Slow Motion Daydream

Everclear fans might appreciate the title.

Darby had a 3pm soccer game. The plan was for me to meet them at the game, and reclaim the kids from their mother at that time.

My intent for the morning, as non-fun as it would have been, was to partake of the first lawn mowing of the season. Aside from allergies and maybe excessive rain, lawn mowing is one of the few things on the spring yuck-list. Fortunately two of those yuck-factors cannot easily co-exist. It was on and off raining this morning, so the lawn mowing thing had to wait, but that will make my lawn all the more unsightly for next weekend. I prefer to take care of the lawn when I am kid-less, so it will be next Saturday before the opportunity arises again, unless conditions are right enough in the morning while the girls are at Sunday school. But I'll only have an hour instead of two as the girls went to Saturday mass this week, so the timing might not work out when you factor in showering and drive-times.

Anyway, it took me forever to get ready and out the door for Darby's soccer game today. I got at least five phone calls, which always slows things down. And then when I finally got out the door, it was like I was a speedster on the road. I'm not a fast driver in general. I try to keep it within five of the speed limit, and more often than not people are zipping around me. But today -- I don't know if it was the damp ground or what -- everyone, it seemed, was driving through a school zone. It was very strange. A slow driver here and there is par for the course, but it really seemed like everyone was having issues today.

I did make it to Darby's game on time, but I did a terrible thing. You see, at practice on Thursday, half-time snack schedules were handed out, and this week was Darby's snack week. Only, I forgot to get them. The original plan was to go straight from practice on Thursday to get some snacks and then leave them in the car for the game so I wouldn't forget. But I instead went back to work since the girls had gone with their mother and I had a deadline to meet.

The whole forgetting of the snacks thing wouldn't have been too big a deal, had I realize when I first got to the field or soon after, as there is a grocery store in the proximity of the field. However, I did not realize until the second quarter was already underway. Crap. The quarters are ten minutes long, which didn't bode well for a happy ending to the situation. So I booked it to the grocery store, grabbed some snacks and drinks in very short order, but then encountered the no-short-line problem at the check-out counter. Even the 15-items or less line was long (actually, it was the longest). So I picked the seemingly best line and waited for an excruciating few minutes in line (too bad there wasn't self-checkout), only to have the folks in front of me change their mind about paying in cash last minute and whip out the check book. This was followed by me pressing the wrong payment method on the self-swipe credit card reader and thereby having to repeat the process.

So I finally got out of the store, but wouldn't you know it? More really slow cars. What is happening(!?!) was all I could think. And, of course, as luck would have it, half-time was just ending as I parked my car. So after all that craziness, I could have just taken my time, as the snacks became end-of-game snacks after all. But that doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. How graceful a recovery it would have been to have made it back on time. But everyone who knows me knows that I am incapable of graceful recoveries. What was I thinking?

Now, don't go thinking the slowness ended there. After the game, we had less than an hour to have dinner before the girls had to be at church (and since the girls had brunch with their mother, I thought an early dinner was better off than a late one). The girls chose Sonic as their meal preference, so we headed towards the nearest one, but I hadn't considered the area construction in my location selection. Even once we got to Sonic and ordered, it took much longer than usual to get our food. Sonic usually surprises me with their quickness, but of course it wasn't that kind of day. And once we got our food we had neither enough time to eat there and make it to mass, or wait until we got to my father's to eat before the girls headed to mass with their step-grandmother. So we had to eat in the car on the way, which I hate to do, but other choices were unavailable. When we got to my dad's house, Darby had finished her food, Shelby was still eating, and there was less than ten minutes before they had to leave for the church.

While it all did work out in the end, it was a very conflicted day. The simultaneous need for haste while there is only the lack thereof makes for a frustrating experience. In the grand scheme trivial, yes, but at the time it sure seemed like there were forces working against me.