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If Alexander were a mother

I went to sleep with wine in my glass, and now there’s wine on my sheets and when I rolled out of my dry, oaked, delightfully dense and aromatic bed this morning I stepped on a Lego batcycle, so by mistake I shouted lots of cuss words, and now my five-year-olds are correctly using the f-word in context, and I could tell it was going to be a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day.

At breakfast, one of my daughters found a pair of cardboard 3-D Elsa glasses in her breakfast cereal box and my other daughter got a code to download a free movie from Amazon video on the back of her breakfast cereal box but I don’t have time to eat breakfast cereal in the morning and all I found in the bottom of my coffee cup was three quarters of a dead moth and a red catnip reindeer.

I’d like to move to Hawaii.

When we got in the car daughter one wanted to listen to the Moana soundtrack and daughter two wanted to hear Kidz Bop Vol. 6,532,742. I said I was over both of those albums. I said I wanted to listen to Gogol Bordello. I said, “if I have to listen to one more overwrought showtoon about the glittercrab or the age appropriate version of ‘Poker Face’ one more time I’m going to hurl in my own lap.” Then, I drove them the 4.2 miles to daycare singing “East Infection” as loud as I could to drown out the sound of their civil disobedience in the back seat.

I could tell it was going to be a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day.

At work, Sitler liked Ferry’s story about turtle relocation better than my story about existential anxiety and the modern mother. At meeting time, he assigned me a story about soy sauce packets. Then he asked me to make sure I conveyed the visceral human emotion surrounding the soy sauce packet issue in our community. I could tell it was going to be a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day.

I could tell because the lottery woman called twice to check on last night’s numbers. She said that she was only ever going to ask for Morrison from now on, because I told her the wrong Treasure Hunt number last time, and she lost out on two dollars thanks to my deliberate and mean-spirited campaign of misinformation. She said the only reason she let Debbie transfer her to me was because Morrison wouldn’t be in until three and she needed to know the numbers now because she had a perm in ten minutes and she did not have time to “pussyfoot around.”

“I hope you never win the lottery,” I thought to myself as I apologized for being a liar and took her pointers on not sucking so much. “I hope the next time you buy a Powerball ticket you get every number right but the ticket immolates itself in your hand in protest of your good fortune and the ashes float all the way across the ocean to Hawaii.”

Ferry got two sausage mcmuffins for his lunch, and Cotton had a really yummy-smelling tupperware container of something homemade for his lunch and Debbie got cheese bread from Little Caesars that smelled like if Heaven and MDMA could get together and produce a lovechild for her lunch. Guess who couldn’t even scrounge together enough change to buy a Mountain Dew and a bottle of Jet Alert for her lunch?

It was a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day.

That’s what it was, because when Debbie offered me a box of peanut m&ms from her candy stash, I took one bite of a red one and cracked my mandibular left second bicuspid on it and Dr. Boger said “come on over and I’ll fix it next week.”

“Next week,” I told Dr. Boger, “I am moving to Hawaii.”

On the way to interview the soy sauce informant, I ran into an eighty-year-old woman from Wisconsin who stopped her Buick in the passing lane of Route 62 north when she saw an Amish buggy headed towards Warren in the opposite two lanes of traffic and thought to watch the pastoral splendor of the scene untroubled by the demands of piloting a 3,362 pound mid-nineties sedan. While we were waiting for the police, I went to give her my insurance information and she yelled at me for talking at a normal volume in an obvious attempt to prevent her from being able to hear the words coming out of my mouth because, apparently, the fact that she was deaf will be my legal defense when my reckless endangerment of the elderly case goes to trial and…

…while I was screaming my policy number directly into the sound processor of her cochlear implant, the cops showed up and cited me for disorderly conduct and careless driving.

“I am having a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day,” I explained to the officer and my “victim.” She still couldn’t hear me, and he asked that I not attempt to communicate with her further until I’d entered a plea with the district magistrate.

So then I went to pick up my kids at daycare and I took them to dinner, because the thought of doing anything but laying face down on my bed and weeping silently to myself was too much to bear at that point, so cooking was clearly out. One daughter ordered chicken fingers with broccoli and juice. The other daughter ordered a corn dog with fries and water. I ordered a bloody steak with a slice of chocolate cheesecake and the largest sangria they were allowed to serve me by law, but the waitress said they were out of cheesecake and she wasn’t allowed to serve meat cooked less than medium well and I said “forget it just bring me the beverage.”

They can serve me an overcooked steak but they can’t make me eat it.

When we finished our meals, I had to take the kids back to the office because I needed my notebook and camera for an early interview the next morning. Before going in I told them that they couldn’t use the rolly chairs to play Viking ship races but they forgot. I asked them to please make sure not to knock anything off of Ferry’s desk and they were as careful as they could be but Viking ship chairs can be unruly and his growler of Mountain Dew may or may not have a little crack in its neck now, which I’ll tell him about in a future column. Wink wink. I also told them that if they’d sit still and behave while I answered an email I’d turn on Disney Junior, but I left the remote where they could reach it and now I’m going to have some explaining to do regarding the 24-hour rental of Real Desperate Housewives on the next satellite bill. I’m sure Patchen will ask me never to bring my children to the workplace again. It’s been a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day.

There was cat puke in the entrance and I hate cat puke.

The president was on TV and I hate the president.

Their baths were too hot, they got soap in their eyes, my life has gone down the drain and my favorite happy yoga pants were too wet, after bathing my children, for me to wear to bed. I love those soft happy yoga pants. They’re like a hug for my legs from the Buddha himself.

Before they went to bed, I had to bounce a fist fight over the Batman pillow and dig a string of Christmas lights from the basement because the night light burned out and they would literally dissolve into a puddle of nothing without a light source by which to misconstrue innocuous shadows as monsters coming out of the closet to consume them.

The cat puked on my pillow, not just in the entrance.

It has been a protracted, relentless, mind-numbing, soul-crushing day.

My aunt texted me to say none of her days are ever like that.

Because she is retired, and lives in Hawaii.

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