I’m a Very, Very Good Driver

I never, ever got smart enough to prepare for this phase of my parenting journey.  I have apparently moved into the “always-in-the-car” season of my life, and along with it I am noticing a widening of my backside and very pale skin.  I suppose it is because I sit and eat snacks all the livelong day without actually getting any sun as I drive my children all over Timbucktoo.

I have made 6 trips to the city in the past few days with 3 more trips before Friday, plus driving to the next small town 30 minutes away in the other direction every single day this week while I wait for 3 hours for my little guys to do a summer camp.  My car and I deserve a prize….perhaps in the form of a large cup of Sonic ice followed by a nap.

Over the past few months as these plans all came together, each child requesting to take this class or attend that camp, it seemed doable.  But I didn’t coordinate schedules while I was saying YES and before I knew it we were going so many different directions that we need a military strategist to organize it all.  The older kids and I have to have a meeting every night to figure out who will drive where in what car with which child the next day.

In the middle of all of that activity James and I had our 29th anniversary to celebrate.  We decided to kill two birds with one stone and go out to a nice dinner on Saturday night in the city since we had to pick up a couple of the kids there at 10:00pm anyway.  It’s been a long time since we went out on a Saturday night since I would rather have a root canal than stand in a crowded restaurant for an hour waiting for a table.

But we had a surprisingly good time despite our table being 8″ from the diners next to us and not being able to hear what each other was saying the whole time.

After dinner we still had a couple of hours to kill so we took a stroll down to the bookstore and wandered around in there for a while looking at books.  Our shopping adventures go something like this (after 29 years together we have this down):
Me: Hey!  This looks like a great book!  Let’s buy it!
Him: We don’t need any more books.
Me: But this would be so good for the kids and look….here’s another one we need! {I begin to collect a large pile of books in my arms as I walk through the store}
Him: Lisa, we really don’t need those books and we are watching our budget, remember?
Me: OK, I will sit here in this chair looking through every book and choose 2 to put back.  Will that make you feel better?  If we only buy 8 books instead of 10?
Him: No.
Me: OK, how about this….I will choose 2 to put back and then I will pick a few more that I can get cheaper on Amazon and….hey look!  There’s another one that we NEED!

On and on it goes.  Me finding things we “need” (you know…for the kids!) and him telling me what we really need is to stay on budget.  In the end we bought 2 books and a game.  The game was for him.

It was always what would happen in the end.  It never changes, but we MUST go through the motions.

One super-duper cool thing that happened while we were at the bookstore is James decided to see if my book was on their computer and it was!  Right there with a description and preorder info.  I took a picture, of course!  Who cares if it’s a dork move?  My book is for sale at Barnes & Noble for goodness sake!

But it doesn’t really change anything in my life.  I still have to drive my kids to their activities all week while figuring out when I will be able to get to the grocery store and if I don’t get some sun people will assume I have an illness.  Being a published author is cool, but I’m still just Mom.

Have a great week!