No repeats on this afternoon, please!

Dear 2:10 Version of Myself,

There you stand, making chocolate milk for Maggie and Addie who slept until 2:10, thus ensuring that they had the longest nap possible, but also giving you enough time to get them loaded in the car easily to go get Chloe from school. In a few minutes you're going to put them in the car, along with Chloe's afterschool snacks. You'll get them both in jackets, shoes on all the feet, and you'll even remember the form you need because you need to stop by the doctor's office to get Chloe's TB test checked on the way home. Little do you know the agony, humiliation, disgust, shame and sadness that await you.

A few minutes into the drive, your stomach will start to grumble. By the time you park outside the school, you will be in full fledged gastrointestinal distress. You'll hobble to the kindergarten classroom, and the usual two to three minutes you have to wait for the kindergartners to emerge will stretch into hours. But you'll paste a cheerful smile on your face because even though you're in pretty desperate condition, the way your daughter's face lights up when she sees you, and the fact that she immediately reaches for your hand still bring joy to your heart.

You'll hustle with her to the car, and then sit, and sit, and squirm and squirm as you wait for all the after school traffic to clear. You'll call your husband to try and get your mind off your discomfort, and it helps, but nausea is now building because this nightmare has to leave your body somehow. Somehow, you'll make home. You'll pull into the garage, turn off the car, close the garage door, and tell the kids you'll be back as soon as you can, asking them to please stay in their seats. As you leave the car, unbuckling your belt as fast as you can, Addie will start begging to make a Santa's elf RIGHT NOW. You tell her she has to wait.

After a lengthy visit to the bathroom, you'll emerge feeling somewhat better, but still not totally well. You'll climb back into the driver's seat, open the door, and reopen the garage door. Addie will sobbing in the back seat, hysterical not because she missed you, but because she really needs to make an elf. You'll offer her a snack, then realize your travails in the bathroom are not over yet. You'll toss Addie a snack, close the garage door again, then run back to the water closet.

You'll feel pretty normal after you leave this time. You'll open the garage door yet again, climb in the car, and head for the doctor's office. As you drive, you'll start to smell something awful. You'll wonder if it's something lingering from your bathroom visit, or if it's just in your head, or perhaps something festering somewhere in the car. When you pull up outside the doctor's office, you'll realize it's the third option. When you go to take Addie out of the car, you'll discover that she's covered in her own vomit. While you were being torn apart in the bathroom, she had worked herself up into such a state that she threw-up. Not because she missed you, or because it was dark, but because she wanted to make an elf, RIGHT NOW. Chloe didn't see it happen because it was too dark with the garage door closed and the gloomy gray outside.

You'll have no clothes to change her into, and you can't just take off what she's wearing. You decide to bring her in as she is, because you just want to confirm that Chloe does not have tuberculosis and be done with it. If you miss this check, she'll have to get poked again, and that was enough of an ordeal the first 1 1/2 times. You wipe Addie off as best you can, but with every step you take you are aware of how vile your child smells. Once you are seated in the waiting room, the smell will become overpowering. Addie will ask you to read a book, and you'll agree, because if you are reading, you are not breathing in, and you don't have to smell it. You pray that everyone else in the crowded room is not breathing either, and that the smell is not as bad as you think, and no one is even noticing you. But then you'll realize that you are reading really, really loudly to cover your nervousness, and everyone is paying attention to you anyway.

Fortunately you'll get called back quickly, and you will be helped immediately instead of being shut in a small, warm room. Even the big, open room you are in fills up with stench quickly. You decide not to acknowledge it, and hurry everyone out as soon as you get the papers. Once back in the car, you'll put in a new air freshener and turn the heat off so you have to smell as little as possible. As soon as you get home, you'll strip Addie and immediately begin cleaning the car. You'll be grateful again for your carpet shampooer, but question again why

• Mom's aren't immune to the scent of their own children's vomit
• There are spaces in the car that can accomodate fruit snacks and pieces of cracker but can't allow a vacuum attachment.
• you keep trying to vacuum up Fruity Flakes with the Power Paw attachment on the vacuum. Because even though they are 100% fruit, they will clog it 100% of the time.

It's now 4:30 and the car is clean. I'm sure the incident will come back to haunt you some time in June when the car has been sitting in the sun all day, but for now, you'll have done all you can. I wish I could tell you a way that this all could have been avoided, but alas. All I can tell you is to savor 2:10, and know that by 4:30, it will all be over. I hope.

Love,
4:30 Ruth