Let's Hear It for the Sugar Crash!

I have to go to the doctor today to get the routine blood draw to test for gestational diabetes. This involves drinking a gaggingly sweet beverage on a mostly empty stomach and then waiting an hour before they can draw blood. And then comes the sugar crash. Blinding headache, here I come!

Obviously, this is not an outing that I'm anticipating with any great pleasure. But what makes it worse is the amount of planning I had to do to even make this unwanted outing happen.

This is not a appointment to which I want to drag my two feral children. Not that I EVER want to bring them along for appointments, but an hour in a doctor's office? I may as well try to cage a wolverine. That's approximately the level of whirling energy I would be trying to contain.

My options for appointment times were very limited, so I had to take one on a Friday morning. This meant that neither the MiL nor A.* would be available to watch the children. Neither of my kids have ever had a babysitter other than those two adults. (I know--sheltered life.)

So I called my friend Alyssa and asked her if I could drop off my two children at her house at 8:15 a.m. for a few hours. Alyssa is currently eight months pregnant with HER third child (a girl, hooray!), but it's a measure of her generosity that she didn't even hesitate at the prospect of wrangling four boys ages 2, 3, 4, and 7 for an entire morning.

Needless to say, I owe her big time.

And just to complicate matters, I arranged to bring my minivan in to the mechanic today to finish some work begun last week, totally forgetting this appointment I already had. So now the whole family is going to load up in vehicles at 8 this morning. We'll go to the mechanic to drop off my van on the way to Alyssa's. A. and I will drop the children off for their playdate (I'm calling it this to make it more exciting for them so it won't be so much like "Mommy is abandoning you," and more like, "Fun times with friends!"), then drive to the Small City and drop A. off at work. I'll go the doctor, then go get the children, then go home, and then we'll go back to the Small City this evening to pick A. up.

I'm tired already just thinking about it.

* A. took a new job at a law firm in the Small City, so his work hours have gotten much less flexible.