...but it sure feels like a Monday.

Getting up and out of the house was fine; Willem is home on Tuesdays, but we have the extra hours at Jacob's daycare (flat rate for up to 20 hours a week) so he goes in for a few hours Tuesday mornings anyway. But since Willem doesn't have to go to school, I can take a long shower and get myself ready without feeling rushed, and come out to two magically fed and dressed children.

Then came the daycare drop-off. Jacob did fine, you can just feel it in his body that he's more relaxed and ready to go than he was last week. Which is a good thing for *my* mental health. But when we got there this morning, there were no teachers in the toddler room - all of the kids were together in the kindergarten room. Thirteen of them. And the one teacher there was on the phone with a prospective parent while a devil spawn of a little boy was throwing a 6" metal car around the room like a football and an apparently self-destructive little girl was trying to eat a plastic rhinoceros.

So I stayed until she was off the phone and gently but firmly had a tantrum. "I'm sure that was a very important phone call, but I'm really uncomfortable with the number of children in the room."

"Oh," she said, "But it's okay, I can have up to 15 in the room with one teacher."

"I don't doubt that you would be able to supervise them on your own, but when you're on the phone they're not being supervised, and I had to stop one boy from throwing things and another girl from eating things." (I couldn't say "plastic rhinoceros," I felt that it would take away from the impact of my tantrum.)

She didn't say much, just focused on getting the room and children back in order. And Jacob was happy and distracted, so I left then, all set to call Willem and have a big rant about the place, blah blah blah. But before I got the chance, my phone rang - it was that teacher, calling to apologize and explaining her plans to call a staff meeting and rearrange schedules and come up with alternate plans if someone calls in sick or late, and so on. Which just took all the wind right out of my sails. Nothing like getting ready for a good tantrum and having it deflated.

Then when I got to work, Judi was upset because over the weekend I saw a woman in the hospital (the "ma'am" woman) and suggested that she get in touch with a therapist here. Judi is a former substance abuse counselor and is of the mindset that if you have any history of substance abuse at all, then you should only ever see substance abuse counselors for the rest of your life. She was all set to gently but firmly educate me on the proper place to have referred this client, and was unhappy that I had considered that and had reasons why the referral wouldn't have been the right response.

And later, she was upset because her paperwork from last Thursday didn't get turned in on Friday (she has Fridays off). It wasn't left in the special Paperwork Drop-Off Spot, and I know it wasn't because I dropped off the paperwork from the Drop-Off Spot and it didn't occur to me to selectively drop off everyone but Judi's paperwork. She insists that it was there, and I didn't think to take photographic evidence, so she was simmering about that, too. Woe is she.

But she's worked off her mad, I'm not mad at daycare anymore, and it's only 45 minutes till lunchtime. So while it started off as a Monday, maybe it's Tuesday already...