WASTE

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
That is all I can think right now!
I am so frustrated and baffled. Perhaps I am baffled by frustration.
I rushed my sister off the phone, rushed to shower and dress and such and gave Clara the shortest walk I could give so that I could stop by CCI and go get the kid at her school on time. I hiked the twenty-five minute or half an hour (because of all the snow) hike to CCI through treacherous snow and wind and freezing cold. My boots filled up with snow rapidly, as this is an incredible storm we're having. So I got to CCI, picked up what I needed and headed to go pick up Ali on time for once. She came out and we then made the very, very, very slow trip home, which was slow both because of the foot fo snow that kept on coming and Ali`s short legs. And short attention span. ("I want to jump in the snowbanks!" "No, Alieda, let's just go home." "I'm jumping in the snow banks!" "Please can we just go home.")
So, after five huge, snow bank/snowball/falling down-induced blocks of dumb street, we finally got to her house. The front door was locked, and I was freaking out about how if the back door was locked how screwed we would be because I didn't have the key on me. It was open, thankfully.
In we went, and their new puppy doesn't like me much so I couldn't get the leash on it to let it out and I wasn't about to crawl all over the floor to do so, and I'm sure that by now he has peed on the rug, just like last time he wouldn't let me near him. I took off all my stuff and so did Ali and about five minutes later her dad burst through the door and screams hello and Ali goes "daddy!" and I'm like why are you here. I knew this was going to be bad news.
He had intended to pick Ali up today without telling me but I had actually gotten to her school before the bell went for once, so we left right away and I guess he didn't see us leave, and was freaking out that she wasn't at school when he got there and had called like twenty people and it was chaos. So he came home to see if I had picked her up, which I obviously did because nobody had bothered to tell me otherwise because that would make too much sense.
So he had to go calling people and tell them that I had picked her up and that she was alive and well and such, and then he was like alright let's give Callie a ride home.
What he had intended was to pick Ali up and wait for me to arrive a little bit late as usual, and then he would be like oh, you can go home and he'd give me a ride and all would be well and I'd have the night to myself. But that didn't work out the way he'd planned, as I had arrived on time.
So we were trying to get Ali back into her outside clothes so I could leave, and I was in a bad mood because I just hiked all about for an hour for nothing and he was in a bad mood because he thought his daughter was missing and he was stressed and Alieda of course chose today to be disobedient. She wouldn't get her clothes on and was acting out of hand and I was holding my impatience in and her dad was at the end of his rope and being most displeased. Eventually she stuck her head up my coat and I was like "What are you doing!?" because she was totally taking a crotch shot and it was RRRR. And Skip was like hey, and smacked her on the head, not hard, but hard enough to get her attention, which I was coming close to doing. She was just being so dumb.
So Ali finally decided to listen to her outwardly frantic and furious father and the seething, ticking time bomb that was me and we got out to the car.
Then the car got stuck in the driveway.
So, Skip shoveled it out and we got going and finally drove me home, and it was in a boiling silence. I don't think Skip knew why I was mad, so when he asked how everyone's last day before the holidays was I bitterly spat that I had stayed home today. He closed his eyes and sighed.
I felt like the most applicable pathetic fallacy to follow would be a stalling of the car in the middle of the busy streets.
So you walked all the way over here for nothing, he eventually sighed. Yes, I replied stiffly. I was being a bitch, but it was justified. He said he really appreciated me picking her up, and I could tell he felt like a dick, and like he couldn't quite articulate his thoughts, but I knew what he was really saying. I didn't answer.
He paid me for the last two weeks, and gave me ten bucks more than he should have, which was kind of him. But I still don't know why he even came home early.
It was such a waste of time and energy! I freaking walked across town for an hour in the worst blizzard yet with a five year old ADD case for s stupid ten dollar bill. WHY couldn't Skip have just called me and saved me so much strife? I know it was just a bunch of stupid mistakes, just a bunch of unintentional cruelties, but I'm so ANGRY. I know that Ali got a big, fat, long, well-earned lecture from Skip. I hope they have a nice evening together.
I'm going to stay here and drink my spiked egg nog, thank you very much.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.