No, I’m not proud of it, but yes, those words came out of my mouth this morning as I waited to leave the driveway for the 6 minutes it took the kids to buckle their seatbelts (while simultaneously screaming, whining, kicking, pinching, and smacking each other).
Six minutes doesn’t seem like much time. I have p*issed away thousands of 6-minute blocks in my lifetime.
But in my current life, 6 minutes can mean that I miss the drop-off line at preschool, have to park the car and drag 3 kids inside, sign in, and get them to the absolute farthest corner of the building without knocking down any preschoolers, help Norah get unpacked, get through the long goodbye, get the other two back out to the car using our walking feet, without falling down the stairs or stopping at the bathroom.
By the time we navigate through the minefield of all the friends and teachers, get back out to the car, and get 2 kids buckled again, we have usually missed the bus. Which means that our next stop is Aliya and Adlani’s school, where we SIT AND WAIT until the proper drop-off time. I hate waiting. When the buses start unloading, Aliya and Adlani run off and if I haven’t volunteered for a PTO-related project during my wait, I am now free to go to work.
Some days I work at home, in which case arriving home from school at 9:15 instead of home from the bus stop at 8:35 is not the end of the world, although it is a pretty big block of time to blow. Other days I’m headed for my office in Needham so I inch my way down 135 to arrive around 9:45 (“So glad you could make it.”). On less flexible days I have an appointment at a fancy place like Harvard, or the Museum of Fine Arts, so I start my journey to Boston/Cambridge 25 minutes late and from 15 minutes further away.
Today, I just had the flu. No place to be but my bed. But for some reason the flu has made me even less capable of handling life’s little delays with any level of patience. “I WANNA GO BACK TO BED, DAMMIT, SO BUCKLE THE HELL UP!!!”
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