I was tired of grading so I thought I'd do a little work on my dissertation. I opened up my stats program and asked it to list my stuff for me.
And it said, What stuff? I don't have any of your stuff.
A cold chill snaked down my spine, because I hadn't backed up my data in about three weeks. (The really ironic thing was that on Saturday evening I had thought to myself, You really should back this up. First thing Monday, I said.) I said, No, really, where's my stuff?
No stuff, it said. I don't know anything about any of your stuff.
At this point the baby woke up unhappy. She had been a bit plugged up, and now she came unplugged. I changed a diaper and realized that I had renamed an important folder earlier that day. I tried to change it back but encountered a spot of trouble and a second poopy diaper.
I tried another solution (no dice) and paused to change a third soiled diaper. At this point the baby was a little distressed, so I stopped mid-change and just held her for a minute. "What's the matter, sweetie?" I asked her. She let fly with a fourth installment, anointing her outfit, a sock, my jeans, and the carpet.
I cast an unhappy look at the clock. I had promised Pete that we could walk home from preschool, but I was short on time. I sprinted upstairs to put the baby in fresh clothes...and she promptly filled her diaper again. By this time she was all done having her diaper changed -- rolling over and crawling away (or giving it the old college try while I held firmly to one ankle), and protesting loudly. Somehow I wound up with an attractive smear across my shirt. I washed my hands for the fifth time and looked once more for my data, because who cares about poopy clothes when three weeks' worth of work is missing?
It was still gone, and I was out of time. I couldn't walk to preschool without being late. I chucked the stroller in the back of the van, thinking we could walk home and retrieve the van when we picked up the middle boys at 3:15. Pete's teacher (who had heard our exchange that morning) commented on my driving to pick him up and asked me if I was okay.
Here, I am embarrassed to tell you, I said, "I'm all right" and promptly started to cry. I was out in public wearing icky clothes and I was afraid I'd have to redo all that work, and it looked to her like I was planning to break a promise to my 4yo. FAIL.
She was very kind about it, and suggested that Pete stay for part of the afternoon session. Mercifully, thankfully, providentially, I was able to find my missing data. (St. Anthony = THE BEST.) Stella wasn't quite done filling diapers and spreading their contents around, but at the moment she and I are both wearing clean clothes.
I will spare you the details of the evening, in which my oldest son was late for his orchestra concert and my husband and I learned that the state revenue department cashed our check but failed to credit our account, so that now we have to extricate ourselves from the hands of a collection agency. Maybe All Souls Day is a good day for bad circumstances, a good day to cultivate detachment from the things of this world. The verse on my mind has been the one from Romans 8 about creation groaning as if in labor, and us groaning along. It's been a groany kind of day. Some days all you can do is ask God to bring something good, somehow, out of the groaning.
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