I would never call it easy to get five kids ready to leave for school and loaded in the car in the morning, but this winter's cold makes it particularly brutal. It is very hard to buckle five car seats when you can't feel your fingers and the whole “put the huge coat and backpack on to walk to the car and then take them all off to fit in your buckles” thing about kills me every morning with its unbearable inefficiency. Just carry them to the car, there is no need to zip and situate and … OHMYFUCKINGGOD.
They insist. It's intentionally calibrated to drive me batshit crazy.
We put on our coats, backpacks and shoes the other morning and walked the 15 feet to the car in the freezing cold so that we could take OFF our backpacks and coats and buckle our buckles. We were late. Shocking, I know. And I was irate. Also hard to believe, bear with me.
We drove into the drop off lane at school #1 where I leave Saige, Garrett, and Quinn. They unloaded, putting the coats and backpacks BACK ON because their mission in life is to make sure I am drooling in a straight jacket by 50, and I gave my usual, “hustle, run now, that's the bell, move fast or you'll have to go to the office” farewell speech. “Hustle! Hustle!” Saige and Quinn bunny rabbitted off to class because they are team players and they love me. I climbed into the driver's seat to take Nate to school #2, but as I drove out of the bus lane, I saw Garrett meandering along at the pace of drunken inch worm trying to pull a boulder up hill while staring mindlessly at the ashen grey sky.
I lost my mind. Inefficiently slow things make my brain hurt. I mean. Why? WHY? The office will call me. I will have to excuse his ass for what? Inability to stay on task for 200 yards?
I rolled down the passenger window and shouted at him: Garrett! Hustle!!! Go!!! To!!!! Class!!! NOW!!!
Garrett jumped and kind of hustled in place a little, but he made no appreciative forward progress toward his classroom. The best part is that a friend was walking between the annex and the main office and she heard me yell out the window at my son. She waved at me as I drove away in my new (to me) 1992 Retro Astro Van. I kind of love this little city. Only here.
I turned up the radio for Nate and hit the automatic window button thingy. The window went up an inch and stopped.
I can not make this stuff up. It went up an inch and stopped and it was—oh I don't know—20 degrees out or so. Of course, I hit the down button and it went all the way down and then it just stuck there. Or froze there. I don't know. Who cares? The important thing is that I rolled down my 1992 Astro Van window to yell at my slightly weird, definitely in his own world, never-hurried, 8-year-old son to RUN to class because I can't get in the car on time in the morning and it STUCK down. Nicely played, Universe.
The entire 15 minute drive to Nate's school, I kept hitting the up button and it would go up another inch each time just to mess with me.But every time I got pissed off and hit the down button it went all the way back down. It's like it was possessed by the spirit of patience and she was going to teach me a lesson.
Good stuff. The lesson finally stuck. The window went up inch by painful inch. It liked about about a two minute break between inches. Very much like Garrett when he's walking into school.
Some things can not be hurried. Temperamental windows. Buckles. Spring. Delightfully weird eight-year-old boys. Good bread. True love. But you know what they say about good things and those who wait.
I hear you. I have NO idea how I got so many good things either. Apparently, the spirit of patience makes exceptions.
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