Last Night

Yesterday was crazy. I have been officially freaking out about the local school budget re-vote. Please don’t tell me not to freak out. That is impossible. A few of us parents started talking about getting together to try to get out “yes” votes, and then they had a meeting that I missed, which is when they decided that I should be the person who speaks to the media. This is about 30% because I’d just written a letter to the editor at the Daily Gazette and about 70% because the people present probably yelled “Not it!” and I was absent and therefore missed that particular competition. I am totally regretting saying that I’d do it because I am way too emotional and worked up about the whole thing, so instead of delivering our key points in a succinct and professional manner, I’m throwing out gems like “If we vote this budget down, all of our kids are going to be screwed”* at the board meeting and starting to get weepy on camera because M would like to play soccer at the high school someday. I am feeling like a bit of a train wreck about the whole thing, although I suppose the media feeds on train wrecks, so I guess that works in my favor, in a warped way. Anyway, I’m feeling awful about the whole thing. Like, nauseated awful. But it’s only a week to go, right?

Sweet J made this lovely sign that is gracing our front yard.

 

Which reminds me, I’ve been delivering signs and magnets, and I am simultaneously feeling guilty about not providing signs to begging neighbors because I don’t have enough and feeling guilty that I still have magnets in my purse, which they are not doing anyone any good. Clearly, I need to calm down.

But I meant to tell you about last night, because after running around like a maniac all day I was scrambling to get dinner on the table so that I could head to the school board meeting  while taking calls from people who were looking for signs. And with about half an hour to go before the board meeting I’d started up the grill (in the rain, yes) and had thrown an errant toy into the garage when I stepped on some glass. Oh, it hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt. Luckily, Cute W was home, and I hopped inside because I didn’t think I could get it out. He went upstairs in search of tweezers, and I followed him, hopping, because I thought he told me to follow him and my brain was not screwed on tightly enough to realize that the reaonable thing to do would be to sit tight and wait for him.

So this piece of glass was all the way in my foot, and it feels much larger when it is puncturing your skin.

Cute W had to do a bit of tweezer digging while I used my labor breathing. It was not so fun. Then I sat for a minute to compose myself and get the bleeding to stop and I went to the bathroom (because you know that if I’m rushing around getting dinner, chances are that I have to go to the bathroom). Then I headed downstairs to look for antibiotic ointment and start working on dinner, and it was only after I’d crossed two different carpet that I realized that I’d started bleeding again. And, at this point, I was truly running quite late and I was hungry and tired and now I was spot-scrubbing my carpets. Which seemed so miserable that. . . you got it! It meant it was time to pull the camera out and take a picture for the blog! And when I went digging into my purse for my camera, the magnets fell out and landed right there next to my bloodstain! I stage things sometimes, but this is how they actually fell. And luckily Cute W had left the piece of glass on my desk as a sort of trophy, so I nabbed that photo, too.

I wrapped my foot with some pressure wrap, scarfed down some food, and hobbled off to the meeting. Where I sounded idiotic. Or maybe not. I think what I said at the meeting was fine, really, but with the tv camera it was the end of the night and I had perhaps answered some things intelligently (or perhaps not) but then of course she was begging for me to lose it and I did. But in my defense, my foot still hurt. And I was very, very tired. And I had to go home and get crackin’ on the KidsOutAndAbout newsletter for this week.

 

*This is, in fact, an actual quote from the board meeting, or at least to the best of my recollection. Key point: yes, I did say “screwed.”