Nothing, really

Yesterday morning I was doing some online financial management while my older two worked on their homework. I realized I didn’t have the budget to do any type of dog-and-pony-show activities this weekend (“We wanna go to FunWorld, Mom!” “Yeah, can we go to Chunky’s after?”). I’d had plans to get together for “Pizza Night” with a friend and her kids, but they were all sick and had to cancel. I also didn’t really have the inclination to throw a dinner party for my kids and their friends, so I put the pizza dough in the freezer for some other time.

Our big excursion in the morning was going grocery shopping. I managed to bribe 2/3 of my kids to go with me with the promise of breakfast at McDonald’s. We actually had a nice time, and it was a heck of a lot more affordable than the trip to Parker’s Maple Barn we made two weeks ago. An added bonus at the supermarket was returning our empties. My younger two were thrilled to have $4.00 to spend on candy and gum and spent most of the time in the supermarket dancing through the aisles, playing a game where they were only allowed to step on certain colors of tiles. My oldest was thrilled to have the house to himself for two hours while we were gone, though “starving” when we got home because apparently he couldn’t take the initiative to eat if no one was around to hand the food to him on a plate, even though I have taught him how to make a bagel with cream cheese, he’s capable of opening a yogurt, and I had baked chocolate chip muffins the night before.

When we got home, I put the groceries away and then called my sick friend while I cleaned the kitchen.

“I don’t really feel like arranging playdates for them…” I confessed. “But anyway, why should every moment have to be planned out?”

“It doesn’t,” she consoled me.

Instead, we just hung out. I took care of a couple of pressing work things but then shut that computer down. I wrote some greeting cards and worked on my taxes. We talked about the Flat Stanley that we needed to send back to the cousins in Utah. We made a pie. The boys played games together and not all of them were electronic. I did three loads of laundry. The kids all went outside and my younger two found friends to play with in the neighborhood. My oldest and I set up the SKLZ Hit-A-Way baseball swing trainer on our basketball hoop. We decided we’d watch a movie together at 8:00 p.m., so we planned our evening around that.

And that was it. Why should every moment have to be planned out?

It doesn’t.