My mother and father-in-law drove in to town from the Midwest and spent nine days with us last week. Before you make any “Fish and house guests” kind of comments, it was really fantastic.
For example, we stumbled on a small fiber art festival filled with incredibly talented artists that allowed my mother and I to enjoy a day of co-conspiratorial snarkiness consisting of phrases like, “But nobody sews or knits anymore, ooooh noooo.” This was especially fun when talking to the internationally reknowned, mostly self taught quilter who sells her art for just shy of 10k, but only when she feels like it, and when talking to the woman who inspired a group of 18 year old women soldiers in Afghanistan to crochet baby blankies for foster kids in the middle of their tour of duty. But you know…nobody sews of knits or crochet’s or any of that stuff anymore.
I like to feel like I belong so when the rep from the Chamber of Commerce begged us to move to town and join there committee I called the outing a total success.
While stay-cationing with our family we hit up an old time strings group annual picnic. Daniel’s been sneaking away of a Saturday to play his mandolin with the group for most of the year. Old time strings folks know how to picnic. There was good grub. My kids found some friends down by the swing set who were into the “make a lot of mud and then get really muddy game.” It involved a water spigot and flip flops and stepping on each other. I, in full housewifely form, put a stop to that since the kids they were stepping on were younger than my kids, but the parents of the kids they were stepping on were younger, stronger, and faster than the group I was with. Old time strings band people…well…Daniel is pushing 40 and he was the youngest by more than a decade.
While on staycation only one of my kids managed to swallow a foreign object. Yes, my kids are too big for this kind of thing. I made a very strong case for telling mommy every time a poo happened and not flushing so I could check for appearances of the missing blue frog (a toy.)
If you have visited my house on occasion you would think the direction to “not flush” were a no-brainer. I mean seriously, it’s like my toilets don’t have flushers at all. But this time? Of course not. Well, I suppose the chronic constipation leading to every other day movements didn’t help things, but both of the girl’s were guilty of flushing at least one potential blue frog away. But this means I only found myself crouched over the toilet with a yellow plastic knife dissecting defecation once in the past week, so who am I to complain?
I’m beginning to think the child was putting the frog in and out of her mouth and then, when she thought it was in there it wasn’t so she only thinks she swallowed it. This is the same child who has chewed holes through my mouse cord so there is no telling. It might be some form of pica developed to meet nutrition gaps in a diet that consists mainly of white bread, butter, and roasted pork. (Picky eater. I do my best, okay?)
Didn’t I start this out saying date night? I think I did. Date night. Much more “Real Housewife” than the rest of this stuff which is really more normal housewife.
After 9 days of sharing the kids with the other grandparents my parents were itching to have them all to themselves so they offered a sleepover followed by a day at the family fun center. You don’t have to offer that twice! In fact, the kids started asking ‘is it bedtime yet?” at about 10:30 the morning before.
Around the time I was loading the car with jammies, toothbrushes, hair pretties, pro-biotics, allergy pills, blankies, Strawberry Shortcake TM, clean panties, bloomers, red velvet Christmas dresses, and children, Daniel called.
There was an evening rosary scheduled. I wasn’t invited.
I dragged the kids to Grandma’s house and stayed to watch an episode of Bunheads. I didn’t need to try and beat traffic back home.
Daniel and I are good at foreshortened date nights so with a heart full of optimism I ran to the store to buy him some Calamata olives, hummus, and bread to go with the cold roast chicken for supper. We had a Poirot from Netflix waiting for us. Sure, it wasn’t a night out for movies and a dinner, but it was an evening where we knew no little ones would run to bed after a nightmare or find that they had to “go” making a mid-night frog hunt necessary. It could still be a successful date night.
At about 8:15 pm he called to say they were just leaving the church. They were about an hour away still.
I watched some Project Runway and I didn’t clean the house. Those guys really know how to sew.
At 9:30, while I was debating what to watch next while I snuggled the dog, Daniel came home. I pressed a plate of Mediterranean date night supper on him and pushed play on the episode of Poirot where the wife is really the one who pulled the trigger.
It was truncated, yes, but it was date night, in a way. It was mostly like any night at our house, but we had the Calamata Olives. I hate olives.
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On the next episode of The Real Housewives of Clark County
“If you kids don’t stop flushing the toilet I’m going to have to ground you both from video games!”
And drama ensues as Traci tries to figure out the right place and time to back out of running the after school Talent Show club the PTO president tricked her into agreeing to while all of the kids were tearing around the play ground on the last day of school.
