Packing Meltdown

Remember the most functional family? Well, they must have left already for vacation because the people in THIS house had a melt down.

I woke up this morning and made pancakes. In my best opera voice, I sang upstairs to my child to get up. Pancakes are her favorite. We are a functional family. This should go smoothly. Four calls later, moving down several octives, I demanded she come downstairs and eat the pancakes before I give them to the poor children. Later, she asked if I would make pancakes while on vacation when we stay with Sandy and Darlene and I snapped, "no." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Darlene will make them then."

I brought down the suitcases. We are flying Southwest so we aren't restricted to one case each, though that's my goal. Two cases and one duffel is what I'm aiming for. I made the mistake of asking Victoria, 'feel like grabbing the last of the laundry in the dryer?' and she quipped, 'Nooooo' while rolling her eyes.

I should note I have painfully explained, many times, to my daughter that eye rolling and walking away from me while I'm talking are dangerous to her health. I've explained this since she was five years old. I feel I've given her fair warning. I let the first one go. I went upstairs to begin the piles of clothing and I realized a hurricane had hit my daughter's room. All the laundry that was done this weekend sat on her bed, dressers and desk. There was no way she was ready to pack. I called her upstairs and asked her to get things in order. Another eye roll.

Melt down number one. I don't remember exactly what I said but I think it was along the lines of children in Africa are starving for vacations and I'll take one of those children if she was going to be ungrateful! Then I announced I was going to give her two seconds for an attitude adjustment. I meant to say two minutes but I couldn't correct myself because I feared another eye roll would happen and I'd have to ship her to Africa along with pancakes.

For twenty minutes we searched for my bathing suit. No, not that one the blue one. That's green. Where's the blue one? After looking in every drawer and closet, it hit me that it was in the back of the van, packed 'just in case' a swimming opportunity came up. I tried on the bathing suit. It's purple, not blue. I might be harpooned if I wear that one in public. I moved on to the other one, and hated that one too. Melt down number two. I hate all of my clothes. Victoria cheerfully pointed out all of my shorts and capris are kaki and everyone will think I'm wearing the same ones every day. Great, thanks honey!

I hate packing!