Mama's a little bit loaded tonight

So today I finally had my day off. I am still in the recovery process from last week's marathon work schedule. I handled my four big meetings with aplomb this last week although truth told, by Wednesday afternoon when the autistic three year old wandered into my office with his mother I was really only able to stare and blink at him, wondering why my intern wasn't jumping off her duff to actually interview the parent to complete the interview I'd suggested she complete. sheesh. So glad nobody watched me as intently as I watch my graduate students...

It's a scary year when the thought of a work week commuting to a conservative, narrow-minded, homophobic, segrationist city to attend a conference on a topic with which you are well-acquainted and really only attending so that you can later point out to dear old Everard that he's not actually doing his job sounds really inviting.

That's where I'm heading during the week of Valentine's Day. Missing the class party for my dear son--truth told, not such a big sacrifice, that--and driving a good 90 minutes each way plus the time involved in picking up and dropping off a colleague for carpooling purposes. And I can't wait. I just have to get through the five new long meetings during the upcoming week so that starting next Thursday I don't actually go into the office or step foot on a campus again for another 11 days.

Bliss.

Not that work is bad. It's just stressful. Terribly so. I remember the first couple of years out of graduate school, when I'd drive home, anticipating the cigarette (still smoked in those days) and thinking about how I really needed a small tape recording device to record my memories so that I could write a book about my experiences--I planned to call it something along the lines of, "In the Trenches; a School Psychologist's Fledgling Years." I dunno. Now I realize I would have breached about fifty million confidentiality rules and I could never go back to those times anyway now. I'm old. I'm jaded. I know exponentially more than I knew then, and that was still more than my current graduate students know. Geez, what kinds of training programs are they running these days?

But I digressed.

So today was my normal Friday off. And my daughter seems to maybe have finally figured out that I'm really serious when I tell her that complete tantrumming meltdowns in stores are simply inappropriate and not to be accepted. Because several times today she pointed out to me that she hadn't screamed one time and could she please have a squirt of whipped cream when we got home? I happily obliged, even though it took about three requests for me to figure out what the hell she was referring to. Which brings me to another point of digression--we really do ignore people who are doing what we want them to do and generally only attend to the shitty stuff, and this explains why so many people really only do shitty things. That's all they ever get credit for doing! We really need to start remembing to notice the good stuff instead of the shitty stuff. Thank you, dear daughter, for reminding me of that today.

I feel wasted, exhausted and as if maybe Sunday is the day to be recovered. There were errands to be completed today and a few more tomorrow morning, along with some kind of cleaning effort. By Sunday, laundry should be completed, shopping contended with and kids should be happily screaming in the street as they ride their bikes hither and yon. I plan to sit out there on my camping chair for at least four hours, book nearby, unread (because quite frankly, even though I am supposed to be enjoying it because afterall, I am a brilliant intellectual, I cannot stand this month's selection of my book group), some kind of (probably nonalcoholic) drink nearby (oh yeah, I'm loaded, aren't I? I forgot to tell you how that happened), chit-chatting with various neighbors except for the new ones who appear to be nice but who I secretly believe are pathological liars and not to be invited into the circle. We'll see if I'm wrong in the end, but in these scenarios I usually am not.

So just to finish with the initial point of the post, which is that Mama inadvertently got drunk early on in the evening, today I picked my dear son up from his school day to find him a little more oppositional than usual. So, after a little scuffle involving a scooter and a school yard, we had a tussle over a karate uniform and beating the tar out of a younger sister. Then we had an incident while waiting in line for karate class to start which ended in me very delicately (I swear to God, that part is not embellished in the slightest) taking him by the hand (out of the karate line in front of everybody so that he actually missed karate today) and walking him out to the car while informing him that he would be spending the rest of today in his room while his family had fun. Then my spouse irritated me by wanting to drive off on his motorcycle instead and I had to take both children to the grocery store. That ended up being not so bad because my calm demeanor in the karate line scared the heck out of both children and when we arrived home, husband was sitting out in the front yard on the bench. After setting up son in his room to address and sign valentines, I headed outside with a beer (see, here it comes!). A little chit-chat ensued, less irritation, I relented and let son out of his room to play, another beer, the neighbor came home, tossed her daughter into our yard, handed me a cup of wine and left to pick up her son, and next thing I knew, Mama was a little loaded and all was right with the world again while the kids played happily, there was chit-chat amongst the spouses and neighbors and once again, we were on a weekend evening. I think I actually might be recovered by tomorrow morning. That is, if I'm not hungover.

Have a good one.