One of those days

Blinkie by: Pinky Blinkies

Today was just "one of those days," you know? I was up late last night working to get a critical project finished (I wasn't behind; I was brought in late in the game). Which of course lead me to oversleep this morning. So to earn myself some good karma, I decided to let in a truck pulling a trailer who had pulled into the center turn lane. Turns out, he needed to be three more lanes over! Well, if I'd known that, you could have waited! Sheesh. I had to sit there behind him for *two* rounds of the light, with everyone behind me honking (and what precisely would you like me to do about it?!), which is only making me more late. For some reason, DS decided to fuss today about going to daycare; didn't want to get out of the car when we got there, but he was fine once we were in the building (weird child).

Finally get home and the garage won't close. It gets almost all the way down and then goes back up, like it senses something in the way. So I spend 10 minutes outside (driving my neighbors bonkers, I'm sure) watching the garage door go up and down, trying to diagnose the problem. You know the wheels that sit in the track? They are held on by these metal brackets, and one of them has fractured. That is causing the wheel to come out of alignment and tug on the door as it tries to go around the curve. When the door feels the resistance, it goes back up. I have no idea if that is a part that can be replaced (because you know how handy DH and I are (not!)), or if we now need an entirely new door!

Finally make it in the house and turn on my computer, only to discover that a meeting has been scheduled for 9:30 (hey, better than 8:30, or I would have been quite late, seeing as it was now about 9 AM) to discuss the work I had done the previous night, and all I can think is that there must be some major flaws to warrant such a sudden meeting. Did I mention I have PMS, which is making me even more tired and cranky than the lack of sleep can account for? Turns out the meeting was just to review my work and to praise me in front of my boss, which was nice, but the meeting also lead to them asking me if I could do a slightly different version of the same report to facilitate some other project. Sure, I can, but this one took hours to do, and the revamped one will take 4-6 hours by my estimation, and they want it by COB today. That shoots the nap I was planning to take at lunch (hey, I was working last night when I should have been sleeping; I think a little sleep instead of work today is justified). They also ask me to attend another data meeting at 11, further cutting into my time to work on said data today. 11 AM meeting goes fine, except that I keep dozing off. Turns out there wasn't anything I could do, but that was an hour I could have been working.

And since I literally cannot keep my eyes open, I decide take a 20 minute nap for lunch instead of eating. And what happens in those 20 minutes? DH calls to see if I was going to take a nap or if he could go play ball (um, I'm *trying* to nap!), and then the speech therapy lady finally decides to call me back after a week. I can't remember if I've talked about this here, but no one takes our insurance for speech therapy. Apparently, our HMO does not have many they do cover, mostly either the place that doesn't want to treat him if he has any fluid in his ears, or a place that is 25 miles away. I was at least considering the 25-mile away place, until she called today. This is going to sound like a bad joke, but I swear to you, it is true. She has a studder. A bad one. Maybe this makes me a horrible person, but I just cannot send my child to speech therapy with someone who studders! Maybe she is wonderful at her job and I'm missing out, but there just seems to be something *so* wrong with that. Combined with the fact that it is so freakin' far away, and the fact that she only has appointments at 10:30 AM on Tuesdays or Thursdays, which would essentially cost me a 1/2 day of work every week plus interfere with Luke's naps (and if you've ever seen him nap-less, you know why that is *bad*), I just could not say yes. So I guess it is back to Children's Healthcare. Joy.

I finally get the work done right at 4 PM, just in time to go pick up Luke, since DH is playing basketball. Get to daycare and discover a nice purple goose egg on Luke's forehead that no one seems to know anything about. Several separate sources verify that it was not there at 3:30 when they went outside (it is now close to 5), so it must have happened on the playground, but he didn't ever cry (which I really do believe), so no one knew anything about it. Guess that shoots the idea of me getting photos made next week. I am just not up to cooking tonight, so we go to Wendy's, where a group of 8 very hungry men are ahead of us in line and take *forever* to order. We waited 20 minutes in line just to order. While Luke thankfully wasn't fussing, he also didn't want to stand in line, so I was trying to let him wander without him getting into trouble, which was quite an interesting feat, but we managed. He even more or less stayed in his chair (he's decided he doesn't need a high chair at fast food type restaurants now). Get home, and he's upset that DH isn't here, so nothing else will make him happy and he fusses on and off until DH arrives.

Get Luke put to bed, and then go outside to check on the garage door. Our first idea, just removing the wheel/bracket is a disaster. Neither of us noticed that it was supporting the door, so that side buckled as it tried to go down and nearly jammed. Thankfully DH caught it in time. He pushed on that panel while I pushed the button to get it to go back up. Guess it's time to head to Home Depot to see if they sell a replacement part. We were smart enough to check the other brackets, and the one on the exact opposite side from this one is showing the same fatigue. The others seem fine, so I don't know what it is about the next to the top one that is getting all the stress, but it is happening on both sides. (Sometime in here, we notice that the door to the house is open, and we freak out thinking one of the cats got out. Took us a few minutes to find her, but we did.) So that's where we stand. DH is on his way to Home Depot to see if we can find someone who knows what they are doing and can explain it to someone who can barely change a lightbulb (and I say that with all love and affection, because I am exactly the same way). Anyone want to take bets as to whether or not we need a new garage door? Sheesh!

Tomorrow is Friday. DH is home, which means if I am really tired....

LIVE UPDATE!

DH just walked in the door, returning from his trek to Home Depot. They don't sell our brand of garage door opener, but the lady in the garage section had a bucket of spare parts that she flipped through first. Found two new wheel mounts that are the same size and configuration as ours, and she gave them to him for free since they were spare (i.e. not really for sale). Told him to take them home and try them, and if they didn't work, to come back, ask for her, and she'd work on finding some in the parts department that would work. Maybe I did earn a bit of karma today after all. We'll find out shortly. DH is attempting to install them right now.

Anyway, as I was saying, DH is working from home tomorrow, which means if I really need him to, he can take Luke to daycare in the morning and let me sleep. We'll see how I'm feeling. I still have a couple of spare hours to burn, so I see a long lunch somewhere yummy in our future tomorrow. Let's hope it goes better overall.

Sounds like it just might. The garage door is closed! YAY!

Currently feeling: need a break