Week Nine: Happy Halloween!

Monday turns out to be no less busy than anticipated and I add a headache to the festivities. We are up in reasonable fashion yet because I make the fatal mistake of trying to get two phone calls out of the way while I put on my face, we are late. And I am pissed. Seems the government (which? I ask. State or federal? I want to know at whom I should direct my discontent: the governor or the president) has decided that because of the year I took out my student loans I am a category 2 (what this refers to I have no idea), which makes me ineligible for an economic hardship forbearance or deferment and that I am now responsible for coming up with an extra $93 a month to finish off the last two years worth of payments on one of my student loans. For some, $93 a month is an extra cute pair of shoes for one of the kids. For me it’s a month’s worth of groceries for the kids. A phone conversation I have no business making on Monday morning.

Weather is fabulous, hitting almost 70 degrees (F) and traffic is conversely horrible. Fifteen minutes to get to the expressway only to have to exit immediately, get stuck on the ramp, and get to gymnastics class 15 minutes late. I drop the kids off out front and am truly surprised when Sailor follows Mac right in. I park. Drop the recycling and head into the gym. Within minutes Mac has disappeared and Sailor is shouting through the plate glass that Mac is going potty. Not sure whether or not he’ll be able to get out of his Captain America costume on his own, I head back to the boys’ room. Calling Mac’s name into the echo chamber of toilet and smelly urinals I nearly knock my boy off the toilet with surprise. He is fine. But he wants me to stay nearby. I read my book from just outside the smell of that thing they put in the urinals so that the place doesn’t wreak of pee. Mac is asking for assistance in turning back into the Captain when Sailor appears. “I hafgo potty.” And so we begin again. Except Sailor doesn’t like the smell and says he actually doesn’t have to go. I escort him to the girls’ room. The irony does not escape me that the boys both have to go potty, wasting another 10 minutes of class time, on the day we are already late. I read about three more pages and class is over. I have a headache.

Mac is scheduled for a session with his talking doctor 30 minutes after gym ends. We find parking right away for a change. Sailor wants to go in, too. I think he really needs to. He plays in the waiting room, earns himself a lolly for being cute in his Batman suit and earns a time out for sticking his grubby, smelly fingers in my face and kicking. I scrape the peels off apple slices for him while we wait. I read. He threatens to fall out the window. Not really. But everything in the waiting room has become climbing equipment to him.

Mac emerges and we all traipse to the bathroom to get him changed into his school clothes. Which should take about five minutes but in fact kills about 15. everyone has to pee. Everyone has to wash his or her hands. And Sailor has become fascinated by the flusher on the teeny tiny just-his-size toilet that sits beside the adult sized toilet. He flushes over and over. I am too embarrassed to leave the bathroom.

Once we get to the car, after stopping into a new coffee shop to hydrate my brain, which is pulsing and writhing and throbbing in my head, we realize that while we have remembered to dress in costumes, pack our lunches, bring a change of clothes for Mac, put the recycling in the car, bring a book for me to read, take a small baggie of cookies we baked to Mac’s talking doctor, and put the list of all the things we have to do today in my bag, we have once again forgotten Mac’s backpack. We have enough time to go back for it, but the question is, should we? We debate. We decide not to. There’s nothing in it but the folder anyway, and there’s nothing in the folder but a thank you note for big Olivia.

The weather is absolutely gorgeous, provoking just the slightest bit of that feeling of energy and hope we get every spring. I let Sailor forego his nap and we play outside. I blow bubbles, drink coffee, and videotape him. He runs around in his Batman costume and an adult-sized Vacula cape. Leaves fall all around him. It’s a true life moment and I call my mom to come out and see her grandson.

All too soon it’s 2:00 and I have to leave for work. A Halloween party at the art studio. I leave Sailor reluctantly. He is playing shipwreck upstairs with GrandDad. Nana will pick up Mac from school at 3:15, which I have let Miss H know. She will take Mac to tap at 5:00.

I make it to tap a little after 5:00 and find out it’s “watching” week. I wish it weren’t. Iahve phone calls to make and a good book to read and a headache. And the class is horrible. Twelve children ranging widely in age and ability. One teacher with a not-very-authoritative voice. The noise level and my head ache are dueling. Mac does well but when it’s not his turn, like the other kids, he does anything and everything but pay attention to the student dancing. It’s a disaster and I am glad the whole session only costs $20. To add insult to injury we are informed at the end of the terminal hour that that children are to arrive at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, December 11 for dress rehearsal for their recital. At 6:30. And they are to come dressed in brown because they are to be reindeer. Heaven help us!

