This morning was the beginning of a cosmic, karmic shit show of epic proportions.
Getting people out of my house in the morning is, at best, challenging and at worst, incredibly-frustrating-to-the-point-that-when-I-get-to-work-I-lock-myself-in-my-office-and-scream-silently-while-my-fist-is-jammed-into-my-mouth-and-I-am-curled-into-a-fetal-position-on-the-floor-and-contemplate-cancelling-my-classes-for-at-least-the-day.
Keith has an 8.30 class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The *second* he informed me of this, in April, I knew getting him to this class on time was going to be a problem.
I don't have trouble getting up and out of the house in the morning. I've been doing it for so long that I'm convinced that most mornings I run on autopilot.
Some mornings I get to work, fully dressed (including accessories!), lunch made, coffee in hand, kids dropped off, and I have no recollection of doing any of these things.
Auto. Pilot.
Of all the kids, Keith was the easiest to get up and moving in the morning. Always the first kid ready to go. He's still like that; even now he can get up at 7.20 and be ready to go at 7.50.
Meredyth was/is impossible to get moving in the morning. She would wait until 15 minutes before we were ready to go, and leap out of bed, in a foul mood, attempting to do everything a teenage girl thinks she has to do to get ready to school, in that 15 minute period.
Many mornings I would leave. I had to.
Keith would be in car, agonizing over being late. Practically sweating kittens.
Again.
My mother guilt would kick into high gear, and I would sit in the car, torn over wanting to get Mer to school because if I didn't she would happily go back to bed, sleep some more, and spend the day watching television and eating whatever she wanted.
And getting my always ready son to school on time.
I can say with complete conviction that at no time did I ever make the right decision.
Emily, when she was younger, was very easy to get out of bed.
As she has grown older, getting her out of bed has become akin to trying to move a 1000 pound boulder with a toothpick.
She simply doesn't like getting up until she naturally wakes up.
She likes to wake up slowly, spend some time cuddling with Reilley, talking to him about how her night was, asking him about his, perhaps reading a little bit, listening to some music, contemplating her day, thinking about whether or not she'd be able to go back to sleep.
She likes to take long, languid, luxurious showers, and, as she says, "think."
I can relate.
I like to wake up on my own time and think about my day, pet the dogs, talk with Stephen.
But what we want to do and what we need to do are two.very.different.things.
Keith, on the other hand, her time-conscious-I-have-an-8.30-class-and-hate-to-be-late-for-anything-older-brother is somewhat less understanding about Em's need to greet the day slowly. He wakes up, gets up, jumps into the shower, gets dressed, comes downstairs, eats something, brushes his teeth and is ready to leave in 30 minutes.
I understand this, as well.
And this morning, therefore, was one of those mornings where I understood both sides, and was stuck in the middle, the adult, the parent, the one who was going to have to be the arbiter.
The heavy (metaphorically as well as literally).
The authority.
In the car, Keith is fuming in the backseat.
Literally.
Waves of anger and frustration rioling from him. It was so thick in the air I could have cut it with a knife.
He is verbalizing his litany of (justifiable) concerns about being late for his Forensic Anthropology class, sharing what his professor said to the two students who wandered into Tuesday's class at 8.40.
Stephen is in the passenger seat, oddly happy for a man who hates getting out of bed as much as Em does, and blissfully unaware of the inner turmoil present in the car.
I honked the horn.
Em HATES it when I honk the horn. I feel the same way when Stephen honks at me.
No Em.
I honk again, twice.
Now things have gone to the extreme.
She comes out, that look on her face, the one where thunderclouds filled with hail and lightening looked nicer than Em did.
She gets into the car.
By this time, I'm in knots. I know how Keith is feeling, I know how Em is feeling.
And I definitely know how I am feeling.
I have no idea what to do to restore peace.
But I do know how to impose order.
Once everyone was in the car, I put in place a new edict:
No one said anything.
At that point, I didn't care.
From Em's point of view, I was "yelling" at her.
She felt ganged up on.
I used the word "people."
She took that to mean her and her alone.
Guilty conscience, perhaps???????
I should have known better.
We live in a U-shaped court and we live in the first house on this court.
Technically, the street is one way: you come in at our end, and in order to get out, you have to drive the entire U to get over to the otherside.
