7:35- get up after the snooze, actually slept really well, too bad I didn't go to sleep until 11:30, I might pay for that today. Check my email, read about my sister-in-law’s day which was really interesting. Go up stairs to get Boy #1 ready for school, find out that the reason the house is so cold is that someone turned the heat off on the thermostat, which of course everyone denies. I'm ready to get out the fingerprint kit and do some CSI work, as this is not the first time this has happened.
7:50 - Boy #1 leaves for school. Boy #2 agrees to half of a ham sandwich for breakfast, of which he eats half. (well, the original sandwich was more like 3/4's of a sandwich, but I'm not smart enough to do those fractions.)
9:08-9:45 - Leave a couple minutes late to take Boy #2 and Ammon to school. Drop DH off at work and go to the pet store to buy the replacement filters for Boy #1's fish tank.
9:45-10:00 - Clean out the fish tank, which has been desperately needed for weeks now, change the water, replace the filter, clean the gunk off the sides. It's really not hard work, I don't know why it doesn't get done more frequently.
10:00 - Waste time reading Google News, when that's exhausted I check Audible to see if there is anything new that catches my eye, nope. Head over to Digg because there is always something good to read there. I'm not disappointed, and do that until 11:10. Andrew and Spencer from next door come over to play with Boy #3 while their mom goes shopping.
11:15 - I'm watching an episode of Alias on the laptop while the kids play with the star wars toys downstairs. I am brought two star wars transformers that have been half transformed and they need me to turn it back into a ship. I realize, in my disgust for all things girly, that maybe Polly Pocket isn't as bad as transformers. At least Polly Pocket is self-explanatory - I can't get these stupid things to fit quite right. But the kids are fine with that anyhow.
11;22 - the kids bring me up our lego star wars video game and I notice there is a website on it, so I check it out. It's all done in flash and very graphic and theoretically fun, but all I want is to know when the next one is coming out, so this annoys me. I go back to watching Alias.
11:45 - Kelly comes over to get the twins, mentions she is on her way to the store so I say she can leave her kids if she picks up some groceries for me. She thinks thats a fantastic idea. I continue watching Alias while the kids play on the trampoline and then eat some hot dogs for lunch.
12:15 -12:45- Kelly comes back again right when Boy #2 gets home and takes the twins plus Boy #2 over to her house to play Lego Star Wars on her xbox. It's the sequel to the game we have, and as you know the kids can't get enough of that game. More Alias.
1:30 - Davey (Josh's brother) comes over to be babysat, easily the easiest kid to watch ever. Boy #3 and Davey play nicely for a long time.
2:15 - I am asked to pick up the older kids from school, the first time this school year. I load Davey into Boy #3's carseat and Boy #3 into the booster, which he loves. He also loves locking the door with his toes, so everytime I try to open his door it is locked.
2:30 - I walk in the door and check the phone for messages. Before I can listen to them, the phone rings, the business line. Turns out to be a guy from Denmark who was charged for an order he didn't place. Apparently someone got his paypal info and charged $111 at our store to his account. Yikes. I have to look into this. The guy tells me the phone call is costing him $2 per minute. As if I needed more pressure.
2:40 -3:45- I'm on the phone with Paypal because their website stinks and it's really hard to find what I need. Besides, this feels serious and I want to talk to a real person. When I get to said real person, they won't give me any account-specific information because somehow my name is not on the account. The account that I set up. The account for the company that I half own. The account that I know more about than DH does, because for crying out loud, that's my job. But she tells me the great news that because we sell an "intangible" product, we aren't covered for Seller Protection (which would theoretically pay us for this transaction). Instead, I issue a refund to the poor guy who this happened to, and cancel the sale in our store, so if by any chance the criminal plans on downloading the files (which i doubt) and hasn't yet, he won't be able to.
3:45 - I send some emails to paypal trying to get some fraud resolution, but I'm probably out of luck, meanwhile People's Court is on. Dumb guy opens his door into incoming traffic and sues the driver who hits him.
4:00 - Still dealing with the Paypal issue, flip to Ellen who is listening to messages people leave on her answering machine. Just for kicks, I call her number and sing her my OB tampon commercial jingle that I remember from 7th or 8th grade. I also sing a mean Freedent commercial from about the same time. This is the reason I won't make it to Jeopardy, this is the less-useless information that is taking away from the useless information that Jeopardy requires. I'm only fit for Deal or No Deal now.
