1. I miss my wife

    My day began at 4:30 this morning when my alarm went off. I had to wake up, you see, because I had to drive my wife to the airport for a 6 am departure. She left today to represent our family at the wedding of a close family friend, leaving me behind to mind the store.

    I’m not saying I deserve a medal or anything, but it’s now exactly 5 pm and I spent today as the single father of five children. Never mind that I’m sick, that, technically speaking, I didn’t actually sleep at all last night, or that most of the pre-laid plans we made for today fell apart… I have to say that I’ve held things together pretty well.

    After the afore-mentioned trip to the airport, I returned home to a house full of still-sleeping children. Until, of course, I got back into bed, at which time the four year-old appeared in my bedroom door, excited to go to the birthday party which was scheduled to begin only five hours later. Undaunted, I invited him into bed and distracted him with my iPad while I tried (unsuccessfully) to fall back to sleep. I eventually crawled out of bed at 7:30 and started the day.

    Since then, what have I accomplished? Well, in no particular order…

    • I got the 11 year-old off to an all-day play date which I encouraged her to set up this morning. Go me! She’s due back in 30-60 minutes.
    • I got the nine year-old off to a pre-arranged, all-day play-date only to discover when I dropped her off that the friend’s mother had to change plans and cancel the second half of the day. No problem… I worked out the rescheduled pick-up while driving across town to…
    • The birthday party for the two year-old’s classmate, to which the four year-old was also invited. I discovered when I got there that, despite my wife’s assurances that I would be able to leave the two of them at the party and head over to my office to get some work done, the entire party consisted of, “Hi. Here’s a playground.” so I had to stay and supervise/entertain my own kids while the birthday-girl’s mother socialized with her friends. I was, by the way, the only parent who didn’t speak Spanish. Bueno.
    • I pulled the two of them away from the “party” early so that we could truck back across town to pick up their sister from the aborted play-date then took the three of them home by way of 7-11 for Slurpees.
    • Once home we had lunch and then I set the three younger ones in front of a movie (what a treat!), supervised by the 13 year-old stuck doing homework while I ran out to Home Depot to buy supplies to fix the bedroom door which I yanked off the hinges yesterday.
    • When I got back from the Depot I realized that I had forgoten to buy a replacement pool filter (which is 2 years over-due) so I ran back out and picked that up.
    • I then came home, replaced the filter, fixed the door, declared a hiatus from TV, got the kids to go outside and move around for a little while and, oh yeah, washed a kitchen full of dirty dishes in between.
    • I’m now enjoying twenty minutes of quiet before I get started on dinner, which will lead to bath-time, then bed-time for #4 and #5, then homework for #1, 2 and 3, then showers, more bedtime, more dishes, more homework, final bedtimes and, if I’m really lucky, some quite time to do my own homework before I collapse into bed since (remember?) I’m sick.

    Yeah, I miss my wife.