Not a fun morning
I woke up this morning to a big puddle on the kitchen floor and an unfrozen freezer-ful of food. It took me a long while to clean out the freezer (melted popsicle juice dripping from the top shelf, anyone?), then I just had time to bathe and feed Norah and put her back down for a nap when the doorbell rang.
It was Elliot's friend from school coming to play. That's great! We had invited him for 10 AM and he was right on time. It was also Elliot's friend from school's two parents, whom I had met very casually before, at the door, waiting to be invited in. Oh, okay, come in! Can I offer you a drink? Let's visit for a while. Excuse my pajamas, you see, we had a disaster with the freezer this morning and I'm getting a late start. I didn't mention that none of us had had a morsel of breakfast yet. So we sat and chatted. . .and chatted. . .and chatted. I dropped a subtle hint or two that I would be happy to drop their son off in a few hours if they wanted to get stuff done. No bites, so after a full 80 minutes of chatting -- with me in my pajamas, children starving -- I couldn't stand it any longer and said, "I've really got to get in the shower this morning. Really, let me bring Ryan home in a little while." And I essentially shooed them out the door.
Was that horrible of me? What would you have done? And who has that much time on their hands that mom and dad can go to a playdate with their child and sit and talk for hours? Also, if it's past 11 and you're at someone's house and she is still in her pajamas, isn't it time to excuse yourself so she can start her day? I mean, really.
It was Elliot's friend from school coming to play. That's great! We had invited him for 10 AM and he was right on time. It was also Elliot's friend from school's two parents, whom I had met very casually before, at the door, waiting to be invited in. Oh, okay, come in! Can I offer you a drink? Let's visit for a while. Excuse my pajamas, you see, we had a disaster with the freezer this morning and I'm getting a late start. I didn't mention that none of us had had a morsel of breakfast yet. So we sat and chatted. . .and chatted. . .and chatted. I dropped a subtle hint or two that I would be happy to drop their son off in a few hours if they wanted to get stuff done. No bites, so after a full 80 minutes of chatting -- with me in my pajamas, children starving -- I couldn't stand it any longer and said, "I've really got to get in the shower this morning. Really, let me bring Ryan home in a little while." And I essentially shooed them out the door.
Was that horrible of me? What would you have done? And who has that much time on their hands that mom and dad can go to a playdate with their child and sit and talk for hours? Also, if it's past 11 and you're at someone's house and she is still in her pajamas, isn't it time to excuse yourself so she can start her day? I mean, really.
Comments
On the other hand, I suppose they wanted to get to know you better to make sure their son wasn't spending time in the home of a weirdo... who wears pajamas all day. :)
I'm so sorry about your freezer. I hope it's not serious. I thought my bottom-drawer freezer was broken once, but it turned out (thankfully) that my toddler had simply opened the door and turned the temperature dial to zero. Whew! Maybe yours will be that simple. Good luck!
How's the freezer? If I recall, it's pretty new, right?
You did the right thing in my opinion.
So sorry about the kitchen puddle. no fun.
And you would think that if they wanted to get to know you better, they could stay for 5 mins, scope out the place, make sure no one was going to die or be neglected, and make a date for dinner together or something. Or maybe they don't do babysitters either. Maybe they have never had a babysitter or a play date and really have a hard time breaking up the family unit. I am spending way too much time exploring the options here. Sorry about your morning.
Then when they got here, they saw a (relatively) clean house, we talked about how my kids have limited computer/game time, if Ryan was allowed to jump on our trampoline, how we both dislike toy guns, they commented on how quiet it was for having so many boys. Honestly, there was nothing they could have had issues with in our house that would have made them nervous about leaving him with us! I think cjane wins for being dead-on: simply oblivious!
If I ever become famous, or Steve does or something, remind me to get rid of blog posts like this one which target specific people. Thanks.
"The party of the first part agrees to stay a minimum of 3 minutes and a maximum of 10 minutes unless the party of the second part indicates that an extension is amenable to both parties."
Argh.
I liked your comment above about if you were famous you'd have to delete this link. Seeing all the election signs, I was thinking on my drive home yesterday that if I ever run for office I won't get the stripper vote after I complained about all the stripper bumper stickers at Seth's preschool in a previous blog entry.