When I left for work yesterday morning, I expected to have a very long workday.  And this was a problem, because before I found out that it would be a long day, I had booked myself for a couple of afternoon and evening things to do.

Granddaughter #1 is in her high school band, and they had been selling mulch (I know, crazy thing for a band to sell) for a fund-raiser.  I'd put in an order for 5 bags.  The mulch was supposed to arrive some time between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. and had to be picked up by 6 p.m.  Also at 6 p.m., Granddaughter #2 had a softball game.  I figured I would not even be finished at work by 6 p.m., so I asked The Husband to pick up the mulch, which meant that he would have to leave work early to beat the deadline.  I'd probably have to skip the ballgame.

I picked up The Boss at 8:15 a.m. and we headed to another county to work.  We'd no sooner arrived than my Daughter-in-Law texted me that Granddaughter #3 was puking her guts out, and Granddaughter #4, who is only 3 months old, had a bad cough and she was taking them both to the doctor.  

As it turned out, the work-day was not nearly as long as we had expected, and we were able to leave a little after lunch.  When we got back to town an hour later, The Boss said I could go home if I wanted to, and I did want to, because I had other things I needed to do besides the mulch and the ballgame.  I texted The Husband and told him that I'd get the mulch, but I needed to clean out my car in order to make room for it.  

On a good day, my car is basically a rolling junk heap, full of stuff that I might need:  a kid car seat, folding chairs for ballgames, a couple of rolls of paper towels, hand sanitizer bottles, a can of Lysol spray, and bags of miscellaneous other things that I don't know what to do with.  Cleaning it out took a while.  My sister-in-law needed to borrow the kid car seat, so I took it to her house before heading out to get the mulch.

I'd been checking the band's web site to see if there was an update on the mulch arrival, but there wasn't any update, so I drove to the school.  There was no obvious mulch distribution point in sight.  There were groups of kids in the parking lot - xylophone players and drummers and flag girls - but they all looked stumped when I asked where to pick up the mulch.  I drove all the way around the school a couple of times, looking for a likely spot.  Finally, I found an adult working with one of the drum groups.  He, too, looked stumped for a moment, then he remembered that he'd heard a rumor that the mulch truck had been in a wreck, and the delivery was cancelled until next week.

It was 4:30 p.m. by this time.  Granddaughter #2 would need to be at the ball field in an hour.  With two sick babies, I figured the Daughter-in-Law would need some help, so I went to her house to check on the kids and see if I could help.  Granddaughters 3 and 4 had been diagnosed with a virus, but they seemed to be feeling fairly well by the time I arrived, and their mother was planning on taking them to the game.  I fed and entertained the baby while her mother ram-rodded Granddaughter #2 into getting her ball stuff together.  We made it to the ball park in time.

But everybody was hungry, including me.  I am taking steroids for a pinched nerve in my arm and have been ravenous for two days, and I did not want to sit through the ballgame un-fed, only to have to come home and cook afterward.  Solution:  phone in an order for pizza.

The Husband arrived at the ball field in time to pick up the pizza.  He came back with pizza and a sack of drinks.  We spread it out on the tailgate of his truck and fed us all right there at the ball field while we watched the game.

The paper towels and sanitizers I'd left in my car came in handy.