With Mike in traveling for work, it’s my first morning flying solo in a couple months. Ben was kind and slept in until 7 AM, played nicely in his room until 7:30, and continued to play nicely while I took a much needed shower. I used the last of the spray sunscreen this morning getting Ben ready for day camp. Note to self: Buy more spray sunscreen.

After a breakfast of Kixs and a banana, I got some dishes put in the dishwasher and started them before leaving to drop Ben off at day camp. When I got back home, I remembered that I meant to make banana bread yesterday and the bananas were about to flip from being perfectly overripe to needing to be thrown away. In the process of making the banana bread, I decided to use straight up sugar versus the Splenda brown sugar blend I’ve been using recently. When I went for the flour, I realized that we were out of “normal” flour and all that was left was the organic stone-ground whole wheat flour. Ben refuses to eat pancakes made from this flour. All in all, the bread turned out okay. It tastes more of the wheat flour than bananas. Hopefully, Ben will eat these, but I’m not sure. Note to self: If using the organic stone-ground whole wheat flour again, either try less flour, more banana, more sugar, or some combination of such.

Somehow between stopping at McD’s to pick up lunch and actually picking Ben up from day camp, my rear passenger tire went flat. This was 10 minutes before I was supposed to pick Ben up and they had threatened in literature sent home to charge a dollar per minute that you were late picking your child up. I immediately called them to let them know what had happened, where I was, my cell phone number, and if I didn’t get this fixed quickly that Ben could go home with the other Ben from his nursery school that was thankfully attending day camp this week. Of course, I had committed the other mom to this without clearing it with her but she’s wonderful and I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. I knew it would take AAA an hour to get there to change my tire and that was not acceptable. I turned into SuperMom. I pulled that full-sized spare out of the trunk, jacked the car up, and got the hubcap off the tire in no time flat. It was then that I met my nemesis, Rusty Lugnuts. Pleased that I had made it that far, I called AAA to get help with the lug nuts and was told it could be up to an hour before anyone got there and they’d ring my cell phone 5 minutes prior to arrival. I was about to call the day camp with a progress report when God sent a gentleman returning to his office asking if I needed some help. Yeah God! He had a little bit of difficulty with Rusty but was able to get all the lug nuts off, pull the tire, and put the other on. I put the flat in the trunk while he tightened the lug nuts in a clockwise fashion and not in a star pattern. I told the man thank you, let the jack down, threw everything in the trunk, called the day camp to let them know I was coming, and was only 10 minutes late in picking up Ben. Pam, as awesome as she is, was ready to take Ben with her and Ben but waited because I had called. Note to self: Unless you plan on hitting the gym and working on that upper body strength, do not attempt to change your own tire. Or, at the very least, start by calling AAA so that a driver might be coming during the time you spend getting the spare out and the car jacked up.

Since we were already in the area and I don’t like the idea of having a flat spare tire because heaven forbid I blow another one and then what, we headed over to the Toyota dealership to get the flat fixed. I went to the dealership because I have road hazard insurance on my tires and the last time I had a flat it cost around $10 for a brand new tire. With no appointment and being short staffed, they were still able to get me in. After watching the last little bits of Jakers! and Full House, some Ace of Cakes, the previous night’s Reds game, and the ending of Animal Cops, and shelling out $20, my tire was plugged and back in the trunk. I haven’t checked yet if they put everything away neatly or not. Note to self: If you plan on making an overtired and overstimulated 4 year old wait patiently in a car dealership customer waiting area just so you feel better about having a good spare, don’t forget to bring in some toys from the car.

After leaving the dealership, we ran into backed-up traffic on the highway. I detoured around where I thought the problem was only to realize that the back-up on the first highway was caused by an accident on the second and I had plopped myself into said accident traffic without any way of getting out other than to crawl at a snail’s pace around it. After passing the accident, we had no problems getting home. Note to self: Listen when the little voice in your head when it tells you to take the longer detour instead of the normal detour.

It was 3 PM before Ben got into his bed for nap time (2 hours later than normal) and another hour before he finally calmed down enough for his overtired and overstimulated body to drift off to sleep. We weren’t able to make the cheap day showing of Horton Hears a Who at the cheap theater as we had planned. Instead, some friends stopped over to borrow Ben’s pirate costume for pirate day tomorrow at their day camp. We had a really nice visit with them before and after Ben woke up from his nap. After they’d left, we ate last night’s leftover pizza while we watched the classic animated versions of Horton Hears a Who and How the Grinch Stole Christmas which was on the How the Grinch Stole Christmas DVD I’d received for Christmas years ago. Note to self: Don’t stress when things don’t go as planned…you never know what other amusing diversion might present itself.

Throughout today while all this stuff was happening, people asked me how my day had been going and I said fine. Note to self: Unless you share all the exciting details of your day as a stay-at-home mom, people are going to think that you have a really boring life.