My girlfriend texted me in a frantic state this morning asking if I could pick her son up from after-school care. I had planned on working until 5:00, Jon was going to pick up Maria, and it just would not work well with our schedules. I called her to tell her the situation, and we hung up. Then I went to work and had to deal with a bunch of idiotic matters. I felt drained by 11 am. So, at 11:15, I texted my girlfriend and told her that I would get her son, Zach at after-school care. She thanked me with a text containing a bunch of exclamation points. I figured with my frazzled state I needed to take it easy, and take a couple of hours away from work (I knew I’d be answering emails after the kids went to bed anyway).

At 11:45, I visited Maria during her lunch time and watched her destroy her her sandwich. She got a grilled cheese (that was actually on wheat bread) and she tried to rip off the bread in order to smother ketchup all over it. The first ketchup packet squirted all over her shorts. The second, all over her plate. She resorted to dipping her sandwich into the ketchup pond but decided that the wheat bread was too “yucky” to eat (she has her dad’s taste for white bread). I was surprised to see her eat her tomato soup, but after a few bites, she gave it up, too. Luckily, I had brought some mini oreo’s for a treat for her and her friends. I had brought nutter butters last time and got lambasted because they contained peanuts and Maira sits at the peanut-free table because her friend, Janira is allergic.

I finished my afternoon meetings early, and got Maria. She could not wait to pick up Zach. After we picked up Zach, we went to Mario’s school. Mario loved seeing Zach, and began wrestling him as soon as he met eyes with him. We decided to head to the river down from Mario’s school. There is an area off the bike path that has a ton of shells and rocks for the kids to gather and throw. It was a total hit for Mario and Zach. Maria was interested for a bit but was too worried about trying to get Zach’s attention. She kept pleading for Zach to “come over to her because she has a secret for him” but he was too busy running in the river (yeah, his mom is going to love me). Maria finally realized how to get his attention – lift up a huge rock to elicit a world of shells and cool rocks. They picked through them together for a while, and Maria was in bliss. Mario, meanwhile, found a rock in the water and acted like he was “surfing.” After an hour, we took off to the car and headed to Wendy’s for come chicken nuggets (yeah, I know you health nuts out there are cringing right now) and home for a picnic on the deck.

Following the picnic, we rode our bikes to Zach’s to drop him off wet, yet safe, to his mama. Upon our return to our house, we took the fastest showers ever (“just worry about the main body parts – privates, underarms, feet and face!”). We all got in our nighties and slipped onto the couch for two goodnight stories.

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