24 Hours

The last 24 hours (ok, 25, to be precise) have absolutely sucked. Nothing life alteringly bad, but endlessly shitty nonetheless. It was already a busy and tiring week, with E no longer at the town summer camp, but instead the much shorter gym camp (9:30am to 12pm vs 8:30am to 2:30pm), and M waking up and screaming multiple times a night, every night. Everything was tiring but still OK until Friday (into today), when for some reason all of the bad luck and crappiness happened all at once.

The first bad thing that happened was when I was in the library yesterday with M. We were there for Friday story and playtime. M wanted me to carry her, and while I was carrying her to the adult section so I could browse, my left ankle twisted and we both fell down. Luckily the library was carpeted, but it was still awful. The last time I had a big fall like that must have been close to a decade ago, Anyway because I was carrying her and she fell too, M was crying, though I think it was more from shock than injury. I ended up rolling onto my back and just staring at the ceiling for a while to gather myself. In some sort of weird fluke, no one saw us fall, and I guess we made no noise besides M crying, so no one came to help either (maybe that was a good thing, less embarrassing?)

The second was when I was drinking my usual afternoon tea at the computer. I had sipped maybe 5% of it, and was thinking about the things I needed to do (schedule fall classes for the kids, reschedule a doctor's appointment, etc.), when I knocked the cup over, all over my left thigh. While luckily the tea wasn't scalding hot, it was still quite warm and I am sure I burned off the top layer of skin cells. Not to mention, there was so much tea and it spilled onto me, the upholstered chair, the floor, and my current knitting WIP. And because I now had to clean up and wash off the tea, I had no time to make another cuppa, so I would have to forego my caffeine for the afternoon. 

Finally the last for Friday was when I couldn't find my phone after coming back from Kumon. I had given M my phone while E was in Kumon class, and I read a library book instead to pass the time. Sometime during the session, M had pooped and I could smell it, which made me feel stressed because I am sure everyone else waiting for their child could smell it too, and I felt bad. The usual getting-into-the-car chaos ensued when E came out, and I drove home thinking to bathe M immediately. Right before bathing M however, I decided to get my phone from my bad and couldn't find it. Worried, I used Google Find my Device, and it said my phone was at Kumon. Fuck. 

After bathing M and stressing to myself, I drove back to Kumon. I walked in, fully expecting that my phone had been found and was in the possession of a teacher. Instead, I found out to my horror that no one had seen my phone, and that I had unintentionally created a small commotion in the quiet classroom. All the kids that had been quietly working had heard me, and had turned to look, excited at the occurrence of any unusual event. E's teacher however, recalled that she had seen M holding the phone when we left, and asked me to retrace my steps. I went outside to look around, and while looking around opened the passenger door to the car to poke around further, and saw my phone lying on its side between the passenger seat and the car door. FUCK. I went back inside again to tell them that I had found my phone, faffing that it was "somewhere outside", and went inside the car to cry.

That night I basically stayed in the bedroom reading by myself while Jon dealt with the kids. The next day I somehow woke up at 10:30am, and felt restored. I thought the run of shitty things had ended with the dawning of a new day, but I was wrong. Instead, after we all piled into the Rav4 to head out to lunch, we found the car battery had died. We switched gears to drive to the nearby grocery store to pick up already prepared food for lunch, and luckily Jon figured out that he could jump-start the car and drive it straight away to Valvoline to get a new car battery. He managed to borrow a jumper cable from our next door neighbour, and he even came over to teach Jon how to use it, which was really nice to him. This whole time period however, was immensely stressful. We didn't know if and how to fix the problem initially, and how long the whole process would take. I needed the car during the weekdays to drive the kids around. Jon proposed taking a taxi to work at one point and I would use his car instead. I felt under so much strain, and I was so exhausted from the previous day, so when Jon finally came home in the mid-afternoon after getting the car fixed, my sense of relief was palpable. 

It can't get worse than these 24 hours, right?