I Just Sat Down For The First Time In Two Days

Thursdays suck.  I don't even want to go into the whole schedule for that day because it makes me tired to think about it, but in general:

get kids up and to school
knee rehab (bike)
taekwondo class
errands, errands, errands
get kids from school
kid activity #1
kid activity #2
kid activity #3 (which ends at 7:30-7:45PM)

all in a row, with time somewhere stolen to be home with the dog.  Oh, and in there I have to feed the kids dinner and make something for Himself to eat when he gets home, too.

Enough by itself, but then last night a friend had a holiday get-together at her house that started in the middle of kid activity #3 (Himself very kindly relieved me from kid detail on his way home from work so I could go.)  And I still had to pack lunches for the kids and get my house ready for a construction crew when I got home from her house!  I accepted the party invitation earlier in the week, when I didn't realize how bad Thursday was going to be: I would SO have cancelled yesterday if it wouldn't have been rude.  And you know what?  That party was the best part of my day, and probably my week.

It wasn't a huge fancy deal, either.  The lady who hosted it is a bigwig in the local community, but very nice and involved in absolutely everything related to the boys' school (in a good way.)  It's a lovely group of women who are involved in all that stuff in general, but we are usually so busy with whatever events we are organizing that we don't have time to enjoy the company.  The point of last night was simply to spend quiet time together socializing before the holiday insanity gets too insane!  Wine, low-key food, good conversation, and re-grounding in the friendships that keep us going in the midst of all the stupid stuff we have to deal with every day.  I walked out of there with recharged batteries...funny, I hadn't realized how empty my tanks were until they were filled.  And they were very, very empty.

Got home at 10PM and started on the rest of the day's tasks...primarily, getting the house ready for the influx of workers today.  When we bought this house, there were six different flooring materials on the first floor alone: two kinds of (heinous) linoleum, two kinds of carpet, wood in the front hall, and nasty institutional white tiles in the hall bathroom.  Last year's kitchen renovation took care of the two kinds of linoleum--they were replaced by porcelain tiles that look like slate.  The current job involves tearing up both the hallway wood and the hall bathroom tile and replacing them with the same porcelain tiles that we have in the kitchen and laundry room--to get ready for the demo crew, I had to clear out the bathroom and hall closet and hallway.  My guest room looks like a bomb hit it at the moment, but oh well.

And of course, this couldn't just be a flooring job--I was told this morning that I need a new sink and toilet and I already knew I needed to replace the light fixture, so apparently we are now doing a total gut job on the bathroom as well!  At least it should still be done by the end of next week (please???)  We'll need both an electrician and a plumber to finish the job, too.

Thank God that the friends coming for the Cajun feast tomorrow have good senses of humor and are okay with big chunks of plywood floor and having to use a second floor bathroom!  Never a dull moment around here...