It's been one of those...

 {image source from here}

This is going to be one of those posts that will be as confusing and confounding as my day. Are you ready for the ride?

Alright. I'm assuming you've made the jump and are properly hanging on for dear life as I lay out my day for you. This day has completely derailed all my lovely best laid plans.

In my picture perfect world, morning rolls around, I leap from bed and skip down the stairs. I make a wonderful filling hot breakfast for my children to start their day off right for school and we're out the door on time. The kids are delivered to school and I have a few hours all to myself.  I can start my day by having a slightly fancy schmancy breakfast at the Cliffhanger (pictured above) with my husband and go on to construct a wonderful blog post about any one of the gajillion ideas I have. I might even take advantage of the gorgeous sun and run out to the New Forest to shoot amazing pictures of wild ponies running free. Not that they're usually running. Rather it's more like they're grazing, slowly, while leaving large steaming piles behind them as they go.

The reality went something more like this. 

I reluctantly and heavily rolled out of bed and blearily stumbled my way downstairs. I couldn't be bothered with actual cooking. Apparently, my kids had high expectations for a yummy warm breakfast, just like the one I'd imagined making them. The idea of cold cereal left them unsettled and they began a disorganized riot. Disastrous whiny lumps of unmotivated children rolled all over the floor and furniture as they lifted the heaviest clothes in the world and put them on with immense effort. We barely got out of the door by the skin of our teeth with only a remote shot of being on time. Two streets down the road I realized my gas light was on.

{image source here}

I had no idea how long it'd been on and there was no fuel station on the way to either school.

I drove past my oldest son's school because they have a very unreasonable drop off and pick up policy for which we were too early for. You must be waiting outside the doors of his classroom at 8:50. Not 8:49, not 8:51. 8:50.

At 8:50, the teacher unlocks the door to the classroom and herds the children in stampede style before shutting and locking back up.

 On top of this bizarre drop off policy they have no parking lot. There's a limited amount of curb side parking in front of the school and a small bit on neighbourhood side streets. Finding a legal parking space can be a challenge at best. My youngest son's school on the other hand, has multiple parking lots. It's like parking heaven and you're given a generous 30 minute window to drop off your child.

By the time we returned to drop off my older son, there was no parking, a traffic jam that would do Chicago, L.A. or Seattle proud, and my car was sucking vapors. Let's skip the part where I now felt compelled to fuel up because I refuse to park illegally and I feel near claustrophobic in this traffic jam. I managed to get my son dropped at school, my husband is still in the car sort of shell shocked from the experience, and I set out determined to salvage this morning by breakfasting at The Cliffhanger.

{Cliffhanger images from here}

I would typically have photos of my experience here but I forgot both my camera and my cell phone this frantic morning. I ordered a cappuccino and scrambled eggs with smoked salmon. I never in a million years could have predicted what dish I was actually going to get. My cappuccino was tepid and watery and my scrambled eggs reminded me of those faux eggs I used to get served in the Navy. The hard scrambled eggs were buried under an ice cold mountain of more smoked salmon than I could eat in a year. My toast was burnt but cold and the bricks of butter would've taken a flame thrower to thaw out to a point where they were spreadable. There are some days where I feel like I can take on the world and complaining about this food would've been a minor thing. At this point though, I no longer felt like I could take on a gnat let alone complain about my food. It was a disappointment because normally, the food is pretty good and you can't beat the scenery. 

There are a myriad of other small things that managed to go haywire but I will leave you all with this final anecdote of my afternoon. In the self-interest of personal hygiene, I decided to brush my teeth before picking up my older son from school. I thought I'd be clever and clean the toilet at the same time. I applied the cleaning stuff to the toilet to let it soak, washed my hands, and began giving my teeth some serious scrub love. I followed that up with a great big mouth of good ol' Listerine.

With the Listerine still in my mouth, I go over to scrub the hell out of that toilet. Somehow in my exuberant scrubbing I managed to find and fling poop on my own face. If that's not enough to convey the type of day I had, I will remind you that I had a mouthful of Listerine at the time and subsequently almost snorted/choked on it all. 

I sincerely hope your day was better than mine.