Brooks Theater Presents: Twenty-Four Hours Without Daddy

Actually, it wasn't all that bad. The day was pretty much like normal. I had a doctor's appointment in the morning, where the nurse did a finger-stick so hard that my finger is still bruised this morning, but my blood pressure was gratifyingly low, and my doctor said I was -- and I'm quoting -- "disgustingly healthy."

Then I went back to the office and did my usual thing until about four-thirty. Left work, stopped at the gas station to fill up the car. Went to the drugstore to pick up some prescriptions I'd dropped off the day before. Drove up to daycare to pick up Penny.

In the car on the way home, she said, "SMELL!"

"What do you smell, honey?"

"Smell cookies!"

Heh.

We got home, and I gave her a cup of milk and a few crackers (because she asked nicely) and got her set up watching Sesame Street. While she did that, I went into the kitchen and got dinner started. (Someone tell me what I was thinking when I decided I'd plan meatballs for Matt's first day being gone? They taste great, but they're not exactly my most time-efficient dish.)

Once I got the meatballs in the oven and the sauce made, I put away all the clean dishes, and loaded the dirties into the dishwasher. I took a picture of Penny that I'll post to flickr later today (I'm going to try to do a picture a day, for Matt). I made jello, and I packed my lunch for today. I got a text message from Matt saying he'd arrived safely, at almost the exact same moment that I was beeping him to let him know we were home and fine. I sorted through the mail, and put a few more dishes in the dishwasher. About then, I heard the beginning of the Elmo segment, which meant there was only about fifteen minutes left in the show. So I put the sauce on the meatballs, turned the heat on the vegetables, and got out containers for the leftovers.

Then I actually got to sit down for about five minutes. I read the writing that K.T. had posted and sent her a text message, and then Sesame Street was over and it was time for dinner.

I offered Penny some broccoli and cauliflower, and she looked at me like I'd grown an extra head. What was I thinking?

But she ate her yogurt and cheese and crackers with great enthusiasm and in good spirits, so that was fine.

She asked a few times for Daddy, but seemed to accept it when I said, "Daddy's on a trip, so he won't be back for a while."

Penny almost always eats slower than me. That was fine; it meant she was confined to her chair while I put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher. Matt logged in just as she was finishing, so I chatted with him for fifteen minutes or so while Penny watched movies of herself as a baby. (Lots of back-and-forth between Quicktime and the IM client, but since mostly Matt was just telling me about his trip and I wasn't doing that much talking, it was doable.)

Then I took Penny upstairs for her bath. She enjoyed it as always, and didn't want to get out. Finally, I pried her out of the tub and got her into her pyjamas. We went back downstairs and she had some milk while I read Curious George Rides A Bike.

You know, I think it's not so much the length of the Curious George books that irritates me, as the fact that George does all manner of rude and naughty things with no consequences whatsoever. It's not really the example I want to set, you know? And I think that's why Bike is more tolerable than what Penny calls the "parachute" book (Curious George Gets A Medal, which has a picture of him parachuting on the cover) -- at least in Bike, he breaks the bike and is sad, and then he does something he was told not to do and ends up in what is essentially a time-out, and it reads that he's sorry for causing trouble. In Medal, there's an attempt at responsibility (he makes a huge mess while trying to clean up a small one) but it's offbalanced by an utter lack of remorse when he lets all the pigs out of their pen, and willful theft (and literally hiding from the consequences of that)... Ug.

But Penny loves the books. We've hidden books from her before, that we didn't care for, like Pinkerton, Behave!, which is hideously repetitious, or The First Dog, which was horrendously stupid. But when Penny can't find her Curious George books, she gets very upset. So I guess we're stuck with them.

Anyway, by the time the book was done, it was time for bed. Penny tried to get me to read her the other Curious George book, but one's my limit. If she'd asked for a shorter second book, I probably would have caved.

I talked with Matt some more after I got her in bed, and then went to take my shower. As I was putting on my bathrobe, I thought, Well, that was busybusybusy, but at least I can relax for the rest of the evening.

After I take the trash and recycling out to the curb.

Oops. So I shuffled the bins out to the curb in my bathrobe, with my hair still wrapped in a towel.

But then I did get to relax for the rest of the evening. It was too late for me to watch a movie, so I dorked around on Neopets and chatted with Matt and K.T., and I eventually went to bed around eleven.

I got up this morning around six-fifteen, and brushed my teeth and washed my face, and I was just getting dressed when Penny woke up. She didn't want to get out of her crib, so I told her I was going to finish getting dressed, and she could call me when she was ready to get out.

Of course, it wasn't quite that easy, but she seemed relatively content to sit in her crib and talk to me while I was in my room getting dressed, though she called me back in several times before she finally decided she was ready to get up.

So I changed her, got her dressed, and then she followed me around while I finished dressing and put on my jewelry and makeup. We went downstairs, and she had some oranges and milk while I took my medicine and checked my email and got my lunch out of the fridge. And listened to the answering machine message I'd missed yesterday, which was just Sam calling to say she was thinking of me and to call her if we needed anything, which was very nice.

Penny asked for some crackers, so I put some in a cup and let her bring them in the car. I wrestled her into her coat, then we went out and got her in the car. I scraped off the frost (I hate frost) and took her to school. She was a bit clingy and sad and wanted me to pick her up. She didn't even want to look at her teachers until I'd done a few turns of the "princess dance" with her, and then she started laughing and let one of the teachers hold her instead so she could wave to me through the window.

I got to work only about fifteen minutes or so behind my usual schedule; I figure if I work until 4:30 most days, then our evening routine doesn't have to be too different from usual.

So, all in all, very busy, but not too horrible.

But I still flipped off Matt's office when I drove by.

--Liz