You are currently browsing posts tagged with Marriage
Tuesday, June 15th started off pretty well….
5:30am – Dave leaves to get to his 7:30am job interview in city located 25 minutes south.
7:00am – Emme wakes up a bit early, so I choose to forgoe my early shower (afterall, grandma is in town so I will have time later!).
7:20am – Stumble downstairs. Jade is all ready for school and Ty and Emme and Grandma are all waking up slowly in the living room. I grab a cup of coffee and settle in for what should be a nice, well-planned day. I say a little prayer for Dave that his interview goes well.
7:59am – Jade leaves for school.
But then…
8:00 am – Ty informs me that he played a joke on daddy and has hidden daddy’s keys. What? Where?
8:01am – Ty reveals Dave’s work keys to the school and classroom, plus his ID badge. I have an “a ha” moment about the remark last night when Dave said, “I can’t find my keys.”
8:03am – Text Dave, “Ty hid yr keys. We have them here if U need them.”
8:05am – Dave calls to inform me that they moved his interview back to 9:15am and that he is on his way home to get his keys. I do mental math (not my strong point, by the way) and realize by the time he gets home, he will have only about 10 minutes before he will need to get back into his car and head back to his interview.
8:07am- Izzy asks me, “Will you flat iron my hair for 6th grade graduation today?” Yes, go get flat iron and plug it in in Jade’s bathroom where there is more counter space.
8:08am – Load Izzy and Lily’s fancy dresses into garbage bags because it has started pouring down rain.
8:10am – Izzy and I head down to bathroom to work on her hair. Ty trails behind us to watch.
8:11am – Ty touches the hot part of the flat iron. Screams, “I touched it on accident!!!!!” I pick him up and run to the other bathroom because Jade’s sink backs up really easily. Run finger under cold water for several minutes. Carry sobbing 5 year old to kitchen and put on bandaid. Hold him. Carry him back to Jade’s bathroom
8:15am – Dave arrives home. Ty runs from bathroom to get a hug from Daddy. I begin flat ironing hair.
8:19am – Flat ironed hair looks pretty darn good.
8:20am – Walk down the hallway and question Dave’s outfit choice for interviewing. I run upstairs to the closet to see if I can do better. I can’t.
8:22am – Return downstairs to Ty and Emme screaming in Dave’s arms. Loudly. I don’t ask.
8:23am – I sit on big chair and go into an alternate universe where they have unicorns.
8:26am – Microwave my coffee and take my first sip.
8:29am – Dave starts to leave, but kids are still screaming. I got it, I say. Just go. Oh, and good luck on your interview.
8:30am – Ty tackles me on the big chair. Cries some more. I use deep breathing techniques to get him to relax. Emme decides to walk around the living room with a dishtowel over her head and discovers that this can cause her to run into things.
8:35am – Izzy and Lily (remember them?) gather stuff to get ready for school.
8:45am – Neighbor girl shows up to pick up Izzy and Lily and they head out the door.
And to wrap it all up…
8:45am to 1:15pm – a short hiatus where I debrief Dave’s interview, finally get my shower, throw in a load of laundry, eat breakfast, fix lunch, put Emme down for a nap, put on nice clothes for aforementioned 6th grade graduation, pack a snack and camera for the afore aforementioned graduation, help grandma pack a picnic for upcoming swim meet, watch Ty’s “battle show” on TV.
2:00 to 5:30pm – All 8 of us (including Grandma Bloo) attend a 90 minute 6th grade graduation where Emme tries to steal the show multiple times by shouting “YA YA” at the top of her lungs and performing 1 year old dance moves to all the music from the slideshow. Then Grandma, Dave, and I put hands in a circle and yell “BREAK” and run in three different directions. Me to dentist with Jade and Ty, Grandma to swim meet with Izzy and Lily, Dave to home with Emme. We exchange seven texts and four phone calls between us — none while driving — and I finally arrive home before the rain starts up again only to read an email that reveals that Lily is on the wrong soccer team for the Fall. Seriously?
