My morning, with some background information

Last Thursday, I got home from picking up daughter and taking her to daycare. It was a rainy day, so I'd had my headlights on for the drive home, to be easier seen. When I got out of the car, the "warning" buzzer that is supposed to sound when you have done something you oughtn't (such as leave your keys in the ignition) went off. Unfortunately, it has gone off every time I've opened the door since 2002, so I no longer notice the buzz. This inability to hear the warning allowed me to go inside the house without turning off my headlights. Well, this was a bad thing, because 2 hours later, when it was time for me to go to class, my battery died. Fortunately, I was able to get a jump quickly, but I noticed a rather odd thing - my car started to turn whenever I depressed the clutch - as though the ignition was connected to the clutch and not the key (I've commented on this already). Anyway, things go ok for about a week. Then, yesterday I drive to work. It's been raining, so I turn my headlights on and think to myself that I shouldn't do that because I'll forget to turn them off in the parking garage. So of course I forget. My friend tells me about 90 minutes after I arrive to school that she saw my car's lights on, but this was 5 minutes before class, so I didn't have time to go and turn them off and still get in to class on time. Class is an hour, and then I have another class immediately after for another hour. Result - a total of 3.5 hours where my headlights are on and I can do nothing about it. Then, class gets out, and another friend and I decide to go get some dinner. With school being downtown, we are fortunate enough to be able to walk to the Park Shops and get our meals. Of course, walking meant that I did not go to the parking garage to turn off my headlights. Once we got back to school, we had to do a little reading for Criminal Procedure (still a class I really dig), and then go to class, which lasts for 2 hours. So now I've added to the 3.5 hours a 2 hour break and a 2 hour class. My battery isn't just dead, it's returned from the dead to seek vengeance on me.

I manage to get a jump last night and am able to drive my car home. This morning I go out to start my engine at 7:10 - remember my whole "it starts turning when you depress the clutch?" Yeah, it didn't. I tried to get a jump, but it wouldn't do a thing. By this time I've got about 10 minutes to get The Boy to class, and I also want to get the little boy to daycare where he can have some fun (I realize my day is by this point shot). I move all the kids to the minivan, and drive to The Boy's school, thinking I should have dropped off the little boy first, for efficiency sake. I get to the turn around to turn into The Boy's school parking lot, where I look into a mile's (1.4 km) worth of oncoming traffic lights moving at 20 mph (about 32 kph). I realize that there's no way I'm going to get him dropped off before class starts, so I decide to take the long way around the school back to the apartment complex on the other side where there is a breezeway he can walk through to get to class. This of course takes about as long as the oncoming line of traffic, and by the time I get him there, get through the exit gate because my gate key doesn't work on that side (which I didn't know until today) and get him to the breezeway, he's late for class, and I have to get the van back to the wife who needs to go to work. This is a little problematic, because we have 1 car, the little boy is in his seat waiting to go to daycare and the daughter is in her seat waiting to go to school - usually the bus stop, but that's not going to happen today. As soon as I get out of one side of the complex, my cell phone rings - the wife is trying to figure out why I took her car. I inform her that I'm pulling into the parking lot now to pick her up and take her to work. On our way to dropping her off at work, about 5 minutes before we get there, we hear daughter inform us that "her bunnies are trying to put the nasties out," which apparently means she's gotta poop. We get wife to work about 3 minutes late, but still before the rest of her coworkers, which gives me 27 minutes to get the daughter to school in time, but of course we have to wait for her bunnies to get the nasties out, so by the time we hit the road again, we have about 23 minutes to get her to school. I was rather fortunate getting back to where our apartment is, in that I still had about 7 minutes to get her to class from the intersection nearest our apartment en route to her school. Unfortunately, every stupid driver and every red light had to make its presence felt on the remainder of the trip, and a six minute drive ended up taking us about 16 minutes. Anyway, I get her dropped off to class, and on the way back to the car, I held the little boy like a football and ran as fast as my out of shape legs could take me. He loved that, and actually got mad at me for stopping 20 feet before we reached the car. So I gasped one last breath of pre-death air and chugged the remainder of the way, his head bouncing along in jubilant glee.

Anyway, I get him to daycare relatively unscathed, and then get back home at 8:55, where I got to embark on the wonderful journey that was the rest of my day, but which is quite frankly not what as frenetic as this portion, though still busy and frustrating, but I'll spare y'all the chronicling at this time.

So, how was your morning?