Monday, July 26, 2010

Friday Night Fail

This may come as quite a surprise to some people, but believe it or not, there are times when I screw up. Sometimes it's a minor thing like forgetting to start the dishwasher, going an extra day without watering the flowers or allowing the bananas to get a little too brown. But sometimes, it's pretty significant. Kind of like Friday night.

1. I'm Going Blind: Charlie had a tennis tournament this past weekend and, as usual, I checked the draws after they were posted on Wednesday to find out the times for his first matches. After seeing that his first round singles match was at 8:00 on Friday night and doubles was at noon on Saturday, I started planning out my weekend. I checked the draws again on Thursday, just to make sure that nothing had been changed and saw that it was still scheduled for 8:00.

Friday evening rolls around and just as I am about to start making some pasta (water just coming to a boil, veggies chopped, but nothing actually touching a hot pan yet) the phone rings. It was Charlie's buddy, who was playing at 6:00. "Um, hi Mrs. Adkins. I'm at the tournament and looking at the draws that are hanging on the wall and it says that Charlie plays at 6:00, not 8:00." Since I try to refrain from shouting obscenities at 12-year-olds that are only trying to help, I simply said "Oh, thank you for calling Sam. We'll be there as soon as possible."

Maybe now is when I should tell you that when the phone rang, it was 5:26. And we live a half hour away from the location of the tournament when there is no traffic and it isn't rush hour on a Friday evening.

Dammit all to hell shit balls anyway.

Fortunately, Charlie was already dressed in tennis stuff since he had already been playing at the club earlier in the day, and his bag was ready to go. I pushed the pot of boiling water to the back of the stove, switched off the burner, told Zach to keep an eye on his sister, and Doug, Charlie and I jumped in the car. Because I do not enjoy experiencing the repercussions of my idiocy, I was NOT going to let my kid be late or even have to deal with a two game penalty. I was going to make it! Sure enough, we hit mostly green lights, weaved our way through some construction traffic, tried to remain calm, swore at a few drivers, told Charlie to take a lot of deep breaths, and pulled up to the gates. At 5:59:52.

I knew there was no reason to panic. I knew all along that we would make it.

2. Burning Down The House: After we parked the car and Charlie was on the court warming up for his match, I sat down and called Zach to see if, since I ran out of the house without making anything besides a pot of hot water for dinner, he wanted me to order a pizza. He asked me what happened, why was the match time listed wrong? I said oops my bad, I made a mistake and must have read the draws wrong and it was scheduled for 6:00 all along. He said hmmm, isn't that interesting. I wonder how that could have happened. Man, Charlie almost had to default because of you. You really read it wrong? I said hey little turd, I called to see if you wanted a pizza, not to listen to you criticize me. I WAS WRONG, OKAY!? He said oh sorry, yes pepperoni would be great.

I ended the phone call by giving an angry finger poke to "end conversation" and told Doug that I can't believe I was about to order a pizza for a kid that just ripped on me and tried to make me feel bad! He said "Are you kidding? He's been waiting forever for an opportunity like this!" And I thought, no not really, because I screwed up an early morning match time back in February, too. Maybe that was different, though, because that day happened to coincide with my birthday.

Anyway, two minutes later, Zach sent me a text and instead of it saying "Sorry mom, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, ur the best mom in the whole world," it said "The burner is still on. Should I turn it off?" I said well, yeah. He sent another message that said "The house is kind of smoky 2." I was about to reply with a "Why would the house b smoky, what did u put on the burner?" when I remembered...I had just put olive oil in a saute pan to cook the chopped vegetables when the phone rang, and must have turned the burner on too! Oh my god! I left a pan of olive oil, and nothing else, on a hot burner and bolted out of my house! Someone is going to jump out of the bushes and strap a sash on me that says "Worst Mom of the Year"!

Fortunately, the burner was only set to medium heat and we had only been gone a half-hour (thanks to my Andretti-like driving skills) so no smoke detectors had went off, which would have sent Zach and Zoe into a complete panic and would have triggered an entirely different set of text messages. So instead of my original message of "why would the house be smoky" I simply told him to carefully slide the fire hazard to another burner, crack a door open, please don't call child protective services, and Mom = Fail.

Oh, and Charlie won his match in straight sets.

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