little girls lost

I misplace my children.

Regularly.

First time it ever happened, spawn was almost two, I guess or maybe almost three.  In any case she was in her terrible twos which lasted approximately from 18 months to age 6.  We were at a crowded mall at Christmas.  The store had extra display racks all over the place.  The kid was in a stroller which was impossible to steer even though it was one of those little ones.  And she didn't want to be in the stroller anymore.  She'd made that pretty clear.  Maybe I let her out, could be, I was kinda stupid and sleep-deprived back then or maybe she let herself out.  In any case, she was out.  Out and gone.  I think I watched her climb under a fixture and then I looked away for a second, because I was there to shop after all.  I looked back and she was gone.  I looked for moving racks and annoyed shopper's faces.  Nothing.  Then... PANIC.  Absolute panic.  People every where.  And we were living outside DC where people don't even look at you.  Don't even want to think about what else was unpleasant about DC.  So there I am, stroller, no kid, ready to completely lose all grip on reality.  I had no idea what to do, where to look, who to turn to.  And then this angel man, who clearly was waiting on his wife and bored out of his mind- thank God, tells me that he saw her run out of the store.  I don't know the rest of the story except that I found her and that I still don't take her to the mall.

Let's see.  I lost little loud one one day after a visit to the library.  We came home with books, some might say "of course", but that one is less enthralled with books than the rest of the family, so it really isn't "of course" with her.  In fact one day this summer, I suggested a library visit and she said, "Why would I want to go to the library?  There's nothing there for me."  I nearly cried.  Anyhow, a year or two ago, we went to the library and got books.  I went about my business until I noticed that I didn't hear anything.  Now, not hearing anything when little loud one is around is an indication of trouble.  When she is quiet, she's cutting off her hair, or coloring on the wall, or gone.  First I called her name about a bazillion times. (she never hears the first bazillion -1 times.)  So I started looking.   I looked outside because she's an outdoorsy kiddo.  I'm pretty sure I went to some neighbors and so on.  No sign of her.  So I went up to her room.  She was reading a book, like it was normal.

Last year I lost spawn again.  I'm minding my own business at the end of the school day (wasting my time on the computer) and it occurs to me that I'd had an awful lot of peace.  So I wandered out into the living room.  I surveyed the evidence and realized that spawn was not home.  I knew this because:  no backpack directly in the middle of the floor, no shoes thrown about, no jacket lying willy-nilly.  No way that kid was home.  I can't remember if she had a phone then or not, but it wouldn't matter because neither she nor the spouse ever have it turned on.  I searched brain banks to see if there was some after school activity that I hadn't remembered.  Nope.  Then I figured she must have missed the bus home.  She missed the bus to school every stinking day, so this was not out of the realm of possibility.  So I drove to the middle school and started looking.  For once, the school was deserted.  I started panicking a little bit at this point.  Then I had a brilliant thought.  I called home and little loud one answered the phone (which is actually pretty amazing in itself), and I asked her to check spawn's room.  Yep, you got it.  She was in her room the whole time, and thought I was crazy for misreading the evidence.

Also last year, in the spring, I lost little loud one.  She walks home from school.  It's a block away.  Generally it takes her a half hour to get home, because there are things to see.  Well, I'm waiting. and waiting.  and waiting.  It's more than an hour after the end of school and no little loud one.  I called school, her best friend's house, neighbor's house, looked around the neighborhood, talked to the lady with the fuzzy dog, went to school, exhausted all my ideas.  At this point, I was revving up a panic.  I had some kind of appointment with spawn and I certainly didn't want to go to that with little loud one lost.  I drove around the block one more time.  There she was, standing next to the lady with the fuzzy dog.  The look on my face must have told her what she needed to know because she crossed the street, after looking both ways even, and got in the car without saying one word.  She was covered in mud from head to toe, but I didn't care about that.  It turns out she'd stopped by the house with the garden and a little girl with the same name.  And they were playing.  The mom apologized for not immediately calling me.  Not that I blamed her at all.  For a little while at least, little loud one made it home in under 20 minutes.

