"Sorry, Roger"

It's a bad omen when your day starts like mine did yesterday.

Tuesday night, we made sure the TV was set to our streaming Netflix so that Cael, upon waking up waaay too early, could watch a Thomas the Train episode until the rest of us were awake.  But those plans backfired, and at 6:02am he was on the side of my bed, poking me in the eyes.

"Mommy!  I want to watch Curious George!"

Can you put it on downstairs?  It's too early!"

"Noooooo, I want to watch it here!"

"Fine, but you have to be quiet, okay?"

"Okay."

And truth be told, he was quiet.  So quiet, in fact, that I didn't hear it coming when his large plastic train came down and hit me in the back of the head full force.  Twice.  I considered the first to be an accident, but when the second made me yell out in pain, I questioned the possibility that my son was pulling a Menendez and attempting to kill me for requiring that he eat his vegetables.  But that hypothesis assigned too much consideration to this incident, while the truth was that he just wasn't thinking.

"Cael, you know that you can't have toys in our new bed!"

"I don't have any toys, Mommy.  Just my train."

"What do you think your train is?" 

"A toy."

Uh-huh.  Trying to reason with him is pointless at this time of the day, because he is too stubborn and I am too sleepy to think clearly.  I took the train away, started another Curious George and went to sleep after Cael promised, yet again, to keep it quiet.  And assault-free.

And truth be told, he was quiet.  So quiet, in fact, that I heard nothing from him until he was waking me up to the news that he wanted to watch Toy Story 3 in my bed.  But where had he been?  I looked around the room and seeing that Joel was off to work, I knew that some time had passed.  But how much?  I looked at the alarm clock.  Turned off.  I looked at Graham's monitor.  Unplugged.  I looked at my phone for the time.  Missing.  "Here we go again," I thought as Cael scampered off to continue whatever mischief he had started.

Morning disasters are somewhat common in my house, since Cael has a limited amount of freedom while we are sleeping.  I trust him not to leave the house, or to turn on the oven-- he knows better than to do those things.  And every other day, I wake up to the monitors telling me that one or both of them is awake.  But this morning, it seemed that every piece of electronics in my room was malfunctioning.  Was the power out?  Nope, the television was still quietly displaying an old episode of Curious George.  There was only one other explanation.  Hurricane Cael-trina.

I jumped out of bed and plugged in Graham's alarm first to hear that he was whimpering and sniffling due to an incoming summer cold.  How long had my Bubba been sad?  I plugged in Cael's alarm and heard extremely loud static, indicating that he'd been messing with the base unit of his monitor, and likely his stereo as well.  Lastly, I plugged in my alarm clock.  Looking to Joel's clock so that I could reset mine, I finally see the time.

9:12.

Seriously?  I got 10 HOURS of sleep last night?  That's unheard of!  I feel so refre--

--WAIT.  That means that Graham has probably been awake for two hours.  And it's been over three hours since Cael begged for a show.  So I threw in my contacts and took the walk of shame.  Not the college "I-stayed-overnight-in-someone-else's-room-and-I-have-to-walk-home-in-my-clothes-from-yesterday" walk of shame, but the even more shameful "I'm-a-terrible-mother-and-can't-monitor-my-own-small-children-in-my-own-home" walk.

I slowly opened the door and peeked around the corner.  No Cael.  I crept down the stairs.  No Cael.  I saw the light on under the bathroom door and slowly turned the knob.

"Mommy!  I'm pooping... can you close the door puh-leeze?"

"Oh, sorry Cael."

I closed the door.  Has it been 3 three hours or 13 years and three hours?  I found my iPhone on the couch and after verifying that he hadn't deleted anything or bought any new apps, I tucked it in his pocket and headed back upstairs.  Once in Graham's room, I confirmed that he was completely fine but very smelly and had one arm out of his pajama shirt.

"Buh poo."

"Big poo?"

"Huh."  (Yes)

When I was up to my elbows in "buh poo", my cell began to ring.  I pulled out with my least smelly hand and saw that it was not a number I knew.  Not knowing whether this call was from a doctor's office or an emergency call or a call from a publisher (hint, hint) I decided to answer.

"Hello?"

"Yes, this is Roger.  I had a missed call and voicemail from you this morning."

Prayer time.  Oh, dear Lord, please don't let this man tell me that my son asked him about his nuts, poop, or told him to pump his pistons.  Amen.

"I'm so sorry.  I think that was my son... he got ahold of my phone somehow."

"I figured it was a kid.  There was a lot of jabbering and whistling."

Yep, my son phoned a stranger and left a train whistle message on his voicemail. Typical.  And I wish I could tell you that things turned around from there, but that just wasn't (and usually isn't) in the cards for me.  Instead we struggled through a slow, boring day and night.  But in our world, slow means that no one went to prison, and boring means that no one required emergnecy medical treatment.  I'll call it a victory.

Now I'm off to password protect my phone.  Sorry, Roger.