Just a Weekend in Suburbia.

Just a weekend in suburbia.

For those of you who enjoy reading this because you find my misfortune amusing, I’m afraid my weekend was fairly uneventful and thus this entry will not be funny.

My wife is teaching a Thursday night class this semester, so the climax of my work week is on Thursday nights when I get to solo parent. This includes taking Franklin (my six year old) to Taekwondo and dragging Vera (my one year old) along. If you’ve ever parented a newly toddling toddler you know how maddening trying to keep someone who can barely walk safe in an environment outside about 4 square feet of carefully padded living room is. Add to it her propensity to simply give up and crawl no matter how dirty a floor may be, and the mess she makes eating a meal without a dog under her feet, and you can start to see a bit of the circus I deal with from 5:00-5:50 on Thursday nights.

When we get home there is still doing bath and bedtime times two and I’m pretty well spent. Friday is a welcome denouement to my week (I’m really working this creative writing class theme). So, the fact that the Druid City Brewery is my favorite place to go and Franklin’s favorite place to go typically makes for a great end to the week.

The downside of my favorite place also being the place where we take Franklin as a reward is, if Franklin gets in trouble at school my Friday ritual is shot. That was how I started my weekend this week (though my lovely wife did get Franklin from me and let me run by for a bit).

Our Saturday was a snapshot of a suburban family Saturday. We had biscuits and bacon then headed off to the library. We got Franklin a bunch of AR books so I don’t have to harp on him getting a new AR book everyday when he gets out of the car at school, then we headed to Aldi.

I have been to Aldi approximately 3 times. If I die without ever going to an Aldi again, it will be just fine with me. For those of you unfamiliar with Aldi, it’s a small grocery store that offers lower prices by carrying knock off grocery items and otherwise skimping on things that you take for granted at a grocery store, like bags that don’t cost 7 cents. For instance, we didn’t have a quarter, so after my wife failed at feloniously freeing a shopping card with a key, we were forced to only buy the amount of groceries we we could carry in our arms.

I’m sure you will all appreciate the picture of me walking through Aldi, carrying Vera, some random grocery items, and trying to balance a pack of paper towels on my head. Aldi people live Aldi. They love it so much, many of them this Saturday picked up on the skimping theme themselves and went without bathing for several days before coming to shop.

My favorite Aldi character however, was the gentleman in line behind us that smelled overwhelmingly of freshly burnt marijuana buying only a large pack of raw chicken wings. He certainly seemed like a guy who knew what he wanted.

We left Aldi and headed to lunch. Those of you who know me, know that I really enjoy being outside, especially if you combine being outside with cold beer. If you’ve spent much time with me you’ve probably experienced me trying to convince you to sit outside to eat when the weather was not what normal people would consider patio weather. If it’s 105 I’ll simply recommend we find a table in the shade. Raining? Maybe that table with an umbrella. This Saturday it was 48 when we got to Billy’s. So naturally, we sat outside at a table in the sun.

Following lunch I earned my lunch beer by attending the absolute chaos of a local bakery’s cookie decorating contest. If you like the sickening sweet smell of frosting, getting various types of sprinkles and jimmies in your shoes, ears, and pockets, combined with mediocre sugar cookies and 50 or so screaming children, you’d love it.

Then, I kid you not, we went back to Aldi. I sat in the car.

We followed that up with a trip to target and dinner at a friends where I enjoyed the peace that comes with sitting by a fire with a glass of bourbon while trying to keep 5 to 22 children from falling into said fire. I feel confident that the other parents were somewhere watching and laughing, but I became sure of it when two of the children emerged from the house armed with giant pointy forks to roast marshmallow

Franklin is notoriously slow to take a shower. When I went upstairs to tell him it was time to finish up I found him sitting fully clothed on the bathroom floor playing with those little tissue paper gunpowder poppers. I really don’t know what we would have done if Vera had been a boy.

Today was uneventful. We went to church, then I completed some long overdue chores. The garland around the front door and the Christmas lights are finally down from out front. Also, our garage can park two cars for the first time in about a year thanks to a bunch of cleaning and me finally building the rolling stand for my drill press I’ve been meaning to work on since February 2019.

For those of you who enjoy my misfortune here’s a reward for hanging in to the end. As I sat here in my chair enjoying a glass of Evan Williams Bottled in Bond and typing this (these are composed in the stock Notes app on my phone hence the terrible editing) I heard my wife utter an annoyed groan from the bedroom. Moments later she came out holding my wallet which I had apparently neglected to remove from my pants before she did laundry.

Despite having gone through the dryer, the contents are not dry. Fortunately I try to keep as small a wallet as possible, so there wasn’t too much damage. Unfortunately, my driver’s license expired last Friday.

Looks like I get a trip to the DMV next week