This little trip down memory lane is brought to you today by the fact that I lost a kid this afternoon.  Spawn didn't come home from school.  I was waiting for her to call for a ride home because she's too lazy to walk 15 minutes.  I've been ignoring the phone all week, because I'm sick and I just don't feel like getting her.  It's annoying and ridiculous.  So I was studiously avoiding answering the phone today excepting that it didn't ring.  So, I thought for a millisecond (because that's about all the thinking ability I have today.)  I processed the whole list of possible after school activities, nothing seemed right.  I put it out of my mind while I fetched little loud one from the after school activity (that I remembered) and fetched the spouse to solve my computer problems.  Then it hit me, you know after spouse said it, that she was where she was supposed to be. Not home, but at her new church gig.  The one I can't remember because this is only her second week and she still isn't officially signed up for it.

Is there a punchline here?  Probably not.  It shouldn't be this difficult to keep track of two kids.

lowering the bar

I had one of those days yesterday.  One of those days that sets the standards.  Low.
I woke up extra early.  Not exactly sure why.  Maybe it was the time change or maybe it was just a desire to dawdle more.  In any case, I woke up early and then proceeded to be late to work.  Later, in fact, than I was the day before.  It really is pretty hard for me to be late to work.  It's not like I have far to drive or need to be there at some unseemly time.  It's ridiculous that I can't get to work on time.  But there it is.  Late.

One of the kids read me her story.  It was about a lady who croaked and she was going to the feneral (funeral).  She smiled while she read me the story.  Croaked?  Yup.  croaked.  I had nothing.  What the heck do you say to a kid who is smiling when she reads her story about somebody croaking?  That there was a teachable moment.

Then we had our first field trip of the year.  Herding cats in a grocery store.  These varmints can't behave in the cage of our classroom.  I gotta admit I dreaded taking the show on the road.  I had low expectations.  They met them.  I got a big headache.

I did manage to vote.  Yay, me.  But I needed remedial voting instruction since I filled in 5 circles instead of 4.

Let's see.  I'm playing piano for the little munchkin choir.  This may not seem like a big deal, excepting that this is not my thing.  I've accompanied singers exactly twice in my whole life and both times were with one or both of my kids.  The elder spawn is quite skilled at rearranging her singing to match my playing (a skill we have worked on).  That song was short too.  The last time I did this was with both kids and I was so bad that little loud one laughed at me in the middle of the song.  Bad.  Like horrible.  Like colossal failure.  Like when the song was done, I collapsed in a heap of giggles (in the middle of church, in the middle of the service) that lasted pretty much until the end of the service.  And I decided then and there that playing piano while someone sings along was something I could just cross off my bucket list for all eternity.  Apparently eternity only lasted a couple months, because when choir director asked if I would, I didn't say "hell no".  So yesterday's rehearsal went just spectacularly.  Not. Choir director was very kind and didn't explode.  I guess it's a real good thing the kids can sing loudly.  I'm hoping for divine intervention on Sunday.  Or something.

The evening did not improve.  Went to class, quite apathetic.  I needed to deliver a piece of paper 4 feet away.  I crumpled it up and threw it at the recipient.  Professor observed that she'd never had that happen in a grad school class before.  I explained that I was trying to lower the bar.  I did apologize.  And laugh.  And really, that was probably ok.  Then we were making up hypothetical questions to ask the author of this article we'd read- an article that really kinda bugged me.  My contribution was the most unpolitically correct question you could possibly ask.  I do walk of shame.

Class over, I'm walking out with classmate who is also in tonight's class that I skipped last week for spawn's concert.  Classmate instigates discussion of where I was.  I proceed to mention the things I was supposed to do to make up for missing class- that I still haven't done.  Then she tells me that we got out of class an hour early last week anyhow.  This launches my little tirade about how that professor had given the speech about giving us our money's worth and would never let us out early and then she hasn't kept us until 9pm since (not that I'm complaining about that).  I'd forgotten one detail.  Wed. prof teaches a class on Tues. in the same building.  The building I am currently walking out of talking about the professor.  Who is 2 feet behind me.  Who proceeds to walk with me for the next 10 minutes as I'm trying to engage in intelligent conversational smalltalk with very large feet in my mouth. 

I was hoping that she hadn't heard me.  Yea, she did.  Because when she revisited the money's worth speech tonight, she was looking right at me.


The bar is very low.