Downtown Stressland. One ticket, please, express line.

Today has been a FLURRY of homework and insanity.  INSANITY!!!  I had about 30 bazillion hilarious things to write about, but zero is how many I can recall.  I've just spent about 3 hours of my life working on a single logic problem that I finally finished, but I'm not quite sure that it's right.  I'll lose sleep over this, and I know it.  Perhaps I should purchase my ticket to Tylenol PMville instead of Stressland.

As it is, the dreaded ROUTINE has been totally screwed for about, oh four weeks in a row now, and today, I decided I HAVE to get back to it.  Have.to.  I'm driving my family bananas with my whining and ridiculousness.  I wake up in the morning angry with the kids because I haven't slept well in weeks because stuff went insane.

My schedule is supposed to go like this:  Monday, I have off.  The kids' mom takes the Little Man for the day while the Big Man is in school and Eric is at work, and I have 8 GLOOORIOUS hours to myself between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.  This is the time I schedule all of my appointments, wander the local coffee shops, do all the nitty-gritty homework that I need absolute silence for and clean the house in my laundry-day underpants with Lady Gaga blaring from the speakers.  Aaah, Monday.  The best day of the week. 

Tuesdays the Little Man goes to school about 45 minutes away at the YMCA for 4 hours.  These days, I drop him off and stay to work out and shower.  Their water pressure there is to.die.  Then I sit in the quiet part at the Y, have my lunch and do homework until it's time to get him.  It's pretty stress free, and I feel great after working out.  Lately, though, the Big Man had two weeks of fall break off from school, so I had to figure stuff out to do with him instead.  Routine shattered.  Then, the Tuesday he went back to school, I was all excited to get back to it, but then car accident supreme happened.  This is an amusing story.  So, I backed my car into the garage door.  Seriously.  I gotta be some sorta flipping idiot.  Anyway, one evening I was craving mimosas and action flicks, so I rushed outta the house to hit up the Meijer for some cheap champagne and some OJ.  I opened the garage door, got in the car, started to back out, and BAM!  The door was on its way back down!  What the French, Toast?!?!  Needless to say, I didn't get my mimosas.  I stayed out there for a while, staring at the mess of a garage door, mouth agape wondering "Now, how in the heck am I gonna go inside to Eric and 'splain THIS?"  "So, honey? darlin? gorgeous, GORGEOUS man?  Well, we've lived here for a while now, and...uh...you remember the garage?  How the door used to, like, look all nice and straight and, like, close and stuff?  Well, it doesn't anymore..."  Anyway, I took the car to the body shop to have the bumper repainted.  I picked it up at 5 p.m. on a Monday.  The first time I drove it was 8 a.m. the next morning when I took the Little Man to school at the YMCA, all happy to have my car back and my routine restored.  So, we park, and this other dude parks next to me and proceeds to SLAM HIS DOOR INTO MY CAR AND WALK AWAY!  I jumped out and checked, and, dudes, I kid you not, there is a 12 inch by 4 inch scratch of RED PAINT down my door.  The DAY AFTER I picked it up from the body shop.

And seriously, this story gets so much better.

So, I chase the guy into the YMCA, yeah?  He says, "Oh, I didn't realize I hit it."  PFFFF.  What he didn't REALIZE is that we were IN THE CAR when he hit it, so he got caught.  Anyway, so he says he has this son-in-law, and he owns a body shop in Whiteland, so I just need to go down there, and he gives me directions and his insurance information and sends me on my way.  I'm livid.  ROUTINE, DUDE! ROUTINE!!!!!!  So, I put Jim Bob's Whiteland Body Shop in my GPS and head on down 31 the way Duder McDuderson tells me to go.  He says, "Go to the Whiteland stop light and turn left."  I pull up to a light that looks like it's in Whiteland, and my GPS tells me to go RIGHT.  WTF?  So, I turn left anyway, like the guy says, and I look back at the street sign to make sure this is Main St. and look to the side to see if I see Jim's and BAM!  Dudes.....I got in a car accident LOOKING for the body shop, the DAY AFTER I got it out of the body shop.  Thank the good Lord I didn't hurt the lady in front of me, at least not physically.  By the time we both got out of the car, I was in full-on Aspie meltdown mode, and she probably thought I was some sort of lunatic escaped from the local institution.  No wonder she wanted to high-tail it out of there.  I was crying and begging her not to be hurt.  I swear to you, I hit her going about 7.5 miles an hour in my tiny Yaris.  My fiberglass front bumper has a couple of holes in it, but her 1980's steel boat bumper didn't have a ding.  Still, I was positive I had broken her neck with my carelessness and kept crying and squealing like an idiot.  She just wanted to get her Hardee's on and split ASAP.

As it was, I pulled over to recheck my directions and calm down and throw my tantrum in the silence of my own car.  I wasn't even on the right street.  This was not Main St. at all.  I decided old Silver Sneakers from the YMCA was wrong, and I'd follow my GPS.  All the way to Bargersville (hint:  NOT in Whiteland) during some freak October tornado storm.  Who in the crap KNOWS where I ended up.  Some Bargersville government building with the same street address (different town GOOGLE MAPS!) of Jim's Body Shop.  I'm lost, and it's freakin storming like a mofo, tornado sirens are going off, and my routine is SO EFFED, dudes.  I'm hysterical by this time.  As it is, I found my way back to 31, and, oh, look....there's Main St.  In Whiteland.  I find my way to Jim's, and wouldn't you know it?  Jim don't live there no mo'.  The sign's upside down and the building's vacant.  My fist nearly went through ole' Jim's front window.

I stopped by the Golden Chassis Body Shop in Greenwood on my way back to the Y after my THREE-HOUR adventure.  They were able to wipe the red paint off with a little solvent, and you can't even tell anyone ever hit me with their door.  Too bad I now have three gaping holes in my front bumper.

Man, is this blog a novel or what?  It may turn into one.  Like, a real one.  I still haven't decided.  As it is, Wednesday's routine involves making the shopping list and organizing all of my coupons for tomorrow's grocery run, so I'm gonna end the blog and do that.