Poor Planning Prevails.

I'm on a roll now.  About a month or so ago, my 3 yr old received via my email some party evites.  Two of his pre-school class mates were turning 3 and having parties on the same day.  The thought of two parties in one day made me just a little scared, or so I thought.

Later we discovered it's also birthday time for one of our new friends in LA.  Her plan was cocktails on Friday, which we couldn't make, so Lynn organized that we'll all go off somewhere interesting on the Sunday.  As Sunday gets closer, I'm mentioning the parties to Lynn and we realize that we're now double-booked.  We felt bad, but the 3 yr old wins the day and we postpone our friend.

Sunday comes.  9am: I re-examine the evite to find the precise address of the first party.  Address is fine, but the party was yesterday!!  Oops, so I check the details on the other party.... also yesterday!

Lynn wrote the apology emails and I haven't looked to see what she called me - I don't think reading them would help my 'self image'.  Have you noticed how LA is seeping into psyche?  I did get one of the replies though, which said not to worry - she'd arrived a week too early to parties before.

At this point, I have 2 obvious options.

Option 1: Start saving for therapy for me and my boys.
Option 2: Move back to the UK and disguise any past 'difficulties' with bad weather and good beer.

Preliminary analysis of these options is not good. Option 1 requires a level of planning and forethought - an area where I have proved myself to be lacking.  Option 2 has already been attempted for 21 years and didn't prove to be a suitable long term solution.  [Note: In the UK aged 16 you can drink wine or beer with a meal in restaurants, so I'm not really as old as you might think...ahem.]

School starts on Thursday, so it's only going to get worse.  I've already added to my calendar, 'School Spirit' days, vacation t-shirt day, 'Green and Gold' day, a coffee morning and something called 'Trunk or Treat'.

Anyone want to bet how many times my kids will miss an event or are wrongly dressed this school year?

Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance.

I was jealous today.  Jealous of my wife!  She gets to hide herself away and write.  You see she can do it legitimately, it's her job / profession.  My job is to look after the boys and keep the house running smooth.  It's a great arrangement mostly... but you can get too much of a good thing.  3 months of school holiday is taking it's toll.

You see the issue with my job is much the same as with any business.  There's that common saying in business, "If you stay still, you die."  It's true of parenting too.  The best days are invariably where you took the initiative and planned an activity in advance - something achievable, rewarding and fun.  I didn't do that today and so I paid the price.  The price is bored kids and the inability to organize a single thought in your head because there's a bored child shouting, pulling at you or trying to use the refrigerator shelves as a ladder.

If you add to the mild nightmare of an unprepared day, a distinct lack of sleep and a very minor household stocking issue, you start to find yourself thinking maybe a job wouldn't be such a bad idea.  We were out of dishwasher tablet things.  Not a huge oversight, but a very visible one as the dirty dishes started to stack up.  

So when Lynn took a break from writing, I sneaked out alone to our local supermarket.  I was just standing, staring at where the dishwasher tablet things should be, thinking I must be going mad cause they don't have any either, when this older lady loudly laughed at me.  Whilst steering her cart past me she chortled, "Can't you choose sweety?"  Now that might be funny, really it might.  However, it felt pretty sexist to me and she was lucky that I spend my days looking after my boys and have almost completely lost the art of the quick, incisive retort.

I supposed that I shouldn't be troubling my pretty little head with the tricky choices of modern house management.  I should get myself back into the kitchen, like a proper little hubby.  So I got the tablet things elsewhere and went home and made home-made pizza.... which I burnt.

Perhaps I'm paying for every sexist joke that I might have ever sniggered at - I'm clearly a no-good male chauvinist pig.

Firemen are hot, apparently.

Here in the San Fernando Valley it's hot.  It's not like we didn't expect it to be this hot, just this year the heat's come late.  In fact the weather has been gloriously comfortable and cheaper to run than last year.  I doubt we've even used the air conditioning, except for when we've guests.  

Our numerous guests have been ok with the weather, but we have them stay in a room above the garage...heat rises and loves to hang around our pals!  At one point, our nephew's girlfriend nearly passed out whilst using the hair dryer.  So I relented and showed them where the thermostat is!  I know, I sound cheap.  I kind of am though, when it comes to unnecessary waste.  Our visitors are nearly always from the UK - when you leave a UK house you turn the thermostat down to reduce the heating bills...   It's not their fault, it's just habit... and our bills.  See I'm cheap!

Wednesday was even hotter for some.  A friend of ours organized a private tour round Fire Station 41 as "a treat for our boys" so she said.  However, she and Lynn seemed more interested in the calendar shoot potential of the firemen.  Our boys loved it, we even got driven round the block in the Fire Truck.  Both boys were smiling from their eyes... so were the ladies!  I can't say much more as it's really difficult to avoid double entendres, but Lynn did say she'd seen a bigger hose...