No Joy in Mudville

Woke up this morning to the sound of thunder and the flash of lightening, and alot of rain. Had that nasty thought of I wish the kids didn't have to drive on Arno Rd from seminary to high school in this kind of weather. So did another mom of a girl who rides with Taryn. Can you tell where this is leading?

Yep. Taryn had an accident today on the way to school after seminary. Everyone is fine. As are all the occupants of the other 3 vehicles who subsequently hit the cars in front of them after Taryn rear-ended the car in front of her. A nice 4 car fender-bender pile up; all high school girl seniors. Even the Principal came out to stand in the parking lot while the Sheriff wrote it all up, which took forever. With the wet road conditions and cars following too closely, plus the stop and go of drop off at middle school combined with students driving into the high school all on a very dangerous road, it is a parent's worst nightmare. What happened is that, apparently, the car in front of Taryn suddenly slammed on her brakes. Taryn did the same but there wasn't time enough to stop and she skidded into the car in front of her. We had to have the volvo towed away with radiator and front end damage. Everyone else's cars just had bumpers scraped or dented. The gold volvo isn't looking too good and Mike wasn't either. Pretty sure the insurance guy won't be smiling at us, his long time clients either.

Since I went straight to the high school and just called the preschool and left a message on the machine, I never got the email that I was needed to sub at Pre-K. And it was picture day, which is a really crazy day at preschool. I got there, just rather late. My director was a tad stressed. Today's Preschool Grab Bag included:

• our school's first (unconfirmed but 90% probable) swine flu
• one minor temper tantrum
• paper mache balloons which had fermented and fell on me and covered my arm in slime that smelled like vomit - and the bathroom smelled all day (gag)
• one child who didn't make it to the bathroom in time. You should have seen the sub who was subbing as me holding the dripping Croc at arm's length. I was all, "let me take care of that and you read the story" and she very quickly agreed.

I was bleaching and lysol-ing like crazy today let me tell you. At the end of the day, I read Froggy Plays In the Band to the kids (I do a great Froggy voice if I don't say so myself). As the kids were cleaning up, I spied the musical instruments and remembered the other day how one of the boys just so happened to have the triangle and as I was reading the same book he was ding-a-ling-alinging it during the band parts which turned into the other kids grabbing some musical instruments to do it too, naturally! So I grabbed the entire music box and passed out drums, jingle bells, cymbals and a bunch of other stuff and instructed the kids in basic choir lady ON/OFF hand movements for noise. They did great! I saw alot of smiling moms watching through the windows. I had a headache all day and it was about all I could take, but it was worth it - they loved being Froggy's Ragtime Band!

Mike meanwhile dealt with the insurance company, and joy of joys, made a phone call to the home warranty company AGAIN because our air conditioner is once again not working. Really? You mean it doesn't have another good 10 years left in it?! Seriously?! I'm amazed.... I'm not sure how many more parts can actually break on that thing, but I'm at the point where I'm like, "break baby break!!!" because I want it to break badly enough that I get a new one. I might run that sucker all winter long. I hope it is unfixable this time. Now we have to wait for the podunk a/c company to respond. They haven't called back and it's been all day, but they technically have 24 hours to respond. Turkeys. They will probably take 22 hrs to respond. But because it's within 90 days of the last time the a/c broke we have to use the same yahoos who came the last time.

Oh yeah, it was a GREAT day! Definitely no joy in Mudville.