Grown Up Now

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Take the Ride?

Let me begin by saying that this was a roller coaster kind of a day -- well, if a roller coaster only went downhill. For miles. For endless screaming miles. Into wet rain and then lava. And mud. Today was like a roller coaster into mud, very muddy, grumpy, bitchy, horrible muddy mud.

It started out with me finally scoring the new Iphone because I must tell that girl Siri to do my bidding. I'm not yet sure what kind of bidding I will have her do because Apple has yet to invent an actual assistant/housekeeper/cook/driver but if I can get her to say "I love you Picket" at least once a day, I'll be happy. I held it in my hand, all the possibility of me and she, and I was at the top of the tracks, butterfly-tummied happy with  the horizon unbroken (and well organized) in front of me.

Within 20 minutes, I got the second speeding ticket of my entire life. A big fat speeding ticket -- $240. In one of those sneaky bullshit traps where the speed limit drops 20mph JUST BECAUSE OF A TUNNEL. Me and my fellow felons waited there while they ran our numbers. I rolled up the window because well I WAS SITTING IN A TUNNEL and I then I rolled it down because I thought that might look suspicious. I can't explain this, but even though I haven't come close to committing a crime (in about 20 years), I kept thinking he would find a warrant out for me or something. It's sort of the same way I feel when I walk into a church: I'm just waiting for the bolt.

I make it home but not in time to see my daughter's classroom play because I am crawling at a speedy 15 miles per hour which pisses me off to no end because I believe my bladder is shrinking at the same rate that my ass is expanding. And I am pretty sure that cop is following me. But beside my need to pee, I am supposed to be at the "play" to take pictures for a friend who already knew she couldn't make it. So I'm bummed. And bursting.

Once home, I start the rushed process of syncing the phone and getting Siri to make something for me for lunch and before I can exhale, R comes through the door and I realize my minutes of brilliant thinking are numbered. She has another school project. The GFYO and his playdate are soon MIA so phone calls happen and I speed off to find them and sure enough, there they are examining rocks or poop or something not 20 yards from our house. Waste of gas.

Playdate? Oh crap. It dawns on me that B has a game today about FOREVER away and that means we need to get in the car in about 45 minutes. I write a desperate email for a ride, but B is a now a no show too. Something buzzes. Buzzes again. Buzzes. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? I think, checking the oven, the car, the smoke detector until I realize it's the new phone with it's new tone.

She's at school, working at Homework Club and I remind her of the game and that she should come home and that I am trying to score her a ride because her brother has a friend over and --

"Did you get the phone?" she texts.

"Yeah. And a speeding ticket."

She instantly forgets about the "come home" part and the "game part" and is probably blabbing all over Homework Club about her criminal mom, and sure enough, before I hang up the back pack I just tripped over, I am hustling to her school to race her home so the other soccer mom can give her a lift. I am livid and lecture her about time management and obligations and not being the only person in this family and I hit the brake because I am pretty sure I am gunning it and god knows, can you imagine? B is apologetic. She changes in the car, only needs her uniform shirt. She is very fast, I think, when she wants to be.

We wait. We wait. We wait.

Phone rings and naturally that terrifies me because it is a new ringtone and I lurch like I've been tasered and bash my knee on the coffee table, the funny bone part of my knee. "Answer it," I half moan to B, half wail.

"Uh huh," she says, "OK. OK. Yeah, no, no problem. Yeah, here she is."

Doctors appointments, homework club, a new winter soccer schedule and me and that other lovely mom decide that FOREVER is too far away today and after all and what not and good grief and after ten more seconds of commiseration, we decide everything is alright after all: it's just one game. We'll do better next time.

It is not alright for B. She races up the stairs the way twelve year old girls do, punctuating each step with a syllable meant to scar me for life -- "soc - cer - is - the - thing - I - love - the - most - mom - m - m - m" and then she slams her door which I have decided is a language girls are born fluent in. I understand it, that's for sure, and frankly, I kind of regret the lack of doors in my open downstairs.

Thankfully, the GFYO, the playdate and R have run away to the playground and are surely finding dead birds or something gross or whacking each other in the heads with hockey sticks. It's all good. I sit down on the couch with the phone I have suddenly come to resent and I try to change the ringtones to cheer me up.

"Mom?!!" whimpers a voice from upstairs. "Mom?"

Sure enough, B has locked herself in her room with that excellent slam. I debate whether to get there right away or let her sweat it out and I half-smile for the first time since I signed my money away at the Apple store.

I let her out. We talk about the play I missed. She acts out the funniest parts for me and just as the day begins to dip into the black of our new clock, the playdate and R come in. "You need to look at Kipp," says R. "Like now," she says.

He's slugging through the dusk and the backyard, his hand to his forehead, a bloody-less zombie. Giant egg on his forehead. Blue, black, green and I hand him an ice pack, relieved the thing is lurching out and not inward, check his eyeballs, and he says, "Can Playdate stay for dinner?"

R asks if she can go the mall to get her teeth whitened.

B asks Siri, "Who's your mama, Siri?"

I pull the giant, padded bar over my lap. I slam it in. I pull my hair back into a pony tail, because away we go. I bought the ticket. I'm gonna take this goddamn ride, but don't judge me if I am not whipping my arms up in joy all the time. I mean. C'mon. Sometimes this ride blows.

You wanna go again? I do. I will.