just another day in paradise….
It’s already August. This whole year has seemed to be divided into nothing but weekends and where I will be on that weekend.
The best part of that is, every weekend has been about where I want to be. Yes, that sounds horribly selfish, but I can say this is the first year in my documented life that I have been selfish with MY time.
Before children you can spend your weekends under a pile of down blankets, watching nothing but craptastic television and eating day old pizza. After children it seems like it’s about birthday parties, swim dates, sports, shopping for the birthday party, swim dates and getting sporting gear. If the joy of being a parent was so wonderful I wouldn’t fully understand why people do this to themselves. Sleep all weekend vs. yelling at child to clean their room. It’s kind of a no brainer. Just when you think you can’t take anymore, your daughter looks at you and says, “cooopins” and you burst out laughing and know there is no other place you would rather be….and broke…broke as fuck.
I had a facebook discussion with my boyfriend’s daughter who complained that we never plan anything on the day she has off. There is a reason for this. Saturday is the only day we truly have ‘off’. Sunday I have trail running and he has hockey. I pointed out that most of the time the planning isn’t a ‘we’ thing, it’s a ‘me’ thing. If he does the planning it’s because he has seen I have reached the boiling point of how many times I can watch Bourne Identity or a rerun of Indiana Jones that comes on TV just to annoy me.
This weekend was a prime example of my need to get the fuckity fuck out of town. I didn’t care we ended up as long as he spoke periodically throughout the trip and that we could take some pictures of something other than his backyard.
Two cups of coffee in the morning and I was ready to go. I put the remaining coffee in a travel mug for the trip.
“Great, we will be stopping every few miles so you can pee.”
He was right, but there was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to let him know that. “I’ll be fine.” We weren’t out the door and I could feel the urgency to go to the bathroom. “Gotta grab something, be right back.” He was on to me though…I can’t be sneaky.
Once we hit the mountains and curves I started to get really uncomfortable. Staring down old PG&E logging roads I was thinking to myself, “I would pee there. I could pee there. Yep, there’s another place I would pee.”
He graciously stopped when he could see that I couldn’t hold it any longer. The bouncing in my seat and clawing at the door was the big indicator.
The ocean was beautiful and the day was the perfect day to sink our feet in the sand. There are times when I can tell he’s happy and when he took off his shoes and headed for the water I knew he was truly happy. The drive was so worth seeing him completely relaxed. I dug out the D300 and captured some shots, but realized I was doing the one thing I hated the most, not living in the moment. I handed him my baby and told him to take pictures because I was going to run in the water and dig around through the rocks and see what I could find. For those of you that know me, Yes…I handed him MY D300 and walked away. Yeah…I know. I love him THAT much.
The drive back went fast and when we got home I felt very calm. We still had a day left of our weekend and I was planning on getting up early and getting in a trail run and he was going to dick around in his shop making cool stuff. I got home early enough on Sunday to watch him put together a wind chime from the stuff we had gathered on the beach the day before.
Things are finally getting easier for us…and it’s about fucking time. ;)