"Age Doesn't Matter Unless You're a Cheese"

I am not sure who initially said that, but boy is it true. As you may know, I am at my parents home for the holiday. Every Thanksgiving I come down for the week and we really enjoy our time together. It is a real gift after 20 years of living so far away from them and not having the funds to travel.

That said, when I am here I find that I am no longer a 45 year old, married, mom who runs a business. I am just "their kid". This is not necessarily a bad thing. I have great parents and I love being one of their children. The problems lies in that it is too easy to put everything else aside and just wallow in the "kid" role. I forget about things that I want to do, I don't think about things I "need" to do and I just go with it. It doesn't show up as much on weekend trips. The turnaround is too quick and I never really get out of my "normal" mode. It's the weeklong trips where I tend to think "there's plenty of time- I will get to it later." and just put everything else aside to just visit and get done things that they need to attend to while we can.

I thought about it this morning. I woke up at 3:45 (don't ask!) and made the coffee. I started looking through our list of things to do and crossing off what we completed yesterday and adding things we thought of while we were out and about yesterday and sent a "good morning" text to my hubby who is at home and was up and getting ready to go to work. When the coffee was done, I poured a cup for me, filled the thermos and got another pot ready. I rarely do that at home until I have finished the pot and am ready to run out the door to work. I then watched a few of the Food Network shows Mom has dvr'd while I fiddled around on Facebook on my iPad. It wasn't until about 7am that I realized that it's been since Saturday that I checked my work email. Normally I do that every single morning while my coffee brews. It gets that chore out from under my belt before I get there and anything can happen that changes my day. Now- my assistant and I are both out this week. I can almost guarantee that no one has walked into my office except to drop things off for me to see when I get back since last Friday. As I get a ton of emails each day- that chore will take quite a bit of time this morning. I will dive in as soon as I finish this post.

Mom woke up a few minutes ago and found me sitting at the kitchen table so that I can use my keyboard with my iPad with the news on the little kitchen television. After a quick "good morning" she fussed at me about having the volume too low to hear. I laughed and said "Mom, I am less than 8 feet away from the tv- I can hear it and am trying to not wake up the world!" but I found myself doing the defensive/whiny thing that I did when I was a kid. I stopped and laughed again and just shook my head at what was coming out of my mouth. It just reinforced that I am in "kid mode".

So my question this morning is this...Do you do this too? Or am I just a little crazy? Could go both ways! Now it is the time to get that email checked so I can plug my iPad in and get going for the day. Two more days till Thanksgiving and there's a lot to do! Have a terrific day!