I'm Back!

Well, almost... We're wrapping up one week of unfettered joy and fun on the lake. Vacations are a rare thing for us. We visited NOLA last Christmas, but I think before that we last took a week off together when Maddie was born. Need to remember this amazing stress-reliever called "vacation pay".

I'm looking at a beautifully calm Lake Ontario right now that is just calling for me to go swimming. But before I do, here are a few of my favorite vacation moments.













































See? Joy.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Red Letter Day

Oh, what a humdinger today was. It was not per se a bad day. But it was certainly riddled with weird occurances.

Today was my first day of teaching a summer camp course at my school. While I love teaching this class, it does certainly complicate my life by making our schedule a little long. I work my regular day and then teach two hour and a half (each) classes, which basically means that I work a normal work day for most of you, my loyal readers.  But for me? Particularly during summer (again my nice relaxed, catch-up season)? Recipe for stress.

So I really got myself together. I planned everything down to the smallest detail -- had the car packed the night before with all my supplies, lunch packed, clothes laid out.  Life had other plans.

When I got up, Rob told me he had had to go to work at 5 am and had parked the car by the side of the building. And oh by the way, here's some cash for gas.  Sounds pretty good, right?

Nope, my car was pinned in by two illegal parkers and one very long car parked entirely too close to me. After 10 minutes of attempting to back out into our one-way driveway, I had to switch to an Austin Powers-esque 30-point turn going against traffic and back up to finally get out the drive 20 minutes later.

Oh, and yes, the gas tank empty light was on. But now I was too late to stop for gas, particularly when I had to go inside and pay cash for it.

So I waited until after work, at which point I coasted into a gas station -- even leaving my a/c off and putting my windows up to cut down on wind resistance. Made it on a wing and a prayer folks. Wing and a prayer.

After work Maddie and I went to -- as she calls it -- "shopping Wegmans" (or as my iphone likes to call it "shopping Wetlands"). By this time it's 5 o'clock and I stock up on all the food I need for my class plus stuff for tacos so we can have a nice easy dinner when we get home from the mobbed and excrutiatingly slow grocery store. We get home at 6, unpack the car, and realize that I didn't buy any tortillas. Yikes! No dinner. Unload the car and back we go on our second trip to the Wetlands.

Here comes the big one... ready? Until this point, I did pretty well. I even managed to throw dinner on the table in under 5 minutes (cold steak tacos anyone?) and take Maddie for a nice walk to the park and still get back in time for bedtime. Get Maddie in her jammies, read her some stories, sing her a song. She's ready to go to sleep -- just one last potty break. And that's when it happens.

I dropped her in the toilet. Yup! I was thinking about what I needed to do for my class tomorrow, not paying attention. Forgot to put on the potty seat and just thought it was there, so I put her on just like it was there and let go. Poor Maddie fell right in up to the armpits. Oh, there were tears. Many tears. She said she bumped her back and that she was scared. And surprisingly she all of a sudden didn't have to go potty any more. I am so hoping there won't be any regression here.