Yes, yes, I can

Archer is out of town until Saturday.  Given some of his previous trips, this one is relatively quick.  He is only gone for two nights, although logistics mean that he is actually gone for three bedtimes.  The bulk of his trip occurs during the week, which means I am in the office and teaching, Bear is at daycare, and Wild Man is at kindergarten.  It does mean that I am responsible for the entire morning and evening routine on my own, and it also means I'm on point all day on Saturday.  Is it stressful?  Sure.  In fact, it is apparently so stressful that both my mother and Yetta called last night to make sure I could handle my children on my own.  My response, "Yes, yes, I can."  I really wanted to say, "If you were concerned, you could have offered to help, you know, sooner than the day before Archer leaves town."  I mean, seriously, if I had said, "Nope, I can't do it.  Someone is sure to suffer. I'll likely just leave Bear at the neighbor's house all week and make Wild Man fend for himself while I stay in bed," would either of them have shown up at my house?  Sorry for the sarcasm, but seriously.  Yes, yes, I can manage to take care of my children for 3 days all by myself.  I've done it before, and I have no doubt I'll do it again.  In fact, at some point, I am quite sure I'll be taking care of all three of them all by myself.

Annoyed

My mother and mother-in-law are incapable of communicating with one another, despite the fact that they live less than 30 miles from each other. Each will actually call C or me and say, "Could you tell M's mom so and so?" and vice versa.

This Christmas, I bought my dad and my MIL gifts from E-bay Express this year, and in my naivete, I had both gifts sent to my parents' house. In hindsight, I realize I should have paid for the gifts separately and had Dad's shipped to my parents' house and Yetta's to her house. I reasoned, however, that it was easier to do a single checkout and that my mom could drop off Yetta's gift at her office, which is only about 15 minutes away from my parents' house. When I asked my mom to do this favor for me, she immediately agreed, saying she'd call Yetta and ask her when she could drop it off. Now I had these gifts shipped the week after Thanksgiving, so there was no rush for my mom to get it to Yetta. There was plenty of time to get the gift to her before Christmas. When I talked to my mom later in the week, she asked me to talk to Yetta to find out when she could drop off the gift, and I told my mom that Yetta didn't have to be there; she could just drop it off with the receptionist. At this point, I called Yetta and asked her to call my mom to figure out when they could meet to exchange the gift. I did this because Yetta is much more social than my mom, and I figured she'd take the initiative. She didn't. I finally got my mom to agree to take it to work with her (she manages a coffee shop in the local mall) and asked Yetta to drive by and pick it up. Yetta said she'd try, but given her work schedule she wasn't sure she'd make it before traffic got bad (an understandable excuse in my mind as I've tried to get out of this particular parking lot during the holidays and it has taken up to an hour). When she didn't manage to get to the mall to pick it up, I gave up. C told Yetta just to call my mom and they could figure it out. I talked to my mom a little while ago to say "Happy New Year!", and she informed me that Yetta "still hasn't called me. What am I supposed to do with this gift, M?" I took a deep breath and as calmly as I could said "Mom, the phone works both ways; you could just as easily call her and figure something out." To which my mom said, "Oh, I guess I could do that," in a tone of voice that tells me she won't. So it is New Year's Day, and Yetta still doesn't have her complete Christmas gift from us, which upsets me because I spent a lot of time thinking about what to get her and I know she'll love it. But why they can't call each other, I don't know.

Annoying Parents

When I dropped S off at school this morning, I was told that one of his classmates had a fever of 101.5, and that the teachers were unable to get in touch with her parents--i.e., the parents weren't answering their cell phones and weren't returning class. These parents make me so angry because this isn't the first time they've done this. How can you take your child to school with a fever? And I could look at the little girl and tell she was sick. She had the glassy-eyed look babies get when they have a fever. I don't understand this model of parenting. Her parents often do this, and their excuse is that they can't take time off of work because they just bought a house. I understand the financial need to work, but I don't understand not wanting to care for your baby.