Most of the people on our court do not follow this traffic pattern. It falls under the umbrella of "unwritten informal law." There aren't many people on our court, so the liklihood of encountering someone driving up the street while you're driving out is very, very rare.
In our neighbourhood, we have an individual who doesn't work. He drives his wife to work everyday, and then returns home.
What he does there is anyone's guess.
On occasion, he is the guy who sits at street corners with signs saying "We need a left turn lane here!"
He sends "anonymous letters" through the mail outlining all of the things you've done wrong.
Scary?
Yes.
Because you feel like you're always being watched.
And I encountered him this morning while driving out of the court.
He wags his finger at me, while shaking his head, and manouvers his car so I can't pass.
I so needed this.
Really.
Only Keith's death stare boring into the back of my head prevented me from stopping the car, getting out, and unleashing Emily and her wrath from the back seat to deal with him.
I fully expect some "letter" in my mailbox when I get home, or, if I'm really lucky, he'll actually put a stamp on it and send it through Canada Post.
Cause he's done it before.
I drop Keith off first.
You can imagine how happy this made the already "she-who-looks-more-menacing-than-thunderclouds full-of-hail."
As I drive into the BMH parking lot, I notice all the lovely, open, available parking spots.
And I know when I return, all of those gloriously empty parking spots will be full.
I was 10 minutes.
That's all.
10 minutes to drive Em to school and get back.
And how many parking spots were left????
One.
Thankfully.
This time.
The one bright, shining moment of my day was that I was able to get a parking spot.
Its the small things, right???
I know that the next time, I won't be so lucky.
In fact, a wonderful staff member pulled in beside us as we are unpacking our stuff from the car and offers her breakfast, a coffee and egg McMuffin, for our parking space.Maybe for a Big Mac and large fries, with a chocolate shake, I would have considered it.
While not being one to make grand overgeneralizations, I think it safe to say that not one university in this country has enough parking.
They operate on the assumption that not everyone will be on campus at once, therefore, they sell more parking passes than they have spaces for.
Couple this with the inability of some people to read signs, you know, the signs that tell you that the first two rows of the BMH parking lot are reserved for Faculty and Staff, makes parking a contentious and stressful concern.
I *try* not to be a bitch about these things. But if there is one spot left, and a student is trying to park there, and I need to park there, I have been known to inform said student that they are parking in the faculty/staff parking lot, and they need to move.
Bitchy, nasty, elitist.
I know.
My logic is that if when students are late for class, it is sad, to be sure, but the class will go on.
When I am late for class (and not for any of the other reasons I would be late for class), can't find a parking spot, and I am not in class, class does not go on.
I have even devised strategies to get a parking spot when there isn't one available. I will sit, radio on, car off, and AS. SOON. AS. I see someone coming into the parking lot, with keys, I turn on my car and follow them.
Granted, this does not bring out my better side, stalking people for their parking space, however, there are times when decorum is ousted by the desperate need for a parking space.
By the time I had addressed the being-on-time issue, the man who would be King of the court-where-I-live, dropping off Keith first instead of the usual dropping off Em first, and getting the very. last. parking. spot., I was FINALLY able to unlock my office door, walk into my office, shut the door, drop my things on the floor, and fall into my chair worrying about what will happen next because when the cosmic, karmic shit storm decides to land on your doorstep, it never stops at just the morning.
For all that effort, the shit storm is gonna last all day.
And it did.
During my 11.30-12.50 break, I decided that eating lunch may help stave off any further trauma.
I heat up my leftover spaghetti from last night's dinner, go back to my office, and there is my son in the midst of writing a note to me in Sharpie marker, on an index card, in CAPS no less.
Relief flooded his face when I opened my office door and walked in, carrying my lunch.
Apparently, he received an email from the Registrar's Office indicating that he had not yet made arrangments for the payment of his tuition, and if he did not make arrangements by 1.00 today, he would be removed from his courses.
The technical term is actually "purged."
I wish I could say this surprised me.
But, it didn't.
So instead of enjoying my break, I spent my lunch hour emailing and phone calling and trying to sort out the latest backlash of my own personal, cosmic, karmic shit storm.
Now, for the rest of the day, I am going to not talk to anyone, to not engage, to remain as inconspicuous as possible, eat Arrowroot cookies and drink lime flavoured Crystal-Lite and hope that my shit storm decides its time to move on to someone else.
Title Lyric: Shit Storm by Casey Jones.
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