By Diana's blog | July 07, 2010 at 09:56 PM EDT | No Comments
Some days you feel like a higher power is testing you. I always have great anxiety about getting places on time. Not because I am OCD or neurotic. Its because I have to transport so many people and things all the time. Take this morning....I get up extra early to make sure that I can leave on time to drop off one child at camp A and two other children at camp B before work. Of course camp B will not let you drop them off before 8:30. I am supposed to be at work at 8:00am.
I get them all in the car and am backing out the driveway when one son remembers that he left something crucial at home. OK...go back and get the item. Start out again. Hit every red light imaginable and then things start to pick up until....the train tracks. Oh yes, a train was passing in front of me and I was the first one in the line. Soon lots of people were behind me. So I calm myself down and just wait for the endless train to go by. Except that this train stops. Not just for a minute or two, but the whole train just stops and doesn't move. After about 10 minutes, I frantically start trying to back up enough to go on another road.
Of course, since there are so many cars behind me this is no easy feat. But the other drivers know that I have nothing to lose. I am an angry, overwraught mom in a minivan, a Toyota no less, who is late to get her kids to camp and herself to work. The minivan is old and has scratches, so I have no qualms about using my finely honed Boston driving skills to drive over grassy medians to get where I am going. I must have that trapped animal look because the cars behind me start to all back up so that I can get out.
Since my GPS was stolen, I had to rely on my backward sense of direction to get to this camp which I had only been to once before. This causes me to go way out of my way, getting more nervous as the clock ticks away. I finally outsmart the train and go 7 miles out of my way to get to the camp. Despite the fact that my son is 12, I still have to get out of the car and sign him in. Ahhhhh. So I sign him in, bid him farewell and hop back into the car with the other two children.
Off to camp number two. Which of course is in the opposite direction of both camp one and where I need to go. This camp has a road that leads to it with lots and lots of speed bumps. It is the only time in life when I wish I had a hummer so I could steamroll over them. Instead I steamroll over them and the entire car vibrates and seems to lose pieces along the way. Finally after practically ejecting the kids, I can begin my commute.
Needless to say, but the time I get to work, I am an emotional wreck. Where I work, parking is scarce. You have a choice of the very limited parking lot which is the bottom floor of a larger parking structure. There are lots of columns all over that are painted red, and whoever painted the parking lines on the uneven ground obviously thought that only motorcycles park there. They are so close together, that I swear they are right on top of each other in one single line. And being that this is Texas, half the cars are pickup trucks.
So I suck in my stomach as I am parking between the huge truck and the concrete pole hoping not to further damage my car. I fit in, but can't really open the door to get out. So I gently touch the car next to me and hope that they have the same color paint. I squeeze out of the door, reminding me that I need to lose weight, and go into work.
Phew, I need a nap and a massage. No such luck. But I survived the crazy commute for another day, even if I am inexcusably late.