Weekend

May is the stupid-busiest month of the year for anyone with kids in school. I realized this about 7 years ago when I noticed all my mom-friends with multiple kids losing their minds by May 10. It doesn't help that May is also when the yard starts needing attention, several summer sports start up, and allergies kick in for those who suffer from pollen sensitivities. The good news is that April and its showers are over; the bad news is that the flowers and trees are ALL blooming.

[Aside: as someone who has year-round allergies to--as someone at work put it yesterday--"everything known to mankind," I have to say that people with seasonal allergies make me laugh, when I'm not rolling my eyes internally. Rolling them for real hurts right now. Yeah. Cry me a river, folks--this is my baseline, my starting position year-round.]

OK, bitchy aside over. I really haven't felt good all week. That's my excuse, and mostly my bitching has been internal or venting to two Very Specific People. But the allergy thing for me is kinda like me complaining about a headache to one of those people, or a backache to the other.

See how I get distracted?

I was going to talk about schedules in May. When Sparky was in Little League this was the middle of the 'season' and there were games 2-3 times each week. There always seems to be extra homework this month, and of course major projects are coming due. The end-of-year concerts, plays, and programs are in May. The pressure is on everywhere, which means time is at a premium.

There are, of course, non-kid-related activities that have to be fit in as well. The regular grind of appointments and schedules--cleaning, cooking, maintenance, etc. And, if you want to have a social life, that's always fun to try to fit in.

So this weekend, here's our schedule:

FRIDAY: I will be doing laundry all day, and tidying our Disaster Zone (i.e. house). Beast left at 7:30 to cover several appointments for himself and his dad, and he will be spending at least 2 hours in teleconferences later today. Sparky has school all day followed by football training--yeah, I haven't mentioned that heretofore, have I? We will pick him up from school and then head to a hotel for tonight. He is attending a manga/anime conference tonight and tomorrow morning and early on I volunteered to make it easier on him and get a room for us nearby so he doesn't lose so much time traveling back and forth. Beast and I will probably go see a movie (Star Trek?) tonight while Sparky is manga-ing.

SATURDAY: Conference-y stuff in the morning. We will check out late and snag him from the conference by 1:00 or so and head home, stopping for corsage pickup on the way. Sparky will shower out of his anime "persona"--I didn't mention the costume aspect, did I?--and pack up for his evening activities. There's a tux involved. And a swimsuit for later. He needs to be at his date's house by 3:30 for pictures, and then they will head to the high school to catch the bus at 5:00. They will be gone for approximately 12 hours, arriving back from post-prom about 4:45. A. M. Maybe Beast and I will go see another movie in the evening. I know we'll need to go to the grocery store at some point.

SUNDAY: One of us needs to pick up Sparky at o'dark-hundred and bring him home and pour him into bed. Maybe we'll get another hour or two as well, but Beast and I will need to be out of the house by about 11 because we have tickets to see the Broadway traveling show of Mary Poppins. We will be gone till close to 6 Sunday night. At some point during the day, Sparky will need to do his homework and get all his tux stuff back together. Oh. And it's Mother's Day.

Monday I will get back on the daily schedule stuff, but I need to take the tux back.

Sigh.

Next week is German Honor Society induction. There's another band concert on the horizon. We have fundraiser stuff we need to deliver. I need to schedule a physical for Sparky for football. Things are reaching crunch time for prep for our youth group mission trip and there is a TON of stuff to do for that. Oh, and there is a retirement party for someone at work, and the changes that will come when her replacement begins. And it seems like everyone I know over the age of 80 is ending up in the hospital and/or nursing care this spring. That could stop. Please.

So yeah. I may not be around here much.

[this took me almost two hours to write--but there is laundry in progress, and I've started to think through the rest of the day at home]

Bleary

Mood: Tired but otherwise pretty stoked
Hair: Yanked up and butterfly-clipped in back
Eyes: Itchy
Listening to: What else? The Olympics. That Chinese gymnast who won on the parallel bars? So NOT 16!! If she is, they really need to feed her more than twice a week.

I spent 4 hours today on my meme, prepping for the next few months (surprise: I don't write all the entries the night before!). It takes a long time to deal with 100 different questions and 25 photos, but I'm set now till March. That's great, since I don't really foresee a lot of time this fall for anything much like this.

