The Key to My Heart

This is going to seem unbelievable after that last post, but I am a creature of habit. In my day-to-day life, I like ruts. My mind is boggled by moms who don't have set routines for their kids. Not judgy boggled, appreciative of their flexibility and relaxed nature boggled.

I rarely deviate from my routine without severe instigation. Like blood. Or massive natural disaster. Otherwise, does not compute.

7:30 All kids up and dressed
8:00 Breakfast
8:45-9:30 Clifford and George (aka, blogging time)
9:30-11:30 Morning activity
11:30-12:30 Home/clean up and lunch
12:30-2:30 Quiet time
2:30-4:00 Afternoon activity or walk
4:00-5:00 Movie (I said I had a routine, I didn't say I was a great parent.)
5:30 Dinner
6:30 Bedtime

Occasionally, someone who doesn't know me well will invite us to dinner or a party or an outing. "Come about 6:30," they'll say enthusiastically. "I'm not sure I can get a sitter, but we'd love to come, so I'll try," I reply. "Oh no, bring the kids," responds this sincere and unsuspecting hostess. Aha. No. Not fun. My kids cease to exist at 6:30 p.m. Anything involving them after that time is just mom torture. I could bring them but I'd have to kill them, or me, and corpses at parties are so last year.

I can usually find things because I always put them in the same place. When I do lose things, like my keys for example, it drives me insane. Because why? Why did I not put them where they go? Also, when I lose things, I REALLY lose them because when I deviate from the norm, my brain goes into automatic shutoff mode and does not function properly until we've resumed normal operating routine.

Like on Thursdays. Thursdays are hard for me. We have to eat breakfast in the car to make it to Spanish school by 9:00 a.m. We're gone almost all day, no quiet time, no steady flow. We walk in the door at 2:00 p.m. tired and hungry and cranky. All of us.

Last Thursday night, when Matt was getting ready for the next morning, he noticed my keys weren't hanging next to his set on the key hanging thingy.

Matt: Your keys aren't on the thing? Do you have them?
Me: Those are my keys. Yours must be missing.
Matt: No. These are mine, yours have the blue Albertson's tag on them.
Me: Well, you must have taken the wrong ones this morning and put them somewhere because those are the ones I had today.
Matt: No. I always take the ones without the blue tag, so that you can't claim I lost your keys. I hung those there when I came home.
Me: Not today. I always hang my keys there. You always leave your keys lying around or in your pockets. These are mine.
Matt: I'm taking the van key off and leaving it for you. Until you find your keys.
Me: (Black smoke pouring from ears.) Those are the keys I had today. YOU need to find the other keys.

Friday, the kids and I went to run some errands. As I was unloading the car, I noticed a set of keys sticking out from behind Cue's car seat. Keys with a blue Albertson's tag. Half behind the car seat. Where I had left during my horrendous end-of-Thursday unloading process and forgotten them because my brain had detected change in routine and powered off.

Later that night, I confessed.

Me: I found my keys. They were behind Cue's car seat. Sorry. Thursdays are crazy.
Matt: That can't be because you always come in and hang your keys up on the key thing.

And then Matt died.*

The End.**

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*He was resurrected yesterday, because I felt horrible all day and he came home from work and took the kids away while I napped and then he made dinner and brownies.

**I have to give points, there's a tropical package at stake. The poetry thing went so well. I didn't realize how many of you were English/Literature teachers. Here's two more quotes from favorite poems of mine. They have nothing to do with this post, except that they are from the Romance Period. I think? I don't know, you tell me, English teachers!

"Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies. Whose wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it's sculptor well those passions read. And yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed."

"Continuous as the stars that shine, and twinkle in the milky way. They stretched in never ending line, along the margin of the bay."

There you go. Two quotes. From memory! (Which explains why I may have them wrong.) Five points for title and author. Five points if you know the first stanza or couplet of the poem. Has to be from memory - no cheating!