Sunday

5:10 AM: I am awake. Why?

I wonder for at least a couple of minutes what day it is and whether I am going to work today, and why on earth I am so thirsty.

Oh, yes.

And that, friends, was Clue #1 That I May Have Had Too Much Wine Last Night During The Annual Valentine's Day Night Out With The Man. (Dinner at Alborz, saw "The Queen" - most excellent - at Alamo Drafthouse, went out afterwards for lemon rosemary cake at Chez Zee. Nice all around.)

I resume fitful sleep.

7:20 AM: OG is in room, next to my bed, saying "It's time to get up!"

Now, wait a minute here. Is this the same OG, with whom we've been having the conversation about "When you wake up in the morning on weekends, go into the living room, turn on the TV, and pour yourself a bowl of cereal, Do NOT wake us up unless you have a BIG problem" EVERY WEEKEND for the past few month? Is that the girl? Is it possible that she could have forgotten this conversation yet again?

Yes, it's her. I redirect to living room. Again.

7:30 AM: The negotiations have woken up YG. I'm apparently up.

Breakfasting, dressing, and letting my children watch way too much Noggin while I slowly get my shit together ensues.

Clue #2 That I May Have Had Too Much Wine Last Night During The Annual Valentine's Day Night Out With The Man: The diet is still off this morning. I cannot face an egg white omelette with green peppers in it, and decide to go for bacon and real eggs, and a piece of toast. Yeah. I resist the urge to try to find some sort of fried potato product, which is my default hangover food.

I'm in yesterday's jeans and my UC-Sunnydale sweatshirt. (This is a joke sweatshirt. It is actually a tribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's the fictional college that they attend in the later seasons. It's very hip and meta, you see. Nobody ever gets it.)

The Man and OG decide to go for a bike ride. Bully for them. I'm going to drink some coffee.

My neighbor shows me the flock of parrots that have been coming to her feeders. She has a screech owl that lives in her tree, too. I am envious.

10:30 AM: YG and I are out doing weekly shopping. First, to Target for socks and a new pair of cheap sunglasses.

(Clue #3 That I May Have Had Too Much Wine Last Night During The Annual Valentine's Day Night Out With The Man: The bodily functions are awry.

You know that one bodily function? The one that, as I get older, I'm happy if it happens every other day or so? Is happening all morning. Including at Target. Nothing better than taking a poo in a public restroom, I always say.

Then to the Container Store for "gift wrap organizers." (I shudder to myself that I have become the kind of person that would own one of these things, let alone two.) Finally, to H.E.B.

Clue #4 TIMHHTMWLNDTADNOWTM: Headache. Can't look at the liquor section. I buy frozen fried things. For the kids.

A woman stops me and asks whether my sweatshirt means UC-Davis. I sigh, and sheepishly explain myself. Jesus, I'm a dork.

12:30 PM: Home, lunch with YG. Can't eat a salad. Opt for a ham sandwich, albeit fat-free ham with reduced-fat cheese on diet bread. I can't ruin the whole damn thing now.

It's nice and quiet; OG is at the neighbor boy's house watching a movie. She is crisis-free after a nice bit of physical exercise with her dad, so all is well.

She's rocking the world on that bike, y'all. A few months ago, she was sobbing in the street about learning to ride a 24" bike without training wheels. Two weeks ago she was an emotional wreck about having to learn how to do handbrakes. Today, the child is riding over curbs, in grass, down ramps - perfectly. Oh, how I wish she could not panic over every damn thing and see with her eyes just how capable she is. But that's not going to be easy to overcome, not that I would know.

YG is actually capable of playing by herself calmly in her room, for which I am eternally grateful, and I take advantage of that for a good hour and a half.

I clean all afternoon, trying to put away the Christmas gifts (!) that have been sitting on my bedroom floor since the whole closet project began. The Santa Claus chocolate suckers don't look quite as good as they did a couple months ago.

Clue #5 TIMHHTMWLNDTADNOWTM: Brief bout of anxiety. I start to wonder what, if anything, I did last night that was mortifying. Did I take my clothes off in public? Did I call someone an asshole? (Oh, yes, I did; the guy that almost backed over me in the Alamo parking lot. I was about to knife his tires.) Does anyone, for any reason, hate me this morning?

I can't think of anyone. Hope nothing occurs to me later.

3:30 PM: OG is home. We remember the need for soccer cleats and valentines. Back out, to the soccer store, and then hence again to Target.

OG is a spaz at the soccer store - that's par for the course in shoe shops - but she keeps it together. I don't even kill her at Target. Is the medication working? It's been seven days since her last big fit...woo-hoo!

Anyway, nice to come home from a shopping trip not really tense.

5:00 PM: Hangover more or less over, but still do not want the beer that The Man keeps offering me.

We pull out some dinner. (Yes, we do eat at Grandma and Grandpa Time. Do you have a problem with that?) Soup for me and The Man, mini-cheeseburgers that I impulse-bought at H.E.B. for the girls.

5:15 PM: We see our neighbors all gathered in the street. International code for Something Is Up. We go outside and, lo and behold, there are about four police cars and a fire truck parked about five houses down, lights flashing like crazy.

So get this: My across the street neighbors were home, and their four-year-old daughter said, "I think there's somebody in our back yard." Sure enough, my neighbor looked, and there WAS someone in her back yard! They locked the door really fast, and the guy darted out, with the police in hot pursuit.

Turns out some guy stole a car, and then was driving it really fast and wrecked it into a tree just around the corner from us. So, he gets out and runs through our neighborhood, but apparently the police were already right on him, and nabbed the fucker.

Sheesh! We went out to see the car, and it was sure enough wrecked during a high-speed chase. Up on the curb, airbag deployed, everything.

Anyway, whoa, weird. OG decides that she needs another bike ride. She and The Man take off again. What is wrong with these people?

6:30-8:00 PM: Bathing, grooming, reading-to, hugging and kissing. Catch The Police on the Grammys.

Damn, Sting, you still have the arms of a 20-year-old. It was so cool the way you were looking right at me during "Roxanne." Call me.

8:30-9:30 PM: Evening chores. Laundry, dishes, lunches.

The Grammys are still on. Cool about the Dixie Chicks winning Country Album of the Year. To quote Natalie Maine: (Simpsons style) "HAH-ha!" I cannot hear that damned James Blunt song anymore, though.

9:30 - now: This.

And, barring unforseen circumstances, my prognostication about the rest of the night is that in some short order, there will be Get Some Zzzz's Tea, a brief flipping through of last week's Entertainment Weekly that I never got to read, two Tylenol PMs, and a pillow.

And there it is. You always wondered; now you know.
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Me:

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