5:31 to 7:38pm – Eat some form of food, have talk with Dave about why he doesn’t take me on fancy dates any more, discover there is no toilet paper in our bathroom, and realize the underwire in my bra is trying to empale me.
7:39pm – -Open beer.
7:40pm – Make a mental note to not forget anything on tomorrow’s agenda.
7:41pm- Drink beer
The End. Well, not really.
On our recent vacation to Whidbey Island, I found these little quiz books at the local “everything” shop.
And because I have a devilish sense of humor, I bought them. When Dave saw them he said, “Oh Great” and then he prepared himself for the worse.
These are the kind of questions I had to answer about him:
#2 Does he have his tonsils?
#9 What is his shoe size?
#42 How many times a day does he brush his teeth?
These are the kinds of questions he had to answer about me:
#5 What is her favorite color?
#11 How often does she shop for groceries?
#36 Has she ever used a power saw?
See, it starts off innocent enough, and I have to say both Dave and I were doing quite well on our respective quizzes.
#73 Which one of these CAN’T she do? A.) Touch her toes B.) Stand on her head C.) Jumpstart a car or D.) Rewire a lamp.
Uh, yeah, I can’t do any of those…
How about these:
#48 Does she know who Pythagoras was?
Whatever…
#14 Would he like to ride into space?
Totally, he would be there in a second. I, however, have to be drugged to ride in an airplane.
But then a few zingers found their way into the game, for example:
#26 Which one of your women friends does he find the most attractive?
Let’s just say I got that one right. Not because he admitted it, but because he turned bright red and opened a beer.
#89 Is there anything you (he) can do that SHE can’t?
No. I can even pee standing up, if required. Oh, wait, he can swim the butterfly. Take it from me, my butterfly is pretty darn ugly. I also cannot do calculus.
#43 What would she say about the idea of a strip club a mile from your home? A.) “Where do I sign to protest?” B.) “Makes no difference to me!” C.) “Great!” or D.) “Hmmm, Wonder if they are hiring?” Well, since the high school I used to work at is RIGHT NEXT to a strip club (I kid you not), I am gonna go with C. Okay, just kidding.
Of course, now when some creep out ther googles “strip club” my blog will come up. Lovely.
So, if you are bored this summer and looking to torture your husband, pick these little gems up. Or better yet, give them as wedding gifts. The groom will thank you, I am sure.
So, as Dave and I are climbing into bed last night, I take the opportunity to tell him about a couple of back-to-back nightmares I had the night before. I am not prone to nightmares but these two were especially vivid as they both dealt with Ty being in mortal danger and me, the mommy, being fingertips away from saving him but not being able to. I normally don’t talk about stuff like that as I don’t believe in putting stuff like that out there. But last night I needed to shake the dreams by telling my husband. He listens and does the much needed nodding and cooing. Then he says, “Ugh, sometimes I have waking nightmares where I imagine something happening right before my eyes.” I nod… oh, we are being so supportive to each other right now. “Oh yeah, like when you’re walking down the stairs carrying Emme and you have this flash of yourself tumbling down while you’re holding her?!?!” We sorta sit there and nod. Sigh. I feel satisfied in our mutual comiseration of morbid thoughts. And then Dave says THIS:
“Well, we all know about the double slit experiment.”
What-huh-huh-huh-eh?
Well, no actually, I don’t, I inform him. Oh, he says, you are just baiting me, aren’t you? Correction, husband, you baited me with your weird science-teacher talk and now, I fear, I am in for some rudimentary lesson in physics that I know… know I can live without.
