Afternoon delight? HAH!

It wasn't a good afternoon for me, let's just start there. (And I'll probably keep this a brief list of grievances as no one wants to read my bitching for too long.

BUT . . .

After I picked up the kids from Girls Scout camp and daycare, we were fine for a while. They watched some TV and I gathered the mail, noted that the grass (still) needs cutting, saw that they dishes from breakfast were still sitting out, and other stuff like that.

I knew Lynda was coming home later with some fast food (yeah, sue me), but I was going to cook some of our garden fresh green beans according to my mom's suggested recipe. I judged the timing of when Lynda was expected and prepared the beans, washed them, and got out the ingredients. I started boiling them and got the kids off the TV and onto other stuff. Hannah was wandering around here and there and not being extremely needy, so that was good.

All was pretty fine until the beans were pretty much completed and I just had them in the warming stage. Then I heard a shriek from the other room and looked around the wall to see that Grace was preventing Hannah from chewing on her glasses.

A good maneuver, but sadly too late. Hannah had (AGAIN, for the love of God . . . AGAIN!!!!!!!!) chewed not one--which is typical--but now BOTH of her nosepads off of the glasses. This has happened around six times now and each event results in our needing to take the glasses somewhere the next day for repair, delaying the amount of time she is actually using them and generally causing us major pains in the ass. I wasn't happy and (unfortunately) I showed it.

This naturally upset Hannah. Sarah and Grace (being good big sisters) removed Hannah to calm her down and to let me calm down. Then I got a phone call to inform me that the basement repair pre-inspection (that was supposed to have happened YESTERDAY) is going to be further delayed into this evening because the foreman is still on a different job and can he call me back later tonight to push the arrival time until sometime long past what would have been dinner/bath hours and more into kids asleep/parent hours.

But I've go to say, "Sure," don't I?

And soon after that, the doorbell rang. That is never a good sign around dinner time and especially since we aren't very popular and no one bothers to visit it.

So, I figured (correctly) that it was someone trying to sell me something. I opened the door to hear him out and politely decline, but he flummoxed me a bit by mumbling something about how he was reading some educational (I think) thing (what now? speak up?) to the other parents on the street (who?) and would I like to see the list of people he'd talked to already (huh?) and don't I recognize them (flattering me as a good parent who is concerned with my kids education and all I do is talk to the other parents on the street about my kids educations, right? but seriously, young man, what are you selling?). And so can I spend five minutes and hear him read this thing from this notebook (whaaa? NOW?), but . . .

And I interrupt and say, "Look, I've got kids running around, starting to cry, with partial dinner cooking on the stove and I simply can't stop right now and hear you read the mysterious manifesto . . . or whatever it is you've got right now? Can't you see that?"

Well, I thought that but didn't put it in exactly those words. But no worries, I think he'll be back tomorrow around 5ish to finally reveal what he wants me to buy . . . and I'm sure it is still some sort of sales pitch that I can do without. I've just got to find a polite way to tell him to leave me alone.

Still, I wonder what it is . . .

After shutting the door, I went back to the crying kids who were growing more hungry because Lynda was later than expected. When she got home, she had her own story of woe about how the people serving her at the food joint had no people skills, ignored her for the longest time, and finally got around to providing the food in the most perfunctory and non-engaged way possible. And while I should have been sympathetic, I was too harried from my own problems to give her much time to vent.

BUT . . .

things got better in the end. We celebrated Sarah's birthday (she's NINE now!) and ate some yummy cake. And I decided to let Grace and Sarah stay up a bit later to watch Night at the Museum. And the kids enjoyed it and Lynda and I watched it with them and laughed and got to relax and the basement guy eventually did come as the movie was just ending and all the measurements were taken and now things are pretty okay I guess.

(I won't bore you with how Hannah just woke up and coughed up some food chunks due to congestion and how it got on Lynda's shirt and how I had to rinse that smelly stuff off the shirt and the pajamas and run an emergency load of laundry to combat the stain and smell.)

sigh . . .

Nine years ago today was when it all started and when it all changed.

We never had night like tonight before that day.

Of course, we never had night like this before then either.

So . . . it's good. It's bad. It's yin. It's yang. It's hot. It's cold.

There is a reason we cried the day after Sarah was born, nine years ago today. We were dog tired and we realized that we'd committed ourselves to something intense and demanding.

And there will be more reasons why we cry some time years from now when Sarah, Grace, and Hannah no longer live here. Because we are still dog tired and all that work has paid off and there they go.