In the dark of the night
posted in Friends, OmegaDotter, Parenting |I was finishing off a book last night, so I sat in the dim living room reading it, then plodded off to bed at 12:45 a.m. I snuggled up against OmegaDad, then had my nightly just-after-going-to-bed hot flash and cooled off, snuggled up again and had finally started that interesting, dreamy descent into sleep…
When the phone rang.
I was jerked awake. OmegaDad jerked up, with a muffled, “Wha-?! Wuff. Wha-??”
I looked at the clock. 1:15 a.m.
Immediately all the possibilities–all of them dire, of course–began running through my head: Something had happened to mom. OmegaDad’s Uncle B.–in the hospital due to a massive stroke–was dying. If this had been about 20 years ago, I would assume it was one of my buds in the middle of a horrible break-up.
Look: In my world, people don’t call at that time unless something bad is happening.
I staggered out to the living room, fumbled around in the dark, grabbed the phone, and peered at the caller ID.
Not Arizona. Whew.
Not Oklahoma. Whew.
“Alaska Digital” caller. WTF?
All of this had taken a second or two. I punched the button to talk. “Hello?”
“Hi. Can you tell OmegaDotter that I called her?”
Okay. WTF? “Who is this?”
“It’s S.”
Of course, I already knew it. S. calls at terribly inappropriate times, but this was the worst.
“::Sigh:: ::yawn:: S., sweetie, it’s almost 1:30 in the morning. Sweetie, this is a bad time to call people. I will tell OmegaDotter that you called, but please don’t call us this late again.”
“I’m sorry.” Small voice. “But please tell OmegaDotter that I called.”
“Okay. I’ll do that. But, S., please don’t call this late.”
“Okay.”
I said goodbye, I hung up, I went back into the bedroom. OmegaDad was sitting on his side of the bed, wide awake, and said, “Let me guess. It was S.”
So we talked about S. S. is the gal whose mom and step-dad had a rather abrupt parting-of-the-ways about twenty minutes before the dotter was due at their house for a playdate. Since S. had called five times that morning about the playdate, when I heard the phone ring, I assumed it was S., and just let it roll over to the answering machine. Besides, OmegaDad had the dotter out shopping that morning, and was going to deliver her to her playdate on the way home.
Alas, when they got there, it was awkward, because the step-dad had to invent a family emergency on-the-fly and the dotter was miserable at not getting her playdate. And then the next day, we got a call from S. where she told the dotter that–surprise!–she was moving to Big City, and could the dotter come play with her there?
Um. Since then, S. has called at very odd hours. We have the dotter on a pretty regular schedule; she’s in bed and asleep by 9 usually, even in the bright summer hours. OmegaDad and I get some alone time, she gets plenty of sleep. This is a Good Thing, because if the dotter doesn’t get enough sleep, she is hell on wheels and a major pill to be around. This seems to be an early bedtime for a lot of her buddies, apparently. S. calls at 9:30, 10, 10:30…and now 1:15 a.m.
OmegaDad was judgmental about the parenting she’s getting as a result; this afternoon, I realized that if our dotter were to wake up in the middle of the night, we probably wouldn’t know it and she might even be moved to try calling one of her friends. But I still worry about S. in general and hope she’s all right…
