adverseria

I have completed Day II.  That’s day two of the a three day in-law visit. I don’t know about you, but I always count the days off of either a visit from people, or a visit to someplace. And I like these people, it’s just that my schedule gets completely thrown out of whack on visits. I am a creature of habit, and have been so probably since I got out of college. Monday through Friday I would work, arriving early so I could leave early and then work out after work, eat dinner, watch some television and then got to bed. It was easy, worked well and was comfortable.

Now that I’m a parent and older, I find that I still have a schedule or at the very least, a routine. I like to get my kids into bed early enough that I can read them stories and still have some time left to exercise and/or watch a show before going to bed. It’s getting harder as they get older, but I still try to maintain the routine. Now with visitors the kids go to bed later, I don’t get to read them stories, and it just kind of makes them weirder than normal. And that’s not all. I am the cheif cook for my family, so when guest come I feel like I’m cooking all day long, or washing dishes, or trying to think about things to make their visit pleasant. Day I was shrimp scampi pizza, today was making sure the coffee was going before I took my son for baseball pictures. Then it was making sure lunch fixings were out. Then it was trying to find things to amuse my in-laws while my wife was out the better part of the day being a stage mom for our daughter. So we went to watch my son’s judo class. I warned them ahead of time that they could go shopping or tool around while we went there but they wanted to take it all in. One hour later, I don’t think they realized what it was all about. Sitting on a hard floor watching half interested children go through judo moves, and badly I might add. Then it was home to get dinner ready. Grilled pork medalions, green beans, and potato salad. Sounds good right? Takes effort to do though.

Tomorrow we’ve got to go to a two hour recital where I will fill guilty the whole time for subjecting them to it, then I have to figure out when to serve dinner because the recital falls right around prime dinner time. It was requested that I make my spaghetti sauce because they love it, so we’ll have spaghetti at some point tomorrow. Otherwise during the day, we have to figure out what to do to amuse them. My wife and her mom like to shop but they don’t really like to have the children with them because they weigh them down. My father-in-law (step by the way) is usually a good sport, but he’d rather just sit in the basement and watch TV, so I try to keep the kids out of his hair as much as possible. And then we have lights that are always turned on, dishes left out, new cups and glasses always being used, remotes that no longer fit in my hand, it’s just an upside world.

I know it sounds like complaining but I am glad that my kids have both sets of grandparents around still and they love the visits so that makes me happy. And I really do like to cook and trying to make meals that get oohs and aahs, but for someone who’s close to OCD on routine/schedule it is really hard. So that’s why I’m counting and I know I have only 24 more hours before I get to go to sleep, get up and head to work. Then I’m done.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS