Wednesday, June 18, 2014

School days

Every Wednesday Ella goes to "school." In reality all she does is run around and play and does some sort of craft and actually eats a complete meal, but hey, it gives me a much-needed 5 hours where I only have one child to deal with.

Here's my problem with school days. Tuesday night I come up with this crazy list of everything I am going to accomplish on Wednesday. Even as I am making my list I know it is entirely unrealistic. Take, for example, this week's list:

-Clean the whole house. Like not the half-assed cleaning that I am able to accomplish with the kids running around. A real deep cleaning. Including baseboards. Oh, how I loathe cleaning baseboards. But this week is going to be the week.

Thank you, Hyperbole and a Half, for totally getting me

-Drink lots of coffee, in relative peace. Preferably while reading a book. And not any old book. Something that will make me smarter. I'm going to find one of those lists of all the books you should read before you turn 30 or die or something and delve into it.

-Do all those educational and developmental things you are supposed to do with babies that I dutifully did with Ella but poor second child Marian has not had. In fact, this week we will even make it to baby story time at the library. I won't just run into the library with Marian napping in the Tula so I can get more books for myself.

-Prep dinner for tonight. It's going to be completely awesome to be able to pop something in the oven quickly instead of trying to scramble something together during the witching hour as I gulp down wine to keep my sanity.

-Pay the bills. Not only that, after I pay them I will haul myself up to the study and file away everything that has been accumulating on the desk/guest bed for the past six months. Then as long as I'm up there, I'm going to organize everything in that room. And put the Christmas decorations back in the crawl space.

-Finally sew the curtains for the living room.

-As long as I'm doing home stuff, I'm going to go to Lowes and pick up paint to re-do the half bath. Then tonight I'll paint the bathroom and as long as I'm painting I'll make a dent in painting our bedroom too. It is going to be fantastic. Goodbye, Bartian beige. Hello, color.

I do this to myself, without fail, every single week. You want to know what I did today?

-Swept the kitchen floor, washed the dishes, and did some laundry. That counts as the whole house, right?

-Made myself a latte and tried to get creative with the foam art like they do in coffee houses. I made a squiggle. It was fantastic.

-Paid the bills. Piled them up neatly and added them to the ever-growing mountain of stuff to file.

-Checked my phone and email about a gazillion times to see if my best buddy Kristen has had her baby yet. Come on, priorities here people.

-Nursed Marian about a gazillion times. Managed to read maybe three pages of a book while doing so. It is a Pulitzer Prize book by a Nobel Prize winning author so that has to count for something (went back and checked- apparently I have zero memory these days).

-Did stuff in the garden. Pretty sure I managed to eat a bug.

-Goofed around on the internet. Then did some serious internet stuff like browsing for shoes for Marian (hello, was this kid not just born?) and looking at stuff for vacation.

-Chased after Marian as she crawled under the butcher block, attempted to climb up the fridge, cruised around the living room, and made a bee-line for the dog toys. Also let her play uninterrupted with all of Ella's toys, which to Marian is probably the best part of school days. Sang "If you're happy and you know it" probably 50 times because she thinks it is the best song ever. Tried (unsuccessfully) to get her to clap her hands. Comforted her as she threw a shit fit because I won't let her eat paper or the gazillion threads she manages to find everywhere.

-Thought about dinner in a vague sense. Remembered Jim has a work dinner tonight so I can do a kiddie dinner before swim tonight and then do a real dinner for myself after they are in bed. Or, you know, have ice cream. Dinner of champions.

-And now have spent 20 minutes writing this blog post. And it's going on 12:30. I know pretty soon I'm going to say screw it and get another cup of coffee.

Probably I should give in and simply put "relax" and "play with the baby" as the only things on the to-do list. 

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad I made the list. :)

    And you forgot wine. The dinner of champions is ice cream and wine.

    ReplyDelete