Mommy and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Mommy really thought it would be a good morning. She had a plan: Blueberry picking. Church office for a 10 minute task. Library. Sam's Club. It felt like a good kid-to-adult activity ratio.

She had snacks packed, water bottles filled and kitchen cleaned up. She had library books ready to go back. On time, no less. The diaper bag was restocked and the blueberry picking buckets were in the van. The kids were dressed, shoes were on or at least in hand.

She was just about to strap Owen into his car seat when the familiar aroma of poop rises from one toddler derriere.

It must have been an omen.

After a pit stop for cash and Diet Coke, they head to the blueberry patch only to find it closed. 

Okay. Mommy can roll with this. They head to the church office.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Danny moans on the way. Of course, you do.

Mommy is a bit flustered already and begins to panic. She can't let him pee his pants; there's no change of clothes for him.  She decides to call her husband and see if they can stop by his office for a pee break on the way to the church. No dice. He's not answering the phone. They pulled up to the church office, which wasn't yet open. Mommy instructs the boy to pee on a tree. Yes, at church. She didn't think God would mind.

The kids play hide and seek in the trees and begin climbing a few of them. Danny breaks a low-hanging limb off the Magnolia tree. Mommy thought God would mind that, so she told him to leave the tree alone. He argues. He heads back toward the tree defiantly. Mommy feels the panic that rises in her chest when her son escalates his defiance. He finally relents. Meanwhile, Owen and Fiona are hanging on and climbing everything they can. Clearly, the kids are in no mood to wait around for the church office to open. And even if she could wait around, they would be too ill behaved for mommy to get a simple 10 minute task taken care of before they destroyed the church's volunteer office.

So they leave. Mommy is 2 for 2 right now. Two tasks undone.

PANIC. Deep breath. Mommy gets twitchy when so many plans fall through. How can these hoodlums not be trusted to behave for 10 minutes?

Just keep moving, she reminds herself. Next stop? The library. Mommy unloads the stroller, the bags of books and the kids. The 2 year old takes one look at the stroller and whines indignantly, "NO."

Great. The last thing mommy needs is to be chasing a 2 year old through the library. After about 10 minutes of chasing, she finally confines him kicking and screaming while they head for the checkout. She reaches into the library bag to find the card.

It's not there. Nor does she have her wallet with her. She leaves the books, trudges back to the car with three kids in tow and trudges back in to have the librarian look up her card with her driver's license.

Okay. Something finally got done. But the kids are melting faster than a Popsicle in Hell and there's still one more stop. Can't skip this one. There is no laundry detergent in the house and sure, mommy could get it at a less inconvenient store, but damned if she'll let the kids keep her from completing her mission. Really, how dare they balk at a morning full of errands when she took them the museum and swimming yesterday. The ingrates.

Mommy is officially pissed. She calls her mother, flustered and not even sure what she wants her mother to do.

They arrive at Sam's Club. Mommy can't find her card. Seriously. But she can't stop now. She just can't.

On the way home from Sam's Club, mommy calls her mother back and she agrees to come watch the little boogers for an hour. Probably to prevent mommy from eating them.