After having a "melt-down", "oh, woe is me", moment to Butch a week ago, I thought I had it all together again. This was after a week of orthodontic appointments, physical therapy appointments, a "late start" school day and the regular carpool that had me driving someone somewhere every day that week. It takes about an hour and a half of my day for the pick ups and drop offs. Then last Monday happened. Steph called in the morning to let me know that Jordan was sick and Morgan had to work concessions for the cross country meet. Which meant that I would only be picking up the carpool kids. I arrive at 3:15 like usual. The 9th grader, Megan, gets in the front seat, says hello, and proceeds to start texting on her phone. After a minute of so, I ask her if her sister, Julia is coming. She said she didn't know. I asked her to call her mom to find out. Her mom didn't know either, so asked me to drive around to Overbrook to check. Of course, this put me in all the cross country traffic.
Megan went in school to track down her sister. She comes out a few minutes later to tell me that Julia is working concessions with Morgan, and "oh, can they have $10.00 for food?" Now I'm getting more than a little "miffed." Megan gets in the car and immediately calls her mom complaining about how rude her sister is. Just as I'm about to pull into major traffic, I hear her say, "wait, can I even get in the house?" I immediately pulled over to find out what I was going to have to do next. She got off the phone and said that Julia had the house key, so could I pull back around. In my mind, I'm thinking, if one of my girls or grand-girls had caused all this confusion, I would have laid them out! But, since it's not family, I just had to grin and bear it.
I dropped Megan off at home without further ado. Cost me about an extra half hour of my day.
The next day, Steph called to let me know that she was going to work from home since Jordan was still sick. Again, Morgan was staying after school. So, Steph picked up the carpool. I'm off the hook for a day.
Fast forward to today. Morgan calls me as I'm on my way to school. She has a basketball meeting after school, so I'll just have to wait for her and Julia. That was another half hour.
It's going to be a long year....
Pardon my language, but that SUCKS, Mom! I feel sorry for you! I mean it's one thing when you're running your own kids/grandkids, but to run other people's kids...no way! I tried doing a carpool two years ago just for football practice and it was a headache from the start. I was totally being taken advantage of by the other mother and found it to be way more work to carpool than to not. I had no flexibilty whatsoever, and sometimes found myself rushing home to pick up the neighbor when I was already out and could have just dropped Mitchell off. I finally told her that I just couldn't do it any more, and she had the nerve to say to me, "Well, that just isn't going to work for me." EXCUSE ME! It's not my responsibilty to take care of her son! After this comment, I knew I had done the right thing, otherwise I would have been her slave all season. And did I mention that Mitchell and her son were not even friends? This little stint made me realize that I will NEVER carpool again! I do a lot of running with the kids, but at least they're mine and I love them!!!
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