09 December 2010

"My poor leadership!"

Tonight was one of those nights when one bad decision snowballed into two bad decisions which snowballed into three bad decisions....you get the idea. It had Gene repeating (in the words of our good friend, Steve Techtmann), "My poor leadership!"

It all started at 3:00pm when I heard a cracking sound coming from the dining room. I thought it was just Heman (our chinchilla) chewing on his wooden block. But a quick glance at Heman told me that it wasn't him. He was sound asleep. I heard the cracking sound again, and it sounded like it was coming from under our dining room table.

I knelt on the floor and saw that our one leg of our Ikea table (that we had just bought in June) had split into two from top to bottom! Luckily Gene came home soon after, and we removed the leg from the table. Ikea had told us to bring the leg back to the store for a replacement part. This is where the night goes bad...

Gene: Why don't we all get in the van and go to Ikea together?
Renee: What about dinner? It's almost 4:30 and the kids need to eat around 5:00.
Gene: We can all go out to eat together since our baby sitter had to cancel for tonight.
Renee: But if we leave now we're just going to end up sitting in traffic on 495 with the kids at dinner time.
Gene: That's ok. At least we'll all be together as a family. (Who says that?! MISTAKE #1. This should have been my first clue that the night was going to be a disaster.)

So we got the kids in the car and started towards Ikea at 4:30pm. We barely made it past the 270 split when traffic came to a standstill. (Uhh, duh!) We knew that at this rate we'd quickly have two hungry screaming kids in the backseat.

We ended up taking the Bethesda exit (one of the first exits we could get to in the traffic) and decided to find a fast food restaurant to get food for the kids and then get back up on 495 to try to make it to Ikea. Gene used the GPS to find where the closest restaurant was.....2 miles away. So he directed us towards the restaurant. MISTAKE #2. The traffic in Bethesda was just as bad as the traffic on 495. Now we were sitting in traffic and going in the opposite direction that we wanted to be going.

We finally got to the street where some restaurants were and pulled into the parking garage. MISTAKE #3. The parking garage attendant flagged us down and told us that the garage was closing at 7pm and any cars still inside would have to wait until tomorrow to get out. He advised us to be back in the parking garage by 6:45 if we wanted to be sure we got out. It was 5:45 at this point and we figured we could eat a quick meal at the fast food restaurant around the corner and be back in an hour.

We walked in the 27 degree wind and came to Chipotle. I have been begging Gene to take me to Chipotle for a few weeks now because I've had a hankering for their guacamole. I ordered some extra pinto beans and rice on my salad for the kids, but it was way too spicy for them to eat. So, while I stayed at the restaurant with Kinsley, Gene took Callan and went looking for McDonald's, which was supposed to be around the corner. MISTAKE #4. (Side note: When Gene mentioned McDonald's, Callan said, "Yeah, and see Farmer in the Dell, too!...hahaha, as you can tell, we've been singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm a lot recently.)

Well, I tried to shove my food in my mouth as quickly as possible while keeping Kinsley entertained with a plastic fork. (I brought some baby food along but Chipotle didn't have any spoons....go figure.) After 30 minutes, Gene still wasn't back, and Kinsley was no longer impressed with the plastic fork. She was getting cranky and wanted to be held.

Finally Gene came back and we packed up all the food and ran to the parking garage, in fear that we would get locked out. The parking sign said: 0-1 hour = $4 and 1-2 hours = $8. Well, we must have gone over the hour mark by 1 or 2 minutes, because when we pulled up to the window the man kindly said, "That will be $8 please." Of course. Why would our luck change now?

Gene rode in the back on the way home so he could feed the kids McDonald's while I drove home repeating, "I can't believe my kids' dinner consisted of fruit snacks, raisins, fries and nuggets!" In which Gene replied, "It's only one night, Babe! They aren't going to die."

So here we are. Back at home...still with a broken Ikea table leg. Gene's reply? "Well, at least the night wasn't all bad." To which I replied, "What part of the night did you think was good?"

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