The Downside of Being a Single Parent

Other than never having a moment to breath and missing Lisa, I generally enjoy being a single parent. I get a lot more time with the kids and leaving work early has it's upside as well. Yesterday however, I had an experience that convinced me that teenage daughters really should have mothers. Sarah decided that she wants to go to Winter Formal next week. I'm not sure why but all of my daughters have some how gotten the idea that every formal dance requires a new formal dress. It would just be social suicide to use a dress that has been worn before. While she could probably wait until Lisa got back to go dress shopping, Sarah was worried about Mom having time and besides, there was no school yesterday (Martin Luther King day) and I did come home from work early so why not go looking for a dress? I think I would rather go for a root canal than to go shopping for a dress. Sarah had picked out a couple of dresses on-line at "Macy's" and the original deal was to just go and quickly check out those dresses but some time between when I agreed to the shopping trip and when I got home Sarah had talked to Lisa who added a list of four more stores that we should go and see while we were out.

groan

Do you know that they don't make formal dresses that go higher than the arm pits or lower than the crotch? What an exercise in futility. To make it all more painful, most of the dresses are well over a hundred dollars and some are several hundred dollars. Who would pay that kind of money for a high school dance? This is crazy. We checked out the four or five stores in the mall and then encouraged by Lisa, Sarah convinced me to go to her "favorite" dress store, "Styles for Less". It is now perhaps my favorite dress store as well. We walked in the front door and there on a mannequin was a very cute dress that actually had sleeves. She tried it on and I thought it looked darling on her but it really is too short. She flashed her beautiful eyes at me and I finally relented to buy it on the condition that I can return it next week after I talk to mom and she can't whine. It does look beautiful and the best part is it was $20.

I hate shopping and worse than shopping is shopping for clothes and worse than that is shopping for girls clothes. It was fun spending time with Sarah though. I'm not sure if Lisa is going to be mad that I bought a short dress or grateful that I took Sarah shopping. I guess we'll see.

We then bought $100 worth of frozen food that we can just throw in the oven or microwave. Yummy things like pizza's, jalapeno poppers, rice bowls and such. Last night we let Alex rent a movie and we all watched that. Five days to go.

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did you know that too much caffeine causes hallucinations?

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