YESTERDAY = Too busy for any of our likings...
9:00am - leave home
9:35 - arrive at dance to discover Zachary W/ wet pants.
9:36 - Explain to Zachy that only babies wet their pants for the 300th time that we have been potty training him 6 momths ago.
9:40 - Take Lydia into dance, leave Zac in the van, ask another good mother/friend Stacy to keep an eye out for the Bug so I can go home and change the boy.
9:43 - 10:27 Rush home, make Zachy go potty AGAIN, change his clothes, (screw cleaning him up, pee is sterile right?)
10:27 - 11:00 - Speed back to dance (feeling guilty that I left my kid there and asked another to watch out - knowing she would be in dance class the entire time and never even know I was gone - go figure...GUILT = a good Catholic Girl) Enjoy a Small bit of girl/mom talk until the girls get out of dance.
11:00 - 11:15 - Change Lydia from dance clothes to street clothes ~ Wrangle Zachy to just sit still and cooperate long enough
11:15 - 11:30 -SPEED like hell to Kids Dentist Appts.
11:30 - 12:30 - Kids dentist appts. - great teeth all around - Ready Set Go... and then the dentist wants to talk about having Lydia could be in his next TV, dental commercial. HUH? I kid you not..and I am no mood for THIS...I think we'll stick to soccer...but I am honored and polite and they may call us... eye roll...
12:30 - 12:45 - Speed to pediatrician office...
12:45 - Pick up pediatrician records to take to ENT
1:00 - Arrive for Lydia's hearing Screening and Tests
1:45 - Appt. with ENT to discuss hearing screenings
2:30 - RUSH into Nashville for swimming lessons
3:00 - Swim Lessons
4:00 - Realize I have locked the keys in the van and Seth is out of town
4:23 - Call a locksmith that is only blocks away - Says he can arrive in 15 minutes and cost will be 45.00
6:15 - Locksmith shows up in the cold parking lot that the kids and I had been waiting in for almost 2 hours (kids with wet hair from swimming, no jackets and Zachary wet his pants)
6:16 - Asshole locksmith informs me that there will be a 35.00 service call for them actually answering the phone when I called at 4:23pm. And that the cost to get in my van would actually be 65.00 on top of that.
6:16 - Tell asshole lock guy that he is an mistaken asshole lock guy - asked him where the hell he had been and called him a damn liar for telling me that he was only a block away and that his ass could have crawled on all fours faster than than he arrive, if he was actually only a block away on Church St.
6:17 - Gathered my cold children and told them we would find another way to get home, but was interrupted by dumb ass lock dude who was lowering his price faster than he could talk English.
6:18 - I tell him to get me in the Eff'ing car NOW! Told him I would pay him 65. flat (which makes me sick, but i was desperate and had he called my bluff and driven off...I would have been screwed. Even my cell phone was exhausted at this point and yelling at me that it was about to turn off if I didn't feed it some juice from the charger in my locked van.)
6:20 - The door unlocks which sets off the car alarm which sends Zachary into sheer panic - SOBBING and SHAKING as Lydia cuddled him (she's an awesome big sister!) on the curb, as I scrambled through the car searching for my FOB to turn off the alarm.
6:21 - Comforted my kids, started the car, got them buckled, turned on a movie and paid shithead.
6:23 - Headed home - got stuck in rush hour traffic hell - Found a McDonald's, swung thru drive through (2nd time in 6 hours for my kids...Yep, feeling like mother of the year here. Not to mention all of the screaming and yelling and begging that had taken place on my part with said small children in a busy parking lot for 2 solid hours).
6:45 - 7:00 Continuing ride home on dark interstate - Kids are Ok ~ All Warmed up, Eating a Happy Meal, Watching Toy Story, Safe and Sound, All Buckled Up for me to watch in the rear view mirror...and I cried silently all of the way home...
7:00pm - Pull into the driveway and see a happy welcoming face... SHAGGY who jumps up on the fence in the backyard and yelps at full volume (as if to say, where have ya'll been?) Walk through the back, garage door where Lydia is now afraid of the dark, Zac however, walks straight in and says, "I turn on yight Ydia"...Turns on kitchen light "All better Ydia?" She nods YES and they both climb into their stools to finish their french fries.
7:03 - I finish unloading the van of wet swim suits, wet clothing, a full day of fast food trash, urinated clothing and snotty Kleenex.
7:05 - Zachy: I all done mommy, I tired. Lydia: Me too mommy, Mommy: Me too guys, let's go to bed.
7:05 - 7:10 - All 3 of us march upstairs without a word - all holding hands, in complete silence! MY KIDS ARE NEVER SILENT! It was a SWEET silence, it was a respected silence...as if we were all sharing our appreciation for exhaustion and also a nice sense of team work. Jammies on...we didn't bathe, brush teeth, or comb hair...the nightly routine wasn't even spoken of. We are all in syn ch. Tuck kids into bed and they are both OUT in mere seconds.
7:11 - 7:15 - I finally get a moment alone and I put jammies on, and YES, I at least brush MY teeth - I suppose b/c I won't give myself a fight about it.
AND...At the end this long day, I look at myself in the mirror and all I see is the frustrated mom that yelled far too much at my kids - at times feeling like I am crossing the lines of abuse - The employee that should have responded to 25 emails (at least) on my day off - The wife that is failing in all areas and trying desperately just to arrange phone calls so the kids can at least say good morning and good night to daddy who is working so hard out of town. I've sucked as a friend - I can barely get on Facebook or check my emails - something that used to be so FUN for me -
It's been a rough time lately family. And it shouldn't be. And that's what's killing me...
Everyone tells me I am being too hard on myself. But, I find that foolish.
I personally, could not have developed a better blueprint to my childhood and life as it is. The bumps in my road have been few. I have not wanted for anything in my life that wasn't simply provided for me, or I could just go out and buy. And my life and support extends all the way out there! I have peeps that LOVE me and support me in all over the damn place - some, I have never met in person.
GUILT GUILT GUILT... It's a worthless but yet, VERY emotional feeling.
As worthless as it is, I am afraid it will always belong to me.
That's all for now.. That's all
Watkins is in major need of some really great landscaping! 
I can't wait for the weather to get nicer to plant flowers and pick weeks and trim bushes and lay new mulch and so on and so on... 
The Back of our house...The screened in porch and a small portion of our awesome backyard! 
Daddy putting up the swing set AGAIN! 
Lydia supervising daddy's work, AGAIN! 
A good shot of our HUGE back yard that opens up to an enormous beautifully wooded 
Another Angle 
The Final shot of our great backyard... 
Did I mention that Mother Watkins is in dire need for a large landscaping REDO! Seth worked so hard on our lawn at Hudson. It was beautiful and we were always getting compliments on how nice it looked and the how pretty the green full grass was. I know he can do it again! But wouldn't it be great if one of those HGTV shows would find us roaming around Lowe's and surprise us like they do on THIS SHOW, Yard Crashers! I am pretty sure you have to live in CA or something to see that dude wandering around the stores. He's probably not frequenting the Franklin, TN area. Oh well. 
