Kids? What kids?

Tonight the Winemaker and I realized that we had somehow forgotten that we have kids EVEN IN THE MORNING.  We both had plans to be away during the get-up-and-go-to-school part of the day. We both knew about each other's plans.  Yet we failed to make a plan for the kids.  We've only been parents for two years, you guys.  It's not like you can expect us to take our children into consideration when planning our days...oh wait, yes you can.  Hm.

I'm not sure what to say about how we got ourselves into this situation, but he is leaving town at 3 am to go pick up grapes in Eastern Washington, and I leave for work at 6:30, and the kids can't be at school until 8:00.  And while they have the technical skills to dress and feed themselves, and even to bike to school, they don't have the emotional skills to resist eating all the sugar in the house, beating each other up, and playing video games all morning, instead of getting out the door.  I worked out a crazy plan with my very understanding boss to bring my kids to work with me (because they would TOTALLY behave themselves sitting in a classroom full of older kids who are dominating Mommy's attention...or not), but a desperate plea over Facebook garnered an offer of support from a woman whose son played soccer with my son last year.

This is complicated by the fact that our daughters adore each other, but our sons barely tolerate each other.  Okay, I think her kid hates my kid, and Oak just likes her kid because he has cool video games at his house.  I think their boy is kind of a dick, frankly, which just goes to show how unfair life is, because Oak has a lot bigger behavior issues, but the fact that another kid would dare to not like him just makes me mad.

Further complicated by the fact that their daughter is as wildly unpredictable as my son, so when we swap kids, as we do, I find it enormously stressful, BUT sometimes they offer to take ALL FOUR KIDS, so I feel like a total parent wimp.

And now I am totally and forever in these people's debt.  It's kind of weird.  None of our family were able to help out, nor good friends.  Is it better to be in serious debt to people you don't know well, or to people you do?   It's kind of like the difference between borrowing money from the bank or from your mother-in-law (yeah, that happened this week too--we're on a roll).

Just had to share.