Being Humbled

Today Delaney was having a hard time getting up and ready.  She dilly-dallied and screamed and cried when I encouraged her to get her shoes and socks on. Sadly, she was not ready to walk out the door at 7:45.  I sent the other kids on to school and told Delaney for the 5th time that her shoes were upstairs.  This time, instead of screaming "NO they are not!" she actually went up there and found them.  She was still too late to catch up to her siblings, so I had to walk her sad self to school.  Rylee was still in her jammies, and I just plopped her in the stroller with her blanket and off we went.  I was quite grumpy.

I was doubly grouchy because the crossing guards leave the crosswalk 5 minutes before school starts and I watched them walk away.  I was even more grouchy when I watched a man pull up and stop in the middle of the crosswalk, stopping traffic on the busy road so he could dump out 5 children.  Fine, I was a little happy that he had stopped traffic so I could cross the street, but I was still mad enough to shout at him that this was not the proper place to unload children.  I detest people who cannot follow the rules, being a neurotic rule-follower myself.  He looked at me and I shouted, "You can't drop kids off here!" and I'm sure I had the angry mom look in my eye.  He smiled and said, "Thank you."  Talk about deflated!

Then, I got Delaney to the school and she held my hand and looked at me and said, "I'm sorry Mom.  I'll get ready faster tomorrow"  And she smiled at me and she ran off to class.  So I felt pretty sheepish after all my anger.

And I learned something today!  If you are walking the dog up on the levee, and he drops his ball off the side and runs after it.  Do not follow him, thinking you are still young and fit and agile and that you'll just step down far enough to reach the ball.  Odds are pretty good you will embarrass yourself and slide all the way down and then you won't be able to climb back up it and you'll have to walk a ways at the bottom till you get to a road up.