My husband and I are embarking on our first grown-up weekend away - ever. Our oldest is ten. My husband is a tightwad. But it gets worse.
The more people that know about our little get away, and you can thank my husband the mouth for telling everyone he trains at the gym, sees on the street, or within shouting distance of this plan, the more stressed I get.
Everyone has an opinion. From "What took you so damn long!" to "Get the weekend started right and give him (sorry I absolutely will not repeat it) in the car." And just the questions - where are you staying, what restaurants are you going to, what will you do there????
OH the Pressure!!!
Have I failed to mention over and over again in this column that my husband and I are Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Have I also failed to mention we can not go somewhere in the car without fighting? And the fact that we have 2 totally different philosophy's on what is fun?
Left up to my husband we would be staying 45 minutes outside the city in a tent where would could bike in everyday for a bootcamp class, then a hike, forage for nuts and berries for lunch in a free park and ride back to the tent for 6 hours of sex. He's good.
Left up to me we would stay in a 5-star hotel order room service, get massages, watch Audrey Hepburn movies and cuddle with a bottle of champagne.
Considering it is less than 5 days away and we have yet to book a room or finalize a city or a plan.....we're gonna be in that damn tent I just know it!
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Homey don't eat that way!
We are going to attempt to go away and leave our two sons with their Aunt and Uncle for the weekend. OK, truthfully I don't know if it can even be considered the weekend because we'll have to pick them up Sunday and hustle back home for the Summer Basketball League finals but Thursday to Sunday a weekend doth make.
So in prepping myself and my Sister-in-law for this endeavor I start an email with, "The Seven-year-old can NOT have Citrus, chocolate, caffeine, or carbonation or he gets a urinary tract infection and stops peeing. Also he has never drank cow's milk only drinks soy but will eat cheese and ice cream. And by the way will try to only eat ice cream and sugar if he can get away with it but will then get sick and the ten-year-old will tell you he only eats steak and hot dogs in order to try and consume as much as possible while not in our house........"
You can see where this is went, quickly and the longer I sat the more I typed because I have never left my children for more than one night at a time and even then I had food prepped and ready to ensure they did not eat 3 meals in a row at a restaurant and then get explosive diarrhea. (Thanks Nanna!)
Anyway 6 paragraphs later I started to feel like perhaps I was quantifying my sister-in-laws theory that I am crazy so I stopped mid sentence and typed "Thanks" and hit send. I should have hit delete. My beautiful, patient, kind, and hopefully not totally offended sister-in-law was nice enough to sit down and reply to my 3 page email. Simply put she said, "Homey don't eat that way!"
Oh thank goodness! I thought we were the freaks? We are here anyway. People have stopped inviting us over because my husband is a vegetarian and they are not sure how to feed him. HINT- Vegetables. She said that Organic is not a bad word in their house and that she does not believe sugar is a food group. Almost apologetically she wrote, "but we do have goldfish crackers" thank God! Cause it's pool season here in our house and when I have to drag everyone to the store I bribe them with "you can each pick out 2 pool snacks" so we now have Pringles, chocolate covered granola bars, Swedish fish, and Doritos in our pantry.
The bottom line in our house is You are what you eat - so everything in moderation. Considering I heard my ten year-old repeat that to his brother who was setting out a breakfast of Pringles and Swedish fish, I think we are doing OK.
So in prepping myself and my Sister-in-law for this endeavor I start an email with, "The Seven-year-old can NOT have Citrus, chocolate, caffeine, or carbonation or he gets a urinary tract infection and stops peeing. Also he has never drank cow's milk only drinks soy but will eat cheese and ice cream. And by the way will try to only eat ice cream and sugar if he can get away with it but will then get sick and the ten-year-old will tell you he only eats steak and hot dogs in order to try and consume as much as possible while not in our house........"
You can see where this is went, quickly and the longer I sat the more I typed because I have never left my children for more than one night at a time and even then I had food prepped and ready to ensure they did not eat 3 meals in a row at a restaurant and then get explosive diarrhea. (Thanks Nanna!)
Anyway 6 paragraphs later I started to feel like perhaps I was quantifying my sister-in-laws theory that I am crazy so I stopped mid sentence and typed "Thanks" and hit send. I should have hit delete. My beautiful, patient, kind, and hopefully not totally offended sister-in-law was nice enough to sit down and reply to my 3 page email. Simply put she said, "Homey don't eat that way!"
