CHILDREN

Child #3 is home from college for the summer.  This is a wonderful thing for me as a mom, but a horrible burden on my grocery bills and my waistline.  I buy food "for him," and then I eat it, too.  Cheezits, cookies, sandwich meat...  All kinds of things I have avoided eating while working on my thesis.  As a matter of fact, I pretty much avoided eating while I was writing because it was often after 10:00 p.m. when I would resurface from the keyboard.

That being said, having the food in the house is also good when one of my other children decides to drop by.  They boys haven't had much chance to re-bond over the course of Child #3's lacrosse season, so the text I get from Child #1 is a bit of a surprise.  Text simply says, "What's for lunch?"

Lunch?  Good lord, children, I'm still in my pajamas at noontime.

There are many things I should be doing.  I had to blow off a fundraiser I really wanted to attend today (would've been doing iron-works sculpture) to do the bullet points on my list: laundry, schoolwork (correcting and posting grades for the kids I teach), reworking front pages and cover pages for thesis (because I found a second reader who did not and will not "lose" it), general paperwork, help get Child #3's stuff moved back upstairs, try to attend a wine tasting to help support Marines (niece is a Marine), plus I thought the Bruins game would be at night but it starts at 12:30, and the Kentucky Derby is on around 6:30.  I'm pretty certain I've left about ten things off of "my list" because I'm a dumb-ass.

So, in the midst of this, as I wrote earlier, Child #1 wants to know what's for lunch.

I have pre-cooked chicken, some pasta (rotini), and a large plastic bag filled with broccoli.  I bought alfredo sauce at the store two days ago, so I cook it all up and mash it all together.  Voila! Lunch!  Throw in a salad for starters and some mini-cannolis (leftover from practicing for Friday's thesis presentation), and it's a pretty decent lunch.  We eat until our stomachs explode while watching the Bruins game, which keeps us glued to the television as the Canadiens implode.

Then my friend Jessi stops by so we can whip up to the wine tasting/Marine event, run back to my house, watch the Kentucky Derby and drink Sangria.  I don't pick any horse that wins nor a places nor a shows this year, so I'm losing my touch.  Good thing I don't bet because I'd suck at it.  After the Derby, we head up to CVS, where I remember to buy shampoo but forget that I need envelopes large enough for my thesis.

I am run-walking (or walk-running, or just plain walking) my first 5k tomorrow.  How do I prep?  By dunking Milano cookies into chocolate fondue and stuffing my face.  Hey, I ate healthy for lunch, didn't I?  Pretty much?

I finally sit down for the first time in hours to just relax ... and nod off.  Seriously.  I am so tired that I might fall off the computer chair.  This is all very frustrating because when I do go to bed, sleep lasts about five hours, and that's with one or two interruptions due to my recently horrible sleep patterns.  Thank goodness Child #2 picked up all of our 5k information/numbers/shirts.  She's obviously the sensible one in this melo-drama.

Crazy as my Saturday is, though, I enjoy having my kiddos around, even if they are all grown-up and adult-like because we still know how to have fun.  Sunday's going to be even better because we're all doing the 5k together.  Well, probably not entirely together, but we're all participating.  The boys will run; the gals will walk really fast.  I gave myself terrible leg cramps, sore feet, and probably shin splints from trying to get ready for the event, hence why I will be walking and not attempting to even look remotely healthy.

I'll let you know how it all goes, just like I let you know pretty much every other dang that goes on in my life.  If it's anything like every other day, there will be tales to tell.