Zip- Drive (Me Crazy)

One of Pman's favorite games seems to be taking everything out of the lazy susan and, one by one, placing the items on the kitchen table about 20 feet away. He giggles the whole time. I have watched him climb on a chair and push the items he has already placed on the table, further back so as to make room for the new items. This will consume up to 45 minutes of his afternoon if I let it.

Sometimes I do simply because I have no better ideas, sometimes I don't let him get more than 5 items on the table because I do not feel like cleaning up.

In seemingly unrelated news, I have a zip drive that houses all...ALL of my teaching stuff from the last few years. (I clean it up every two years.) I, foolishly, do not typically back up my documents, so if I lose the zip drive I'm totally screwed. Some items, like my syllabus and class notes are backed up with hard copies, but the creative writing assignments and class activities that make up the genius that is my teaching style are on the zip drive.

Yesterday, while P napped, I started working on materials for the upcoming semester. When I finished, I pulled the thumb drive out of my laptop portal thingy and placed it on the side table to my immediate right.

This I KNEW.

Later that afternoon when I was gathering my school stuff up so it was not in sweet P's way while he played, I realized the external drive was not on the table.

Curious.

No matter, it probably fell off the table and is under the couch. Nope.

Between the couch cushions? Nope.

Possibly I threw it away? Nope. And ick!

In about an hour I had every stone, as it were, turned, twisted and practically crushed. The couch cushions were strewn about- P thought we were making forts. My storage area for school stuff- my school stool- was torn apart and reorganized. All of P's toy bins were upturned. I even had the couch upside down and was thisclose to cutting the underlining because I was sure the drive had fallen within the depths of the couch. I did all of this calmly, but quickly. I wanted to scream, but I did not want to frighten P. So, instead, I turn the couch right side up and sat on it, cushionless, and cried.

It sounds wussy, but I have found crying, rather than yelling, is a much better way to let it out.

As I sat there with frustrated tears streaming down my face, Pfunk brought a book over to me. My sweet, thoughtful son climbed on my lap, which was easy since I was only about 3 inches from the floor. He put his head on my shoulder. Instead of reading the book, I tried to explain to my almost 19 month old that mommy lost something very important and she was sad. He looked at me and said, "ssSaaBccmamavmmas." I forced a smile and tried to read the book to him. He again put his head on my shoulder and said, "BaaSsaavnajsjsh."

Not impressed with my lack of enthusiasm, he scooted off my lap and headed back into the kitchen to finish the lazy susan game.

Defeated, I picked up his empty sippy cup and headed to the kitchen to fill it up. It was then I saw it- my zip-drive, sitting on the bottom shelf of the lazy susan- clearly not where I left it.

I am in no hurry for P to grow up, I am really enjoying my time with him at this age. However, this little episode gave me a glimpse of the sweet man he will become. He is not perfect, just moments after all of this, I had to give him a time out for playing with the lamp shade. (I swear this boy has toys, it's not all lampshades and lazy susans!) We just had this great moment of real human, mother to son, I need a hug interaction and it was amazing.