Lisa Call

This is what a weekend looks like when focusing on 2 major goals (preparing my house to put on the market and redesigning my website) when four 12 years olds visit for a birthday party:

Friday evening:

• 4:00-4:05pm: Arrive home from work thinking that the weekend isn’t busy enough so decide to participate in community garage sale in the morning.
• 4:05-5:00pm: Sort through kitchen in search of something to sell. Fortunately garage is full of things needing a new home as they’ve been decommissioned from my life.
• 5:00-6:00pm: Cook nice dinner for kids
• 6:00-6:15pm: Plan menu for daughters sleepover birthday party. Head out the door to purchase food for party and discover wallet is in purse, which is still at my office.
• 6:15-9:00pm: Settle for plan B: work in studio an hour and work on new website design.

Saturday:

• 6:30-6:50am: Up early to hear answering machine message from sister that airplane tickets for family vacation over 4th of July have just gone up to $600. Wonder why I didn’t purchase them last week when they were under $300.
• 6:50-8:00am: Drive to office (~1 hour round trip) to get purse, buy food for party (they don’t have the required ice cream flavor so leave that task for later), return home as the garage sale is to start.
• 8:00-9:00am: Pull stuff out of garage and slap prices on it. Note it is really cold and windy (as is indicated by the lamp that keeps crashing over).
• 9:00-11:30am: Send kids off to teen court training (they are jurors) as I come close to freezing to death doing yard work during the garage sale. Few people show up, I make $50 and get my tree trimmed and start cleaning up rocks overgrown with grass in my front yard. The snow is not encouraging. Look at clock often wondering when kids will be home.
• 11:30-11:45am: Bring remaining junk in to garage. Label unsold dresser (with drawer that won’t close) and 40 year old folding camp table (that is less than stable) as free and head to yummy thai restaurant for lunch.
• 11:45am-12:45pm: Have yummy lunch and hope that when thai place reopens in a week in new location it is still as yummy.
• 12:45pm: Return home to happily see that the dresser is gone. The camp table is still on my driveway as I type. I’m sure my neighbors are pleased with me – my house looks like a flea market at the moment as there is also firewood, some PVC pipe, bags of tree branches and a big pile of rocks on my driveway. This is all against HOA rules I have no doubt.
• 12:45-1:00pm: Purchase airline tickets for summer trip into alternate location requiring a 5 hour drive on days other than originally planned no doubt messing up everyone else’s plans.
• 1:00-1:30pm: Try to organize house for birthday party starting at 4pm as I try to get son to figure out his plans (something 15 year old boys do not excel at).
• 1:30-2:00pm: Phone call with sister about summer plans. In the background son discovered his cell phone is out of minutes and he has no idea what is going on. Hang up phone recognizing I need to take action.
• 2:00-2:10pm: Turn circles wondering what I’m doing.
• 2:10-4:10pm: Go to store to buy more minutes for sons phone. Drive son way the heck downtown denver (60 miles round trip) so he can attend friends lacrosse game and escape sister’s party. Includes turning around and driving back to give him money after I drop him off so he can take bus and lightrail to another friends house later on (plans changed 2 seconds after I dropped him off – surprise!). Also stop and buy ice cream for party. They didn’t have the required flavors either. Glad I added a second shopping trip to the day.
• 4:10pm – Arrive home 10 minutes late for the start of party. One kid has already been there 45 minutes. Good thing kids are old enough to babysit each other. Discover daughter did amazing job decorating for party – looks great.
• 4:30-10:00pm: Hide in basement packing boxes and organizing as kids make noise during party. Cook dinner, let them make huge ice cream sundaes, be thankful house has not yet been cleaned or repaired for sale as 4 girls are making a mess. Plans of working on website fly out the window when I realize it is just not very quiet.
• 10:00pm: Send girls to room, hope they sleep then head to bed.

Sunday:

• Wake up at 7am to discover girls are already awake and playing Wii (borrowed from kids dad’s house). Wonder if they slept at all.
• 7:00-9:00am: Escape to basement again and pack more. There is always more to pack apparently.
• 9:00-10:15am: Cook breakfast and try to round girls up into car to go bowling.
• 10:20am: Finally get girls in car – wonder if we will make it there by 10:30 to get the cheap rates.
• 10:35am-12:45pm: Kids bowl. We got the cheap rates so I buy them popcorn and sprite and win mom of the year award for about 10seconds. It’s over when I refuse to buy more sprite but offer to get them a pitcher of water. While kids bowl I shuffle papers and redo all my todo lists figuring out what I can get done in the coming week. Also talk more with sister about summer plans. Drive back home (40 minutes round trip drive time)
• 12:45-1:30pm: Make lunch for girls.
• 1:30-1:45pm: 15 glorious minutes in my studio.
• 1:45-2:00pm: Round kids up to leave. Hunt for lost retainer (which was already packed).
• 2:00-4:00pm: Drive kids back home. Not a normal birthday party service but needed to help out another mom that had to work. Also drive in complete opposite direction across town to pick up son – it’s safe to come home now. Total miles – 70, Total time in car 2 hours. THIS is why I am moving to Denver.
• 4:00-8:00pm: Try really hard to focus and get back to work on website or packing. Fail at both. Hang out with kids and play board game instead.
• 8:00-9:15pm: Identify that I can complete an item on my weekly goals for the artist breakthrough program if I write a blog post as it’s the only thing I have energy for.

This must be why others have cable/dish – I’m sure even reality TV might seem okay right now.