I'm back! And, yeah, still the same ...

So it's been a few months. My blog had been on life support and, you probably assumed, died a slow death. I'm here to tell you, reader, that I'm redoubling my efforts to keep my blog up to date. Please accept my apologies for having left you breathless with anticipation.

I'll pick up right at the present, the first glorious day of the first full, beautiful week of summer vacation. I will give you a rundown of the boys' schedules, and you will never believe that I had intended to keep them "relatively free" this summer. Paul is taking a "get ready for kindergarten" summer school class, mostly because I feel strongly that he's not at all (emotionally) ready for kindergarten. I hadn't planned on signing up Ben for any summer school classes ... but then his teacher recommended this great robotics class. I signed up Paul for T-ball, because, hey, he might like it. And I enrolled Ben in kickball and "It's Game Time!" because, man, that sounds fun. Summer school runs Monday through Thursday mornings for the next four weeks. T-ball games are Monday and Wednesday mornings, after summer school, natch. Kickball is Wednesday afternoons, and Ben will partake of game time Friday afternoons. Rounding out our schedule, all three boys take swimming lessons on Saturday mornings.

Honestly, I have the best intentions. I know for a fact that I do not enjoy spending my days driving the boys from one place to the next, and over-scheduling is no good for them either. All I can surmise about how I get myself into these situations is that I develop some sort of amnesia about how much I am indeed undertaking. Summer school? Great! Park and rec activities? Those are such good opportunities for learning sportsmanship and social skills.

As if some kind of divine sign, today, the first day of all the activities, was perfectly awful. I knew Paul would be fretting about starting his class. That's why I roped Mark into dropping him off today. When I called Mark for an update, he said Paul had been weepy and that I probably wanted to get there early (so I'd be waiting for him, not vice versa). While Paul was at school, I had brought Ben to my mom's while I took Gus to drop-in at the Y and went for swim. I ran back to pick up Ben to take him to his class and was supposed to have plenty of time - and I would have had the Clovis parking lot not been a nuthouse. Yes, that's nobody's fault but my own for failing to have foresight. Nevertheless, I flew into a mini road rage trying to get out of the full parking lot and to a spot on the street. I called the driver in front of me an idiot for taking too long to make her move; meanwhile Ben, I'm sure, looked on in horror at my bad behavior.

I reached Paul's classroom at the appointed time, but the door was open already and other parents had begun picking up their children. Paul sat sobbing while an aide patted his back. "He was fine until he thought you were going to be late," she said. Great. I got him calmed down and brought Ben to his class. "These kids all look older than me," Ben worried. I assured him he was in the right place and left with Paul and Gus to run to Shopko to get the boys snacks and drinks before Paul started T-ball. When I was at the store, my cellphone rang, which almost never happens, and I was so surprised that I dropped it on the floor and it stopped ringing. I didn't have time to think about it: we were running late for T-ball.

Once at T-ball, Paul and Gus dropped into their normal, comfortable roles. Paul, watching me like a hawk to make sure I was in sight at all times, Gus, running away from me at every opportunity, ensuring that I would not be in Paul's sight at all times. At one point, I was chasing Gus around, and Paul came to our spot for a drink. I saw him, but he could not see me. "I want you to stay close!" he wailed. In the meantime, Ben came to the field as planned after his class. It turned out that I had gotten the time wrong, that his class wasn't starting until later. The phone call. He had played computer in the lab during the other class, and now he actually had to go to his class.

Ben ran back to the school, and I realized that I didn't know when his class ended. I called Mark and asked him to call the school and figure it out, as I was more than a little frazzled - and still chasing after Gus. He called the school, and the secretary told him that she couldn't help him, that summer school is separate from Clovis. She gave Mark the phone number, and of course it rang and rang. Mark called the Clovis secretary again, and she told him that though the summer school office is ADJACENT to the Clovis office, she couldn't do anything to help. The best thing, she said, would be to come to the office in person to straighten it out. So Mark left work to do just that. Finally, we figured it out. By this time, it was past our normal lunchtime, and Paul, Gus and I were tired and hungry. My mom agreed to pick up Ben after his class, and finally we headed home.

Later, when we were playing outside, Ben accidentally squirted me with the hose. I glared at him and said his name in that just-so way. He burst into tears. When I asked why he was crying, he blurted, "You've been in a bad mood all day! And I didn't like it when you called that person an idiot!" I told him he was right, that I had been in a bad mood all day and tried to explain that I was wrong to call the other person a name, that I was only worried about getting to Paul.

The first day of the first full week of summer, and I had managed to damage Ben, making him witness my bad behavior, and I scarred Paul, when I turned up late and failed to stay in sight. At least Gus was spared. Unless you count all those YouTube videos I let him watch while I prepared supper. (One of them he chose was a "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" that was in some language that sounded to me like a cross between French and Japanese - turns out it was Thai. Do I score some points for making him more cultured?) The summer is young. We'll see if I can manage to do more good than harm.