TheMommyBlog

Sunday, May 03, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family, Travel

My friend (from the Madsen bike video below) wrote this morning, and just staring at her questions made me think of enough to fill a book.

Hi Mindy,
How are you ? how was your trip to Chicago ? Give me some news ... it feels like I haven’t seen you in ages ...
~m

So I filled a novella.

Hee - yes, I’m home, loooong stories that make the week seem like a month. While i was gone - in the first 12 hours, my ex’s uncle died and I might have needed to come home early so he could go to the funeral in another state. So, I went to the first half of the day’s activities (http://loveyourveggies.com/veggies_champs.php) and then took a cab back to the hotel room to wait for news. Here’s the email I sent to mom:

I am in my hotel room, waiting to hear when ex will be going to CO for the funeral for his uncle who died this morning. Having the hardest time getting information as he keeps handing the phone off to the kids and reception is poor. So frustrating. I missed all of this afternoon waiting for news, and now I’m going to dinner. At least I got to rest, it was badly needed.

So I went to dinner that night, and everyone kept sending the waiting circulating with margaritas over to me.

The next day was going to be all day on the far south side of Chicago, not close enough to take a cab back if I needed to, so I stayed behind. All day long my ex debated whether to try to catch a flight for the Friday service in CO, or skip that and go for the weekend, or what. Just as I was meeting everyone in the lobby at 7:45 Wed night, he emailed that he wasn’t going at all. o_o

Fast forward to Thursday, getting on a plane that would land at 8:30 pm, and he emails that his cousin, who works for an airline and is the daughter of the uncle who died, said she’d get him a buddy fare for eighty bucks. But I didn’t need to do anything.

By the time I landed, he’d changed his mind and wasn’t going at all, so I just said, please meet me at the house with the kids so they can stay with me and you can do whatever you need to do. He said he was too busy, would I mind picking them up?

About two minutes after we hung up I called back and said, yes, I did mind, I just came two thousand miles, could you just come the last mile and drop them at my house? It would take twenty minutes to get out of his house with all the stories everyone would need to tell me.

Oh, and it was almost nine, Logan still had homework to do, and needed to get up on the morning to write a summary of a story he hadn’t read. And Dylan was supposed to do his historical figure project, and was going to be Benjamin Franklin, and his teacher gave him a black blazer to wear. UGH. I told Dylan he had his own clothes, here they are, I’ll lay them out, and why don’t you tell me your speech? This is while I’m tucking him in. He said, “I’m Ben Franklin and I liked playing outdoor sports as a kid and swimming in lakes, and later they elected me President and I’m on the ten dollar bill.”

WTF??

I said, no, honey, no you weren’t. Maybe you swam in lakes, but no to the rest. We’ll talk in the morning.

So Friday morning, Logan is writing his essay, Daphne is asking me to pick out an outfit, and I’m furiously typing bullet points for Dylan. Like, “I was President of Pennsylvania, and am on the one hundred dollar bill. Oh, and I invented bifocals, the lightning rod, and the glass harmonica. My family was poor, I was #15 of 17 children, I only went to two years of school and ran away when I was 17.”

So I got them all dressed and then Logan said, “I don’t have any shoes.” 

“What?” 

“I came here barefoot. All my shoes are at Dad’s.”

So could dad meet us at school? No, too busy. So I said we’re coming, and I’d better not see you or I might kill you. It’s 8:05. Just as we’re rounding the corner on his street, he’s DRIVING AWAY to meet us as school. I stopped, he stopped, traffic backed up behind him, and he passed Logan his shoes through the window. And then we nearly collided when we both did three point turns to go the other direction.

As I’m dropping them off, Dylan said, “Come to my presentation. 9:30-10:30.” So I went to Safeway, got food - fridge totally empty from being away all week, got home, was literally standing naked stepping into the shower when Dylan called at 9. “Mom! Where are you? It started at 8:30!” So I got dressed and made it for the last 25 minutes. Dylan was so happy to have me sitting nearby when he gave his speech over and over to parents who asked him who he was.

And then I went back to bed.

You?