Weekend

I had a lovely evening out with my friend Tamara on Friday night. And learned that THERE IS A BAR! WITH ALCOHOL! in the MOVIE THEATRE! We were both starving so we grabbed hot dogs before the movie started and then as we headed in, she said, “Want to stop in there to eat? We could get apple martini’s” and that is when my head exploded with joy. After the week I had had, it was like the gods had smiled down at me, and gave me the gift of booze, IN A MOVIE THEATRE!

We had to down them pretty fast because the movie was starting soon, and Tamara won the FASTEST EATING OF A HOT DOG EVER! lifetime acheivement award. I would have beaten her, but the sneaky chica asked me how all the work stuff turned out RIGHT after we sat down, so I was busy talking while she inhaled food. Smooth tactic, Tamara. I’ve got my eye on you. *peer*

We watched the latest Lindsay Lohan movie, which was exactly what you would think the latest Lindsay Lohan movie would be, cute, entertaining, and doesn’t make you think in any way whatsoever. After the movie we checked out the few other restaurants and discovered their bars were full to bursting, so returned to the movie theatre bar and ordered some food. (I did good in asking for no bacon or mayo on the sandwich. Yay me! I probably ate too many fries though.) It was nice to get out with a girlfriend and discuss kids and our men and work and life.

Saturday

Saturday morning SOUNDED like all others, starting with the bleary wakeful consciousness of Jocelyn calling out, “MOOOOOOMMMY…. DAAAAAAADDY……” which we ignored as it turned into vibrant top-of-the-lungs versions of ‘twinkle twinkle’ and the alphabet song for probably another 20 minutes, before I poked James and said, “go get her.” During the week, lately I have been getting up and bringing her and Ethan into our bed before I hop in the shower. It gives them some transition time from waking up and getting up (this happens at about 6:15am, so some transition time is a good thing), and also it’s fun snuggly bed time with Daddy, but I always miss it, because I’m in the shower. So I was looking forward to my OWN snuggly bed time with the kids, but the conversation from James and Jocelyn I heard floating back to me deemed otherwise.

“Hi Daddy!”

“Hi Jocelyn! Would you like your bear?”

“Yes! Bear Daddy! Jocelyn’s bear!”

“Oh. …. Oh dear. Uh oh.” (this is probably where he takes the bear away)

“NO DADDY MINE BEAR! MINE BEAR!”

“Uh oh.” (I’m starting to get worried now.) “You are a mess, Jocelyn.”

“(more screaming about said bear)”

“What did you DO?”

“Poop, Daddy. Poop!” (said in the cheeriest tone ever.)

“Yes. Poop.”

By now I am out of bed and running water in the kids bathtub. Until I see her, and then I realise that a BATH is stupid because the poop will come off her smeared hands, arms, legs and turn the bath into a non-joyous stinky cesspit in which I don’t want my daughter splashing in. We go to our bathroom instead and I shower her off with me.

Granted, we are old pros at this, given that Ethan regularly discovered his own poop at this age, and being in his own bed at that time instead of a crib gave him the opportunity to not only paint his OWN body with shit, but paint the walls, the dresser, the carpet, the doors and even deposit some into his dresser drawers. The major incident of poop smearing is still refered to in our household as, “E cubed” which stands for, “Ethan’s Excrement Extravaganza!” This was also when we realized that the paint that the builder painted with is crap, as a lot of it came off in all the scrubbing. (It’s got purple satin finish paint in there now. Hopefully we won’t be required to test it.)

Ahhhh, what a way to start a Saturday morning! With poop smeared child, crib, blankies, my little pony, pillow, etc! Yay! Thank god for modern inventions, like the washing machine!

The day held other non-fun things, the second being, Ethan’s 4 year old shots. Decidedly NOT FUN. The last shot he had was his flu shot last fall. I wasn’t holding him properly, and he actually GRABBED the syringe and pulled it out before teh shot was over and the doctor had to get another one. This time, he had to get FOUR shots, and I had to physically hold every limb while the doctor took her time to administer the shots, insisting on putting on little band-aids to each one RIGHT after it was given. I asked her to just do them all, BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! and we could do the band-aids after, but she said something about then they would bleed. I WILL TAKE A LITTLE BLOOD, JUST GET THIS HELL OVER SO I CAN RELEASE THE DEMON WRIGGLING AND STRUGGLING ON MY LAP!

