FRIDAY
7:30 am – make sure the kids are out of bed
8:00 am – drive the kids to school – MAKE SURE THEY HAVE THEIR LUNCHES!
3:30 pm – kids come home from school
SUNDAY
9:30 am – drop B off at soccer game (NOT PRACTICE FIELD!!!)
10:30 am – drop R off at bus
11:30 am – soccer team meeting and lunch
1:45 pm – pick up T. Drive to improv class. DON’T BE LATE!
No, this is not a couple of pages ripped from my calendar, it’s part of a list I am creating for my husband so I can leave for the weekend for the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop and know that my husband will NOT FORGET TO PICK UP OUR SON FROM HIS SOCCER GAME. I should be packing or practicing my wittiest lines or at the very least reviewing the weekend schedule but, no, I’m making lists…in bold and mostly in caps.
I like lists. Lists make me happy; they keep me organized and I love the feeling of running a line through a finished task. I don’t, however, like making lists for others.
It makes me cranky.
Even though the list I am currently drafting is more for my benefit then my husband’s, every time I need to make him one I get a little annoyed.
Shouldn’t my husband of 21 years, the man who has lived in this house for the entire length of our children’s lives, know WHAT TIME THE KIDS GO TO SCHOOL?!
(A couple of years ago he tried to drop our then middle-schooler off at the elementary school. I don’t note which their schools on my list even though I am tempted…)
I know I’m not alone. I know that I am not the only mother who takes these steps before she leaves her children in the care of their significant others. Perhaps not with the intensity that I do though…
I have one friend who claims that she can just leave and her husband will figure it out. That might be true but she will never really know. Before she leaves, she arranges the carpools and the sitters and makes sure her kids have somewhere to go after school just in case their dad forgets when the kids were going to be home or that they needed a ride to baseball practice.
She orchestrates her kids’ schedules just like I do, the only difference is she skips the list and gets other moms and/or neighbors involved as backup.
I guess I could stop whining about the lists and just skip them all together. Really, what’s the worst thing that could happen: the kids would be late for school or my youngest would get stranded at a soccer game?
That won’t happen.
My kids know what time they are supposed to be at school. They will remind my husband (or hound him depending on how late they are running) and my husband will drive them—or they will walk or get another ride. And my youngest will not be left on the soccer field because there will be other mothers there who will notice him sitting alone on the field and will make sure that he has a ride…that is if he doesn’t call his dad first.
No, the worst thing that could happen is that they will call me.
Yes, it makes me feel better that someone knows where my kids are and where they are supposed to be but it also makes me feel better that I can ignore the frantic texts asking me where the soccer game is or what time track practice ends?
It’s on the list and I, will be out.
i suck as a parent 