How do I love thee, O month of June?

Ever have one of those months when it seems like every day is an extra challenge? I’m loving the fact that it’s now June — here’s why:

1. May 1 — leave after work and drive to Atlanta. Arrive at cheap Super 8 motel at about midnight. Look the other way to avoid seeing hair in bathtub or roach on wall.

2. May 2 — eat breakfast at IHOP, then sit in line at immigration for a few minutes. Get stamp in passport, allowing another year to be added to Green Card. Leave Atlanta by 8:30 a.m. Arrive home to pick up child at noon. Spend $100 on gas.

3. May 11 — remember husband’s license expired.

4. May 12 — send husband to renew license. Call to check on his report that he has to see an examiner. Confirm report, and add the detail that he MUST go to Mobile for the license. Call Mobile. Make sure stamp in passport will be good enough, since paperwork isn’t coming from UCIS. Send husband with father to Mobile (after all, the license is  officially expired) to get license renewed. Stress about whether he’ll actually get to see an officer, and then feel relieved when he squeaks through as the last person of the day.

5. May 13 — Eletricity surges, and computer graphics card dies. Vacuum cleaner bites the dust as well (unrelated to electric surge). (Maybe I should say, refuses to bite the dust, which makes it rather useless as a cleaning tool.) Furthermore, pregnant self is snotting it up every morning, a condition she attributes to the lack of an air filter, since it has been removed for over a month now in the quest to install a new A/C unit.

6. May 14 — Wake up at 3:00 a.m. to drive to Pensacola to catch a flight to ND. Child wakes up and chats the whole way to the airport. Run to make your second connection and arrive at the gate with four minutes left to spare. Arrive at destination (Grand Forks, ND) and look for family. No one there. Look for luggage. Also nothing there. Report luggage as being lost (apparently it didn’t make it to the plane with four minutes left to spare). Sit outside and wait for family. Wait some more. Wish you knew a cell number. Finally get in their van 45 minutes later. Child screams and screams after being awakened from a desperately-needed nap trying to cross the border into Canada. Try to take nap, but can’t because of the sweet little voice that kept saying, “Where mommy go?” Send husband to pick luggage up at the border at 8:00 p.m.

7. May 14-21 — hang out in Manitoba, where child has issues with sleep and wakes up crying most every night. Where said child also screams for mommy & daddy whenever they leave her sight (thankfully not quite the whole time.) Where child also, in her great fatigue, falls down the stairs twice in a matter of hours. Fortunately, child eats better than most adults at the house, and does warm up to kids.

8. May 21 — Leave at 5:30 a.m. to catch a flight back home. Deal with snotty border guard, who says, “So, are they going to mail you a new card?” Yes, dear. But for now, look on page 11 of his passport. Perhaps you should apply for some form of alien paperwork yourself so you understand. Get to airport as plane is boarding (flight time moved 20 minutes earlier without us knowing it somehow). Let child run and run at the Minneapolis airport, then get on plane with very tired child. BIG MISTAKE — let child have her own seat. Massive screaming by the end of the two-hour flight. Get in last plane in Memphis. Half of the A/C is not working. Child is crying and sweating. Mommy is about to hyperventilate from the heat, stress & fatigue. Wait on runway for a while. Finally get in the air, put on video for child, and she promptly falls asleep (THANK GOD!!!). Land in P-cola, meet grandma, start crying on the way home. Pitch fits randomly throughout the evening. Refuse to go to sleep until after 9:00 p.m. Make your parents question their own sanity. . .

9. May 20-something — bathroom drain completely clogs. All toiletries must be completed in kitchen sink.

10. May  20-something again — finally break down and fix the computer after electric company will take no responsibility; $105. :*(

11. May 29 — husband helps parents with trailer remodel, then follows me to gas station and pumps gas for me. Car does not start. Hmmm… Battery? Alternator? Galant husband “boosts” (Canadian term for a good old fashion “jumping off”) car and we go home.

12. May 30 — Child eats Huggies SPF 50 sunscreen, prompting a call to poison control.

13. May 31 — Dear husband & father are working on A/C. Husband runs to pick up a tool and a few things from the grocery store. Calls to say his truck has been hit and is undriveable. Get in car with father and drive to the accident scene. Call for tow truck. Thank God his license got renewed back in #4. Answer phone to discover that hedge-trimmer borrowed from brother-in-law is unreturned, living happily in my shed — a serious breach of contract.

HMMM, so now it’s June. Snotty nose issue was resolved in Canada, where it was flipping cold most of the time. Immigration paperwork still has not come, although filed in February. Child got into medicine on June 2, and then poured Clorox cleanup all over her bed. (Thank God for child-proof lids.) Same child pitched a huge fit on June 4 after leaving grandma’s work, and then again after leaving from Enterprise after being picked up in daddy’s rental car. Paper came in the mail saying mortgage insurance is not adequate (although it is) which will require more haggling with my friends at Wachovia. Altima will not start at all now. So maybe I don’t love June as much as I think? In spite of its start, it’s always nice to have a clean slate in front of you. After all, I did pick up husband’s Ford Focus rental, compliments of some nice people’s state-mandated liability insurance, and discover we get $200 just because he hit his head. What shall we spend it on? A new vacuum? Our own hedge trimmer? A car battery?

So, I love thee, June, for 13 reasons and then some.