mammothrept – (n.) Gr., a spoiled child, literally “a child raised by its grandmother”
It’s February Vacation Week in our world, so with barely contained glee we drove to Maine yesterday to dump deliver Charlotte on her grandparents’ doorstep to spend the week with them.
No kid for a whole week! The possibilities are endless! The realities, of course, are a fair bit less so. The times being what they are, it’s not like we’re jetting off to Monaco or basking like lizards on the beach at Cozumel. After the perfunctory visit with the in-laws, we spent a couple of hours revisiting some of our old haunts in Portland. Our favorite coffee shop has a new name, but they still serve the “Joe Conrad” (half hazelnut coffee, half hot cocoa), so we enjoyed a cup, gawked at the vast number of empty storefronts on Exchange Street, tried to remember what was in them when we lived there, gave up, and drove home. The day was capped by watching the season premiere of “Amazing Race” and having cheese plate for dinner. Almost too much excitement to bear, I know.
Charlotte is just as glad to be free of us for a week as we are of her, I am sure. Now that spending a week with Grandma has become SOP for school vacations, she has a whole agenda of must-do items for them to accomplish. There’s lunch at Friendly’s one day, shopping at the dollar store another, going to the movies, dropping in on the ladies at the Town Hall so Grandma can show her off, and possibly even swimming at the Y. Grandma is expected to have an ample supply of Little Debbie snack cakes at all times. Bridget made sure Charlotte went loaded with craft projects, bedtime books, and her school journal to fill up the quieter hours. For this visit, the extra added double bonus is that Aunt Martha and Uncle Yang are also there for the holiday weekend, so they get to do some of the activities that the grandparents are too old and frail to manage, such as sledding. Who could ask for anything more?
While it’s fun for us to be able to go out a couple of weeknights for dinner and movies and such, the real appeal of the week is the break from being Charlotte’s personal slave. No morning rush hour to get her delivered to school, no chauffeuring to and from her several activities, no fighting over doing homework. I love my child, but anyone who says they actually LIKE being a parent is either lying or deranged.
The week will go by all too fast, I know, and we’ll be back to the daily grind in the blink of an eye. Somehow Charlotte will have to readjust to the less-than-total pampering that she gets, and we will have to go back to picking up heaps of dirty clothing off the living room floor and trying not to trip on the mountain of stuffed animals on her bedroom floor. But the promise of April Vacation Week will dance in all of our heads like a twinkling pixie of mirth.
Yay for you and the friends who get to hang out with you two when you’re temporarily child-free!