evening chaos, thermos, and perpetually late me

My weeknight evenings are rarely calm and serene.  There's typically dashing in and out the door, dropping a kid here or there, squishing someone's dinner into a thermos, and trying to catch some part of someone's sporting event.  Thursday promised to be no different.

Coach worked late.  Curly had dancing class from 6-8:30.  Coach sometimes picks her up from dancing on Mon and Wed when class ends at 9:00.  Ed and Tank had away volleyball games not far from the Irish dancing studio.  Score!  Meanwhile, Reg walked home from track practice.  My mom agreed to pick up Mini and her BFF from badminton.

At drop-off in the morning, one dad said that they wouldn't be there to get their kids until after 4:15, which is fine - it just meant I would not be able to see Tank's whole volleyball game.  For some reason that escapes me, I cannot be ready to walk out the door the minute all of the kids are collected.  The dad ended up getting his kids before 4:00, so if I had my act together - well, I could have been ready to go.  In theory.  I spent the whole 25 minute drive to Tank's game frustrated with myself.  Why can I not be ready when the kiddos vamoose?

Problems?  1.  Dinner -rarely started early enough.  2.  Me being me.  3.  Messy counters that didn't start to tick me off until 4:00 when I noticed how gross they were.  4.  Inability to wave my magic wand and make time stand still.  .

Have I ever shared a picture of this Irish
 dance bag?  I made it for Curly.  It is like
 a duffel bag with a letter 'M' on it - her
real-life initial.  I even sewed a zipper
 in it - no easy task any non-sewing
types out there.  Plus here is her regular
thermos and my ceramic dish with a lid that
doesn't really keep food warm, but
 I'm a mom - so I am accustomed
to eating cold food.

Curly, her dinner thermos and her dancing shoe bag, and me and my dinner and my iPad (in case I had time to write something.  Someone might wisely call my 'iPad at the ready' - ironic, or foreshadowing or something)  raced to the away game, leaving the house at 4:45 - his game started at 4:30.  We missed all of Tank's game.

And then?  We watched Ed's team warm up forever, which would have been a perfect time to run to dance class but it was too early and no one would have been there.  Instead, we had to leave Ed's exciting game to drive to dancing.  I returned a bit later, but missed the end of that set where Ed scored the point to put us in extra points.  (Not sure how you say that.  I don't speak volleyball, ask me stuff about water polo- now that is my forte).

So my down-the-street-from-dancing-class night that seemed so aha-the-stars-have-aligned-and-life-isn't-totally-inconvenient was not turning out to be so 'oh I will just get there, see that, drop her there, and be back to see that - ish' at all . . . which was frustrating - (how long is this sentence, or are we calling it stream of consciousness) but so as not to be long-winded, even though that too is my forte, I will leave you hanging until I describe the next chapter in my oh-so frustrating evening.