anyway, my point is, if i don't have enough wiggle-room in my schedule, things feel chaotic. obviously the first thing to go is housework. then the house is a mess, we have no clean clothes, and being at home just feels stressful. case in point: last night. the house was already a disaster since i was gone last weekend and hadn't done laundry since the beginning of time. joe was gone overnight for work on wednesday night and was going to get back in town and go straight to his broomball game last night. i have once-a-month cooking club with my girlfriends the first thursday of the month, where we each cook a dish based around a chosen theme and get together at one of our houses. well, since that was last night and i was single-momming-it, i kind of knew it'd be a lot. i hadn't gotten to the grocery store to get the ingredients for my stuffed peppers. so i got off work at 4, ran to cub to get the stuff i needed for my dish, went and picked up bennett from daycare, and drove home. by then it was almost 5:30 and i needed to make my dish (which i didn't realize needed to bake for AN HOUR), feed ben, get everything in the car and get to shoreview by 6:30pm, which is about a 15 minute drive. at this point i should've thought to myself, hmmm, that doesn't add up. but instead i thought, you got this.
i so did not have this.
ben pretty much started fussing the second we got home. i kept saying "ohh buddy, you're ok" while frantically trying to dodge dirty dishes, hollow out the peppers, make the filling, and heat up ben's food since he needed to eat by 6. he was clearly not ok and seemed to resent the fact that i kept saying he was. fussing turned into crying. i burned the couscous. i dropped bennett's sweet potatoes. blended basil sauce splattered on the counter. things were not going well and i was becoming increasingly flustered. i got ben fed, but he was starting to sense my raising anxiety, considering it was 6:20 and i was nowhere near ready to go. so, despite a full belly, he started fussing again. i got the half-cooked peppers out of the oven and put the baking dish in a tray, covered it with foil, and brought it out to the car (yes, i did burn my hand, in case you were wondering. of course i did.). i grabbed ben's bottle for later that night and put it in the diaper bag and put that in the car. i got ben in the carseat and then put him in the car, too. at that point i realized i didn't know where my keys or phone were. story of my life.
for the next 10 minutes i desperately searched the house and my car for my keys and phone. ben started screaming. i almost did too. needless to say, my lady speedstick was not cutting it. finally, 7pm and in tears, i gave up. i got ben out of the car, went inside, and pulled him out of the carseat for a hug. i needed it. apparently so did he because he instantly calmed down. i sent one of the girls an iMessage from my iPad (since i still hadn't found my phone) and just gave a short explanation of why i wasn't there and that i wasn't coming. once i resigned myself to that, i started to relax. honestly, bennett didn't stop smiling the rest of the night.
i eventually found both my keys and phone in the trunk of my car. obviously that's where they'd be. i must've set them there while grabbing the groceries.
so, that was a long-winded example of why i need to stop trying to do too much. i should've texted my friends and said i couldn't make it days before. or told them i could come but probably wouldn't have time to make a dish. or prepped the dish the night before. or pretty much anything besides what i did.
you'd think i'd learn my lesson. i've been making plans for the weekend all day. let the chaos ensue.
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