That won’t come as a surprise to many of you. I had a really busy day today…kids to school, meeting at the office, then a couple of hours to clean up the day’s email before I went to the chiropractor. I was in REALLY bad shape…he pretty much gave me a complete overhaul.
Then I headed to the Natick Mall to buy Norah’s birthday present at the American Girl store. The parking there is always terrible, but today I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT! In addition to the 8 empty h/c spots, there were 11 “valet parking” spots blocked with cones…not a single spot was taken. There were also 8 empty spots for curbside dining, and 10 parking spots for low-emissions vehicles! In one row they were completely empty, and in the other they were filled with non-green vehicles, unless Ford makes a hybrid F150 pickup.
After driving around for 15 minutes I finally found a spot about 3 miles away and dragged my hunch-back to the door of the American Girl store, where I was met by 2 men who were preventing anyone from entering unless you were registered for “the event.” I know in the grand scheme of things this isn’t a big deal, but I almost cried. I shuffled back to the car and pulled up the American Girl website on my Blackberry to see if I could crash the party. It showed the “special hours” for today as closing at 7 p.m. for “the event.” It was only 6:25!!! I could have been in and out of there in 10 minutes! I may have to file a formal complaint. If the posted hours state that they’re closing at 7, shouldn’t that mean that at 6:25 they’re still open?
I drove from there to the soccer field to wait for Aliya to finish with her clinic so Ben could go home and eat (he’s still fasting for Ramadan). As soon as I arrived, 4 fighter jets started circling above us. They made 6 or 7 big circles and a few times they were pretty low…you could see the orange glow around the engines. At one time I would have thought that was really cool, but seeing them circling like that brought me right back to the days following 9/11/01, when they were constantly circling overhead.
Aliya and I stopped and picked up dinner for ourselves at Big Fresh, and walked into the house at 8. The other kids were still up so I took them up to bed. That’s when I realized that I forgot to stop and get the ingredients I needed for Norah’s birthday cupcakes for school. As I was rocking Norah I remembered that I always make special t-shirts for the kids on their birthdays (“Yahoo! I’m TWO!), and I had no idea where the puffy fabric paint was. I was all ready to run out to AC Moore, when Aliya pointed out that Ben had left the house headed for who-knows-where so unless I wanted to take 3 kids to AC Moore at 8:30, I had to come up with Plan B.
When Ben came back at 8:45, I went to Stop & Shop to get the cupcake stuff except that I couldn’t find the self-rising flour that the recipe called for. So I bought cake flour and then came home and tried to find a recipe that I had all of the ingredients for. I didn’t want to use a mix because one of the kids in the class has a food allergy. What’s crazy is that never once while I was at Stop & Shop did I think of swinging by the bakery department and putting myself out of my misery.
I got the cupcakes in the oven, and started thinking about how I would improvise the celebratory t-shirt. Here’s where the insanity starts. I actually thought, “HEY!! I have that BeDazzler that I got at the What’s-In-Jenny’s-Nightstand Yankee Swap!” And yes, I have BeDazzled a purple t-shirt with a big number 3 and let me tell you…it’s not as easy as it looks on TV.
And now I have to go to bed so I can wake up early and put the butterfly bodies (half gummy worms) and wings (mini pretzels) on top of the cupcakes, deliver them to school, get Adlani to the bus, take Aliya to have her braces put on, take her to school, and go do a fire door inspection on a church that is now home to a Chinese restaurant. I also need to squeeze in a stop at the American Girl store. I’m tired already.
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