Never enough enough

"one more time!" "five more minutes!" "throw me again!" We have this joke, that for our kids, whenever it's fun or yummy, it's "never enough enough. It's usually a parents job to temper the impulses of their offspring's growing neurotransmitters... "no doughnuts before dinner" "finish your homework first" " I'm not going swimming right now". "it's time for bed" It's how we teach them responsibility and how we keep them from becoming cracked-out, overtired sugar-zombies...but sometimes, for me anyway, "no" is just reflexive, over-tired parenting. It's easier not to clean up the mess again, It's late, i'm tired, it's time for "me" now and throwing you in the waer again will probably tear what's left of my ruined rotator cuff, so...."no". Here's what I've learned from my kids since taking off and becoming a practicing hedonist myself; If you eat the doughnut before dinner- you don't have to make dinner. You can have apples and peanut butter with the doughnuts and there's no dishes to wash after. Then, fine, leave the homework and we'll go swimming instead and while we're playing in the water, we'll burn up all that sugar and my shoulder loosens up so, yeah, I'll throw you off the boat again. By the time we dry off, we're hungry again, so i'll make cheese sandwiches while you finish that homework and then yeah, forget about bedtime, we'll just stay out here and look at the stars but then the kids fall asleep in their bunks while putting on their pj's, so Jon and I have the rest of the night(and the stars) to ourselves and we'll talk about grown-up, important stuff... like how we should have bought more wine before we left La Paz because, well, it's never enough enough.