Light duty night

Wednesday nights are usually a heavy duty kind of night. Not on purpose, just because of the way that things work and the way that people feel they should spend my time. It also varies from semester to semester, but usually Wednesday nights are my least favorite of nights.

This semester in particular…we have cub scouts, scouts and/or young men’s (church boys youth group), and piano lessons. Not in that order. Essentially we hit the floor running the minute the boys com in the door from school in the afternoon.

I have to have dinner prepared and shoveled into faces and be out the door by 5pm, but no later than 5:15pm, in order to get to piano lessons in time. This is not an easy task to begin with. I am typically not hungry for dinner at 4:30pm. Unless I’ve skipped lunch which rarely happens. Can you imagine how hungry I am if I don’t get lunch until say 1:30pm (more likely to happen)? So while the boys are starving when they get home from school and Lance can always eat something…the rest of us don’t get thrilled with eating at that time. So that typically means lighter dinners. I guess that’s good in some ways, they just don’t last as long. I seriously need to work harder in this department to cook things that are new and interesting so we don’t get bored. I personally am already at the “bored” stage.

Then we’re out the door to piano lessons. Piano is not that far from us. Even when the location changes after Thanksgiving, it isn’t far. In fact, it is literally off the same major road we live off of. It is only 1.5 miles to the Wal-mart and we’re talking maybe another 1.5 miles past the Wal-mart. However, traffic at that time of day any day of the week can be a killer to get through. I am only cringing when I think about what traffic will be like on this stretch of Spring Cypress once they get the Junior High School that is supposed to open for the 2010-2011 school year will be like. Murder? It is just heavy. It is going home time after all. So it can take me 15-25 minutes to get down the street, through the 2 lights, and then merged down into the traffic on what results in a road that is one lane each way with the occasional turning lanes. Yep. Fun. Not! I was not impressed when the available times for piano lessons were all going to be involving battling this unavoidable traffic at that time of day. So taking the lesser of 3 evils…I opted for the one that gave me the most time between the end of piano lessons and the start of the evening activities. It was go at 6pm out of class to battle that traffic and be late to karate every single week for the 16-17 week semester OR give myself 30 minutes to go from their piano lesson to the church. That was the decision made, of course, on the premise that cub scouts would be held at the church still.

Of course, cub scouts is not at the church anymore. Evidently making an half-hearted attempt to have the meeting at the church during the same time that the “young men” were there during the summer where you’ve got all sorts of special activities going on is a certainty that it just won’t work that way. *shrug* I am not sure how they drew that conclusion so life of those parents who do have children that do have to go to the church just becomes more stressful, crazy, stretched out, etc. I literally have to get Kyle back through all that traffic to where he has cub scouts and hope that traffic isn’t any worse at 6:30pm than it was at 5pm. It always is. It is no fun. I also have to get Andrew from piano lessons to the church building which is at least 15-20 minutes away depending on traffic. Oh and the church is NOT in the same direction that I have to drop Kyle off in. I am screwed if Ben ever goes out of town or for whatever reason has to be somewhere else. Quite literally Ben and I BOTH have to go pick up Kyle and Andrew from piano lessons in 2 different cars to get them to their destinations. Poor Lance gets drug out in this. So instead of him just being at home hanging out with his daddy, he has to get strapped into his carseat and go along for the ride and do whatever else we have to do that night. I will be way less than impressed if the price of gas goes back up to where it was just 1 year ago. This simply makes no sense. The only fair location for meetings is at the church. Everyone has to make the same sacrifice to get their child(ren) to their meetings.

But this wasn’t a gripe, this was a jump up and down for joy post. Last night they canceled cub scouts for Kyle. One less thing to do. They canceled piano due to the fact that one of the teacher’s daughter has been in the hospital. Woohoo! Only had to worry about scouts and Ben took care of that! Light duty. I like nights like this.