Taking the long way around...

Amen. Mondays are getting harder and harder with only 20 days left of the school year.

This morning I had my alarm set to 5:12am, as always, but I didn't drag myself out of bed until 6:15. I threw together my lunch, which was basically packed from some of my mom's leftovers last night and went to check my e-mail.

By the time I realized the time, it was 6:45am. I need to be out of the house by 7:20 or else I'm officially late. I made it out by 7:22.

The first thing that greeted me at school was a note from the principal to go over my in-class observation from February. Yep, looks like I'm not the only one running a little late.

The kids were in a collective coma and even a pep talk from me didn't do the trick. It was hard to be convincing when I didn't really believe it myself. Let's face it--we're tired. The heat hasn't helped.

By 2:15pm we had had as productive a day as possible under the circumstances and all of a sudden the classroom began to feel very hot. Our A/C was no longer blowing out cool air, just fanning in the hot air from outside. Boy, the room got hot very quickly!

The bell rang at 2:35pm and I left around 3:10pm after ordering a Wizard of Oz t-shirt to support the Performing Arts program.

I was making great time as I got off the freeway until I saw up ahead that a train on the train tracks was not moving at all. I had already gotten into the left turn lane to go in the direction of the tracks. Like many other frustrated drivers, I had to maneuver my way around little, unfamiliar streets trying to get away from the stalled train. Meanwhile, I was going in the opposite direction of home. After going about 12 miles out of my way and twisting and turning around little streets for about half an hour, I finally got to a familiar area that was away from the tracks. I was about 5 miles from home, instead of the 2 miles away where the tracks are. The only good thing was that I was near my 2 markets--HOWS and Trader Joe's-- where I had some shopping to do anyway.

Certainly there are worse things that can happen, but when you're hot and tired and it is the end of a long work day on a Monday and all you want to do is get home--a stalled train can be frustrating.

Fortunately, it was nothing that a little chocolate pudding and venting couldn't fix.