One Morning a Week....

Braja and I continue to live our opposite lives of serenity vs. chaos, beauty vs. necessity. I'm supposed to wait until tomorrow morning to post, but even though her's usually goes up 12 hours before mine, I am *amazingly* finished with my post early! Please go see Braja's lovely morning, fraught with her own little catastrophe (and I do mean tiny) at Lost and Found in India.

CC and Destructo simultaneously barrel and tumble down the hall, talking loudly about which one will get Grandpa’s chair vs. Grandma’s. I lift my sleeping mask to check the time, it is 6:12 a.m. I replace the mask and lie back, considering my options: try and eke out another few moments of sleep or get up and steal some precious minutes in front of my laptop before I am thrown into the morning battle that will require more sustained effort than usual, as we are heading back home from a delightful and mostly restive visit with my parents. I am staring down the barrel of nine hours in the minivan with my pack of boys that cannot be constrained by mere seatbelts. An endless supply of DVDs will only keep them occupied for four of the hours, the rest will be spent bickering, screaming about infractions, tattling, and bathroom breaks.

I am repelled by the thought, but We are the Griswold’s (Minus the dead grandma on the roof of the car and plus one “spirited” toddler) can’t help but sneak into my mind.

I opt for a little computer time and get up. I am extremely pleased to find the Animal still asleep and the two big boys in front of the boob tube. I wake up the laptop and check my yahoo, gmail, and Charter email accounts, pop open facebook to check out a message that came in and some drunken wall posts that a new old friend (a high school friend that just found me). I realize that she possibly didn’t leave the posts while drunk when she apologizes for her atrosious[sic] spelling. LOL. She is just as hysterical as she was in high school! So glad she found me!

My dad gives me some light reading on how to raise more money for your volunteer organization (because it came up in conversation at 7 a.m.?). It is a moneymaking scheme based on making asking your board members to individually promise to raise $1000 each, backed up by 50 ideas on how an individual might go about raising 1000 bucks if they can’t, as idea #1 suggests just write a check. I can only see having to sign a contract to raise money personally as a deterrent for volunteering to sit on a board, but some of the ideas are actually good, so I make a copy of it in his office. Fortunately, I don’t jam his copier/printer until the last page. Close call! ;^) One of the suggestions is to host a dinner for 12 of your friends, asking each to contribute $12 per person to your cause, reaping a quick $244. I resolve to get my older boys involved and have them make invitations and cookies and then serve the courses of a dinner to raise money for a charity of their choice. We’ll see if it happens….

Thank God, we packed last night! The boys get into their clothes and deliver their p.j.s to get tossed into the family duffel bag. The Animal wakes up as Grandpa finishes cooking the bacon and Grandma whips up the buttermilk pancakes. One more feast before we leave… ☺ I feel my muffin top expand another centimeter in both directions and resolve to hit the gym every day for the rest of the week. (I’m supposed to dress up as Amy Winehouse for our New Year’s Party in a couple days and I am going to look like her fat, older sister…. The Elvira wig that I got will make me instantly recognizable, though, so it will have to be enough.) I eat only one pancake and just a bite of bacon. It’s all good.

Daddy-007 spirits the children and bags out the door and into the Mom Bomb (man, I love that minivan!) while I download one last file on my laptop in silence. I close down the TweetDeck, the email, the browser, and put the machine back to sleep before tucking it into my backpack and walking out the door. Hugs, kisses, thank you’s and I Love You’s are exchanged all around. We all get settled and start our long drive home. A pretty easy send-off, all things considered!

As we turn out of the long driveway, I imagine my parents in comic strip form, both falling onto the couch, wiping their brows from the exertion, and exclaiming, “Phew!”

Follow-Up Report: The drive back home was almost effortless, I am pleased to report! The peanut butter & jelly sandwiches that Grandma made for the trip were a HUGE success and us leaving by 8:30 made for less stops than usual, so we made it home in only EIGHT hours. We called our babysitter on the way home and she is due to arrive at 6:30 p.m. so this might end up being the best travel day with the kids EVER.

P.S. I apologize for the rotten photos taken with my annoying Sprint phone. I couldn't find the "micro" SD-adapter, so they are only truly accessible via this annoying Sprint store slideshow. If you want to see the better quality photos, follow this link: View Slideshow I do have to say that last picture is kind of worth it. It is a totally cool dragon that was drawn in the dirt on the back of that moving van! Very creative and really awesome looking.

P.P.S. That is me typing up my post in the car. Finally! Something useful to do in the car. Amazingly it didn't make me carsick, like reading in the car does.... :)