I would like to say first that I will be writing, or rather, transcripting a longer post about Friday. Friday was one of those Murphy’s Law sort of days in which everything went wrong and by the weekend things had degenerated to the point that I was blogging on paper. Really, it was that bad.

In any case, Friday started with the news that Jennifer was to go to Germany for two weeks on short notice; that is, she left this morning about ten minutes ago, after I woke her up half an hour ago because she was so tired from packing until three hours ago.

So, I have two weeks of single parenting ahead of me, but unlike her trip to Singapore, we have the nanny to help with a lot of the chores that made the last trip so tiring. Also, I am looking forward to the fact that a month from now I’ll be eating paella in beautiful Barcelona. Until then I have a lot of work to do and until Jennifer returns I can remember her by this cold she left me.

And here you thought it was going to be all this undocumented worker flap that was going to result in Dora the Explorer going off the air. No, I say, Dora is going down because the show’s writers have run out of ideas. I can deal with the talking monkeys, bulls, lizards, and various other animated inanimate objects, but please–there are flying babies on there now. I’m a parent, and I know flying babies. Super babies indeed! Flying babies are NEVER a good thing. If anything, Dora should be trying to save the other passengers from the gooey, noisy, poop machines.

Now that we’re back to the regular work week, things are going pretty well. Anna even went over to her bestest friend K.’s house to play after school, and she will again tomorrow. Yesterday, this gave me a chance to go to the grocery store, which I find much easier to do than grocery shop online. Too much discipline and planning is needed for online shopping.

In mere hours, Jennifer will be getting on a plane to return to her loving family. I can’t wait.

Thank god it’s Monday. I was actually happy to get back to work. Granted, it was a supreme effort to get the girls to school and daycare, but after a day of work I was ready to really focus on the girls and put off everything else until after they went to bed. Which is now. While I’m blogging instead of cleaning up. But I’m going to get to bed before 10pm, really. What time is it? Ah, crap.

I’ve had a couple of offers to bring over dinner, or to host dinner, and this is really great. Since we live 2000 miles from our families it is great to have such generous friends. Sadly, my kids are really hard to move around, so going over to someone’s house for dinner is more effort than making it myself. Not that I’m going to make it myself. We had McDonald’s for dinner–second time this year–and there was nary a complaint. No dishes either.

I’m down to 72 hours of solo parenting. Tick.. tick.. tick…

Although it’s a morbid topic, I’d always thought that in the event of the unthinkable, I would take the money from Jennifer’s life insurance and stay home for a couple years with the kids. Well, screw that noise, I’m buying a Porsche instead.

Today was a pretty difficult day. The long hours are starting to take their toll on me. Jennifer said that I should just let things slide and not be so concerned about keeping everything in order; the problem is that the following day is worse because there’s twice as much work to do at the end of the day, and it’s hard to manage Tara in a cluttered house. She is just so amazingly curious, she will test the boundaries of everything around her. If I don’t keep the house in order, I spend my whole day plucking unsafe things out of her hands and mouth at the last second. Today, we went to a birthday party where there was an activity bin full of dried beans, peas, birdseed, etc. Tara actually played for about fifteen minutes before starting to pop them into her mouth, and it then became a game to see if she could get them into her mouth before I or another adult could stop her. She also did a faceplant while running downhill. Three times. She’s fine.

Anna abandoned her stepford ways for today and has been more typical, ie., difficult. I’m counting hours now; in 120 hours, Jennifer should be home. For at least 30 of those, I’ll be sleeping.

I think all this single parenting is bringing out my inner a**hole. On Friday, I had to struggle to get Anna ready for school, only to be late enough out the door that I had to drive almost to work to drop off Tara, then drive back home to go to the post office to pick up something for Jen’s work, then drop off Anna, and then go back to work, where I continue to straddle the line between my new job and my old job. At the post office, I had Anna sitting up on the counter, and I was talking to her when out of the complete blue, some hayseed looked at my Michigan sweatshirt, then rolled her eyes and bleated, “As an Ohio State person, I wouldn’t go around advertising that I went to Michigan.” I squinted at her and said, “of course not, if you didn’t go there. Didn’t they teach you that in college?” Then, after a pause, “No wonder you couldn’t get into a real school.” She stared for a moment in shock and was about to say something when I turned the other way and resumed talking to Anna. In restrospect, I should have just said, “I thought I smelled something.”

