A Night Without the Kids

You get back to the house after dropping your kids off with grandma.  New Years in the house by yourself.  You have been looking forward to this for weeks.  Tonight you are going to get caught up with your life, have the quiet to think to yourself and get really ready for 2015.

Walk into the house, remove your coat and savor the silence for about 10 minutes. You don’t know what to do first.  You are overwhelmed with options. You have a running bucket list of things you want to do when you get control of your home again and you literally don’t know where to begin. 

But you are excited…because the undeniable truth is that at some point tonight you, my friend, will get to pee alone.

Tonight you are going to have the quiet to finally whip the house into shape.  Christmas decorations will come down. You will make your purge, donate, return bins and get a jump on that resolution to declutter your home for good.  It’s going to be heaven. But you’ve got time for that…you need some downtime too.

Maybe you’ll watch some tv first. Who are you kidding…it’s time for those yoga pants. Go get them on if you aren’t already wearing them…always.

You walk over to the remote control and hit the “on” button.  Dora immediately begins screeching orders at you. “Not this time, you pint-sized, screeching like nails-on-a-chalkboard, type A banshee.  You have to find your own crap.”  You begin flipping channels.  Several hundred channels of options and you can’t wait. 

Maybe some House Hunters? There’s a marathon on. 

Or perhaps you’ll watch a movie with a lot of profanity…just because you can. 

You could watch the 24-hour crime show channel.  Ring in the New Year with a little “Momsters: When Moms Go Bad.” 

You scroll the channels for a full 15 minutes looking for something to catch your eye. What the heck did you used to watch?  At one time you had complete clicker control, and you were an expert at show choosing.  But now you act like you just arrived in this century and you’ve never seen television before. 

You finally settle on the evil mom show.

You grab your phone because tonight, is the night.  You will play candy crush at full volume. Without the fear of little feet running up behind you and plucking it out of your hands yelling for the Super Why! game. You settle back in your chair of choice, put your feet up, half listen to moms going bad while you crush candies. 

At some point you’ll get into the hummus but pace yourself dear…the night is young.  It’s only 5pm and you won’t start getting drowsy for another 45 minutes at least. 

Even though you are enjoying yourself, there is that voice in the back of your head reminding you what a huge, lame waste of time all of this is. 

It’s a good thing we don’t listen to that hussy. Crush those candies, girl.

The next few hours are a blur.

You decide to get going and go through some of the kids’ toys while they are gone.  Got to make room for the mother load of incoming Legos and V-tech cars and tracks that are sitting in the hallway from Christmas. You'll throw out toys your kids will never miss and have that playroom looking Pinterest ready in no time. 

I mean that was the intention.

At some point you realize you are now just sitting in a bean bag chair in the playroom, playing slots on your tablet and watching moms go bad…still.  Someone ordered Jimmy Johns.  It must have been you.  Taking bites in between spins, you resolve that you are going to get to the next level of Wizard of Oz slots tonight if it kills you. 

Clearly you’ve mastered the art of time suckage. But any minute you’ll get up and start cleaning and organizing like Martha Stewart and June Cleaver. 

Next thing you know, you are waking up on the couch. There’s a half eaten bag of pita chips, and an open container of hummus on the floor beside you.  It’s 6:30 in the morning on the first day of 2015 and you are having a super lame, non hangover “Hangover” experience as you try to piece together your super wild night. Christmas decorations are still up, your butt print is in the kids new beanbag chair and every tv in the house is on the Investigation Discovery channel. 

You get off the couch wide awake because the fact that you had the freedom to stay up late and sleep in doesn't mean you are cable of doing it anymore. 

You wonder how the kids are.  Gosh, you miss those little guys.