Schedules

If you are like me, when you lie down in bed each night, you mentally go through the next day's events. You review who has to be where and when, what appointments you have, obligations, fun things, or even just chores that have to be done around the house. I have a PDA that I live by during the work day, but during the summer, my mind is the only calendar I have. So when I went to bed last night, today looked something like this: sleep in very, very late. We had a pretty intense triathlon training workout last night, and when I got home afterwards a little after eight, I was beat. After waking up around 10:00, I was going to eat breakfast, shower, and get the kids ready. Around 11:30, the kids and I were going into my work so I could get a few things done - I have an event at work tomorrow that I had to prepare for. After working, we would stop by Riverview and register Elizabeth for 2nd grade. A friend of mine had mentioned the possibility of her taking her kids to a dollar movie in Kokomo in the afternoon, so I figured the kids and I would also go and take in the movie. We would get home around 4 or 4:30, and I would head out to the garden to pick the corn. If I had enough corn, I was going to freeze it tonight. If I didn't have enough worth the time to freeze, I was going to invite everyone I could think of over to the house for corn on the cob. Then I would do some daily household chores, get the kids a bath, relax for awhile, and then get to bed around 10:30 since I have to go into work tomorrow (day off for training today.) Sounds like a pretty fun, relaxing day, right? Let me tell you how the day actually went. The roofers started working on our roof at 6:30 this morning...right above our bedroom. From 6:30 to 7:00, I sighed loudly, complained to Jason that I couldn't believe they came so early, and "slept" with the pillow over my head. At 7:00 when Jason got up, I sandwiched my head between both of our pillows and enjoyed an hour of sleep until the phone rang. It was a former co-worker of mine needing some information regarding work. Since I was up, I figured I would call the pediatrician - Elizabeth had been complaining of an earache for a few days. They said they could get her in at 10:30. I got up, showered, got the kids up, fed us all breakfast, and we headed to the doctor's office at 10:30. An hour, middle ear infection diagnosis, and two prescriptions later, we headed to Walgreens to get some medicine. That would take 20 minutes to fill. We went home for 20 minutes and did some chores. We went back to Walgreens, picked up the medicine, and drove to Riverview to register (administering the first dose of antibiotics in the parking lot.) After registering (it's now around 1:00,) I start aimlessly driving towards south Marion. Am I going into work? Am I going to the movie? Am I spontaneously going to take the kids shoe shopping for school? Oh, and we haven't eaten lunch yet. My phone rang. It was my friend - no kid friendly movies at the movie theatre. She offered to watch the kids while I went into work. So we hurriedly pulled thru the McDonalds drive thru and headed to her house to drop off the kids. After dropping them off, I went into work, taking the antibiotics in with me because they needed to be refrigerated (NOTE: THIS IS KEY LATER IN THE STORY.) I put the medicine in the refrigerator at work and headed to my office, where I was greeted with 22 new voice mail messages (I had stopped into work on Friday and cleared all other messages.) Due to the nature of my job and the fact that school is starting for one class tomorrow and the other classes in a week, I HAD to return these phone calls. Also, one of the messages was the social worker from our Westview school making sure that I was still planning on sitting at a Head Start table at their open house from 5:30-7:00 tonight. Oops. I had committed to that in May and had completely forgotten (I'm not on PDA time yet.) Well of course I am planning on going, I tell her on a voice mail on her phone. 21 more messages to go. Well, it was going to time wise make sense for me to just stay at work until I had to leave at 5:00 to go to Westview, so I called my friend and she so graciously offered to keep the kids longer. I called Jason, and he was able to pick them up in a timely manner, so the kids were set. I returned all of the phone calls but three when I noticed the clock read 5:15. I hustled out the door and headed to Westview, just in time for the start of the open house. The open house was going well until about 6:40 when I realized I LEFT THE ANTIBIOTIC AT MY OFFICE and the building is locked from the outside at 4:30. Oh, and I am not important enough to have a key to the outside doors. Since Elizabeth was literally crying today due to the pain (and also in the bag with the antibiotic were ear drops to be given at night to numb the ear) I knew I had to get those antibiotics. So I left the open house early and headed back to the office, praying that the night shift custodian would somehow see me to let me in (it's a rather large two story building, it wasn't likely.) I tried the front doors - locked, and no activity. I drove to the basement parking lot, and miraculously, a door was unlocked. I ran upstairs, got the goods, and headed to the car, ready to go home. I was just about home when it clicked in my mind that today was gymnastics sign ups at the gym. So I kept on going straight instead of turning and went to the gym to sign the girls up. As I pulled into the gym parking lot, I could no longer ignore the low fuel light that had been on since heading to Tucker (my work place) from Westview, so after registering the girls, I stopped by the gas station. Just a word of wisdom - it is always good to stay by your car, even if the pump is on automatic. I had planned on filling the tank, and as the gauge reached the 15 gallon mark (I have a 15 gallon tank,) I wondered why the pump wasn't clicking off. At that moment, gas started gushing out of my tank, and I got a foot bath of gasoline. I hoped Jason wasn't planning on a campfire tonight, because a spark would have set my legs on fire. I finally pulled into home around 8:30, settled for a BLT sandwich and some Doritos, and the rest of the night has gone on as planned...except now it is past 10:30.



