Married to the Mean Mom Has a Birthday

Yay for today being my husband's birthday! Ideally, I would have loved to have been the kind of wonderful wife who plans an entire weekend of festivities based on birthday based fun fun fun, but since we live in reality and have these things called 'kids', not only did that not happen, but it's not going to happen today, either.

Good news: He had a lot of time to himself over the weekend to sleep in, read, play Xbox, workout and watch the Australian Open.

Bad news: He had a lot of time to himself because the kids and I were at a tennis tournament, which means that he had to play with the 24-hour play machine, also known as the puppy. Also, all time spent reading or playing a game was constantly interrupted by texts from me saying things like "Up 3-2, playing great, missing some forehands" or "please bail me out of jail after I kill a few of these moms." In addition, the kids and I knew the results of the men's and women's Australian Open finals, but because he managed to resist the urge to check the results, we couldn't even talk about the match while he watched it by himself. And sleeping in didn't really happen either because even though I tried to be quiet at 6:45 in the morning, I'm sure he heard me whispering "We are leaving in five minutes! Get your teeth brushed and your tennis bag packed NOW!"

Good news: He had Zoe home on Sunday to play with the dog and keep him company while I took the boys to their matches.

Bad news: Zoe woke up with a cough and a low fever, which meant that she spent the day on the couch, coughing and moaning about her low fever, but not really playing with the dog very much.

Good news: Zoe was feeling better last night so we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Bad news: Zoe felt better for the length of the car ride, after which she promptly declared herself as 'freezing to death' before her fever instantly spiked to 102. Mozzarella sticks eaten = one, which coincidentally is also the number of beers that each of us had.

Worse news: Like I said before, we each only had one beer! And he had to drive home so that I could hold fever girl in the car.

Good news: He had the whole bed to himself last night, with the door completely shut, and was able to get an uninterrupted night of sleep.

Bad news: He had the whole bed to himself last night because I was sleeping in Zoe's room, waking up every half-hour or so to hear her either cough coughity cough or talk in her sleep saying "sorry I'm really sorry oops did I do that I didn't mean to sorry." And it wasn't the fact that she was talking in her sleep that was freaking me out, it was that I didn't really know she was capable of saying the word 'sorry'. Anyway, since I managed to get about 2.6 hours of sleep last night, Doug may want to think twice before he opens that bedroom door and tries to communicate with me.

Good news: He took today off so that we could sleep in a little and we could see a Coen brothers movie.

Bad news: Zach managed to suffer from alarm clock user error AGAIN so I was whispering AGAIN, something like "oh my god I'm going to put that phone somewhere that you will never be able to not notice that alarm going off." Also, the boys don't have the motor skills necessary to shut the bathroom door without anything less than a sharp thunking sound. And even though Zoe took a break from the fever for a few hours last night, it has returned just in time for Monday morning. Which means that a bloody, obscenity-filled movie and fatty popcorn has now morphed into girl on couch, Buzz & Woody and Orville Redenbacher.

Good news: I'm going to make him something great for dinner today.

Bad news: I have no idea what that great thing is because since I was home for exactly 10 hours this weekend, we have nothing in the house that screams "the preparation and sauteeing of me will result in a delectable birthday dinner." We do, however, have something that says "Look at me, I'm a frozen pizza."

Worse news: Whatever I do end up whipping together will have to be eaten early, because the boys have a piano lesson tonight.

Good news: Like I said before, he took the day off from work and coincidentally, it snowed last night. Yay for not having to celebrate a birthday by sitting in two hours of morning traffic on a Monday morning!

Better news: I shoveled the driveway this morning.

Bad news: I now smell like I shoveled the driveway this morning, and for all of you that live in a cold, snowy climate and have spent any amount of time outdoors doing something besides standing still, you know what smell I'm talking about. And since Zoe is sick and will be expecting me to be her beck-and-call girl, who knows when I'll be able to find time for a shower.

Good news: I wrote a birthday blog for Doug last year, and hopefully if he reads it again, it'll make him feel happy enough to be able to forget about how potentially crappy this year's birthday could turn out to be.