Oh thank goodness! I thought we were the freaks? We are here anyway. People have stopped inviting us over because my husband is a vegetarian and they are not sure how to feed him. HINT- Vegetables. She said that Organic is not a bad word in their house and that she does not believe sugar is a food group. Almost apologetically she wrote, "but we do have goldfish crackers" thank God! Cause it's pool season here in our house and when I have to drag everyone to the store I bribe them with "you can each pick out 2 pool snacks" so we now have Pringles, chocolate covered granola bars, Swedish fish, and Doritos in our pantry.
The bottom line in our house is You are what you eat - so everything in moderation. Considering I heard my ten year-old repeat that to his brother who was setting out a breakfast of Pringles and Swedish fish, I think we are doing OK.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Blame it on the rain....
yeah yeah
You can blame it on the rain
Ooh, ooh (ooh)
I can't, I can't. I can't, can't stand the rain
I can't, I can't. I can't, can't stand the rain
Yeah, yeah
I'm dating myself with this totally 80's reference to Milli Vanillli but that's what happens when it rains for what 12 straight days! Holy High Waters Batman.
It would be nice to blame my lack of interest in reading, writing, cleaning, and organizing on the rain but this has been since January. Surprise? It's not that I haven't dealt with the surgery and all that surrounded it, it's just that it left me foggy for quite a while, and tired. And then I was playing catch-up, and then I was just in the weeds, now I'm not even on the field. I'm totally sitting on the sidelines. I've given up. I'm just an observer.
I look at my life and my family and I am grateful and happy and know that I should get back in the game, but it just seems like so much work. I'm not afraid of hard work though, in fact the opposite is true, I love that sense of accomplishment in making a list and checking things off. Perhaps it is because there is one list - and I check it off over and over and over again.
Laundry
Cleaning
Grocery
Cooking
drive the kids to sports
entertain the kid who's not playing the sport
scream everyone into a shower
wrestle them into bed and spend quality time with husband (or vise versa)
Since my surgery in January I have been determined to make time for myself and do things for myself no matter what the "push back" is...it's harder than I thought. Over vacation I kept wondering why we sounded like the Bitchinstein Family and then it hit me. Maybe I'd actually changed. Not drastically, but a subtle change in what I will and won't do for them, what I will and won't accept, and in what I am doing for myself. And they have all just figured it out.
All this time I've been so hard on myself that everything and everyone is falling apart and it's all my fault, which, well, it kinda of is. But given some more time we'll all figure it out. Meanwhile, I am going to keep writing this blog even though there are now three boys standing behind me waiting for me finish. Hold you horses men, mamma's gotta get her groove back.
You can blame it on the rain
Ooh, ooh (ooh)
I can't, I can't. I can't, can't stand the rain
I can't, I can't. I can't, can't stand the rain
Yeah, yeah
I'm dating myself with this totally 80's reference to Milli Vanillli but that's what happens when it rains for what 12 straight days! Holy High Waters Batman.
It would be nice to blame my lack of interest in reading, writing, cleaning, and organizing on the rain but this has been since January. Surprise? It's not that I haven't dealt with the surgery and all that surrounded it, it's just that it left me foggy for quite a while, and tired. And then I was playing catch-up, and then I was just in the weeds, now I'm not even on the field. I'm totally sitting on the sidelines. I've given up. I'm just an observer.
I look at my life and my family and I am grateful and happy and know that I should get back in the game, but it just seems like so much work. I'm not afraid of hard work though, in fact the opposite is true, I love that sense of accomplishment in making a list and checking things off. Perhaps it is because there is one list - and I check it off over and over and over again.
Laundry
Cleaning
Grocery
Cooking
drive the kids to sports
entertain the kid who's not playing the sport
scream everyone into a shower
wrestle them into bed and spend quality time with husband (or vise versa)
Since my surgery in January I have been determined to make time for myself and do things for myself no matter what the "push back" is...it's harder than I thought. Over vacation I kept wondering why we sounded like the Bitchinstein Family and then it hit me. Maybe I'd actually changed. Not drastically, but a subtle change in what I will and won't do for them, what I will and won't accept, and in what I am doing for myself. And they have all just figured it out.
All this time I've been so hard on myself that everything and everyone is falling apart and it's all my fault, which, well, it kinda of is. But given some more time we'll all figure it out. Meanwhile, I am going to keep writing this blog even though there are now three boys standing behind me waiting for me finish. Hold you horses men, mamma's gotta get her groove back.
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