Fathers and Sons

Tonight my husband is taking our son to the annual Fathers and Sons outing. The men look forward to getting filthy, shooting marshmallow guns, and not getting in trouble for passing gas and burping in public. At least there are no females there to scold them and act disgusted. So it's a good time for the men. I imagine you can smell the high levels of testosterone wafting through the camp. Thank heavens I won't be anywhere in the vicinity.

It's also a good time for the women. My daughters and I look forward our "girls's night out." We typically go out to dinner someplace that my hubby would never want to go (like the Spaghetti Factory--it's so boring, he says, and he prefers more exciting foreign food like Peruvian or a Argentine --places my girls just don't want to go).

So we go to the Spaghetti Factory (not my absolute favorite either but one my girls all agree on, miraculously) and Leah gets the kid's macaroni and cheese with applesauce on the side. My older girls will get a pasta dish with mizithra cheese. And I will get something green and good for me, like salad with dressing on the side. I'm counting those Weight Watchers points and I don't want to blow them all on a bowl of fettucine alfredo, you know what I mean? I will have a side of pasta with marinara sauce maybe. I hope I will do this. I plan to do this. Who knows what will really happen.

After we ask for boxes for our leftovers and then leave them on the table, we'll go to Adrienne's end of the year band concert. She plays the clarinet and hates it. I don't think I've heard her practice for months. (her band teacher will probably not read this blog, right?) Well, I'll cut her a bit of slack. When she got her wisdom teeth out last month it was an actual RULE that she couldn't t play for two weeks. So for those two weeks she would call me and ask me to take her out to lunch or to bring her home. One time I was flying down Provo Canyon on my bike when she called. I stopped my bike and answered. "Mom, remember how I can't play the clarniet because of my teeth? Well, could you just get me and we could maybe go out to lunch and then you could bring me back?" I remember that I only get her home for two more years and I immediately say yes and rush down the canyon in record time to pick her up.

It was really bad when her cell phone got stolen last week. Oh man, was that bad. You'd have thought her right arm had been removed, she was so disturbed. The girl sends 786 (I know cause I just saw the bill) texts a month. So that's 26.2 texts a day. What would she do with her hands if she couldn't text? Just be extremely grumpy.

Anyway, we'll see how the concert goes tonight. I have no idea what they're playing since I haven't heard any playing for months.

Then we will come home and watch "Music and Lyrics" (I know a PG-13, but what a great PG-13!) Adrienne loves this movie. I love this movie. Hopefully Samantha will love the movie. Since she read "Twilight" she might be more interested in romances, even if they don't include a vampire. Hopefully Leah will go to sleep and not bug me to play with her while I'm trying to watch. You see, I've had a thing for Hugh Grant for a long time now. I keep being disappointed that he doesn't seem as great a human being in real life as he is in the movies. That's how you know you when you like an actor, when you want them to be as glorious in real life as on screen.

I just think he's so charming and funny, and yes, I love the accent. I love how self-deprecating he is, and how his eyes wrinkle when he smiles. I love his curly hair and his witty lines and I love . . . .OK, enough about Hugh Grant.

I am planning on only eating the 94% fat free popcorn during the movie as opposed to last year when I broke out the quadruple chocolate clog your arteries but die happy Ben and Jerry's decadence. Not this year. I will drink some diet coke and keep eating the popcorn and concentrate on Hugh Grant so I don't feel deprived.

I will love being with my girls and watching a chick flick. I will love staying up reading. I will NOT love going to a 4-hour scout training in the morning, or washing the smelly fathers and sons outing clothing (or what's left of it) later that day. But it will be a nice evening of gender separation, a recharging of the batteries, so to speak. Men be men, women be women and then we all come back and live together more harmoniously.

It's a nice theory!!