So much for unwinding...

Last night was supposed to be a good chance to unwind a bit. I tried staying at the office past 5, since I figured that I could get some alone time there to collect my thoughts since my head is swimming. Then all the kids in the houses surrounding the office decided today would be a good day to find out if I'm scary or not. Apparently I'm not. Which meant that there were 6 kids (under age 7) in the office trying to figure out how the stapler worked and games to play with the phone and how to use a computer (basically, they're strategy consisted of banging on the keyboard and seeing what would happen on the screen; I hid my laptop really fast). I finally managed to push them out the door so that I could lock up and head home.

When I got home, I went to the kitchen to make myself a PB&J. Immediately, one of the neighbors' kids saw me and ran over to knock on the door. I let him in. 2 1/2 hours later, I finally got my alone time. It started by making a peanut butter sandwich for him and his friend (4 and 5 years old). Then, I decided to go play with Juju (my puppy) in the hopes that that would get them outside. Instead, it resulted in several dollops of peanut butter on the floor and some peanut butter footprints. I especially like the game they've invented where they spray bug spray on one another (and often me) or when they seek out the knives in the house and start playing with them.

So I came inside to do some clean-up. One of the neighboring teenagers came over to play with his kid brother (the first kid who came in), which basically negated my efforts to clean up. They wrapped a rubber band around a piece of thin rubber and had a soccer ball the size of a ping-pong ball and started kicking it around the living room (which is actually a workshop with 4 plastic chairs). Then three other teenagers came over and somehow, I was playing host to everyone. The teenagers just sat in the living room talking while I sat there making occasional comments. Part of the reason I wasn't making many comments was that my head was swimming even more than it had been earlier. The other part of the reason is that the two kids decided to play king of the mountain using my neck as the mountain.

So yeah, my planned restful evening wound up being anything but restful. My batteries could really use a good recharging. It seems like I'll have to wait a bit longer before they get it.