The Norwegian Widower - Day 8

Tito again put the kibosh on my attempt to gain a few precious minutes of extra sleep with his standard, “Wake up!”  He is starting to resemble a character out of an Stephen King movie. 

At least I remembered to heat up the frying pan today before spraying it, so his eggs didn’t turn out black, just brown as I over-cooked them for whatever-day-this-is in a row.  Tito misplaced his jacket, and I had no energy to help him look for it, so I had him try on one of my old extra-large NASCAR jackets.  It dwarfed him, I didn’t care, and I sent him off to school.  I am thinking that Jeff Foxworth could have come up with another “You might be a redneck” joke had he saw my son that day.

Bitsy actually got up without too many problems and sat down at the kitchen counter to take her medicine.  I set the timer for eight minutes and she made her usual gasping, gagging, and screeching noises until the buzzer went off.  I went over to ensure she had suffered down every last milligram, but as I approached her, I could tell something wasn’t right.  Her head was down, and she starting pounding the counter wish her fist.  When I reached her, she had tears in her eyes.  She hadn’t finished her medicine, and the consequence was…no computer for the rest of the day.

This unexpected situation put me at a crossroads.  I believe in being firm with consequences, yet she had nailed this new medicine-taking process every day thus far.  I went for the empathetic approach and said, “Alright, if you can get the rest down in the next minute, that will be okay.”  She worked in a fury, had it down within 30 seconds, and life went on.  If she turns out to be an undisciplined disaster someday, well, go ahead and blame…Kacey.  If she wasn’t in Norway, I wouldn’t have been in the medicine-enforcement roll.  In fact, I would have still been sleeping.

As I was getting Bitsy ready for school, I took another look at the note that Kacey had left for me regarding the product that goes into Bitsy’s hair after head-washing (discussed previously on day 5).  Sure enough, it isn’t supposed to be a lotion, it is a spray – so whatever I put in Bitsy’s hair on Saturday was wrong.  Raise your hand if you are surprised…seeing no hands, I will continue.

After dropping Bitsy off at school with five minutes to spare, I returned home for my daily nap.  Unfortunately, I could only snooze for about an hour, as I had a consulting call to attend. I thought  about taking the call from bed, and just may have done that if I wasn’t worried about falling asleep  and snoring into the phone.  After my call, I actually thought about taking my second nap of the morning, but decided that drinking half of the country of Columbia’s annual production of coffee may keep me awake for a few hours.

As I drove out to my consulting client around noon, I was frustrated at the thought of having to leave three hours later to pick up Bitsy from school, just to drive her home one mile.  After all, she would probably just sit in front of the computer or play with friends until dinnertime.  The problem is that Kacey decided that as she is a stay-at-home mom, our family shouldn’t pay the $250 to have Bitsy transported to school.  That is all well and good, except when Kacey is several thousand miles away.

So, I enlisted Big Daddy for pick up duties, although it was also someone stressful for him to pick her up as he had some sort of repair dude at his house.  Before we hung up he told me, “I will pick her up, but do us all a favor and stay at your consulting client long enough (they pay me hourly) to earn the $250 and just put her on the bus next time.

I ended up getting home around five and promptly found my easy chair.  I was spent;  I had no motivation to do anything except stare at the ceiling, and even that was exhausting.  Yep, it was pretty obviously that I’d had it - I needed Kacey back.

I tried to pacify the kids with a snack of chips and salsa, but was met with protests from Tito.  So, dinner was burgers and tator tots.  I was so defeated in my prior attempt to make broccoli that I didn’t even try again.  Tito has had fruits and vegetables a grand total of two times in Kacey’s absence (unless you count apple juice as a fruit).  Interestingly enough, he went #2 three times after dinner and said his stomach was not feeling well.  I suppose a diet involving no fiber will do that to you.  Kacey really needs to come home.

Tito had a fair amount of homework, and I erred in not having him start it until 7 o’clock.  He is an early bird and begins to tire around 8.  So, his motivation wasn’t high and my energy level was on empty.  I was shorter than I should have been with him, a pretty poor teacher in fact (I guess I now know what University of St. Thomas professors feel like), but we got it done.

After tucking him in, Bitsy sat on the couch across from me and worked on her own book.  It wasn’t homework, rather just writing for fun.  Finally, at about eleven o’clock on a school night, I figured I should make her go to bed.  I am pretty sure I didn’t even tuck her in – it was too far away.

Completely exhausted, I tried to crash around midnight, but couldn’t settle my brain.  I haven’t made much progress on my own book, but have no energy to do so.  Kacey gets back late Thursday afternoon, and it can’t come soon enough.  After tossing and turning for at least an hour, I finally drifted off to sleep.