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Friday, November 30, 2007

Is It Really Almost Over?

Today is the last day of November, meaning that it's my last post for NoBloPoMo! So I am planning on taking a break for a week or two. I'm totally kidding. Truth be told, while I think I've come close to posting every day in previous months, I don't think I've ever officially blogged every day for a whole month before. I takes solace in the fact that not every day is an embarrasing adventure in motherhood for me! My little confession is that if I hadn't been pariticipating in NoBloPoMo this month, I probably would've posted a lot less than usual just because this month has been stressful. I'm glad that I stuck with it. Tomorrow I'm excited to be hosting one of my favorite bloggers and email friends, Jodi for the Blog Exchange.

Of course how could I not end NoBloPomo without a story about yet another item that I did not learn from the hospital manual for new parents or any of my parenting magazines: the pick up/dropoff line at preschool. I love the pickup/drop off line at my older son's (OS) preschool because it means that I can, if need be, throw my coat over my pjs, a hat over my unwashed unbrushed hair and maybe a pair of sunglasses so no one recognizes me when I'm driving, and drop OS off at school. Even when I am dressed to the nines (hypothetically), I love that I don't have to take my younger son (YS) in and out of the car when I take OS to and from preschool.

The preschool assigns pickup/dropoff times by class. They say it's better to be 5 minutes late than 5 minutes early. I like to get to places early, so this one isn't intuitive to me. The reasoning is that if you get there early, you get into another class's line and then can subsequently hold up the line if your child's class isn't outside waiting. I usually am in one of four modes when I go through the line:
  1. Unkempt and in my pjs because I just woke up
  2. Unkempt and unshowered in my workout clothes so I can go straight to the Y, but looking like I just woke up
  3. Neatly dressed in my uniform of jeans and a v-neck t-shirt and wearing a little make-up and trying to give the illusion that I am a" with it" organized mother who did not just wake up
  4. Praying the my car won't run out of gas in the pickup/dropoff line. (Note that this fourth option can be combined with options 1, 2, or 3)

These four things all have one thing in common: I don't want to draw attention to myself. Hey, I pull out the big guns, which of course means pretending to be Tyne Daley's character from Judging Amy, for important events in my life: Kids birthday parties and gatherings that include more than 10 people (or on a truly bad day, more than 2). That is why I was completely mortified when I messed up the preschool pick-up line today. I don't know how it happened because I left the house a little later than usual and there wasn't any increased speeding going on, but I got to the school early. Things weren't helped by the fact that the class was running slightly late and was still playing outside.

No problem. I just pulled over to the side. Two other moms from my son's class pulled up behind me. Except that other cars got there and instead of going around us (seriously there was a ton of room and everyone always just pulls over to the side when they're early so it's pretty standard to just go around them. Wait that's something else not in the magazines!) they stopped behind me. Pretty soon, the whole line was backed up. Feeling I had no other choice (and also because my gas gauge had dropped me into pickup line mode 4 from the list above), I pulled forward and ended up being first in line for the pick up line followed by the other two moms from OS's class. Nice, except that I totally screwed up and managed to get the three of us in front of some of the other people whose pick up time was before ours. Of course there just had to be about 4 teachers watching what I was doing, so of course I felt the need to explain what had just happened as they were rushing to catch up with the delayed line. Ugh! The good news, is that at least I didn't run out of gas.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: If whole parking lot of people witness a snafu, then it truly is an embarrassing moment. As always, it's really NOT a good idea to drive around with the gas tank almost empty.

Labels: ,

posted by Alex Elliot @ 7:05 PM   3 comments
3 Comments:

  • At 11/30/2007 10:58 PM, Blogger super des said…

    It sounds like you did the right thing by getting out of the way.
    Those other people forced you to be first in line because they copied you.
    :)

     

  • At 11/30/2007 11:06 PM, Blogger FENICLE said…

    Yes, good idea to get out of the way. Craziness!!!

    (I came over from Jodifur!)

     

  • At 11/30/2007 11:06 PM, Blogger Suzanne said…

    Sounds like a good morning. At least you feel good knowing that gas is a full 48 cents cheaper per gallon by you than by me. Although I happen to have free gas right now as I type this...

     
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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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