Wednesday, March 24, 2010

i'd say call me the white rabbit, but i think rabbits smell bad, so don't

i am somewhat obsessed with promptness.  being made to wait for someone or making someone wait for me i consider to be a serious insult. 

it's not that hard, just get your shit together and get there on time.  which, by the way, is a trick because if you're on time you're already late.

right.

and then i had a baby.

and then i turned thirty and got even slower.

the discomfort i feel with being late unfortunately doesn't lessen even as i know rationally that there's not much i can do about it sometimes.  in one way or another i am aware that my tardiness will affect someone else in an unexpected way, which i always feel guilty about.

this morning, for example, i experienced the perfect storm of incidents that led to my being about a half an hour late for my target date with kristine. 

the landscapers with their multitude of leaf blowers and lawn mowers made such a frightening racket that my silly monster was literally scared shitless.  it took an extra long time and a lot of coaxing to get him to proceed with his morning poop. 

which in turn delayed my shower, and made my coffee cold.

which made me forget that i was carrying coffee (as i tend to be much more careful with it when i know it's scalding hot).

which led to the sublime moment of spilling said coffee on my daughter's head.

which led me to grabbing the first travel mug i saw (after cleaning my poor kid's coffee hair) forgetting that the only clean one was the leaky one.

which led me to proceed to spill the freshly poured coffee down the front of my white shirt. 

but then i remembered that i was going to target where there's a starbuck's.  i knew i could save a few precious minutes by just wearing the coffee shirt and then getting a venti drip at target to walk around with.  anyone who noticed the stain would be sure to see the big ass cup in my hand and think that it must have just happened. 

and because i needed more coffee.

pretty clever, i thought.

and just like that, i have become the ragamuffin mom that i never thought i'd be. 

8 comments:

miss. chief said...

hahahaha this sounds like me every single morning. It's like a whole chain of ridiculous events that begins with me tripping over that computer cord I meant to move last night to spilling hot sauce (?) on my jacket to almost missing the bus.

Logical Libby said...

I hate being late. I also hate getting up in the morning. The two do not mesh -- especially now that I have a baby.

Oh, and today it was 11 before I realized I had a big hand print of formula powder on my shoulder.

Anonymous said...

See, this is what I call "logical thinking". It's calculated and clever and flawless. I mean what's the point in dripping all over a CLEAN shirt? No point. Therefore, I say you are somewhat of a genius!

mo.stoneskin said...

You and me, we're pretty similar I think.

I used to hate being late so much that I would drive my parents mad, get to school stupidly early and really get angry with anyone that was late - irresponsible timekeeping I would say. Then I got married to a girl (strike 1), we had a baby (strike 2), and I'm not sure about strike three but yeah, don't care so much about it now, I've given up.

Harna said...

At the beginning, I was going to say that we could never be real life friends because you'd always want to punch me in the face since I'm almost always late, then towards the end you sounded just like me and I don't even have a child yet. Welcome to fucktardland. It's cool, I've been this way my whole life, but I'm starting to see the charm in it.

MJenks said...

I always woefully underestimate the amount of time it will take for me to get ready.

My wife, however, is a person who doesn't just do prompt, she does "get there early or don't get there at all".

Which is why, all weekend long, I was awakened at 6:30 am. It was rough.

I've also been through the "if I just wear this...they'll think it's something else" phase, too. Hooray parents.

Alyssa Ast said...

I still try to get places on time. But with 2 kids it never works out that way. And a clean shirt, forget it!

Anonymous said...

Wait. You spilled coffee on your kid's head?

And parents yell at me for misgrading their child's paper......

;)