High Expectation

I hate hate hate when I set my expectations too high. I usually don't, and although Mark says I am really negative and a pessimist, I take a more positive, as it were, look at it: I say that if you expect the worst, if it happens, you are prepared. If it doesn't, you are pleasantly surprised. I would rather be pleasantly surprised.

The visit last week from Dave and Natalie didn't go at all as well as I had planned. A combination of an irrational fear, a sick kid, disrupted sleeping schedules and locations, yet another snowstorm, and possibly a few other things made it just not fun. Not horrible, by any means, but not fun, either.

A few things I think were the biggest issues:

• Natalie is 5 months pregnant with their second child. Visibly so. They got pregnant immediately, right as I was initiating Operation #2, so it was painful to be around such a symbol of fecundity.
• Being a SAHM, and a fairly self-isolated one at that, I have more or less a series of routines and can go for an entire week hearing only the noise of the library besides Mark and the Manling. Very calm, collected routines. A 2 year old is not any of those things. Plus, with the sickness and the snow, we were pretty much trapped in the house. So I was over-stimulated and had extreme cabin fever since I haven't really been able to get out of the house since mid-December. The Manling, on the other hand, thought having a 2yo around was the.greatest.thing.ever. I think he really learned a lot about how big kids play. I am really excited about that! They were so great together, although the Ninjakid wasn't a big fan of the Manling seizing every toy out of his hands every 2 seconds. The kids were high-energy, non-stop. It was amazing to see, but exhausting.
  
• And lastly, I think because I knew Dave and Natalie pre-kids, I was really nostalgic for the old days when we would just be stupid and drink too much. That obviously didn't happen.

I had some other things to say about stuff since they left, like going to the Stock Show, and losing our camera, and foreskins, but I'll get to those later; I have to go eat something before I fall off of my desk. I will just say I am really quite pleased with myself: last night Luanne et al came over, and I didn't make even one single comment about the asinine things she does. Very hard to restrain myself, but I did it! I diidn't make any 2007 resolutions, so maybe I will be a kinder, gentler person this year. Yeah, right.