Book-ing a Later Flight...

Well, I'm supposed to be on the road to Chicago right now but, GUESS WHAT?!, I'm not. Tomorrow night is my company's "wrap party" for this project we busted our nuts (and, I don't know... ovaries? Ovaries are basically women's nuts, right? Sure. Ovaries.) on for the last year, and Saturday is yet another "last" gig for my old band. So, I was getting ready to leave when Mr. Z mentioned that tonight was "Reading Night" at his school. What is reading night, you ask? Fuck if I know -- apparently you go back to the school you just left a few hours earlier and hang out in the gym, making bookmarks, listening to stories, eating shitty baked goods and getting a migraine.

So he brings this up, and I mention that I'm not going to be around for it because I'm going to Chicago and that I'm betting his mom probably won't want to lug the two of them around the gym by herself for a couple of hours. Well, you'd think I shivved him in the leg or something because he had a classic Mr. Z lid-flippage. Miss O soon followed. They were both bawling their asses off, the Moron Twins ("We're not twins") were in the kitchen working on the stove, and I just stood there like a giant shithead.

And for some reason, instead of calmly explaining why they couldn't go and promising that they could go "next time," I said, "Okay guys, you know... I guess I can leave early tomorrow morning and we can go." Where the shit did that come from?! I'm telling you, you get to this point where you just don't want to deal with the goddamn conflict anymore and you just end up saying and doing moronic shit. I mean, I guess it's not a big deal to leave in the morning, but it'll just make the whole trip more hectic and shorter and I'll have even less of that feeling of "Ahhh, I'm away." And it made them happy, I think, so why the fuck not. They just owe me big time, and I'll lord it over them for many months to come. "What? You have the gall to stand there and whine at me about playing Monopoly with you when I postponed my trip to Chicago for a WHOLE DAY?! Frankly, I am shocked!"

So, we went to fucking Reading Night and it wasn't horrible. They both made a bookmark, both ate shitty cookies and Mr. Z won a "Captain Underpants" book that he's already read by playing some weird version of a cake walk, but with shitty books. We skipped the story reading by, I shit you not, "Sir Read-a-lot," ("Baby got BOOKS!") and I managed to get out of there with nary a headache. Bonus.

So I guess I'm leaving in the morning. Oh well, at least I can go to sleep tonight knowing that deep down, my kids don't really appreciate it.