Family Planning

Photo credit: www.texastribune.org

We had a plan.  Of course nothing went according to plan.  Nothing ever does.  In my 20's when everyone else was on birth control, I was trying to get pregnant.  Now in my mid- 40's when some women are trying extraordinary measures to get pregnant, I'm trying desperately not to.  Which wasn't helped at all when I dropped my birth control pill in the dog's water bowl earlier this week.  But this post isn't about that.  It's about the other kind of family planning.  Trying to get anywhere with 4 kids, 2 dogs and 1 husband.

After my last post which contained a video of my friends ogling my bedroom renovation, a twenty something from Twitter asked me if my friends come over all the time and hang out.  And I about spit out my coffee.  Because apparently if you're in your twenties without kids you have no idea what kind of major military operation it is to go anywhere or to just have people over at your house when you all have kids.  (And I'm not even including cleaning your house just enough so people don't call CPS on you.)

IT'S A TOTAL PAIN IN THE ASS!

As are the kids.  Not to mention, the damn dogs.

So, at the small, intimate renovation party I had (that I feel guilty I couldn't invite ALL my friends to), one of my very good friends, Victoria, broke the news that she's moving two hours away.  If you don't have kids, you might think....A measly two hours?  No biggie!  But you'd be wrong.  So completely wrong.  Because last summer I had two very good friends, Suzanne and Mary move one hour away, to Denver.  So I can verify that I don't see either of them near enough because of our family schedules.

Take for example last Sunday.

When we had a tentative family date with my friend, Mary and her family.

Who also has 4 kids.

Originally, we wanted to go tubing.  Problem was, the river doesn't have cell service and Craig was on-call for work.  Mary has derby practice Sunday mornings, so we'd meet in the afternoon.  That was until Sky came home the night before and informed us he took on someone else's hours at work the next day, not knowing we had family plans.  He'd start work at 4.  So between roller derby practice and work, we had between the hours of  2 and 4 to make this happen. (I didn't even mention  accounting for the dogs' walk to insure they don't pee on my new flooring.)  Then, it takes and hour to drive to Denver, providing Sky with some supervised driving hours with his permit.  Risking the lives of the entire family.  Of course none of this worked.  Well, we didn't die.  So that worked.  But, after a whole series of snafus and life circumstances, we didn't end up connecting. 

But, that wasn't the worst part.  When we were almost home, driving through thick traffic and rain, rushing to get Sky to work on time, Sky found out he didn't, in fact, have to work after all.

Our family plan would've worked too !

 If it wasn't for that meddling kid who's conscientious and motivated to work to earn money to buy himself a car.