Not So Sharpie

Mark called at 5pm to let me know he was 10 minutes from the house. He also sweetly suggested I suit up and head out for a run as soon as he gets home. Delighted, I said, sure, that would be lovely. I didn't tell him I was already skirted and shoed and ready to explode out the door before he can put his little red truck in park.

Not that it was difficult day. It wasn't. At all. As a matter of fact, I had nearly nary a worry in the grand scheme of my world until I was mid-run and began pondering the fact that my Mabel's Labels (school stuff labels complete with the children's names and appropriate icons--fire trucks for Heath, trains for Stella) have not arrived in the mail. And if that isn't enough to make me feel insufficient in properly identifying Heath's plastic bowl of grapes tomorrow, the cup that I have pinned all my hopes on for discontinuing my steady (and unseemly) effort in clogging the landfill with sticky juice boxes has not made it to my front porch either.

The cups and labels are not late. The only matter of lateness is the fact that I have a bit of a bad habit with waiting until the very last second to take care of something. This is not a new problem. It's old. And I have waited until the very last second to take any real ownership of this issue. I. Am. A. Procrastinator. There. I said it. And I waited and waited and waited to place those labels and cup orders. And now, when I need them, they are not here. Surprise!

So tomorrow, on the first full day of school, which includes bringing his lunch in his trusty fire truck lunch box, Heath will not have his cutie Mabel's Labels with his full name and fire truck. Instead, he will have his name scrawled in black Sharpie ink from a pen whose tip has at some point been so miserably manhandled, beaten, and crushed to be almost, ALMOST unusable. (I wonder who in this house might be responsible for such inappropriate proprioceptive input?) But there was just enough blackened tip to write his name in my horrible chicken scratch on bowls and lids and cups that will most certainly leak.

As I finished up my run I had a slight glimmer of hope that we would have a last minute UPS or FedEx delivery to the house, but no such luck. Maybe tomorrow. There's always tomorrow.