Full of life

My parents babysat the girls a few weeks ago so that Rich and I could attend an evening wedding.  Because their year end gymnastics show was the next morning, my parents stayed at our house overnight.  That next morning, the girls were acting as they normally do - running around, playing, begging to wear their show leotards.  It was loud, hectic and crazy but instead of picking up on that, my father commented on how our house is alive.  Full of life.  

And it is.

I've thought of setting up a video camera (and not telling the girls, of course) to capture what our house looks and sounds like.

We had a heat wave roll through here not last week but the week before.  My parents live very close to the beach but their house isn't very close to ours.  The drive isn't too bad if it's a weekend but during the week, there's commuting traffic to contend with and that not so bad drive can easily turn into an hour and a half of road torture.

Wednesday and Thursday were forecasted as the hottest days and on Monday, Grammy offered to take the girls to her house for a few days so that they could enjoy the beach with Papa.  We finally agreed upon two days and nights.  They would leave Wednesday morning and Rich and I would drive over and pick them up Friday morning.

Two nights away is a big deal!

I felt like absolute crap Tuesday morning and would have called in sick but I was managing a huge project that needed to be wrapped up that week and the only way I could call in sick is if I was actually puking.  I was not.  I decided to take a later train to work, hoping that I would feel a little bit better.  That train would land me at my desk a bit after 9:00.  Well, it turns out that, unbeknownst to me, they moved the departure time for that train forward by 2 minutes and because I never take that train, I still thought it was leaving at the old time.  And then Main Street was dug up and there was a detour on our way there.

I missed the train and I wanted to cry because I felt so sick and the next train was in 40 minutes.  I asked Rich to stay for 20 minutes so that I could rest in the van and then I would wait on a bench.  The girls lasted about 4 minutes.  "I'm hungry.  I need a snack."  "Can you unbuckle me?"  Needless to say,  I ended up waiting in the train station.

Wednesday, I still felt sickly but had to work.  Rich had class that night and I arrived home from work to an empty and quiet house.  We've lived in this house for four and a half years and I can't recall ever being home alone at the time the girls would be going to bed.  I had big sewing/blogging plans but didn't have the energy to do much of anything.  I found myself camped out on the couch watching "new" Goo Goo Dolls stuff on YouTube.  That was even more of a time suck than Pinterest.  

Thursday was a repeat of Wednesday.  I was exhausted (from being sick) and would have greatly benefited from a day at home by myself.  Instead, I worked and then returned to an empty, quiet house.  It was a bit eerie.  Rich called me on his way home from class and when he asked what I had been doing, I replied, "Stalking my ex-boyfriend on Facebook.  I found his wife!"

Silence.  "Why would you do that?"

"Isn't that what Facebook is for?"