GrandDad has mercifully prepared dinner.

At 7:30 we are all in my bed and searching frantically for the remote so we can watch the Beegees concert. We give up and I turn off the lights at 8:37. Sailor’s back itches but I am too pooped and lazy to get lotion so I scratch for a few minutes and then we all go to sleep. The remote will turn up tomorrow in a basket of clean laundry.

Halloween. “BOO!” I greet the kids when they wake up. Then I take it too far with 15 minutes of ghost noises and tickling. They are displeased and say mean things. I kick them out of my room and pretend to go back to sleep. They apologize. I apologize. And we start Halloween again.

Can French fries be substituted for hash browns? In a pinch? Mac wants hash browns with his pancakes but all I have are French fries. A potato fried in oil is a potato fried in oil I rationalize. And so my children eat French fries for breakfast.

Both boys promise to dress themselves in my room while watching Curious George. I shower. I put on make-up. I dry my hair. We have to leave in about three minutes. Naively I expect both boys to be in their Halloween costumes ready to put their coats on. Instead both boys are sitting on my bed naked and mesmerized by the flashing colors of PBS Kids. I tell them they have lost their tv privileges for a week. Ok, first I said a month but then I realize that a brand new month begins tomorrow and I just can’t uphold that. So I say a week as if I’d said it all along. I send Sailor to his room to get dressed and he sits down on the floor and opens a book. School starts in ten minutes and it takes ten minutes to get there and I won’t be able to stay with Sailor if we are late instead of early. Sailor is not happy with this. I am not happy with him. We are late to school. I have to stay because I can’t leave my crying Curious George. Why do I do this to him? He begs me to take him home. I bribe him to stay. I hate this.

Harry Potter and I walk home, stopping at CVS and the bank. The back is giving out treats and I ask for cash but am denied.

Mac and I read a dismally boring Halloween book that was supposed to be funny. Then we climb into the car to go stalk the trick-or-treating preschoolers. We slide by and stop the car. Roll down the window and act like paparazzi alternately snapping photos and taking video of the tiny animals and superheroes, skeletons and princesses. And my Curious George. How cute they are. And how little time we now have to get Mac home and back into his costume and lunched and back on foot to get Sailor. But we make it. Mac’s hair is sprayed black and he has a ziplock baggie full of chicken and cheddar cheese.

Sailor is cute as can be waiting for us. He wants to eat candy right away and I let him. Today. Only today. All healthy food bets are off. We stop by the firehouse to drop off a little bag of Halloween cookies and head to the big school. The kindergarteners are all so cute in their costumes. Rapunzel has a full head of hair today.

At home Sailor doesn’t want to be “dropped off” with GrandDad and says it’ll be a “zaster” if I leave him downstairs. I twist up my hair in two little knots upon my head and pull on a 16-year-old ladybug costume that my mom made for a play I directed not long after I graduated college. I don’t know if I look cute or stupid and I don’t stop by the mirror to check. But on my walk back to school I am called “sexy” by a man walking past me. Right.

I am one of many mom volunteers in the kindergarten this afternoon and I am stuck in the boring “door sign” center. I have to help the children create personalized doorknob hangers. I am not only bored but famished. I do enjoy practicing my French now and then and when I tell two of the French moms that I have set a goal of being able to have a dinner party in French by the end of the school year, one of the moms takes it upon herself to begin my immersion lessons immediately. Fortunately, while I miss a word or two here and there by the end of her short story I do know what she said. I think.

I have invited two of Mac’s classmates to come home with us and join us on our trick-or-treat run. I serve up a plate of apples and pretzels and cheese and the kids devour most of it. Except Sleeping Beauty, whose mom says she is a picky eater. She touches nothing. Apparently she lives on pizza and cereal, nether of which is on our after school snack menu. I would like to tell this mother to let me have her child for three days and I will return her with normal eating habits.

We run up and down the street for two hours, losing Sleeping Beauty to fatigue: “I don’t want to trick-or-treat anymore. I’ve been doing it all day long!” and the fancy cat to a parade somewhere north of here. Sailor won’t carry his candy bucket and wants me to carry him.

