It’s Race Time, Sports Fans!

What was intended as another boring weekend turned out to be one of the busiest in recent memory. Sleepovers, Nerf battles, park visits, and racing got packed into a two day extravaganza. It was great–but is this what going back to normal feels like?

The most excitement I was expecting in my weekend was doing my taxes on Sunday afternoon. I got all my forms to fill out the “more difficult than it should be” tax form, but in truth, it’s a lot less complicated now that I only work for one company. Back when I was a consultant, and I had to fill out up to three state tax forms, it was a bear. (Pro tip: never work in Maryland.)

However, I never got to any of that. Instead, someone texts us right before candle-lighting to confirm a playdate for one of my daughter’s friends. Cool–almost forgot about that. Then a family friend stopped by later that night and realized he forgot to invite Asher to his son’s birthday party. They were going to K-1 Indoor Racing on Sunday; well, of course, we said yes.

So after services on Saturday, the wife and Eliza went out to the park to play with her friend Sophie and her mom… who came back with them. So I had a nice time half-reading, half-talking to Sophie’s mom while the girls had scads of fun. (I don’t get to use the word “scads” very often–my great-grandma last used it in 1914. True story.) Meanwhile, my son was over at his neighborhood friend’s place playing Nerf battles in their house (not MY house). That took all day for both of them, and Eliza and Sophie had so much fun, they asked if Sophie could sleep over.

Why not? It turned out to be the first time that Sophie ever successfully stayed the night anywhere. They had THAT much fun.

Which led to Sunday, where we almost forgot about Asher’s Hebrew tutoring session, so the cantor and him had a quick half-hour on Zoom singing, and then we went out the door. Because they put this racing place in an industrial park, and no signage, I made three wrong turns before I found the place. Asher was at least 4-5 years older than any of the other kids at the party, but because they met at a Montessori school, this is not that unusual. They did three races around this track in side a warehouse. (To my non-Arizona readers, you HAVE to have this inside, otherwise, it would be too hot to use for half the year.)

This was expensive as hell and not something we could do more than once a year, but thankfully, I didn’t pay for any of it! When I did something similar his age, it was outside, and it was with little lawn mower engines… and I’m sure it cost much less comparatively.

Anyway, they topped off Sunday afternoon with both my kids hanging out with different friends, different activities, and my wife even getting to hang out with her friend while I got to play computer games. Lord, that was a good weekend! Even before this shutdown, we usually only did one of those things–we crammed in four events! Are we overcompensating? Is it just a strange confluence of different events? Did you go go-karting as a child? Let me know in the comments below!