Memento

You guys.  I think my Google account is mocking me.  I just tried to sign in with an old password and suddenly a message appeared that read "Your password was changed FOUR months ago."  Just like that- with the word FOUR in caps and everything.  While it didn't actually add the word "jackass', I feel like it was strongly implied.  My feelings are a little hurt. I kinda want to write Google a letter that would say:

Dear Google, CALM DOWN.

Sheesh.

Today I want to tell you about the crappy week I suffered through a few weeks ago.  Actually, I was going to tell you guys about it last week, but then I got insecure and decided to hold off.  I had been an accidental witness to a mean girl conversation and you know what I learned?  I can NOT be around people like that anymore.  I can't.  My backbone disappears and I turn into an quivering insecure amoeba who walks around afraid that everyone is judging me in the same mean way that I heard the mean girls judge others. It's probably bad karma coming around to get from my own mean girl conversations in the past.

Anyway, because of the mean-girl aftermath, I got insecure about posting this because most people don't want to share what I'm about to share. While many people have shared with me that what I'm about to share with you is actually a completely relatable experience, there are many people would say I'm over-sharing.  I'm going to share anyway because I think it's funny and I like to share funny things with you.  Plus, I'm actively trying to set a record for the number of times the word share appears in a single paragraph.

There.  That's over.  Thanks for sharing and being a part of it.

(Sorry. Maybe I should take ADD medicine.)

I'll change gears before I lose the 2 of you who are still reading.

Do you guys remember the movie Memento?  It came out around 2000.  Guy Pearce stars as a man who, because of a debilitating brain injury, is incapable of making new memories.   His wife is murdered and he has to solve it by backtracking through records of sticky notes that he writes for his future self.  He even tattoos some crucial information on various body parts.  To be honest, it's a pretty confusing movie and it doesn't help that the whole story is told backwards.  However, in honor of what I am now referring to as "The Week The Universe Turned On Me And Went To Crap", I thought it'd be cool if I told the story backwards, Memento style.

Here it goes:
9:30 Thursday night, on one of my most stressful days in recent memory, I am standing over a stove with a plastic shower cap on, separating curds from whey and pressing it into homemade cheese.  Are you intrigued?  Are you wondering why? Believe me.  I was wondering the same thing.

7:00 Thursday night: Pieces of my vacuum cleaner are strewn about the floor.  It's broken.   I am crying a little bit.  Hmmm?  What could be going on?

5:00 Thursday late afternoon:  This is the state of my laundry room.  In case you're wondering, while it's not usually spic-n-span, I am usually able to at least see the floor. You can't tell from the picture, but the piles spill from the laundry room out into the hallway.  I've been doing laundry for hours with hours with more hours yet to go.

4:00 Thursday afternoon.  I am at my client's house watching him try not to stare at my hair, which is pretty much slicked back into a greasy bun loaded with coconut oil.  I am greasy.  I smell like overwhelmingly like coconut (And it's not the good suntan lotion smell. It's more like a cooking oil smell.)  I am obviously frazzled.  I try to apologize to my 15 year old client for my appearance and he endears himself to me forever by saying "It's okay. Sometimes I get really greasy too." 

Bless his heart. 

3:00 Thursday afternoon: Our living room is filled with trash bags crammed with stuffed animals, pillows, and jackets. My girls pose for a picture, because I already know that someday I'm going to write about this. Their hair is slicked back into buns too.  And even though I am pretty much in the middle of total chaos, I still take the time to notice how beautiful they are.

(Sorry.  Total mom moment there.  I'm allowed once and a while.)

Anyway, I'm sure by now you know where this is going, don't you?  Here's the final piece of the puzzle:

10:00 Thursday morning: While cuddling with a sick Roo on the couch, I look over and see this.

Lice in my household.  I have never dealt with this before.  Not in all my years of parenting, not in the years I spent teaching, nor ever as a child myself.

So that, my friends, was the icing on my crappy sundae of a week.  And if it seems terrible going backwards, that's nothing compared to stress of the chronological events.  My whole week was bad, from start to finish: Matt was gone on a business trip, I had to cancel a bunch of clients, my kids got sick, I had to cancel more clients (some for the second time in the same week), one of my kids was rude to a friend at school and the opposite parent and I had to get involved, I was practically mugged by a homeless person, and then finally, my Grammy had a stroke and ended up in the hospital. (That actually happened on the morning after the lice episode. She's doing better now and is in a rehab facility. My family and I would appreciate your  prayers and good thoughts, though. We all love her so much and need her to be healthy. Thanks.)

Anyway, all that (except for Grammy's stroke) preceded the lovely climax to my epically crappy week.  One of the worst things was that I was so busy running around, picking up the kids, notifying friends we'd interacted with, giving the kids treatments, picking through hair and cleaning, that I had no time to get my own head checked.  I could practically feel them crawling around on me all day long, which only lent to the barely-below-the-surface panicky feeling that shadowed me.  By the time the vacuum broke, I was done.  Like I said, I cried a little.  Then I took another deep breath and did the following:

Vented on Facebook.
Gave the kids frozen waffles and burritos for dinner because it' all I had in the house.
Put the kids to bed.
Continued laundry.
Finally had husband check my head; he declared me clear of lice.
Disbelieved my husband and called my sister to see if she would come over in the morning to check my head and bring a vacuum.
Gave myself a treatment.
Sat down on the couch.
Remembered that J had a school project due the next day in which he was supposed to demonstrate how to make homemade cheese and bring it in for the class to taste.

And that is how it came to be that at 9:30 at night, on one of my most stressful days in recent memory, I was standing over a stove with a plastic shower cap on, separating curds from whey and pressing it into homemade cheese.

Isn't that a pretty mental picture? It's like I was a twisted version of Little Miss Muffett.

So now it's a new week.  We're off to a much better start. Somehow the boys and myself escaped lice.  I'm sick with a head cold, but I'll take that over lice any day.  My grammy is on the road to recovery, my clients are back in full swing, my kids are well, and hopefully the only memento that remains from the whole lice episode is this blog post and a healthy fear of sharing hats and hairbrushes.

Thanks for listening to my pity party.  Have a good night!