
I bet they planned their location because of all the hooplah and noise my family creates! No one will hear the machines and screams over my 7 year old in a time out battle with his mom. .. or his sister.. or his dad or grandma or dog or TV!
Sarcasmica 