So what does one do the night before embarking on a 3000+ mile road trip?

~ pack up everyone’s party clothes, pool stuff, health and beauty aids, comfortable shoes, the Hannah Montana sleep mask, and all of the other necessities
~ type the itinerary into an Excel spreadsheet and attach the hotel confirmations, maps, eTickets, and list of places to stop when the Prozac stops working
~ make goody bags for the half-way point of each day’s drive so I can hear “Are we half-way there yet?” eight hundred and ninety two times every day
~ load up the iPod – we’re up to 4 days and 2 hours worth of music, just about enough to get us there and back if we listen to the Christmas stuff too
~ sort through the DVD’s and leave behind all of the ones that are too scary (The Lion King?!?!), find the missing cable that makes the second screen work, install it in the car and hope that the petty thieves are otherwise engaged tonight
~ write detailed instructions for Ben, who is missing the first 11 days of this journey, on how to keep the cat and dog alive
~ wash all of the laundry so that we don’t come home to moldy underwear – I was all caught up Friday night but somehow there were 5 loads waiting down there for me tonight
~ catch up on all of my work-related email so that everyone can live without hearing from me until at least tomorrow night
~ keep the kids well-behaved enough (bribery, threats, and the hairy eyeball) to make Uncle Josh think he might actually survive the first half of the our trip – at least until we get him into the car and too far away to jump out and hitchike home
~ fill up the spray bottle and stash it on the front seat floor so I can break up fights without taking my eyes off the road. As a deterrent, I told the kids I was going to fill the bottle with pee. The other morning I heard Aliya tell Adlani, “If you do that on the way to Tennessee, Mommy’s going to squirt you with pee.” Hopefully that one didn’t make it to school.
~ get everything ready for the last big day at school tomorrow so I don’t say “f*ing cheese stick” in front of Uncle Josh
~ most important – make sure everyone (especially ME!) gets a good night’s sleep

Nightie-Night!
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I found Aliya’s packing list in my to-do notebook…everything we need for a fun and exciting road trip (click on photo to enlarge):

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We’ve been talking about customer service a lot at work, since it’s one way we can differentiate ourselves and keep the orders rolling in during a tough economy. I found this video and it’s a great message for all of us:
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neW6NZyucZw&hl=en]
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Here’s a link to the original version: http://www.stservicemovie.com/
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I can’t believe that a whole school year has gone by and I still haven’t figured out how to get out of the house in the morning without losing it. I don’t want to be Psycho-Mommy. I want the kids to look back at their childhood and remember how patient and loving I was, always ready to (gently) brush the rat’s nest out of someone’s hair, whip up homemade waffles with fresh fruit topping, or find a packing crate for a papier-mâché solar system project. Maybe I’m just being unrealistic. How can I possibly have time and patience for any of those things when I spend the entire before-school hour telling people to get dressed, brush their teeth, and eat their breakfast? You’d think they’d get so sick of hearing the orders repeated that they would just do it to shut me up. No such luck.

I’ve tried everything to get the train moving more smoothly. I get up before everyone else and take my 3-minute shower, and then simultaneously brush my teeth, slap on some face goo, and scrunch some anti-frizz stuff into my hair, completing my beauty routine in roughly 6 minutes. On most nights I get out the snacks, lunchboxes, backpacks, outerwear, forms, lunch money, and anything I need for work, and I lay out Adlani and Norah’s clothes. I wake the kids up an hour before we have to leave the house. How is it possible that with this level of preplanning we can’t get out of the house without at least one of us having a hissy-fit in the driveway?? I’ve tried bribery, praise, encouragement, punishment…the only thing that really seems to affect them is when I break down and cry. I just don’t think it’s healthy for me to be crying every morning.

A couple of days ago I was having a particularly bad morning since I hadn’t gotten out the snacks the night before and I couldn’t find anything Adlani would eat (since he only eats 5 things, that’s not so hard to imagine). We were running VERY late, I had to be at Aliya’s school by 8:45 so there was no leeway, and the morning was just not going well. While I was doing a half-dozen different things at once, Aliya sneezed and started hysterically screaming that she needed a tissue. I gave her my most incredulous look and yelled, “Get your own tissue! I am so tired of being the one-stop shop for this entire family’s needs!” There was a pause and then Adlani said to himself in that cute little voice, “Hm…I don’t really know what that means.” It was so funny.

Adlani’s usually good for lightening up the morning mood. A while back he was eating breakfast when he started yelling, “Hey Mom! Look at those bastards running up the tree!” Apparently he heard Ben call squirrels “bastards” and decided it was an interchangeable synonym. I’m not completely blameless when it comes to the foul language. A few weeks ago on another particularly bad day I lost mind in a heated moment and yelled, “Just get the f*ing cheese stick!” I’m not proud of it, but sometimes stuff slips out. A few seconds later Adlani started repeating “F*ing cheese stick. F*ing cheese stick.” Great. Now my bad-mommy status will be revealed at snack time when Adlani tells his classmate, “Hey Andrew! Your mom gave you a f*ing cheese stick too! We match!”
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Today will be our 4th 90+ degree day in a row. Is that a heat wave?
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Karen left a comment on my post about living in an iron lung and I don’t want anyone to miss the video she included as a testament to what people can endure and overcome:

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