MetaMegan's Mangled "Me Time"

Luke has swimming lessons on Thursdays, and the pick up time is between 5:45 and 6:00 at the pool, which is very close to my office. Since I finish work at 5:00, that means 45 whole minutes of glorious "me time" between work and pick up. I declared Thursday to be Megan Day! I dressed nicely because on Thursdays I have to drive! I brought the paper to read while I sipped a latte somewhere between Whole Foods and Barnes and Noble after leisurely strolling the magazine and fiction section! Thursdays, how I have looked forward to you, lo these many weeks since I signed Luke up for swimming lessons. How I imagined what I could be doing instead of hovering around the lesson that first week. How I wished I was more organized the second week when I was speeding to pick Luke up after we had stupidly scheduled his parent-teacher conference at the school at the end of the day, forgetting he would be across town at lessons.

Maybe it was a case of too much anticipation? Maybe 45 minutes isn't really that much time? Especially because 10 of those minutes were spent talking to my boss, not realizing it was already 5:00 pm? And 10 minutes were spent finding a parking space at Whole Foods, and 10 minutes were spent purchasing peanut butter at Whole Foods so I can make lunches this evening. And 5 minutes were spent waiting for my latte. So yeah, I browsed for 2 minutes, spent 3 minutes in line debating just chucking the book and running for the door. I made up excuses in my mind for not being there when the lesson ended. Like, "I couldn't find a parking space!" (Eerily, that came true.) Alas, when I arrived at the Y, Luke was lounging on the couch watching TV. He managed to slide one eye in my direction to glare at me reproachfully for not being the first parent there, all the while keeping the other eye glued to Nickelodeon.

And then we left, and he immediately and completely melted down into a pile of crying, screaming, hungry goo. I brought him a plum for a snack. That made things worse.

But! The day was saved! Because if are coming down from a relaxing three minutes of me time, and you have a screaming child in the car who needs a snack, and you have recently purchased some peanut butter... I think you can see where this is going. I loaded up a spoon full of peanut butter to take the edge off his hunger meltdown, while simultaneously gluing his mouth shut for the rest of the drive home.

Megan Day was saved.