Days that drive a mother to strong drink...

Yesterday was a day to drive an otherwise teetotalling mother to strong drink. Immediately following the boys' school we drove to Jacob's psychiatrist appointment for his ADHD medication. After about an hour and a half there, we drove to Patch base to send our family Christmas gifts to the states. It was a completely hellish experience. I waited in line for a good half hour only to get to the front of the line and have them tell me that I needed to fill out customs forms for each package I was mailing and one of the boxes with exterior writing needed to be completely re-covered. With 4 kids sort of in tow I went back, to fill out customs forms. Jacob and Mason were messing around with the retractable line tapes and pushing eachother, Joe was running around, bumping into people, grabbing the flag (this is a military base and I was expecting someone to throw a major fit any second) and cutting the post office packing paper with a pair of scissors he found on one of the desks. When I tried to get him to sit and discipline him he started wailing and screaming and kicking and then playing the limp dishrag and the whole works. He wouldn't sit still and left his designated time out area to blow his nose and wipe his eyes on the--you guessed it--the flag. He was so naughty that Sam told me he heard a woman in line tell her daughter that Joe had mental problems and it wasn't polite to stare! Between desperately trying to control Joseph and trying to get Mason and Jacob to stop messing around and mailing 7 packages the Southern postman at the desk kept looking at me pityingly and said three different times "Maam, you have your hands full." I nearly killed my children in broad daylight with witnesses in a government building. The day didn't end there--Joseph and I had eye appointments which Garrett had to drive us to because they were going to dilate my eyes. After 2 1/2 hours at the eye doctor and then looking for glasses which, by the way, cost $600 for Joe and me we decided that the day had reached its capacity for pain and anguish and I "called in blind" from the dilation and skipped the young womens' activity. The bottle of wine in the picture was a gift from our German neighbors who came over on Sunday to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner with us. I thought about sending it to the Bradfords to christen their fancy boat with, but after yesterday, I might have found a better use for it!