Weekend Journal

At 6:30am, I put on my glasses and poured myself a huge cup of coffee. I had been sleeping late for the past few days, and it really hurt to wake up this early. Late night efforts at creating powerpoint presentations didn’t help matters much. I sat on the sofa hugging my coffee and watching the vacant morning
shows hoping to get enough energy to get ready for the morning.

I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do first. Pour the cereal? Make lunches? Copy my files to my flashdrive? Five days of loafing, and my brain had been reset.

After 10 minutes, Steve kissed me good bye and set off for his bus ride into the city. I heard the boys moving around upstairs, and they eventually joined me on the sofa. Jonah snuggled up on my left side, his usually spot on the morning sofa. Ian was shrieking upstairs that he wanted everyone to go back to bed. "Jonah! Go back to bed! Momma! Go back to bed!"

Jonah and I told him to come downstairs and join us, but he was cranky all morning. I don’t think he wanted to back to school. He had really enjoyed the past few days. We all did.

I put all school work on hold for a few days, and Steve took off on Friday. We had uninterrupted family time until I started getting nervous about class preparations on Saturday afternoon. We made side dishes for Thanksgiving at my mom’s house. We tidied up around the house. We picked out new kitchen cabinets. We had friends over for dinner. We took the train into the city to see Santa’s Workshop at Macy’s. The kids got haircuts.

As I took the kids to get their haircut at Nanuet mall, Jonah talked my ear off. "Mom, did you know the tongue of the sperm whale weighs 2 pounds?" (It’s actually 2 tons, but he got the idea.) He rattled off one "fun fact" after another that he learned from his Weekly Reader at school. He has an endless capacity for memorizing pointless trivia and for joining all his thoughts with one "and" after another. He just expects you to say "wow" every once in a while, when he pauses to inhale. Cliff Peterson is born.

As we snuggled on the sofa this morning, a diaper commercial came on. They showed a little baby cooing and did a close up of its tiny fingers and toes. He said, "I can’t wait until I get one of those". "Really?", I said. "You want a baby?" "Yes. If it’s a girl, I’ll call her Vanessa, and if it’s a boy, his name with be Victor."

More than any other boy that I’ve met, Jonah really wants to be a dad. When you ask him what he’s wants to be when he grow up, he’ll sigh and look annoyed that someone’s asking that dumb question again. He’ll say that he just wants to be "a regular dad." Not a doctor. Not a lawyer. Just a dad. I really do love that kid way too much.

Ian was in fine form this weekend, other than a cranky morning today and during Thanksgiving dinner (a car nap gone awry). He chased his brother around the house and made pages and pages of words. I have a stack of papers with the words "Cartoon Network," "Pokemon," and "Chowder." He enjoyed looking at the train sets in Santa’s Workshop at Macy’s. But when a David Sedaris wannabee funneled us into a room for a picture with Santa, he ran away. Santa can be scary. I found the rooms of many Santas to be scary. A little too efficient.

It was a fine five days. But it’s back to reality.

A political post will follow.