I figured this wouldn't be too difficult of a task. I'd drive out Thursday night after work, make sure they got off to school on Friday morning since I could work at home, and then hang around until my mom came home sometime Saturday afternoon.
WRONG! Since my brother crashed my mom's car a few weeks ago, its been in the shop for the past week. And guess who's job it was to pick it up? Oh right, mine. Not only that, but I was also asked to take it to get the oil changed on Friday....because obviously I drive it all the time so its totally my responsibility, right? And it has to get done at the dealership which is far less conveniently located than Firestone or Jiffy Lube. Whatever. So those two new tasks made my life slightly more complicated. Then I found out I had to be on a 7:30am call for work. Oh wait, school starts at 8. Well that's a small problem. So I spent at least an hour trying to come up with different scenarios of how Mark (my only sibling who can drive) and I could juggle around cars and such to get 3 kids to 3 different schools at 8am, while I'm on a conference call. This became easier when we decided to stay at my dad's place instead of my mom's since he's walking distance to two of the schools and Mark can drive himself. So now my only job is to kick kids out of the condo at the appropriate time while also listening to Aon's earning call.
Of course my sister Erica's volleyball team ends up winning their first play off game which leads to practice from 6-7:30pm Thursday night and a game at 6pm on Friday but she has to be there at 5:30. Well I've conveniently scheduled appointments to get my haircut at 7 on Thursday and eyebrows waxed at 5:30 on Friday. Clearly volleyball and personal grooming don't mix. Fortunately practice is walking distance from my dad's and the game is on the same block as my mom's so Mark and I will just have to shuffle siblings and 2 cars back to mom's between 5 and 5:30 so we can avoid the construction workers there. What fun!! Then its eyebrows, volleyball game with red eyebrows (which Dan pointed out I already have....thanks for that observation!), ordering pizza, and hopefully dinner/something fun with my OP friend Elizabeth! Just hope the siblings don't want to go anywhere tomorrow night because it would definitely interrupt my social life! And of course my mom's flight doesn't land until 6:30pm Saturday night. I didn't offer to pick her up...and I'm hoping I don't need to stay in River Forest the whole day but some of that depends on if Erica wins her volleyball game and has practice on Saturday...which I won't know until tomorrow around 6:45pm. Really wanted to be able to go back into the city for my 11am football game and stay there but not certain that will happen...
But seriously, how do parents do it?! Especially single parents?! This whole juggling around thing just isn't cool. Its hard to have a social life. And if I actually had to be at the office at 7:30am for a meeting? Forget it!
So once I realized how much more inconvenient this whole weekend was going to be, I raised the topic to Dan during our daily chat while I'm walking home from the train. I very bluntly informed him that he was not allowed to divorce me because I didn't want to be a single parent. He said fine, he'd just leave me if it came down to it. And then he reverted back to his old joke that I'm going to pop out children and then just be too busy to raise them and leave it all to him so it won't matter anyways. This will not happen, thank you very much. I might be a strict parent, but I won't be an absent one.
Later yesterday evening I chatted with my dad about the kid's routine and what I needed to do, etc. You'd think at the ages of 21, 19, and 14 they'd pretty much be able to fend for themselves but that doesn't seem to be entirely accurate. I complained to him about how the kids interfered with my schedule and asked how he was handling it with my mom gone the past couple of weeks. It doesn't really seem to be a problem though. Mark drives the car to school. Erica walks. Danny walks with my dad to the train and then finishes the other couple of blocks to school on his own from there. They all happen to leave the house at the same time so that's pretty convenient. So its possible....but then they all come home to an empty house until my dad gets home from work around 6 so certainly not the ideal situation.
Anyways, so I told my dad about my conversation with Dan. This in itself is a big step because generally I try to avoid discussing anything relating to mine and Dan's future with my parents. My dad doesn't ask and my mom's contribution to the discussion is usually something along the lines of "Sarah you don't want to settle down too early." or "Maybe you'll have a new boyfriend by then" (minus that one time she tricked me into going out to dinner with her and grilled me for an hour and a half). Normally if I get asked something about mine and Dan's future I try to give a really vague answer like "well we have been dating for 5 years" or "I've been to North Dakota 9 times, what do you think?"
My dad was actually incredibly supportive of my complaints about how hard it would be to have kids and have a career and a life and said something about "well at least you'll have grandpa around to help out". Aww...thanks dad. But seriously, when I was contemplating job offers in Milwaukee and Kansas City one of the things that turned me off was the fact that both of our immediate families are in Chicago. I also have a lot of extended family in Illinois (2 sets of aunts/uncles, 5 cousins, a grandmother). That's a grand total of 11 potential babysitters by the time we have kids. The one benefit of our parents being divorced is that they are each a separate babysitting entity. Instead of grandma AND grandpa babysitting one night and then the other set another night...its grandma OR grandpa OR grandma OR grandpa. Plus siblings who definitely shouldn't be reproducing anytime in the near future? Babysitting goldmine. And no, we're not planning to have kids now but, just like moving back to the suburbs, its going to happen sooner rather than later so may as well be prepared. Clearly the smart decision to be in Chicago. My dad agreed with me, after I related all this information to him. I even told him I might let him live with me if he's still competent enough to babysit. If he isn't, then to the assisted living community he goes! I tried to convince him assisted living communities were just like college:lots of friends all live in the same building, transportation to drive you places, you don't have to cook, lots of organized activities like bingo and bridge! He kinda believed me. Other benefit of divorced parents is that they won't actually want to live together again so at least I'd only be stuck with one of them! Unfortunately same thing goes for Dan's parents....but its only him and his brother so we'll get one I guess. Tim is clearly going to have to build/remodel us a very large house with the number of family members that are going to be residing there...
On another note, I've proudly restrained from reading the Fifty Shades trilogy for a third time in a row. I've gotten a little further in the Hitler book but its kinda a drastic transition. Fortunately crappy Harlequin and kindle romances are filling in the gap well enough. However, I have gotten addicted to the fifty shades playlists on youtube and stalk the facebook page. I almost burst out laughing at work when I saw this on facebook:
I never had any plans to be a part of this population boom, but after this weekend I definitely don't intend to be. However, there are also predictions that Christian and Ana will get a boost in baby name popularity in 2012. Dan told me I couldn't name our children after people we know but he didn't take quite as hard a stance against characters in books. I'm already going to try to push Hadley (The Paris Wife) but no boys names yet. Christian? Grey? Taylor? Luke? Sawyer? Ray? Teddy? Elliot? Ethan? So many options!!! Besides by the time we get around to having kids the hype will have died down, right?
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