Mixed feelings and random thoughts

It’s 3.15 am. I went to bed really early last night, as I often do when my husband is on a business trip, and sometimes it’s great and I wake up in the morning all refreshed, other times I wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep. I have been awake for an hour, at which point I had to choose if I was going to stay in bed and keep trying to fall back asleep, or get up and do something semi-useful. Loading the dishwasher would have probably been more useful, but I have a great excuse: I can’t make noise. Typing on my laptop, on the other hand, is surprisingly quiet

When I wake up at night I often get random thoughts going through my head, and unless I write some of them down I cannot go back to sleep. So here’s hoping that by the time I’m done with this post I can catch a couple more hours of zzzzz.

"He's handsome, but I think he's a bit too old for me"

1) What’s with the weird couples being cast for movies these days? I think I have seen some of the worst combinations lately. For instance, I watched King Arthur the other day, and quite aside from the fact that I really cannot picture Clive Owen as a knight, him and Kiera Knightley? Weird. Just weird. You know those couples you see and go: “They work so well together” even without knowing them? Of course you can never tell what goes on behind the scenes, but with some couples there’s just this chemistry that translated on the outside, too. Yeah, that was not the case here. I sure hope that King Arthur and Guenevere were a better combination. (This obviously has nothing to do with looks, as Clive Owen and Kiera Knightley are both very good looking.

Other movie couples I feel this way about: Katherine Heigl and James Marsden in 27 Dresses, Jennifer Garner and Matthew McConaughey in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Althought to be fair I haven’t seen that one yet, so I might change my mind (and being a woman, I retain that right no matter how convincingly I may present my argument.)

2) What is it with men and scheduling? I don’t have a lot of complaints about my husband, he’s fantastic: funny, sweet, loving, supportive… and I am really lucky he is so patient, which I think is one of the reason why we are still married, after 12 years.

However, one thing I have to say: after 12 years, he still manages to pull off poor scheduling. After 10 years of marriage I learned that although he realized how neurotic I am about organizing, he still didn’t realize he coulnd’t schedule family-related things without letting me know in advance, to avoid scheduling conflicts.

So two years ago I bought a more detailed engagement calendar, Mom’s Plan-It, which in addition to large spaces for each day of the week also has stickers for a wide variety of things, including doctor and dentist appointments, lunch and dinner dates, school events, birthdays, parties, and so on. It’s really great, and I keep it updated with painstaking precision. I also keep it right in front of the computer, so it’s easy to access and one doesn’t have to track it down.

What  had down for this week:

• Wednesday: Sarah’s English Tutor, 3pm-4pm
• Thursday: Jen Lancaster is in NYC! “Such a pretty fat” book signing, Union Square B&N, 7pm
• Saturday: SELF Workout in the Park, 11am-3pm, Central Park

The first is a weekly thing, but I don’t need him here for that. The other two however, have been on my agenda for months. The SELF event? I bought my ticket in May. In fact, I marked on my agenda the day the ticket sale for the NYC event opened, so I could make sure I’d get a ticket. This is the last event of its kind that  can attend before we leave, so I really wanted to go. Needless to say, I needed him around this week.

The agenda, love. R-E-S-P-E-C-T the agenda.

However when the time came to schedule a trip to Switzerland to look for apartments, when does he schedule his week-long trip? This week, of course. The kicker? He booked the flights and everything from our home computer, in our home office, sitting at the same desk my agenda is on. Did he look at it? Noooo. By the time he got around to telling me the exact dates, it was too late to change the tickets and he had already scheduled meetings. So even after we had already actually found an apartment, he took the trip anyway.

“Hire a sitter!” I can hear you saying. For the whole event? It would be a little expensive. Between getting there and back, standing in line, waiting for the train and the actual event, I could be gone for 8 hours. I’d be so stressed about getting home that it would actually spoil it for me. What good is “me time” when you have to treat it as just another appointment? Add to that the possibility of thunder storms on that day, and you see why I decided that I will probably skip this one So I’m sorry, no event coverage Double bummer.

3) I made a smaller sidebar graphic for my giveaway! Don’t forget to enter, or to add entries – it ends May 17th.

4) Last but not least, because the “writing thoughts down” thing is working and I am ready to get back to bed, I was going to say that my Mother’s Day post is up, but it isn’t yet. I’ll do that tomorrow. I mean, errrr… later on today. Right now, I’m going back to bed. If I fall asleep quickly, I might get 2 more hours of sleep before I have to get up.