Julie Asks – Am I an Adult Yet?

Every Friday, beginning, as best I can tell, around 4 pm, Rich’s company sponsors a Beer Hour.  This is a bit of a misnomer as it never seems to end before 8, 9, midnight, 2 a.m. , thus making it a Beer Hours.  On it’s own, I am fine with it.  I appreciate the need to let go of the week, start the transition to the weekend, socialize with the folks you sit in meetings with all day.  However, why the hell does it have to be on Fridays?  Is no one taking into consideration the spouse who is left at home with the kids?  Has no one thought about the fact that, despite my J-cation, I have had a long week, too.  I have, so far today, (warning: rant coming) gotten the kids up and out on my own,  been to work, raced to get the kids, taken them first, with the hopes of making mother’s day gifts for the grandmothers, to Plaster FunTime only to realize, while walking through the door, that my plan was a bad one, then schlepping (in the rain) to the mall to find something “just perfect” for each of them, came home, straightened out the house and washed and pitted the $45 worth of berries I stopped at the market to get before picking up the kids at school (and, no, I am not exaggerating.  I bought two little things of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries along with one big thing of strawberries.  Okay, I threw in shortbread cakes and whipped cream for Harrison and a few little yogurts for me) which will have been consumed by this time tomorrow and now have to go back out in the rain to drive Harrison and his friend (the same friend he had officially – apparently not – disassociated himself from just a week ago) to a dance.   Then, I get to come home, do the nightly bedtime battle with Georgie (I have been on duty every night this week…that is the price of my J-cation) and, perhaps, have some dinner.  (And I really was testing the temperature of the macaroni and cheese…it wasn’t dinner.  Sushi is on my wish list…)

So, back to Beer Hour.  It comes at a very inconvenient time for everyone other than the imbiber.  It prevents me from creating a sweeping Shabbat dinner (well, not really.  I wouldn’t do it anyway, but it does derail any hopes of a family dinner, even if it is pizza), makes me a little, um, short-tempered, with my children and, frankly (and I know this will come as a big surprise) a little bitter.  In all honesty, I don’t care if Rich goes out at night (he used to go to karate every night which got to be a little irritating, but that has slowed way down) I just loathe it coming on a Friday night.  Why can’t they do it on Thursday nights?  Or Tuesdays?  For something which is supposed to be a quality of life benefit, it is clearly misguided in that, while it may be enhancing the quality of life for the employee, the same is not so for the family.

I must wrap up as the calm which I had been lulled into thinking was going to segue into a pleasant night has disintegrated into mayhem around me (Well, behind me, actually.  Georgie just reported that he needed a band-aid and blood or broken bones are usually the metric by which I determine just how dire things have gotten but I take comfort in the fact that is was just a small skin tear and nothing too worrisome).  I now have to sternly yet kindly tell my children that they might want to reconsider their current behavior lest they discover me lying in my bed with an empty pill bottle next to me.  Then, I get to put everyone in the car (did I mention it is still raining) and deliver Harrison, and all his hormones, to the dance.  So here it is, just before 7pm on another Friday night and Beer “Hour” is in hour number three.  Geez.