Jenn's Zen

This past Saturday was a beautiful thing.

It was the perfect symbiosis of life as JD and I have figured out thus far. We all like to sleep in.  Well, to qualify that the little girl likes to “snuggle in”.  If someone is willing to get her something to eat and let her snuggle back into the bed to watch TV, the morning is golden. Because of our schedules, the way that they are, this is best enjoyed on Saturdays. This last week the breakfast and snuggling were delayed a bit even by E’s normal routine. She is usually up and ready to face the world at 6:45 am and then detained in her room until her clock reads 7:00 am. At that time she is allowed to venture out and seek comfort for her hungry belly and cold feet. This is of course assuming that she hasn’t already climbed into our bed between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00 am. When this happens, as long as she goes back to sleep, I don’t mind anymore (notice the anymore, I’m relaxing into motherhood!).

So, back to Saturday… 8:00 am E and I are up and had toast or cereal or some such token of breakfast. I got dressed, she got dressed and then we both went back to mommy and daddy’s room to watch TV. An hour or so later JD joined us in the awakened state. He was hungry, but neither cereal nor toast was sounding good. I mentioned IHOP and heard, “Do they deliver?” “Um, no.” And truthfully soggy lukewarm pancakes with rubbery eggs just don’t sound very good out of a Styrofoam box. The Saturday attire of t-shirt, hat, cargo shorts was donned by JD and off we went. Surprisingly the wait was less than 20 minutes and we were seated in a timely manner. YUM! When IHOP sounds good, and then I actually get to eat it, YUM! That’s all I have to say. By the way, I order the same thing EVERY time: Harvest nut & grain pancake combo, eggs over medium w/ sausage. High cholesterol be damned. It isn’t like I eat it every week, or even every month for that matter.
On the IHOP kid menu was a special Horton Hear’s a Who kid meal. The conversation then shifted to the movie, had we heard if it was good? Yes. Is it playing here in Apex? Yes. Hm… How would you feel about an afternoon movie? Delightful. Done. Plan in motion, leave from breakfast to purchase tickets.

With tickets secured we ventured over to Lowes Home Improvement store. There is probably a new bathroom in our future and we haven’t decided a few of the details yet. We walk around, agree (natural wood, brushed nickel), nod, and I learn my husband likes corner shower stalls and seamless sinks. We leave Lowes and the little girl is panicking because we didn’t check out, they are going to think we are stealing. We didn’t buy anything. This flummoxes her. Is it possible that this is the first time in the five years of her life that she remembers us (all three) leaving a store without a purchase?! Possible yes. To our defense, we rarely venture out to the retail arena to look/do research. We usually do the looking online and the purchasing while out and about. Neither of us wake up on any given day just dying to go look at stuff.

Next is the Goodwill. Treasure hunting. JD has his band and cool band duds are often found at GCF. $30 later we had 4-5 shirts, one pair of slacks, one tux vest (my find!), and (drum-roll please…) and Abercrombie and Fitch sweater which I am actually wearing at this moment. The expedition was cut short by the fact that E had to potty and GCF does not have public restrooms. Why? Why don’t they have a public potty?! Do they not know that people would spend all day digging through the bins and racks if in fact there was a place to pee?! Hm, maybe they don’t want us hanging around.

Gas station down a block had a clean public restroom and JD needed gas anyway.

On the same block was a jewelry store that could change the batteries in two of JD’s watches and fix the band on one of them. The storeowner was a very kind man who only asked for $10 for his services. Love it.

Next we headed back up the hill to ship two boxes and get stamps to FINALLY mail some belated items. The two boxes weren’t late yet so I was relieved to get them out. The envelopes were birthday cards and a check for our Girlscout cookies. I need them like a hole in the head, but that isn’t the point. My cousin sells them (she’s 12, or there abouts, right?) and she earns her way to camp each year. So, I kept forgetting to send my check. Done. No more nagging mail.

Then we went across the street for JD’s haircut. A quickie place but a little bit further up the food chain than the usual quickie place. As a bonus we discovered a possible new babysitter. This while JD tried not to sound like creepy old guy hitting on the girl asking her if she baby-sits, and gets her number.

We were still an hour or so early for the movie and I had Kohl’s cash burning a hole in my pocket. Kohl’s is next to the theater. Off we go. JD hits the clearance rack, shirts, pants, jeans, most for less than $10/ea. I went upstairs for an essential bra. The shoes I decided I liked after-all were not available in my size. Why didn’t I buy them when I was here a week ago? The picture frames in the ad are different than the ones in the store. sigh. On the way out JD sees some cute pants for E. She doesn’t need them, but they are super cute. Done, just in time to get across the parking lot and over to the movie.

At the theater JD knows what he wants at the concession stand, I can’t decide, in the process I actually say out loud that my child is odd for choosing water when offered whatever she wants to drink. Ah the joy. In the theater we have our choice of seating, we’re early and quite frankly I haven’t been to a crowded movie yet at this theater. Of course that isn’t saying much considering how very infrequently we attend. The movie was good. Not good enough that I’ll rush out to buy it on DVD, but good enough for a great family day together. The only hitch was in the previews. The first preview was for the new Indiana Jones movie. There was probably more violence in the three-minute clip that our darling sweet daughter had seen in her whole life, ever. We kept looking over her head at each other, looks of desperation on our faces. She is completely entranced. We decide to roll with it and deal with the fall out after.

Did I mention that it rained the whole time? Sometimes there was more of a downpour than others, but truly rained the whole time. We didn’t bring coats (wasn’t raining when we left) and we were in and out of the car a lot, but we didn’t care. We had a great day together. It felt good not to have a plan and yet get something accomplished. Kudos to us.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Marriage, Mommy, Treasure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.