Our last stop turns out to be the home of a man who used to be a child who lived in the neighborhood. I recognize him and he pretends to recognize me. We chat. He tells us how he now has his parents’ home all to himself, but that it’s too big because he is single. I tell him how convenient it is to live above my parents now that I am a single mom. He says he is a lawyer. I tell him where I live. He asks what I do. My sister hands him our brochure. He says he’ll probably see me around the neighborhood. I hope he does. I remember that I still have my hair up in two tiny knots on the top of my head.

We dump out all the candy onto the dining room table. We sort the candy into three piles: those known to have partially hydrogenated oils in them, those known not to, and those we are unsure of. My sister calls the toll free number son the sides of the wrappers of this third pile and puts most of the third pile into the first pile. We have two equally full buckets: one poisonous, one non-poisonous. But even so, what parent lets her child eat all of this junk? Even the non-poisonous bucket has enough candy to eat a piece a day for no less than a month. And I don’t want my children eating a piece of candy a day. No, I want to go back to our healthy eating habits tomorrow. November 1st has always been the launch of my self-imposed No Candy November. In years past the boys have not mentioned the candy the day after Halloween. I fear this year will be different and I realize I have fewer than 12 hours to devise a plan. Meanwhile, with No Candy November just hours away, I am working my way through the non-poisonous bucket. Everything I have felt obligated to eat is pretty much gone and though the Butter Fingers bars should be in the poisonous bucket they remain available to me. I have no more room for them, however, and I fear they will go un-enjoyed.

I bathe the boys while Aunt M orders dinner. She wants Chinese but settles for Thai. I make the mistake f shampooing Mac’s hair first thing. Rendering the bathwater black with hair dye. Sailor is relegated to a second bath. I wipe down the tub between bathers, but there is still a nasty ring. And Mac’s washcloth mysteriously disintegrates while I try to soap it up. Black hairspray is everywhere. Dripped on the toilet lid. Splashed on the wall. Sliding down the sides of the sink. Ringing the tub. Filling the cracks of my already over-dry hands. We’ll be doing some cleaning tomorrow, it appears.

My house is a splatter of Halloween. Costumes bagged up, or spilling over the laundry baskets, or in the case of the laundry basket costume Mac wore over the weekend….
Pumpkins in every room. The moldy ones on the back porch. The haunted house we made on Sunday. Cards. Books. Stickers. Toys. And all that candy. And I want it all to magically disappear before we wake up tomorrow morning. Halloween is over, it’s time for Christmas.

I brush my teeth for bed and it takes nearly ten minutes to cut through all the sugar. And I realize with true horror that it hadn’t occurred to me to brush Sailor’s teeth before he fell asleep in my lap at dinner or Mac’s teeth before he and GrandDad disappeared into his room for stories. Or maybe Mac did brush his. Maybe Sailor brushed his too. Mac got a new suction-to-the-wall toothbrush from one of the moms in the kindergarten class. Sailor was envious. And they retreated to the bathroom. Let me just hope that at least a small measure of brushing took place while they were contemplating the new toothbrush.

“What about Thanksgiving?” my sister asks.

“What about Thanksgiving? That’s just the last big meal to energize us for the upcoming month of Christmas shopping.”


Wednesday, November 1, 2006. there is nothing worse than waking up to children screaming for no important reason. Ok, yes, there are many things worse, I admit it. But not when you are the one waking up to the noise and it’s too early to be waking up. I estimate that since Mac was born nearly 5 ½ years ago I have probably only awoken on my own accord just about half a dozen times. Total. In nearly 5 ½ years. (Did you get that part already?)

Mac is banging some musical spoon thing that I thought we’d given back to its rightful owner months ago. Making music, no doubt. Sailor rushes in crying that Mac has ripped his two dollars in half. No matter that he is holding two halves of a five dollar bill. I say I’ll fix it, stuff it under my pillow and tell Sailor to tell Mac to stop the noise. Obedient child that Sailor is (sometimes), he runs to the playroom to squelch the banging of his big brother. “STOP!” he screams. But big brother protests. Over and over. Finally I hear Sailor shout, “Mommy says!” and finally Mommy is out of bed and none too happy.

