One of *those* days.

Do you ever just have one of those days?

This morning I got up, determined to make pancakes for Davis, who had been nagging me for two solid days that he wanted pancakes for breakfast. And if not breakfast, then DEFINITELY lunch. Not frozen… and certainly NOT homemade chocolate chip pancakes (I made those a few days ago. What nerve I have!)… but ‘real’ pancakes.

I got everything ready to make said ‘real’ pancakes and realized that we were completely out of milk.

Disaster. Meltdown #1 of the day.

Later in the morning (after toast, fruit, and juice for breakfast), it was off to see a movie at the dollar cinema… ‘Karate Kid’. Which turned out to be a really good movie. And a really LOOONG movie. And about 20 minutes into the show, I remembered that I was scheduled to bring dinner to a friend who had recently had major surgery. And I had prepped nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

So as the movie dragged on (two hours and twenty minutes??), and I am cheering for someone to just finally win this Kung Fu tournament already… I got a text from my darling husband.

He was at the tire place, getting his tires replaced because he had screws in two of them, and they were slowly leaking air. So FOUR, count ‘em… FOUR new tires later, my head was splitting, and dollar signs were dancing through my vision. Backward and down the crapper. Cha-ching!

After the movie, I made a mad dash to H.E.B. to pick up the items to make dinner to deliver, and as I sped through the aisles, pulling stuff off of the shelves, all three kids jogging to keep up, I ran into a friend in the refrigerated section (not LITERALLY, for which I’m sure she is grateful). I stopped to chat for just a minute… and while we were talking, some guy walked by, pointed and said, “Excuse me, but those kids are going to kill each other.”

Um… what?? Which kids? What the heck was he talking about??


Oh, none other than… my children…who happened to be shutting each other inside the refrigerated section, and waving to one another from behind the glass doors like they were being defrosted while on display at a cryogenics lab.

Totally mortified, I quickly paid for my groceries, got everybody loaded up in the van, and went to back out of my parking space.

CRUUUNNNCH!

In my blind spot, sat a sedan who had zipped behind me to wait for a space on the opposite side of the lane to open up. And it couldn’t have been a beater… some crappy old car… Nope.


Had to be a Lexus.

Could this day GET any friggin’ better??

Practically in tears, I exchanged information with the other driver, called Phil, and assessed the damage. The highlight of it all? Trying to figure out how to take pictures with my cell phone in the blacktop parking lot of the grocery store when it’s 105 degrees outside.

And once at home, after getting dinner started, and realizing that I had forgotten to put an egg in the brownie mix (after the brownies had already been baking for 20 minutes, of course, so there was no salvaging them for my dinner delivery), I sat down at the table to call my insurance company. Never a fun activity, regardless of the circumstances.

Answering question after question, the lady on the phone got all the information she needed, and said, ‘I think that’s it, Mrs. Linson. I’m really glad everyone is okay.”

I mean, I KNOW she’s probably paid to say that… but I came undone just the teensiest bit. I began to cry, and I said, “Me too.”



And as I looked around at my wreck of a kitchen, my doomed eggless brownies, my cell phone loaded up with off-center pictures of damaged bumpers, and the bits of paper with scribbled insurance policy numbers… I realized that this, too, shall pass.


It was a minor fender bender, and I have insurance.


We now have four new tires on my husband’s car. We may be broke, but at least we’re safe.


I didn’t just have to have surgery.


I have kids that know how to... er... entertain themselves in the grocery store. ;)




And… I remembered the milk. So, tomorrow, I get to get up in the morning, make ‘real’ pancakes, and start over fresh.


Thank you, Lord, for days like today.