Let's Play Hooky!

By 7:00 this morning, I had talked to each one of my children. We are in 100% agreement that we would like to play hooky from work &/or school today.

I offered to pick up my vacationing offspring from the airport bright and early this morning. I woke up in the middle of the night and never went back into a deep sleep. I feel like I have been awake since 3:30 am (but I'm sure that I dozed off for at least an hour). When I finally got mobile this morning, I felt physically ill. I wondered if I could have caught the 24 hour flu bug that my brother just suffered through (but he lives over 500 km away and we haven't been in contact with each other for almost 2 weeks, so I would have had to catch his virus through his email ... highly unlikely). I didn't want to face this day.

My First Son arrived home from his one week vacation-in-the-sun at 4:50 this morning. I got to hear his enthusiastic review of his holiday before he even changed out of his summer attire. By the time he made it through airport security and arrived home, he had ten minutes to spare if he was going to make it to work on time. He didn't feel like going.

My Second Son and I chatted as I absorbed my second cup of caffeine and he was completely disoriented when his alarm went off this morning. He has been working long, hard hours lately and enjoyed four entire days off of work this New Years long weekend. His work day wasn't quite mapped out before him as he left for work ... but he too, felt like taking one more day off.

My Third Son started his rant just before he went to sleep last night. He wants to do his school work from home. He hears how I can work at my own pace at school, set my own goals/test dates and work at whatever speed I want. That is what he wants too. He is fortunate enough to find school easy, so he breezes through his work (he tells me he is a multitasker) and waits for the rest of the class to catch up. So ... when he got up this morning, he reiterated that he really didn't want to go to school. I told him that he was too young to quit school and that none of us wanted to go to work or school this morning. But we are going anyway.

Oh, how tempting it would be to wave my motherly magic wand and grant each one of us a day off, to play hooky. We could go out for breakfast ... hear about My Oldest's vacation ... and My Second Son's plans for his upcoming vacation. We could just hang out for a while, as the rest of the world spun along happily without us.

We could do that. We we aren't.

The real world awaits ... whether we are ready for it or not.