Next it’s Mommy yelling. And demanding Mac replace Sailor’s ripped $5 bill with his own. But he can’t find his. I am not a happy mommy.

Later I find Sailor’s bill, still intact, in his room. I return the two-part bill to Mac and tell him that it’s his own money he has rendered useless. I put Sailor’s $5 in his bank but that is not where he wants it. And so I empty his entire bank to find $41 and change. Mac tells him, “You can buy whatever you want!” I let him keep $5. The rest is sealed in a ziplock and ready for a trip to the bank.
I have an allergist appointment this morning. I am mostly going for aesthetic reasons. I have heard that dark circles under the eyes can be caused by allergies. (I have also heard that they can be caused by raising two small children alone, but there is no medical cure for that.) We are running late, surprise, surprise, despite the late hour of the appointment. We should have plenty of time to walk to a 10:15 appointment but we drive and we’re ten minutes late. And then I forget to put the quarters in the meter. And when I run back to do so my cell phone falls off my bag but I don’t notice until we are inside the office and I am settling our things. I don’t drag the kids out. I make them stay. As in Sit. Stay. I run back and find my cell spread eagle in the alley. I pick her up, dust her off, and check my VM. So busy listening I pass right by the doctor’s office and then can’t find it when I double back. I read the entire Disney version of Brother Bear to the boys. Again. I read it every time we come to the allergist, which, thank heavens, is not often. It’s a long book. I pay my copay and the receptionist is short $5 for my change. She hands me a receipt anyway, which Sailor proceeds to chew on and then leave under the chairs for Mac to find for me later. The doc is efficient and puts up with Sailor telling me to stop talking throughout the exam. The doctor gives the receptionist the $5 to give me. That feels like a modicum of justice, of some sort, anyway.

Sailor refuses to eat lunch.

During lunch, which I insist Mac finish, due to his busy afternoon schedule, I notice no fewer than 5 typos on the back of the box of crackers we are enjoying. I am flabbergasted. I call the company. I will be issued a refund check due to the fact that they were unable to provide me with a truly fabulous experience, the woman tells me. Or something like that. I wasn’t looking for a refund. A proofreading job maybe.

We are late for school. Mac has to go in with Marc Fish and his dad.

I walk home slowly. Sailor falls asleep and stays that way for a few hours. I fold laundry and think about how to teach the kids to understand and put it away themselves. I turn on my favorite Bee Gees concert DVD and am lost temporarily in my unrequited love affair with the now 60-year-old Barry Gibb. (He was only 51 when he did the concert!) I websurf Bee Gees and find out their middle names and birthdates. Barry’s is Alan Crompton and September 1st, 1946 (which I knew), and the twins were Robin Hugh and Maurice Ernest, December 22nd, 1949. You know you wanted to know. (Ok, I know you didn't.) Sounds like the parents Gibb used up all the good names before Maurice was born 35 minutes after his twin brother. Also notice that the Gibb brothers have been dying youngest to oldest (we all remember Andy Gibb’s tragic end in 1988 at age 30). But I digress, and so it is my grownup obsession with the middle-aged former teen heart throbs.

Sailor wakes up while I am being read the terms of a credit card agreement that turns out not to be beneficial to my overall financial well-being after all. And so I am carrying him, pretending he weighs a fraction of his 30 pounds, holding the phone to my ear and trying to maneuver baskets of clean laundry to each boy’s room.

I will not be late to pick up Mac. But I almost am when my friend Chad calls and it’s 2:55 when I finally say goodbye.

Outside school we shiver. Two days ago we were coatless and today I have tights on under my corduroys. (No, not dorky mommy cords; stylish, fun, too long, low rise cords.) I speak briefly to my favorite French mom and then listen and she and two friends speak their native tongue. I am getting better at understanding. So much better. It’s starting to sound and feel more natural to me.

Mac pops a juice box out of his backpack as soon as he hits the stroller. I listen to Sailor whine for three blocks that he is thirsty for something yummy in his mouth but not milk and not water. And then I listen to him whine that he has to pee right now for the other three blocks. That’s why I told you to pee before we left the house, I tell the wind.

Mac is deposited at FTK and Sailor and I set out. He is hungry. This is what happens when you don’t eat lunch, and then try to eat lunch four minutes before we have to leave the house, I tell the trees. We stop in Panera for bagels because Sailor wants a big pretzels and I don’t know where to find one. A kind lady holds the doors open for us. “She our friend?” Sailor inquires.

