The terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day

At 12:30am on Tuesday morning, having been asleep for approximately 2 and a bit hours, I was awoken by a loud crash as the ferocious windstorm outside threw a plant pot against my bedroom window.

Three and half minutes later, as my heart was still racing from the shock of being so rudely awakened, the electricity went off.

Tuesday pretty much went downhill from there.

After a poor and patchy sleep, which wasn't assisted by the two children who ended up in my bed, I got up at 7 to try to do a day's work at home, as my school holiday childcare had fallen through the day before.

There was still no power, however, which meant no Internet, no landline phones, and a maximum of 4 hours on my local drive on the laptop if I was lucky.

As I was pondering this, I got a work phone call at 8am that did not go terrifically well (and that is a charitable description). While chewing on that, my three children decided this would be a great time to start squabbling non stop.

The power company's website suggested power would be back on by 10am. By 10:30am, with no power, fractious kids and a laptop battery that was declining alarmingly, I piled everyone in the car to drive to my husband's work to try to use his wifi to at least download my work mail.

This was unsuccessful. BECAUSE MY LAPTOP WOULD NOT FOR WHATEVER GODFORSAKEN REASON CONNECT WITH HIS SYSTEM.

By now I was actually grinding my teeth in frustration, but I kept my cool (sort of) and drove off to Maccas, to get the kids lunch and try to use *their* wifi. THIS ALSO FAILED. I CAN'T EVEN.

So off we went to my workplace - all of us - so I could get some urgent things done, charge the lappy and get my mail. We were there for just under 2 hours and it was among the least enjoyable 100-minute stretches of my life. Tooth extraction would have been less painful. The kids fought, fidgeted, were disruptive to me and my workmates, and all the time I felt shitty about the fact that this was meant to be their school holidays and look how much fun they (weren't) having.

All of us exhausted, we drove home in relative peace just after 3pm, to find that our power was STILL off (WHAT????) and all the food in our fridge and freezer was starting to spoil. The electricity company was now suggesting 5pm ... maybe ... as an estimated time.

I pretty much gave up at this point and curled up on my bed with the 4 year old and read her stories. This was the only non stressful part of my day.

Finally, just after 4:30pm, the power did come back on, I willingly let the kids have an hour's TV time, and I got some urgent work things finished. I then spent 2 hours frantically trying to cook all the defrosted meat so it wasn't wasted, serving dinner to the once-again bickering children, and assessing the damage in the fridge (pretty bad).

By the time I tumbled into bed at 9:30, I was so far beyond done, Done wasn't even a dot in the rear view mirror. The whole day was a litany of Things Just Being Hard and Not Working, with very few breaks being caught. I slid into sleep with a deep and profound relief that it was over, and I have to say, it's not often I consider an entire day such a write-off in this way. Generally I tend to the view that as I live a privileged, soft and happy life, it behooves me to be appropriately aware of this and appreciative of every day I'm given. And I mostly am. Really.

But Tuesday? It sucked, and I'm glad it's gone. THE END.