real food day 2.

today was amazing! totally awesome! couldn't have been better!

just kidding. it fucking sucked.

not food wise. but, like, every-other-thing wise. let's go back to my old format and walk you through my day by the critical moments.

6:30am. up and at 'em. our division of labor among the spouses since the kids started school is that i'm in charge of picking out the kids clothes/approving their own clothing choices, and feeding them breakfast. okay, not a big deal. except for when i offer to make them an egg sandwich with organic local cheddar, farm-fresh eggs and sprouted grain bread. oh, zeke went for it on the description alone, my little foodie. nash? you would've thought i offered to feed her earth worms and straw. so i compromised. i made him the foodie egg sandwich, and she got a plate of scrambled eggs and organic grapes.

she didn't eat any of it. after 20 minutes of begging and pleading while trying to get myself ready for work, i huffed "fine. don't eat. it's a long time until lunch." and you know what? she didn't eat.

i'm in trouble with this one.

on the way out the door, i drank a green smoothie. it was delicious. and pictured below.

10:30am. i'd like to say that something eventful happened before this, but the only thing eventful that happened was that a new dashboard warning light came on in the toyota. it's not the oil light, so i'm pretending not to care. this is not our last conversation about this car for today, so just hang on for it. back to 10:30 - it was at this point in the morning that i shoved some 3x3 bread in my mouth: 1/3 cup each of cottage cheese, oats, and eggs/egg whites, plus 1/4 cup of pumpkin, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1 T of black-strap molasses and some spices. baked in a ramekin and yum.

12:30pm. lunch time. i had a big salad, but it didn't feel nearly as sad. maybe because it was a premeditated salad, brought from home - tons of greens and veggies with 1/2 an avocado and some diced up pork tenderloin from sunday.

things are about to get more exciting.

4:00pm. i worked through lunch/ate at my desk, so i left work a little early to get in a workout at the gym before heading off to my babies' very first every kindergarten parent-teacher conference. big deal, no? yes! so. i got in a nice stationary bike ride while watching part of The Village on my phone (because halloween), and then i got in a 10:00 HIIT workout. i looked at the clock after these two activities and saw that it was 4:40 and decided i had time to sneak in a quick shower and get back into real clothes before heading home for our planned dinner time of 5:30 and then heading off to conferences like a perfect family.

never make plans. never. make. plans.

after a quick hosing off and putting my street clothes back on to my still-sweaty-body, i headed towards the car. it was now 4:55. it was at this moment that i realized i did not have my car key. i had my set of keys, but my car key had slipped off my stupid mother f*cking caribeener at some point, and i did not have it on me. i traced my steps back into the gym, into the locker room, through my locker... nothing. i then went to the front desk and declared that i may have to leave my car in the parking lot and take public transit home, to which the customer service rep said "oh. well, your car may be here in the morning. but it may get towed. i don't really know..." and i very exasperatedly told him that i had to get to my babies' first ever parent-teacher conference, and simply could not afford to get my car towed. he told me to leave a note. "a note?" "yes. a post-it note with the make/model of the car, your name, and the reason the car is in the lot overnight." this did not seem like a foolproof method to avoid towing.

so this was my plan A: to leave my car overnight in the lot and take public transport to the kids' school. but then i realized that we do, actually, need our 2nd car on tuesdays/wednesdays. john has a standing tuesday night meeting that he has to get to, i need to get the kids home after conferences, and then we both have to go opposite directions in the morning for work.

in the words of bridget jones,

so, we (the editorial "we") decided to enact plan B and call a locksmith. apparently, we still have those. 3 phone calls to 3 different places, the first two companies telling me they couldn't get there for 45 minutes, but the 3rd phone call felt promising, since he said he could get there right away. okay, right away then! and he did. he got there in 5 minutes. but the next 45 minutes were a locksmith dramatic reenactment that could literally be a skit on SNL. i tried explaining to him right away that i was trying to get to parent-teacher conferences, acknowledging that the key being inside my vehicle and not on my person was fully my fault, but that i really needed to get going... his response? "honey, these things take time."

good grief.