Let’s see, I guess that was yesterday. I can’t believe it’s only Saturday. I’m past the halfway mark. On Thursday night Jennifer will be home. Now that I’m into this single parent groove a little bit more, I’ve made some decisions. First, that I’m definitely going to to buy less nutritious food. I’m thinking prepared defrost-and-serve sort of stuff from Costco, or even better, Schwan’s, which delivers to your door. I love to cook when I have the time, but when I don’t (which seems to be the norm these days), it sucks to try to make something out of nothing in no time for people (I’m looking at Anna) who don’t want to eat it in the first place. Second, we have to step up this nanny search. Third, I need to be more decisive. I have too many irons in the fire. There’s too much on my plate. I need to fish or cut bait. I need more clichés. I’m going to start saying “no,” in situations where I used to say “maybe,” and for things I used to say “no,” to I will probably say “get bent.”

On the up side, the house stays noticeably cleaner on a day-to-day basis. When Jennifer gets home, I’m going to quarantine her bags to a small area; packed is fine, unpacked is fine, half-unpacked is not allowed. Still, Tara is starting to miss Jennifer. For the first couple days, it was as if she didn’t notice she was gone, but after hearing her on the phone a couple times, she points to the phone and says “Hi! Hi! Hi!” like she wants to talk to her Mom. She broke out in “hi” and waving this morning when she saw Jen’s picture on the wall. Poor girl.

Anna has been very well behaved for the most part. If not stepford, then at least half-stepford. It’s a great thing. Both kids have been sleeping well for the most part. I would be way screwed were it not the case. I’m just counting the days now (five) until Jen comes home.

Yesterday was a fairly busy and tiring day. By the time 10pm rolled around and the kids were down and bags were packed and clothes were laid out, I was in no mood to clean the kitchen and do the laundry. So I watched a little TV and surfed a little web and went to bed.

Today was even more complicated, as I had to give both girls breakfast in the morning and get a reluctant Anna to school in time to take Tara to an follow-up appointment with the otonasolaryngologist, who confirmed that Tara’s ears were clear as a bell. I’m pretty sure it was the quickest doctor appointment ever. A mere 45 minutes after the appointment was scheduled to start, we had finished and I had driven the 20 miles north to drop off Tara at day care and was sitting in my desk at work. Unprecedented.

This afternoon, I participated in the first staff meeting for my new job. I don’t usually talk about work, but I’m really starting to get excited about my new job. I’m still working for the same company, but the new job is on a newish project that’s just a little crazy, but it’s the good crazy–not like my old job, which had an ever increasing amount of bad crazy. The new job will mean more hours, which in my current home situation is, sadly, bad crazy. But we’re trying¹ to hire a nanny, which should help us to offload some of the craziness.

Speaking of needless complications, Anna asked yesterday if she could sleep with someone. I suggested that she sleeps with Bear every night, but she clarified that she’d like to sleep with a real live person–she wanted to sleep in Tara’s room. As Tara’s auxiliary bed was not made up, I told her that she could do so the following night (ie. tonight) if she slept well and had good behavior. She did. So tonight, I made up the other bed, and we tried to have Anna sleeping there. It lasted approximately long enough for me to crack open a beer and fire up the TiVo, so here I am laying next to Anna’s bed, writing a blog post while she goes off to sleep. Tara was her usual tolerant self, awakened but not bothered by Anna walking in and out of her room several times. So now it’s 8:40pm, and I’m almost ready to start my chores for the day. Joy.

¹ And by “trying,” I mean that we decided that we should start trying.

Today was a surprisingly well-executed day. It is now five minutes until eight o’clock, and both girls are in bed; I’m sitting next to Anna’s bed with my laptop as is the evening tradition. As I tucked Anna in to bed, we did the quiz version of her bedtime routine:

“Daddy, do you remember all my things?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“What are they?”

“Will there be a fire? No. Will there be an earthquake? No. Will there by any witches or bad guys? No.”

Anna interrupts, “with swords.”

“Bad guys with swords. No.”

“Will there be any sharks?”

“No.”

“Will there be any f-f-fiiiii…”, she begins, prompting me to resume my recitation.

“Fish? No, except in the freezer.”

“But they’re all smashed up into food.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t like eating fish. They’re guh-ross!”