I have to ask the girl behind the counter to please show Sailor the whole grain bagel. He is not understanding that they don’t have any plain bagels. And he keeps saying he wants the one with cream cheese. We settle on a toasted sourdough roll. With cream cheese.

We start Christmas shopping. And find Halloween costumes 50% off. Sailor chooses Yoda, for $3.75. We chose Superman for Mac because he asked for it many times before Halloween and I did say (though I didn’t mean we’d actually buy it) that we would have to wait til after Halloween. 50% off is hard to resist, especially when everything else at the store is so cheap. Warm mittens for Mommy, $4.99. Birthday gift for classmate, $4.99. Christmas book for best friend’s baby. You guessed it. $4.99.

Sailor wants to know if he can wear the Yoda suit when we get home. But I do him one better. I put it on him before we even leave the store. He is adorable, of course.

It’s dark when we get back outside. “We go bed now?” Sailor wants to know. How confusing. For him. For me. I see dark skies, I too see bedtime. But it’s only 5:00. Who’s idea is it to keep this useless daylight savings program, anyway?

Mac walks home holding the stroller handle. He indicates each house at which we trick-or-treated last night. I am glad he is walking because at 42 pounds plus coat, I can no longer comfortably push the double jogger with both kids in it. I know. I feel like there should be a “you’ve got to be kidding me!” after that statement. I am thinking about trading it with someone for a single jogger. I sure as heck can’t afford to stash this one in the basement and buy another. But I also feel ridiculous pushing around a double stroller bearing only one child.

Sailor refuses dinner. Both boys want to sleep in my bed. The phone rings while I am reading to Sailor and it’s a dad from p.m. kindergarten participating in the school’s annual phone-a-thon. I am glad I don’t answer the phone. No need to embarrass myself by saying I can’t afford to donate to my child’s school. Or worse yet, making a donation of something meager such as $5, or $10 to save face even though I can ill afford event hat, and knowing full well parents are making donations with three and four digits with ease. Mac is worried that Nana and GrandDad will die soon (they’re not that old, I reassure him, realizing that the same conversations repeat, generation after generation). I give in to my day-long craving and eat not one but two partially hydrogenated oils filled Butterfingers “fun size” candy bars. I have always wondered about that. “Fun size.” Is there something not fun about eating a full sized candy bar?
I feel somewhere between sick from the sugar overload and craving one more, just to be bad!

So much for my annual No Candy November. And I am embarrassed to admit that my boys did better than I did today. They had no candy.


I must remember to dispose of our moldy pumpkins with tomorrow’s trash.


Wednesday. 7:15 a.m. Both boys are playing in their playroom. Not quietly, but nicely. I sneak out of bed and tiptoe to the bathroom. Unseen. Unheard. I hop in the shower. What a refreshing way to start the morning. I am stepping out of said shower I am thinking about yesterday morning, and most mornings for that matter, and how one or both of my boys, with uncanny timing, will throw the door open to ask me something or tell me something unrelated to real life just as I am stepping out of the scalding water and into the steamy room. At that very moment the door flies open and there’s Sailor. And Mac. “Sailor,” I say, “and Mac.” My tone is not disapproving, but it’s not terribly approving, either. “Hi, Mommy!” they chirp, surprised to find me not only up but in the bathroom and showered. I check myself and remember that I read or heard something not so long ago that your face should automatically light up when your kids walk into a room. Did mine? Did they realize that mine didn’t? I realized that their faces lit up when they saw me (though for Sailor it might have just been because he got to see my boobs, which even at three and weaned from breastfeeding for just over a year, he is still fascinated with). I ask them kindly to please shut the door and leave me what little warm air is left in the bathroom. They retreat. I crumple.

We actually have enough time this morning to get the garbage out (and the rotting pumpkins into the garbage), breakfast made (they discovered grits, or as Mac calls them, crits, yesterday), and everything done properly and on time. Oh but opos, we’re late again. Because Sailor has to be at school at 9:00 and I have a PTA meeting at the big school at 9:00 so I have the whole morning planned out. But soemthign distracts me and Sailor is crying that he doesn’t want to go to school. Which is my fault, because at 8:00 when he asked me, “I haf go preschool now?” I said, “No.” and half an hour later I am saying yes, and he is angry at me, thinking I lied to him. But I haven’t lied. I’ve just made an error in my judgment. I finally get Sailor to let me leave the schoolhouse by promising to bring the beanbag and a blanket when I return.