It really was awful, and Ethan was pissed at me afterward. I think he is still pissed at me. He told me several times throughout the weekend, “I don’t like you anymore, Mommy.” He also doesn’t like his doctor anymore. I have one dreaded thought, and that is the doctor wasn’t sure if he needed ONE of the shots required, and she was going to go through his records carefully and check to see. If he is required to get one more, then it is going to be BAD, as I’ve already told him that he is done with shots until he is 11. There had better not be anymore.

Of course, we went to McDonald’s after and got icecream and he played in the playland tunnel world of toddlers, which he loved, but then he reverted back to being really mad at me on the way home. On the one hand, who can blame him? I held down my own flesh and blood while he was injected, not once, but FOUR TIMES, 2 in each arm. That’s right, he got two, and then I had to TURN HIM AROUND and HOLD HIM AGAIN while he got two more. OF COURSE he’s goign to be pissed. But I can’t go around letting him talk to me and act to me the way he was talking and acting, so it was a tricky relationship between comforting and disciplining, all weekend.

Saturday night our sitter arrived at 5pm and we escaped to childless freedom! Oh the possibilities!! We could drink ourselves silly! Dance the night away (until midnight which is when we said we’d be back)! Movies! Dinner! Dancing! Peeing without company or interuption! The world was our! What did we choose to do with our precious hours away from our offspring? We went and looked at new cars. That’s right, internet, we are SO DEVIL MAY CARE!

Seriously though, looking at cars is not a very child friendly experience, the child wants to sit in the driver’s seat and steer, they leave sticky fingerprints over every surface imaginable so that the sales rep starts to get that tight-lipped “when are you leaving again?” attitude, and you can’t really take the time to check out everything you want. Plus, the sales rep does this weird climbing the walls thing, when you go for a 30 minute test drive and leave the kids with them. Something about poop and smearing and new leather and automatic locks.. I didn’t make it all out last time. So it was nice to check out the new Suburus alone, and do a little test driving, although the ones we wanted to test had dead batteries. Apparently when people sit in the cars, they leave the lights on. You’d think that’d be one of the things they’d check before leaving the lot each night. Just drive by and make sure no lights are on, not that hard, but anyway. So yes, we’re looking at new cars for James. We’re not ready to buy yet, so I personally thought it would be fun to sit down and haggle the price as low as we possibly could, and then when they won’t go any lower, GET UP AND LEAVE and see what they do. James wasn’t that interested though, something about how the thought of haggling for a new car makes him want to vomit. THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT FUN!

Then we had dinner, and spent a nice half hour in Barnes and Noble (another experience totally ruined by the presence of children) before heading back home, picking up milk on the way and surprising the sitter by being home by 11. That’s us! We are CRAZY! CRAZY I TELL YOU! We booked her again for next Saturday, so we can go see X-Men. And we will be visiting that bar again, because what doesn’t go better with Wolverine then booze? NOTHING! THAT’S WHAT! WHEEEEEE!!!

Sunday we loaded everyone up and headed to Lowe’s and Target. Picked up 15 bags of mulch at Lowe’s and a couple bags of Miracle Gro garden soil. I was happy that the mulch I wanted was only $2.50 a bag, which seemed like a pretty good price. I was dreading a $3 to $4 price tag. I have bought in bulk the last few times, some with good results, some with bad. The last batch I bought was in the beginning of April from the local Recycling and Composting Facility. I got the double shredded stuff, and it is pretty disappointing. A lot of very fine particles in it that blow away in the wind. Good mulch is warm and the water soaks right into it, but this stuff the water just runs right off of it, and it doesn’t have that wonderful mulchy smell. (I would wear a perfume that was mulch scented. Mmmmm. Anyone know of a woodsy perfume?) So I’m glad I went with the bagged mulch, seems SO GOOD, practically steaming, and the water soaks into it. I had a couple flats of impatiens (annuals) to plant, but still had pansies in the ground where I wanted them to go, so I agonized over them for a while. I knew the pansies were going to die once the brutal summer heat hits, but they were still good for another couple of weeks. On the other side, I don’t want to have to leave my plants out until the pansies finally kick it and then do more plantings in only a few weeks, so I pulled them up. Wah! I felt so bad doing it, but there you go. I saved some of my favorites and planted them on the side of the house with our hydrangea bush. It gets a lot of shade over there, so maybe they’ll be ok for a while.

