Mantown 2009

This weekend is Boys weekend. Demi is off the the Island to her annual weekend with the Real Housewives of Long Island. I know, I know. Where do I begin? I know you just want to shout out @#$%^ (rhymes with "stores"), but they are actually very nice girls. Mostly.... Just me and the boys. And I have a raging head cold. Not a good start. But we had the beach party at the school last night, where the boys got to do the limbo, arts and crafts, dancing, moon bounce, run around with their friends. And I. I got to hang with some of the football moms. The boys both have basketball and Coco has a birthday party. I score bonus points with organizing a carpool and play dates (for the boys, not for me).
I got the boys fired up for NHL All-Star Weekend. They are rooting hard in the Futures Stars games for the Bruins Representative to the Rookie Squad, Blake Wheeler. Editors Note: Here is the first representation for the B's in this blog, and is a positive sign of how well they are doing this year, it is not followed by a curse or outburst of disappointment. Unfortunately, Milan Lucic was not able to play for the Sophomore Squad. I pointed out to the boys the fact that Zdeno Charra took it upon himself to turn his role in the hardest shot competition into a way to fund raise for charity. And how it snowballed from just the entrees in the competition, to their teams, to the NHL and then to the NHL Players Union. So not only an opportunity to get the boys excited about hockey and the Bruins, but a good message as well. The boys went wild when Charra set a record to win the event.
At one point, while the three of us were sprawled out on our new sectional couch, each having plenty of room to sprawl out, stretch, scratch, etc, Caz turns to me and asks, "Hey, at bedtime, can we take Mantown upstairs and have a Mantown sleepover?" I lost it. I am sure it was inspired by all the commercials during the All Star Skills Competition for the new show with the Goose, Tony Siragusa, "Mancaves". Highlight of the weekend.
In order to comply with by full disclosure policy, or fair and balanced, or whatever you would like to call it, I must confess that I was not on my A game all weekend. I could hide behind my head cold but I just need to fess up and say I did not have the energy to be as patient as I needed to be. There was an inordinate amount of yelling on my part and not because I was trying to be heard from one floor away. The boys are of the age where they can be extra helpful when they choose, so maybe I expected more help than I got. Maybe my expectations were out of skew because I expected more help because I was sick. There were a couple of moments that were not my proudest. Not to worry Lefty, I don't think the boys will be in a clock tower over it. Scared Straight or not, they should pull through.