A Day in the Life

Dear anyone who has ever gotten mad at me for not returning your phone call or email or text right away,

Although I love you (or at least tolerate you) and want to talk to you, I can't always take time out to do so immediately. This is why -

6:00  Alarm goes off. I smack my phone a few times until it turns off.
6:20  Austin comes in my room and says something about rain. I don't wake up enough to comprehend.
6:25  Savannah comes in my room and asks me if I can drive her and Austin to school before second period because it's raining. I growl at Savannah and my head rotates 360 because, quite frankly, I'm not a nice person in the morning.
6:45  Wake up again and realize it's quarter til 7:00. Freak out. But not enough to actually get out of bed.
7:00  Spring out of bed, adrenaline rushing through my veins. Thankfully, I work well under pressure. Wake up the Littles and the Middles.
7:02  Shower. I remember to actually rinse off today.
7:10  Wrap myself in a robe and go downstairs and make coffee and lunch while I drip dry because I'm too lazy to actually take a towel to myself.
7:12  Jackson informs me that I need to drive him to school early for his field trip. Information that would've been nice to know yesterday (not that I would've dragged my butt out of bed any earlier, of course.)
7:17  Go upstairs and get dressed.
7:18  Decide I look hideous and change.
7:19  Decide the new outfit looks just as bad as the first one. Change.
7:20  Repeat the last two steps.
7:21  Vow to consume nothing but water. At least until noon.
7:25  Slap on some make-up and take stock of my hair. It's raining and humid. I already look like Roseanne Roseannadanna.  Ponytail it is.
7:30  Wake up the oldest kids who have fallen back asleep. Pile everyone in the car.
7:31  Lexi's friend picks her up.
7:35  I drop off Jackson.
7:45  I drop off Brooklyn and Clayton.
7:55  I drop off Austin and Savannah.
8:00  I drive away from the high school as a branch hits a powerline almost directly above me. The tree catches on fire and sparks fly. I slam on my brakes. As I watch the flames, the whole thing bursts into a fireball and I'm momentarily blinded by the light. I've never seen anything like this before and I'm freaked out. I call 9-1-1 and debate speeding under the burning foliage and sparking wires to get to work, or just sitting there until the firemen arrive because well - FIREMEN!
8:05  I get impatient and drive as far around the wires as I can.
8:06  Get stuck in traffic behind an accident.
8:25  See a smashed-up school bus and a news crew and pray that no one was hurt.
8:35  Get to work.
9:00  Decide that I was crazy for vowing not to eat and grab my yogurt. Realize I've forgotten to pack a spoon again. Debate between using a pen or a mascara wand to eat it. Find a straw in my drawer and attempt to scoop up yogurt with a straw because I am just that classy.
9:05  Drink a couple more cups of coffee.
9:15  Consider calling 9-1-1 again because it feels like my heart is going to explode from caffeine overdose. And I didn't actually get to see any firemen the first time around.
9:20  School starts and I bang my head against the wall for the next 4 hours.
1:30  Take time to eat an unhealthy amount of peanut butter brownies for lunch.
2:00  Go back to banging my head.
4:00  Leave school.
4:25  Pick up the Littles.
4:30  Get home. Check on the homework situation. Start a load of laundry.
4:45  Check email and make sure I'm all set for the Twitter party I'm co-hosting tonight.
5:30  Ask Jackson to make some couscous and corn for dinner. Slice up leftover pork chops into little strips so kids won't realize they're left-overs and they'll eat them.
5:55  Take Lex and Brooklyn to tumbling.
6:00 Kick them out the door and drive Savannah on to the high school so she can get the last of her volunteer hours for NHS.
6:15  Drive around campus and pick up Austin, who stayed late to work on some ceramics, from school.
6:30  Drop Austin off at home and go back to football field to watch the girls do backflips.
7:00  Go home and give instructions to everyone to get ready for bed. Assure Lexi that despite the warnings, a tornado isn't going to hit us. Start writing a brilliant blog post.
7:45  Do something stupid and manage to lose my brilliant blog post.
7:55  Finally stop cursing my evil computer and dial in for the Twitter party.
9:05  Tuck in my kiddos.
9:15  Give up on writing a brilliant blog post and instead endeavor to explain how busy my days are thus resulting in stupid blog posts.
9:16  Get interrupted by Lexi who is afraid that zombies will kill her in her sleep.
9:18  Get interrupted by Savannah who asks me if I can help her with her math. She knows darn well that I can't. She just likes to make fun of me.
9:25  Get interrupted by Jackson who shows me his abdomen and says, "Is it supposed to stick out like this?" I make a mental note to call the doctor about the ultrasound results tomorrow.
9:30  Get interrupted by Savannah who tells me she's still dizzy from donating blood today.
9:35  Get interrupted by Lexi again who says she has a tummy ache.
9:45  Get interrupted by Savannah again who complains that she has her EOC in history tomorrow.
9:50  Get interrupted by Austin who presents me with a chocolate cupcake. It almost, almost does away with my disappointment in his crappy grades.
10:15  Work my way through a backlog of email.
11:00  Realize I've been goofing off on Facebook for the last 45 minutes when I should've been writing.
11:20  Hop in the shower, take a handful of Tums to counteract the chocolate cupcake and lie down.
11:45  Take my turn in my 4 perpetual Words with Friends games and lie awake for an hour thinking about everything I have to do tomorrow.
12:45  Get up and switch the load of laundry I've forgotten about.
2:30  Wake up on fire and dripping sweat because I'm middle-aged. Think about going downstairs and standing in the freezer but decide I'm too lazy to move.
3:00  Wake up with a great idea for a book and type it into my iPhone even though I know from experience that I'll wake up tomorrow and not be able to read a single word of the nonsense I typed.

Yep, that's pretty much my (and really, any mom's) day. There are variations of this. Sometimes I forget to pack a spoon and eat my yogurt with a plastic knife. Sometimes I have water polo instead of tumbling. Power lines don't usually explode on my way to work. But the basics stay the same. So this is why I sometimes can't call you back right away or find the time to answer emails. I'm sure you understand.

Sincerely, 
Dawn