Tuesday, June 28, 2005

being the only grown-up gets tiring

Lest you think that today was a bad day, given the whiny title I've given this post, let me start off by saying that's not the case at all. It just really does get tiring being the only go-to person for three children, who are for the most part a self-sustaining unit of their own. They're great, but from time to time they still need things only an adult can provide like nourishment, or seatbelt-buckling.

We awoke this morning to torrential rains which soon subsided into a general misty foggy sort of thing. The morning was spent doing inconsequential things at home, and then we went to the Cape Cod Children's Museum, which is geared mostly towards 3- and 4-year olds, but the older two kids enjoyed themselves, too. We bought ice cream sandwiches from a type of automated ice cream vending machine I hadn't seen before (not that I am any kind of expert on vending machines). It used a vaccuum hose to pick up your selection and move it over to the bin where you could get it out of the machine. It was pretty cool.

It was only 3:30 at that point and I was casting around for things to do, since I knew if we came home the kids would just sit in front of the TV all afternoon and get on each other's nerves (and mine, too.) DD asked if we could go to the movies if it rains again tomorrow, and I thought, Why not now? We were only about 5 minutes away from a theatre, so we drove over and found a parking space.

The next showing of "Herbie: Fully Loaded" was only a half-hour away, so we bought our tickets and were just going to head to the little toy shop nearby when DS1 grumped out, "Why do we have to go to the movie now?" I told him it was because I'd already bought the tickets -- if he really didn't want to go, he should've spoken up sooner. Turns out he was hungry and wanted to go home and have dinner (our appetite clocks are totally screwed up, by then his stomach was asking for lunch, and wondering why it was so late!) So when I explained that it was way too early for dinner and besides we'd get popcorn, he realized he didn't have any choice... so then we went in and bought the popcorn and got seats in the tiny, tiny theater (maybe 250 seats, tops).

The movie was cute and it didn't bother me at all that it was so predictable. The kids all really enjoyed it, and it was a great way to kill a couple of hours on a day that was threatening to become very tedious. Dinner, laundry, hanging out, and catch-up phone calls completed a long successful day... but now I'm just beat. Time to call DH and then fall into bed. Except I'm not sleeping in a bed, I'm sleeping on a couch. It's more comfortable in couch-mode than it is as a sofabed, and since it's just me, I don't bother unfolding it. That's just one more weird thing about being the only grown-up around.

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