Days like this will make me grey(er).

It started yesterday evening.  One of my children came to me in the laundry room to tell me that something bad had happened to them.  Without disclosing any of the private details I can tell you that the child was badly shaken but not hurt, and that the end result of the disclosure was a phone call to the bishop and from him on to the stake president and the church’s abuse hotline.  At the end of an already exhausting day (Nine errands!  NINE!!) it really wiped me out. 

This morning as I was writing out a list of things that need to happen before we leave tomorrow.  While I was writing Jenna came in looking for her new shirt that is to be worn for the all important family beach picture.  As I talked to her I finally realized that when they were trying on alllllll of the new shirts I had ordered from Kohls she had not taken the darling shirt she had chosen up to her room but had left it with all of the other shirts.  Which meant yeah, I returned it to Kohls last Friday.  And it’s no longer available online.  (Did I mention how cute it was??)  So now we need to figure that one out.  You know, today.  In my spare time.

After a quick lunch at our ward’s book club I came back home to get started again on Stuff That Must Be Done.  My alarm on my phone went off, alerting me that I needed to stop everything and check everyone in for the flight tomorrow.  (Don’t ask me why, but we ended up with each person having a different confirmation number.)  I started checking people in.   (Did you know that if you’re checking in on Southwest starting at the first moment you can, the amount of time it takes until you can check in the next person gives you a boarding position that is 10 lower?  Yeah, me neither.)  When I put in Jared’s confirmation code the website told me that his ticket was cancelled.  Well obviously that was a mistake, so I put it in again.  And got that message again.  I had to breathe pretty deeply at this point to keep myself from panicking and I started searching my email for another confirmation code for Jared.  No luck.

As soon as I had the rest of us all checked in I called Southwest.  Waited on hold for about 5 minutes.  Finally got a nice-sounding lady on the phone and tried to continue breathing deeply so that I didn’t yell at her.  Explained the convoluted situation as clearly as possible.  Yes, 6 people.  Yes, 6 different confirmation codes.  No, weren’t intending to leave our youngest child Home Alone.  (No, I didn’t mention that he is only the youngest by 2 minutes.  It didn’t seem relevant.) 

As the woman at Southwest dug into our records she was able to make sense of what I was saying and finally saw that when someone at Southwest had made a reservation for Jared in March, they had cancelled it 9 minutes later.  Fortunately (FORTUNATELY) there were 2 extra seats available on our flight tomorrow and she pulled one of them for Jared.  Then she put me on hold for  what seemed like forever and went to consult with the help desk.

In the end they gave Jared a new reservation and charged me the original price for it.  I was more relieved than I could possibly say.  And equally exhausted.  I finally ate my lunch at 3. 

Now I think it’s time to eat some chocolate.  And take a nap.  What can I say?  Desperate times call for desperate measures…