Oh man did I ever have a bad case of the Mondays.

First of all, it was Monday. I always find it hard to get back into the groove of things on Monday. The writing was on the wall at 7:00 a.m. at work when I knocked my coffee grains all over the common kitchen - do you know how hard it is to pick that shit up without a broom? And without a coffee in your system to deal with what just went down?

Work is, well challenging these days, and that Monday proved that challenging would be amped to shitshow. And I'll just leave it at that.

When I went to pick the girls up at daycare I was greeted not with hugs but rather a chorus of awwwws, what's for dinner and general crankiness (I guess kids can get the Mondays as well). Here's where it really gets high drama. Remember how mild it was last Monday? Well, the schoolyard had been cordoned off due to severe slushy conditions. Edie wanted to go play, and I said no. But I didn't say no quickly enough because she ran off into the slushy yonder, which was knee deep for her (yup, knee deep in icy slush) and she promptly lost a boot in it. Grace tried to help, but she also fell victim to the slush. I had to meander out there in my fancy work boots and rescue them. It felt like the last hour of the Titanic, only no cute Leo Dicaprio was helping me out. I had to carry Edie to the minivan, and Grace heroically carried both backpacks and Edie's sopping wet boot.

Could it get worse? You betcha! You know how your trunk allows you a certain amount of clearance so you don't smash your head on it when you stand up (too quickly due to mild rage)? Yeah, well mine decided not to go up all the way up for some reason and my head was punished for all the sins I have committed throughout my life.

So, into the safety of the car. Kids strapped in, check (Edie I suspect is mildly hypothermic at this point but I can easily distract her by shoving a Leapster in her hand....we call it a DS for 4 year olds, heh heh, she doesn't really get the difference yet). Anyhoooo, for all you mini-van drivers out there, did you pimp yours out with a "Magic Button"? The one that open and closes one of the back doors so you don't have to, god forbid, shut it yourself? We did, and loved it for years until the first week of January, when we had our car safetied, and the door was deemed unsafe (it was working fine for us), so we had to fork out much dollars to fix it. Yeah right, fix it. That Monday, when Grace pressed the Magic Button to seal us into our happy place, the door, shut. Then opened. Then shut again, then opened again. It took on a life of its own and seemed to be teasing me "Wanna go home, go ahead, oh! Hold On! Not yet! Now go, haha! Whoops! Not just yet little lady!" When I finally found the master switch and shut the beast of a door down, Grace started to cry a bit, worried that the door would open and expel her onto the road. Then Edie remembered that her foot was cold. Then I remembered that my head hurt and my feet were cold. I kept my tears in (I was close to the edge), reassured Grace (an emergency tootsie pop may have been involved) and drove off.

When we got home, I took a deep breath and ordered everyone out of their wet clothes and into some cozy jammies. Awesome. The worst part of the day was over. Time for bonding over a nice meal and cuddles on the couch. The girls scampered to their rooms and Edie called out to me. She needed help with her jammies. She lay on her bed, froggy style. I leaned over her to tickle her (god I’m an idiot). This kid loves a good tickle and reacts with her whole body. See where I’m going with this? One little poke in her armpit propelled her little tiny feet straight into my teeth up into my nose with the force of Hercules. I was okay, nothing broken, the chicklets felt a little tender, as did the nose, but no long-term damage.

It was at this point I let myself cry.