Tuesday afternoon, we packed up the giant orange suitcase and the two crammed-full-of-books backpacks and the large stuffed cheetah (Schwarz) and the small stuffed jaguar?/leopard? (D.C.) and the seven-year-old blond kid and the nine-year-old brunet kid into the Land Rover and headed to the airport. And at about 6:03, roughly 13 minutes past the scheduled takeoff time, our boys lifted off... up, up and away for a week and a half in Colorado with Jim's parents.
That night was OK. We went to Ground Kontrol and played video games with our friends Howard and Suzanne. (Ground Kontrol is great... most of the video games are either vintage, e.g., Ms. Pac-Man and the thoroughly inexplicable Tempest, or hyper-violent; those are the only kinds I like.) It was Rock Band night, and Howard and Jim, performing as "Tri-X," nailed a Boston song (I can't remember which one it was; all Boston songs sound alike to me). I drank two Mike's Hard Lemonades (shut up and stop laughing), felt courageous and dragged Howard, Jim and some random drummer-type guy on stage to perform "Debaser." High point: a crowd of people I didn't know shouting "I am un CHIEN! ANDALUSIAN!" along with me. Then I was embarrassed and we left.
We went to Kelly's Olympian (best, and possibly noisiest, bar in Portland). We went to City Grill's late-night happy hour and ate delicious spring rolls and seared tombo tuna. Howard and Suzanne went home and Jim and I went and played Scrabble at Billy Ray's. A fine time was had by all.
And since then, it's been way.too.freakin.quiet.
No lengthy monologues on the merits of various WWI aircraft. No bickering over LEGOs. No one to eat dinner with. No one to play cards with. No one to read me "Little Bear" or to beg for just one more chapter of Redwall.
Today, I was out of bed by quarter 'til 8 (early enough, when you consider I was up 'til 2:30 again). Jim had a day-long photo shoot and was gone half an hour later. I cleaned up our bedroom. I washed the dining room table, which stays much cleaner when no one is smearing yogurt and cereal detritus over it every morning. I took out the recycling and scrubbed out the garbage can. I made dinner (our Used Meat steak is happily braising away in the Crock-Pot). I washed two loads of laundry. I did a bunch of work stuff, re-tidied my already fairly tidy desk area and caught up on some friends' blogs. And all that was over an hour ago and I've done nothing worthwhile since.
It is too quiet. I can't concentrate.
But I'm a good daughter-in-law for sharing my little crazymakers regardless of the negative impact their absence has on my sanity, right? Right?
Oh, and here's the real Pixies performing the real "Debaser."
Ooooh, you want noise? Questions? Loud reading? Bickering? Fighting? Questions? Questions? More questions? I have two... two wonderful children. They can be rented by the hour. ;)
Mmmmmmmmh... quiet time? Sounds fabulous.
Posted by: suchlovelyfreckles | August 08, 2008 at 09:03 AM
Hope you have something FUN planned for the weekend!
Posted by: paula wessells | August 08, 2008 at 06:10 PM