Quite a Week

It’s been quite a week over here. I knew it was to be. There was no way it could not be. But still…

Now that Gabe is in kindergarten and doesn’t go to daycare anymore, my entire schedule has gotten complicated. I drop him off at school in the morning, then I drop Josy off at school and work for a few hours. After school he goes to a friend’s house for a couple of hours and then I pick him up and work from home for the rest of the afternoon. Pat’ll pick up Josy from school. It’s crazy, but I think it’ll work. Plus, we’re have no daycare options for Gabe in the afternoons and it’ll mean that I’m home when Bella gets home from school too.

However, this schedule gets significantly more complicated when Pat is out of town for work and I get to pick up Josy also. That’s what happened the week.

I knew things were going to be crazy, so I spent all Sunday afternoon making freezer meals. I figured that was the only way that I’d be able to feed my family. Also, a friend of mine was having surgery on Monday, so I made two batches of everything, so that she could have dinner than her teenage daughter could throw in a crock pot. It made for a long day. I was finally done at 9:30 and even then the kitchen was a disaster. But I made the choice to just go to bed because I also needed to sleep. So I started off a crazy week with a dusty kitchen. Not the best choice, but that’s what we had.

Monday morning, Pat left. Then I got the boys ready and dropped Gabe off for his first day of school. Josy and I went to work. I picked Gabe up and decided that since it was the first day of school, we needed to celebrate, so we went to get froyo.

Lucky kid had also gotten smoothies with my friend and her kids, so he was definitely happy about starting school… Then we went to the pet store and bought Gabe a new fish, since Shelley is no longer with us. That seemed like a reasonable first-day-of-kindergarten present. He picked a bright red fish that he named Swimmy.

We got home and tried to get Swimmy’s tank set up, only to determine than all of the food that we have is too big for him and he kept spitting it out. I didn’t know that betas could have food preferences. Gabe is pretty sure he’s allergic. Great. Also, it turns out that I threw away the used filter when Shelley died and we no longer had a filter at all, so we were headed back to the pet store eventually anyway.

Gabe and I then went down to pick up Josy, then went to pick my surgery friends kids from their daycare. I brought them all back to my house where I got the crockpot dinner I’d made for her, as well as the freezer meals I’d made. We also picked up Bella. Then we drive to my friend’s house, dropped off her kids and dinner, only to figure out that she did not have space for all the meals, so I left her two that I could fit in and told her teenager to call me when they used those and I’d bring her more. Then we headed back to our house to put them in the freezer. We then drive to McDonalds because it was a beautiful day and I didn’t have time to do any cooking. We sat in the drive through for forever before finally getting our food, but eventually we made it through and drove to the beach. We left the house at 4:40 and got to the beach at 6:50. Lovely… But we had a picnic on the beach and it was lovely.

Also, as we were leaving, this one decided to take his leftover fries and dump them out, throw away the container and then try and carry them all in his hands.



Tuesday we all got out the door just fine. On my way to pick up Gabe, I left early to go to Costco to return the bell peppers Pat had bought that spend that we’re all bad (making it hard to finish my stuffed bell peppers freezer meal…). I got another pack and then grabbed Gabe and headed home. I worked for a bit and then we left to go get Josy. On the way home we stopped at the pet store to get a filter and see about other food options for poor Swimmy. Unfortunately, when you have two little boys in a pet store, leaving is hard and by the time we got out of there at gas 10 minutes to drive home, get all the stuff we needed for soccer practice and make it to the soccer field. We did not make it in time. We made it, but definitely not on time.

We headed home after practice and I started putting dinner together and pulled out everything to stuff the rest of my bell peppers when I got some news from a different friend that she’d had a horrible family tragedy, so I told her that I’d stop by after the boys were in bed with two trays of stuffed peppers so that they’d have some dinner the next night. As soon as the boys were in bed, I stuffed the rest of the peppers and headed over there. It’s a good thing I’d just happened to go to Costco to get more earlier in the day.

Wednesday was on track to be slow and normal…until my surgery friend called to tell me that one of the kids in her son’s class tested positive for Covid and he needed to be picked up. So I went to the school and got her two kids and dropped them off at home, since she should definitely not be driving yet…

From there, things calmed down a lot. We had some slower evening and, thanks to freezer meals, life didn’t revolve around cooking. Friday night we ordered a pizza and watched Homeward Bound. It was a quiet night, and definitely what we needed.

 But it was a crazy way to start the first week of school…