… is Friday’s moron.
I’m going to have that embroidered on a sampler, and I’m going to mount it here on the wall of my office. Oh yes. Yes, I shall.
Oh Mondays, I am brilliant. It’s a new day! A new week! And THIS WEEK, I shall triumph. I will be on top of my game. Work will melt away under my fingertips, the children will be delightful and charming, the house will be clean, and late at night I will sidle up to my husband and whisper something a little more sexy than, “I am so tired right now I could cry, if only I had the energy.”
On Mondays, all things are possible.
By Friday, I’m just a mewling puddle of uselessness.
The sad part is, it’s entirely my fault. My misery is of my own making. (Don’t bother suggesting it; I already HAVE that one on a sampler.) Here is but a sampling of the ways in which I unnecessarily complicate my life:
I repeatedly order clothing online from a store where I always end up taking the stuff back. I’m like one of those rats hitting the bar for the food pellet, and the food pellet NEVER COMES, yet I cannot stop myself from pounding on the bar. I mean, let’s examine the facts: I place an order (with free shipping, and a coupon code, which is probably what lures me in) telling myself that hey, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just take the items to the brick and mortar version of the store. No loss. My order shows up and nothing fits right, and suddenly the “wow, isn’t it great how I’m saving money by doing this from the comfort of my home” undertaking becomes an unnecessary trip across town to return the stuff. Without fail, I end up receiving the package on a Thursday. You know, because I’m always in such a good mood on Friday and have NOTHING ELSE TO DO but return the clothes I foolishly thought would fit this time.
I do things like turn to my son and say, “You can have your birthday party this weekend or not at all, so what’s it gonna be?” You remember Monkey’s birthday, don’t you? I have been trying to pin that kid down on a party plan for MONTHS. He’s had a lot of great ideas. Ton of ’em! All at the same time! And so it’s been endless months of “Well maybe I…” and “How about…” and finally I had to put my foot down. DUDE. How about some friends, this weekend? He said sure. I mailed the moms. They gave the thumbs up. It’s all great! Except that apparently I am having a birthday party here tomorrow, and I have… ummm… oh, that’s right, NOTHING. No party food, no party favors, and—especially—no party plan. Seems like maybe I should do something about that. (“Hi, come on it! We’re all… just sitting here! Drinking water! WOO!”)
I complain about how much time choir takes up, and then I go join a quartet, too. Fear not, Dad—all those years of voice training aren’t going to waste! Now I’m inflicting my mediocre sight-reading skills on even more people! Thankfully this is putting a huge dent in my already tight schedule, plus a recent rehearsal caused me to spend half of this morning searching online for some music software I can use to practice. The only problem? Friday Brain prevented me from figuring out what to search on, and I wasted a lot of time with things like “free Mac download music” before I finally added “notation” to my search terms and stumbled on a suitable program. Because rehearsals weren’t time-consuming enough, and now I would like to spend two hours painstakingly programming in the alto line of this song I cannot seem to learn. Because I am retarded. Oh, hmmm. There’s a key change in the middle. I have no idea how to do that with this software; better figure in an extra hour for that.
I tell a client that I’d be happy to attend that planning meeting via teleconference. Oh, that’s something I need to do. No problems there, right? Except that Monday Brain is all “Teamwork! Rah Rah! I’m on it, boss!” and Friday Brain realizes that someone sent me a PowerPoint template. Because apparently they are expecting… slides? From me? And probably not ones that say “Words good. Pay me muchly for them. Thanx!” Also, I’ve rejected several other ideas, too. (Favorite Dilbert strips or LOLcats, pictures of dollar signs, or just a bold rendering of my phone number with a brief explanation about how you can better expect me to know what you’re doing if you call and tell me about it.) Maybe they’d like the sheet music to this piece I’m working on for the quartet…?
I do things like offhandedly mention “Sure, we’ll make a cake for the cake auction.” Seriously. What is wrong with me? Chickadee wanted to discuss this cake in the car on the way to school, and I am here to tell you that there is NOTHING I want to discuss at 7:00 in the morning except how I’d like you to fix my coffee. And this is not a great match for a couple of kids who are interested in hearing that maybe, JUST MAYBE, you spoke too soon and there might not be time to make a cake because OH MY GOD, it’s already Friday and do they have ANY IDEA what all you need to get done in the coming week?
