Single momdom has hit me square between the eyes today.
Kids home from NM.
Flash has flown the coop, after more or less living at The Okey Dokey for a month while the kids were with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. Yet he came by with hugs and kisses as he retrieved his drum (playing with Gene and Zack tonight), his Bluetooth charger, his blue shortie bath towel that he Velcros around his sexy hips when he’s feeling modest. Or chilly.
Guess he’s out of here for a while. Shit.
Sticks around just long enough to rile up the kids and then moseys on to The Asylum, his home/refuge just a few miles down the road, yet a world away.
I’ve got a long list of things to deal with on the house I’m renovating and have Marley and Avery in tow. A surefire recipe for inefficiency and guilt.
God help us all.
Since Mike’s death two years ago, up until yesterday, I did what anyone in my situation would have done: send the kids outside to play with the neighbors children so I could get something accomplished. Except the neighbors are now driving with all of their worldly possessions to Ithica, New York, where Anton got a job.
So, I promise the kids a trip to the library and a trip to the store to purchase a Bakugon (whatever that is). But they MUST let me make my phone calls to contractors, insurance companies, utility providers, and they guy I’m going to buy egg-laying chickens from next month.
The kids agree to cooperate.
Two DVDs, one meltdown, and a broken pair of glasses later, we’re on the road to do errands. Theirs and mine.
When we get home, I have more work to do, and the kids bring our next-door-neighbors’ Shih-Tzu named Einstein to our house. They all romp into my office and congregate just next to the wheels of my chair, forcing me to remind them with gritted teeth and a plastic smile that I need some space in which to work.
Later, I decide that I should try to engage my children in a nice homespun activity, such as baking biscuits for Einstein. Marley, normally the crafty one, is too absorbed in her DVD from the library to look up, but Avery takes on the project with enthusiasm, happily rolling out the dough made of organic flour and organic peanut butter. He spends 15 minutes—a great deal of time for him—pressing cookie cutters into the dough and gently poking the tiny flower and gingerbread man shapes onto the cookie sheet.
Marley decides she wants to sew, and takes out the plastic Singer sewing machine out of the cabinet and unsuccessfully tries to get it to work. I, however, am not a crafty soul. It has skipped a generation in my family. But I remember my mother saying something funny about the sewing machine. Oh yeah, no bobbin, so stitches made with the machine simply pull right out of the fabric.
And the flimsy plastic foot is cockeyed and the tension knob is all fucked up. And the light is pointed at a really strange angle, but it sure lights my left elbow quite well.
Oh yeah, Made in China syndrome. Again. WHY IN THE HELL DO THEY MAKE PRODUCTS LIKE THIS??? Doesn’t Singer want to hook young kids on sewing so that they will upgrade and keep buying their products?
Evidently, they’d rather turn the next generation of seamstresses into lemmings who purchase their tee shirts at Wal-Mart for $4.88.
Marley wisely gives up on her “sewing machine” and sews her project by hand.
Finally, Avery and I pull the first batch of biscuits out of the oven.
After they cool, he gives one to Einstein, who sniffs it and promptly turns his nose up at it.
Damn dog.
