Sky Zone

Today was definitely all about the birthday party for Rose Starr, Johnnie's classmate and neighbor right down the street on Rosewood. We got the invite a couple of weeks ago and I will admit I was hesitant to go. Not because we didn't know them, not really. I mean I remember in Kindergarten, Johnnie and Rose had a play date at Penmar Park and I got along plenty with Patrick, Rose's dad.  The hesitancy was all about not knowing anyone else and not knowing what to do with myself. Johnnie will be just fine regardless. These are his classmates after all and he has at least 4 classmates that he knew well on the guest list. Still, I remind myself it's all for Johnnie, not me. And for Rose and I will suck it up, put on my big boy pants and take him to the party. Besides, it's at Sky Zone in Van Nuys and I found out later it is actually a trampoline park. How fun would that be for Johnnie! And so this  being a Lisa work Saturday, I planned to pick Johnnie up first thing. Except that I was texted first thing by Lisa's office too. An opening in the Hygiene schedule just came up and Claudia wanted to know if I wanted to come in for my cleaning. Those openings being rare, I jumped at the chance. Plenty of time to do that and then go to the party afterwards. When I got to Lisa's house, Johnnie was still asleep and Claire right next to him in the living room sofa. I guess they had played in the sand and Lisa said both boy and dog were too dirty to sleep in the bed upstairs. Why that makes a difference with sleeping on the sofa is beyond me but who am I to question. Lisa just stated both needed a bath, meaning I should give both a bath. That, I was happy to do. In fact, all 3 of us took a shower in the lower bathroom. Much easier to do it there than at my apartment. All 3 o f us getting cleaned up therefore, I headed us to my apartment with McDonald's breakfast in hand. Now all of a sudden my morning was compressed. And I was so glad I did my grocery shopping yesterday already. I went to Lisa's office at 10:30, Kristin Wong did my cleaning as we traded stories about the kiddos, and I was glad to have nice and clean teeth again. And now I could focus totally on the afternoon and the Rose birthday party. What made me feel better was that Johnnie actually had a present for Rose all ready to go, hand-wrapped and everything. Then I don't feel anything was inappropriate. In fact, now I was mentally prepared to spend the afternoon with the kiddos. 

There was just one thing I did not account for. The party started at 1:00 PM. And I didn't know that they were going to do the trampoline activity first before food and that actually meant 1:30-2:30PM.  Which meant that we wouldn't be eating until 2:30 at the earliest. I didn't think about that one. Not so much for Johnnie. He's used to skipping lunch just to do more activities. I was thinking more about me and how hungry I was going to get. Could I suck it up until 2:30 PM? I decided not to. Just as soon as the kiddos started with all the trampolining and jumping around, I snuck out and grabbed me a pizza at the food place inside. I wolfed down half very very quickly and got me and Johnnie some water. And then I joined the rest of the parents. I will say it's kind of cool to see Johnnie with his friends again. And there were at least a half dozen kids from his class there. Look at the pic of him and his friend Caleb doing battle in the balance beam. SO much fun! I will say that a half hour in, all my hesitancy and social anxiety went away. I can do this. And everything was already fine. The Starrs were great hosts and I myself thought this was a great idea for maybe even Johnnie's birthday. The kids got stuck playing air hockey actually and although I didn't bring any cash for any of the other games and they weren't providing any at the check-in places, that's actually not bad that they weren't doing mostly games, after all, the trampolining was what was paid for. Afterwards, the kids had pizza and the adults let them sit with each other and i sat with David and Ana, Alanna's parents and we talked about golf the whole time LOL. See? I do just fine socially! It was almost 4 PM by the time we got home. With the pizza, I ate the rest of my tuna salad as soon as I got home. I was more tired than usual, and I thought it was hilarious that it was ME that was tired simply watching Johnnie play. All in all, Johnnie had a great time which was all I could ask for and he wasn't even all that tired really. In fact, he wanted to take out MY mini-trampoline so he could keep bouncing some more.  I parked him in front of his usual slate of videos and waited for Lisa to call to pick him up. I didn't really talk to her much when I got my cleaning done today simply because she was busy and we really did need to go. Still it was a surprise that we didn't hear from Lisa until it was almost 8 PM and she was back to her dark Self energy, you know the why-do-i-do-this, why-am-I-alive energy. I already knew I had to disengage quickly and not feed into it or she will suck me into it. If I could even not have any interaction at all that would be ideal. But I still had to get Johnnie home. I toyed with the idea of letting him sleep in my apartment for the night. Instead, I waited until 10 PM to bring him home. No need for him to sleep early tonight, he can sleep in all he wants tomorrow. And as it was he actually waited for her to come home before actually going to sleep. I waited too, for which I was rewarded with an interrogation about brushing Johnnie's teeth and Claire's teeth. For which I responded that I did both. She wasn't interested in teeth. She was interested in picking a fight. That's the only way her dark energy could process. To actually let myself sink into it is how it gains energy. And so I went home and tried to clear my thoughts and clean up that energy as best as I could. And fortunately, I went to sleep easily. It was a long day. But other than the Lisa blip, it was a fun, frivolous, happy day actually. And I hold on to THAT energy as long as I can.