If you follow me on Twitter, I apologize for this weekend. But many times, it felt like it was my only link to the final tenuous links to my sanity. For four days, it felt like the universe was conspiring against me, just to see how much I could handle.

You see, while DadJovi was living the life of an International Playboy in Montreal with his buddies …

I was living the frazzled life of a single parent. Seriously, I do not know how single parents do it. It’s EXHAUSTING being on duty 24/7 for four days.

He left early Thursday morning, so at least I had a break at work while E. went to school. And the weekend started out great. We had Thursday Movie night, and on Friday, turned our shuttle disappointment around by getting Sound of Music.

But on Saturday, things started to go downhill … fast. First, we made plans to meet a friend at a nearby splash park. She was going to go to the farmer’s market first, then I was going to meet her and her daughter (who is only a couple months younger than E.) at the splash park). But then my friend called me just as we were about to head out the door — the water was turned off at the splash pad. Super. You know what it means that we were about to leave, right? Yup, E. was already in her suit and ready to go. And I got to tell her we couldn’t go. Fun.

After some scrambling, my friend and I decided we’d just go to her pool instead (poor me, I know. But I really didn’t want to commit to that much time initially — the splash pad seemed a better in and out option). So, I decided to do a couple quick errands while I was waiting for her to get home from the farmers’ market. So, I got E. to take off her bathing suit and into normal clothes.

Once again, we were about to head out the door when my friend called again — the water was BACK On a splash pad. OK, back to Plan A. Sigh.

But once we got there, I enjoyed a blissful 45 minutes of E. playing her heart out with her friend while my friend and I sat there catching up. Score.

After all that playing, I thought E. would be willing to do me a favor and come with me to Old Navy to return some shorts. I guessed wrong.

She was really good for most of time and even helped me pick out some new stuff (their weekend summer sale was great — $6 skirts and 3/4 sleeve cardigans!) but then it was time to leave. I had told her she could get a bouncy ball from those giant gumball machines but suddenly she decided that wouldn’t cut it. She wanted something from their Target-style bins near the registers. Only, unlike Target, Old Navy’s stuff isn’t $1 — it’s all $5 to $6 for crap. Nope, not happening.

Needless to say, this did not go over well with E. Suddenly, she was that child. After I tried to explain to her that she could get a bouncy ball or nothing, the shouting of “no, no, nooooo”s ensued. A tantrum was coming and I just wanted to get out of Dodge. So I picked her up, and fled the store. By the time we got to the car, we were in full-fledged tantrum mode — something that mercifully doesn’t happen very often.

She was SCREAMING in the car and had a death grip on the headrests so that I couldn’t get her into her car seat. This went on for about 20 minutes. Um, do you remember how hot it was Saturday afternoon? It was well over 90 and we were in a hot car that was only getting hotter. And she was screaming, crying and starting to hit me.

I’ve never spanked my child and hope that I never will but that was about as close as I’ve ever come. It was baaaaaaad.

Finally, I somehow got her into her seat. We didn’t speak to each other for a long time. After she cooled off, she apologized and we hugged it out when we got home.

There was only one thing that helped me not completely lose my shit that day …

Actually, to be more specific, it was these guys …

OK, I’m a season-and-a-half behind, so keep your spoilers to yourself but Sookie needs to dump Vampire Bill for Eric. He is so hot. And Jason? Well, he’s just amazing.

So, after the mega tantrum, I was d-u-n. We came home and E. wanted to watch Sound of Music again. So while she watched that and played, I watched a couple True Bloods on my laptop. Judge me all you want but I knew I had to pace myself — I still had 24 hours to go.

All that True Blood watching had an unintended side effect though. I’m not sure if I had a bad dream or if I actually heard something, but at about 3 a.m. Sunday I popped up out of bed with my heart pounding. I’m not sure what, if anything, woke me up but I was up and freaked out. It’s times like that that I really miss my killer dogs. I always slept soundly when they were on guard.

I think I finally fell back asleep around 4 a.m. So, of course, why wouldn’t E wake up way earlier than usual on Sunday?

But I knew the end was in sight — DadJovi was scheduled to land at noon. But then I started getting worried that I hadn’t heard from him. He should have texted me before his flight. So help me, if he missed that plane, E. was getting on a plane for Montreal. Bonjour!

Finally I heard from him — they were delayed. Noooooooo!

So I decided to go with what works — splash pad here we come. As fate would have it, this arrived in my mailbox over the weekend.

We went on an adventure to try out a new one and headed for Barnett Park on Colonial Drive, right next to the Central Florida Fairgrounds.

How have  I never been to this park before? It’s a massive green space with a BMX bike course, tennis courts, basketball courts, at least 7 playgrounds that E and I counted and tons of bike/running paths. But we couldn’t find that $#(! splash pad. We drove all over that park for about 15 minutes.

I finally stopped to ask someone for directions and at long last, we found it. At first, we were underwhelmed … or should I say oversprayed? It was as if E. was playing in a really powerful fire hydrant.

Cooling and refreshing? Yes. Potentially blinding? Also yes.

Oh, and after about 5 minutes of playing, one of the park employees tells me, “We’re going to have to turn it off for about 10 minutes or so to clean the filters.” Super. Because 11 a.m. on a Sunday seems a good time to do that. And E has been so good about being told no over the weekend. Like a well-trained predator, she exploited my single parenting all weekend and knew just how to pounce in order to cause maximum damage. I swear, she’s normally much more reasonable.

But then, the pack saved me. Two more families showed up and the park reconsidered its plan to turn off the water. Hallelujah.

And then, double hallelujah, a park worker came over and says to me, “You need to push the red button.” Huh? Like this?

And honestly, it was a magic button. When he stepped on it, the fire hydrants stopped and about 15 fountains of different sizes and styles came on. SO.MUCH.BETTER.

Yup, that would have been useful information 15 minutes ago. Oh well. He probably gets sick of kids and enjoyed watching one just getting sprayed in the face for awhile first. Touché, park worker. Touché.

It was the perfect way to kill time til DadJovi’s plane FINALLY landed.

When we got home, I did something truly luxurious — I went to the grocery store ALONE. I’m not kidding, I spent about an hour there and it was heavenly. I even found myself singing along — out loud — to Hootie and the Blowfish in the dairy aisle.

And then the luxury continued. I had a date with some vampires and a freaky bull woman.

Yes, I watched an entire season of True Blood in one weekend. I blame Paula of Eat:Watch:Run. Her love of the Bon Temps crew reminded me that I liked the show. DadJovi didn’t like it after the first season, so we never kept going. His trip was the perfect excuse for me to gorge on vamps.

So that was my weekend. I know it probably doesn’t sound that hard. She’s only one child. Parents of multiples or multiple children? Well, you’re all heroes as far as I’m concerned.

And me? Well, I think we’re all better behaved when Daddy comes back. And besides, he scares the vampires away.

And I’ll get my revenge — I’m going to Cape Cod in September for a friend’s wedding … alone! Sucka!