A Very Bad First World Problems Kind of Morning

Every workday, my alarm goes off at 7:01 am and I need to be out the door at 7:15 am in order to have time to stop for coffee at Cumbie's (now $1.38 for a large) and get the kids to school at 7:30 (which is the first minute when you don't have to pay for morning extended care) and then drive to my work which starts at 8 am.  

Could I get up earlier to start my day in a more calm manner?  Should I get up earlier to get myself ready without running around like a chicken with my head cut off?  Yes and yes.  But you know, sleep is the best part of my day.  That sounds borderline depressing but I swear I just love to sleep.

Last Friday morning, I was woken up by Phil getting his clothes out of the closet at 6:40, which is fine.  I mean it is his room too, though cranky-woken-up-Colleen doesn't usually think so kindly or clearly.  I somehow fell into a deep sleep between that and 7:01 am when my alarm went off.  I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, but somebody is using it.  I knock and wait and finally Maggie comes out.  Maggie thinks she is the third parent in our household and therefore uses the main bathroom downstairs and not the kid bathroom upstairs (and who can blame her when she has to share it with six boys?).  She comes out and I go in and realize there's no toilet paper so I yell at her to get more.  She throws some in and I can finally use the bathroom.  

Because I still firmly believe I could get pregnant at the ripe old age of 44 but would like for that not to happen, I pull out my ovulation monitor that I use with the Marquette Method of Natural Family Planning.  I somehow drop said monitor in the toilet, where I have just relieved my bladder.  Ugh.  I grab it out so fast and throw it on a towel and try to dry it off, all the while reminding myself that urine is sterile.  It's fine Colleen, urine is sterile.  Once dry, I try to turn the monitor on but it gives me a weird signal and number and I look it up in the instruction manual, which tells me I have to call Customer Service.  Ugh.  Phone calls are the worst.

I thoroughly wash my hands (it may be sterile but it's still gross) and run out of the bathroom to get dressed when I see a naked boy running around, crying that he can't find his gym uniform.  I tell him he has THREE gym uniforms in his size so there must be at least ONE in his bureau or in his clean laundry box or last resort, in the dryer.  He runs off and I start to get dressed when he's back in a flash saying there's none to be found.  I send the older child to go help him and continue trying to get ready in my quickly vanishing 14 minute window of time.  Both kids come back saying there's no gym uniforms anywhere.  

I realize that because of the heat, they have been allowed to wear gym uniforms this week, but there must be at least one uniform in the dryer.  I march myself upstairs (of course my most helpful children and their father have already left for high school so I'm flying solo) and yank open the dryer to find that a teenager had decided to do their laundry BEFORE putting in the load I asked them to help me with yesterday, so now the teen had dry clothes and the rest of us had clothes sitting in the washer all night.  Ugh.  I tell the naked child to put on his regular school uniform, which he groans about but sees there's no other option and complies.  Wearing a uniform on a non-uniform day is the worst.

We leave the house at 7:28 which means I have no time to stop for coffee and will drop the kids off later than usual, which means they don't have time to eat breakfast at school, then I drive to work.  I really need coffee, so I decided to be a couple minutes late for work in order to be more productive at work and I go to the Cumbies near my work.  I run in and there are no Large Iced Coffee cups anywhere!  Ugh.  My former high school best friend's sister works at this Cumbies and tells me to take two small iced coffees but she'll only charge me for one.  Awesome.  Because I know her, I become even later as she tries to update me on my former bf and the rest of the family which is nice but time's a ticking people.

I get to work at 8:06 and call the Customer Care line for the monitor while I am turning on my computer, etc and the lady walks me through things to do to fix the error message, but nothing works.  She finally asks if it had been dropped or gotten wet and I freeze and say "Ummm potentially it could have been" because I don't want to tell her I dropped it in the toilet.  She says she'll send me an email with instructions on what to do next.  

In the meantime, two of my coworkers both need me to do worky things that aren't my job duties but I have to do them because my boss is away and I'm #2.  The good kind.  So I put out those fires, then open the email from the Clearblue company and the first step is to send a proof of purchase.  Easy peasy.  I know I bought it on Amazon, so I go and look through my orders but I can not find it.  All that is coming up in my searches is the test strips for the monitor but not the monitor.  I look through every single order from 2023 and 2022 and 2021 and I can't see it.  Finally I just give up and realize that they probably won't replace it anyway since I did indeed both drop it AND get it wet.  Ugh.

On my lunch break, I decide to go to the gym and run away my stresses and I call Phil as I'm leaving the office, grabbing my gym bag and water bottle and keys.  After hearing the monitor saga, Phil tells me we will use his extra bump in his salary this year to buy a new monitor, no problem.  Feeling better, I get to the gym and get changed and realize I DIDN'T BRING MY AIRPODS.  Ugh.  Do you guys know how horrible it is to run on a treadmill that stares at a wall without having a tv show to watch and listen to?  I literally save my favorite shows to watch while I'm on the dreadmill to help me get through it.  I decided to do both the elliptical and the treadmill and switching between the two really did make it feel easier without having anything to watch.

I showered and felt much much better after that sweat session, as I always do, and came back to work with a renewed focus.  I started in on a huge annual project of mine, that is due at the end of the month, and realized I'm at a standstill because I am waiting on reports from other people before I can move forward.  Ugh.  I wish I could Freaky Friday with Maggie and go back in time when all I worried about was volleyball and which boy I liked at the moment.  But then I would have have to face this day in the future, so I'll just be glad it's over instead.  

Hope your morning was way better!

P.S. This morning started out strongly terrible as well, with a child who forgot his backpack at home (had to turn around to get it), another child who forgot his phone at home (had to drop it off at his school), and a coffee that splashed all over me when I put the cover on.  Ugh.