Yesterday was my birthday. In honor of this, I had decided to forgo errands and chores to treat myself. After dropping the kids off at preschool I was going to have a pedicure/manicure. If you know me well, then you know that if I was wealthy and had lots of money to toss around there are two things I would do (after helping the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the sick, of course.). Number one is that I would have a professional clean my house every week and number two is that I would have a pedi/mani while she was doing it. How thrilling it would be to have beautiful nails and a clean house all at the same time!
I was pretty excited because I haven’t had a pedicure or a manicure since LAST summer. Back before kids, when I had extra time and extra money, I would get a pedicure and a manicure usually once a week in the summer. I have been doing my nails myself since then but it is a poor substitute to the massaging, trimming, filing, clipping and painting that they do at the nail salon.
Unfortunately things didn’t go quite as I had planned yesterday morning. Sarah, who normally skips into school without even looking back to wave goodbye, refused to go. I had to drag her into the car. Now I know what they mean by “kicking and screaming” because she was doing a lot of both. And she was doing that annoying limp body thing that kids do that meant my 35-pounder felt more like 135 pounds.
She cried and whined all the way to school. So much so that Peter was yelling, “Stop it! Be quiet! Shut up!” My head started to throb a little. This isn’t going to go well, I thought and began to panic a little, sensing that my pedi/mani might be at risk. When it was our turn at drop-off, Peter jumped out of the car, excited to be away from the whining rumbling noise that was coming out of his sister. When the preschool director unbuckled Sarah and tried to take her from her car seat, Sarah let out a howl. The preschool director had a shocked and puzzled look on her face. Sarah then proceeded to climb from the backseat over the console and into my LAP. I calmly smiled and told the preschool director that I would just park and bring her in myself. She had a relieved look on her face since the other cars in the drop-off line were beginning to back up.
I dragged her all the way to her classroom. I was getting lots of pitying looks from parents who had successfully dropped their kids off. I wanted to shout at them, “She’s not normally like this! She likes school! Don’t look at me like that!” But I just calmly smiled at them and marched into the 3-year-old classroom.
When I got to her classroom I talked to her teacher who informed me that there had been an “incident” on Tuesday that she had learned about on Wednesday. Apparently on Wednesday (since she didn’t witness the “incident” herself) she gave the whole class a lecture about how we don’t spit on our friends. We think that since Sarah was the "spitter" and not the "spittee" she knew that the lecture was being directed at her. We decided that she was worried that she was going to get in trouble at school again the next day so she was putting up a fight.
After learning about all this and sitting through circle time with a clingy, whining girl attached to my lap, I told Sarah we were going home. I gave Sarah my own long lecture about spitting when we got outside. She tried to defend herself by saying that the other girl was taking her toys. I told her that we still don’t spit and oh, by the way….you are going to school on Tuesday no matter how hard you scream or cry! She agreed and trotted happily to the car.
My pedi/mani didn’t happen yesterday morning. Instead Sarah and I did the dishes, folded laundry and made pudding. Not exactly the plans I had for the morning of the 38th birthday but that’s what we did. Later that afternoon my friend Jennifer (jennwa to those that know her well!) surprised me with a gift certificate to a local spa for…a manicure! I was very excited and very caught off guard! So I’m getting my manicure after all! I just wonder if Jennifer would mind cleaning my house while I’m getting it?
4 comments:
Happy Birthday a day late! I'm sorry it didn't go as planned but now, by using the gift cert for the manicure, you recoup some of the $ you had to shuck out for that black-handled cawfee pot. I would have done the same thing you did, by the way. How does Target get away with being SO much higher, though?
I hope your day yesterday ended up way better than it started. Hugs - M
Happy Birthday! Let me get this straight: your anniversary and birthday are both in the same week, right? That's a lot of celebrating! Our anniversary and David's birthday are both in June, but they are separated by three weeks. Poor Joshua's birthday is the week before Christmas.
I don't suppose it would surprise you to know that I have never had a manicure or pedicure. I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself if I did! I guess I really shouldn't broadcast that to, you know, the whole internet! That was sweet of Jennifer to surprise you like that. She is a really thoughtful and generous person. :)
Well happy birthday even though things didn't go as planned. I remember being sick on my 28th birthday and being terribly depressed about the whole thing.
Happy super belated birthday Beth! I'm catching up on my post-reading, I'm so sorry that I missed it!
My birthday is 10 days after Ariana's, so you can imagine how it was 2 years ago when I had just had her and was still carrying at least 40 extra pounds, plus I was hurting everywhere and was very sleep deprived...But, I celebrated it with the best little gift God could ever give me :)
I used to be big on celebrating my birthday, nowadays, I'm happy with a little bit of alone/relaxing time and CAKE!
Post a Comment