i remember the days when you called a locksmith, and they showed up with this ninja blade that they would shove down along the window and simply pull up and the door would unlock. not this guy. and the yaris is not a power-anything vehicle, so there's no sneaking in through a crack in the door and hitting the automatic door unlock. i told him we'd have to find a way to to push the weird circular-knob manual lock button. he replied with "well, i can just get in there with a wire and pull the handle..." and i said "nope. that doesn't unlock the door." his reply? "why not?" i don't know dude. i didn't fucking design the car. i just want to get in it and get to my kid's school. that's not what i said. but it's really what i wanted to say.

he tried putting this weird inflatable pump thing into the door, which inflated and opened the door enough for him to get these strange wire mechanisms inside the door to attempt to push the weird circular-knob manual lock button. after 10 failed attempts, he said "do you know where the key is?" (oh my god, seriously?) and i said, "yes, i can see it. it's on the floor over on the passenger side." his response? "well, why didn't you grab it before getting out of your car?"

oh my god.

next he said "well, i can just pick up the key then!" um... what? how are you going to pick up the key with this singular wire and then, somehow, magically, fit the key in between this crack of space that you've created with the inflatable boob-like device? well, to my dismay, he did wind up 'piercing' the key with his wire, and got it up towards the boob-like inflatable in the car door, and then got the key wedged in that crack of space. then he asked me to "hold this, please" (referring to the wire piercing the key which is now wedged in the door) and he went to get tweezers out of his vehicle - TWEEZERS.

it was at this point that i said "don't you guys have, like, some kind of flat blade or something that you can use to get in-between the window pane and the door panel and rig the lock open?"

"ma'am, that is our last resort. we have other methods we use first."

"did i mention that i'm in a hurry and trying to get to my kid's parent-teacher conferences?"

he just looked at me and proceeded to play his own little game of operation involving the tweezers, the key, and the wire. after a couple of minutes, i heard the 'kerplunk' of my key hitting the floor of the inside of the car. he hadn't, in fact, tweezed out the key, but wound up dropping it back down into the car, in the bermuda triangle of all cars - that space between the door and the bottom edge of the seat near the door.

next up? picking the lock. which he could not do. he gave it the old college try though! a good 7 minutes on the passenger door, then 10 minutes on the hatch. he even sprayed some weird stuff into the hatch lock and then kept on trying to pick it? nothing. i tried cracking a joke with the guy, "cars seem so easy to break into in my neighborhood! but apparently we can't get in when it's our own car!" his response, again, was "ma'am, these things take time."

i fucking hate being called ma'am.

next up, he went back to the wire mechanisms, only this time on the driver's side. i was so frustrated with his lack of using the magical ninja blade that i just had to walk away. i got out the phone and informed the badger that i was definitely not going to be home for dinner and probably not going to make conferences.

i'll wrap this up. i'm sitting here blogging, so you know that i did eventually get into my car. by some luck of something, his wire was able to grab the circular-knob thing and unlock the door on the drivers side. then he crawled into my car and exclaimed to me, "well, i have to find your key that i dropped..." and i said "i've got it. let me just pay you so i can get going to my kids' school." okay. so the car is unlocked, i've got the car key in my paw, and i handed the man my visa card. his response? "oh, this is going to take a while. we typically only take cash."

oh my god.

he hand-wrote, in triplicate, the details of his work, charged me my money, swiped my card, and i, finally and breathlessly, was on the way. it was 6:10, the exact start time of the first conference.

i feel the need to confess how fast i drove and how much i prayed that i a) wouldn't die, b) wouldn't kill someone, and c) wouldn't get pulled over. none of those things happened, and i made it from midway st paul to northeast minneapolis in 7 minutes, 7 minutes late for our first conference.

this? THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR TRYING TO WORK OUT.

while driving at a speed that was definitely illegal, i shoved an apple and some almonds into my mouth. i was also texting and doing my makeup (just kidding).

8:00pm. after conferences, and getting the kids to bed, i finally had dinner. the badger made this absolutely amazing tomato bisque that i literally could've stuck my whole face in. i also had a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of wine. because i'm an adult.

here's my eats, in collage-form:

sincerely,
ashley "yes, ma'am" rebekah