Have I got your attention now? Entries here for the next twenty one days will talk about experiences of me taking care of the kids - some subset of all seven of them - without Tara. For some definition of "taking care of the kids", anyway.
Tara left this morning to spend some time tooling around in the South of France. My only requirement for her trip is that she come back fully rested and relaxed. Tara wants me to take a lot of pictures to post here. Today I got one. (Don't skip ahead, wait for it...)
When I bought her tickets, I got tickets out of our city airport here. They started commercial passenger flights out of here in June or July of this year through Frontier Airlines. For now, they've got one flight out in the early AM, and one flight in every evening. The flight only goes to Denver. It was well worth the money, from my perspective. (I assume Tara's flight went well.) We got up, drove to the other side of town, a little under 15 minutes, and we were at the airport. Easy. It shaved 90 minutes off the round trip drive to the airport. I am definitely going to try to get my next business trip to go out from this airport. If anyone flies into town, and wants me to pick them up from this airport - not a problem at all.
We got home just in time to pick up all the car pool people for choir. We got to the school about 4 minutes late. (for choir - 1 hour before school actually starts...)
I spent the next 5 hours dealing with the little kids. Noel was ticked off because she was very hungry and very tired, and was having a hard time picking a priority. Lily had preschool. Adam was bored, I guess.
I was cooking eggs for egg salad sandwiches for Lily and Adam, Noel was awake again, and wanted to eat, and Ruth called from the school. She told me that today was 'eat lunch at school with a parent day', it was the only day that it would happen, and she wanted me to come down to the school right away for lunch. For a second I had the idea that maybe I could possible find a babysitter or something, Ruth told me to find someone to watch the other kids, and call her back in the school office, she would be waiting. About 45 seconds after I got off the phone, after looking at the eggs, looking at Ruth, and opening the front door, I decided to call Ruth back. I told her what was going on, and suggested that maybe we could go out to lunch on a different day. I think I committed right there to taking each of the kids individually out to eat while Tara is gone. Ruth came home from school and asked if I was ready to go out to lunch. Not today, Ruth.
After all the little kids were down for a nap, I got about an hour of work in. I'm not sure it was super productive work, but it was something.
Tara's Mom stopped by after school, so I took the opportunity to take all the library books back, and get some milk. I bought 5 gallons of milk on Saturday night, but it was time for 6 more gallons. I'm thinking about getting a cow.
Tara and the girls read a lot of books.I should have made a couple of trips or something. I think I set my back back a day or so carrying them into the library. Also, there are 8 more books somewhere in this house that need to be returned. 5 have been located. I don't need to work out. I can just take the library books back. Then as a cool down, I buy milk.
I tried to make dinner be leftovers, but it sort of morphed into leftovers and cereal. I'm not sure how that happened. Tomorrow one of Tara's friends is dropping dinner off. On Friday, the ward is having a ward activity - international night, where you bring your favorite international dish. I am strongly thinking about making potato salad. Not German potato salad. Good old fashioned American potato salad. The United States is most definitely a member of the international community. And we have 3 dozen eggs and a bunch of potatoes in the house.
I had a Stake meeting tonight that was supposed to start at 8pm. I had gotten a babysitter for Noel, and took her over there. The meeting started 45 minutes late. And went over an hour long. Noel seemed to be having a good time when I got there. When we got home, the girls had the lights on in their room still. 4 of them were at least pretending to be asleep when I went into their room.
I seem to have been on the go all day long. Which isn't all that different than normal, except I had this possibly deluded idea that I could fit work in while Tara was gone. I think we will try tomorrow. I'm going to make little beds for Lily and Adam under my desk, maybe they will sleep. We'll see.
I also did 4 loads of laundry, and two loads of dishes. All in all, I was busy all day long, and I think we did pretty ok. There was a brief breakdown that involved a one paragraph essay, and proper spelling of words. I think that got resolved, but I'm not sure, and that child was either asleep or acting asleep an hour ago.
At about 10pm, I got an email with the choir director at the school. She was sending it to let us know about a "small issue that they've had and she talked with the choir about today." What was the problem you ask? The kids have been getting there late. Several minutes late, in fact. They only had 1/3 of the choir there on time today. Then she said something that I just have to quote directly:
"...choir begins at 7:30 sharp. After that, the red pencils are put out on the roll and the child is considered tardy."I think something actually exploded in my head. A tiny little explosion, but I think it was real. My doctor wants to have me do an MRI of my head. It was the 'red pencils' part of it. Tara hasn't yet been gone 24 hours, and I'm already considering making a scene at the school. I almost replied to the email right away, but the filter engaged just in time. I didn't reply to the email. Maybe that means it was an implosion in my head, since nothing violently came out. I'm thinking about going into the school on Monday, getting the kids there on time, and keeping them out in the hall for a few minutes, just so I could watch her whip her little red pencil out...
1 comment:
First of all, I do have to have some sympathy for you. Not many mom's try to hold down a full time job, fulfill church responsibilities, and take care of 7, count them, 7 kids on their own. Having said that, sounds like a typical day to me. However, I'm not sure I would have been able to engage the filter for the choir director. (Believe me, this has been said to schools before)-- I would have told her in no uncertain terms that if the school district was providing transportaion, she would not be allowed to mark the kids TARDY when they came in late. For now, you are the districts' transportation company when it comes to your kids and if she has a problem with when they get there you will be more than happy to discuss it with her in private. And, until the school district is providing transportation, she is not to mark them TARDY when they are nearly on time. I think I only had to have this conversation with attendance people a couple of times our whole high school experience..... they usually didn't want me coming back.
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