restful weekend

9-28-09

It was a good weekend. I found myself with only one family obligation, which was great since I didn’t have to go anywhere.

Friday night, we went to my folks, which was the one family outing. My aunt and uncle Guinn and George were there, which was awesome since I had not seen them since I guess 2005, back when we went to Pennsylvania. I don’t know her all that well, but I am pleased when I feel like we are kind of drawn towards one another. It was nice to see her since I felt like it was comfortable.

Dax did not feel the comfort level like I did at first. He walked up the stairs in my parent’s house and saw these two strangers and burst into tears. At least I know nobody is going to lure him away. It took a while to calm him, but when he did, he was much better. Ken took the boys outside to play so I could visit, which was perfect.

My mom got home so we headed out to dinner at the Big Wok. Yum! The waitresses there who knew us from going there with Papa Brenan had not seen us since I was pregnant with Dax. But they remembered us! Dinner was yummy. I did have to do the poop dance with the boys, both of whom decided they needed to take a crap while we were there, which meant I had to hang out in the bathroom for a while. Of course, Bobby had to get all private and didn’t want Dax in there with him, so I had to shuffle Dax out while Bobby did his business. Fun.

We stayed there till almost 9, which meant the boys went to bed pretty late. Bobby actually broke down a bit when we left, but only because he had been playing with the Wii and was loving it. Clearly, he will be a video game junkie.

With the late bedtime, it meant that they slept in. Shockingly, really, since this isn’t always the case. I got up around 7:30 and the boys were still sleeping. They got up around 8, which was cool.

They played all morning, and then as I turned on the tv for them after their request for a movie, we noticed that Noggin and Nick were taking part in a basically no media day. No programming for 3 hours except this screen telling you to turn off everything and go outside and play. So Ken and I took them up on this and decided to take them to McDonald’s to play in the structure there since it was air conditioned (it was freaking hot).

We got to McDonald’s at 11 and it was packed. We had not done the Saturday lunch time McDonald’s run before. Luckily, there was a seat and the boys were happy to have all the kids there. There were balloons all over the place, and this meant that Ronald McDonald was in route. Neat. Last time they said this, all we got was Grimmace. At noon, Grimmace came out and once again we felt punked. Bobby was excited about this, but Dax felt that he was in grave danger. Let’s face it, Grimmace is essentially Barney with no bones. Kind of scary!

Word on the street was that Ronald himself was also coming and Grimmace was just a bonus. Sure enough, this dude with a booming voice that rivaled Ken’s, came into the play room. He announced a show outside, so we headed out there to a small trailer with Ronald pics on it, a giant blue mat out in front of the stage portion and several kids sitting on it. We ushered the boys onto the mat, handed them some milk and they were good to go.

The show was an hour! I was impressed. The poor dude who was Ronald had to have been miserably hot in all his makeup, but he never let on. He was great. Some magic tricks, random jumping around, unicycle riding and the best part which was a giant inflated cube tossed around the kids, kept the kids all kinds of happy.

At the end of the show, they could meet Ronald, take a pic and they got a goody bag. We were not in the front of the line, so our goody bags were clearly the bags they put together when they realized they had run out of the regular stuff. The boys got paper plates, forks and place mats. No joke. It was like the people ran inside, grabbed a few things just to keep them happy. I half expected ketchup packets. Luckily for us, the boys loved what they got and didn’t know they had been gypped.

What the kids did not realize was how much of a sacrifice I was making the entire morning. I got hit with a chatty cathy.

I don’t play well with people I don’t know. I recognize this will be something I have to overcome since I am a mom now so I have to be used to talking to random parents. On Saturday, I sucked it up and dealt with this lady who decided to engage us in conversation.

She started chatting us up in the play area. Next thing you know, her kids were next to my kids and she was hanging out with us. She was nice enough, but kind of abrasive. There were a couple of good things she did like yell at the kid who came down the slide on a tray. She also quickly brought attention to this one kid who was spilling his sundae all over the place. She also had zero control over her daughter, who seemed to take great pride in disrespecting her mother in front of people. Mom did not punish, only threatened, a lot. Nothing came of the threats, and her kid seemed to know this would be the case. It was aggravating, but at least her kids were way older than mine so I didn’t have to worry about a play date coming out of this.

