Rolling with the Punches vs. Panic

About a month ago three of my BFFs flew in from across the country and Canada to spend the weekend, play with the babies and get in some much needed "girl time." They had coordinated their flights to land within a half-hour of each other which made picking them up at the airport insanely easy.

We left the airport and headed to out for Sushi.

I haven't had Sushi since the weekend we closed on this house two years ago November. When I was pregnant nothing looked appetizing except turkey subs and Sushi was an especially nauseating thought never mind the fact that I was not allowed to have it. I have been craving Sushi for months now, so I made sure that everyone was on board with it and found a highly recommended place in Baltimore.

It did not disappoint.

Two of us LOVE Sushi, one likes it and the other, at the end of the meal, declared it good...except for the fish. Ha! It's a good thing that I wasn't drinking anything when that line was uttered or I would have had iced tea shoot out my nose!

Some of the pieces were extremely large. I don't cut my sushi I just dive in and stuff the roll into my mouth. One of the girls figured out how to pull the seaweed apart so that she could divide it in half. One of them tried to copy that technique and used her chopsticks...like a knife and fork...as if she were cutting filet mignon. I tried to not make fun of her but after watching her do this, seemingly endlessly with no visible result, I and the other two girls just burst out laughing. She might as well have been trying to cut down a tree with a herring. (note the Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference).

We laughed hysterically, jumped from topic to topic and left with our bellies full but our wallets not ridiculously light. I even ordered some sushi rolls to take home to hubby who was being daddy extraordinaire with the boys for the afternoon and evening.

The next day hit the Amish Market and got pretzel wrap sandwiches which are AMAZING and just for good measure picked up some pretzel wrapped cheddar wurst and some pretzel cinnamon sticks. As if that wasn't enough we cleaned out the day old table at the bakery and grabbed some pumpkin bars just in case anyone got hungry!

On the way back from the market we went around two cars that were stopped on a back road and three young ladies standing on the side of the road looking beyond confused. As I backed up to their cars to check on them I noticed that one of their cars had a flat tire.

I know my way around a car pretty well so we parked our car and gave the girls a hand. None of them had any idea how to change and flat and the car with the flat didn't even have a jack in it! The rim with the flat tire on it only had three lug nuts holding the wheel in place. There are supposed to be four. She said her mechanic said she didn't need the fourth. Um...yeah...I'm pretty sure the fourth one isn't just there for looks.

I hate mechanics like that.

How would he feel if someone told his daughter some crap like that. She was driving up and down the turnpike on that thing!

While removing the lug nuts, one of them broke in half. Apparently, the know-it-all mechanic put them on too tight and in the process of trying to loosen it, it just snapped off.

And then there were two.

She asked if I thought she could make the 50+ mile trip to Baltimore for the weekend. I'm not 100% sure but I think we all shouted, "NO!"

While all of this was going on my twins were just hanging out in their infant seats on the embankment. They love to be outside and watching all the action was plenty to keep them entertained.

The girls that we helped were really excited to have learned how to change a flat tire and I explained that as single girls traveling alone there are certain things that they should know...that is one of them.

I love these weekends with the girls. We stay up entirely too late, eat horrible foods and laugh...a lot!

The weekend was a weird comedy of errors that had us running in odd directions dealing with things that most people never have to deal with much less all in one weekend. But, it's par for the course when we get together and we always weather whatever comes.

Most of my friends, if not all, can pretty much roll with the punches. We seem to be able to adjust to whatever comes without much fanfare. I can't say as much for my hubby.

My hubby is a wonderful, loving, patient, kind, understanding, good hearted, fun loving guy...until the babies are crying or he is behind the wheel of a car. Those are truly his major weaknesses. Well, that and he is a horrible multi-tasker. Give him a task and he will knock it out of the park. Try to have a conversation with him while he is doing it and he will completely stress out. Throw a crying baby into the mix and...well...all bets are off!

When the girls were planning their trip they not only coordinated their arrivals but they coordinated their departures too. This made pick up and drop off very easy! The one difference was that one of the girls has a friend who lives in Virginia and she had made arrangements to have that friend pick her up at the airport at the same time I was dropping everyone off.

Great idea until the friend was almost an hour late!

I was not really concerned because this gave me some really good one-on-one time with her that I would not have had otherwise.

Hubby was home with the kids who were evidently fussy and my cell phone started blowing up! So much for “quality time” with a friend that I get to see once a year!

Rather than being able to enjoy our extra time together, I was peppered with phone calls from a stressed out hubby who had evidently lost the ability to think on his own and despite my telling him otherwise, and our repeated conversations about the drop off schedule, thought I was going to drop them at the curb and head right back home. 

I sent text messages to both of my mother’s helpers begging assistance and discovered that neither was home and therefore unavailable!

I contacted a friend and told her what was going on and she said she’d go right over. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

For the most part the kids are pretty easy. Their fussiness is usually short-lived and they giggle at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, my hubby is not all that easy to distract and once the kids start crying his ability to think goes out the window.

I understand that crying or fussy babies can get on your nerves; they get on mine too. What I don’t understand is the panicked response to it.

My mother assures me that this is just a normal male reaction to crying babies.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a stage that my hubby is going to grow out of!