Oh. My. Heck.

My day started unexpectedly when the phone rang at 7:00 AM.  I struggled out of bed and ran into the kitchen (will we ever find any more phones???) thinking that surely if the phone was ringing so early it must be one of the kids saying they had forgotten something necessary for band.  Instead it was a Vonage service person, calling to talk to Russ about some question he had.  I refrained from telling him what I thought of anyone calling at 7AM, and gave him Russ’s number.

I drank my coconut water (if it’s cold I’m starting not to mind it as much) and had my piece of peanut butter toast, something I had never eaten before in my life before I had stomach problems, but have eaten every morning since.  (The one morning I had jelly toast instead my stomach hurt terribly.)  After eating I made myself get into my exercise clothes and made my way to Curves.  Where, when I was done exercising, the mother of a (part-time) schoolmate of Rachel made some comments to me about how unfair and hurtful Rachel has been towards her daughter, and how upset both she and her daughter (who has been very ugly towards Rachel, bless her heart) are.

It was late enough when I left curves that I only had time to pick the kids up from school (they had just finished their PE & music classes) and run Rachel and Jared over to the dentist to get their teeth cleaned, still in my workout clothes.  There was a receptionist there that I hadn’t met before, and she asked where my cell phone phone number was from.  When I said North Carolina, she asked me what North Carolina was like.  On this grey and dreary day, that question was almost more than I could handle.  I’m sure she had no idea how close to tears her many kind questions had me.

After a few minutes of talking about North Carolina I ran next door to our credit union where I opened 8 new savings accounts.  Hooray for being able to handle our finances better!

I finished at the credit union just as the kids were done at the dentist.  We just barely had time to run and get them burgers and then rush back to the house (me still in workout clothes) to drop off Jared and pick up Jenna for choir.  The girl’s choir has moved to Wednesday during early lunch for this semester, followed by the 4th grade choir during the later lunch period.  The previous choir accompanist (who was 85) has not returned since her emergency surgery in the winter so I have continued to play the piano for the 3 elementary school choirs.

The girls went into choir practice but I told them that I was going to be a few minutes late, and went in search of one of the 6th grade teachers to talk about Rachel’s problem with the school friend.  The teacher was kind and said that she would handle the problem between the girls, and I went off to choir happy.

Except that when I got into the music room all of the kids were like “there you are, we’ve been waiting for you!!!”  It turns out that the music teacher was absent today and the substitute had no musical background at all.  So one of the 6th graders who plays the piano had been trying to help the choir practice.  When I arrived they all looked at me as if of course I would teach them the music as well as play it.  After 10 minutes with them I had 20 minutes with the 4th graders as well.  By the time I was done my throat hurt and I was feeling deeply grateful to all of the wonderful primary accompanists I had over the years, because it turns out that it’s not so much fun to try to teach the music and accompany yourself at the same time.  Kind of exhausting too.  Maybe I should have gotten paid for subbing??

I left the school and went home, worn out by my day.  And when I got home I had to laugh.  It was only 12:27… But believe me, I was done.  For. the. day.