Grinding to a stop - Absolutely Normal Chaos: My Personal War - (Mom) plus (Five kids) minus (Dad in Iraq) plus (one year) = chaos

Just a quick update while I'm waiting for clothes to finishing washing . . . soccer clothes to be precise (for yet another weekend of soccer tournaments).

Well, I got a call from Andy today. He was in Maine! This after a grueling couple of days, sitting on busses for 12 hours on run ways, etc. etc. and delaying about 3 days his departure from Kuwait. He had stops in Romania and Iceland before getting to Maine. I hadn't heard anything from him via email or phone for days, so I didn't have a clue about what was going on w/ him. Except Wed night (or early morning) at about 1 a.m. he called from Kuwait to tell me that he hadn't left as scheduled. I really don't remember much else from the short conversation -- I had been in the middle of REM sleep and my brain wasn't exactly firing at the moment.

Anyway, got a call from him around 10:30 this morning. He had to cut it short because he was about to board a plane from Maine to Ft. Dix, NJ.

Anastasia and Arianna and I took Rowdy for a bath at a "you wash your pet" type place. Rowdy's gotten to be so calm and well-behaved while getting her bath lately. She doesn't shake off the water until the very end. Also while we were bathing Rowdy, I was getting the oil changed on the minivan at Jiffy Lube a couple of blocks away.

On the way home, we went through the Good Times drive through (burger place -- it's beef that's natural and non-antibiotic, etc) and got us burgers and chicken fingers for Rowdy. I mean, what kind of person gets her pet a meal from a drive through fast food place? Yep -- a wack job.

Well, about 5 min. toward home, Rowdy puked inside the van (and within a few min. had eaten up her vomit in dog-like fashion).

After getting rid of Rowdy at home and having the girls get ready for an afternoon of soccer (and giving the car a quick scrub!), I then rushed to pick Alix up from school in the middle of Denver (35 min. from my house), then Andrew from his school (about 25 min. north and west of Alix's high school in a northen suburb of Denver (Arvada). I had a soccer practice to get Arianna to (4 p.m.) and a game that Anastasia needed to be at (5:30 warm-up).

On the way to Andrew's school, the car started sounding progressively weirder -- high pitched sound and lots of revving of the engine. By the time I was in front of his school picking him up, the car was getting pretty loud w/ it's revving and whining, and the acceleration was veerrrryyy slow. I drive another 5 min., and the car won't push past 20 w/out lots of revving. So, I pull into a Home Depot parking lot, turn off the car and start it up again. Fine. Except when I put it in reverse, it goes nowhere. I turn the car off, look under the hood. There's an odor like cooking fish coming from my car. I turn the car back on, and this time it goes back in reverse fine. When I put it in drive, it doesn't budge. The engine's still on; the car's just not moving. Right then Andy calls me again. I really can't process what he's telling me (I think he says he's at Ft. Dix, but they lost one of his bags (the one w/ all his underwear and changes of clothes) and that at 2 a.m., "they" are going to get everyone up to start perparing for a bus ride to Philly so that he and the others can fly to Fayetteville, NC outside of Ft. Bragg (final destination before home). But I'm barely listening. I just kinda interupt and tell him the car's dead . . . again . . . and I think I need to get it towed and rent a car.

I start the car up again, and it starts moving. So, wishful thinking, my plan is to get it to a car rental place (a couple miles away) and rent a car and get mine towed from there. Reality becomes: about a quarter mile later, I'm pulling over to the side of the road because the car isn't going faster than 15 mph and losing its ability to do even that very rapidly.

I call the car service place which got over $2000 from me last month, and they give me the number to a towing company. I call the towing company and set up the tow. I call my mother-in-law (who was waiting for me in front of a nearby Barnes and Noble, as we planned, so that she could collect Andrew for a picnic w/ friends that evening). She comes out and rescues me and the kids and takes me to a car rental place. I leave the key to my car under the floor mat for the towing guy.

I rent a Nissan Pathfinder for the price of a minivan (they were out of minivans) plus a 5 % discount because I told them my husband's on his way back from Iraq (at least you get some perks out of a year like this!). I load up my rental car w/ all the junk I grabbed from my car and head down to Anastasia's soccer game for her warm-up. She gets there 5 min. early. Miraculously.

That car fiasco started at approx. 4 p.m., and I was down in Littleton watching Anastasia warm-up by 5:30 with a car towed, 3 of my kids distributed to my mother-in-law, a car rented and Friday evening rush hour traffic navigated through. I think it's a record worthy of some note.

Anastasia's team won 2-1.

Oh, the wash is done! I'm going to bed so that I can get up early so I can drop kids off at their respective fields!

I think first thing in the a.m. I'll be needing a stiff java drink.

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