Can Michael Phelps PLEASE take time to see an orthodontist and a speech therapist?!

OK, sorry. I also sorted through the box of photos tonight. I thought it was mostly framed photos. It was not. I think there were less than a dozen frames; but the total items in the box ran to about 80 (I could go look, since--yes, here's a shock--I'm cataloging everything, but I'm inherently too lazy and whupped to open the file again).

I dusted the living room for the first time in awhile which explains some of my itchy eyes. The downstairs is very clean: vacuumed and dusted (half-assed, but better than nothing, yes?). I need to really attack the bedrooms soon.

Called and rescheduled a couple of cancelled doctor's appointments today. Also tried to connect with the school about Sparky's screwed up schedule, and talked to a couple of banks about safe deposit boxes. I now have reached Deep Antipathy with the bank that currently holds ALL our money as well as our mortgage. Time to change banks? I think.... Their customer service the last few times I've interacted with them has been frankly neither.

The plan for the next couple of weeks is for Beast to drive home tomorrow afternoon, leaving Sparky at Grandpa's. BIL will arrive on Wednesday at Grandpa's. I will drive out to Ohio Saturday to pick up Sparky and return home on Monday. My nephew Jesse is supposed to be here sometime next week (hence the bedroom-cleaning festivities--there is currently furniture stacked on both beds in the spare room), we will all go to a minor league baseball game on Friday where we will hand Jesse off to Katherine and Alan with whom he'll stay till the Tuesday after Labor Day. That Tuesday is Sparky's first day of school. Somewhere in there, we need to shop for school clothes and get his room completely sorted out, cleaned, tidied, and organized.

On or about September 5, I plan to drink myself into a deep, daylong sleep. Or collapse. I would welcome company for the former, if only to steer me to safe places.

Anyway. Good night. Or as my family used to say when I was a kid, "Good night!!"

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Urban Word:

Bachelor breakfast: Eating breakfast (or any other meal really) while standing at your kitchen counter instead of sitting at your kitchen table.
I am proud to say that in the three days I've been home alone, I have yet to have eaten a bachelor breakfast (or lunch, or dinner). However, to be fair, I did eat breakfast in the car two of the three days.

Change of subject

Mood: Tired
Hair: Hot pony mess
Eyes: {shrug}
Listening to: The Olympic coverage (currently women's all-around gymnastics)

In other news, that bruise from last month...remember?...still hurts. It hurts way down deep inside, and it is just a bruise (I promise), but it's weird.

It's been achy all week. Maybe it's psychosomatic.

I dunno.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Also, why can't Béla Károlyi speak understandable English after all these years?

Even-ing

Mood: OK
Hair: Not my crowning glory today, I'm afraid
Eyes: Really, officer, it's just allergies!
Listening to: The Chicagoland Speedway NASCAR race; would someone PLEASE take Kyle Busch OUT OF THE RACE?!?!?!

So I got our bathroom thoroughly cleaned today, as well as all the ceiling fan-blades in the house. Sparky & I went and ran some errands; he drove most of the way. I've spent several hours cleaning up Bloglines feeds and going through old posts on this blog. I probably deleted about 10 that had completely dead links and/or stupid stuff, and I rewrote several. Hey, it's my blog: I make the rules. ;-) I rediscovered a thing I used to do called "Snappy Comebacks" that I may resurrect once in awhile.

I'm really tired, but determined not to go to bed until later than usual so perhaps I'll sleep all night long finally. I stopped drinking caffeinated pop at about 5. Normally I can drink Dr. Pepper until I crawl into bed. My plan was to watch as much of SNL as I could stomach tonight, until the comedy just totally disappeared. However, then I discovered that Mariah Carey is on, so I will watch until she appears, and then go to bed and read or something.

Oh. And I loathe Kyle Busch. In case you didn't get that up above.

Also, Brett shouldn't come out of retirement. He's thinking with something other than his brain. Stop that, dude!

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Word Spy:

microboredom: n. Boredom caused by having nothing to do over a short period of time.

I think right now I'm experiencing a bit of microboredom in anticipation of work tomorrow.