UMF

Most folks don't like surprises. Not unexpected surprises anyway, if that makes any sense.

And I'm pretty darn sure no one likes "morning surprises". Those little events that throw the rythmn of your day off from the get go, keeping you off balance all day long.

Most folks have a morning routine. A schedule. Maybe even a plan B. And some folks have built in the appropriate amount of slack into their morning to account for foreseable challenges.

For the most part, I feel that I have those bases covered, but for some unkown reason, I keep finding myself falling prey to one particular form of "morning surprise" that I just never seem to prepare for, no matter how many times it bites me. And it really just messes things up, almost always when the morning is nearly going well but the slightest variance will throw it out of whack.

So what is this monstrosity that so torments my mornings when I least expect or need it?


I call it UMF... or "unexpected morning frost". It seems silly, and it's certainly not the worst thing that can go wrong, but man, if you're not thinking about it, and you're falling behind, but you're on the virge of making up the time and getting all caught up with your morning, only to step outside to see that your car is not frost-free... at all. Ugh.

At least if a kid is sick or you get a flat tire or there's an accident on the highway, you can just tell it like it is and it's accepted as a non-mitigatable risk factor (NMRF). But when your windows are frosted over, and you've got to take several minutes to compensate -- subsequently shattering the equilibrium of your day -- what kind of excuse is that? Sorry I'm running behind, sir, my windows were frosty...

Sometimes when I experience UMF, I want to just get back in bed and "eject" from the morning. I forfeit, see you at lunch. Things will be better after lunch, all back in order. But unfortunately I don't live in a fantasy world (most of the time) where the unattended problems of the morning make themselves happy little solved problems by the afternoon without my (at least partial) intervention.

I know that most people will read this and think what a lame story it is, just scrape your windows and move on with life buddy. But from the single parent perspective -- my perspective, when you're struggling some mornings just to get the kiddos out of bed, much less get them fed and ready, sometimes you just don't think to glance outside to check the visibility status of your windshield. And, of course, it's on mornings like today when the "must leave now" point is fast approaching and the kids are still not quite ready, and I think I still might make it out on time because here they come with all of their stuff together, only to step outside and realize immediately... crap. We're not going anywhere.

It's really not that big a deal in the grand scheme of my daily problems, but it throws the day off just enough to give me issues throughout the day, when I already had plenty to begin with.

Now tomorrow, we're expecting a "wintery mix", so I'll therefore expect the possibility of MF/ice and plan for starting the car up early to defrost. No big deal. Even if bad weather related traffic throws off my day, it's still dismissable as an NMRF. Today, however, I was not expecting the frost, and it was the really thick frost that required extra elbow-umph (and time) to clear away.

Thus my rant about UMF. As expected, my whole day felt "off" and I've still yet to feel like I'm back on track. Though the day is about over. Why can't we have cool morning surprises, like UPCL (unexpected piles of cash on the lawn), or KARGU (kids already ready when I get up)?


I hope this is not just a me thing. But I suspect it is.