But what was so remarkable about this is I allowed myself to not hate her right out of the gate. I talked with her a bit, I didn’t completely shy away from her. I was so good! Seriously, if I can deal with that broad for 3 hours, I can deal with anyone for a few minutes of chit chat. I figured it was just training for me.

The rest of Saturday was nice and mellow. I tried to get liquored up on Ken’s redneck daiquiri. But apparently I could only get a slight buzz. We watched an iCarly episode, which yes, is a show for tweens. Don’t ask.

Sunday, since we didn’t have bowling, we could sleep in. It was awesome! Once again, the boys slept in, which meant we had the morning quiet. Bobby got up and told me that per my request the night before to be sure to sleep and not come out 100 times, he in fact did sleep and that he did it just because of the bribe for donuts. LOL! So Bobby and I got dressed and went to get some donuts for us. Dax had opted to stay behind, which was good for Bobby and I. K-Earth has a Beatles show on every Sunday morning, and I turned it on. Bobby heard Here Comes the Sun and was jazzed, asking if it was the Beatles before I even told him it was a Beatles show. I confirmed and he was so happy. So was I, and we listed to the show there and back and I felt all happy that my kid was enjoying a band so much.

When we were leaving the donut show, Bobby saw all the guys in there eating donuts and drinking coffee. He asked me, “Mom, why are these guys eating in here? Do they not have any friends?” LOL!!

We had errands to run after donuts. We went to Target for cat litter and night time underwear. We went to the location in the Carson mall since we also had a couple bags of books to drop off at the used bookstore. While we waited for the bookstore to open, we let the boys run in the squishy inside play area of the mall. Similar to the one at Wilmington, this one had a slide and an airport theme. Not many kids in there, if any at times. The boys ran around for a while, which was good. I think it kept them mellow then for when we went to the grocery store afterwards.

We didn’t get home till 1, so the boys ate and had quiet time while Ken and I watched Glee. Holy crap that show is good. Unfortunately, the main song for this episode was that damn Single Ladies song from Beyonce, which has been stuck in my head since. Arrrgggghhh!!

After the show, Bobby and I lounged in the pool while Dax ran around in the yard. Dax and Ken eventually came into the pool and it was family time. We headed into the house around 4 and the boys zoned out to They Might Be Giants Here Come the 1 2 3’s, while I made dinner.

It was nice to be able to have a mellow weekend. I enjoyed the fact that I could just do nothing without having guilt. Of course, my house suffered in the idea that it is messy, but I can work on that this week. I need to since Doug and Elizabeth are coming this weekend to go to the fair with us. Yay! I am thinking maybe pizza or something at the house afterwards for visiting purposes. Matt is supposed to go with us, too, since I think it would be good for Matt and Doug should hang out.

Roman Polanski was arrested over the weekend. It was from the 32 year old warrant from his skipping the country during his trial for drugging and raping a 13 year old. It is one of those cases where it is hard to say what is right. No one should get away with this crime. That being said, at the time, Roman did do a 3 month psychological evaluation, and was led to believe that he would not serve real time then found out that the judge was corrupt and planned on sending him away forever, he left the country. I want justice to be served, I do, but I also wonder if we aren’t wasting time and money on someone who had done no other bad. He went on to live an upstanding life in France and is well respected in the arts community. The 13 year old even went on to forgive and is one of the people voicing support in dropping the charges. So why are we spinning our wheels on an incident that occurred so long ago, that will not happen again with this man? Why spend the money? I don’t know that I am right, I just truly wonder about the priorities of our law enforcement.

