Certain days of marketing consulting are very rewarding. For instance, when I do a big meeting and all the people leave and I’m all by myself for 5 minutes, that’s rewarding and I love my job then (especially if I’m kicking back with a glass of vino). Many other days of marketing consulting are crap, such as today. It’s been a day of pretty much every client telling me or perhaps IMPLYING that I am a giant moron.
The pro of marketing consulting and working from home is being around for my kids while still being engaged in something besides…my kids. The con is I am not in charge of stuff like I used to be and people can, and do, make me feel like a moron by second-guessing dumb things, giving me only dumb things to do, or by saying things such as “You’re a moron”. That didn’t really happen but I felt it was implied.
What I would like to do is sit down and write about it but that’s not super professional. I am somewhat restricted in my blogging because I don’t want to actually name my kids (though, in a baby step, a nickname is included below). I’ve been told by my husband to leave him out of it. I can’t talk a ton about clients because it’s boring, one, and two, they’d find out and stop hiring me. With all those rules one has to be broken so I’m going to relay, here, the latest act of crazy around these parts because it’s funny. And better than thinking about how annoyed my work made me.
As it is June we’ve got just a couple things going on. Like year-end celebrations every. single. day. I know that many of you are in the same boat and also that the grass is always greener but one of my friends was lamenting the fact that because she works she couldn’t get to her child’s award ceremony and I was like WATCH WHAT YOU WISH FOR. Because these “end of’s” are every day. And they’re sweet, of course, but also time-consuming. The baby cut one short the other day, due to general unruliness. It was the 50-year time capsule opening at one kid’s school, and they were doing a nice job of it, flag salute and all. Now I believe I’ve mentioned that the baby isn’t talking like she’s supposed to. Except she’s turned a bit of a corner.
She still only has a few reliable words, like “Bobo” (her monkey) and “bubbles” (her favorite thing) and Coco (her favorite sister). It’s frustrating to some of us that she’ll yell Bobo all day long but won’t ever give up a “Mommy”. Well, evidently she’ll also yell Coco all day long, because she did, at top volume, as they were trying to hoist the flags with some degree of solemnity.
She’s also super, super into animal sounds now and if she was either a zookeeper or that damned Diego she’d be in tip-top shape. She can roar, she can grr (in case the bear comes back) and she can also do Moo. Ba. And La-La-La for the three singing pigs. She has a variety of dog barks and the other day I had to get up and go see why it sounded like a poodle convention in the playroom–she’d found her dog slippers and was “Woof! Woof! Woof!”ing in a very delicate little voice.
So anyway, after the round of “Coco’s” and before the barking began I left the ceremony. We came home to check the calendar. Ballet dress rehearsal, swimming lessons, brownie bridging, all this stuff. Gymnastics, which we’ve forgotten every time, since we signed up for Saturday classes, when everyone’s not thinking about classes but lying about like sloths watching cartoons and throwing cereal all over the family room floor. T-ball. Add in, the twins are taunting me with a made-up disease. Every other day the school calls and tells me they have a rash. I go get them. The rash disappears. Today I was like WE’RE GOING TO THE DOCTOR. They snuck us in the back so the rash wouldn’t get on any of the other sick kids. Guess what? Rash disappeared. The doctor thinks I’m crazy, the twins are cracking up, 2 hours and $50 down the drain. The tummy bug we had was real (not real fun, but real) and sucked up a week of our time–we certainly don’t have the manpower or resources for fake, disappearing rashes.
The aforementioned ballet dress rehearsal is for the recital which has a LOT of rules. Up to and including what my 1st grader should wear, makeup wise (perhaps they’ve seen her disguised as an oomph loompa) and stating quite clearly NO TATTOOS which coincides with my husband’s new rule (no MORE tattoos). We were at an end of year celebration the other day for one twin who looked so pretty in her special finery, and was sporting on each skinny forearm a giant tattoo like a sailor, if sailors wore Easter dresses and tattoos that say “Party Girl”.
Picture him in an Easter Dress.
Anyway, we’ve got a lot going on. And we’re moving.
So why WOULDN’T my husband have a barbecue with everyone he works with?
Over the years, he’s had precisely ZERO barbecues. He feels it’s important to keep work and everything else separate. Suddenly, he decided he needed a BBQ. He asked me when we were free, and since I was only half listening, I threw out a date that we were free for like 4 minutes. And then the recital got scheduled, a kid party, oh and also it’s a week before we move out.
Nevertheless he is proceeding with the BBQ. Last weekend, he realized we had no chairs or patio furniture. BECAUSE I SOLD IT AND PACKED IT. He decided that his guests could use the old closet doors that he’d been using for wood projects, as tables. Nothing says classy like a bbq with the guests sitting on my kids’ princess lawn chairs THAT FALL OVER when someone looks at them, eating off old closet doors. As a plus, I just looked out at the Sanford and Son junk heap on the front lawn, waiting for junk pick up and found someone dropped off some old lawn chairs. Why would anyone leave me MORE junk but, I guess if they’re going to, at least it’s junk I need.
My mom asked what I was cooking. How many were coming. What time. I said I. Don’t. Know. I have not asked these questions. Because I’m packing, and attending year-end celebrations ad nauseum, and trying to get my kid to do more than talk to the animals. The barbecue is his. Perhaps the guests can stop by the junk heap on our front yard for a lovely parting gift.
What WOULD be awesome is if we could combine it with an old-fashioned Amish barn raising and get everyone to help build the new house. However. As it stands, what will happen is that I will be running around like a crazy person. Anything good in our house is packed or given away (including liquor and spices). We have a 10 year old Weber grill that is cooking carcinogens into each and every bbq item; we have 2 kid picnic sets, and we have a hammock. So the party will be a bunch of people falling out out of Disney chairs that dump EVERYONE unceremoniously, eating off doors, and wondering if, indeed, crazy people live here.
No, but we can talk to the animals.
Tags: barbecue, too much to do, working moms