Thank goodness the grandparents are coming for a visit in a few days. It’ll be nice, next Friday, to at least have someone here to wipe the drool off my chin.
Big deep breath…
… and relax…
… and find some biscuits(the british sort that are cookies that is!)
that mkes no sense.
sorry.
transatlantic commenting sometimes is difficult
Oh! I can do party planning! It’s my one skill. That and graphic design (but only if I like your project, thank you otherwise I’m rubbish). Few quick games you might have the stuff for already: suction-cup dart gun targets (need cheap-o guns, large glass door, means of decorating door from behind [paper can be cut and stuck on etc]) – benefits, can be changed to suit theme (we did dinosaurs, but nearly anything works); treasure hunt (for very small, make it a follow-the-string one, for larger do color coded visual clues [each child has its own color], for the even older do very simple hints); soap-bubble derby: straws and bubbles, just have them blow the darn things over various objects, through targets – whatever. OH, and if it’s warm enough? Have the boys set up a tent in the back yard. It keeps them busy and they have their own play fort to hang out in OUT of the house… I could go on… love doing parties…
I advise tequila and a hot bath…
Poor Mir! Stress seems to be going around these days. Somehow the “do-over” of January 1st has lost its sheen. Hang in there!
1. Do what Megan says about games. 2. Buy paper plates, etc. from Party City. 3. Buy a cake from Publix. 4. While you’re at Publix, grab sub sandwiches and chips and drinks.
5. Saturday night, have yourself some bacon vodka.
Hang in there, sunshine! :)
Always glad to help. I’ve packed your bib.
Alternate take on your situation: No matter what you do, or don’t do over the weekend, when it’s over it will be Monday….and you will be your normal, charming, optomistic, pretty, I could conquer the world if I wanted to self.
Keep the faith.
I hear you. I was a victim of this this week as well. We have been talking about and planning to get a puppy for a few months. I turned in a HUGE project that I had spent at least 6 sleepless night working on over the last two weeks on Tuesday afternoon. I had a presentation for my class on Thursday night that constituted the bulk of my grade for the course. So what did we do on Wednesday night–when I was so tired I wanted to cry if I only had the energy–we got a puppy!!
Awesome, good thing he is cute or I would have accidentally left him outside by now.
I expect the next time I will get some decent sleep to be in August after I take the bar exam, when my 7yr old son goes to overnight camp for 2 days and I tell my husband to go out with his friends.
As a presentation designer, you have no idea the hideousness that comes through my desk via PowerPoint. Oh, wait, maybe you do. ;)
When I get like this Sean forces me to simplify, because he is a wise man. And because I’m useless in these types of situations I’ll just reiterate what he says to me: do what you can, don’t create more things to stress out over, store buy the rest of it, it’ll be great, everyone will love it AND you, oh, and have wine later.
Good luck with the party. I think your previously mentioned idea of feeding them pizza and popcorn and letting them run around like wild things should work pretty well. I mean, that’s what they’re going to do anyway, right?
>
I had to turn down an editing job this week because the clients wanted me to commit to a (very short) turnaround time without seeing an excerpt of the work to be edited. Too bad, too, because I could use the work.
Sorry to hear you are so stressed.
Here’s a link to help with the party planning, they offer ideas by theme, so I hope it helps:
http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/KidsBirthdayParties.htm
Hang in there!
For the music notation program – if you can’t get the program to do a key change, then can you just transpose the notes from the key change part into the original key so it sounds the same even though the notes are different? Does that make sense? If not, feel free to email me and I’ll explain it better…or try…lol!
I find that I overschedule much more since I work from home. Because hey! I set my own schedule! I can bake that cake if I want to! I can squeeze the work in later! Except ummm….what am I doing folding laundry and baking a cake at 10 pm?
It is a hazard of the job.
Good luck with the party, sounds like you have lots of good recommendations above.
PUBLIX!! she is your friend. cakes you can even try to pass as your own if you need. love the bubble relay idea. or let the boys loose with a soccer ball in the yard – supposed to be nice this weekend, yes? that would make mine happy for hours.
