August 21, 2012
-
Day of Sloth
I have declared today to be a “Day of Sloth” because I need a break. I just want to hang out in my bedroom with my book, my cheesy reality shows, my laptop, and myself.
So far, on my self-declared Day of Sloth, I have:
- Partially unpacked from a road trip with the kids
- Done one load of laundry
- Cut up an entire watermelon
- Taken out the trash
- Loaded and run the dishwasher
- Baked a cake with an 8 year old
- Cleaned up from baking a cake with an 8 year old
- Returned calls to the piano teacher and the allergist
- Not read one single page of my book
I’m sure you’d agree that I am a bit of a failure at slothiness.
Why do I need a break, you may be wondering? Look at the calendar, folks. We have now reached that portion of the summer in which all the trips have been taken, school has not opened, and everything in the entire universe has become “so boring” to the kids I have spent the last 9 weeks entertaining.
Most recently, I took the kids on a road trip to my homeland of New Jersey. We drove up in 5.5 hours on Friday with little incident, save for some sibling in-fighting in the backseat. Oh, and the EZPass wasn’t working.
If you live anywhere north of where I live on the East Coast, then you know what a monumental problem this is during a trip from VA to NJ. Instead of breezing through high speed bridge/tunnel entry lanes and empty “EZPass ONLY” lanes at regular toll booths, I had to wait in line with all the other chumps who are paying a $3.00 toll with a twenty dollar bill.
When you reach for the wallet at every toll between here and there (and several side trips within NJ and then back here again), you realize how expensive it is to travel by car in this part of the country. $9.00 in MD, $4.00 in Delaware, and about $8.00 in NJ. In each direction. That’s a lot of stopping and rummaging for cash.
While we were in NJ, we went to the Boardwalk and shelled out a bunch of cash for rides, and carnival games, and ice cream, and water ice, and food, and mini golf, and the arcade, and, well, you get the idea. Tons of fun, but tons of cash! I guess I’m so used to being able to slide my credit card for everything, that reaching for the cash money hurts a little bit more – even when it’s just $3.00 here, there, and everywhere. But, hey, at least we got a stuffed Smurf, Angry Bird, blue fish, and green teddy bear out of it.
We also got a chance to visit with many good friends and family members, and we had a great time throughout our trip.
It’s just that the minivan and the hotel room are significantly smaller than our house. It’s a lot of togetherness. Especially since the return trip took an hour longer than the trip up, thanks to a total closure of I95 in Maryland and a not-so-convenient detour.
School starts in two weeks, and there isn’t much of anything on the calendar between now and then. Which is good, and also troubling.
Hence the Day of “Sloth.”
In theory, at least.
Comments (2)
I’m declaring two more weeks of sloth. But with kids it’s never full-blown “sloth,” is it? Somehow there are still meals and laundry and phone calls and paperwork and running people around. But hopefully we can squeeze in some good reading time, too. :)
Ha on sloth. But school starts for me on Monday.