My weekend began Friday afternoon when I picked Romeo up from school. I was so excited…THREE full days off, which felt luxurious after being gone last weekend and the general stress of the week. I was ready to scoop up all the kids, go home and make a yummy dinner while drinking copious amounts of wine. I walked up to Romeo all smiles, and he hands me something. Now, to be fair, I think he was actually trying to be discreet, but we were at school so naturally I thought he was handing me something he made, or some other school related crap. So I grab it, hold it up high.. and low and behold…it’s a pair of lacey thong underwear that apparently had glued themselves via static cling to the inside of his fleece hoodie during the wash. It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at…it was like having the gas station attendant hand you a sushi roll--- wwwhattttt??? It just didn’t compute.
Now, as luck would have it, Fridays are generally speaking the “dad’s afternoon” to pick up. There are some dad’s who pick up at all the time, but truthfully, not many….except for Fridays, that is “their day”, and I'm guessing it's because they are cutting off work early and putting in a token school visit. So it’s me, and about 5 dads standing outside Romeo’s classroom when the lace thong unveiling happens. Lovely experience. There's no real graceful way to handle that one, or at least I didn't find one in time.
Next, John’s flight gets cancelled. Weather in Southern CA....frustrating. Looks like he’s NOT coming home Friday night and instead, rolls in around 2 p.m. on Saturday. Now it’s one thing to know I have 2 or even 3 days single-parenting, because I can brace myself for it, and have a strategy. It’s a whole other thing to have “sneak-attack” single parent time when I've already spent all my energy carefully proportioned throughout the time I "thought" I had. I was not prepared and had no reserves.
Next, Romeo and I embark on a mega Lego reorganization project because I refuse to buy him even one more Lego set until he sees how many he actually has. So we pile them all in the middle of the living room floor (after collecting every last one from everywhere), and we start sorting the mound, and by mound I mean mountain. He lasts maybe 30 minutes and then goes off on some quest to find the ninja Lego figurine, which prevents him from actually helping whatsoever. I spend the next 2 hours sorting thru 4.5 MILLION Lego pieces. At what point did sorting Legos actually become a reasonable Friday night activity? I’ll tell you when. NEVER.
Saturday I spent almost ¾ of the day fielding angry texts from one of my sisters who is convinced my dad has to be moved back to the states immediately, and is ready to stage an intervention and “force them to come back”. Insane, infuriating, and almost the entire conversation is done over text which makes me want to crawl out of my skin and now the mere echo of the “waterfall” dinging sound of a text makes me involuntarily gag.
So, this is where our daily joy goal comes into play….because to be honest, those things above were the ones I was going to tell you first (and did), until I read the daily goal and then realized, I should probably have noticed the GOOD first. How dare I let what’s wrong take all the glory!!
And I will tell you, I do have a few things that DID go right. First off, after John got home, the kids promptly convinced him to take them to the fair. Yes, the fair. Because he’s super dad, and experiences chronic “I’ve been gone” guilt, he took them and luckily for me, I know my limits and gracefully bowed out of going. The result was time to get some work done, and time to enjoy some kid free quiet. I went to turn on CNN while I worked, and then thought better of it (why experience the stress on a Saturday??) so I turned it to…drumroll….the movie BREAKFAST CLUB!! Dang, that’s one great classic. I loved it all over again. I did this all in a peaceful, quiet house with no on talking in my ear. Amazing.
I will also note, that what is also RIGHT is that Monday is a holiday so even though it felt like my weekend started WAY too late…it’s ok, because Monday is a freebie. Cool.
Lastly, what is also so super RIGHT is the Velvet shipment that arrives today. Love, love, LOVE it. Can’t wait! This is one of my favorites…..it’s got retail therapy written all over it—hello joyful retail purchase, nice to meetcha.
Signed, ME {lv}
Great post, Lauren!!! So funny about the thong/dad reveal, lol!!!! And I love listening to fave old movies while I work - so much better than the news!
Posted by: Diane | February 22, 2017 at 03:04 AM