Life as a Single Parent: The Recap

First.  I'm wounded.  I sliced my ring finger on my left hand and stabbed something sharp under the nail on the index finger of my right hand.  And I slammed my left thumbnail in a terrible way.  If it wasn't already painted blue-grey it would probably match my other blue-grey nails anyway.  It is throbbing.  I think it got hit far enough out that nail won't fall off.... but it is gonna turn black.

Thursday:  Hot left for a distant land (Sarah P.... I was going to tell you to watch for him.) to teach a class.  I promised the kids a trip to Target to spent their loot.  Tuff has tooth money and the big kids got money from Grandpa for picking up all the bale twine.... they wound it round and round their arms and then couldn't get free.....  And they all cashed in their change from the Easter eggs. 

So off we went.  It was agonizing.  Bugsy was quick to decide.  Sally Hansen Xtreme wear in Gunmetal.  (Hence the blue-grey nails as reported above.)  She was so sure we had to stop in the toilet paper row and paint her nails.  Yes, I am that parent.  Sweet knew what he wanted.  Lego.  Star Wars to be specific.  And it took all of his cash.  Tuff shopped and shopped.  She settled on some lip gloss, Disney princess dive sticks & new tennis shoes with straps (velcro).  I had to float her a small loan to cover the shoes.... but she loves them and I got some good extra chores out of her to make back some of the money.  Don't tell her I would have bought the shoes for her anyway..... she needed them.

All-in-all it went well but it sure makes for a long day when you spend an hour in the toy row at Target.

Friday:  VIGILANTE DAY.  Or, as Elle noted, "This is not your usual VD."  Vigilante Day is a uniquely local tradition.  This is the 88th year of the parade.  The high school kids get the day off and the little kids have 11:00am release.  So I stopped at the local grocery deli for corn dogs and chips, picked Sweet up at school, zipped out to the valley and got the girls, parked back at my work, had a picnic on the lawn, and walked down to see the parade.  The floats are all themes from local history.  My husband can tell some very naughty stories about what they did when they were supposed to be working on their floats.  It reminds me somewhat of homecoming when I was in school.  A town of almost 30,000 acts like a town of 200.  Then when it is over we went back to daycare..... it is fairly hilarious to see floats tooling down the main drag at 35mph.  It is even more fun to see the cars from out-of-town that don't have a clue what is going on.  And then there are the people you see wandering around town.... "Do you look like that every day or are you a float escapee?"  I saw a kid in boots and wranglers wander by three or four times..... carrying a trombone.  WTF?  We followed a float going 60 towards daycare..... they turned off and we realized there were kids still ON the float.  Yikes. 

Friday night was the usual movie night fun.  Cheese pizza and panda moons (potstickers).  Bugsy was still wandering around saying, "Where.  Daddy?  Where.  Daddy?"

And then, this is crazy, WE GOT CBS.  Wait.  Let me explain.  We have rabbit ears.  Shoved out the window.  We get NBC, FOX & ABC.  If we turn the rabbit ears just right we can get something on channel 10... I can't remember what it is but it has cartoons early on Saturday.  But it hasn't been coming in.  So I turned the ears and tried to scan between channels 9 and 20.  I didn't want to mess up the tv programming for the channels we get on 21 (but wouldn't get if the rabbit ears were turned).  Are you with me?  Did channel 10 show up?  No.  But channel NINE did.  It was CBS.  Wow.  I'm so excited.  Now if I could just align the ears so we could get all the channels at the same time.  Also... if you open the screen door it messes up the tv reception.  I'm not kidding.

Saturday morning my little tv addict (Sweet) was excited about all new cartoons on CBS.  The kids were up at 0-dark-thirty and ready to have a big day.  I painted the closet.  More on that later.  The kids played and played.  They made a lap track in the garage for scooter racing.  We went swimming in the afternoon.  I'm not as thrilled with my new suit as I was originally.  I still like the suit but I guess the problem is I don't like my body.  Who knew?  The two big kids jumped off the diving board over and over.  We tested out the new princess dive sticks.  We swam and swam and played and played.  Everyone was so tired we got home, ate a bite, played a couple of games of Sequence and the kids were in bed at 7:15.  Hot called to tell me he had dinner with our friend (a game warden) so that was fun.

Sunday the kids were up by 6:30 again.  I promise I will have to drag them out of bed on Monday.  I'm the same way.  Why is that?  When I have a fantastic fun weekend I wake up early and enjoy it.... on a workday I can barely drag myself out of bed.  I slapped another coat of paint in the closet while the kids played submarine.  I'm not sure of the rules but they used both laundry baskets, the couch cushions and the ottoman.  We got the house vaguely kicked into order and then we had a date.  My father-in-law took my mother-in-law, me & my kids to afternoon brunch at Izzak's.  It is a great restaurant in Craig.  Yes, we drove an hour to eat.  Then we took the long way home..... gorgeous.  It was a great and relaxing day.  Wish Hot could have been there. 

Then we diddled around.  I have no idea what we did.  We made brownies.  We snacked.  We played Guess Who.  We folded laundry.  I started to put the closet back together.  Finally it was bedtime for the kids and I settled down to work on my latest project... music files.  Specifically.... getting rid of all the duplicate music in iTunes.  Progress.

I"m pretty sure all three kids are in our bed waiting for me to come up.  Hot gets home tomorrow.  Yeah.  I'm tired of being a single parent.  Good night.