Jun
28
There’s one thing I can definitively say about weekends as a parent as opposed to pretty much every weekend I can remember before I had kids: they used to be too short, and now they’re always just a smidge too long. There’s usually a point during every Sunday afternoon where I look at the clock and think, you have GOT to be fucking kidding me.
Which isn’t to say we didn’t have a wonderful weekend, because we did—the weather was spectacular, and everything felt very summery. We’ve had a tent in the backyard all weekend and the boys (all three of them) are constantly tumbling in and out of it like delighted puppies, we visited the animals at the farm, we found an awesome new park with a vastly entertaining skate bowl, we traipsed through a festival on a hot afternoon and its baking heat and complicated quilt of foodbooth smells transported me back to every fair I can remember as a kid.
Still, after all that joyful exuberance there’s something about the knowledge that tomorrow is Monday that feels less like a woeful all-good-things-much-come-to-an-end tragedy and more like a thrown life buoy, juuuuust within reach.
Breaking news from the No-Shit Gazette: children are exhausting. They will grind you right into the dirt and keep on going, leaving your sad sack of oldmeat behind. I don’t just mean this in the metaphorical sense: I ran a 5K this morning and during the race at least four kids absolutely smoked me, loping effortlessly along like goddamned gazelles while I huffed and snorted and lumbered in their wake. I came home feeling like, hey, I just ran my face off (THERE WERE HILLS. I CANNOT ADEQUATELY EMPHASIZE HOW MUCH I DID NOT KNOW THERE WOULD BE HILLS) for 30 minutes, time to kick back and—but no, of course that’s not an option since Dylan and Riley never stop moving EVER, they just buzz around constantly like hummingbirds loaded on bathtub crank, and not for the first time I thought how great it would be if I could just siphon off an ounce or two of their go-juice. Tap those little mofos like maple trees, and chuck the Red Bull once and for all.
No can do, though, no matter how earnestly I try and hammer that spout into their foreheads. All I can do is try and keep up, and man, for having such shrimpy little legs, they sure can kick my ass.

In conclusion: fantastic weekend, but whew, glad it’s almost over. How about you, do you hate Mondays with Garfield-esque intensity . . . or secretly kind of love them?