--one reason is that I stayed up until after midnight:30 last night.
Why?
Well, it seems that Rebecca had a project due for school--cutting out a felt Christmas tree decoration, writing a little poem to stick on the back, and putting various bits of sparkly glue on the front.
And also, Ashley had to bring some sort of homemade food item to school to demonstrate...something. I'm still unclear on the reason, but she had to bring the food, and how it was made, and explain how it was made.
And also, Jonathan had to demonstrate a similar food-prep/measurements type thing for bonus points in math class.
Which would have all been done much earlier had someone decided it was worth keeping an eye on the time budget. But I dare not say who that would be.
But when you leave church after evening worship, and you make your husband stop at Wal-Mart on the way home to pick up a) some premade pastry dough, b) some apple pie filling, and c) some green felt, and you spend OVER AN HOUR getting all this stuff (and, of course, more useless junk that was more or less like flushing money down the toilet), and then you get home and eat supper, and then get the kids out of their church clothes, well, it just sorta eats up a lot of time, there.
ADD TO THIS, the insistence of a certain child in doing EVERYTHING else EXCEPT cutting out a piece of green felt, or writing a poem, and the insistence of a certain other child and her mother of making tiny baked apple turnovers in the slowest, most labor-intensive manner possible, and, well, it just turns out that everyone goes to bed late. Except for Tiny Girl and Boy, who went on to bed--way past their bedtimes--but still earlier than everyone else.
Oh, how I wanted to go to bed. But I knew that if I did, I would suffer what the lawyers call "loss of affection." For a time longer than I was willing to endure. And I dared not offer any suggestions on the cooking end of things that might have been construed as a lack of confidence in ANYone's abilities. No, heaven forbid we get things done quickly and cleanly, when it's much harder to do it the slow and messy way! Silly me!
So, I read the paper. I checked my e-mail. I glued decorations on a felt Christmas tree. I gathered up dirty plates and stuff and put them in the sink. And watched the numbers on the clock change and get way up in the high 12s.
Result?
Well, the tree is cut out, pasted onto a piece of stiff construction paper, dotted with dots of colorful glitter glue and festooned with shiny wavy rickrack, and a lovely poem is glued to the back.
Approximately 15,000,023 tiny baked apple turnovers have been made and sealed into buckets to take to classes, along with a written recipe for Boy to take with him, and samples of the various implements and ingredients used for Oldest to perform her demonstration.
And I have this lovely set of indentations in my forehead from resting it on the keyboard.
And THAT was just the stuff we did Sunday night after church--BEFORE THAT, there was ANOTHER trip to the grocery store, and a trip to Wal-Mart, and to the Chinese buffet (which has caused my internal tubing to suddenly be overcome with spasms not unlike those performed in the initial steps in preparing chitlins for cooking) and a trip across the county for Bible Bowl, and a stop at the cemetary where, in one of those odd coincidences, both my father and Reba's first husband are buried, and before all THAT was morning services, and before that Bible school, where I had to sub for Boy and Middle Girl's teacher, and didn't realize we had something like two or three other folks who were running late, causing everyone to rush around in a tizzy AND a panic AND to get their panties in a wad AND get them simultaneously wrapped around an axle. Such a mess! I tell you what, there's just sometimes when you wish that jawbones of donkeys were a bit more easily come by.
And THAT was just SUNDAY.
SATURDAY, Reba had to go to work, so I stayed home and washed clothes all day. What I really wanted was for her to get back at a decent time so I could go play in the junkyard. See, one of the tiny plastic clips that holds the end of the driver's side sun visor had ::snapped:: off one morning several weeks back, and it's bothered me ever since that the end of the visor was adrift. So I wanted to go get another one to fix it (new ones costing the equivalent of a pile of gold, frankincense, myrrh, and a new Escalade).
But I couldn't go until I had some relief. I had at first thought I could get Grandmom to watch them, but I figured Wife would be home around lunchtime.
She got home at 3:30. Which is 2.5 hours before Pull-A-Part closes, and approximately 1.6 hours before sundown. Ever try to pull junk car parts in the dark? Well, me neither, but I really didn't want to find out about it.
Needless to say, Reba, who had not seen me all day, wanted to discuss her day's travails. None of which included being at home with a 15 year old daughter with the emotional maturity of someone a full one-third of that age. Sleeps until 10, then wonders where her breakfast is. And from there the rest was rather downhillish.
SO, we swapped notes as I tried my best to get out of the house without seeming THAT eager to run away. Junkyard, paid my dollar, started the process of trying to find unbroken visor clips. Wound up with three, probably could have found more except, well, you know, dark. Also picked up two headrest pads that I don't need, and a power antenna that I'm not sure works! All for the mighty sum of 8 bucks.
Back home by 5:30, changed out the clip, finished debriefing with Miss Reba on the events of the day, and then just as soon as that was done, she and Oldest were off to meet Beau #4 (of Oldest, not of Wife) at the movie house to watch The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. He's been very much more solicitous of late, for some reason, and had no problems at all with Mom coming along as a chaperone. I suppose he wouldn't have minded if the whole crew had come along, but, well, you know--there was still a pile of laundry to get done, and we all had to get up early the next morning to go to church. And, four of us were able to do that. Two, however, were very sleep from the previous night's date, making us late for church.
Friday? Well, I have a vague recollection of getting Boy's hair cut--since Miss Alisha wasn't there, I skipped it, but thankfully, Catherine was able to remind everyone in the shop that I she thought I was going to get my hair cut, too. "Uh, no, sugar, not tonight."
"BUT I THOUGHT YOU WERE! You SAID you were!"
"Not. Tonight. Sweetheart."
It can wait--I could tell no one in the shop was in the mood to cut hair, and I didn't want the same thing to happen as last time when I didn't get Alisha, in which a very VERY large older woman continually rubbed her parts and pieces all over me. ::shudder::
ANYway, it sure was a long weekend.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at December 12, 2005 10:12 AM