Wednesday in Review

I'm sitting here in a veritable stupor. Even though everyone slept until 7:30 (are you paying attention? 7:30!!!! Not 5, not 4, not 6:45, 7:30), having to actually get out bed and stumble down to the kitchen to make my own tea facing down hoards of miniature shouting angry people (by that I mean my own children) is still daunting.

I deeply appreciate all the prayers for Matt's safe traveling. However, I neglected to ask for prayer that Matt would take the right set of keys with him.

Yesterday morning, having woken up at 5 and spent what seemed days preparing and organizing for our morning with Classical Conversations, I experienced sheer terror at precisely 7:50 when I took the keys off the hook and found them to be the wrong keys. I called Matt in hysteria and then remembered that, by the grace of God, one of the families in CC lives four blocks from us. I called in her in a fit of apologetic embarrassment and she very graciously agreed to come get us on her way.

So the morning progressed without other incident. Except that my own son could not see his way to sitting in his chair even for the slightest amount of time and eventually, by the end of the morning, was standing up in it shouting and weeping about the melting of the snow. Then he shouted and wept when I took his star and he lost the opportunity to pick a prize out of the prize bucket.

I was so shattered by the whole mess that when we got home I let everyone watch Curious George and Word Girl while I tried to figure out what to do about choir. Because there's also choir on Wednesdays, which requires a car with a key. After much phoning and gnashing of my own teeth, someone from the choir with a van volunteered to come get all of us.

Really, there's nothing like taking four small children to choir practice at night in winter. I bathed them all, stuffed them into warm pjs, stuffed them into coats, and then plonked them in front of this

while I filled bottles and found snacks and looked for the list of music. Choir itself involved holding the baby (first on the back and then the front), moving E closer to and then farther away from the heater as her internal temperature dictated (she sat with her eyes shut and her hands folded in holy contemplation. Later I discovered she was thinking about how much candy she expected to receive and not about the music, or God), catching my boys by their collars as they ran laps around the church to tell them to NOT run laps around the church, finally forcing them to sit in the library because they couldn't Not run laps around the church, only to hear one wail (loud enough for everyone to hear) "It hurts my feelings when you make me sit in here."

So I am sitting here in a stupor. Pretty soon I'm going to move my stupor to the school table where I will wrestle my children into learning whatever it is we're supposed to be learning today. And then I'm going to make them Clean!!! NOW, no don't dawdle, no stop touching your brother, CLEAN!!! because Daddy is coming home and if he delays at all, well, we'll see.

Oh, and if you're in Binghamton and you're planning to go to the Noon Eucharist today, its canceled, because I can't get there.