All About FAILing

Remember last post, when I said I wanted to write a little something every day? Well, FAIL on that as it is now November 5, and I'm four days late on the every day thing. Due to that, and a recently-given-but-undeserved nickname of Mother Teresa, I decided that this post would be about failing miserably. Here are ten things I have failed at in the last week alone. And there's more! I am just limiting this to ten so we don't all get too depressed.

1. Jack-o-lanterns. FAIL. I did not take the kids to the pumpkin patch this year, nor did I even buy pumpkins during a grocery run. (Mainly because there haven't BEEN any grocery runs - see #3 below) Hence, we had none to carve this year. About 4 pm on Halloween, Ethan goes, "Hey, we haven't carved pumpkins this year!" to which I braced myself and replied "Sorry, but we don't have any this year...", expecting a mini-meltdown at this breach of tradition. Instead, the kids just said, "OK" and moved on. So is it a FAIL if nobody cares? Yes, because I have no pumpkin patch pictures for this year's scrapbook. (Which I am also failing at because I am 4 years behind on scrapbooks.)

2. House cleaning. FAIL. Something smells in my kitchen (finally figured out it was high time to take the compost pail to the composter in the back yard), I can't even take a shower in the Master bathroom because it's so slimy and disgusting in there, the dining room table is covered with papers ready to file, and there are baskets of laundry in various stages of cleanliness. Sigh - don't even know where to begin.

3. Groceries. FAIL. You know those good ol' staples - bread, milk, cheese? We've got none of these, nor have we had any for quite some time now. Mealtimes have been interesting and packing lunches for the boys have been barrel-bottom-scraping, to be sure. I've been living on tea and Halloween candy.

4. Bread. FAIL. I tried to make a loaf in the breadmaker for the first time in a while and it was a disaster loaf. I used what was probably old flour (and that's a double FAIL because I have no idea how old this special Best For Bread Flour is/was) and tried to make a whole wheat bread. Woke up to a delicious smell emanating from the kitchen, and as I opened the breadmaker I may have drooled a little only to find... the densest, smallest loaf our maker has ever created. Totally inedible.

5. Arriving on time to hockey. FAIL. Oh, I can't tell you how much this stresses me out. We try so hard to get there early, in enough time to properly lace the skates and get on the ice. I thought I really had it together on Sunday, but I thought we were three minutes early... turns out we were two minutes late onto the ice because I had Calendar-ed 1:15 instead of 1:10. FAIL FAIL FAIL. hmpf.

6. Building a house. FAIL. I was SO happy to participate in a Habitat for Humanity build through work. I was very excited to leave the house at 6:40 for the pleasure of arriving on the job site at 8 am. Not only did I arrive 10 minutes late due to traffic, I also annihilated a raccoon on my way. He (and I'm saying he was a he because if I stop for even a minute to think that he may have been a mummy raccoon with babies I may go insane) ran right in front of me at 6:40 am - pitch black, raining cats and dogs or, er, raccoons, and I had no chance. I whacked into him first with the middle of the front bumper and then, for good measure, ran over him with both the front and back right tires. Crunch. And I screamed, then hyperventilated. I didn't even have time to brake. And on the way home at 5 pm, there he was, lying exactly where I'd hit him. He looked like he was sleeping except his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. So my happy feel-good volunteer day? FAIL.

7. Changing a lightbulb. FAIL. Feel free to insert your own bad lightbulb joke here. But the real story is that every evening for the past four nights, I go to turn on our entry-way light and realize that yet again, I have failed to get out the stepladder to remove the old bulb to go to Home Depot and match the bulb and buy the bulb and come home to replace the bulb. And now that it's dark earlier because of daylight savings, we notice it more. Just not until it's too late to fix it.

8. Not using the TV as a babysitter. FAIL. It took me forever to sew the kids' overalls for their costumes, and I allowed them to play way more Wii and watch way more TV than is good for them. And it totally backfires, too, because they are super grumpy people when that's all they do. So we all lose when the TV is on so damn much.

9. Work. FAIL. Not that there is anything I am fully dropping the ball on; I just feel that there aren't enough hours in the week to get the projects done as fast and as well as I would like. I am only supposed to be working just under 19 hours per week - both me and my manager would like to keep it at that. But for every task I accomplish, I seem to add three more. And I would love to take advantage of some of the other learning opportunities and cross-training available to me, but it's just not working for me right now.

10. Staying positive. FAIL. I fully believe that you can make your day whatever you want it to be by adjusting your attitude. There were several days this week that I lost sight of that and I let myself get overwhelmed. No more negative Nellie here!

So for those of you who think I wear a halo, ask yourself this - does your toilet stink like pee? Because mine does, and as soon as I track down the boy who missed, there will be a stellar parenting demonstration happening. Check your halos at the door people! Over and out.