Mother's Day 2009

The day got off to a bad start. I'd been sick the day before and wasn't sure if I was even up for a Mother's day event so everyone kind of waited to see how I felt when I woke up Sunday morning. Good news: I felt great this morning!

(I would have felt even better had I been able to sleep well but there is a beagle who lives up the road and when he gets excited once a year or so he howls-barks-barks-barks-howls-barks-barks-barks for about an hour straight and he happened to do that last night. I started counting his howls like sheep which worked for a while until he paused for a bit and started up again. Um, shouldn't his owner be shot?)

I felt so great in fact, that I had enough energy to clean up the kitchen (which had been left just as it was the night before after I made dinner). I found myself doing dishes at 8:30am, wondering how this Mother's day would end up -- would there be a surprise-kid-lovefest or a passive-aggressive-mom-whinefest? Would the kids get up at all? Would I even care? I decided to not have many expectations. I had hinted about many things in the days before Mother's day to help all involved and my final hint was my favorite -- NEW SHOES -- so that's what I was sticking with.

The boy is a sucker for holidays. But he's lazy. So I went in after I did dishes and asked him to look up breakfast burritos on Google and then come on in and make me some.

Sure enough, he showed up in the kitchen soon after with his iPhone and his questions.

Sid: "Do we have 8 eggs?"

Mom: "I'm not sure. Maybe just 6."

Sid: "Do we have onions, green peppers and tomatoes? Do we have sausages?"

Mom: "No sausages. Let's do vegetarian. And let's just do salsa."

Sid: "Do we have feta?"

Mom: "No. But we have jack cheese. Okay, you know what? Just use whatever eggs you have, salsa, cheese and tortillas."

Sid (unconvinced): "Okay."

Robert volunteered to help so the boys went to work and Zoe Niki finally entered the kitchen to help. I sat back in the living room (happily sipping coffee) waiting for the meal. It was probably the first time in a year that I've done that. Besides the occasional sandwich, no one else makes food for me. Let me tell you, having someone else in charge of the food prep is like getting a massage, a facial and having an iPhone app to do my laundry all combined into one.

The food arrived and it was delicious. REALLY DELICIOUS! I don't know if it was because someone else made it or if I was just famished. Incredible.

I liked watching Robert ask what pans could go in the dishwasher and which ones needed to be hand-washed. And I liked when I needed to remind him to dry the pan before he put it in the cupboard.

(I feel a bit guilty about teasing Robert. I'm not his mom and he shouldn't have to help, but it's fun watching him in the kitchen. Just like I'm sure he chuckles when I try to help him with power tools.)

After waiting for Zoe Niki to make the proper "leaving the house preparations" which took many, many minutes and some hours we went to Super Jock 'N Jill to test out some running shoes. They watched me run and decided that I'm a moderate over pronator so I tried on several pairs and gave them test runs. I ended up with something similar to my current running shoe but with more support and a bit narrower and with more toe room. I'll test them out tomorrow. The store has a great return policy. I'm not sure if they'll take back a pair of shoes because I think they look a little too patriotic but we might just find out...

After the boring shoe shopping (which Sid and Zoe Niki tolerated very patiently) we went to see Star Trek which, I think, was our first movie together this year. I've never seen a Star Trek episode or movie and I loved it. Even without knowing much about Star Trek besides the names of the main characters of the original tv show it was enough to entertain and there were many chuckles and it was overall a good story.

We ended the festivities with a lunch out at Boom Noodle. Yum. Thank you Sid and Zoe Niki. It's been a privilege being your mom.