Tabs

Especially at the end of the school year.  When I visit Nana, and she's sitting on the couch "waiting for her hair to dry," I feel like such a loose cannon, such a fake-important lunatic, saying things like, "Well, I have to go pick up Araceli at school and get her a snack and drop her off at ballet before the other kids get home from school.  They all have to do their practicing before play practice, and Golda and Ruby are at an all-night dance company rehearsal, so they have to miss some of their other dance classes and Ruby can't go to guitar..."

Nana chuckles like that's so funny that I'm knocking myself out doing all this stuff.  I get it.  I agree.  Then she'll say something like, "I've gotten such joy out of dancing and music in my life."  I take that as tacit approval of me and my extremely segmented and overloaded schedule, and I feel better.  But still, I sit down to write a couple of paragraphs and I have Ptolemy or Tziporah interrupting me literally every ten seconds, and kids texting me from school asking me questions and I also have like 10 windows open on the computer, all of them with flight deals, so there are all these travel scenarios competing for brain space ( my own dang fault, I know).  I've just answered a bunch of emails, I'm thinking I should have put in a load of laundry before I started writing this, and I'm trying to pay for a cello on my new app with one of my Chinese suppliers.

The morning routine almost makes the after-school routine seem easy.  Drive kids around.  Period.  Except did I tell you I broke my tailbone?  So I have more tabs open concerning treatments and balms, and driving takes on a whole new level of discomfort.  But since I'm doing this low-carb diet (more tabs open, "what foods to eat," "why I have a headache"), I can't medicate with cookies and a dirty diet Coke like I would love to.  I'm sitting on a donut, but that doesn't count.  It SO doesn't count.

This is me getting xrays.  I had just shocked the x-ray technician when she handed me the gown and I quickly stripped off my dress and leggings, shouting, "Wait!  Don't go!  I have the gown on!  Come back!"  There's no time for modesty when you're in excruciating pain.  I needed those xrays NOW!!  Scott showed up and I said, "Hey!  Can you pick up Araceli at ballet so I can go straight over to the shop?  I'll be home after I teach, and I'll pick up Ruby on my way home so she can be home on time to teach, IF she's finished with tech rehearsal and goes to ballet.  She might not.  Freestone is in charge and he said he was making pasta.  Can you drop off this prescription and I'll pick it up?  And I have book club tonight.  Thanks!!!"  I think Scott's reply was, "Hey.  Broken tailbone?"  Yes, there's that.

Can you just hear Nana chuckling?  I can.  She is laughing at me, in fact.  It makes me wonder how many tabs I really need to have open.  I try to edit, but new ones pop open all the time.  Example:  I'm sitting on my donut in the car at the junior high, waiting for Araceli to load her cello in the back.  She hops in and says, "I made 100 invitations for the party, but I ran out, so I made more.  And I don't know what SCHOOL to go to next year!"  As she launches in to her own thoughts about all the factors and repercussions of one school versus another, I realize I have seven kids.  And they all have a thousand tabs open.  I'm doomed.

And also...what party is this???