PTA meeting is boring as usual. I doodle. I wonder if the dad next to me, whi is super-friendly, is married. I drink two cups of FREE decaf Starbucks and scrape the sugar from the bottom of my cup with the little wooden stir stick. I take notes that I’ll never read again.

I walk back to my car, coffee hand freezing and cold around the neck because I gave Sailor my scarf to keep at school. My pink and white scarf. A single dad walks me to my car. I think he offers to accompany me downtown to my next court date. If only he were my type, which he is unfortunately so not.

Mac is playing the keyboard and GrandDad is on guitar when I return home. There is a discussion about a song that Mac found offensive because he recognized the words “Hitler” and “Nazis” in it. GrandDad explains that the song is about the end of the war and people coming home.

I run upstairs to make some phone calls. Run back down to find Mac draped over a kitchen chair, bored, awaiting GrandDad’s return from the bathroom. I make grilled cheese and potato chips for two of my three fave guys. I find mould growing on half a sandwich!

And I am late – again -- to pick up Sailor from preschool, which apparently, according to his teacher Sherry, pleases him to no end. As soon as all the other children left, she tells me, he burst into a great big smile and became Mr. Chatty. Sherry is working as hard to convince me that Sailor is happy in preschool as Sailor is working to convince me that he doesn’t want to go.

It’s snowing. Big flurries. We drive home for Mac, leave the car in exchange for the stroller. We are not late for kindergarten. Hurray! Sailor and I have some errands to run and he falls asleep while I push the double jogger through million mile an hour winds. The rain shield keeps flying up in my face. I use hair clips and baby links to secure it to the stroller. And I seriously question what I am doing walking down Clark Street with my child in this blustery January-in-November weather. We press on, nonetheless.

When Sailor wakes up hungry we raid a vending machine for Fritos, or as he calls them, Frooties. Still hungry we head into the mall and I get another free pair of undies from Victoria’s Secret on our way downstairs to Eatzies for a snack. We settle on some homemade cookies and a ginger ale for me. No latte! I am doing well. We wander around the bookstore next and when Sailor has to go potty I struggle to get the stroller through the bathroom door. Which gets me thinking, why am I pushing a double jogger when a) I don’t jog and b) there is only one child in the stroller and c) I am no longer physically able to comfortably push it when there are two children in it (turns out Mac weighs 49.6 pounds in full winter gear and backpack, which must put Sailor at about 37 pounds, plus the stroller itself and I am pushing nearly 120 pounds! I weigh enough less than 100 pounds for this to be a problem.)

Sailor and I walk to the big school from the bookstore. We discuss all manner of things.
Who to invite to the boys’ Boys Only Pajama Party coming up on December 1st is a hot topic. Sailor names a few boys in his class and I ask if they still have a diaper. “No,” he assures me, “Isaac wears underpants. But Brody has a diaper.” Sailor has been potty trained since he was 2 ½, miraculously. Sailor wonders about a particular boy in his class who seems to have some sort of skin condition. Tentatively he asks me, “’Cept itchy guys can go dere?”
I laugh for a block and assure him that he can invite the itchy guy if he’d like.
Then, “I smell shayo [cereal].”
“I think you smell soap,” I tell him, noticing the soapy water on the pavement.
“I smell shayo and soap.” Then, “mmmmm.”
We discuss the cookies we bought and Sailor says he wants to surprise Mac. “I put the cookies hound my back.”
A smart word, I think. Hound. A cross between behind and around. I love it.

No one can come over to play with Mac after school so we just come home. We play. I am too tired to go out anywhere when their dad arrives for his weekly visit. But I do slip into a hot bath and leave him to get the boys into bed. He doesn’t remember to have them go potty before bed, though, and Sailor wakes me around what feels like 2:00 a.m. to tell me his pants are wet. He’s sleeping in my bed. I think. And I try in my sleep-induced stupor to strip wet long johns off his legs. I kindly invite him to go back to his own bed. He declines and instead cries in the dining room that it’s too dark to go back to his room for dry pants. But it wasn’t too dark to get from your room to mine, I mumble in my sleep. Mac is bothered by Sailor sleeping in his spot when he arrives a few hours later. I need a bigger, more water proof bed.

