Last Sunday was Mother's Day. We started with a beautiful breekfast with pancakes, eggs, sausage and tiny fruit tarts. It was perfect. Dexter had handed me a bouquet of roses the night before and we used it as a centerpiece at the dinner table. Mike did all the cooking and all the cleanup afterwards. He is too sweet.
Originally, I wanted to go shopping… alone. Oh the horror of wanting time away for myself on Mother's Day. The day started out nicely and the day previous had been wonderful, so I thought it would just continue that way. Instead of spending the day by myself, the whole family came along. It went okay for a while. We drove to Corte Madera which is a few miles north of San Francisco. We went to a small shopping center that had a little playground. Dex could play while I shopped, and Mike would look after him. We got there early and everything was fine until lunchtime. Then it started getting worse and worse as time went on.
Mike took Dex out for a drive so he could take a nap because he started getting super cranky during lunch. I went off on my own for a couple of hours. When I saw Mike again, he was under attack from his allergies. He felt so bad, that I took Dex while he went to get some allergy medicine at a Rite Aid a couple miles away.
Dexter and shopping mix about as well as oil and water. He's okay until he sees something he likes, and then he's nearly impossible to get him away from it. I bribed him with the playground a couple times, and then he learned that the playground was just outside. This started him darting for the door to go outside every chance he got. The mall is set up for walking, so there aren't any cars around. It's just an outside path from store to store, so it was relatively safe for him to run outside, luckily. It was just annoying to be running after him with unpaid merchandise in hand, looking like I'm a crazy shoplifter busting out of the door.
Once Mike returned, he took over. He felt so badfrom the allergies, that he couldn't keep up with Dex taking off. He is so fast running now. He's gotten a lot of practice in our new place and it shows. It used to be a fast-paced walk to keep up with him and now it's a jog. At one point, we were at the back of a store, I let my guard down for a second and told him to stand there. Next thing I know, the little booger is hightailing it for the door. By the time I caught up with him, he was about 5 feet away from running out the door. All in all, he covered about 40 feet of distance in about 10 seconds. That was the last straw. We left and Mike has been sick since. It's certainly not intentional, or any fault of his that his allergies are acting up. It's just brilliant timing.
Next year, I'm sticking to my guns and spending at least a good chunk of the day by myself. I love being a mother, but it would be nice to get a day off once a year to celebrate the other 364 days I'm on duty.
