My Day Ahhhhhhhhff

Since my employer charmingly mandates that I use up all remaining vacation time before fiscal year end, I took the day off yesterday. A Monday at home is delightful. Not part of a massive road trip effort, not even a trip to the Cheyenne Mountain zoo, just home.

When I would normally be stuffing leftovers into a sack and grabbing kisses from both kids, I instead cuddled in our waterbed with my 3-yr old, surrounded by stacks of books and an audience of plush doggies.

Once Mitch got home from work, we ate breakfast all together and then headed off for Walmart – before pre-nap exhaustion, sibling stress, and kid-consumer gimme-ism set in.

We got home just in time for a quick dip in our new backyard pool, frigid although Mitch gallantly tried to warm it by draining our hot water heater repeatedly. But kids don’t care about such details. We learned when my son was 2 that the standard answer will always be, “N-n-n-n-no, I’m not c-c-c-c-cc-cold.”

Still, I got no argument taking a shivering little girl out for nap, and she didn’t even pull the last-second delay tactic, “But I’m huuuuungry.”

One child safely down, I spread lunch fixings all over our table. It’s amazing how a sandwich can taste like you bought it in a restaurant if you put enough good stuff on it. Lately I’m enjoying a Basil Ranch salad dressing, my son prefers Goat Cheese with Sun-Dried Tomato. Mitch peeled us an avocado, and we had lots of romaine and red-leaf, roma tomatoes and red bell peppers. My young gourmet fried us up some bologna slices – they bulge in the middle with the heat and come out looking like little sombreros.

The three of us finished Steve Martin’s Pink Panther – we started it at dinner the night before but my 3-yr old kept asking every 5 seconds “What happened, Mama?” plus she truly did not understand the humor of people getting knocked down, hit in the head and what not. I could tell she disapproved.

So we three enjoyed it sans running commentary. My favorite part is when Inspector Clousseau spins the big globe, and, with a nod to Peter Sellers’ falling on the floor with that move, the globe instead comes off its stand and turns into an Indy Jones-like missile destroying all in its path and takes down a pack of cyclists like bowling pins.

Getting Mitch to do anything sitting down is a little tricky, but I’ve been wanting him to read my blogs for days now, and he knew it, so he sat still long enough to catch up. Since he’s the human whose approval I care most about, that alone made my day.

Naptime over, we got another arctic dip, put the kids in pink and blue see-through donuts and spun them like bumper boats. Later I swathed them in warm towels and blankets.

I made curry for dinner, S&B Golden Curry, Medium Hot, a Japanese import which takes me back. I’ve made peace with the fact that, at least for now, my kids do not like curry, so I make two meals on these nights. Mitch has the same taste I do, or I might not have married him. Life is too short for bland food.

Afterward Mitch started to throw away the S&B box and I stopped him – “Wait, I might need to blog about that.” This made him laugh out loud. (When we first started dating, Mitch’s laugh embarrassed me, until several of my friends commented how nice it was, and I have loved it since. Mitch is the one you hear laughing across the room in church or at the movies. Not the annoying kind that goes on and on, Mitch laughs because he really thinks it’s funny, and he’s not thinking about himself. That makes people happy to be around him.)

Mitch thinks I should blog about “You Might Be A Blogger If . . . .”

My desire to save the curry box being Exhibit A.

We finished the evening by watching Dinotopia – this one accessible for my 3-yr old with its talking saurians and comprehensible dangers. I am completely intrigued by this movie. It reminds me very much of Kent Hovind’s DVD on dinosaurs. Although philosophically the two are realms apart, they both tell of a world where humans and dinosaurs lived together.

Refreshed, I’m ready to return now to the world of EOBs and death certificates, benefits summary rewrites and finding new ways to make all these things comprehensible and accessible to all I work with. As big a challenge in its own way as piloting a brach through a T-Rex infested forest.

It’s Tuesday, time for my own adventure!