Who knew?

Apparently my driver's license is expired. And apparently you can't buy booze with an expired license.

I discovered this tonight. I got a call at 7:15 a.m. this morning to sub as a Special Ed. para at our elementary school. For the whole day. I of course said yes, and then started screaming at the manchild who had missed his bus (again. Because he thought it was a good idea to take a nap on the couch downstairs after eating his breakfast and before taking his shower. God help me.) to hurry the hell up.

And then I remembered that my car was on empty. Like, "15 miles to empty" empty. Please tell me I'm not the only one who does that? Drives until you are literally skating down the road on fumes? This was a huge point of contention in my marriage. And yet I still do it.

Anyhoo. So not only did I have to get Nappy McApnea to school, I also had to go get gas, get the 5th grader up and ready AND get this: take a shower and try to look human. All in the span of 1 1/2 hours. All I had going for me was half a Diet Dr. Pepper, an Adderall and the thought of a whole extra day's pay in my next paycheck. So off I went.

Things went fine. Got the sleepy genius to school, got the sweet one up and ready, took a shower, found clothes that looked halfway decent (and by halfway decent I mean clothes that didn't have a team name emblazoned across the chest and no yoga pants) and headed off for my first full day's work in years.

Working in a school is kind of like going to Vegas. What happens there, stays there. I can say, however, that this one day totally reaffirmed my thoughts about working in the Special Ed. area full time. I loved it. It was challenging at times, but I loved it. I think the high point of my day was playing "Sorry" with the cutest first grade boy in the world and seeing the light in his eyes when he pulled the Sorry card and sent me back to Start.

So after the school day ended, I grabbed William, waited the 10 longest minutes in the world while the giant cluster-fuck known as the "Parent Pick Up" line in the parking lot dispersed, and high-tailed it to the music store to pick up his French Horn practice book which finally came in after being back-ordered for 2 weeks.

Hurried back home from that because it was Big Daddy's "Dinner Hour" night and he was due to pick up the kids at any minute. He shows up and two of the kids decide that they're not going. Alrighty then. Make them a gourmet dinner (actually chicken nuggets and apple slices but given the fact that it was Big Daddy's turn for dinner they're lucky I made anything...they're 14 and 16 for God's sake), and sat down for the first time all day.

And then realized that I had promised to go color my mom's hair today. So I called Mom, gabbed with her for a bit and then sat down.

Only to have that "somebody's watching me" feeling. Turn to my left to see the world's angriest dog looking at me with a mixture of pity and contempt in his lovely brown eyes. Or maybe it was just a blank stare. Who knows. It worked. He was pissed about being left alone all day. So I changed my clothes and took Walter for a 3 1/2 mile walk. By now it was dark and I was thinking to myself how nice it would be to sit my ass down with a glass of wine and watch Sons of Anarchy. That sounded just so nice.

So I get home from the walk, clean the kitchen, fold a load of laundry, put the folded stuff away and put in another load. Still thinking that a glass (or three) of wine would be awfully nice after such a busy day.

Took a pork tenderloin out of the freezer for the next night's dinner and realized that I didn't have any rice or potato thingy to serve with it. Made a little list for the grocery store, told Molly I was leaving and then headed out. As I was driving to the store, my phone rings. It's the sleepy kid from this morning! He forgot to tell me, he's supposed to have 3 or 4 menus from various restaurants for his FACS class (that's Home Ec to us fossils) and he was supposed to have them 2 days ago. And hey, Mom, would you mind stopping at a few restaurants and grabbing take out menus for me?

This time I laughed. "I'm wearing a dirty sweatshirt with sweaty armpit marks, Charlie" I told him. "How about I turn around, pick you up and I'll drive you to a few restaurants?". The smart child agreed that this sounded like a plan, and so I turned around and picked him up. Drove him to some eateries, got his menus and then, since he had to do an assignment with these menus that was due a few days back, drove him back home.

I was debating whether or not a trip to the grocery store was still necessary. I mean, I had the next day off, why not just go home and get my jammies on? But the thought of a glass or bottle of merlot still sounded really nice. So I went to the grocery store.

Got the starchy sidedish for the next night's dinner, got a few other odd'n'ends and then headed over to the booze section. Perused the selection, made my choice (by this time I was so excited to have that merlot my mouth was watering. Seriously. I am that pathetic.) and headed up to the counter.

It was the hoarse-voiced butchy lady working. She and I have chatted before, and we did so again as she took my sweet purple merlot and rang it up. "I just need to take a peek at your license, dear" she said. I wrestled it out of my wallet and handed it to Raspy Lady. "Ummm...can you see when this expires?" she asked me. I felt a little twinge, because that's when I remembered that it was expired. My birthday was 2 weeks ago, and I'd had the little renewal form next to my computer for ages...

"Oh well" I thought. She knows me, she knows I'm legit. We'll have a laugh about being absent-minded middle aged women, she'll give me my bottle of wine and I'll be on my merry, thirsty way.

But no. Raspy's tone changed. Got colder. "Well, if your license is expired, I can't sell this to you." I said, "Seriously?". Raspy pulled the already-bagged bottle of sweet sweet relief out of my hands. "Seriously" she said. "And you are really lucky that you haven't been pulled over, missy."

She called me missy. And she took the wine OUT OF MY HANDS. I played it cool. "I'm sorry" she said, "it's the state law." I shrugged it off and said, "Oh that's ok. Maybe this is a sign from God." That warmed her back up a little and I was just getting ready to head out when I saw a mom from school looking in at me through the glass doors that separate the grocery part of the store from the liquor part of the store (for my out of state friends, in Minnesota you can't buy groceries and booze together. Also, no booze is sold on Sundays. Ever. I don't know how we have alcoholics in this state. Sundays must be a sad, awful hell for some people present company sometimes included).

So anyways. There, watching me get rejected at the counter of a liquor store was a friend from school and her son. Nice. Because as if being the Village Sob Story isn't stigma enough, now I'm the poor chick getting turned away at the bottle shop. She came in and we laughed about it, she even offered to buy it for me (by this time I was seriously starting to feel like an 18 year old desperately trying to get alcohol but being busted with a fake I.D.). I decided that this was, indeed, a sign from the Almighty One and told her that this was going to be an ice water night for me.

And that's what I had. After I got home and did 2 more loads of laundry, helped Molly fill out a worksheet that she's had for a week but all of sudden realized that it's DUE TOMORROW, cleaned the kitchen again (because while Mommy was out getting humiliated at the booze store someone decided to make Dinner Number 2 for themselves), let the dog in and out (because I must have superpower ears, no one else can hear him clawing at the door), poured some Liquid Plumr into the upstairs bathtub (I pulled what looked like one of those shrunken head souvenir things out of the drain this morning and the water was STILL backing up in the shower), got the little guys prepped for bed, tucked in and kissed goodnight, warned ManChild that a repeat of this morning was not going to be accepted....

I fixed myself a giant glass of ice water and sat down to check emails. And here I am, 11:30 at night clickety clackety typing away.

I'm off to get my license renewed tomorrow. And I'll have to watch Sons of Anarchy then, too.

Maybe with a nice glass of wine?