Bad from Beginning to End

This day SUCKED! It sucked so much that I need a gin and tonic IV.

1. I woke up to the sudden realization that my credit card was gone. I had not wanted keep an eye on my purse at my school's picnic last night, so I took the credit card (in case I needed to run to the store for hot dogs or something) and tucked it in among some paperwork in a plastic shopping bag. And of course, at the end of the evening I unpacked the shopping bag and tossed it in the recycling without thinking about the credit card. Si was pissed off, and gave me a lecture. I thought I had better rush to school and dig through the recycling, so I left without breakfast and was three quarters of the way there when I had a sudden memory. Sure enough, I had decided at the last minute to conceal the credit card inside my camera case. There it was, safe and sound. Too far from home to turn around, have my breakfast and read the paper. Got a nice early start at the office,though; and it was such a pleasant place to spend a really long day.

2. Since the AC at our school is on the fritz, my office got hotter and hotter all day, topping out in the 90s by mid afternoon. I ate, like, 5 Popsicles, but still could not stay awake. I melted at my desk, in a torpor that I was unable to shake.

3. At 5 PM I was thoroughly melted, and it was time for me to drive north to the lovely town of Hooper, where Sara was playing in a soccer tournament. Rush hour. Traffic inching along at 10 MPH almost the whole way. Although I left an hour before kick-off, I managed to arrive near the end of the second quarter.

4. Having found my daughter's match, I was finally cool and relaxed on the grass by the field when the whistle blew for half-time. [Let me pause for a minute to say that the guys who are coaching and the soccer-moms who are organizing the tournament are a bit freakish about the whole thing. Lots of self-important striding about and yelling. I am a bad soccer-mom. I mostly sit on the sidelines and daydream, languidly clapping when others clap.] Okay. So the coach's wife yells, "SNACK!" That is the signal for the "snack parent" to produce the sliced oranges that are ubiquitous at Utah kids' soccer half-times. It was not until that exact moment that I remembered that I was the "snack parent", and that my carefully prepared snacks were still in the fridge at Guadalupe Schools back in Salt Lake. Oh, that sick horror, when you realize that you are the forgetter of the snack. The coach at this point is YELLING, "WE NEED FRUIT AND WE NEED IT NOW!" [Um... does this strike anyone else as funny? The coach is like a TV ER doc: "FRUIT! STAT!"] Well, dirty looks at Kate when she has to confess that she has forgotten the snack. The kids didn't care, but of course the parents use this as a measure and a mode of judgement. The coach's wife was digging around, crying, "Is there anything we can use as a snack?"

Not to make excuses for my sorry self, but I have often wondered why we feel it is necessary to feed children during any type of physical activity. Water, of course; but is it necessary for a child to have a snack at half-time, followed by another snack and a sugary drink at the end of the match? How do other children all over the world manage?

Well, I am good at staying cool under pressure. I asked at the hospitality tent where I might find the nearest grocery store. "Wellll, now...." (She wasn't chewing a straw, but it would have been fitting...) "Just go down the road a piece, 'til you come to the Sinclair station, then turn left and go a piece more until you get to the KernsMart." A "piece", as it turns out, is about five miles. I made it there and back with granola bars and drinks in time to watch the last minute of the match.

I stopped by the school on the way home and rescued my original snacks from the fridge. Sara has to play yet another match in Hooper tomorrow. We have snacks to spare.