Sunday was quieter, at least relatively. I still didn't manage to sleep in, not the way I wanted (and probably needed) to do, but we had a good morning of television and video games and general relaxation (except for, well, the laundry). Somewhere in there I started writing up these entries.
Then, as we usually do on Sundays, we went down to see my father - the boys' grandfather.
His new wife had a client coming in, so she was pretty well stuck in the house for the afternoon and it was better if the rest of us were elsewhere. (HIPAA is a harsh mistress, as Heinlein might have pointed out.) So, we grabbed Granddaddy and headed out in search of a restaurant, and landed at Freebird's. This went amazingly well, all things considered: the servers talked Granddaddy through the available options as he went down the line (which he needed, because he basically can't see any kind of details), the boys enjoyed their quesadillas and would gladly eat there again, Beautiful Wife got to eat something she knew she liked, and I got queso. (Well, and a burrito, but after that much queso I only ate a little burrito and packaged up the rest for later. No shortage of tinfoil here...)
After that, we went in search of a park.
The first one, which I found by way of Google, was mainly ball fields with only a little bit of play equipment. We didn't even stop. Instead, we went down to one I remembered from my youth, which wasn't big but sat right on the bank of a creek and had a couple of bridges connecting to a central island and a dam you could walk across.
The boys loved it, and honestly it's nicer than I remembered. The parks department had done a great job of preserving some of the original features while adding in more modern play equipment as well. Secondborn immediately found some kids to play with, and a dog whose owner was willing to let Secondborn help him play Fetch. So that kept us busy for about an hour.
Then we returned to Granddaddy's house and parked ourselves on the porch, where we tried out a tent he had that he thought would fit me better (it did) and an air mattress I had that we thought would work better for something he has coming up. (It would.) The boys, meanwhile, changed into bathing suits and went outside to "swim" - which actually meant "start inflating water balloons for a water balloon conflict", with a bit of "try to clean the oak leaves out of the pool" thrown in for good major. (They actually came up with that second part on their own, and yes I'm terribly proud of that.)
Grandaddy doesn't have as much energy as he used to, so I generally keep our visits relatively short, but this one was an exception; it was nearly 5:30 by the time we coaxed the boys back into their clothes and back into the van, and creeping towards 6:00 buy the time we got home. And, of course, even after we'd brought everything in, Seconborn wanted to go on a walk. He had an egg in Pokemon Go, and walking would be needed in order to hatch it. So we took my woefully undercharged phone, and went on a walk.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and sundry other Notables: that was the part that broke me. I thought I'd just take the boy on a walk, take one for the team, and let Beautiful Wife cook dinner... and I suppose I did. But I came back from that walk with nothing left. My feet hurt. My calves ached. I was perfectly ready to collapse.
I couldn't, of course, because... well... parent. That was when the tornado sirens went off, and we put everybody -- including the cat -- into the bathroom. They stopped a few minutes later, and we served dinner.
So after all that we ate dinner, and eventually got the boys down even though it cost us extravagant promises that I fear we may not be able to keep. (What does Secondborn need to do with a water balloon for his YouTube video, anyway?) But finally, at last, all was quiet, and all we would have to worry about was getting the boys up and ready for school. Oh, yeah, and there was a magnificent thunderstorm, but I generally count those as good omens.
Tomorrow is another day, am I right?
Because people keep saying that to me like they think it's a promise, but it always, always sounds like a threat.
A creek, with bridges. Is it deep enough to play Pooh sticks? The rules are simple: each player finds a stick and drops it in the creek from the upstream side of the bridge. The sticks should be visually distinctive so they can be told apart. The idea is to see which one passes under the bridge first. My family used to play this all the time at the local arboretum.
ReplyDeleteWow. There's a memory I hadn't pulled up a while. Pooh sticks!
DeleteThis wouldn't be the best creek for that. It's more than deep enough, but it's corresponding slow-moving. But there are a couple of other spots in the area...