(a)musings

On Monday, I had one of "those" mornings. I did my entry after walking Geoff to the bus. I got some dishes done. I got some laundry going. I packed his bag for camp so he would have everything he needed when I picked him up from school. I went to the school, got the boy, drove him to camp. I realized when I got there that I'd forgotten his immunization records, a big no-no for any camp going kid. You must have proof of immunizations. So. I drove home. I got the immunization record. I drove back to camp.

I dropped off the document, waved to Geoff, reminded his counselor to put sunscreen on his ears because they stick out and always burn. I hit the road.

I was only 10 minutes later than I'd thought I would be that morning, so I figured, hey -- I'm doing really well with this.

Getting close to I-95, I suddenly believed deep in my heart of hearts that no one remembered (no one being me) to turn off the coffee maker. Because I knew no one would be home until 8pm, I knew I'd better go back and turn it off.

It was off. That was all for nothing. Gah.

Again, I headed towards my office. Getting to I-95, I hopped on the highway and managed to go less than half the distance to the next exit when traffic suddenly came to a complete halt. Oh, hell no. Two lanes closed for the big ongoing nightmarish paving project. FTS, I'm outta here.

I got off at the next exit and decided to head east to Rte 1. I could cruise down Rte 1, and then hit 95 again and continue on my way. Natch.

Just past the Topsfield Fairgrounds, again, traffic ground to a halt. Road construction. Double oh hell no. Detour into the neighborhood to the west. I was behind a nervous nelly who was deathly afraid to venture into the neighborhood and follow the big hugeassed orange signs at any sort of sensible speed, lest she blow past a big arrow telling her which way to go and she'd plummet of the face of the earth or be eaten alive by the aboriginal residents of Topsfield. So we crawled along like turtles. And me cursing her existence.

Eventually, we made it safely back to Rte. 1 and I blasted past Ms. Dingus at about one billion and a half miles per hour. Holy crap... I can't believe I was stuck behind her.

Back on 95, cruising along, 80mph, blasting past that police speed trap just north of Centre Street. Luckily, I was not the rabbit in the pack, and the guy in the other lane going about 10 mph faster than I was got nailed by the wolf. I cruised off the highway and into Peabody. Traffic was bumper to bumper the entire way. I'm cursing myself for even bothering to try and make it to work. Just give up. You'll never get there. By the time you get there it will be time to turn around and go back and get Geoff from camp.

This is how long it took me to get to work:

My 45-50 minute commute took me a hour and 47 minutes.

Today's commute almost had me turning around and heading back home, but for entirely different reasons. I got Geoff to camp on time, and was about 3 minutes from my office when I heard that Steven Page of BNL was making a live in studio appearance at the local radio station up near my house.

Holy Crap!

I slammed on the brakes. I almost spilled my coffee. Do you know the amount of will-power it took to keep me heading towards the office? Do you know the Herculean strength I needed to apply to my body, my feet, my hands, my brain, just to keep from flipping a big fat U-turn to go home, hang out freaking out Fangrrrl style for a couple hours and then going over to the radio station to salivate in the vacant lot across the street?

Believe me -- it was an effort.

Everyone at work was proud of me. G and C both were shocked when they heard him on air and realized that indeed, I was sitting there in the office.

I'm nothing if not messed up in my priorities in life.

And another example of me not having my priorities straight is that I didn't leave work the minute I got there to drive into Boston and go get a wrist band for tonight's in-store appearance by The Vanity Project (aka, Steven Page). I'm a loser. But the wristbands are all gone by now.

"That's all, that's all."

So it was asked of me by a few people: How did Geoff do at his first day of camp.

Well, for a boy who didn't want to be there, he tells me it was "the greatest day of his life." You may recall that he said the exact same thing the day that Aaron took him fishing in North Carolina. So I guess that he now has a new greatest day. Sad but true.

He liked it so much that when Doug went to pick him up, he denied that he was Geoff and said he was "Joe" so that he didn't have to leave. Doug was standing at the pick-up spot, and they radioed for the boy, and the response was 'uh, we don't have a Geoff down here...' there were only a few boys, so they rounded them up and got descriptions. Doug said "yeah, the blonde with glasses." And then Geoff got the royal lecture about telling the truth and yeah we're glad you liked camp so much but you can't go and lie like that because grown ups take it all pretty seriously and the like.

Crazy.

He also came home with a wicked bad sunburn on his back. I asked him if his counselor put sunscreen on him, and he said "Just my ears."

You'll recall at the beginning of this entry that I did indeed instruct the counselor to make sure he got sunscreen on his ears. All he heard, obviously, was "sunscreen" and "ears."

Boys. They crack me up. Rob will probably agree when he reads this that indeed -- yes, boys hear things differently. They do things differently. I called the camp director today and informed him of this fact and he said he'd go over sunscreen safety with the boys... and he thanked me for understanding and not freaking out yelling.

What can I say. I have a boy who does exactly these things.