Rainy Day Co-Parenting

It was a rainy yucky day yesterday. That stresses me out a little bit. We need to know what's going on and if there is not plan then we need the sun. We want to go outside. So when it's pouring I get a little like an animal in a cage. Pacing. Doing laundry, cleaning, all sorts of craziness. Our plan was a soccer game. The first one of the season. It's pouring out. Game on. Thank every God there is that my friend Lisa's son, Ethan is on the same team as Chay. I'm sorry, but I need my wingman. When it's pouring and you're standing outside under an umbrella in the wet grass it's nice to have a friend under there with you. Especially when your friend is dressed to the nines and highly entertaining.
Do you have that friend? The ying to your yang? Where one ends the other one starts? I have a few of these. One being Lisa. I talk about her a lot. She is the Felix to my Oscar. She is friendly, I am somewhat standoffish. We teach each other things. She tells me what to make for dinner on any given night and I give her the secret to king pigeon. It's a win/win. We all have our strengths, so to speak, right?
After the game ends (which they won, btw) we still have a lot of the day to kill. Adam, Lisa's oldest and my kids need clothes to wear to a Bar Mitzvah and a funeral, respectively. We decide to take them shopping. Four boys, Saigy and us. That's fun, right? So the rest of us get our stuff done and we are waiting for Adam to get fitted for his suit. The four other kids and I sit down on the steps and kind of just stare at the store below us. Every once in a while a salesman sits down besides us and surprisingly I am really friendly. I talk. I engage. I make them laugh at our silliness. Meanwhile Lisa is piss walking by us with a little imaginary hand gun to her head, shooting it. This caused us all (excpt Adam, I'm thinking) such delight, it's hard to even verbalize. So we're sitting there and her seven year old Ben, who I could eat with a spoon leans into me and says very quickly, which is how he speaks, "Amy, Amy, Amy, don't look, don't look, that guy is staring at you." "Who?" I am intrigued. This afternoon might be looking up after all. He points to this man, who has to be on the far side of 80. I'm pretty sure his head was pointed in our direction. He wasn't "looking" at me. Then Ben announces, "Don't worry though, I was about to say (and he raises his voice very loud at this point), Hey, Amy, what time do you think MARC will be home?" Ben totally had my back. I said, "Good looking out Benny Boy. You're my man."
To top off their day we decided while we needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store we would drop them at Dairy Queen. We tossed a twenty in the back seat and said, "Don't get kicked out. We'll be back in a few minutes." They hopped out in the pouring rain and we parked and went in the store. The whole time we were in there I just knew it was taking us to long. Lisa is a shopper. I needed some Sweet and Low and a can of dog food for my two idiot dogs. She was getting gourmet pretzels, muffin tops for breakfast and an assortment of other oddball items. We pay. We go outside, I knew it. They are all out there. Carrying on like zoo animals or children that have been cooped up cause of rain all day. Chase says, "We were looking for you guys. We looked in the liquor store first." He is smarter than he portrays in school." They made us leave." Oh, poor liquor store people. They never saw that coming. Interestingly enough, we did have to make one little stop there to pick up some wine. We told our little sweet angels to stay outside with the grocery cart. The whole time we were in there Lisa kept saying, "Amy, will you control your kids for God sake?" I had to be the one to go tell them to knock it off. Once again a role play change. Sometimes we tend to morph in to the other one. This happened all day long, much to our amusement. When we finally got the wine, the groceries and oh yeah, the kids in the car we realized it was 5:00. We killed the whole rainy day.
Just like Jack Johnson sings, "Better when we're together."