I am competitive. I really hate to lose. It is all because of my brother. Seriously. He is 2 years, 6 months, and 1 day younger than me. But...he is a billion times more brilliant and successful than me. If that doesn't urge a person to try to step up their game and compete I don't know what does! If you know our family personally (but have not met my brother) and have met our oldest son, Buddy, you will already have a good idea of his personality. They are so alike that Buddy would easily pass off as my brother's son. They look alike, laugh at the same jokes, talk circles around me in similar ways, and are very sarcastic in their humor while not caring that the rest of the room takes longer to catch up. They both also "get" computers - and when they start talking about them my eyes glaze over. I don't retain anything. Which means I don't learn anything. Which means that I suffer from a lot of eye rolling from my son when I can't figure something out and my brother..well...let's just say he doesn't answer my phone calls anymore because he (rightly) assumes I am calling to say HELP!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously though, my mother and her husband paid my brother and I for our report card grades. Each type of grade got a different amount. A+ got $10, A got $5, A- got $4 and so on. Obviously no money was given for anything below a B-. My brother and I always competed about our grades and how much money we could earn. To.this.day my brother is frustrated that I had a small town Spanish teacher who gave me an A+ which earned me $10 when he went to a very large high school and took advanced courses which he got over 4.0 GPA's in but on the report card he still only got an A and never an A+ (therefore only $5 and not $10;). Eh, I actually surpass him in so very little that I have to take the victories where I can. The other area I surpass him in is that I have a Doctorate and he "only" has a Masters. Not that it matters since he makes way, way, WAY more money than me (and have I mentioned that he is much more brilliant that me?). But, again, I gotta claim one-up-manship where I can!
So...when my brother, publicly on facebook no less, told me that he only thought I had a 40% chance of successfully being a single mom for a week while my husband and Buddy are at Challenge 2016 that familiar feeling in my gut of needing to show him up came to the fore. I became determined to succeed this week. Darn it.
So now I am keeping a tally in my head of all of the "points" that would up my percentage of success...and admittedly those that would lower it. Because it is a worthwhile thing to do? Of course not! It is simply because I am competitive like crazy with my brother and I need to prove that I can pass up that 40%! Even a 41% would make me feel good lol!
Saturday night the men left at 11. I got JJ to bed and he slept through the night! Score! No, that has nothing to do with me...but it meant I got a good night sleep;)
Sunday: I got the kids to church...only 2 minutes late! Taught a full Sunday School class without my husband (The Enforcer) even if the class was a little more wild and louder than usual. All 4 of the kids sat very well through church too! Then I decided to invite someone over for supper. I was sure that was going to be my downfall. I had to cook, clean, AND keep the kids from...being the kids. But I did it! Not only did I serve a decent supper (I think), I also made a peanut butter pie that I found a recipe for and had never made before (it was really delicious...and unhealthy), and had it all ready on time when our guest and Beautiful and her husband came for supper. Score!
BUT, in addition to that, I cleaned the house! Ok, I had already cleaned the upstairs for the Bible Study last Friday...but I cleaned and vacuumed the whole basement which I had procrastinated way.too.long. Admittedly that part of my house that doesn't get much attention since we only sleep there and people just shouldn't see it. But it is satisfyingly clean, um, cleaner... Score!
AND! Are you ready? I am probably the most excited that I cleaned a bathroom with the Middles watching intently...then sent them off to clean the other 2. From now on they will be cleaning bathrooms. I am very.excited;) Big score for training my kids for adulthood;)
AND! I DUSTED!!!!!!!! Yes! I hate dusting. Back when I only had 2 kids I dusted weekly. I had Bible Study at my house and it got a good cleaning before the ladies came once a week. Then...yeah...it has dropped off to about 2 to possibly 4 times a, um, year. Yeah.... But I dusted! Score!
And the kids did not kill each other despite my distraction! They had been pretty bad for 2 days, but I think that was due to the stress us oldest 3 felt packing up my husband and son for the trip. So, Sunday went well:) I will be realistic and not claim any score for that;)
Consequently, I had a lovely time with our guest despite interruptions from the kids every 90 - 120 seconds. There are people that you sit down with having not seen for years and you just pick right back up. Those are the kind of friends I need because that is about how often I get to sit down with a friend...
Anyway, then I took the kids to a fireworks show. I almost gave that up but decided the kids would like that memory so sucked it up. Thankfully we sat with Beautiful and her in-laws so they helped me contain...chaos. But afterwords I got them to bed (and got the kitchen cleaned up!) with minimal problems. (Ok, I may possibly have warned them on the way to fireworks that if they caused any trouble at the fireworks, during the going to bed process, leaving their rooms before I got up, or going in each other's rooms in the morning waking them up that they would not get ice cream the next day - hey, it worked so I am ok with that). Score!
