I shan't lie

I'm writing this after drinking about half a bottle of syrah and eating a medium-sized bowl of pasta with garlic, hot pepper flakes, freshly ground pepper, olive oil and salt. Okay - and I ate a few mini marshmallows dipped in peanut butter a few hours before that.

That meal (?), gluttony, absolutel disregard for health and ateries and fat cells and the like can really sum up my weekend.

We had a rough one, last week. Along with a fairly pressing work schedule and coming off the Swine Flu, I did the solo parent dealyo most of this week as my husband took an epic journey to exotic areas of our country including Terra Haute, Houston and Sacramento. Why and when will be in the press soon enough (perhaps - or maybe the country's just used to bad economic news from HR Directors these days). Suffice it to say however, that upon his arrival home Thursday he needed immediately to take on the single dad role as I was out for a meeting with a client and then Friday night, as he delivered the final presentation to receive an importing/exporting certificate from WVU (that seemed like a good idea at the time...), I took advantiage of a sitter to support my alma mater's Relay for Life and listen to a speech by my former professor, current friend and always mentor Dr. Bev Hogue as she delivered an awesome speech about her "cancer journey."

So, this activity, combined with the knowledge that Wednesday evening we shall bid farewell to our boys to fly to San Diego and walk 60-miles in 3-Day (The Breast Cancer 3-Day), aided and abetted our decisions to basically take this weekend off. We stayed in touch with our PDAs of course, but really tried to focus energies on the boys and what they wanted to do. A bit of our activities:

• get up early, crawl in bed with mom and dad and giggle for an hour
• have a fantastic early morning read with Dad on the couch
• cherry kool-aid from Mom at 9 a.m.
• free-time in which lots of Wii and Lego play ensued
• lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant including a "virgin strawberry daquiri;" spelling test on the British spelling of words likve "colour," "favourite," "grey," "realise,"; explanation about why "toilet" is a more-commonly-used term across the pond; and fried icea cream eating race with Dad
• trip to the Mound Cemetery to investigate old graves and paranormal activity. Big disappointment, the dog could not come. "Dogs are much more sensitive to paranormal activity," my 7-year-old states. "If there were ghosts here, [the dog] would have acted crazy and we would have proof."
• Visit to Giant Eagle
• Viewing of Dr. No
• crawl into bed with Mom and Dad in the middle of the night - strip off all clothes.
• awake to Mom yelling because someone in the bed is naked
• reading with Dad, games with Dad, being quiet while Mom sleeps in
• discussing Dr. No with Mom and Dad and playing with Lego.
• more Wii
• beating up my brother
• going outside for a two-hour romp with the neighbor kids - ignoring Mom and Dad
• family dinner
• homework
• reading with dad

Yes, incredibly child-centric. And totally against my NaNoWriMo goals (not a word written in three days). And really not productive for preparing for a journey across country.

But the kind of weekend I love best...