This morning, I'm taking Luke to school, and won't see him again until Friday because of my work schedule and child-care challenges. That'll be hard. But we have the phone, Facebook, texting...I miss him something fierce when he's gone. There's this bizarre void in my psyche that's left when my son is away from me. Perhaps that's what my mom feels about being apart from me. I miss her in a weird way, though it's so refreshing to have the house free of negativity and full of calm.
I've stayed on the straight and narrow, with the temptations to misbehave few and far between, and staved off by my sheer willpower and determination to STAY on the straight and narrow. I'm eating (as much as I can tolerate), I'm not doing drugs, and I'm not drinking. My mom is hopefully having a good time and not worrying horribly about me being alone at home.
Today will be a most challenging day at work: 3 doctors on duty, short-staffed with just me and my so-called superior manning the front office, me plunked at the frantic front desk all morning (though I might ask her if we could trade morning for afternoon, just for my sanity's sake), the general craziness of a Monday at the office...Lips just back from vacation, dealing with everyone who wanted a Z-pack and Robitussin with Codeine for their rhinoviruses (which totally doesn't work, but Lips Rx's them anyway).
I'm naturally most looking forward to the sauce making tomorrow. I've put a lot of thought and planning into the evening with TOC over for dinner. I texted him on Saturday to ask him if he preferred spinach ravioli or plain pasta in interesting shapes with the sauce. Unlike his typical lack of response, he immediately texted me back, "Trying to run on the treadmill while texting. I will eat any kind of pasta! Which one is more tolerable to you? That's my choice." I chose this homemade spinach ravioli from Tony's on Northwest Highway that's fucking fantastic that we've got in the freezer. (He texted back that one can only run so fast listening to Elvis Costello and I bid him good luck on the rest of his workout.)
No, I'm not attempting to pry him with alcohol into inappropriate behavior, but I did go so far as to buy him a bottle of cabernet to have with the sauce. It'd been almost 4 years since I purchased alcohol at a store, and I felt like I was wearing a giant sign on my forehead that said, "This woman is an ALCOHOLIC! She has no business buying wine!" But that's part of an alcoholic learning to live within a society that does drink alcohol. Just because I can't have any doesn't mean others can't. People are capable of socially drinking and enjoying a glass or 2 of wine with their dinner. I'm just not one of those people.
I bought what looked like a nice, mid-priced bottle (I have never tasted it, so I couldn't tell you if it's good or not) for him and a bottle of alcohol-removed merlot for myself. I've never had alcohol-free wine before, but there was something about feeling left out of the wine-consuming that compelled me to try the alcohol-removed wine. Yes, it's safe for me to drink. No, I don't think it will incite cravings for alcohol in me. I've had alcohol-free beer before, though I don't even really like beer, and I was fine with it. Communion wine doesn't tempt me to drink, and that's real wine that I have every week.
My mom left a litany of chores I need to complete before I allow TOC into my house for dinner, including but not limited to cleaning the bathroom again (she just cleaned it Saturday), bleaching the kitchen sink (which I would anyway after getting tomato sauce all over the kitchen), feeding and cleaning the parakeet (which I also would've done sans prodding), and she parted, as I threw her suitcase into the back of my aunt's van, "Stay out of the hospital!" Now, those tasks will all wait until tomorrow while the sauce is simmering away for 4-5 hours, apart from the landing in the hospital part (it was during her last vacation when I came down with my first attack of pancreatitis and didn't tell her about it until after she got home).
She warned me not to buy him salad already chopped in a bag, because there's some breakout of ick going around with recalls and bullshit, and to get 3 heads of romaine and chop it myself (fine). I'm fairly certain, Ma, that I can produce a decent salad with little effort. And to make sure I remember a dessert. I don't normally eat dessert, but he does like his sweets, so I see nothing wrong with a nice sorbet to cleanse the palate and take some heat off the garlic and wine stench.
All things considered, I think we'll have a lovely evening that I know we're both looking forward to, naysayers be damned. What he's told his wife about his plans tomorrow night, I don't know, but he doesn't seem terribly worried about it.
So I just got Luke up for the morning and made him a nice breakfast, when it occurred to me that I don't actually HAVE to make his bed (no, he doesn't make his own bed, I know, I know) today because no one will be around to see it and complain about it. The 10-minute rearrangement of all of his stuffed animals was just shredded from my morning routine. Mazel tov!
It'd be awfully polite and far more sanitary if my 11-year old son would LIFT UP THE TOILET SEAT when he urinates for the first time every morning. Without fail, I go to sit down on the toilet, and it's sopping wet on the seat, which grosses me out to no end. So I asked Luke, "Do you ever LIFT up the SEAT when you wizz in the morning?" He answered, "I'm too tired." I said, "Dude, that's gross." He blabbered something about the state of the bathroom at his father's house, and quite frankly, I don't even WANT to know what kind of germ factory THAT is. Meanwhile, my ass is slimed up with the remnants of my son's waste products. Boys!
Off to eat some semblance of breakfast myself, though as usual, I'm not remotely hungry, then onward and upward through the hectic day. Yo-dah-lay-hee.
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