Gone Daddy Gone

Daddy’s gone to Missouri again to dig up archaeological treasures amid the ticks. The first week without Daddy is always the worst. The boys and I are struggling to find our groove. This is probably the first time that Jiro has been able to verbalize the fact that he knows Daddy is gone. He’s been chanting, “I want to see Daddy" with wide, searching eyes. Satchel misses Daddy too, but his feelings of loss are mitigated by the fact that he knows Daddy will bring home toys from the Missouri Wal-Mart.

My brother called on Monday to see how we were fairing (even though I was at work and the boys were at school and we had seen Warren that morning as usual). He needed to do laundry and we needed to eat dinner, so he agreed to go to the house and start his wash around 4pm and see if he could find something in the cupboards or freezer to make. A "Door Knock Dinner" if you will.

He called at 5:30 to report that the kitchen was bare and that we would most likely need to order a pizza. "I just don't think I can make anything good out of beets, lettuce, and week old spaghetti," he said. "Is there any meat that isn't frozen?"

I informed him that hiding in a long tupperware was some barbeque chicken from Neely's that I had brought home from a work meeting. "There's grapes and walnuts too...why not make some chicken salad?" I suggested. "The boys can eat hot dogs, mac & cheese, and broccoli."

Problem solved.



Even though it was tasty, I couldn't help feeling like I had stolen someone's Weight Watcher's meal. So once everyone cleaned their plates and/or licked the ketchup off their hot dogs, we went to Baskin Robbins for dessert.

"Pulling out the stops on day one, huh?" my brother astutely commented.

With Daddy (a.k.a. “The Enforcer”) gone, things are quickly spiraling out of control. Before Warren left he asked me to please not doing anything too lax so that the de-programming on his return could be as painless as possible. I have yet to cave into the children’s desire to eat every meal in front of the TV, so we are off to a good start. However, I have allowed Satchel to wear his new Spider-man sweat suit to school three days in a row. (He wears clean clothes underneath and inevitably takes it off by noon due to the heat.) And I unknowingly aided and abetted Satchel’s scheme in which he traded his old beat up Ninja Turtle shoes for his buddy Jack's brand new light up Spider-man shoes.

Tuesday I had roller derby practice. I had planned to pick the boys up early and hit McAllister's for free food, but ran out of time. I ended up taking them through the Burger King drive through and leaving them home with K, our trusty babysitter. (I considered taking the boys with me, but it is really hard to get in the rough and tough derby frame of mind with the monkeys cheering, "Go mommy! Go mommy!" or screaming "Help me! Help me!" from the top of the indoor playpen.) Satchel was fine with this, but Jiro had a fit. I basically had to peel him off of me and leave him bawling his eyes out. I got home at 9:45pm to find them happy, wide-awake, and covered in pudding. We all finally got in bed around 10:30pm.

Today (Wednesday), I planned to make up for abandoning them on Tuesday by taking them to a special "Kidz Fit" class at the Germantown Center and then out to dinner. Satchel has been taking gymnastics at school and then teaching Jiro at night so I figured they would enjoy a "fitness" class just for kids. I left work at 4:30pm so that I could pick them up and get to Gtown by 5:30pm. Traffic was waaaaaaaaaaaaay worse than I expected and we were lucky to roll into the class at 5:45pm.

My two fearless monkeys who spent two hours causing me near cardiac arrest by jumping repeatedly off the diving board in 14ft water with no floaties, took one look at the Kidz Fit crew and hid behind me with their heads buried in their hands. "They're just a little shy," I told the teacher. I figured they would loosen up after a few minutes of watching everyone do the hokey pokey and the limbo and some other goofy exercises, but they didn't. They just fought over who could take up most of my lap. Satchel did eventually show interest in joining the group, but wouldn't actually join in without Jiro. Jiro was 100% certain that he was going to have nothing to do with the Kidz. Ten minutes before class was over, I rounded them up and huffed and puffed out the door, thoroughly annoyed that my fun activity was a bust. As we headed towards the stairs, they both flocked to the gatorade vending machines and started pushing buttons and begging for money. I gave them my no you did-int face.

"Wait, I want to play with the kids. I'll be good!" Satchel said in a desperate attempt to butter me up.

I walked them back to the class just in time for the closing hoola hoop exercise. I got them each a hoop and they played for approximately 3 minutes before the class ended. Then they proceeded to bounce off the walls, down the hall, up the stairs, out the door, and through the parking lot with the energy of ten Energizer bunnies.

Once they were buckled in their carseats, they both informed me that they had to pee even though one minute earlier when we were outside of the bathroom they said they didn't.

Grrrr.

It was in this state that we all drove towards the San Francisco Bread Company in search of free kids' meals. Stay tuned to Dining with Monkeys for the details.