A Day of Doing Nothing

O.K., I'm so over this being a single parent thing. Today I figured I did nothing, but I couldn't figure out why I felt so tired this evening. Reflecting back on today I realized that my definition of 'doing nothing' has become completely warped!

A day of doing nothing:

• Up at 6:30
• Breakfast at the counter - tea & bagels for mom; cereal - one with milk, one without - apple, milk in cups and half of my bagel for kiddies.
• Baths and hair washing for kiddies
• Shower and hair 'styling' (read: shoty blow-dry) for mom
• Throw a load of towels into the washing machine
• Strip beds
• Put new sheets on my bed
• Throw kids sheets downstairs to wash after the towels
• Watch Cinderella - for the 5th time
• Start load of kids sheets
• Watch taped episode of Survivor while listening to whinning about watching Survivor
• Make lunch
• Eat lunch
• Clean-up from lunch
• Dress kiddies into outside-appropriate clothes (No, you can not wear only daddy's T-shirt to play outside)
• Put sunscreen on both faces (god they love that :-( )
• Helmets on, bikes out
• 1 hour bike ride (They ride, I walk - not looking for a repeat of incident with E. careening down a hill into bushes last year).
• 45 minutes at the park
• Come home - the long way
• Take down Christmas lights
• Shovel last of snow off patio
• Convince kiddies to now go inside
• Make supper - a good one this time (pork tenderloin, noodles and veggies) - while trying to keep J. awake since he didn't nap today (He fell asleep while playing the computer as I was upstairs making supper. I hear him cry in frustration and say that he can't hear Reader Rabbit on the computer. I call down supportively, 'You're the one that messed it up son. I'm sorry I don't know how to fix it. You know you have to wait until dad comes home' (the speakers haven't worked for 4 months) Anyway, about 2 minutes later I hear E. call, 'Mom, J. is sleeping.' Yeah right. Whatever. 'He's just pretending,' I call, but go to look anyway. The kid is passed out on the keyboard of his computer......drooling! I am NOT exaggerating. He is out like a light.)

Anyway, back to the list:

• As supper is cooking, vaccuum the main floor area plus the stairs since going to the park means copious amounts of sand coming in from the front door - oh yeah and I dumped a bunch of grass around the house because I raked the front lawn yesterday wearing jeans with the bottoms rolled up and then wore those same jeans around the house for over an hour before I figured out where all the dried grass was coming from.
• Eat (an event, let me tell you)
• Clean-up from supper - while 'helping' (mostly nagging) kiddies to put on PJ's
• Pull sheets out of the dryer
• Go upstairs and make their beds
• Convince them to stop playing and come upstairs
• Brush two sets of teeth
• Wash one face (E. left and I didn't have the energy to make her come back - do you think her face will fall off during the night? - oh crap, I put sunscreen on her earlier....she needed her face washed - too late)
• Kisses and hugs and to sleep they go
• Oh, wait a minute....E. calls that she needs socks on
• Try to convince her that she doesn't (since she didn't wear any last night)
• She remains completely unconvinced
• Go back upstairs 3 minutes later because E. is having a tantrum about not having socks on
• Put the !#%^& socks on
• All is quiet
• Post on the blog

And that, my friends......was my day of.......doing nothing. What the heck is happening to me?