I have no idea what’s been going on with me as a mother. The fact that I am away from home on a business trip while leaving mu children to the care of a babysitter does not bode well for my chance of winning Mother of the Year anyway. But I did figure out why I am loving people over the Internet so much better in real life.

You do not witness my suckiness up close and personal.

You do not get to witness my parenting fails.

You do not get to be rubbed the wrong ways by my mere presence. My smugness. My suburban privileged life. My undeserved whining. My coy yet relentless pursuit of youthful appearances.

For that, I am grateful.

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Mr. Monk my recently-turned-8 younger child came home with the wrong jacket last Tuesday. It was size XL, way too big for him. When I finally noticed it on Wednesday afternoon, I rushed over to the care facility where he had to stay that Monday and Tuesday because school was out and I had to work on those days.

I made the director at the center check the coat hooks. The cubbies. Different classrooms. I made her call the “suspects” aka kids who were also there on Monday and Tuesday and were BIG enough to be wearing a size XL jacket.

No dice.

I became more and more indignant.

What kind of parents would not notice that their son had gone home with a jacket that’s too SMALL for him?! Wouldn’t they have noticed by now since it is freezing?! Are they keeping our better and brand new (!) jacket on purpose?! Jerks!

I was also mad, unfairly, at my child for coming home with the wrong jacket and for not noticing it till Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, with the entire weekend forecast to be cold cold cold. And on top of that, I had to rush to get everything ready for Thanksgiving. It was hugely inconvenient to say the least. [Oh how I sound like a spoiled brat inside my own head!]

I had purchased the jacket from Gap when there was a 35% off sale. I did not want to pay full retail price. Mr. Monk did not want anything else but his old jacket back because he had been wearing the same style for several years. And if you ever wonder why I am calling him Mr. Monk in this blog: Extremely dislike of changes or disruption to routines and sensory sensitivities.

It was my personal, trivial, perfect storm.

Oh it was a saga alright. Albeit a perfectly unnecessary one. And if I really think about it, quite embarrassing and I really should not be writing about it for the world to know… (i.e. of course I absolutely need to blog about it…)

There have been quite a few coupons floating around in the Cyber space for Gap but none of them could be used for in-store purchase AND the online store did not have the jacket any more. There was ONE left in our local store and I do have a 35% off coupon for in-store but that did not become effective until this Friday. So on Wednesday, after much whining from Mr. Monk and everybody else that had to help him zip up the hand-me-down-too-big-and-a-bit-tattered-with-a-non-working-zipper jacket, I broke down. I called the store in the morning and asked for the jacket to be held for me till the end of day. I drove over there at night and lo and behold, the road to the mall was closed. No problem. I would take the detour. When I finally got there, with 10 minutes till closing time, LOOK! Best parking space ever! Why? Because the entire mall was shut down due to power outage!

I went back again the next day, clearly agitated, and paid for the jacket in full price, fully aware that if I had waited one more day, I could have got the jacket at 35% off. But I did not want to risk the possibility that someone could have walked in the store on Friday morning and snatched that stupid prized jacket away from me.

I hate paying full price. I absolutely hate paying full price for clothing items. I really really do. I hate it. Hate it. HATE IT!

I came home with the jacket and guess what? The zipper did not work!

By then Mr. Monk was so defeated and had come to terms with the fact that he simply had to live without his jacket. [Oh the Horror!] It was like Morgan Freeman telling me to give up on this stupid prized jacket and hop over to Lands’ End to order a jacket with their 40% off +Free Shipping promotion. I bit the bullet and ordered a damned jacket and by doing this, I triggered some Cosmic Law about lost clothing items:

Guess what? The jacket, the original one, came back.

When I picked up Mr. Monk from the weekly Chinese school on Sunday, he presented me with the beloved jacket.

I was horrified.

For this meant many things:

1. I did not notice that he had come home with the wrong jacket for an entire weekend PLUS the Monday AND Tuesday AND Wednesday Morning.

2. I had shown my indignation by mistake.

3. I now need to track down the too-large-jacket that he had come home with [Are you still with me?!] that I had shoved into the hands of the childcare facility director, mind you, with great, visible, indignation and annoyance.

4. I need to go over and pick up the jacket from the childcare facility director with my newfound humility and embarrassment, offering up apologies for causing her so much unnecessary trouble.

5. Then I need to bring the jacket back to the mother of the jacket’s owner who asked incredulously, “You mean, you did not notice it was the wrong jacket when you picked up your child last time?!”

She proceeded to tell me how she had made her son wait with her when the school ended.

“I told him that for sure the mother would notice that the jacket does not belong to her child and she would bring it back right away! How can you not notice that the jacket is too big?!” She laughed jocusingly (Joking + Accusing). And then she said it again for good measure, “You mean you really did not notice it until later that day?”

I did not tell her that not only did I NOT notice it that Sunday, I did not notice it until the following Wednesday afternoon…

As I was leaving the Chinese school with my boys in tow, crestfallen, embarrassed (Did I ever tell you that “fear of embarrassment” is one of the two driving forces in my life?), I was accosted by another mother who made an effort to traverse all the moving and converging children in the hallway to deliver her assessment of my appearance that day,

“You really do look cute in that age.” She delivered her line with a smug expression, indicating the hat I am wearing, pointing it out to the young girls surrounding us (who probably are in the right demographics to be sporting this hat…)

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Did I ever tell you that I hate Other Mothers even though in a different telling of this story, I am probably That Mom?

I am on the down cycle (i.e. Y < 0 ). Catch you all when I come up from below the X axis…