And the worst mother ever award goes to...

Why, yes, I remain the reigning champion.

Honestly, who needs school photos when your mother has these mad skills with the camera?

Carlie missed school last week. All. Week. For the first several days, she had a stomach virus. For the last couple of days? She was suffering from dehydration... due to apparent parental neglect during the stomach virus. Whoops.

While I was staying home with her, not monitoring her fluid intake, I did manage to go to her school and pick up her homework and missed classwork each day. All 400 lbs of it. Which DID NOT help her feel better. But which DID help her coin a new phrase, which she has used about 2500 times in the last 24 hours... "homework stress."

I can't eat that. I have homework stress.

I can't sleep. It's my homework stress.

Why do I have to take a shower? I have homework stress.

You get the idea.

Friday she went to school for part of the day, after getting off to a late start. Then the weekend was filled with an open house, a VERY INTERESTED potential home buyer and the all day ballroom dance competition on Sunday. When I say all day, I am not even exaggerating. First dance was at 10 a.m. We had to be there at 9:00 a.m. Dancing ended at 5 p.m., followed by dinner and a show, which ended at 9:15 p.m. I told you. ALL DAY.

During that busy weekend, Mom of the Year over here neglected to crack the homework whip, or review the ream of papers that had come home from school.

I was pretty proud of myself that I remembered Monday was individual school pictures and, thus, Free Dress. Free Dress in the world of the Catholic school uniform is a VERY BIG DEAL. A normal free dress day is occasion for quite a bit of hemming and hawing over what to wear. School picture day free dress? Forget about it. Let's just say, the morning of the first day of the first week back to school after being home for a week was a wee bit stressful. Wherein *wee bit* equals *shot of Jamesons in my coffee? why yes, thank you.*

Carlie put a lot of thought into her outfit, and her hair, and her accessories. She left the house the absolute picture of perfection. Minus the envelope with the check and the picture order. Which you hand to the photographer when he snaps your picture.

Let's take a look from Carlie's perspective: hair - perfect! necklace - perfect! outfit - perfect! How exciting! The entire fifth grade lines up to get their photo snapped one at a time out in the garden by the photographer. Hey, you guys, why do you ALL have those ginormous white envelopes? OH NO! insert tears here.

Besides the envelope, she also forgot her "weekly report" which goes home on Friday and is returned, signed, on Monday. Did I mention the part where she DID NOT GO TO SCHOOL Monday - Thursday and went for half of Friday? Right. Yet the drama surrounding the unsigned "weekly report," which reported ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, was tremendous.

Besides the envelope and the weekly report, she also forgot her lunch. At a school without a cafeteria where every day is brown bag lunch day.

I know. It keeps getting better, doesn't it?

When I picked her up from school I could see the stress on her face and the tears behind her eyes. By the time I pulled up to the "get in" spot of the pick up line, she was sobbing. By the time she was in the car and we were pulling away, she was hysterical. And to add insult to injury, she fell off of the swing at recess in a very dramatic fashion (per her report).

We had a tearful evening of homework, a sobbing bedtime including a recitation of every person she has ever loved who has died, moved away or had a hangnail, capped off by lamenting for lost pets. Tell me you've had those bedtimes and it's not just me. Please.

I woke her up 40 minutes early this morning to finish the homework (and it's all done!) and she went off to school with a much better attitude. I need to get dressed for work and get out of here. I've got so much to write about... ballroom dance competition! Carlie was awesome, but really, the lady with "invisible panties" is what you've got to hear about. Oh, and the prospective home buyers who looked at the house, came back the next day armed with his and her notebooks and spent an hour opening EVERY DRAWER, CABINET AND CLOSET DOOR in the house. For real. And I haven't even said a word about Macy Gray on DWTS. Seriously? WTH?

Okay... going to work. Adios.