The Significance of the Midweek Pattern

So today we go back to not having to drop Johnnie off at Lisa's at the beginning of the day. With Lisa's office almost officially opening, or at least she's seeing patients now twice a week, we both agreed she wouldn't have much time to watch Johnnie in the morning on Wednesday anymore. Not that she could even get to the lessons anyway. Really I was doing it as a favor for Lisa who was really struggling with being cooped up in the house alone with nothing much to do. But I didn't really need to do it because I had that much work to do on Wednesdays. I just told Lisa that. And so today was simply just like another weekday. We get up, we go get breakfast at McDonald's and depending on the meeting schedule this morning, I let Johnnie do NumberJacks or Numberbots until he's ready to start with his lessons. I swear I do not understand how Lisa can't even get through one day of lessons. We get done before lunchtime and that's while I'm trying to stretch the lessons. Example, I let Johnnie color his math objects, not just draw them. Buys me an extra 10 whole minutes LOL. I even threw in a couple of PE classes, and some extra work everywhere else. Actually, I am trying to also remember that each minute I get with Johnnie is pretty special and in the future I will remember this time of the lockdown and homeschooling and look at it fondly. Already his teacher(s) are sounding more emotional than usual as the schoolyear actually draws to a close in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, it is a short week and that sweet spot between the USC graduation and the mid-June UCLA graduation point. Which means it shouldn't be busy. But I am sitting on a whole slew of administrative stuff and although I am lollygagging trying to get any of them done, I still have to get to them eventually.  Today I only have the Wednesday Huddle to do at 4 PM and then off to Panda Express night. Until I get a call from Lisa. It would seem she wants us to meet up for dinner. She probably misses Johnnie a little and I'm okay with meeting up with her. For dinner.  I told her we'd bring over our Panda Express at 6:30 and that would be that...

Except that nothing is ever easy with Lisa. Or at least that is the program I keep playing about her. We get there and Lisa is on the phone with Vatche. She apparently had had her piano lessons. And then Eusebio pulls up and starts doing gardening stuff, apparently unplanned.  And so of course Lisa had to talk to her. We were supposed to eat at 6 PM. It was close to 7 PM by the time we started to eat because of course, Lisa had to fix her dinner too. She must have sensed my discomfort with how she was proceeding with what was supposed to be family dinner. I mean this was for her. But NOT at the cost of my time with Johnnie. I don't know how she realizes that tonight was just for dinner. We were going to eat and then we were going to go. I had no intention of including Lisa with our rituals.  I never have in the almost 2 years since I left the house. Why would she think I'd start now? And so dinner became a pretty uncomfortable experience, at least for me. And really all I wanted to do was get it over with and get us back home as quickly as I could without acting like I wanted to get out of dodge. But see Lisa has all these things that usually happen within her orbit and that is all totally fine. As long as I don't get sucked into any of them. I kept telling her back in the day that she would always hijack my plans. And she keeps doing them now. On the weekend when it is her turn I have no choice but to go along with however spontaneous she wants to do stuff. But NOT when it's my turn. We have a routine. We stick to our routine. And that means dinner by 6 PM. And really it's more about Johnnie than anything. As routine-less he is with Lisa is balanced by how steadfast I stick to OUR routine. And I have no intention of backing off of that. And so it was that we got done with dinner and headed home before 8 PM. Heck it's hand-off night tomorrow anyway, I don't see why coming to dinner tonight was even important. If it's going to be like this I will have to ask Lisa why we even have to do it? And so we went on home, Johnnie got to watch some Cat-in-the-Hat and we did the bedtime routine before 9 PM... with one twist. This time I showered with Johnnie! And boy did he enjoy it. He loves showering with his mom I think and tonight he was really happy he showered with me. I was happy too. I was happy that he was happy. It was most definitely the play-of-the-day.