Lazy Sunday

Well, sort of lazy. First part of the day included a 5 am wake up time in order to get the girls to the airport for their 7 am flight. I had a small almost-scuffle with the counter lady, when she told me that I could not have a gate pass. I always get a gate pass. Sometimes, they limit us to one (poor WD), but usually, we get two. So I calmly asked to speak to a supervisor. While waiting, different ticket agent told me ( authoritatively) that the only way to get a gate pass is to call the reservation line and change the reservation. I said, “are you the supervisor?” and he said “No, but I know the rules.” I calmly let him know I would continue to wait for the supervisor. (WD chuckled and said quietly into my ear, “if you aren’t the supervisor then just butt out and shut the fuck up!” which perfectly expressed my insides, but the girls hate it when I get snippy, so I was keeping it in check) The supervisor came over, heard the agent’s story of my egregious attempt to get a gate pass, smiled at the girls. To Lemon: how old are you, sweetie? And Lemon says she’s 14. To Mouse: how about you? And again, with the honesty and the 12 years old (for another month). “Give mom a gate pass!” she tells the agent with obvious incredulity that she even had to say it. The agent fights! Explains that it’s against the rules. “No, it’s not. Give mom a gate pass!” Agent tries yet again to prevent the evil of my going through security with my daughters: “They are 16 and 14. They don’t need it.” I interject/reiterate. “They’re 14 and 12.” Supervisor repeats “Give mom a gate pass” Nasty ticket agent says “they were born in 1996 and 1998.” Which is true. Of course, supervisor prevailed, but it would have been kinda funny if we were denied because of the ticket agent’s inability to do math.

Funny in a non-funny “Mouse is hyperventilating” kind of way. (I have no doubt Lemon would be fine.)

guess we are on notice, though, that once Lemon is 16 (in approximately 18 months), they’ll be going it even more alone. Like I told them this morning, “We’ll just drop you curb side with a ‘get outta the cah!’”

Ha ha. Funny mommy.

When they were officially “unaccompanied minors” (before Lemon was 14), we were required to wait at the gate until the plane took off. We don’t have to any more, but definitely want to be there if the plane is turned around or delayed at the gate to the point of taking the girls off. But WD was outside the security area, so I left the gate, and we sat at a food court with breakfast wraps looking out the window at their plane until it was in the sky.

Then home. And sleep! Much-needed sleep. After several days of late bed-times and super-early wake up times (thanks to soccer, doctor appointments, court appearances, etc.), I was exhausted.

I have some of my favorite people coming over in a bit to play Mah Jongg with me. I must pry myself from my new blogging app on my iPad, the one that lets me do this:

with the swipe of a finger, and go buy my friends and I some nibbles & prosecco for our afternoon of chit chat and game-playing.

What do you think of my first iPad post? Hmm?

** Updated to add – bummer that the app does not trigger my WordPress automatic twitter notification when I publish a post, and the app doesn’t have the ability to do so itself, either.  Most of the comments about the app address this point, so I trust they’ll fix it soon.

(photo: Bar Harbor, Maine, Labor Day, 2009)

Bedtimes & Curfews

Back to school just happened.  Ouch.

The kids could not have been more off their sleep schedules than they were this vacation.  (Except for the whispers I’ve heard about their frequent all-nighters when visiting their father.)  Lemon was by far the worse offender.

Our usual conversation during the week off:

Me:  ”What time did you go to sleep last night?”

Her:  ”uh, 4:30….”

For several days.  WD chose not to wake her on the other side of sleep, and she did wake up as late as 2 p.m.

I remained okay with it, because I remembered my own winter and summer vacations:  My sister and I lived in the basement of our raised ranch house – our parents’ bedroom was upstairs, completely opposite the house.   So Sis and I stayed up until 4 or 5 – usually playing Spit and listening to Cyndi Lauper.  We fought, we made up, we laughed.  We went to bed late, and slept as late as our parents would let us.  They had no idea, so they didn’t harass us.

Lemon’s room is across the hall from ours.  WD is a night owl.  She honestly answers us when we ask what time she went to sleep (not to mention that her Facebook activity time stamps would give it away if she lied …)

So when he found her up at 4 a.m. on the Saturday before the great Return to School, he was a little nervous.  Just worried that she’d sleep all day and not be able to sleep before 4 a.m. on the night before school.  I told him that I wasn’t too concerned – that it was okay for her to go all haywire during vacation.  And then I crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t have to eat my “oh, it’ll be FINE” words.

I didn’t have to.  She had plans for Sunday, and so set her alarm and was up by 11 (yes, I’m considering 11 early).  I picked her up from a friend’s house at 6, and she said, “man, I’m so tired, I’m going to bed straight after dinner!”

Didn’t quite work out like that, but she was in bed by 10.  Maybe – just maybe – she freaked herself out a wee bit that it was “too late!” and that she was going to be tired the next day.  Maybe – just maybe – I had to close all her curtains super-tight and then rub her back for 5+ minutes before she could calm down enough to drift off.  But she’s 14.  So it was kind of fun.

Mouse can’t stay up as late as Lemon.  I think she is physically incapable.  But with New Year’s Eve and general vacation hours, she was also pretty far off schedule.  She got grouchy during the day on Sunday, likely in anticipation of the Return to School, and after pitching at fit at WD for [huh, I can't remember ... but it was dumb], she put herself to bed.  At 4 p.m.  She woke up in time for dinner, and still fell asleep at a decent hour.

This morning, Lemon had her usual grumble-face on, and Mouse was in a fine mood.

I, however, really didn’t want to go to work.

___________________

In other news, we just found ourselves re-instituting a technology curfew for Lemon.  We had done this over the summer, when we found her chatting on Facebook or otherwise until 2 or 3 a.m.  I even contacted the Ex when she shifted to his house for a few weeks, to let him know of the curfew and beg him to enforce it.  (Oddly, she never once violated it with me, but did multiple times from his house – so said my AT&T Bill and the trust Facebook time stamp.  I told on her.  She was mad at me.)

WD proposed that the curfew be “when we go to bed.”  I was worried that we were asking for daily arguments, because of our (potentially) varied bedtime.  What if I am absolutely exhausted at 9?  What if I have work to do, and don’t go to bed until midnight?  So I counter-proposed 10 p.m. on weeknights, and midnight on weekends.  Then we let her choose.

She picked mine!  She picked mine!

Oddly, WD (the strict one) thought my 10 p.m. proposal was too early, and suggested we keep 10:30 in our back pockets for negotiating when she complained about 10.  But she didn’t bat an eye.

Probably helps that we discussed it on a day that she was exhausted after a packed Winter Vacation.