I now know why some species eat their young. More power to them.

Starting at the beginning, B's jeep is refusing to start. It buzzes at us and then tells us to go to hell. So I've been getting up at the crack of dawn driving my husband to work every morning. B kept me up until 3 this morning bitching about how frustrated he is. He said it was because he's impatient that he has to wait until the school year's done when he's looking forward to moving on with his life, but I know it's because he had a horrible day yesterday with some crazy parent shooting him as the messenger so to speak (nutso story, details if one desires them). So because of that, when he has to go to work this morning, I am too stinking tired to wake up and take him, so I let him take my Jeep so N and I can sleep a little longer. I have playgroup this afternoon, and I'll go get the car later. This is important.

In the morning, I wake up when N starts stirring, and we usually go into the living room together. Normally, he runs ahead of me. This is not usually a problem. Today, he darts ahead while I'm getting out of bed. I hear a crash, and then little whimpers, and as I'm going to get him, my kid comes back in to the bedroom with a huge smile on his face, a plastic dolphin, and bloody fingers. I get into the living room, and the glass of grape juice I'd forgotten about the night before is smashed, shards are everywhere, and there's grape juice all over my floor and couch. So I clean his hands up (one tiiiiiiiiiiny little cut), get him out of his grape juice-soaked jammies and diaper, and put him in his high chair for breakfast. I call my mom to come pick us up and take us to the school so we can get the Jeep for this afternoon.

All of the straw-sippy cups are dirty, so I give him one that doesn't have a no spill valve (valves kill his latch) about half full of milk. Normally, this is not a problem. I also give him a spoon and a bowl of applesauce. He was perfection with these items the other night at dinner. As I'm cleaning up the glass and grape juice, I hear "plop.....giggle......plop.....splat....haaaaaaaaaaaaa!....plop." Okay, all of the glass is off of the floor now, and I go back through the dining room (N's in the doorway between the dining room and living rooms), and I see my toddler covered literally from head to toe in applesauce and milk mixture. His spoon is stuck in his mouth, his high chair tray is completely flooded with this stuff, his bowl still has some of his strange soup in it, and there's a three-foot circle in every direction around the highchair of little dollops of millky applesauce. He'd been reaching into the bowl with his hands and dropping handfuls on the floor. It was a small, styrofoam to-go bowl. I didn't realize it held that much. I get N out of the high chair, and got the major clumps off of him and ran to throw a shirt on. No sooner to I enter my bedroom than I hear the pitter patter of little feet and I swear, an evil giggle. The little snot turned off the computer. It's not just pushing the button. You have to push and hold the button for the exactly prescribed amount of seconds, or the damn thing just laughs at you. I am no longer working on anything on the computer.

So my mom's going to be here in 5 minutes, and there is a G-d in heaven because somehow, all of the grape juice and glass is picked up, the sludge wipes off of N in no time flat, and my mom, who sounded in a huge hurry, came in took one look at me, saw the towel on the floor (for the applesauce), took my kid, and started cleaning up the floor, saying she had a few minutes if I wanted to change my shirt. I love my mother.

I go outside to install the spare carseat (a crappy little Evenflo--I hate this thing), and I haven't taken 3 steps before I start smelling natural gas. I get the carseat in, call the gas company, and my mom helps me get N dressed (something akin to dressing an octopus) and put on his shoes while I change my shirt and call the gas company.

After we get the car and come home, the gas company guy is there, and while I'm trying to corral the dogs and keep the kid out of mischief (HA!), N pours a snack bag of barbecue potato chips on the floor and starts eating them. Oh well, at least he's quiet, right? I get the dogs back outside (and now need to change my shirt yet again), the gas company guy says we don't have a gas leak, but the people next door probably do. He leaves, I try to clean up the barbecue chips, and N decides right then, he wants to nurse and go to sleep. He does, and my house is blissfully silent now.

I am not looking at the living room. It will make me cry. He will probably wake up within the next half hour or so, and when he does, we're going to playgroup. He must run some of this energy off, or I'm going to see how fast DHL's service is and send him straight to Drama Queen.