Breakfast Compass

Ken just said to me, “I don’t know why I’m so tired tonight.” 

I said in reply, “Well, let’s see.  Maybe it is because we didn’t get much sleep last night and we have been on the go all day.”

Then he mustered enough strength to say, “Oh…yea.”

What a day it has been!  There is no way I can tell you everything that happened, but I’ll share some of the highlights.

All the craziness started this morning.   I realized our dog, Sammie, has a special talent.  He is a breakfast compass.  You know how a compass works…no matter how you turn it, always points north.  Well this morning, no matter where I walked around the kitchen munching on Michaela’s leftover waffles, Sammie continued to point his nose in my direction. Then, he had the nerve to look at me with those big brown eyes (see the slightly embellished photo above), trying desperately to pull at my heart strings, so I would share it with him….No way…Call me selfish, but it was mine…mine…mine!

Ken had to go out of town today, so I was in charge of picking up the kids.  Sounds simple enough. I had some extra time before school got out, so I took my rolling grape and my super sleek and wonderful power chair to my Mom’s house for a visit.  When it was time to pick up the kids I grabbed my coat, said goodbye to my Mom, and headed out the door.  Just then, I realized that I had my super sleek power chair with me and my car will only fit two power chairs.  Yikes!  What was I to do?  I could just leave one of the kids at school for the rest of the day, but I decided that wasn’t the best thing to do, so I hurried back home to drop my power chair off in the garage and zoomed in my rolling grape (within the legal speed limit of course) to school to pick up the kids.

When we got home, there was a mysterious black car parked in front of our house with a man sitting inside.  I pulled into the garage, and all three of us got out of the car.  As I was closing the door on the van, I noticed a second car pulling up in front of our house.  A man got out of the first car, and a second man got out of the other.  One appeared to be caring a large back bag.  They both started walking up the driveway.  Slightly frightened, I zoomed in my spiffy power chair out of the garage to meet them at the end of the driveway. 

“Can I help you?”  I asked as my knees were shaking.  They gave me their names, and I gave them a stare like a deer in headlights…not knowing who in the heck they were.  “Didn’t University of Michigan tell you we were coming?” they said.  Oh, oh….All of a sudden the light bulb came on.  I instantly remembered that some men from a national publicity company were suppose to come up from Detroit to interview the kids about a possible television commercial for the U of M hospital.  Somehow I forgot to put this very very very important appointment on our calendar.  This was NOT good, because I realized that our house was a total WRECK before I left home. 

We had junk all over the place.  There was a 20-pound bag of dog food on the kitchen cupboard, right next to the moldy bread I forgot to throw away.  The kitchen table was a mess, along with my kitchen cupboard.  And the floor…the lovely floor, it looked like a NASCAR race had occurred just moments before, because there were super spiffy power chair tracks all over the place as a result of the rain and snow the past couple days.

They were really nice guys, and they asked the kids all kinds of questions.  Just then, I felt a sense of doom…they asked me if they could take some photos around the house to take back to their producer.  Michaela gave me the evil eye, because she really wants to be in the commercial, and she was quite certain her chances were slim to none after they saw our house.  Our only hope…maybe, just maybe, they didn’t notice the disaster that surrounded them.

As they were leaving, they said they would contact us in a couple weeks to let us know if they wanted to include the kids in their advertising campaign.  When the door closed behind them, I gave Michaela a look, very similar to the look the dog gave me in the above photo.  She grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me toward her, and said, “Mom, let this be a lesson to you…you need to do a better job cleaning the house!”

The moral of this story…Always keep your house clean, for you never know when publicity people will be stopping by.

Go Blue!