Well, the double slit experiment is pretty well-known, he says. Great. Now I am being insulted as well. Perhaps I am the only person in all of the world who has never heard of this COMMON, well-known, probably on Sesame Street experiment, but, please, continue. So, he tells me that if you take a piece of common cardboard and put two slits in it and shine a light through the two slits, one gets a pattern on the opposing wall that looks like stripes because (and this is where I have to take his word for it) two electrons are interacting with each other to create the pattern. But, oh and here it gets really really crazy, if one turns down the intensity of the light so that only ONE electron goes through the slit, you will still see the same pattern on the opposing wall. Even though, he says with a gleam in his eye, there is only one electron passing throught he slits. You can imagine my chagrin at never having heard of this amazing experiment.
But it gets better.
But if only one electron is passing through the slit, he ponders, where is the other electron? The one needed to interact with the original electron and therefore create the striped pattern? I hold my breath. Well, says Dave, we can’t prove it yet, but the most PLAUSIBLE (this word is very important so remember it… plausible) explanation is that the other electron is in an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. Are you saying that in some alternate universe I actually fell down the steps with Emme???? NO, but there are zillions and billions of alternate universes. And guess who came up with this whole thing, he asks? I shout out perhaps the only famous scientist I know, certain of success: EINSTEIN!! No, Dave says….. it was GOD. And this is all coming from a man who refuses to watch LOST because it doesn’t make sense.
A moment of silence passes and then I say: Go get my computer! Oh good, he says, you’re going to Google this, aren’t you.
Nope. I am going to blog.
Tomorrow we are going to analyze a Shakespearean sonnet before bedtime and then discuss Dante’s 9 circles of hell… one of which I was on during the discussion of the double slit experiment. Stay tuned.
When my Ty was born, Dave would actually try and compete with me on over who was the “most tired.” I would say, “I am sooooooooooooooooooooo tired!” and he would say, “Me, too.” And I would say, “But not as tired as I am.” And he would sorta squint and look at me and say, “I think I might be” and then I would say,”No, Dave. That is not possible. I am nourishing another human being from my (said in a whisper) breast every two hours.” I would say, “Dave, I am tired at my ROOT. I am tired at my CORE.”
In an effort to streamline things, we have now abbreviated the whole mess to I am “tired at my root-core.” And the phrase lives on. Oh, we can really throw down on this one. Dave has two jobs working with teenagers that require him to commute to two different cities and he usually works 2 weekends a month as well. Plus, when he walks through the door, he is expected to be daddy and uncle Dave and be smiling and happy and give me a foot rub. Me? Well, I am in charge of five kids ranging in age from 1-14. Enough said.
We’re tired.
Can I get a witness?
Most days I tackle our life with grace and aplomb. Not really. Most days I tackle our life with a gritty determination to do my best and not send anyone into therapy. To get all the hugs in. To make sure they are all fed. To listen to my gut. To pray. To breathe. To get a shower in, if not make-up on. To kiss my husband when he walks through the door. To call my mom. To parent with intention.
But April nearly killed me.
And it bled a bit over into May.
These last few weeks included a very sick one year old, three trips to the ER –two trips for head lacerations on two different kids and one of those trips was for me because I broke my toe. And if anyone thinks I am being a wimp about a broken toe, come on over and ram your toe into the mega vacuum cleaner we own. No? Okay, let me continue with my list. These last few weeks included sports for three of the kids — that’s Track, Soccer, and Martial Arts — a 1/2 dozen birthday parties to ATTEND and two to HOST, Dave starting a new job, and a huge project that I cannot even begin to tell you all about because it is just that top secret. I am also the room mom for preschool and for some reason I just signed a permission slip last night for Izzy to attend and help out at the school carnival. Whah? I know it is all just LIFE and I am not complaining. But last night I decided to up the ante on our “tired competition.” As I was coming home from a preschool board meeting after spending a total of four hours and 7 phone calls trying to restore our internet and a Costco run that had my broken toe throbbing, I looked over as Dave was pulling in the driveway from swim practice. I said to him. “Hey Dave, my root-core just BROKE!”
He stopped. Looked at me. “Well, okay… you win!”
A-ha!
I win!
I am the most tiredest of us all! I win!
I wonder what my prize is?
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
