Monday, April 5, 2010

Week 14: #$%*(^*!

Turns out, I'm pretty good with a bedtime on school nights, for a week at least. As was the case with other challenges, it was sort of nice to have an excuse to behave the way I normally should. There was definitely some adjustment -- I sometimes felt tired when I didn't think I should, and vice versa -- but it's hard to say after having done it for only a week. It's not enough time for my system to even itself out, really.

And I have to admit to some chicanery. Saturday night Peter and I planned to get dinner and see a late movie -- specificially Clash of the Titans. (What? It's practically a lesson in Classics!) But while we were eating lad nar, Peter remembered that I had to be in bed by 11, especially since I had botched it the night before. But -- but -- I didn't WANNA go to bed. Peter and I get one night a week without the kids, and it seemed a waste to squander it on something trivial like sleep. Before anyone feels compelled to say it, yes, there are other things you can do in bed without the kids around, but I'm so sick of waking up in a pile of Scrabble tiles, I can't even tell you. So, we gamed the system -- we went back home, moved a futon to the front of the TV and watched a movie. A futon is, after all, a bed, and I didn't say I had to be in MY bed by 11. (I tried to convince Peter that I had to remain supine for the challenge requirements to be completely satisfied, but he wasn't willing to carry me up two flights of stairs, the slacker.)

What it boils down to is that at 34, I'm not ready to hang up the late night dancin' shoes just yet. An 11 o'clock bedtime on a Saturday IS the worst thing in the world. It's our primary non-kid-having time, and let's face it, lots of fun social stuff is happening after 11 pm. I guess I'm willing to sacrifice the routine once or twice a week for now -- there'll be time for an extra couple of hours of sleep when we're in the rest home. So, I'm going to try to keep going on this one during the week -- but a late evening once, maybe twice a week is kind of a treat, and I can usually sleep late the next day so there's no sleep deficit (although it does present the problem of getting back into a sleep routine, which was the whole point of this challenge, but anyway...) The upside to this challenge is that it was super-easy to make up the day I missed last night. I was out like a light.


I had a few ideas for Week 14, but my lack of planning kind of did me in this week and I don't know what I did or didn't do yesterday that was awesome and that I could do for a week. Hide eggs? Hang out with superkeen friends? Eat ham? Okay, ham-eating is awesome and I could do it for a week, but is that advisable? Hmm...maybe.

Wait, seriously, I could eat ham every day for a week. Lord knows we have lots of it leftover from Easter, and that would be much easier than my other plan, which is to give up swearing for a week. Anyone who has spoken to me in a less-than-formal situation or read anything that I've written knows that I tend to drop a lot of four-letter words. I think of them as salt and pepper in the dinner of life. Funny are funnier, anger is angrier, happy is happier with an f-word or a b-word in it. They're color when you need it, you know? Plus, I have kids. I probably let more slip with AJ now that he's older, but when he was younger I had lots of haughty discussions about language and how constant use of obscenities belies a lack not just of vocabulary, but imagination. (And then I'd meet friends at the bar and proceed to swear like a sailor.) I still am careful about swearing in front of Hannah, a.k.a. The Shame Mirror. The other day, while driving to school, I must have made some sort of irritated interjection because Hannah said, "When you are driving and someone lets you in, you say thank you, and when they don't, you say, 'DUDE!' Right? Right Mommy?" What she doesn't yet know is that when I say DUDE! I'm thinking...something very different. And it takes a lot of restraint to stop at "dude".

Naturally, yesterday I was swearing all up in the place when the kids weren't around, since I didn't have a no-swearing plan in place yet. Well, it's Monday and while I've thought all kinds of f's and b's and s's and s-c-s-m-fer's, I have neither spoken nor written one, and we'll see if I can make it for seven days straight.  If you're smart, you'll bet against it.

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