The perils of fishing

I like to post on body-pump nights.  Last night as I was driving home from the train, I called DearWife to see if she wanted me to leave the car running.  The night before she had about 3 hours of sleep.  Iced coffee in the afternoon.  That wouldn’t even be a blip on my radar, but it really messed up her sleep.

She gives me the rundown, saving a few minutes of dialogue when I get home.  What the kids had to eat, why she was irritated at me that day, when she was going to be back, etc. etc.  “Oh, and the kids just got up from their naps 15 minutes ago.”  Two hours late.

When I got home, the kids were sitting at the table, looking like little zombies eating their home-made chicken nuggets and cucumbers in vinegar and ranch dressing (goood).  BigBrother told me about his day at the pool, and how he was getting into the deep end all by himself (with Mommy right there of course).  LittleBrother would get a grin on his face from time to time and say “ME! ME!” indicating that he too had been to the pool.

I figured that today would be a good day to go fishing, since they were going to be up for a long time anyway.  So I changed.  In an amazingly short 15 minutes, I was able to corral the kids, dress them, put their sandals on, get my fishing pole, attach a hook, switch the bobber from BigBrother’s pole, and get the kids on the way.  BigBrother was having a great time carrying the pole all by himself.  BigBrother loves fishing.  I cast for him – I’m now sure if it’s because I’m a hoverer or if it’s because he could easily hook me in the cheek.  We got about 3 casts in, and I was telling BigBrother that it was LittleBrother’s turn to reel it in when  I looked over at LittleBrother.  He was wiping something off of his hand.  It was some form of bird poop.  My first thought was “thank goodness DW isn’t here, or she might not survive the horror.”  My second was “I need to perform some damage control.”Amazingly, I was able to do a decent job of cleaning up while keeping both kids away form the hook.  BigBrother wanted to carry the pole back, but with the hook attached, I got him to agree to carry the tackle bag instead.

We got home and I got LittleBrother changed.  We decided to play outside.  The neighbors came by, and their little girls played with out little boys on our play set.  Eventually, a neighbor came by and her little girl joined in.  I kind of like the idea that we have one of the back yards that is a gathering place.
I was talking sports with the neighbor Mark, and from time to time, in a lull, we’d overhear parts of the women’s conversation.  “She was legitimately huge, like she had septuplets.”  “She really didn’t have septuplets though.”  “Jane left before saying goodbye.”  The neighbor and I exchanged a glance – nothing there that could compare to sports.

Finally, at the end of the night, the groups merged and we talked about the night out we’d had on Saturday (DW’s birthday).  I teased Cindy, Mark’s wife about having to drink so much when we played “I never.”  But that’s a story for another post.  I’ll just say that rarely does anything positive come out of that game.

After all the parents giving their kids the “we’re going home in 1 minute” notice for about 30 minutes, we got inside at about 8:30.  The kids were down by 9, and DearWife and I basically vegged out.