Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Christina and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I should have known that nothing good could come from getting out of bed today when I almost died putting on my Spanx. Okay, so it was really a Chilean off-brand Spanx-type garment, but I still almost died.

At 5:30 this morning, I was pretty much still asleep because we have to get up at the ass-crack of dawn. I threw together a quick outfit that would sort of accommodate the extra real estate that life in Chile has added to my waistline, only to find the pants were just snug enough to require a little artificial compression. I know it's ridiculous, but I have never walked around with a muffin top and I'm not about to admit to having one now.

Every time I squeeze into one of these tiny tubes of stretchy horror, it reminds me of my formerly Mormon friend, S. She doesn't wear an undergarment OR Spanx because she's not a big phony like I am, BUT she has this adorable way of referring to Mormon undergarments as "angel underwear," and that makes me laugh.

So I was standing in front of the mirror, mostly asleep, trying to slither, arms and head first, into a stretchy tube about half my actual size, when my hand slipped and the damn thing rolled up like a-- well, like a condom, which essentially turned it into an incredibly strong tourniquet around my neck WHILE my arms were still in it up to the shoulders. So now I'm standing in the bathroom being squeezed, unable to do anything with my hands except flap them around in vain as I tried to reach my own shoulders. But, I obviously couldn't reach my shoulders because my arms were being held next to my ears by my own undergarment.

I now know what it's like to be killed by a constrictor, if it's a small constrictor and you manage to block its access to your neck with your armpits. In that moment, all I could think was, "This is it. This is how they're going to find me, stone cold sober with my arms pinned over my head." Only half of that was in the obituary I had at one point imagined might be in my future if I didn't get my life together. This was followed by the more obvious "Where does 'strangled by her own underwear' rank on the list of stupidest ways to die?"

I eventually was able to roll my shoulders enough to inch my textile attacker down over my shoulders and onto my waist where it belonged.

I should have been happy to be alive and called in sick. But no, I just HAD to leave the house.

Thirty minutes later, I was in the car with Rob and the kids, headed to school. Of course, the kids started fighting because that's ninety percent of what they do when they're together. Maya didn't want to put her backpack by her own feet, so she put it by his feet. WWIII ensued. I tried to chuck the offending backpack into the third row seats, only to have one of the clips hit Max in the eye.

Next, I lost the code to log into the school's computer and sign my daughter up for after-school activities. By the time I recovered it, she ended up wait-listed.

Right about then, I realized that I forgot Maya's swim bag for P.E., which meant she would have to go to double Spanish, which is apparently a fate worse than death. I think she could have, at the age of six, sued for emancipation based only on today's screw-ups, and won.

Then, there was a school-related thing that I can't share because I have a strict policy about writing about students.

I kept smiling until 8:00 AM. That's right. This was all before 8. I smiled my way through a quick morning debrief with my students, and then when they left for Spanish class, I FREAKED OUT. I scurried around, sending iChats and trying to find an extra little girl's swimsuit somewhere on campus, while at the same time running to Maya's classroom to let her teacher know about the swimsuit situation. By 8:15, I started to realize that my switch had finally flipped. I think I would have sat down on my classroom floor and cried, if my classroom floor weren't infested with ants.

Yep, that's right. It's ant season in Chile. So, I ended up sitting at my desk, overwhelmed and sobbing while ants bit my feet.

Ultimately, my fabulous colleagues collectively saved my butt. Nicole found a little rash guard. Nancy found a couple of swimsuits. The swim teacher found an extra cap. Bless their hearts, they managed to save one little part of an ant-infested, almost dying in my bathroom kind of morning.

At the end of the day, as my students were walking to their moms or their busses, I was in the hallway and heard a familiar voice yelling, "Mommy!" I turned to see Maya running toward me, hair messy from swimming and carrying a bag with what could only contain her borrowed suit. She kissed me. I asked how swimming class went.

She put her hands on her hips and pouted. "You didn't pack my towel."

I turned my back to her for one minute and did some deep breathing before I turned back around and took her hand. "You're right. Let's go get you a snack."

This is what we do. As parents, we make ourselves crazy, work ourselves to the point of exhaustion, and we make every possible effort to hide all of this from them. If they had any idea what was in store, they might never have kids of their own.

I will, however, make sure she knows the dangers of donning compression garments unsupervised. That's just not safe.

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