Murphy

I am a priestess of Murphy, and my god loves me.

"You know what you should do?" Matt said to me about a week ago. "You should take a vacation. Even just a few days off. You need to relax a little."

It was an idea with plenty of appeal. Surely, I thought, surely I can find three days in March that I can take off. Do that cleaning/organizing of the playroom one day, and then spend two days relaxing.

Surely.

So quite naturally, last week, Alex got sick and Matt and I spent pretty much the whole week taking half-days off to take care of him. And he was perfectly fine yesterday, except that it snowed Sunday night and the schools were all closed yesterday, so Matt and I both stayed home to watch the kids. (Both of us because Matt's office is in the middle of trying to get a build to go live -- he wound up working all weekend -- seriously, 12-hour days, which completely sucks, so he couldn't work and keep the kids rounded up.)

So in the last week, I've burned through 22 hours of leave. Hey! That's almost three days!

This morning, I thought we were going to be lucky. Our county is the only county in the entire area that's actually having school on the normal schedule today. Every other county and city is either closed or on a 2-hour delay. And Alex's daycare was open, too. Whoo!

Then Matt discovered that the cat had peed on the carpet sometime during the night. And when I got into the car to drive the kids to school, literally thirty seconds after Matt had backed out of the driveway and headed down the road, I saw that my "Check Engine" light had come on, and my computerized display that usually shows me engine efficiency was set firmly on the screen telling me that the car was broke and I should take it to the shop post-haste.

Sigh.

I drove the kids to school anyway. Got stuck waiting at the railroad tracks for the world's slowest coal train. The daycare teacher suggested checking my gas cap, which I'd heard somewhere else. I tried it, but no dice.

I took Penny to school. She spent the four minutes waiting for the bell whining at me about how she was too tired for school today. And the classroom assistant passed us in the hall as I was giving her a goodbye hug and kiss and told Penny to keep her coat on, because the classroom didn't have heat.

...Faaaaantastic.

Today is not looking like it's going to be my favoritest day ever. Can I get a do-over?

At least Penny got to enjoy the snow.


Edit/Addendum, 12:30pm: Made an appointment for the car, arranged transportation, moved a doctor's appointment that I wasn't going to get to. When I left the office to get my allergy shots and then drop the car off to be fixed... it had spontaneously fixed itself. No warning lights, nothing.

So I called the fixit shop and canceled that appointment, and called my chiropractor and got that appointment back, and my day is back to the more or less even keel on which it started, except for the cat pee on the rug. And the fact that the heat in my office appears to be on the fritz.