Saturday, August 4, 2012

TGIF

Friday! I love Fridays. I don't even have the weekends off, so it's not like it's my celebratory last day of work or anything like it is for a lot of people, but it still just feels magical every time it rolls around. For one thing, it's payday. Payday is always nice. For another, everyone else in the world for whom it is a celebratory last day of work is always in a really good mood, which rubs off on the rest of us. And finally, the word 'Friday' just sounds jolly, somehow. Like a fat, funny, freely fiddling friar, full of.... well, jolliness.

Today was a particularly excellent Friday, in a relaxing, zero-pressure, day-off sort of a way. Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day involving sudden, firey, panic-inducing hot flashes (thank God for the -10 degree walk-in freezer at my place of employment - I've melted a belly-circle into the door from standing in there and leaning against it so often in the past month or so), crankiness, and arguments about the nature of what constitutes real or fake camping (I'm not sure but I may have lost), but I think it served as a foil to magnify how wonderful today was.

For starters, I got to sleep in. Sort of. We all tried going to bed early at night because we were falling asleep on the couch at eight thirty, but then at some point I ended up in the kitchen throwing things and then on the living room couch sobbing hysterically in a state of full, glorious, completely inexplicable pregnant lady meltdown while my husband and son looked helplessly on, and didn't end up going to sleep then until about 11. I slept somewhat fitfully all night (what are you supposed to do with your hips when you are pregnant and trying to sleep, by the way? Anyone have any good tips? It's not like I can exactly sleep on my back or my stomach, or my feet, or my head, so I think I've run out of non-hip-compressing slumber options, and those girls HURT in the morning. And every second of all night. Ugh!) and then proceeded to wake up puffy-eyed and bushy-tailed (bushy pony-tailed, that is) at a ripe old 5 AM.

5 AM! On a Friday! Preposterous.

Nonethless, I was awake, so I puttered around on the computer for a couple of hours waiting to get tired again and then right when I DID get tired again, about 7:30, Max woke up. Facing a day of busy toddler-wrangling when you have had 6 fussy hours of sleep and are dehydrated from the copious expulsion of random tears is no good, Charlie Brown.

Luckily, Max seemed more interested in cuddles than in breakfast, so we lay down on the couch and proceeded to snuggle and then, promptly, we both fell asleep. Whew - I knew that Friday would redeem itself somehow!

(By the way, I'd just like to say as an aside that I definitely just had to go google 'lay vs. lie' and then the past tense of the verb 'to lie', because I was confused there as well. I found the most glorious chart on Grammar Girl's website, http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/lay-versus-lie.aspx :


Isn't that magnificent? Didn't it just improve your already-awesome Friday? I know it did mine. I love the English language. Almost as much as Fridays. But not quite.)

So fast forward a few hours - at some point we had returned to bed and slept in cuddly magnificence and when we woke up, it was TEN FORTY. As in 10:40:00, Ante Meridiem. Which I'm pretty sure is the latest I've slept in, oh, a decade or so. I woke up with a noseful of heaven-scented baby hair and a blanketful of warm sunshine, and I felt great. Great!!! (Well, except the hips, of course. But I keep telling them they only have to get me through 2-3 more weeks and then we will all be able to sleep in a normal position again.)

Okay, cue Friday. Have I mentioned that I love Fridays??

Once our Friday had re-booted itself and started for real, it went like this:

Pay no mind to the permanent marker decorations on the couch. We have a two year old.
 Max was in a good mood and had cinnamon toast for breakfast. He was probably in a good mood because it's Friday (obviously) and because I let him play with the iPad (because it's Friday, obviously... not because I'm a terrible parent who uses technology as a coping mechanism when I don't have the energy or wits to devote every square inch of grey matter to entertain my kid and just need a few Maxless minutes to get things done. ...I swear. Friday!!). While he ate breakfast, he enjoyed looking at pictures of himself, and then enjoyed turning on the camera app and watching himself eating his toast on the screen. Whatever floats your boat, kid. It's Friday.

Meanwhile, I made myself a kale smoothie. Kale smoothies taste approximately 620% more delicious than they sound and look, I promise. You just take frozen blueberries, a ripe banana, clover sprouts, kale, and vanilla soy milk, blend them, and you end up with magic!

What's that? You don't put your kale smoothies in a Guiness imperial pint glass???? Well jeez, it's no wonder yours taste like vegetables instead of like cool, refreshing glasses of fruity breakfast joy. Clearly, you're doing it wrong. For the record, EVERYTHING tastes better in a pint glass. Everything.

The next couple of hours were spent in delightful relaxation and much Netflix-watching/internet-perusing.
Suddenly, it was 1 pm, even though it felt like 10 am, and Dada was home from work! Now the fun could begin for real.

Arriving in a glow of awesomeness.

After Todd's arrival, we hung out for awhile and had a snack and then piled into the swagger wagon to run some errands.

Max is waving.

Unfortunately, one of the aforementioned errands involved going to Walmart, which *almost* ruined my Friday. But, of course, Fridays are unruinable, and the trip was redeemed by the fact that I bought some scrapbooking supplies, which felt like Christmas. You just wait - one of these days I'll post some of the scrapbooking jazz I've been creating in my album, and you'll be dying to become a scrapbooker yourself, and you'll understand the thrill of purchasing supplies for a new project. Scrapbooking is awesome. (Almost as awesome as Fridays.)

We had to run to Grandma and Grandpa's house to throw in a load of laundry. (Starting tomorrow - TOMORROW!!!! - when we start moving into our new apartment, we will actually be able to do laundry at our own house again! What a concept!)

"Howf! Howf!" shouts Max excitedly, which specifically means "Grandma's house! Hooray!"

Max was ecstatic, because a) it's Friday (duh) and b) he LOOOOOVES Grandma's house. More than anywhere. Including Silverwood. (I know, I know, I don't get the kid either... but then, this is the same child who doesn't like pizza, peanut butter, or stuffed animals.) We were pretty happy too, because having clean laundry is definitely something we appreciate.

Hooray! Grandma's house! AKA Toddler Heaven!

After all of this running around, we headed up to Naples for church. Since we're currently in the Dormition Fast, in preparation for the feast day of the Dormition of the Theotokos (known in Western Christianity as the Assumption, I think), our church has a Paraklesis service 2 nights a week right now. Paraklesis is one of my favorite services ever - so, how fitting to have it on a Friday! ;-)




When we returned home, we had a veritable Friday feast: 



...Um, okay, so it's not exactly a feast. But it was the best I could do when I was hungry and tired and Baby Nichols was hungry and tired and Todd and Max were, surprise, also hungry and tired. Chickpeas and scrambled eggs with butter and heaps of fresh-ground black pepper. We ate it out of paper bowls, by the way, because one of the things about being nine months' pregnant is that you aren't allowed to do dishes. (Honest! Any doctor will tell you! *cough* ...Erm... please don't give away my secret). I think you're also not allowed to cook at this point in gestation, a rule to which I try to adhere whenever possible, but I do have to break down sometimes when we're out of husband-friendly macaroni and on the verge of starvation. Either that or we go to Pita Pit, which seems to be happening more and more often these days. I love Pita Pit. Almost as much as I love Fridays. But not quite.

So, that concludes the Friday adventures of the Nichols family. Whew! I know, it's a lot of work to be us. We have fun, though. Now, it's off to bed. If anyone has thought of any good sleeping positions for sore-hipped pregnant ladies since the beginning of this post, now would be the time to step forward. Just saying. I'll probably wake up and be unable to sleep at about 3 am, though, so you can tell me then, too. Thanks. You're a pal.

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