All of the above to say that I think it is interesting how we, or at least I, plan our days down to the last minute, but in reality, our plans are usually thrown out the window by what life hands us for that day.

I Scream You Scream We All Scream For Ice Cream

It started out as a simple bribe to Elizabeth. I needed to run 30 minutes for triathlon training, and I thought if she went with me and rode her bike, the time would go faster, and she could keep track of time and mileage. The motivator - a dipped ice cream cone from McDonalds. She lobbied for a dipped cone from Dairy Queen (apparently they are better) but McDonalds is closer to our house and cheaper, so she agreed to McDonalds. We set off to the Riverwalk for our training.

The first two miles went pretty smooth, aside from the water bottle falling from her bike basket 1/2 mile in to the run. "No, we can't stop to get it," I told her, because if her bike stops, then the time stops, and then I would have an inaccurate time. At the beginning of the third mile, I was starting to suck wind, and she was complaining that her knees hurt. No time for complaining, I told her, I wanted to finish three miles in less than 30 minutes, and I was just on pace. She was a trooper and coasted across the "finish line" a few seconds ahead of me. After walking a bit to cool down and then sitting on a park bench drinking the water (she rode ahead and picked it up quickly on the way back,) we headed to McDonalds for her reward.

We started at the north McDonalds, just a couple of minutes from home. We coasted up to the speaker to order our cone, only to find a note saying that the drive thru was closed and sorry for the inconvenience. After running three miles, I was not about to go inside to get this cone with sweat dripping off my body. I told Elizabeth, "I guess you will get your Dairy Queen cone after all," and we headed to Dairy Queen, five minutes down the road. We got to Dairy Queen, and apparently Sunday evening is a very popular time for ice cream in Marion. The drive thru was so long that when I turned into the line, the rear of the Jeep was sticking out in the road, blocking the right lane on the bypass. Oops. Luckily, after about 30 seconds the line moved, and we got out of traffic. However, there were still 7 or 8 cars ahead of us, so I told Elizabeth we would back out of line and head to the south McDonalds. We got to the south McDonalds, and I was happy to see the drive thru was empty and in working order. "I would like 1 chocolate dipped cone, please," I pleasantly ordered into the speaker. The voice on the other side said, "I'm sorry, we are all out of ice cream tonight." "What, you are all out of ice cream?" "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said. I told him we would not be ordering, and in disbelief, we drove on out. "Well, Elizabeth, I guess you will have to settle for a Frosty." So we headed into Wendy's, and without a hitch, we ordered a vanilla frosty for Elizabeth (and a chocolate one for Anna, I guess she was the big winner in this because originally she was not going to get a dipped cone,) and headed home.

Funny thing is, as I looked at our training schedule for tomorrow, I noticed I had made a mistake. We were supposed to run 45 minutes, not 30 minutes, and had I known about the 45 minutes, I would not have taken Elizabeth with me, knowing that she probably wouldn't last 45 minutes on the bike. Then we wouldn't have had our ice cream chase. But then I also wouldn't have had our conversation on the bench about second grade, and our Fall Break Disneyworld trip, and her birthday plans (which at the moment include Chuck E. Cheese,) and she wouldn't have had the proud opportunity to shout out to passer byers at the park that "We're training for a triathlon." So all in all, it worked out pretty good, for tonight at least. I probably won't be thinking that as I tack on 15 minutes of running to the 25 minute swim and 45 minute bike tomorrow.