Zoom

I'm on a completely twisted sleep schedule since last week's attempts to make too many impossible deadlines, so I'll keep this short so I can get to bed. I've been on a mission to get us caught up with financial type things this weekend and I'm glad that's done. Bills are paid. Receipts are recorded and in an envelope to go to Bill-the-accountant-who-keeps-me-out-of-jail, I have a to-do list for tomorrow ('cause it's Father's Day and in the spirit of recent Mother's Days), in lieu of a spendy gift, I'm cleaning something he feels overwhelmed by. No small task, cleaning the toxic dump that had been my truck on Mother's Day took him the better part of the day (and it looked great afterwards). So this time I'm cleaning the house. It's not a toxic waste dump, but every Fisher Price toy we own was taken out on Friday to create a massive Fisher Price village--and then not put away. We have seven million six million loads of clean laundry to fold and someone needs to find a better place to store the carpet cleaner than in our only full bath. So he shall go race little cars and I shall take the kids to church and then come home and clean.

I put together the menu for the week and then took the family grocery shopping. When we got back we tossed brownies in the oven, put away the groceries, jumped in the shower, dressed, grabbed the hot brownies, and then headed over to Chris' former coworker's house for a BBQ. It is midnight and I spent the whole evening talking to his wife, so I'm completely blanking on his name . . . Todd! Todd. Todd and Dawn. Two of the NICEST people you ever met in your whole life. They dote on their four-year-old--Z. Z and Milo were soon best buddies and Ben was right there with them, although he would occasionally spin off to do his own thing. Max built cities and pirate ships for the little guys to play with and mostly did a great job of entertaining them. There was one NASTY bonk by Ben on the floor, but otherwise the evening was casualty free. Dinner was great, and Chris even forgot to make fun of me for bringing out my knitting.

On the way home Chris commented that he'd smoked a cigar with Todd (I'd missed that part) and Max said in a firm tone, "I hope you won't be doing that again!" Chris reassured him that he had no intention of taking up smoking. I echoed that Daddy knows smoking is very bad for you, and Max seemed reassured. Someday we'll have the discussion about social drinking and smoking and the odd role of the cigar and we'll have to frame that all in the context of being a part-LDS family. But tonight we stuck to reassuring the boy that that particular line still holds and that was apparently all he needed. An odd little moment at the end of a long day.

I put the kids to bed and then worked on a massive pile of moving receipts Chris had found and which needed to be recorded and categorized and put in the Bill-the-accountant envelope and the evening wound a way to a close.

Happy Father's Day everyone. We are awfully fond of all of ours.