So I planted white and orange impatiens in the front, white and red impatiens on the side with the deck (full full full sun) and still had a few left, so planted them right in front of our air conditioner units on the other side of the house (the side with the hydrangea). I have no idea if they will hinder the unites later, whey they get big, but I didn’t have any other place to put them, so there they went. Then I spread the mulch, and it looks sooooo nice. The annuals look so small and piddly right now, but by June and really in July, they’ll have taken off beautifully. It is going to be an all impatiens summer, let me tell you! (aside from the beans and tomaters and perrineals I have. I sooo totally almost spelled that “perineum.” I don’t think I got the spelling right either way.)

I spent a lot of time working the soil, trying to get through the Virginia red clay, getting it mixed with previous years additions and mulch, getting the rocks out as well. The soil is really doing well in some places, and in other places it is still very much clay-bound. I kept our wheelbarrow behind me to toss rocks into, and by the time I was finished it was full. I’ve stopped being amazed at the amount of rocks in the ground, because otherwise, my head would explode, it’s insane.

Some of the plans I laid out over the winter have gone by the wayside. For example, there’s a butterfly bush I was going to move over to the deck, which I’m still planning on doing, but for now, I want to keep those beds more temporary so I can work the soil each year and improve it. That is hard to do with permanent plantings. Plus, I didn’t want to dig a hole that big. (Once again, I hate our clay soil. Big holes the first year is just not going to happen.)

So yesterday was Gardening Day! and while it was hard, it was nice. I love working with the earth and seeing things grow. It was Sunday, and being outside with nature was like my own little religious service. Interupted from time to time with my helper Ethan, who used his new lego Scoop to help with the digging. I didn’t take any pictures, but will soon. I am actually sore today, which feels good.

CUTE KID STORIES OTHERWISE KNOWN AS IT’S NOT A PAPER TOWEL:

– Jocelyn grabbed one of those mesh rubber pad/sheets that you line drawers with (and I use to keep my cutting board from sliding around) and for some reason James informed her that “It’s not a paper towel.” Which she then informed us again for the next half hour as she skipped merrily along swinging it to and fro. She’d skip up to me, skid to a stop and say, “It’s not a paper towel, mommy!” waited for me to acknowledge this fact, and then skip off in search of daddy to inform him of the same thing. For some reason it just really cracked me up and a few times after they were in bed, I was forced to turn to James and say, “It’s not a paper towel.”

– Cute but in an ‘uh oh’ sort of way. Ethan has many little cars and trucks, I guess they are of the match box variety though not necesarily that brand name. One of them is a little fire truck that our friend Selena got him (along with others) last year for his birthday, with a little plastic ladder which actually goes up and down. He has been enamored of this particular truck this past week. James told me that Friday morning, Ethan wanted to take it in to school to show to his teacher. I picked them up that afternoon and halfway home, he cried out with sadness, “WE FORGOT MY FIRE TRUCK MOMMY!” He wanted to turn around, go back and get it, and was sad when I told him we couldn’t, and we would have to get it Monday morning.

I kind of thought to myself, he will forget about it once we get home, and true, it’s not like it consumed his every waking moment. But he did bring it up several times, when school come up, he would add, “And we will also get my fire engine, right mommy?” and even mentioned once out of the blue, with no mention of school to prompt him.
Well, James has informed me that this morning when he dropped him off, he ran and checked his cubby, and was pretty sad when said fire engine WAS NOT THERE. I was kind of worried about this all day, but when I picked him up this afternoon, he RAN to his classroom and grabbed the fire engine and RAN back to me, hollering, “I got my fire engine mommy!!!” I asked him where it was, and apparently it was on a shelf with the other fire-fighter toys. He was so happy to have it back in his grimy little hands.

THAT IS ALL! (and oh my, it was definitely enough. Sometimes when the brain vomits, it just can’t control the spew.)
-amy drove a lot this evening, but she’ll tell you about that tomorrow. With pictures!