Ma and the Stupid Day, That Turned Out

Ma got up and stepped on the scale. Oh boy! Another no good rotten weight report.

And her head hurt.

Ma walked into the chilly exercise area. She commenced her routine, each weight-bearing exercise an integral part of her day. A totally useless but integral part of her day.

And her head hurt.

Starting school late, Ma patiently sat by as her 7-year-old arduously and methodically typed his 30 spelling words into his computer for the week. He complained and halted many times, but while Ma kept an eagle-eye upon his barely compliant frame, he finished the awful Monday spellingness in 20 very long minutes.

Ma watched as the lad tried to save his words and saw the annoying "error 50" phrase pop up, instead.

Ma called her resident computer assistant over, had her pull up the REAL program and then Ma typed in all the words herself in a stunning 90 seconds.

Ma let loose a cathartic whine.

And her head hurt.

Ma continued to the living room, where her seven-year-old mysteriously seemed to have forgotten most of the multiplication facts he had known the week before.

Ma prodded. Ma goaded. Ma got impatient and suddenly the lad knew even less.

Ma relieved the boy of further scholastic endeavors for the day and went up to tread on the mill. It was on the endless rubber mat of runningness that Ma had a bad case of regrets.

Upon finishing, Ma went directly to the math-whiz-to-be and apologized.

Then, ignoring the hungry lunch-deprived growls of young stomachs, she enlisted several small slaves to help fold, spindle and mutilate the "Christmas letter."

In not-too-long-at-all-for-little-kids, 53 letters were folded, stuffed, sticker-sealed and stamped.

And her head hurt, but didn't seem so bad.

The kids fed, the face washed and freshly painted, Ma and the scholar set off for freezy shopping procurement awfulness.

The letters became mailed, though Ma saw that the stickers were unsealing.

Stores awaited, and still Ma's head hurt.

Ma exchanged pleasantries with the meat-counter-guy, primarily on the amazing one cent markdown of rump roast. He seemed less than amused despite Ma's face turning red.

Ma chose chicken, instead.

The temperature was -3 outside, as the polite grocery bagger waited in vain for Ma to unlock the trunk with her ignition key.

Huh.

Ma would have been re-red-in-the-face except for the boon of approaching frostbite.

Lots of things were starting to hurt.

Safely inside the cold car, Ma found the ignition key did not wish to turn. It was still miffed about being inserted into the trunk keyhole.

Miffed and twisted.

Ma-the-ever-tricksey-one went back and reinserted the ignition key into the trunk and twisted it back, again.

"VRROOOOM"ing sounds were heard.

Ma congratulated herself and wondered if she would live long enough to return home.

She did.

And her head hurt.

But one piece of frozen pizza and a small glass of pop later, Ma was starting to feel her oats.

Or maybe it was just the oatmeal from breakfast.

Ma took the only bright spot of the day over to her computer. She opened the small tin containing a 3 CD set of Big Band music. The War Years.

It seemed appropriate.

Still in a rebellious mood, Ma played the 3rd CD first. By the time she got to the third song--American Patrol--she had closed her eyes.

Her foot was tapping.

Ma's head still hurt, but at least her foot was tapping.

It was good.

It was the best Big Band anthology she had heard in a long, long while.

And Ma thought Paige's mom was really somethin' and she started to cry...
 

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