Today was all kinds of not awesome

It didn't start off too badly, what with actually getting my shopping list made in less than four hours and getting to take a shower while the kid was parked in front of the television.  I dropped Liza off at school, ran over to the grocery store and shopped like a bat out of hell, in hopes of a) having something other than month-old cheese and mayonnaise in the fridge for dinner tonight, and b) getting done fast enough to actually accomplish something at home before having to pick up the kid.  I blew through the store like I had rocket fuel for breakfast, then I found the shortest checkout line and I waited ... and waited ... and waited.  Trust me to find the line manned by the four-foot-tall, 90-year-old woman with no urge to hurry and no desire to just type in the damn SKU already, if it didn't scan the first six times, it's not going to change now omg I'm going to kill her keep smiling keep smiling so she won't see it coming.

Ahem.  Despite that delay - did I mention it took 15 minutes for me to check out?  And there was no one in front of me in line?  Gahhhhhh - I managed to find a few minutes to get caught up on computer stuff, but I lost track of time and had to drive a bit faster than usual in order to not be horribly late for Liza's pickup time.  She was the last kid there, of course, and was on the teacher's lap with a paper towel in her mouth and tears in her eyes.  Apparently there had been a miscommunication about exactly who was getting off of the playground see-saw when, which ended with Liza falling off and biting her tongue.  And subsequently drooling blood all down the front of her shirt - you know, the Hanna Andersson shirt that I finally managed to convince her to wear despite her pleas of "But that's the shirt I wore on the letter E day when I threw up all over the floor at school!"  Dude, that was in October.  Get over it.

Or, not.  Guess that shirt really is bad luck.  Here's hoping the blood comes out as easily as the puke did!

My afternoon plans of shopping for more flowers for the yard were shot thanks to Bleedy McSwollentongue, so we went home and nursed her with a popsicle and some cuddles, which seemed to clear things up nicely.  After a while of reading and playing on the couch, it suddenly occurred to me that yesterday was the 10th, which meant today was the 11th (wow!  the intellect involved in making that leap!), and somehow that sounded like the day that Liza was supposed to get her picture taken with the rest of her dance class, but I thought that was on Tuesday?  I shuffled upstairs to check the paperwork, and yes, she needed to be at the studio in costume and full makeup in, um, half an hour.  And I still hadn't altered the dress or hat to actually fit her.  Ulp.

You have never seen someone get a kid ready for a photo shoot so fast in your life.  Into the shower - out of the shower - into a robe - tons of hair gel and bobby pins - add hairpiece to make her bun look less pathetic now that she's got short hair - shorten straps on costume - make hat somewhat close to actually sort of fitting after the fourth alteration - powder/blush/mascara/eyeshadow/lip gloss - find tights and tap shoes - pack extra gel and hairspray and bobby pins - write a check to get a copy of the photo I'm killing myself to get the kid into on time - and, done!

Yes, I drove her to the studio while she was wearing underwear and a bathrobe.  She doesn't own any shirts that open wide enough to get over the Massive Bun of Plastic Hair without messing it up, and there wasn't time to finagle anything remotely clothes-like, so we went for speed.  If only I could have found some really large sunglasses and a very small dog for her to bring with her, she'd have looked very divalicious.  Except the robe is a really pilled polarfleece one I got for $2 at the resale shop ... but I don't think anyone noticed, mainly because they were so shocked that I had actually given in and done Liza's hair the way the Hair Nazi studio owner had decreed.  I have been threatening for weeks to boycott the ugly slicked back bun hairdo - seriously, it took dozens of pins to contain Liza's hair in that style for the 45 minutes I needed to get her to the photo shoot and back, it's not going to work any better when she's got to be in a dance recital for three hours with no adults around to fix it when she decides it's fun to throw herself backwards bunfirst at the floor.  I am very curious what the Hair Nazi would do if we showed up for the recital with her hair pulled away from her face but not up in a bun ... I sort of think the pile of abandoned tap shoes in the studio waiting room is left from previous students who decided to be conscientious objectors to the hair policy.

Yeah, so, anyway ... we pulled up at the studio so fast that I think little cartoon smoke clouds were spurting out from behind our tires, and I had the kid stripped naked and into her costume in about 45 seconds flat.  We got there 10 minutes after we were supposed to show up, but at least 10 minutes before they were scheduled to actually take the picture, and she looked reasonably presentable, so I consider it a success.  The place was a madhouse, and the costume hats are like four feet wide, and I spent the next 15 minutes utterly convinced that she was either going to wipe out some little kid with that hat, or it would get stuck on some parent's coat and rip the fake hair right off of my kid.  But neither happened, so all of that extra hair gel and all those spare bobby pins were for naught.

After her photo we got her into some regular clothes and drove home, where she asked for a snack and then fell asleep face-down on the couch, leaving a Frisbee-sized puddle of drool on the slipcover while I fixed dinner.

And now I'm looking at the list of summer activities I've thought of having Liza try, trying to work out a schedule for that which includes a couple activities on different days but leaves plenty of free time for just hanging out ... it's going to be, um, fun.  I feel like an air traffic controller trying to fit 453 things into five slots, and oh, look, here comes Air Force One.  Because it all sounds fun, and she has actively said she wants to try all of it, and I could sooooo use a break a couple of times a week to actually complete a thought without having to answer 14 versions of "What if?" worst case scenario questions ("But what if Jimmy finds out about my party, and he comes, and HE wants to go on everything first?"  Dude, the party was over a week ago, and Jimmy didn't come, and you got to go on everything first, so just leave it the fuck alone, okay?).  But since I'm not going to be able to fit gymnastics, dance, cheerleading, yoga, swimming lessons, theatre classes, dinosaur classes at the natural history museum, and a summer camp at the Lake Erie Nature Center all into one summer, something's got to give.  

I think it may be my brain.