2,116

I'm convinced the universe gives us school mornings to make it easier to leave our kids with strangers for the majority of the day.  Why else would we have to wake up long before the sun, place plates of hot, healthy breakfast in front of cranky, half asleep kids, pry open jaws to force in a toothbrush, spend twenty minutes getting their braid exactly the way they want it, search through disorganized drawers to find matching socks, run back into the house to get the calculator they forgot they have to have, and wait in the world's stupidest daily traffic jam five days a week?  Seriously, if not for the dramatic lessons in self control, I would probably home school.  Well...maybe not, but if I did, lessons would definitely start after 10.

Anyway, this was a typical morning.  By the time I got Maya to release my hand, I was free.  I practically ran to my car.  (I say practically because there was an abnormal amount of hot dads at the school this morning, and one cannot simply rush past such views, but that's a story for another day).  I leisurely strolled the aisles at the grocery store and blared the stereo in my car for the first Monday this school year.

Then, while putting away the groceries, I found Eva's retainer case.  Uh oh.  She has been so excited that she doesn't have to wear it all day since school started.  Unfortunately, she's still used to leaving her retainer in, so she must have forgotten to take it out this morning.  It hurt my heart that she was missing out on her little reprieve from the appliance.  So, while my pie shell was firming in the refrigerator, I walked the case up to the school for her.

Eva always has a million questions.  A million.  Before noon.  I love her, but really.  Enough with the questions.  But, as I was walking the case up to her, I thought about some of her more frequent questions.  The one that I've heard the most is "How far is it from our house to the school?".  I've already told her how long it takes me to run there.  Today, I timed the walk.  29 minutes.  On the way back, I counted the steps 2,116.  When I got home, I counted the blisters.  2.  Because that's too far to walk in cheap flip flops.  I can also tell her it's far enough to get stopped by two different guys who know me despite the fact that I've never seen them before in my life.  It is the right amount of distance to allow too many thoughts to drift in and out of my short term memory.  And it's far enough that, at 88 degrees, I was smelling less than fresh by the time I got home.  Most importantly, though, the distance from our door to the elementary school is exactly far enough to remember why I'm so lucky to be able to do silly things like count the steps between us.

2,116.  Close enough to walk but far enough that I can still miss them by 3:25 pm.