Zachary is in the stage of life where the word “No” is funny to him. (Mommy says it in a louder, deeper mean mommy voice; therefore it must be a joke and mean that whatever activity I’m involved in is both ingenious and hilarious). So this is the response that I received this morning to my yelling of “No! No! Oh no! Stop! Oh no!” when I found Zach standing on the dining room table dumping my mug of luke warm coffee all over my laptop keyboard. (The thoughts in my head were definitely worse than “No! No! Oh no! Stop! Oh no!”) Haha! That mommy of mine. She’s SO great. She must really love my new game of ‘laptop coffee dump’ since she’s making so much noise. She must really be telling me how wonderful I am! Man, I rock…I AM hilarious with all this coffee dumping. And she really liked my dancing on the table top yesterday, though she likes this show even better! Now that she’s busy cleaning up the coffee mess (I don’t see why she bothers though…) I think I’ll go jump on the couch and then do a headstand off of it.”

The good news is that Kara, my laptop, doesn’t seem to have suffered any permanent damage (other than emitting a slight coffee smell, which quite frankly, I enjoy).

Matthew attended his second day of preschool today. Yesterday was Open House where both he and I stayed and met his teacher, Mrs. Mac, and played together for an hour. He definitely approved of the truck selection on the playground. He could hardly wait to get to school today. The parents sat out in the “big room” for Parent Orientation while the kids experienced their first hour of flying solo in class. Only two or three of the twenty kids (in the two 3’s and 4-year-old classes) came sobbing out to their parents. Matthew certainly wasn’t one of them. The second Mrs. Mac opened the classroom door he was like, “See ya,” without even looking back.

My one, one little worry with this preschool – I know…if I quit another preschool this year, then I’ll probably be banned from ever enrolling in a preschool again, [“Oh, YOU’RE Matthew’s mom…you’re the one who joins preschool and then drops out because something just isn’t up to your standards…right. We know all about you.”] well, anyway my one issue is the smell. Yes, that’s right, I have an Odor Issue. (I’m seeking treatment for my OI problem). Here’s the issue: the preschool is in a church basement – which I knew ahead of time and visited and inspected thoroughly, if you’ll recall – and it smells of…of church basement. I inquired when I visited if the place gets cleaned and I was reassured that they were busy preparing for the carpets to be thoroughly cleaned that very weekend (four days ago) in preparations for the first day of school (yesterday). So, I was hoping yesterday to find a fresh-clean-scented school. No, it still smelled of church basement. Then today during parent orientation, after a while I thought, “hmmm, I have a little bit of a headache.” At the end of parent orientation, I overheard another mother asking Mrs. Mac about the smell and I thought, “Oh good, I’m not the only one suffering from OI.” Mrs. Mac reassured Other Mom that the windows are usually opened to air the place out and…I didn’t catch the rest. (I didn’t want to be too obvious in my eavesdropping). Out in the parking lot, I mentioned to Other Mom that I heard her mention the OI and I was glad not to be the only one.

She replied, “Yeah, it’s bad. If it doesn’t get better and they don’t do anything about it then I’m going to pull my daughter from this school. I had to take allergy medicine when I got home yesterday.”
This comment is what led to the worsening of my OI. What if it’s mold? What if this school will poison my child? I do have a headache, after all. Oh my gosh, it’s a brain tumor! I have cancer from the church basement stank. I can’t keep Matthew in a moldy, stanky odor church basement cancer school. The more I thought about it the more frustrated I became. But I LOVE this school. We’ve been registered for three different preschools in the last three weeks, and I was sure that the third time was the charm. I love the teacher, the curriculum, the playground, the classroom is great. It’s just the stanky, cancer mold that’s a problem.

The first chance I had I researched moldiness on-line. I, of course, am now an expert on things moldy, reactions to it and the ways to deal with it. I am thoroughly reassured that my headache was an unrelated fluke and not caused by mold. Turns out the whole mold thing usually takes a while to have an effect on the unsuspecting victim. (And headaches aren’t listed as one of the common side effects). So, I’ve concluded that the church basement stink is just that, church basement stink. It’s probably mildew at the very worst. Besides, it’s not like I’ll be there all that often to suffer through the stank…I’ll just drop Matthew off in his class and go. It’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. Anyways, it if is mold at least he’ll be getting a really great preschool education!