Where's my brain?

Today I was supposed to take two of my kids to a homeschool co-op. I forgot. It must be my age. That's the only excuse you can get away with now. We didn't even get to bed later than normal (for a Halloween night). But I did have to wake up Holland for school. The bus pulls into our driveway at 8.30. I had to wake him up at 8. Actually, Egypt took care of most of the dirty work. I've had her wake him up before and she usually does a pretty good job. (She tells me I'll be very gentle"). Today she took it upon herself to go wake him up. When she was going up the stairs, I told her to be quiet. "I'm just looking at Molly (the cat) under your bed." Seemed plausible enough. A few minutes later she comes downstairs and complains "Holland won't wake up!" I went up to his room to check it out and he was still curled up on the floor. He still seemed pretty sleepy. But, why shouldn't he be? He had been up at 3, gotten a glass of milk and found my $200 pager which he took up to his room. I pulled it out of his pants pocket (yes, he'd even dressed himself at 3 in the morning). He had switched screen colors and been listening to ring tones. He actually downloaded something before. I didn't find out until a charge for a ringtone showed up on our monthly statement. I told him if he did that again, he'd have to pay for it.

So, you see, I was pretty distracted by all this. Trying to get him ready to go anywhere takes much longer than the 30 minutes we had. Telling him to hurry only aggravates him, sends him into orbit and defeats the whole purpose of getting him ready to leave the house. So, when my phone rang at 9.30 and I saw my sister's cell phone number pop up, I wondered why she wasn't at home responsibly teaching her kids. (my bad) We skipped co-op, stayed home and actually got some school done. I figured it wasn't worth it to get everyone ready (mostly me: sweat pants, no make up, wet hair. Not a pretty picture). Luckily, Egypt was still having diarrhea, so I can always use the excuse that she was still sick and I was just thinking about the other kids in her class. :-)