Nowadays my weekends are filled with guilt and stress. The house needs to be tidy up from top to bottom. The lawn needs to be mowed and trimmed. The longer I put off, the worse they get. They just get piled up weeks after weeks. When I look at them, I don’t know where to start.
My ideal weekends are to spend time with my sons going ice skating, rollerblading, biking, reading, or just relaxing. Basically, I just want to enjoy the things I like to do instead of the things I have to do. When I lived by myself in Poughkeepsie, New York, my apartment was just a place for me to sleep. On the weekends, I would pack up my bags, drive home to stay with my mom, and hang out with my homeboy Nate. Now they are both gone and my life has changed forever.
I am not complaining about my current life. In fact, I am blessed with a wonderful family. They mean the whole world to me and I rather spend time with them than doing anything else. It’s just that when I have to do things that need to be done, it takes my time away from them. Sure, I could make them help me by doing all the chores, but then they would feel as miserable as I am for doing the things that they don’t enjoy.
For fuck sake, Donny. You’re a grown-ass man now, stop whining and get the shit done already.
I wrote this post while watching Đán learning to play ice hockey at 9 am on a Saturday. We went home around noon. Instead of taking the kids to ice skating for three hours, I decided to stay home to tidy up our basement. It took me two hours. By the time I finished organizing the basement,the kids had finished their late lunch. I took Đạo, Đán, and Xuân to the skate park. We rollerbladed for an hour and the boys sweated profusely. It occurred to me that they all needed a haircut. We returned home and I gave each one a buzz. None of my kids had been to a barbershop before. I cut their hair as well as mine all by myself. We saved quite a bit for the five of us.
We took a bath and headed over to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner. It was not a bad Saturday after all.
