Yeah. I'm THAT mom.

Early last week D7 brought home a note from school announcing that Friday (yesterday) was Pet Day and the kids should bring in pictures of their pets for show and tell. We have two dogs and a cat. D7 was excited about taking pictures in and I promised to print some for him.

I've been having trouble sleeping and I've also developed a lovely patch of hives on my arm. Yes, it is completely stress related. Thursday night I woke up around 2:00 with my arm itching. I was up for two hours until I took a triple dose of Triaminic Allergy medicine. I figured if kids 6 - 12 need two teaspoons, 42 year old women needed six teaspoons. I also added two (or three?) Advil.

I woke up at 7:00, crawled out of bed, made breakfast, crawled back in bed for 20 minutes, got up, made sure everyone was dressed and out the door and crawled back into bed until 9:00 (isn't this fascinating? I'm setting the scene ok?).

At 9:00 I crawled out of bed, made coffee and sat down at my desk where I discovered I had things to take care of ASAP. About 10:20 or so things slowed down and I started cleaning my desk off.

That's when I found the note about Pet Day and that show and tell would begin a 11:15. Crap. I had about 45 minutes to take pictures of the pets with my phone, print them, shower, and get to school.

The next 35 minutes were filled with snapping photos of the pets, unsuccessfully syncing the iPhone with the computer -- photos wouldn't download. Finally realizing I had to e-mail the photos to myself. Trying to print them, dealing with three or four paper jams -- each which meant I had to restart the printer. Can you imagine my language during this? I think you can. My office is an old sun porch and I am in there cussing up a storm. Loudly. The whole neighborhood could probably hear me.

Finally, about 11:03 I had photos of each pet.

I threw on some really horrible sweat pants, t-shirt, baseball cap since the whole shower thing hadn't happened. And the whole laundry thing hadn' happened for a few days. As I'm hopping in the car the neighbor's painter, who was painting the window trim, about six feet from my office, looked at me, smiled, and said, "'morning!" yeah. ha. I said "hi' hopped in the car and kept swearing under my breath. I said out loud to myself, "yeah, i'm THAT mom." The crazy one. The unorganized one. The swearing one. The unshowered, driving like a maniac always three steps behind one.

The whole way to school I was muttering "I'm THAT mom, I'm THAT mom."

I walked into the classroom minutes before show and tell started, handed Dave his photos, and sat down in the back.

When it was his turn D7 told the class about his three pets and sat down. There were a couple of kids who had pets but hadn't brought pictures. I don't know how they felt about it, but I knew how D7 would have felt. Because we had talked about it and I knew he was really looking forward to it.

On the way out of the classroom I ran into a teacher's aide I knew and she asked me why I was looking so harried and stressed out. I told her what had happened and she just smiled and said, "Yeah, but you made it. You're a great mom!"

Yeah. I am a great mom. I busted ass and made sure I followed through on a promise to my kid.

The whole way home I kept thinking to myself, Yeah, I'm THAT mom." But this time I was smiling.