Picket Fence Post

The Scene: Saturday morning. It was pouring rain outside. The Spouse and I were about to drop The Girl off for her soccer game and planned on reading the newspapers while we waited in the car with The Eldest Boy and The Youngest Boy until the game started.

“Mom! The oranges! Do you have the oranges? I’m team captain this week,” The Girl blurted as we pulled up next to the curb to drop her off.

A little more than 20 minutes later, I was running out of the grocery store in a torrential downpour clutching a plastic grocery bag containing: A cheap kitchen knife, oranges and a box of Ziploc bags. (No, we didn’t have any oranges at home. Both The Spouse and I had forgotten all about the buying of the oranges thing and we were determined not to screw up on the very first game of the season by being the family that forgot the oranges.)

As The Spouse drove back to the field, I grabbed a small plastic crate that we keep in the car, covered it with the plastic grocery bag to use as a makeshift cutting station, busted open the Ziploc baggie box, pulled out a baggie and then began slicing oranges and dropping them inside.

Pulp and juice got onto everything. The dashboard. The passenger window. The seat belts. The console thingy between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. The Spouse’s eye. (Yes, we quoted the famous, “Pulp can move, baby” line from Seinfeld.) And during all of this, I had to try to ignore my pressing worry that I’d cut my fingers if The Spouse took a corner too quickly while I was slicing.

We arrived back at the field just before the game started. The Spouse pulled over to let me out next to the field and then went to park the vehicle. While under the cover of the umbrella, I darted across the soaking wet field and tossed the Ziploc bag full of oranges next to the girls’ water bottles with a chipper, “Hey, here are the oranges!”

No slackers were we.

Image credit: From this web site.

The birthday party invitation has been in the middle of our magnetic bulletin board since before we went away on our family’s Disney vacation.

I RSVP’d to The Youngest Boy’s best friend’s birthday party and left a message with his best friend’s older sister, who I hoped would pass the message along to her parents. But since we were prepping to leave for Florida the next day, I have time to follow up on the phone call.

This morning, The Youngest Boy pointed to the invitation and asked whether the birthday party was this week. Then I looked. The party was on January 31. This PAST Saturday. Just fabulous.

The Youngest Boy took his parents’ oversight admirably. While I stood there verbally beating myself up, he put an arm around me and said, “It’s okay Mom.” Then he went upstairs to his room where I heard him quietly crying.

After The Youngest Boy boarded the school bus, I left a long, rambling phone message to the birthday boy’s parents, apologized for forgetting the date and invited the birthday boy to our house for a playdate this coming weekend.

Sometimes I feel like I’m my three kids’ administrative assistant. And I’m doing a lousy job of it.

Item #1: Beware of the Mice

If you live in the MetroWest area outside of Boston and pulled one of those plastic Little Tikes Cozy Coupes from someone’s trash thinking it was your lucky day, boy were you wrong. The thing’s filled with mice.

My sister-in-law called me today and related the story of how, when my nephews were playing with their Cozy Coupe outside this week, one of them spotted a mouse sticking its head out of the hole where the steering wheel had been. (The steering wheel was busted soon after the boys got the car.) Horrified, my sister-in-law wheeled it away with the intent of dealing with it later until she realized there wasn’t just one mouse living INSIDE the plastic car, but a whole bunch of them.

She put the car out on its side on the street next to her trashcans this morning, but before the trash haulers arrived, she noticed the Cozy Coupe was gone. She then started feeling guilty that some unsuspecting parent had grabbed the car and might’ve put it inside his or her house not realizing that it’s filled with mice. They’re in for a big surprise.

Item #2: Old Christine Gets Guilted

Speaking of guilt . . . the latest episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine really hit home for me this week as it dealt with maternal guilt, specifically, Julia Louis Dreyfus’ character Christine feeling badly because she was working so much and missing things for her kid, including forgetting to submit the application for her 12-year-old to join a lizard club. She felt so badly that she missed the deadline — as well as a party she’d promise to attend — that she agreed to go on a date with the creepy head of the club in order to secure her son’s admission to the group. Only it didn’t go as planned. (Link to the video here.)

This week I missed several deadlines for my own kids. Papers requiring my signature and homework that I was supposed to initial and correct have been flooding my house like a never-ending onslaught of junk mail. For example, I forgot to sign The Youngest Son’s reading list one night (didn’t write down what he read) and we got the list back marked with a red question mark. Last night, I didn’t have the chance to listen to The Girl read me a passage aloud three times and then grade her reading skills. This morning I had to quickly write a note telling her teacher why the homework wasn’t done.

So when the lizard guy told Christine, “A good mother doesn’t miss deadlines,” I felt that one. Right in the gut.

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