For Crying Out Loud

The road to hell is paved... yeah, that kind of morning so far. The tree pollen count in Seattleish is moderate-to-high this week. Therefore, allergic-to-alder-and-ash Jenn took Benadryl last night.

And slept through the alarm and woke up at ten past eight.

Abby has to be at school no later than 8:35. We usually leave the house at 8:15. We had not eaten, showered (in my case) dressed, or brushed hair and teeth. So we dressed quickly (except Lizzy who was being at her obstructive-dawdling-preschooler best, so I just stuck shoes on her), brushed & brushed, and left the house at 8:20, with the intention of driving through McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin. Except that I had forgotten that I was very low on gas... so low that we might not have made it up the hill to school. Instead of McDonald's we stopped at the gas station.

Do you know how hard it is to find acceptable breakfast food for a anaphylactically-nut-allergic and somewhat picky 8yo at a gas station? We ended up with chocolate milk and a cream cheese Danish, which aside from the lack of produce isn't as bad as it could have been, I guess. I made Abby promise to get lots of food from the five-a-day salad bar at her school at lunchtime.

We're on our way up the hill to school and we're behind a school bus and then behind a garbage truck and I'm muttering to myself in the front seat, when Abby says, "Mom? What does 'for crying out loud' mean, anyway?" Hmm... I thought for a minute, and then said, "Okay, you know about the Bible, right?" (we're not churchgoers; we're what my Jewish brother-in-law and I agreed is "culturally Christian" in that we celebrate Christian (Protestant) holidays, but fairly secularly). She said,"Yeah, it's the book that talks about God and Jesus and the guys from the Prince of Egypt and Noah and all them, right?" Uh, indeed. "Well, one of the rules that Moses - the guy from the Prince of Egypt - brought to the Hebrews..." (Aside from Abby - "is that Hebrew like my name?" - yes it is, now hush) "... one of those rules is "not taking the name of the Lord in vain". That means you're supposed to say, "Gosh darn it" instead of, "God damn it" and you're supposed to say, "for crying out loud" instead of, "for Christ's sake". It's politer when you're talking about God".

She accepted this, got out of the car at the school (at 8:32, thank goodness), and went in. Lizzy and I drove home, discovering along the way via phone that a check I wrote to my mom for babysitting had bounced (gosh darn it!) because of another check (for crying out loud!) from wayyyyyy back that had cleared out of turn. (why can't people cash them when they get them? Checks from five months ago - I wrote this other one just after the first of the year - should not be clearing now... for crying out loud. And what's with the arbitrary decisions the credit unions make as to which overdrawn checks they will honor and which they won't? Mom will forgive me and I'll make it good and that's great, but there's no guilt like bouncing a check to your mother. But I digress.)

We got home. I went to get Lizzy out of the car. And discovered that in the confusion, Abby had left her school backpack in the back seat.

Oh, for crying out loud. Gosh dang it to heck.