Kerplooey

Sometimes things go kerplooey and there's not much you can do. I had planned on running when the girls were at naptime, as I often do during the week. We left late this morning for storytime which meant that I left a sink full of dishes. I HATE leaving a sink full of dirty dishes because it means I come HOME to a sink full of dirty dishes. We got home, I quickly made the girls lunch, added to the sink full of dishes, and attempted to get them upstairs. The Princess very nicely requested that I not run today (a first for her) and instead play with her.

We've entered that PLAY WITH ME stage. I didn't even notice that SkyWalker was out of it until I realized that the Princess is now in it. Most of the time I don't notice because she plays with SkyWalker. But the past few days she's been unsatisfied playing by herself or with her sister when SkyWalker is at school and wants Mommy to play with her. It's not as simple as just spending time with her either. I need to get on the floor and play Superheroes with her. Playing Superheroes for her is pretty much like playing Barbie Dolls only with Wonder Woman, Batgirl, the O'Brien twins (she has two of the same female character so she has dubbed them twins. When she calls them she says "O'Brien, O'Brien". It's funny.) and if she's feeling daring she'll grab Magneto or Wolverine or Batman. She is allowed to play with Superman--the one with the broken arm is hers and the unbroken one is SkyWalker's. Anyway, all she wants to play is Superheroes. I do not LIKE playing Superheroes. Just sitting there on the floor and making them talk makes me want to sleep. But, I wound up playing Superheroes.

I got Chewie up for her nap, played a little Superheroes, convinced the Princess to go upstairs for quiet time and quickly changed into my running clothes. Even when I run inside I am still delayed by winter--I have to take off all my multiple layers of clothes and put on my running stuff and try to convince myself that I will warm up and it's okay that I'm cold now. It SUCKS. Lately what I've done when we're staying home is to put my running clothes on UNDER my regular clothes. It saves just a bit of time, but I need that time. I couldn't do that today because we went to storytime and my running clothes are stinky. So, I changed, headed downstairs, decided that since it was now later than I intended I would alter my goals and just do an easy 2 miles. I plugged the treadmill in and ... nada. I thought perhaps I had forgotten to switch it on, so I did it again. Nope. (I keep it unplugged because I have 3 small children.) Then I noticed the silence--I looked up and the baby monitor was off, the clock was off, the computer and cable modem was off. The lights were still on though. I went to the circuit breaker switches thingy and saw one that said "off." I switched it back on but it wouldn't stay on. I finally called Vader at work and after half an hour of flipping switches and running back to see if anything worked I finally got everything stabilized. By then it was 1:30 and while I could have run a mile or so and taken a quick shower before getting SkyWalker off the bus, I was just so irritated that I didn't. I also was a little hesitant to plug the treadmill in again and get on it, just in case something happened while I was running this time.

I did the dishes, swept, and regained control of my kitchen. The girls are sleeping. SkyWalker is now home and watching his 30 minutes of TV. I'm annoyed... but I ran 3 times already this week, 9 miles, and I feel better now that the dishes aren't staring at me with their yogurt covered cheerio yuckiness. AND... I have my running clothes on under my regular clothes (necessary to pick up SkyWalker off the bus) so there's a good chance I'll get on the treadmill after bedtime when Vader will be there to catch me if it launches me into the air.