Friday is a day off. As in there is no school for Mac. There is really nothing “off” about it for me. Except that no one has to get yelled at to get dressed because while we have plenty to do there is no schedule to follow today. Except that I plan to take the kids to class at The Paintbrush at 11:30. I bribe them with a trip to Target’s StarWars department if they clean their playroom and Mac’s room before we leave. Pick up meds at the GI doctor’s office. Target. Drive around aimlessly trying to decide if we have time to do anything else before 11:30. Art studio. Aunt M comes with us afterwards and we hit Carter’s to find out that footy pajamas in sizes 5 and up are $14, which I deem way too expensive, a new healthy food market that doesn’t have anything we want, Trader Joe’s, which never ceases to surprise me with my final bill despite the fact that I have only come in for a couple of things, a teen resale/consignment store that I thought would certainly take 3 pairs of GAP jeans and a pair of Abercrombies but won’t because they are more than a year old, so they say, and the overprices, trendy kids haircut salon where I drop off fliers and both boys get their bangs trimmed for free. Then I give up. Sailor needs a nap, it’s past 3:00, I have to leave for a dinner engagement a month overdue for my best friend’s birthday, and despite the fact that we missed the grocery store where I wanted to get milk, we go home.
It’s 9:00 p.m. when I call home to see how the kids are doing. Mac is asleep and Sailor is not. On the phone I tell Sailor I am at Starbucks with Aunty Lisa. “Please you bring me chocolate milk?” he asks. Before I hang up he proudly tells me, “I tooted!” He’s so cute.

While I drive around looking for a parking space I realize I don’t need because I can take my sister’s spot, I double park out front of the home of the guy we met on Halloween. I scribble off a quick note about calling me for coffee or a drink if he isn’t bothered by the fact that I have kids. Apparently he is bothered. 24 hours later my phone has yet to ring.

Saturday is a day of rest, or so it was intended. We don’t have plans. Well, actually we do. Mac was invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates. Except the mom neglected to email or call me again with the particulars, such as where and when! I am sure I can find someone else to give the boy’s gift to. I haul down three loads of laundry and a basket of Halloween things to be put away. We run to the bank and pick up my new allergy medicine, which, the pharmacist tells me, could keep me awake, so I should take it as early in the day as possible. I take it when we arrive home and for the first time in week I am not choking on thick stuff trapped and sliding down the back of my throat. And I am very drowsy by early evening. I feel drugged, for sure. But hey, I can breathe!

Sailor is forced to nap and Mac has a timer set for an hour of quiet time in his room. I finish watching Million Dollar Baby, which I fell asleep to last night. We have dinner. Mac unloads the dishwasher to the best of his ability and I explain the concept of doing chores for allowance. We bake muffins and Sailor has his first experience pealing carrots for them. He does just what Mac did the first time: peel and peel way past the peels and into the carrot. But he is very skillful.

The phone rings and it’s our local fave restaurant. Mac has won 1st place in the Halloween costume contest! High fives all around!! We (and I say we because this was a family event, not an individual) get a $100 gift certificate to Toys R Us, which means the boys can choose Christmas gifts for one another without burdening my budget, and a $50 gift certificate to our favorite neighborhood restaurant. We are ecstatic! And now onto the other contest. The radio station we stopped listening to a year or so ago is running a Bee Gees contest all weekend. Both my home and cell phone are programmed to the phone number. I have been caller 1, 4, 9, and 7. I need to be caller 13. When the announcement comes on the radio, I have trained the kids to stop and be quiet when I say “freeze.” Just for today. But it’s working well with them (though not so well with GrandDad, even when I explain it as I am commanding it!) so we may have to implement this to our real life. Anyway, I want to win this prize! It’s just a box set of 6 Bee Gees CDs. But who no more deriving than the Bee Gees newest greatest fan? My sister is working with me on this and I have allowed that if she wins it she can present it as my Christmas gift. There is much incentive to be caller 13. And if one of does win, it’ll more than make up for the fact that we have had to listen to some not-so-great hits of the 70s and 80s all weekend!

So the day of rest, where I never really sat down to rest for more than the hour of the movie. A strange day, for certain. We are not used to staying home. But we just need a break now and then. Finally.