It all started at 1am when I woke with a blinding sinus headache. I thought I was going to DIE. I don’t do well with OTC meds but I was in serious pain so I searched the bathroom for those little red death pills and came up empty. Settled for little pink benadryl and somehow fell asleep around 2am. Woke again at 5am still feeling the pain but dozed through it til the alarm went off.
Made it through the initial morning rounds – dogs, cats, coffee, morning posts, email, blogs. All was right with the world, even if my head felt like it was about to burst. Stopped at Starbucks for my fix, took TW to work and spent $30 to fill up the gas tank.
Came home and went into the bedroom to read my blog feeds on the laptop since I was ahead of schedule. Finished that and headed back to the office to get back to work. Uh oh. My computer screen was black. Power light was on but the pretty blue windows wallpaper and my cluttered desktop were nowhere to be seen. Just blackness.
I moved the mouse. Still blackness. I clicked the keyboard. Still blackness. I fiddled with the monitor settings. You guessed it, blackness. I turned off the power button, waited a minute and turned it back on. Blackness. Turned it off and fiddled with wires. Black, black, black. (insert profanity)
It’s an all in one that TW’s mom bought me a couple of years ago and I love it or I did until this happened. I had 3/4 of a report on that thing! I had my metrix for the report on that thing. I had work for next week half way completed so that TW and I can take the weekend off and hit the beach before Michelle comes home next week. All of that work and on a kid crazy, school pick up, little kid birthday day!
(insert a lot of profanity)
I went back to the laptop in the bedroom and struggled along. Recreated my report. Scraped up an old metrix spreadsheet and recreated. Struggled along some more. Wrote to Gateway about my poor black screen computer. Worked some more. Took a break to wrap birthday presents for E. Worked some more. Took a red pill of death that TW found this morning before she went to work. Struggle, struggle, struggle.
1:15, time to drive across town and pick up the girls from their school. Got disgusted with a woman who sought my white face out of a crowd of non-white faces to complain about the way folks triple parked during pick up. I love NYC, triple parking doesn’t faze me a bit but her assumption that another white face would agree with her – well that bugged me. (I hope it is not her son’s birthday party we are suppose to attend next weekend)
Got home at 2:30 and struggled through work for another 45 minutes while assisting RJ with homework, fixing snack for both girls, talking to E about her birthday presents and just general life with kid stuff.
Drove to the other side of town to pick up J from school and from there picked up TW at work so she could come home and make E’s birthday cookie with her. Ha. We hadn’t been home long when E discovered the evil dog who ate the cuties earlier in the week had EATEN HER BRAND NEW BACKPACK! sigh
I shut down the work I had been trying to do and jumped in the car. “I think we got that backpack at Target, or maybe Walmart” says RJ. I figure Target. I figured wrong. Luckily Walmart is in the same vicinity as Target so I head there. Target was empty. Walmart was PACKED. No Lisa Frank backpacks! No cutie backpacks at all! They couldn’t have gone to Kmart, it’s not their style! Where did they get that thing???? I was about to give up and head to Kmart when I saw a huge bin of backpacks near the electronics with some bright pink and bright blue in the middle. Paydirt. Lisa Frank – but no pink ones with some funky looking girl and a poodle. I grabbed a light blue one with a CUTIEEEEEEEEEEEE dog on it and hoped for the best.
Drove home, showed it to E, apologizing profusely when she said “I like this one better!” Yea! Crisis averted. So I’m repacking the new backpack and say “Where’s your lunchbox.” Silence. He didn’t. Yes, he did. He ate that too.
Back in the car I go. Back to Walmart. By now it’s 6pm and traffic is umm bad. Walmart is even more crowded than before and again, no Lisa Frank lunchboxes! grrrr! No cutie lunchboxes AT ALL. I’m thinking I’m going to have to drive in the other direction across town and try the other Walmart when I see a wee bit of pink underneath the Spidey lunchboxes. Ha! A Lisa Frank lunchbox just like the backpack Jake ate! It’s not the ugly purple Lisa Frank but surely she will like this since it is the same design as the original backpack, right???
I pay. I drive home. She giggles. Funny. Oh yea, I’m laughing my rear off here as my head threatens to explode some more.
We light the candles on the birthday cookie. We eat. I make a wish that she really was still 4 as she blows out her candles. I don’t know what she wished for but it had better not be another Lisa Frank backpack or lunchbox. I don’t think I can handle that.