It's Been...

… one of those kinds of days.

You know, the ones where the baby wakes up at 3:00 in the morning, and the next thing you know it’s after 7:00, so you just give up and send her to play with her siblings who are up at that point and you climb back in bed, hoping to get a few hours of sleep so you don’t spend the entire day resembling the abominable snowman…

Except, your oldest daughter knocks on the door in a panic, because there is a phone message from the dentist office, and did we forget we had appointments, this morning?

So you bolt out of bed, call the office back, get chewed out by the receptionist who has left no fewer than four messages on your phone in the past several days, each with a different start time for the appointments, and she doesn’t seem too thrilled when you tell her that the latest start time she left is actually still fifteen minutes away…  Of course, there is no possible way you can actually get there by that time, because you live 30 minutes from the office, but it was worth a try… 

After being put on hold and then enduring much sighing from the receptionist, you are informed that they will take the kids in 45 minutes, which is just great, since none of you are even dressed…  well, except Ian, who is dressed in what he wore yesterday…

Seventeen minutes later, you are pulling out of the driveway looking worse than the “People of Wal-Mart” pictures, but hey… you need to make a trip to Wal-Mart anyway, so it kind of works out…

The good news is that Miah has decided the dentist is fun, she likes to say, “Ahhhh,” and she even lets them snap an X-ray.  Further good news is that the missing front tooth does, in fact, exist.  Not so good news is that said tooth is not formed right and will apparently never, ever erupt, so that’s going to require a specialist…

It only take three attempts to make an impression of Caleb’s teeth in order to create a spacer, which will be ready in three weeks, at which point they can also fix Seth’s chipped tooth (which I had hoped they could fix today).  No one has cavities (yea)!  And 3 hours and 45 minutes later, you actually exit the building… not that you haven’t walked in and out several times so Miah could “pet” the fish shaped coverings on the downspouts outside while she waited…

Since it is now almost 3:00 in the afternoon and you haven’t eaten yet, you decide that Little Caesar’s is the only reasonable option.  This is primarily true because all of the children are moaning about how hungry they are, foaming at the mouth (oh wait… maybe that was toothpaste), and pointing at Little Caesar’s, which is three doors down from the dentist.

You eat in the van in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and man is it ever hot!

You then proceed to buy more processed junk food than you ordinarily purchase in an entire year, because you are planning to take a trip the following week, and it’s far cheaper to pack lunches and snacks than to run through every fast food line known to civilization.  You start thinking about the good food you might eat for dinner and consider whether or not it would be wise to simply skip lunch and snacks on the trip.  The kids are in near shock over the number of preservative laden boxes that are hitting the grocery cart.  A cheer goes up with almost every one…

When you finally arrive at the checkout lane, still rather hot and a little bit sweaty, just hoping that no one actually did snap a picture and that your family really won’t be featured on “People of Wal-Mart”, tonight, you realize that everyone is dying of thirst, so you send the oldest four children to the little cold drink coolers at the end of the lane.  Ian tries to slip a Mountain Dew on the belt, but you’re still smarter than that (amazing enough), and he has to settle for orange pop…

And you check out…

And you get to the van…

And Miah is actually hot and thirsty enough that she doesn’t scream or kick anyone or take her seatbelt off multiple times on the way home…

And then you realize that Tropicana Raspberry Lemonade doesn’t hold a candle to the Simply stuff, but you’re hot and thirsty enough that you don’t scream or kick anyone, either… you just drink it…

And before you know it, you’re home.

Glad there aren’t too many days like that…

L.

PS  Photographic evidence?  Are you kidding me?  No…

But, how about some lyrics...

From Derek Webb's "I Hate Everything (But You)"

It's been one of those kinds of days

And I'm feeling so out of place (And the whole world is on my case)

And I hate everything, everything

I hate everything but you