My Morning

I spent a frantic half hour this morning looking for my keys.  Please keep in mind that with four kids, three of whom have to be at school and one taken to daycare all before I have to be at work at 8:00, this is a real crisis.  I first looked in my purse, which is the most logical place to start.  No keys, but I found this: a broken Land Before Time toy that Owen has been carting around for three days, along with one diaper and a Ziploc bag of wipes that I had to take to the doctor's office yesterday (which I wouldn't have had save Jackie remembered I don't take a diaper bag to her house in the am and knew that I wouldn't have one if I needed to change him during the checkup).  There was also the prescription for Sam's asthma medicine that I fogot to drop off at the pharmacy when I went to the store to get Owen some ibuprofen and tylenol  to help with the pain from his vaccines.  Which I had to go to the store and get because I left his other two bottles at grandma's house last time she watched him.  There was also a flyer about an after-school program that Sam is going to be joining, the receipt for the jock strap for Eli that I am supposed to be taking back because it doesn't fit (thank God the actual item was also not in my purse, and let's not make it public that my 13 year old had to have one for track and hey, they are not made for the average 13 year old!), and another flyer about birth control that my daughter picked up last time we were at the doctor.  I found a half-chewed-on teething biscuit, a wrapped up but already chewed piece of gum, and a screw.  But no keys.

 Next logical place: kitchen table, where I alwys head as soon as I get home.  There were the Skip-Bo cards still laying out from out ass-kicking tournament (Sam and I won, hands down), a newspaper article Hannah is doing a report on for her SS class, and a croos-country schedule, but no keys.  By this time, I was supposed to be walking out the door, and our well-oiled morning machine was definitly developing an ominous screech.  Eli had come in to tell Sam that he needed to walk a different way to the bus stop because the drug dealer's pit bull was loose, which made Sam cry, Hannah had to go back in and change her shirt because I could see her boobs from across the room, and Owen was whimpering with each step because his legs hurt from all of his shots yesterday.  In a bit of a fury because I still couldn't find the goddamn car keys, I stomped back into the kitchen and in my haste bumped into the high chair.  A jingle-A HA! There were the keys, laying on the high chair with Sam's envelope of money for school parties and the two bills I needed to put in the mail today.  It all came back in a flash-I set it all there in a nice, neat little pile last night so that I wouldn't forget them this morning.

Days like this make me think that a little Valium upon awakening might be in order.