Oh. my.

Oh. my. a tough Sunday today and I’m not entirely sure why it exhausted me so. I woke up before dawn because of Ernie’s restlessness. That man just can not sleep late. I found myself pinned between Hattie, Bob and Owen and so found it hard to go back to sleep. Once I got up Owen kept changing his mind about going to church with me–driving me crazy. He decided at the last minute to go so we got out the door a little late only to find the van covered with ice beneath the snow. After lengthy frantic ice scraping and a call to my mother to say I’d be late we took off. Now mind you, in the middle of the night I had told Ernie I was worried about getting in my parents’ driveway. Their neighbors had shoveled them out after the big snow but we’ve had some more since then. Ernie reassured me that I would be find and I believed him. I believed him. I BELIEVED him. So of course as I pulled up to their house I quickly realized that there was no way my van could vault the two feet of packed snow and ice deposited at the foot of their driveway by the plows. I said a couple of words that Owen calls “Daddy’s words” and went around the block. I gave up and doubleparked and slogged up and over the snow drifts. I got in and told my Dad I didn’t know how we were going to get him outside into the van. He just calmly said, “oh, I’ll get out there” and ignored me. So I found their shovel and tried to dig a path for him to get to the street. They have a PLASTIC shovel….a PLASTIC shovel. They have a PLASTIC SHOVEL!! You can imagine how effective that was on the packed down pile of snow. I tried to get into the garage but the drifts were huge and I gave up. I went into the house and told Dad we were going to have to walk through the snow, down the slightly shoveled sidewalk to a neighbor’s driveway. He blithely said yes and I said ” WELL, IF WE’RE GOING THROUGH THE SNOW WE HAVE TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW” and we set off. At this point I was totally stressed out but when we got out into the driveway, watching my father so bent over and carefully picking his way through the snow with his shillelagh brought tears to my eyes.

Of course I wanted him to walk down the sidewalk but he insisted on climbing over the pile of snow. If you don’t know my father you probably wonder why I didn’t try to argue with him. If you know my father, you are merely sighing deeply. Helping a frail 82 year old man with a cane crawl over snow and ice defintely took a couple of years off my life. We did it and got into the van and took off for church. Of course we were late and had to walk quite a ways. Then Owen decided to get whiny and complain about being there. I wanted to just throw him in the van and leave him there to wait for us but instead I used the voice that pretends to be calm and really just lets your kid know that you are REALLY GETTING PISSED OFF.

Owen continued to be restless and whiny and I was wanting to kill him. I stood up to sing (or mouth silently as I do) a song and when I sat down I sat on his foot. He had stretched out on the pew behind me and was sound asleep. Oh…that’s why he was being whiny…he just got up TOO EARLY this morning. grrr. I moved him over and relaxed a little. Of course waking him up after mass was tricky but I promised a doughnut and he grumpily set off to the parish hall with us. A woman I had spoken with once before came and sat with us. Dad knows her but didn’t seem to remember her. He told her several of his stories over and over and then Owen topped things off by telling her all about the opening scene of the SpongeBob movie in which Patrick is naked and has a flag in his butt. sigh.

We went back home, as I hadn’t gotten a shopping list in the chaos earlier. I got Dad over the mound of ice and snow and breathed a big sigh of relief when he was safely inside. Later we all went back over there and Ernie shoveled while I did the food shopping. My back hurts from my frantic shoveling and being so tense and I can’t believe tomorrow morning is Monday.

In other news, Leo’s car, or the Inscrutamobile, as our friend Jim called it, did not win. Leo took it pretty well but it broke my heart watching him try to be brave. Of course he did say it was the worst day of his life, but all in all he handled the disappointment well. My sweet pea. Owen watched the first several races but then got whinier and whinier until I took him home in disgust. He then proceeded to eat a bagel with peanut butter, two bowls of macaroni and cheese and then a bowl of ravioli in short order. I guess he was whining because he was weak from hunger. I am frightened by what my food bills will be when he’s a teen. Of course I’m frightened by a lot of things about the boys being teens….

Anyway, another Sunday.