No. Time. For. Coffee.

In two weeks I have to go to the Clean Water Festival with my son’s class. And when I say I have to...I have to. At the school barbeque the other night his teacher used some sort of Vulcan mind-meld trick on me. It must have been that. Because I’ve been on this God-damn trip FIVE times now –count ‘em, five – and there’s just no way in hell I would have agreed to go on this effing trip otherwise.

The Festival is an all day event. I have to ride the bus with the kids. No fun moms go because they’ve long since learned to save their volunteer time for the good trips like apple picking and such.

The Festival sucks ass. And it always has either just rained or is raining while we’re there so that I’m soaked through. Lunch time – usually the time I realize I have not, in fact, packed a lunch for myself – is spent being entertained by a children’s entertainer who forces me to get out of my seat and dance in time to his shitty music. The most exciting thing we see is a toilet flushing from the inside. Seriously.

I can’t believe I’m going on this trip. Again. I think I’ve been on this trip more than any of the teachers. Twice with Callum, twice with Ben, once with Jack and now with Nathan.
At least now when I go I won’t be working a night shift. God, sometimes I forget how exhausting that was. For years I was a bartender. The bad kind, the kind that made you feel shitty for forcing her to serve you drinks. But it paid the bills....sometimes a bit better than this gig, I might add. My shift was three nights a week back then, from 4 pm -2 am.

And the Festival always fell between nights two and three of my shift. My aunt lives down the street from me and she would take the kids overnight. But still...I’d get home from work at around 2-2:30, sit and stare at the walls for an hour then fall asleep around 4 in the morning. Turn around and get up by 7 so I could be at my aunt’s house when the kids woke up in the morning (I remember becoming quite a math whiz, calculating the waking hours I was away from them in a week. If they were in bed by 9 it was fifteen.) We would rush through our morning to make it to school and then get on the bus just in the nick of time. No. Time. For. Coffee.

I would stumble through my day, putting on a big phony smile when my kid was looking so he wouldn’t feel like shit. I would eat an apple out of my son’s lunch and maybe have one of his cookies if he wasn’t looking. The complimentary coffee always ran out before I got a cup so that around 2:30 my eyelids would start to seize and stay at half mast for the rest of the day.

Then on the bus home, it would start to rain. Real rain. I would try to stay awake on the bus but it usually didn’t work. And I would calculate how much time I had when the bus pulled back in to school before I had to get ready for my night shift. Three, maybe four minutes. Then back into my uniform that always smelled like deep-fried chicken wings no matter how many times I washed it, a bit of eyeliner to make me look sexy but just made me look older, my hair in a ponytail and a kiss goodbye for the boys.

On the drive to work I’d tell myself, it’s probably not going to be busy. Sure, it’s always insanely busy when it’s raining but today...it won’t be. Then I’d pull in to the parking lot and barely be able to find a spot. The place would be packed with screaming kids and pervy old guys sitting along the bar waiting to look down my top. And every time I tried to grab a cup of coffee, someone would yell out ‘Hands!’ – which means they need...you guessed it, hands to carry food – and I wouldn’t get a sip. Then of course, because I was such a bitch all night, tips would suck. I would go home and worry about money, and not get a wink of sleep.

I really hate that fucking Festival. This year I'm bringing coffee.