Long Day

This was one of those days. It started out fine. Ryan got off to the bus on time, Eric went to preschool. I ran errands, as I always get to do on Tuesdays. I was even able to make a quick trip to the yarn store, as I was conveniently in the neighborhood!

Eric was so tired after preschool he could barely eat his lunch. Perfect--time for a nap! I took him potty, read him 3 books, put his favorite music on...2 hours to myself! Except that 20 minutes later he came downstairs, as refreshed as if he had slept all day. He made it pefectly clear that nap time was over. I set him up with his new Cars coloring book and went back to what I had been doing--completing an on-line interview with mom2momconnection.com. I was trying to come up with thoughtful answers to the questions, as people were going to be reading all about the most important topic of all time--knitting. And Eric would not stop talking. He told me about every color of marker he was using, about each part of Lightning McQueen he was coloring...and each time I patiently explained that Mommy needed to think so I couldn't talk. Then I became a little less patient, then less, then LESS....

And then it was time to pick Ryan up. Again, that part of our afternoon started out fine, but then it would not end. The house is a complete mess, there is laundry every where, and I found I was getting nothing productive done. I kept trying to get them to play nicely with each other and someone kept bursting into tears... and they kept fighting over the gameboy, and fighting over which pictures to color.

At one point Ryan called Daddy to see what time he would be home from work. I expected to hear something like 20 minutes. No, it was going to be at least an hour. AN HOUR?! I was brought back to the days when my boys were babies and an hour truly seemed like a week...there was no way I could handle another hour of the chaos in my house. And then I remembered something to make it even worse--Mike is about to take a new job and, if all goes as planned, he will need to go to Chicago for a week. An entire week. Now, I know I shouldn't complain. Everyone's husband travels. All of my friends are home alone with their kids while Daddy is on a business trip. I have no one to complain to because they all do it all of the time. But seriously, I just don't think I can handle a week of this by myself! I mean, as crazy as Mike makes me at times, he does make himself useful around the house from time to time. For instance, he did pick up dinner tonight because we have no food, and he'll be going to the grocery store this evening to buy said food...who will do that when he's gone? I have a very strict policy against bringing my kids to the grocery store. I've always said I will go hungry before I even do that again. And now I'm facing it head on.

Who will feed the frog? It is a well documented fact that I will have nothing to do with Slimy the frog and his live crickets. Can we give him a week's worth of crickets? Can he go that long? I think I'll need to research that. Is it time to explain to Ryan about Frog heaven?

And to top it off, I've done no knitting. I've done a knitting interview, knitting shopping, knitting research (oh my word, Leah, you're not going to believe what I've found!), I've felted a couple of items in my washing machine using up a weeks worth of hot water for a small 3rd world country for a pair of felted baby slippers, but no actual click-clacking of the needles has occured. It makes me a little twitchy.

So now it's 8:00 and I have a couple of choices--clean up or knit? If I clean first, I will be resentful that cleaning has taken up the last of my knitting time today. If I forego the cleaning, then I can't really enjoy the knitting because I can't relax in clutter. What to do, what to do....