Children, I mean.

This week, both Girl1 and Girl2 are in a city-run camp that includes swimming lessons, crafts, activities, yada yada, yada. They don’t particularly like it, and it is a bit disorganized. It’s one of those “you get what you pay for” kind of daycamps and it was only $120.

So they are with friends of theirs, and I’m carpooling with the other mom. I do the drop-off in the mornings, and the first two days, Girl2 clung, and cried and looked up at me with her sad, sad eyes when I left. This morning, though, she was fine.

Yahoo, right?!?

Of course not. Girl1 sensed the impending relief of maternal guilt and decided it was time for her to cry.

No rest for the wicked, right?

So I signed my kids up for a 10-week program of skiing at Banff’s Sunshine Village – it’s called Mountain Freeriders and sounded super fun. It was NOT cheap, but we decided it would be a great investment – we are a skiing family, and this would be a chance for the kids to really develop their skills (with professional instructors) while making some new friends on the slopes. Plus: Mom & Dad would get a day of skiing alone — built-in date!

So where does the guilt come in?

Well, two weeks ago was the first session, and I forgot about it. I don’t know what happened…I knew the session started January 6th. I just forgot that that Sunday was January 6th. We spent the day puttering around, running rather pointless errands. When we got home, I saw that we had a voicemail message. When I checked the missed calls and saw SUNSHINE SKI SCHOOL on the display, it hit me. I ran to the calendar. January 6th. I ran to check the confirmation email from the ski school – session starts January 6.

SHIT! SHITTY-SHITTY-SHIT!

It actually took me a few hours to work up the nerve to tell my husband. He had been saying to me, for days, “does the ski club start this weekend?” and I, in my January 6th denial/blindness, would blithely reply, “no, not until next week”. I felt just sick about it.

Well, in the end it all turned out okay, except that my kids get just one less day skiing than we paid for. We packed ourselves up to the mountain this past Sunday, for week 2 of the program. On an interesting sidenote, ten other families had missed the first session; so many that they had a special group in the morning to place all the kids who were just joining in on week 2! That helped mitigate the guilt somewhat.

Ahhh…the joys of being the sole responsible party!