5:30- Kelly calls and asks if I want her to take my salad over to the church since she's taking hers right now too. I say sure, and fortunately, I've actually made the salad already. The ward party starts at 6:30, but Boy #1 is at a friends house from school and I can't remember where he lives, and in a stroke of particularly bad parenting, I also don't have their phone number. If this person turns out to be a psycho-child-killer and I'm interviewed on tv and have to admit that yes, I basically had no idea where my son was or who he was with and had no way to get ahold of him, I think they'd put me in jail. I had told Boy #1 to call me so I could pick him up, but that didn't happen.
6:00 - My guilt is assuaged somewhat when the mom of Boy #1's other friend, Jacob, who is with Boy #1 at the unnamed location, calls me to ask if I had the friend's phone number, because she couldn't find where she had written it and couldn't remember where the friend lived either. Which means that if both of our kids are victims, I won't be the only one skewered on national television. She says that she'll drive over there and get the boys and bring them back. A few minutes later Boy #1 calls and I tell him to go home with Jacob's mom and by the way, have Jacob call his mom on her cell phone.
6:30 - Boy #1 is finally home, and I load up the car and head over to get DH from work, and then on to the ward dinner.
6:45 - We're 15 minutes late for the ward dinner, but with mormon standard time, how big a problem can that be? I notice that the parking lot is particularly full, but maybe it always is but we're usually on time and only see it mostly empty. I comment on that and DH says, "Well, it could be because we're so late." I say, We're not that late! And he says "Yeah, it started at 6:00, we're 45 minutes late, I thought you knew that!" So we walk into the completely full cultural hall, where people are polishing off their dessert and I think every single ward member is staring at us. I beg DH to let us just go to McDonalds or something and leave before too many people see what losers we are. But no, here comes a member of the bishopric to greet us, and someone starts clearing off a table, the stake presidency member's wife brings us some silverware (the real kind because they ran out of plastic that everyone else used) and I am too mortified to get anything to eat. Not that the selection was too impressive at this point, but I could not stand to be up in the front of the room with everyone looking at us loading up our plates, so I got food for the kids and just about ran to the table in the back that they've cleared off for us. I really hate being wrong about things, and I really hate being monumentally wrong in front of 200 people. Pride problems? I don't deny it. But I'm so embarrassed and angry (at myself) that I can barely function.
6:55 - The dinner part of the activity is over, the kids are all sent into the RS and Primary rooms for "children's activities" which must mean "let the children run around like crazy animals unsupervised" because that is the de facto scene. The Primary room was more sedate, there were actual adults in there at least temporarily so we took Boy #3 to that room. Boy #1 and #2 can defend themselves just fine, so we let them go where they want.
7:00-8:00 - The adult activities begin which is, like the vast majority of ward adult activities, a getting-to-know-you game. We are at a table with a couple that lives two doors down from us but whose kids are grown so we have just about never spoken to them. (The husband of said couple once got up during priesthood or sunday school to complain about neighborhood kids getting in their yard, which all of us in the cul-de-sac took personally, and some had some really negative feelings about the situation. My kids don't go down there too much so I wasn't so offended.) Turns out they are interesting people. The wife is a seamstress and a fantastic one apparently, she does the dresses for Marie Osmond's dolls and there is a virtual parade of young brides picking up gowns from her.
After about 5 minutes they announce that everyone needs to switch to a new table, and my mood immediately improves because a pile of couples come over to sit with us. You'd think that past, say, high school, the need for some sort of popularity would go away, and while it mostly has, it is still really, really nice to have proof that people like you. Also, it turns out that I was the possessor of an incredibly valuable commodity -I had downloaded the last episode of Heroes from the internet, the episode that was pre-empted by the Trolley Square shootings and no one else had watched. No one ended up taking up my offer to have a copy of the show, but for a few minutes I was the Hero. (Superpower: Being able to call up the missed episode of a show so no one has to get mad at their husband for not being able to remember to tape a show. Maybe not as useful as invisibility, but causes less conflict!)
8:00:30 - Boy #2 is about 30 seconds past his bedtime, which is why he throws a massive fit on the way home. DH (the Pessimist) laments the long drive home and wishes we met at the stake center instead. Long Drive Home: 2-3 minutes, approx. 1 mile. Stake Center: about 15 houses away, 1 1/2 blocks (unless we cut through some backyards) Living in Orem, Utah: Priceless.
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