Does Otto have alot of film canisters lying (laying? whatever!) around? Last year we made mini-rockets out of film canisters, loaded them with some combination of alka-seltzer and water (I could get you the real proportions if you need them) and presto! Fun party activity!! The kids were enthralled, and it really was easy (and no one ate any alka-seltzer tablets, so whew!, they all went home happy and healthy).
Or get thee some fabric crayons and cheap t-shirts, let them draw something with the fabric crayons on a piece of paper, and iron it on to the shirt. Another big hit in my house!
But really, you probably need less of a plan than you think if my home-based b-day parties are any indication. I plan, plan, plan … and on the day of the party all the kids just ignore me and run around being kids, and have a blast!!
I had to chuckle because my son’s birthday was yesterday – but, alas, due to running about and a sporting event [which was his present] we didn’t celebrate it “officially” yesterday – bad Mom #1. Then tonight son’s attending a kid’s nite out thing – no parents [whee – three hours kid free while he gets hyped on energy, sugar, and fat!], then tomorrow evening his Aunt takes him for 24 hours [kid free again!]. Maybe Sunday nite I’ll get around to taking birthday photos with a cupcake … :-)
I think that you should invite one of your friends over for the party, and then everyone can sit around, drink water and watch her knit! Oh, but YOU get wine!
Yeah, you’re screwed. You need to hire someone who will follow you around and smack you every time you volunteer for something.
Thanks for making me feel a lot less guilty about my own duck and cover “Email? What email?” tactics when the calls for volunteers come my way. Yet, I still manage to become a “mewling puddle of uselessness” by the time Fridays roll around. (Is “mewling” really a word?)
I love your dad.
N’s birthday party is tomorrow, and we have almost nothing ready. My excuse? I’ve known about it for MONTHS! It’s on his ACTUAL BIRTHDAY! So, of COURSE I…um…hmmm. Your excuse sounds better.
Sigh. Off to make the requested “golf cake with pink frosting, Mama, because pink tastes better than green.”
And, oh, yeah. Here in Sunny Southern California, where having the party at our little house is no big deal because we have that big backyard and, hey, it never rains in Southern California? It’s raining. Has been for three days, and will be for two more. All those kids, all those parents, all in my house. Having a miniature golf party. Bye bye, glass cabinets.
That’s one of the great things about living in Southern California. When it rains we can use it as an excuse to cancel anything and everyone understands.
Pinatas and small boys go together like cream cheese on bagels. Sticks, blindfolds, hitting things and *BOOM* candy. Just saying….
Scavenger Hunt – run them upstairs and down, inside and out, hither and yon. That’ll blow the stink off of ’em, as my father-in-law likes to say.
If my dad was just as great as yours I would totally steal yours.
You can store buy the cake for Chickadee thing too; I’ll bet half the mom’s will too anyway. Don’t over think it. Take the super easy route & get it all done, then drink lots and lots of wine (or bacon vodka, mmmm bacon.)
For real…how about a BACON-BIRTHDAY-BOY party??? Bacon streamers!!!!
We know from last years costumes that you are well versed with family fun. Why not print out a couple ideas that Monkey likes, have him draw from a hat tonight and call it a decision made? Oh, yeah, because that would be way too easy. Good luck!
yeah, my friday brain thought it was monday! seriously.
HAH! the awesome Mir having a crisis? Never. This is just a thinly veiled attempt to get your readers to suggest new ideas and recipes.
you can’t fool me, supermir.
*Waving madly* HEY!! MUSIC TEACHER HERE! I gotz yer software and the skillz to use it. If you wanna send me a scan, I can put it in the program, including the key change, then send you a midi file or mp3 of the part. If you want the accompaniment, too, it’ll take a little longer, otherwise, a couple of hours. Lemme know. What software are you using?
Finale Notepad. It’s free. The real thing (Finale, that is) will cost you, but it has a free download in the smaller format.
When you get the sampler done I’ll buy one for my studio. On a Monday, of course.
On Monday, You’ll be a goddess
Okay, I got over here from fun.crazy.life and you are my new favorite blogger. Wow, a lot of what you said in this post really describes me. Very cool.
Your dad makes me really miss my own.
Hang in there –stress seems to be going around. Sigh.
Barb