Not-so-funny funny story

My not-so-funny funny story begins with the fact that my children (and now husband) have been sick for the last few days. Fever, vomiting, higher fever, body aches, cough, sore throat, headache. Pretty much you name it, they've got it. And the mommy who's been coughed/vomited/heavily breathed upon? Exhausted, but seemingly alright. God bless my rockin' immune system...there are benefits to years of working in a disease infested ER. I realize I could be jinxing myself with that statement, but let's move on.

The health of my family should give you a better insight into my state of mind as I finally made it to Winco to buy much needed groceries yesterday. The kids were still feverish, but we needed crackers and chicken noodle soup and children's ibuprofen, so I bundled them up and prayed the checkout lines wouldn't be 7 miles long. After pulling out of our driveway, I realized I should get the mail that's been piling up in our mailbox. (Our mailbox, along with 16 of our neighbors', is down the street half a block, which makes parking on the street very convenient and getting our mail every day...not so convenient.) ANYWAY, our mailbox was stuffed with 98% junk mail and 2% bills and at the red lights on the way to the grocery store I was sorting through what should be dumped in the recycling bin and what I needed to keep.

We finally made it through Winco and home with a typical amount of grocery store drama, I proceeded to dump a ridiculous stack of worthless mail into the recycling can. It took me 3 trips to haul in all the groceries as the kids fought over which color cup they wanted their chocolate milk (grocery store bribe) to be poured into at lunch time.

I'll get to the point of the story, which was the not-funny part. This morning Jake got to go to preschool which he missed yesterday. He didn't have a fever, and frankly I needed Sir Whiny Pants out of the house for a few hours. After the drama of getting the two kids ready to leave the house, I grabbed my purse and went down the stairs in the garage to buckle them in their carseats. Hmm, I thought as I looked through my purse. Where are my keys? I went back into the house and turned everything upside down. No keys. And I'm seriously hearing ear-piercing screams from the garage, which is wide open to the neighbors who are probably seconds from calling 911. The screams were related to which kid got to hold the balloon we got at a birthday party the other day. I searched the car. No keys. Perfect. I've lost my keys and my mind. I did have a key to our other car, and miracle of miracles...Dan got a ride to work this morning. So even though we were already late, I switched out 2 carseats and 2 whiny children, and drove recklessly to preschool.

I dreaded going home after dropping Jake off. I knew I'd searched EVERYwhere for my keys, and both kids were swearing they'd never touched them. I was going to have to tear the house apart. Then Ty and I pulled in to the driveway and I saw it...the big blue recycling can. Thank you God that it had just been emptied, because that thing is a monstrosity. I picked through the milk carton and flattened cereal boxes I had dropped in there last night, and got to the pile of junk mail. Underneath that...TAH DAH! My keys.

Just one more reason to despise junk mail.