The Great Quest to Find William B. Travis

This morning was one of those mornings when things should have gone smoothly but they did not.  I actually woke up at 5:30am.  Good start.  BUT did not actually get up until a little after 6am.  I hopped in the tub meaning to only stay in about 5 minutes, but I love sitting in the dark, in a warm tub so I decided to go for 7minutes instead.  Even with the cat poking my shoulder every ten seconds, requesting I dribble water on his head, it was mostly relaxing.  That is right up until Lauren Francis came streaking into the room and invaded my bath.  This wasn't necessarily bad, but I had to adjust to Plan B.  I was going to be in the tub now for at least 15 to 17 minutes.  We got out and got side-tracked on our get ready for school mission.  John was sitting on the bed doing email so we decided to take a snuggle detour.  Plan C.  We finally get upstairs at 10 til 7.

Now in my house, if children are not dressed and to the table by 7am, we are most certainly not going to make our "leave the house by 7:30am" goal.  I assume that anyone who has to get anywhere in the morning has the strange minute barometer set in their head.  "Good God!  I woke you up at 6:30am.  It took you 12.5 minutes from the time I woke you up for you to lift your head off the pillow!  Hustle, hustle!"  My children hear the word hustle no less than 30 times a morning.  They also constantly hear their statistics on the minute barometer so they know exactly where they can improve their times.  "14 minutes wasted this morning locating the one shoe under the bed and the other in the bathroom.  3 minutes wasted trying to sneak a My Little Pony in your backpack.  Okay, when you have to poo, you have to poo.  But if you could try to time it before we are backing out of the garage.  We were 4 minutes ahead of schedule."

With that said, no one made it to the table until 7:10am this morning.  Lauren who had started off strong by waking up early, became side tracked trying to get a table cleared off in her room so she could move the Princess Celestia castle on top of it.  This was of course the top priority of her entire day.  Little things like clothing, eating and getting to school on time came much lower on her list.  Helen, was earlier to the table, but had her nose in a new book so she kept forgetting to eat and ended up leaving the table 10 minutes later than Lauren.

At this point we are 7:38am, I pull out Helen's binder to do my parently duty of signing and acknowledging the school day before existed when out fall two small drawings of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin.  "Helen, these drawings are great," I remark.  Helen looks a little panicked,"Where is William B. Travis?  Oh dear.  Oh dear.  This is bad.  I have this thing, I have to turn these in and I don't see William B Travis.  Where did he go?"  We start pulling out an unbelievable amount of loose paper from Helen's messenger bag.  It is like the little cars that 50 clowns pour out of.  There is a fox Helen sketched, a page that says redo that Helen has not redone.   It is a memory lane of assignments that Helen cannot help reflecting on even as she is panicking about Travis.  I realize we are not likely to find the tiny hero.  "Helen, here is a notecard.  Get to drawing and I will go look and see if he fell out in the car."  Lauren chimes in, "What did Helen loose?"  "She lost William B. Travis.  We cannot find him anywhere."  Lauren helps in the hunt as well.

I am sad to say we never found Mr. Travis.  I am quite certain he made his escape yesterday when Helen pulled a piece of paper out to sketch on during Girl's club.  She drew another but he was done in a rush and apparently inferior to the original.  We left the house with 7 minutes until tardy bell.  We had a tardy last week.  A tardy two weeks in a row is very frowned upon in Allen.  This is bad for us because we tend to be late in clusters.  We pulled into a drop off spot with kids coming from everywhere at a full run.  The tardy bell had rung but a watch dog dad was holding the door.  "Hustle girls!  Hustle!"  I have my coffee in hand, the assistant principal has his coffee in his, we make eye contact.  He smiles and looks the other way while about 15 kids slip into school avoiding the tardy slips that come once the door closes and locks.  I can't help it, I know somewhere on the floor of the school is a tiny William B. Travis, happy to be in a Texas still wild enough to stretch the rules just a bit.