I frequently wonder if there is a time warp that i have not been told of....a sort of vaccum that makes the minutes shorter than we expect them to be...or if I, like many others just overestimate my ability to bang out all that i have planned to accomplish...
Yesterday I experienced an extreme of the warp....all the week I had a list in my head of the tiny last minute details that had to be navigated in order to have the kids prepared for the Halloween parade, the girl scout bake sale and of course the Trick or Treating deal...
sew on patches to scout uniform
make candy apples
finish Eves Vincent Van Gogh costume...(paint splattered shirt and palet..easy right ?)
a bit of picking up around the house and some lunch for the kiddos..
ready to go by 2:15
seems like a tiny list ..
I had anticipated having the entire day to accomplish these things...i also anticipated a lovely big weekend family breakfast and a fun last minute costume for me...a huge fan of All Hallows, i love throwing together a last minute something so that i am not just 'the parent' but actually a participant in this awesome silly tradition..
at the last minute things changed when i had to take care of some guests at the B&B...so now the morning would be dedicated to that ..i returned home at noon with 2 hours until departure time to find the kids watching films in their pj's and sleeping bags ...no chores were done...no work had been done to have the costumes ready....'kids at home detritus' strewn all over every flat surface of our home...
Within 15 minutes of my return all three kids wanted me to begin helping them get ready for the parade..now, under normal circumstances i do have some pride in the fact that i can make a whole lot happen pretty darn quickly..but i cannot make candy apples, sew and paint simultaneously..at least not with a positive outcome...
somehow it all happened ..well mostly ..the candy apples were produced by Ana...on her own initiative..however, as it was her first go round she missed the bit about 'butter the waxed paper before placing apples to cool' ...so the apples meant to go to the bake sale yesterday still live here in,our kitchen waiting for someone to figure out how to remove the waxed paper that is cemented to their bottoms...
the patches were sewn on only to realize that somehow in our hurry we had put them over the wrong pocket...still can't figure that one out ..we knew we exactly where they were SUPPOSED TO be sewn..so with 10 minutes remaining until our departure time we pulled a horrid (martha stewart have a heart attack) cheat and put the darn things on the correct side with, GASP, the hot glue gun....
eves VAn Gogh presentation was actually the least stressful and the most fun...splattering an old button down with paint out in the yard...smearing her short blonde locks with spiking gel and dark foundation makeup , sufficiently bloodying her severed ear bandage with a homemade fake blood concoction (red lipstick and Vaseline)..the challenge then was that wet paint and blood was not really conducive to a car ride to st. mikes...but we managed it..and the car came out unscathed...
No costume for me...
The evening was fine...fun was had i think ..(although from my perspective the best part was the short 45 minutes at the pizza shop sitting at the all grown up table)
So...in the end everyone got what they needed...well, no one 'needed' any of this...but they wanted it ...so i made it happen...but not in the calm fun way that i had envisioned it going down...for some reason in that two hour period my heart rate elevated with full on fright or flight...and none of it really felt fun at all....i think that the pressure of other things happening in my life spilled over into the 'deadline' of Halloween prep and sucked some of the fun out of it for all of us...there was not the time for space in between the tasks, humorous admiration of the costume prep...breathing???
So in future I will try to remember the time warp ....and have fun in spite of it ...
Life as Usual
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