Where Did My Day Go?

A few quick updates: the youth athletic association that I am coaching for is obviously run by morons. A big group of morons. The disorganization runs far beyond the cheerleading section. And that's all I can really say about that right now, mostly because I'm too annoyed to be able to write halfway intelligently about it. On another topic, I was trolling around on craigslist last night and came across a picture of a penis with a watch on it. I'll address the first part of the sentence -- I'm a troll, except not the live-under-the-bridge kind of troll. Hi, my name is Stephanie and I'm a craigslist troll. About the penis and the wristwatch, I was like, who does that? Who actually puts a watch on their dick and then takes a picture of it? I don't know if he was trying to demonstrate his girth, because a sewing tape measure would have done just fine, or if he was trying to say something else, like, "Heeeeeyyyyy, it's penis time!" Too weird. What a freak.

I've survived the first two days of the children being back to school and I feel like I'm going to die. This will be my first full year of being a single parent, although in previous school years I felt like a single parent but I was also really bitter and angry that another adult was living with me but didn't do much to contribute other than give me guilt trips about why I wasn't doing more. So this will be my first full year of being a single parent who isn't bitter and angry all the time. Although the schedule is killing me, I've enjoyed not being really pissed off about why I'm stuck with everything. Maybe it was me subtracting that other, grown child I was raising?

This has been my schedule for the last two days. I expect that it won't be this hectic on the days when we don't have cheerleading practice. Those will be the days I live for.

5:45     My alarm goes off. Hit the snooze.
5:54     My alarm goes off. Hit the snooze and lay in bed and pretend that some hot guy is laying next to me.
5:57     Get up. Stumble out on the deck and smoke a cigarette.
6:08     Shower.
6:19     Wake the children up.
6:23     Pour a healthy bowl of really sugary cereal for both of them. Go dry my hair.
6:31     Get the first child in the shower. Remind them to wash their hair and their ass with actual soap and shampoo, versus the imaginary soap and shampoo.  Start on my makeup. Tell the other child to go make her bed. This isn't so bad, because the younger daughter has decided that making her bed is a pain in her ass, so she just sleeps on top of the covers every night. I'm down with that. As long as the bed is made in the morning, I don't care where you sleep, as long as it's not in my bed.
6:41     Ask if child in shower has washed hair and ass and am told no, they haven't. Think to myself, what the fuck are you doing, then? Get loud and irate with them, and yell hurry up! Your sister needs to take a shower!
6:42     Get myself dressed.
6:48     March into the children's bathroom and tell the child in the shower to get out now. I don't care what's washed, just get out. Get the other child in the shower and start blow drying the first child's hair. Feel pleased that they actually did manage to touch some kind of soap somewhere on their body when I find a few suds in their hair.
6:53    Still trying to get hair brushed out for drying, because of the drama of tangles. I don't know if she's shampooing her hair with a football cleat, but it sure does seem like it.
6:55    March into the bathroom and tell child in shower to hurry up! We need to go!
6:56    Blow dry hair halfway, because the child's hair is too long for me to want to do the whole job. Tell that child to go get dressed.
7:00    Make sandwiches for lunch. If I was smart, I pre-packed the lunch the night before and all I have to do is slap some PB&J together. Oops, the bread is frozen. Fuck.
7:07    Finish the lunches, tell the other child to get out of the shower. At this point, we've used more water trying to get hair and asses washed than an entire village in Africa will use in an whole week. I'm sure of it. I wonder what the next water bill will look like.
7:09    Dry the other child's hair, tell the child who just got dressed to brush their teeth and put on their shoes.
7:15    All hair is dry. I need a drink at this point. Tell the freshly dried child to go get dressed, and no, you can't wear just underwear to school.
7:16    Smoke another cigarette on the deck and get annoyed that some child is coming out on the deck to bug me. I need some quiet.
7:25   Make my bed, because having a freshly made bed keeps me from getting back in that bitch. 
7:30   Brush my teeth, finish my hair and makeup, put on jewelry.
7:42   Throw backpacks, lunch sacks, water bottles off on children. Tell them to go outside and hurry up!
7:45   On the way to before and after school care. Realize my lunch is sitting on the kitchen counter. Oh, well, I can eat some air for lunch. It's cool.
7:56   Arrive at childcare, rush children in, sign in and then they don't even want to give me a kiss? What the fuck is up with that? All this drama and no kiss for Mommy? You should be grateful you have a Mommy as awesome as me.
8:01   Bolt out of childcare, hop in car and rush to work.
8:18   Traffic is backed up on 95. Fabulous.
8:35   Make it to work five minutes late. I don't really care.
8:35 - 5:05  Try to be productive. Realize around 11:00 I haven't paid my bills yet and still need to clean out my purse. Dump contents of my purse out on my desk and spend 45 minutes sorting through my bills and organizing my purse. Take 25 minutes to go eat lunch in a co-worker's office after I find a can of diet soup in my desk and then eat half of my co-worker's chicken salad. Did I mention I only hang around people who share? Besides, he's on a diet and I'm just doing him a favor by eating some of his food. 2:00 comes and I realize that we'll only have fifteen minutes to eat dinner, so I take another lunch break and run to the grocery store to buy some Lunchables. Because I have just made them Dinnerables.
5:05    Leave work, traffic is backed up on 95. Fabulous again.
5:35    Arrive at childcare, bolt in and rush the children. Hurry up! We've got to be at cheerleading practice in precisely 50 minutes!
5:50   Get home and feed my children a wonderful Dinnerable, tell them that if they want more food after cheerleading practice, they can have some goldfish. Try to negate this in my brain by telling myself that it's okay, you packed totally awesome lunches today.
6:00   Change clothes, check my blog. Get sucked into facebook.
6:20   Rush children out of house, back in the damn car.
6:35   Arrive at cheerleading practice five minutes late. I don't really care.
6:35 - 7: 30   Cheerleading practice. I want to throttle some of these children. My stomach is making funny gurgly noises and feels funny. We need to get the hell out of here and get home because Mommy does not want to use that nasty porta-potty.
7:40    Get kind of testy with older daughter's cheer coach because they've run 10 minutes over on the practice and we have homework to do! That wasn't it at all, Mommy's stomach feels really bad and we need to get the FUCK outta here.
7:42    Realize I won't be able to make it home. Make a mad dash for Food Lion.
7:49    Arrive at Food Lion and goose-step the children inside. I'm pissed at myself at this point for ingesting about two gallons of caffeine today because this is what happens when I drink this much caffeine.
8:05    Emerge from Food Lion, okay, let's hurry up because we need to review homework and Big Brother is on, dammit!
8:15   Arrive home. Review homework and praise older daughter effusively for having the foresight to have gotten it done at childcare.
8:25   Big Brother! Because my priorities are straight!
8:35   Realize I haven't watered the my newly seeded topsoil. Fuck. Run outside during commercial breaks and water the topsoil, though I'm pretty sure I missed a lot because it's dark outside and one of my flood lights is burned out.
8:58   Big Brother is over, I've watered all I'm going to do during commercial breaks, children in the bed.
9:10   Get up from a few minutes of just staring stupidly at the walls.
9:15   Pre-pack lunches.
9:30   Send a few emails.  Troll around on craigslist and alternately stare at facebook.
10:00 Holy shit, where did the day go? Fart around on the internet and pack up book bags. Sort through the bill receipts.
11:10  In bed. Pretend some hot guy is laying next to me. Think about doing it all over again tomorrow and pass out.

At this rate, it'll be December in about a week. I can make it to the summer, I swear I can.