the first annoy­ing day

It was bound to hap­pen: and you know when it’s not just the things that are hap­pen­ing, but your own rot­ten atti­tude that is fol­low­ing you about as things get screwed up?  It start­ed last night at Avery’s bed­time when her beloved knit­ted lady­bug went miss­ing from the 200 or so items essen­tial for a cozy sleep.  She already miss­es her pony Lady­bug ter­ri­bly, and Lady­bug antic­i­pat­ed this by giv­ing her the toy as a Christ­mas gift, so thought­ful, to remem­ber her by.  The whole com­fort-item log­ic car­ries in it, how­ev­er, the seeds of its own destruc­tion when said item dis­ap­pears.  Did the clean­ing lady car­ry it away in the dirty bed linens?  Did she car­ry away bed linens at all, come to think of it, or did she do the laun­dry here?  See­ing as how I was busy avoid­ing her all day, I can’t say for cer­tain.  I promise avery I’ll deal with it in the morning.

Morn­ing, how­ev­er, brings its own issues as the *&^%$ Eng­lish wash­ing machine decid­ed dur­ing the night not to drain, and when I open its sor­ry #$% to do a load of laun­dry, rough­ly 40 gal­lons of water gushed onto the kitchen floor.  I called the land­lord imme­di­ate­ly who basi­cal­ly said, I’ll see your flood­ed kitchen and I’ll raise you a scratch I saw on the cir­ca 1974 nau­gahyde sofa, so you can whis­tle for your repair­man.  I then basi­cal­ly said, I’ll see your lame dam­age-deposit threat and I’ll raise you a miss­ing lady­bug from my daugh­ter’s bed.  We reached an impasse so I hung up and told Avery it was time for school, where­upon we dis­cov­er that her school scarf is miss­ing as well.  How it dis­ap­peared between walk­ing in the door last night from school and get­ting dressed this morn­ing is not for us to say.  By then we were in that state of edgy, snarky gloom that afflicts not-morn­ing peo­ple when ANY­THING unto­ward hap­pens at 7:30 a.m.  Off to school in a mutu­al state of dis­sat­is­fac­tion, and Avery said, “I’ll try to have a good school report at the end of the day to make you hap­pi­er.”  Insert steak knife to heart, twist three times clockwise.

Home to a surly repair­man who after much huff­ing and com­plain­ing, approached me to say the thing was fixed, hold­ing out a nasty lit­tle bit of burnt wire.  “ ‘ere’s the cul­prit, plain as day in the pump,” he growled accus­ing­ly.  I swear, like I put it there!  That’s what I do for fun on a Thurs­day evening, play hell with the pump on my wash­ing machine.  This encounter was topped by my phone call to the land­lord’s sec­re­tary ask­ing her to query the clean­ing lady about the lady­bug.  “It’s a small black and red knit­ted insect about the size of an egg,” I said, rel­ish­ing as always the chance to use a sen­tence that has prob­a­bly nev­er been uttered before.  “A what?”  “A lady­bug, you know, the fly­ing sort of beet­ley thing,” I elu­ci­dat­ed, think­ing, what do you mean, a what?  “I’m sor­ry, I don’t fol­low,” she insist­ed, and then the pen­ny dropped.  “A lady­BIRD,” I cor­rect­ed myself and all was clear.  OK, I love the Eng­lish, but that’s tak­ing time-hon­ored lin­guis­tic dis­tinc­tions to an absurd extreme.  The next thing you know, if I’m even think­ing the word “ele­va­tor” the lift won’t work.

Ah well, no wor­ries by pick­up time at school.  There just is noth­ing more com­plete­ly adorable, I assure you, than see­ing 30 or so nine-year-old girls in black watch plaid, plaits fly­ing, run­ning around the cor­ner of the school laugh­ing and swing­ing their swim bags.  I mean, if the impli­ca­tion of tons and tons of impe­r­i­al and oth­er­wise cor­rupt mon­ey being spent on these priv­i­leged lit­tle scraps of human­i­ty does­n’t dis­turb you, which as a card-car­ry­ing lib­er­al I feel it should.  But what the hell, I paid my dues as a New York City Pub­lic School class moth­er.  And as sweet as King’s Col­lege is, in my heart of hearts, I’m find­ing myself very glad that Avery’s first years of school were spent in the end­less vari­ety, obstreper­ous­ness , food fights, play­ground jun­gle and sheer vol­ume of noise that was PS 234.

Avery reports that she suc­ceed­ed in putting togeth­er more French sen­tences than any­one else in her form today!  Not bad for a lit­tle girl whose French to date was lim­it­ed to menu items like steak frites.  And her maths are com­ing along well!  And she could spell “mis­cel­la­neous” for the gen­er­al staff which silenced even their gen­er­al atti­tude that Amer­i­cans are lucky if they don’t dis­grace them­selves every wak­ing moment.

Still await­ing word from John on the sta­tus of the lease, but I assume all is well unless I hear dif­fer­ent­ly.  If so, we could move as ear­ly as Wednes­day!  We’ll keep you post­ed.  I can’t wait to tell you the address.  It’s SO English!