Missing the Middle

If you work in an office, I bet this morning a co-worker has already asked you some variant of "So, how was your weekend?"

(If, like me, you work from home and your only interactions are with tiny people and household pets, perhaps you have had this same conversation with the cat.)

Today I don't have a clue how to answer it. I feel like we had about seven different weekends this weekend, and not in the "it was so long and relaxing and awesome that it feels like it just went on forever!" way, but in the "wait, how the heck did all those highs and lows get crammed into two days?" way.

Saturday morning, I was on a mountain. (Um, in mountain pose, at least. Saturday mornings come with an early morning yoga boot camp class these days.) Saturday night? I was spending some quality time in a ditch. (Nope, there's no cute little "just kidding, it wasn't a literal ditch!" note to add here. It. Was. A. Ditch. The highway glazed over with ice awfully fast, and we did an impressive little spin into a snowy ditch. K, for what it's worth, was a total trooper about the whole ordeal, which made waiting for the tow truck much more tolerable.) I feel like that's pretty representative of the weekend as a whole.

On the "awesome!" side of the weekend: K helped me make a blueberry-nectarine cobbler for dessert Friday night (she will proudly tell you that she is a "good helper in the kitchen," and she totally is. I measure and she dumps the ingredients into the bowls, I prep the pans while she stirs things up, and the whole time she provides entertaining running commentary "What's that? Butter? Butter makes my tummy happy!") I survived my boot camp class and managed to sneak in a toddler-free trip to Target on the way home (Target!). The house got cleaned, K kept herself amused long enough to allow Bob & me to watch the original True Grit movie (we'd seen the new one on a K-free date over the holidays.)

On the less-awesome side? Well, the ditch. The ice. And snow. And rain. And thunder. K's insistence on reminding me every hour or so about how she has an ouchie on her face because I accidentally sliced her with my ring last week. (I KNOW. I'M SORRY. STOP MILKING IT.) The addition of several tractor stickers to the hardwood floor. The way I totally snapped at Bob for trying to share fries with me when we went to dinner. (Losing weight maaaay have made me slightly neurotic about looking up nutrition information on restaurant websites before we go and I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY CALORIES THOSE HAVE ARE YOU TRYING TO SABOTAGE ME I ONLY ASKED FOR ONE.)  There may have been an incident involving a diaper blowout and the upstairs carpet. And now Bob is down for the count with some bug that hit him suddenly in the middle of the day yesterday.

This weekend was so all-over-the-map that I'm not even bemoaning the fact that it's Monday! (Well, not too much anyway. I still did a bit of token whining when opening my work e-mail this morning. I haven't lost my mind completely.) This week promises to bring with it a whole lot of crazy (lots of obligations and starting mid-week we're going to be joined by two extra children while their parents are out of the country!) but -- as long as we can keep it on the road and in between the lines? Bring it on.

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