HI THERE! WHO'S READY TO CRUSH SOME SHIT TODAY?

lol jk that mug is full of Theraflu, not coffee. 

I don't have the flu (we "believe" in the flu shot around here, because it is the flu shot, not Santa Claus), but some absolutely brutal cold -- or some amalgram of multiple colds from Jason's work, the kids' schools, that field trip to the Maryland Germ Factory Science Center I chaperoned last week -- that will not let me live or breathe or go 10 minutes without coughing up a lung. 

I didn't want to or even intend to chaperone the field trip, because I am really terrible at interacting with other people's children and never know how to handle my pack of charges. ("So you like, go to school? That sucks.") I shoot for being the Cool Chill Mom but instead end up being the Awkward and Ill-Prepared Mom who has terrible Time Management Skills. I forgot to ask about bathroom breaks until we were suddenly in a panicked sprint to find the nearest restroom two floors away; I couldn't find an empty table at lunchtime so we all ended up eating on the floor in a random corner; I nearly lost one child on an elevator, twice. 

All the other chaperones seem to come armed with full first-aid kids and hand sanitizer and sunscreen and extra layers of weather-appropriate clothing and emergency plastic bags for carsickness. Meanwhile, I had to yell at my own child at one point to STOP LICKING THE ACTUAL GODDAMN WALL, OH MY GOD, IKE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING???*

Anyway, I only volunteered to chaperone because I believed I could game the system by waiting to submit the field trip form until the very last minute, by which point all the first-come, first-serve chaperone spots would surely be taken. (But then I could still tell Ike semi-truthfully that I tried to chaperone but wasn't picked, OH WELL!) It's a tactic that's worked for the last two or three field trips but my lucky streak ended when a chaperone canceled at the very last minute and I was asked to fill in. 

Oh. Sure. Yay. 

The morning of the field trip, we were supposed to be at the school no later than 9:15. Since things like "getting places on time" and "leaving the house with clothes on" are not my forte, I woke up at 7 a.m. just to be safe. Things were going smoothly until about 8:45, when all of the following happened:

• Ike, in an effort to show me that yes, he packed his lunch in a brown paper bag as instructed, pulled it our of the fridge and knocked over a (vintage Pyrex!!) bowl of leftover Bernie-O's, which went crashing to the floor, sending bloody canned pasta carnage and shattered (VINTAGE PYREX!!!!!!) glass everywhere. 
• Me, in an effort to pack up Ike's backpack with our lunches and absolutely no other essentials for the day, somehow spilled the entire contents of my water bottle all over the kitchen counter and floor.
• Ezra, in an effort to help, grabbed a not-really-absorbent kitchen towel and pushed the water further across the kitchen counter, over to where my chaperone form and a $7.50 check for the chaperone fee were, destroying them both.
• Me again, after re-printing and re-signing the form and re-writing the check, put them both in Ike's backpack and then discovered that one of the straps was busted and wouldn't adjust to fit my non-tiny-8-year-old hulking shoulders and I needed to move everything to a different backpack.
• Me YET AGAIN, drove everybody halfway to the school before remembering that I'd left the fucking form and the fucking check in Ike's backpack and needed to turn around and go back home. 

We got there around 9:17, but it was fine. The cafeteria had run out of cheese for the brown-bag lunches, so the field trip was delayed on account of...cheese. 

I guess it just wasn't anybody's morning, that morning.

Anyway, I am sick, and yet in just three days approximately 70+ people will be descending on my house. I am in no way, shape, or form prepared for Friendsgiving at this point; I should be cleaning all the things and pre-making hundreds of gougeres instead of sedating my ass with Theraflu. I did -- in either a burst of mania and/or feverish folly -- decide to rearrange all the guest room furniture but then gave up halfway through, thus creating a guest room disaster that did not exist a week ago, just for fun.  

Also, I just found all of these socks under a bookcase:

Why? Why are there so many socks under a bookcase? Why is this happening? And why are some of them toddler-sized socks that I swear to God, I have thrown out 400 million times before? 

I do not know, will likely never know, and am going back to bed. 

*Ike, the child who literally LICKED a goddamn WALL, is so far the only member of the household who hasn't gotten sick. So I guess the lesson here is: Get your flu shot and then also lick some walls.