Minus Charity Week: Seventh Day

See the first day here.

•••

It’s the last full day before Charity comes home. Thursday, you’ve never looked so good.

The times are approximate, the feelings are not.

5:35 am

Alarm goes off because again, at one point I thought this was a good idea.

*sigh*

It is.

7:45 am

Get a text from my mom asking me to bring the children over to her house at 9:45am, instead of her coming over here like the other days.

I fall to the floor and put my face in my hands.

We’ve just gone from a two second, “thanks mom,” and walk out the door situation, to an all-morning-long try-and-get-everyone-dressed-and-packed-and-out-of-the-house extravaganza.

But, my mom has helped so much this week that I can make it work.

Besides, she gave me life.

8:30 am

I tell the girls they are going to grandma’s house today. They scream “YES!!!” Like they were just told that Jurassic Park is real, and that they’re going to see it today, and that it’s safe this time.

9:50 am

Haven’t left for grandma’s yet. Spent most of the last hour looking for clothes, packing Roman’s diaper bag, hunting down shoes, gathering school work, and going through a mental inventory of everything we own and trying to decide what’s worth taking.

“Hmmm…will they need that floor lamp for some reason? We’ll bring it just in case.”

10:21 am

Finally get them dropped off. I roll into work, trying to mentally shift gears to a job that doesn’t involve being responsible for the basic needs of humans.

4:17 pm

Work is over. I go to pick up the kids from my mom’s. During the course of our debrief I mentioned that I will probably make some cheeseburgers tonight, because I need to use the ground turkey I had bought earlier in the week before it expires.

…Wow, totally sounded like a mom just then. Can’t wait to go home and check Pinterest for some fun dessert ideas.

Anyway, my mom informs me that she had put the ground turkey into the freezer yesterday because of said expiration issue. Well thanks for the vote of confidence mom. I had it under control. But I guess she’s not going to assume that when she is rifling through our fridge to pull together lunch for my children, and I don’t blame her.

She says that I can just thaw it. Says it so nonchalantly like it’s no big deal. Yeah, well thawing wasn’t something I was mentally prepared for today. I’m not adding that unpredictable layer to our already fragile dinner time procedures.

We’ll have frozen pizza tonight.

4:34 pm

I thought it’d be fun for all of us to watch a movie this evening. On the way home we stop at Family Video to rent one—yes, I’m aware of Netflix, Redbox, and Amazon, I thought going to the store would be more of an experience.

I’m going in with the mentality of letting the girls pick what they want, and just suffer through whatever their poor judgement deems worthy of our time on this planet, because I love them.

Family Video has a kids section that is totally free. Booyah! Well they land on two movies, Ribbit, and The Princess and the Magic Mirror. They are are not in the free kids section. Way to go guys!

Have you ever looked at a situation fully knowing that you are about to flush your money down the toilet? An analysis of the DVD cases for these two films reveal that they are both low budget, straight-to-video-or-worse, animated CGI kids movies. They are new releases that appear to have been made by seventh graders on first generation iPads for a technology class they were forced to take in the summer.

*sigh* Fine!

Get to the counter and find out that the wonder doesn’t end there. We get a free additional rental, because three terrible movies is better than two. They pick an early 90’s, live-action winner called Little Bigfoot; about two kids finding a little bigfoot.

This could be my end.

5:45 pm

Thought it would be great to make brownies, because…why not, what do I have to lose. So I psych myself up and bust out the mix—brownie mix, not some great spotify cooking playlist.

I grab a bowl and fill it with the correct amounts of water and oil. I then scour the fridge and can’t find any eggs. All I need is one. I call my mom to confirm. Yep, she’d used them up yesterday.

“Ok, I’ll just run to the store.”

I look at my kids and picture getting them in and out of the van.

“Sorry girls, grandma has robbed you of your brownies.”

They then comment on my strength. They’d never seen me pick up someone before and throw them under a public transportation vehicle.

6:37 pm

After dinner we start the movie Ribbit. One minute in and it is very clear that the only value this movie has is to assure me that my TV is functioning for the next 80 minutes. Fortunately Roman would rather climb up the stairs, which he is a pro at now but I probably “need to help him” a lot. Sorry girls my hands are tied.

At one point I bring down Snickers ice cream bars for us. Violet only eats half of hers then gives the rest to me. And in doing so shoots straight to the top of my favorite kid list.

6:46 pm

Nola gives me the last fourth of her Snickers ice cream bar because it was getting too cold for her hands. How it was in her hands long enough for her to realize it was cold is beyond me. I don’t even remember eating mine. I just remember that for ten seconds of my life everything was right with the world.

A fourth of a Snickers ice cream bar can only get Nola the second favorite kid spot.

Roman is dead last. All he does is take.

8:00 pm

Ribbit is finally over. It would have been more fun roasting marshmallows over a pile of flaming dollars. Maybe we’ll do that next time I think it’s a good idea to let the girls pick a movie.

I asked the girls if they liked it. They say yes.

Their bar for a good movie must only require that a noun of some kind moves on the screen.

8:24 pm

We are all in the bathroom brushing teeth. In the course of playing some game Violet ends up scratching Nola, who starts crying and screaming of Violet’s malicious intent. Violet is heart broken at the accusation, it was an accident, and slides down the wall to sit on the floor in anguish. In doing so her back catches the protruding door hinge scraping it all the way down. So now Violet is crying too.

I move to comfort Violet because I know how painful that is. While doing so Nola thinks it would be good to give Roman a hug and he somehow falls and hits his head.

So within eight seconds all of the kids have been injured and are crying and I now have the loudest bathroom in the world.

8:36 pm

Everyone pulled through. We finished getting ready for bed and I just laid Roman in his crib. I get down to his level and we look at each other through the slats. I surprise him with a “RAHHH!” He laughs and gets up on all fours. I do it again. He cracks up again. I go for the gold and pause for a beat, being unpredictable keeps it interesting, then let out a big “RAHHHHH!” He laughs and lunges his face into the side of the crib.

Now he’s crying again.

Come home soon Charity, it may be a matter of life or death.

Day seven down.