I recognize my compassion is out of wack. I guess I just hate to see someone deemed a monster for one thing they did wrong. Polanski was fairly fresh of the brutal murder of his wife and unborn son. He was drinking, partaking in the lifestyle of the time, and he probably took advantage of his celebrity and perhaps to some degree cultures from other countries he lived in. He did bad things to this 13 year old. She said no, and he simply slipped her more drugs and booze. It is one of those things where I wonder what would have happened had he been sentenced by a judge that wasn’t obsessed with celebrity? Would he have sentenced him to a few years? Would it have been something light? Would he have put him in prison for 30 years? I don’t know the appropriate sentence amount for someone who does that, you know? What is correct when it is a first offense? Perhaps he should in fact be sentenced to that, but then again, I hate to see us spending tax dollars on housing a man who isn’t doing anything wrong now.

I don’t trust the system. I don’t trust people to do right, yet I want somehow to contradict them by believing in people who have done bad. Maybe it is my way of rebelling against people who put folks like Tyra Banks up on a pedestal for doing some show about her wearing fake hair.

I am off my rocker, I know.

On Facebook this weekend I friended one of my old best friends from Madison. I used to hang out with him and two other buddies. It was so cool that he remembered me! Yes, I still suffer from the feeling like I was forgettable.

It is a shame double standards exist, but they do and I suppose we just need to deal. On the way home from the Wok on Friday night, Ken pointed out some spot where this chick he friended on Facebook and he did it. I wasn’t sure that was something I needed to know, despite the fact that Ken knows all the places I did it before him. However, that being said, Ken still was much more active then me and it is harder sometimes to think about that. Him pointing out that spot in some circumstances would not bug me, but for some reason it did on Friday. I felt bad, but nostalgia is one of those crazy things that sometimes is not a two person game.

In theory, this is the last Monday at my desk in this building. Rumor was we were moving by the 5th. I will be curious if this is true. Today is the close, and tomorrow is my report day, so this week could prove to be busy.

We watched a couple new shows, including Modern Family which was so great, and Cougartown, which shocked us and it was quite good. I was pleased! Of course, Cougartown is done by the dude who does Scrubs, so I am not shocked.

So now that Ken set us up with unlimited text messaging, he encouraged me to set up Twitter stuff to come to my phone. I have been playing around with who to follow and may have determined I don’t have time for most of it. I love me some Kevin Smith, but he will get on a roll and tweet like 50 messages in a 10 minute period. Dude. That is a lot of stuff. I had signed up for him before, but I happened to set it up on a tweet-a-thon day in which it was one a minute for 24 hours. I turned it off pretty quickly. I signed up for Mental Floss, but being that I already read it once a day, I don’t need the tweets. I have Stephanie set up, but she doesn’t tweet too much. I think I may need to turn off the celebrity tweets since I just don’t know that I can keep up.

Ass much as I bitch about it and joke that the boys and Ken would be lost without me, I will admit, I kind of love that fact. Ken just texted me asking me where the heart necklace was for Bobby, and of course, I knew where it was. It is nice to be needed.

My chest, arms and back hurt from swimming yesterday. Dax insists on riding on my back as we float around the whirlpool, and it is rough!

Is it bad that even though I like seeing Ken every day when I get home, that I am kind of happy that he won’t be there today? It isn’t that I don’t want to see him, it is that I get totally distracted on things that need to be done when he is there. Him not being there means this afternoon, I can make my kitchen a happy place again. Plus, maybe I can figure out a new place for all of his damn spiders, which he now has 4 of them.

There is some show that Ken and I were invited to on Thursday night in Anaheim. Some Star Wars Musical? All I know is I am trying to make arrangements for my folks to watch them. It is late (8 on a Thursday night) and we might not be back until midnight. I am not keen on picking up the boys at that point. Hell, I am not keen on being home that late since I get up at 4:30. My mom is saying maybe the boys can stay over night. Not sure I am keen on that 100% only because it may be hectic for Ken to go get them. So right now, I am waiting on Ken, and my mom to talk to my dad. I hate having to arrange this. It is one thing on a weekend, but weekdays, I just hate to do it.

My morning was going pretty quickly but all of the sudden I hit some kind of time wall. The clock is holding still. It knows I have big plans for when I get home. LOL!