Monday: JJ slept through the night again so when I woke with EIGHT HOURS of glorious sleep and I hopped on the treadmill while Grace asked to play outside. I discovered that she had dug out a bunch of candy to eat and climbed up on the railing with a 15 foot drop (thankfully I discovered that after the fact) to grab her goggles that "Mom! I got so excited I found me goggles that I accidentally threw them up in the gutter!" (in case you are wondering, she did lose ice cream). I got everyone fed a big breakfast (that they are always thankful for) and we headed off to a town an hour away to drop Grace off with some friends for a few days. I successfully ate at a fast food restaurant with them (for under $13-I won't think about the unhealthiness of it) AND shopped in a store (I had a $30 certificate to use)...and didn't lose any of them or have any mishaps (Did I mention that the ice cream was not given until we were LEAVING the town? ;) I think I scored big points for an outing like that lol! The only hairy moment was when we were in the restaurant and I needed to figure out how to use the restroom and keep all of my different gendered children safe at the same time I could not be in the same room with 1/2 of them. Even Superman was a bit freaked out and kept talking the rest of the day about the "sketchy" guys in the restaurant when I had to leave him outside the door.
Probably the only way I lost some percentage points was when we left the house. I realized that I forgot to make Grace a card for her open each night she was away (and she had been soooo looking forward to it)...THEN I realized I had no money with me (my husband ALWAYS handles the money. I joke with him that I make it and then hand it over to him and he is in charge from then on). Thankfully I remembered it only 1/2 block from home so turned around to take care of those 2 issues despite running 30 minutes late already so I figured I should not lose too many points for that. So...1/2 score?
And...tonight is just relaxing with the remaining 3 kids. Well, sort of. Beautiful spent the day at our house while we were gone catching up on the recordings of Shark Week since they don't have satellite TV. Then her husband came over after golfing and I fed them supper. But now they are off doing married couple things and the rest of us are relaxing;)
My husband and son were worried about a lot of things before they left and let me know exactly what they thought I would not be able to handle. Things like - getting the garbage to the curb (I remembered!), locking all of the doors at night, and making sure everything else is locked up at night. So far I have been successful with those things (it helps that I made a list of them lol!) Score!
To be fair, I feel I have to admit that JJ wanted a new game on his ipad and there was not enough storage so I had to mess with that for WAY TO LONG to figure it out (cough...over an hour. Ok, hours). So that, admittedly, loses me percentage points. My brother would have had that done in under a minute... Sigh...
Tomorrow I work 12 hours and the kids will hopefully be good for the sitters (I split the 12 hour day into 2 6 hour shifts for 2 sitters to save their sanity - one being Beautiful. Even she thinks that 6 hours will be too long... Wednesday I work 9 hours and they will be with one sitter, then I have someone getting Faith to her softball game. I will rush home long enough to feed the kids and get them to Faith's Double Header game. Thursday morning we have to be gone by 9 to go pick Grace back up.
Thursday will be the point breaker. I have plans to (if the weather cooperates and it appears that it will be extremely hot and therefore be cooperative) take the 4 kids to a water park. By myself. Yep, the rest of this week will be kids play compared to that. I am wavering on chickening out so we will see. That and I will have to find something to do for 2 hours with them before the pool opens and they may get so antsy during that time that we won't even make it to opening time before we need to go home lol! Water Parks are always a tenuous thing for us. My husband a very very healthy (unhealthy??) fear of water so if anything at all happened to the kids while I had them at a pool it would be... not good... but we all need to stretch ourselves...right? If you think I am a helicopter mom in life, it is nothing compared to at a pool:( Then Superman has a baseball tournament game that night and the men get back Friday afternoon (YAY!!!!!).
So, every situation that happens this week I mentally catalog if it increases my "success" rate or decreases it. So far I personally think I am batting over 40%. I could make the week "easy" for myself...or I could put in some extras that could boost that success rate to...gasp...possibly over 50%! A good healthy dose of competitiveness from my brother is just what I needed to push myself harder this week. I am so thankful for Ellie's special friends who offered to take her for a few days for me. And for the sitters who will watch the 3. Without them and their help (and several others who are helping me out this week) I can guarantee I would not have had even a chance of hitting that 40% - but I do have people helping and I will claim those points - just like I felt no remorse for claiming the rewards of that A+ back in 1990 lol!
Brother, thanks for always being that poke in the back I need to keep moving forward;) I couldn't do it without you (and thanks for letting me have a little fun with you in this post...you are not the only one in this family with a twisted since of humor lol! Except people may get your humor more than they get mine...gah! See, you win again! ;)
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