Tonight I still need to do the dishes, clean the house, pack lunch and bottles, take out the trash, lay out sheets and a check for the cleaning lady, do a load of laundry, lay out clothes, take a shower, plan tomorrow’s to do list, and look at some work stuff I didn’t have a chance to finish today. It’s not as oppressive as it sounds. I might even have a chance to play volleyball tomorrow–which reminds me I need to bring a towel and a change of clothes to work.

Today has been a surprising success. Anna was well-behaved all day long; she napped at school and helped out before dinner by occupying Tara while I cooked dinner. Although Anna was slightly upset this morning when I dropped her off a little earlier than usual (before any of her classmates had arrived), she recovered quickly and her teacher said she was happy all day long. Not a single time-out was issued, nor was a tear shed by either of the girls.

As well as everything went, the highlight of the day was a call from Jennifer, who had arrived at the hotel in Singapore some 30 hours after she left our house yesterday. It sounds like her hotel is in a great location to check out the sights and food; I’m looking forward to some pics, which I’ll post. On one hand, I envy the chance to get out and see so many new things, but it’s tough leave a family like ours behind, even it is for only eleven more days.

Yesterday, we bid bon voyage to Auntie K. and Uncle T. and Jennifer, who all left together for LAX. Anna was surprisingly casual about the whole thing, and of course Tara didn’t get it at all. Since Jen was packing for her trip all the way up to five minutes after she had originally planned to leave, it didn’t look like I was going to be able to be on time for the playgroup Easter party; luckily our friend M. offered to bring Anna along. I took her up on the offer and arrived an hour later after Tara had a full nap. There were no protests of any kind, and in fact no bad behavior to speak of. Both girls had a great time at the party, and there were offers of help and well wishes from everyone as expected. We did get McDonalds on the way home, and I even got both girls bathed and in bed only a little later than expected.

Anna wanted me to stay with her at bedtime for an extra long time, but in practice, she was asleep within seven minutes after her head hit the pillow. She did wake up crying later, which I fully expected due to her lack of nap and late bedtime, but this was remedied more quickly and usual and the night proceeded without further incident. I even got six hours of sleep after getting everything ready for tomorrow. Now, it’s scarcely six o’clock, and I’m awake and dressed and ready to go. Who da mom now?

No, I’m not talking about next week, when Jennifer is in Singapore and I have to be a single, working father of two for ten days. I’m talking about later today when Jennifer is running around the house, packing like a crazy person. Auntie K. and Uncle T. will be at a wedding, and I’m going to be playing softball with my volleyball buddies. Rather, I’m going to be drinking with my drinking buddies, while trying to play softball at the same time, and wishing I was playing volleyball instead.

K. and T. have been in town all week, and will be leaving at the same time tomorrow as Mom. I anticipate this will spark in Anna an outburst of epic proportions, such that none will be spared. But at least that frees me from having to plan the rest of the week.

After Jennifer and beloved Auntie K. and Uncle T. leave for the airport and Anna throws an epic outburst, only to be calmed by the Cinderella Video of Last Resort, followed by the nap-time consisting only of screaming and pounding on the door because she may not again watch the Cinderella Video of Last Resort, followed by threats of death (by all parties), followed by a half hour of relative quiet, it will be time to go to the playgroup Easter party. Getting-ready-to-go-to-playgroup will consist of some sort of clothing-related protest, followed by a dislike-of-parties-to-which-strangers-are-invited protest, followed by some yet-to-be-foreseen protest, after which I will pack the girls into the car and go to playgroup if for no other reason than to collect the well-wishes and offers of help from the other parents who have been in the same boat at one time or another. I will bring my camera, but I suspect I won’t have a chance to use it. I suspect I will stop at McDonald’s on the way home, even though I only eat there a couple of times a year, but I don’t think I’ll have the patience to deal with picky eaters or dirty dishes.

After going through the bedtime-for-two drill, followed by the reversal-of-entropy¹ drill, the blue glow therapy², and preparing for the following day, it will time to go to sleep, which in practice, means tossing and turning in my big empty bed until I decide the consequences of being tired will be too dire, then drifting off, only to be immediately awakened by one of the children crying, then failing to ignore the crying, then finally going to sleep at 90 minutes past too-late o’clock, then apparently getting immediately back up and starting the morning routine.

But who knows, it might not be as bad as all that. Maybe there will only be two protests before playgroup.

¹ cleaning

² watching TV