When I was a kid, it seemed like things were a bit simpler schedule wise.  Our sports were whatever we chose to stay at school to do and appointments were only booked when absolutely necessary.  Most parents worked all day, so we often fended for ourselves until they came home.

As a parent now, my children are involved in four extra curricular activities (soccer, tap dance, ballet, and piano this year).  They have about 30-60 minutes  of homework each day.  Ben has up to 50 medical appointments a year, which I try very hard to schedule on PD days and holidays, and we have “play dates” to ensure that our children are getting enough social time in.  I need to track days when library books are due at school, which day to send home reading back, and which days I have bought hot lunches for, not to mention special days at school like pajama day – you screw that up and your kids will be mocked for years.

Because of these rigorous scheduling demands, I consider myself as more than a domestic worker for my children.  I feel more like an air traffic controller overseeing a terrorist filled skyline.  The control panel which I use to monitor these daily attacks is a combination of my wall calendar and my good friend Siri.  (In reality, I could just use Siri, but I am far too control freaky to trust my multitude of demands to a non-paper source).

So, naturally when I said that I wanted to take the wall calendar with me to Montreal, it seemed like a no-brainer….until my husband said- “no way” – he needed it.  Say what???  This is the same man who texts me every week because he doesn’t know what time Hannah’s dance class is…..EVERY WEEK!  My usual response is to say – scroll up!  Are you kidding me!  But, marriage itself should be built on a foundation of compromise and trust; therefore, it was necessary for me to demonstrate this by leaving my wall calendar at home.

Benjamin is having an excellent day here.  He had a playdate with Amber this morning and three volunteers came to play with him at different times throughout the day.  Also, as is part of our daily routine, the nursing staff came in to clean the screws in Ben’s head….yup…think about that for a minute.  After that was done, we worked on our basketball game for a while.  Right now we are working on Valentines for the other patients on the floor.  We are hoping to sneak by their rooms tonight to deliver our goodies while they are sleeping!  Tonight we have a movie date with Amber to watch Trolls and tomorrow we start school!!!  We can’t wait.

Oh…what I said before about trust and compromise was a bunch of crap – are you kidding me!  Leaving the wall calendar at home is the equivalent of French President Francois Hollande handing his nuclear codes over to Trump and saying “just handle them responsibly”….ummmm I don’t think so!!!   I bought my own wall calendar and copied all the dates over.  Every morning I send reminder texts home to ensure all flights remain in order.  The control tower has gone remote!

As a sidenote – Ben’s doctor just came in and said he wanted to make some adjustments to the Frankenhelmut.  The nurse then went to get wrenches….yeah…that’s right…WRENCHES!!!  At first I thought they must be referring to some medical tool that bore a similarity to wrenches.  Ummmm….nope – wrenches….car wrenches I think!!!  I’m gonna need some serious red wine 🍷 soon if this continues!