In Which SuperMommy Is Nearly A Victim of Vehicular Manslaughter

My beautiful, charming daughters

Ever noticed that the holidays fall during school breaks?  That means that, along with the stress of gift purchases and annual family letters and baking (okay, some of it's fun) is also the stress of FINALS.  Good lord, how I loathe the end of the semester.

I've had a particularly stressful semester's end.  I'm taking the classes for my major out of order- part time status kind of does that to you- and as a result was woefully unprepared for one of my classes this last semester.  It was on the visualization tools used by urban planners, public administrators, and policy analysts.  My final project involved the use of all sorts of software that I had not only never used before, but that my poor little netbook Hackintosh just couldn't run.  As a full time mommy, I don't get out much, so my time in the school labs was extremely limited.  My wonderful father downloaded the software to finish my project, worth 40% of my final grade and to be judged by the graduate school faculty, and I planned to finish my homework over Thanksgiving weekend.

Never mind that my family was also celebrating Channukah on Thanksgiving weekend.  No, let's not concern ourselves with that just yet.

SI and DD in their pretty dresses, playing with Poppa

Of course, nothing is ever that simple.  For example, M's semester is also ending, and unlike me he actually has final exams.  That means that every last minute he has is spent on campus, working on his school work.  This is very conveniently timed with a major project at his work that's threatening to make him work seven 12 hour shifts a week starting any day now.  He's hardly seen his children at all.

For the first time probably ever, I went to bed the night before a family trip without having packed.  That's how bad it was.

We stayed at my sister's house.  Now, I love my sister.  But I will never be doing that again.  The fact of the matter is that people without kids just don't understand what it's like to HAVE kids.  Every time I asked my parents if they'd change a diaper, or feed a toddler, I was treated like some kind of lazy slob.  Not exactly my cup of tea.  Add to that the constant complaint that my kids were leaving crackers under the table or making too much noise early in the morning...

They're 14 months old, for god's sake!  Give me a break!

Incredibly, impossibly, unfathomably, I finished my homework very late Saturday evening- while my family and friends were eating latkes and playing with my daughters in their beautiful holiday dresses.  I was tucked away in the basement, editing margins and adjusting color transparency, but I got the thing done.  I even managed to scarf down a few latke and some falafel, and actually see a few people I love dearly and haven't seen in at least five months.  Or in one case, about fifteen years!

DD hamming it up for the camera

To sum up: the weekend was hectic and stressful, but parts of it were genuinely wonderful.  And it ended with me being on the verge of DONE with my semester.  And the girls were absolute gems.  They got some really great presents, too.

Then yesterday came.  My final countdown began: only seven days of class left.  So how could it possible go wrong?

I'll tell you how.  I'll tell you how the universe likes to screw around with SuperMommy.

That gigantic project?  It's printed on PAPER.  As soon as she gets out of the print shop?  It starts` POURING RAIN.  I run from the print shop to the car, and drive to my night class.

The rain doesn't let up, it just gets heavier and harder.  By the time I head back to the car, it's a torrential downpour.  A car stops at the crosswalk to the parking lot of my night class.  I step out into the crosswalk, in front of the now stopped car and make a very unfortunate discovery.

That driver?  She didn't stop because of the stop sign, or the crosswalk, or the wet, surly pedestrian.  No, she stopped to answer a text message.  And she decided to start going again without looking up at all from her phone.  Right into ME.

The good news is that she didn't accelerate very quickly, she was only about a foot away from me to begin with, and I'm fairly resilient to car v. human collisions.

SI playing with her aunt's girlfriend

I first picked myself off of her very wet hood, then the very wet pavement, and as she apologized out the window, I started shuffling off towards what would undoubtedly be a very wet, uncomfortable drive back home.

But at least the homework is all done, right?