Remember weeks ago when I said SG had a job offer here in our area? The start date finally materialized. He had to wait until the holidays were over for the HR people, who are located in another state, to get their stuff together and get him scheduled for his background check, a DMV report and a physical. The DMV apparently is slower than the social security office because after a whole month they decided to just get him started with the DMV report as a contingency. (They also made him get a spinal x-ray - but no drug screen. Weirdest hiring protocol I've EVER heard of.)
So he passes all his screens, gets his offer, quibbles over it for a few days, then accepts. He finally started on Monday of this week.
While the weeks at a time of wrangling life at home on my own was a serious challenge, the upside was is that SG was also home for weeks at a time. Home to get the kids dressed and fed and on the bus, the animals fed, dinner made, groceries shopped for and household chores done. If a child ended up needing to be picked up at school due to illness or behavior, he was there to take care of it. I got used to coming home to dinner on the stove and kids with finished homework every day.
I was spoiled. I had a househusband.
About Thursday of last week panic set in. We had considered that this would mean drastic changes to our routines at home, but until it was staring us in the face we hadn't really thought it out in detail. Kids going to before- and after-school care would be kids who needed to get out of bed and ready to go an hour and a half earlier than they were used to. Dinners, especially when we wanted to create time at the end of our day to exercise, would need to be planned and cooked in advance. Bedtime would need to be pushed up, undoubtedly spawning cries of outrage. We'd need to plan around guitar lessons, obedience classes, homework and workouts.
We laid out plans for meals, we bought groceries. We identified who was responsible for what each morning and each evening. We were the parenting equivalent of Rocky training for a fight against the seemingly unbeatable Ivan Drogo.
(What was that line of Dolph Lundgren's from Rocky IV? "If he dies...he dies." Yikes.)
Sunday night, groceries are bought and stowed. Dinner has been eaten and put away and the kids have showered and are enjoying computer time before getting ready for bed. I pull all the meat out of the fridge we will need for the meal plan I've written up for the next few days.
"Honey, there's only one package of chicken in the freezer. Didn't you buy any?"
"No, I thought we didn't need chicken. Do we?"
"I don't think four legs are gonna cut it."
Swap Tuesday for Wednesday on the menu plan and forge ahead. Its only a minor setback, we're still on our feet and swinging.
So far we've dealt with:
- SG forgetting to set out all of his daily supplements and leaving the house about twenty minutes later than he planned and THEN forgetting his phone on top of it, causing him to have to go back to the house after dropping the kids at daycare
- Me forgetting to fill out Race Car Man's medication log resulting in a phone call in the middle of a meeting after I'd forgotten to silence my phone
- SG spending an hour on another day looking for his desk key, which just happened to be in his desk at work. In the keyhole of his desk at work.
- Guitar lessons being missed
- I forgot to buy the M&M's for Race Car Man's class party
- Wednesday dinner being changed at the last minute from homemade Ginger Glazed Chicken to McDonald's.
- At least three separate instances of me dramatically announcing "I SWEAR I'm going to CUT MY HAIR OFF!"
On top of all of it, the Chihuahua has had diarrhea for three days which has added an extra half hour to each morning of changing crate bedding, cleaning the carpets with my steam cleaner, extra loads of laundry and lots of air freshener. Because we were out of clean bedding last night we had to let the dogs sleep loose in our room. Did I mention Zoey's favorite place to sleep is the bed? Between her insistence on putting her big head so close to my face I couldn't breathe and SG's habit of hogging the covers I finally ended up retreating in a huff to the couch where Iwas then assailed by the cats trying to take advantage of available human real estate to curl up on.
Its only Thursday and I'm starting to feel afraid we're headed for a TKO. Not to mention its Valentine's Day. I'm here to tell you its a sheepish thing to give your husband his Valentine's Day card when you've spent the night in a huff on the couch. To be honest, I didn't actually give the card to him, I just tossed it over onto his side of the bed after I finished getting dressed this morning. I'm not usually this chickenshit, but I'm just wiped out.
Hey, we're still in one piece. No one's lost a finger or gotten left behind at the grocery store, at least at the last head count.
I'm sure we'll have this down in a week or two. I just hope to God the Chihauahua's butt dries up.
