It doesn’t seem like there is anything in my life that is cool enough to write about other than the every day normal stuff. As I sit here this afternoon I am feeling the need to write about something that struck me funny today. I was thinking about the difference between a day off for a man and a day off for a woman. Normally you wouldn’t think about something so trivial, but today happened to be my “day off.”Most men (notice I said most, not all) relax and unwind on their day off. They work hard all week and feel that the weekend or day off is well earned. Some guys watch television, play on the computer, hang out with friends, whatever strikes their fancy for a good time. However the same is not true for women (well at least women who have children which I can vouch for).
My day started at 6am when my son woke up and knocked on my bedroom door wanting to know if it was time to get up. I said it was and settled back down into the bed. My son will usually play for up to an hour before he expects (yes I said expects) me to get up and start my day. Well this morning five minutes after he knocked the first time, he knocked again, “Mommy can I play a video game?” Um, no! It’s 6 in the freaking morning and he wants to play a video game on a school day. Geesh! So I settle back into the covers only to get awoke what seemed like seconds later by the darned alarm. It was time to face the reality and get my butt out of bed.
I got up and started the morning like I do every morning, toast in the toaster for my son’s breakfast and while it’s toasting I make his school lunch. Then I get his toast buttered with some cinnamon butter and pour a glass of milk for him while “hollering” that it’s time to eat. I make sure all his items that he needs for school are in his backpack and get everything set on the dining table ready to go. I then go in get dressed and get myself respectable to go out in public (well as respectable as it gets for my day off). I wake up my husband for work at 7am and sit with him chatting for a few moments. I help my son get dressed and he brushes his teeth and we still have 15 minutes until we have to leave. We go over some spelling before we leave the house to get his brain into thinking mode and at 7:20am we’re out the door.
The ride to school is spent playing games in the car to keep his brain thinking and I drop him off at 7:35am. I then head back home just in time to see my husband out the door for work. Then the fun begins.
I make a grocery list and do an inventory of all the things in the house that we need to replenish. I head out the door to the grocery store. I then start the car realizing that I left the movies that I wanted to take back in the house and turn off the car so I could walk back into the house and grab the movies. I get back to my car and off I go.
WalMart at 9am is very peaceful. It’s not crowded and all you have to worry about it occasionally having to dodge stock people who are refilling the shelves of all the finery that WalMart has to offer. I get everything on my list (and a few other items) and head to check out. Why is it when you are shopping that you can always get everything in the cart, but yet when they bag it up for you it never all fits back into the basket. I mean I know that those plastic bags aren’t that big! $177 later, it’s all loaded into my cart and I head out to the car glad that the worst part of my day is over.
I get to the car and pop my trunk and that’s when I realize that I never took my son’s bike out of the back of my car from last weekend. Man! Well I maneuver the bike into the back seat (I’m glad he’s only 5 and has a very small bike) and load up the trunk with the white bags o’plenty. I get into the driver seat and keep my eye on the bike because the handles keep tipping close to the back of my headrest. I don’t want to get knocked out by a bike while driving this morning. I head to Blockbuster to exchange movies. I do so quickly and easily. Then I head to the local Starbucks to get myself a treat for being the coolest wife in the world for doing all that shopping by myself and not waiting until my husband got home to do it.
I have to admit that Starbucks is a wonderful thing. I used to work for another coffee shop and I really learned a lot about the coffee business. I can appreciate it much more now, and I can tell when coffee is made right or when it’s crap. This time of year Starbucks has the most wonderful creation in the history of the world. The pumpkin spice frappaccino. It’s wonderful for those who like pumpkin pie because it’s like pie with a bit of coffee blended in. Yum! Arriving at home I realized just what I had gotten myself into, unloading everything that I had purchase all by myself. I made sure to put the bike into the house first so I wouldn’t forget later on.
5 trips from car to apartment later, all the groceries were all inside. Did I mention that the sidewalk that leads up to my apartment is a hill? Oh yeah, so that was a fun bit of exercise. I got all the groceries put away and was done at about eleven. Where had the time gone, I had so much planned to do today and my morning was already almost gone!
My husband came home from work and we got to spend one hour together without the interruption of our son. Those of you married with children understand the importance of moments alone without little ears or eyes or mouths. It’s nice. We don’t have a babysitter so we’ve always got our son with us, if he can’t go somewhere then we just don’t go. It’s rough but he is a blessing.
My husband goes back to work and I’ve got an hour and a few minutes until I have to leave to go get my son from school. I take a shower and then clean both the bathrooms in the house and straighten up the vanity area in my bedroom where the bathroom stuff is. By then it’s time to head back out and I realize that getting it all done in one day isn’t likely to happen like I had hoped.
We get back home and I put away all his laundry that was sitting around in baskets in his room and I take all his summers clothes and put them away. It’s getting much to chilly for tank tops and shorts. I mill about doing a couple of other things and decide that I’ve had enough today. I’m tired and don’t feel like doing anything else. So here I am sitting and sharing a day’s adventures with you.
So much for a day off. I worked harder at home today than I would have at work. That’s a fact. I still have housework that begs to be done but I cannot muster the motivation to get up right now. I’m beyond spent and it’s not like the chores are going to not be there another day. It’s times like this though that I envy those who are blessed enough to have a maid service. No doubt I’d love it!
Hopefully our weekend will be low key and slow paced so I can enjoy it. I also will have Monday off so I’m getting a four day weekend this week. (Don’t hate me cause I’m lucky!) I’m not sure what the weekend has in store all I know is that I’m looking forward to it and at least I got some of the chores done! I will write more when I have something to write about!
