Loser Mommy Chronicles

This afternoon was one of those loser mommy moments. It was an experience where I came face to face with the bumbling, disorganized mom that I am. I promised and re-promised and re-assured CH that I would bring the Greek honey cake to his TAG classroom at exactly 2:15pm. "I'll meet you there," I said more than once.

Well, the Hospitables are here with their youth group and I went down to be part of the ropes course festivities. I lost track of time. I sensed it was close to the time the kids would get home so I headed home. I checked my email, wrote a comment to little-brother-I-never-had mark and then it hit me. Oh crud! It was 2:40.

I grabbed the Greek honey cake from the fridge, drove like a bat out of hell to the school, and hoped the kids would still be in TAG. I screeched into the parking area, ran across the street and ran to the TAG trailer. They were still there! (pant, pant, pant) CH come over to let me in and greeted me with a grin. The look on his face said, "Mom, I still love you, but I knew I should've come up with another solution..."

I bumbled into the classroom, realised I didn't have a knife, any serving utensils nor any napkins. The teacher gave me that great teacher reply, "Yeah...I don't have any in here either." I ran over to the main school building, hoping to break into the cafeteria and was caught running in the hallway by two kindergartners. "Don't tell anyone I'm running in the hall, ok?" I pleaded. They smiled and giggled and then told their teacher somebody's mommy was running in the hall. Thanks a lot, girls.

I opened the door that I thought led to the cafeteria and ended up in the art room. Luckily the art teacher was benevolent and suggested I look for utensils in the teachers' lounge. I ran up the stairs, grabbed a bunch of napkins and a plastic butter knife and headed back to the trailer.

Trying to cut the honey cake with the plastic butter knife was not very successful. The pieces were mishapen and broken into odd pieces, but luckily 5th graders aren't very picky. Everyone loved the honey cake (imagine if they hadn't!) and wanted seconds. The teacher asked, "How long did it take you and your mom to make the cake, CH?" Umm....yeah....he made it with his dad because I don't cook. Mommy fumble #604.

After the cake, the kids were dismissed back to their regular classrooms and I apologized profusely to the kindhearted teacher who probably wonders how my children survive my fumbling parenting. I headed back to the car, ran into good ole Amy and shared my motherhood moment. Thank God she was there.

After the kids were dismissed and in the car, I apologized to CH who said sincerely, "It all worked out ok, Mom. I'm just glad you showed up. At 2:15 when you weren't there, I figured you were just running late like you always are. At 2:30, I started to think you'd forgotten about me. But then at 2:45, there you were. Everyone got their cake and liked it. It was ok, Mom." Yeah, the 2:30 comment is the heart-piercing one.

Ahhh, motherhood.