Safety in the deep end

I miss my pool.  I grew up in a lake community, thinking, of course, that it was WAY better then the pool.  The pool had  no docks to swim to, no sand, no sailboats...just boring clear water surrounded by boring hard cement.  I felt sorry for those people who had to go to a pool, getting blisters on their toes from the rough bottom, red chlorine eyes, green chlorine hair, heavy "I just drank half the pool full of chlorine" coughs.  Poor, forsaken pool-people.  

Then I moved to a place that didn't have lakes - if you wanted to submerge in water in public, you had to join a pool.  When a friend from playgroup invited us to go to her pool as guests, I didn't jump up and down.  Pool.  Whatever.  Yeah, I'll go.  But only because my Nemo sprinkler is on the fritz and he doesn't spin anymore. He just kind of leans to one side and spits  - one stream of water in the exact place my face is while I'm bent over holding my screeching toddler up, the other stream straight into the ground creating grassy mud that said toddler NEEDS to sit in. 

The first time I sat myself in the baby pool I believe I actually got light headed.  Thank god the pool was only a foot and a half deep and I was resting comfortable against the side because the shock was overwhelming.  I...was...a......pool-person.  How quickly the might fall.  I flipped faster than a crab on the deck of a ship on the Deadliest Catch.  Where had it been all my life? 

How could my parents have failed me all those years?  I grew up eating pb&j sandwiches laced with sand every summer.  We swam with the constant threat of snapping turtles lurking just beyond the ropes - never questioning why they respected the rope boundary - did we have some kind of treaty with them?  I wouldn't swim within ten feet of those ropes - I swear the water was colder over there - and anyone who did was either brave or stupid.  Mainly stupid.  Those docks were painted with some kind of glossy white paint that was mixed with sand so you wouldn't slip and crack your head open.  Of course, you always did slip and you ended up with an extremely painful sandpaper rash, (think road rash) and then had to, gasp, swim back to the beach trailing blood, and we all know what that attracts.  Sharks. 

(If you grew up in the era of Jaw's, you know what I'm talking about.  Heart stopping fear. Bleeding in open water is like putting a target on your legs, you will be eaten by a shark.  The best you can hope for is that the lifeguards are watching and would at least blow the whistle and yell "SHARK! SHARK! if they saw a fin because God knows your friends aren't swimming near you, they "swam ahead to let your mom know your hurt".)  

I digress.

The beach lifeguard (at least where I grew-up) would dole out punishment for those who didn't obey.  If, for example, you where caught climbing up the end of the slide (which was made of metal, by the way, so by noon on a sunny day you were likely to incur 2nd degree burns by the time you reached the bottom) you would be called in to the lifeguard stand if.  Your punishment would be to pick-up 25 cigarette butts off the beach.  If you had a bad reputation (and your mom wasn't at the beach), it would be more like 100.  It was a time when all the moms would sit in their low sand chairs, lined up in a half circle around the kids, wearing big sunglasses and baby oil, doling out pb&j sandwiches, smoking, and drinking TAB.  Of course, who needs and ashtray when your sitting in all that sand.  So, on a crowded day, kids would be getting in trouble all over the place because, hey, someone had to clean up the beach.

And so now it has come full circle.  I am in New England now - lake country.  I will now subject my children to the same perils I faced.  I will send them out into that freezing lake water and listen to them complain about sand in their bathing suits.  I will make them climb into the hot car - sandy, wet, and tired.  I will make them rinse the sand off in the freezing water from the hose in front of the house so they don't bring it inside. 

More importantly, I will no longer be able to sit right next to the deep water, thus keeping my standing-upright-in-my-bathing-suit time to a minimum.  I now have to walk my not-really-suitable-for public-viewing legs all the way across the sand and into the painfully-slow-deepening water.  I do believe I'll just bring a misting bottle to the beach and put my kids in life vests.

 

MAP-COPs (Moms Against Pecker-head Children on Playgrounds)

I've decided to form a gang.  My gang - MAP-COP (see above) - will be trolling the playground at my kids school after dismissal, using our scary mom voices and embarrassing our families. We are going to be throwing hard, disapproving looks and standing with our hands on our hips.  We are going after the overly aggressive, big for their age,  soccer players.

After school,  a mass of boys, ages 6 thru 11,  converge on the playground field .  That doesn't seem like a big age spread in print, but for those unfamiliar, thats like the difference between Stewart Little and the Stay-Puff Marsh-mellow man from Ghostbusters.  They split into teams and play soccer and it generally ends badly.  Insults and elbows fly, and mom's herd their kids into the car vowing "we will NOT be playing soccer after school tomorrow.  Really!  I mean it!  I'm done with the whole "ball-playing" thing after school!".  To which my kids mumble and snap at each other and huff and puff and say "it's SOCCER, mom, not "ball-playing" ".  Which, of course, lead one brother to yell at the brother who said that "Why are you so RUDE???  You don't have to be SO RUDE!!",  bickering ensues, whining impressions of each other are done, sides are taken, egos are bruised...until I finally yell "ENOUGH!!  NO MORE TALKING!  NOT ANOTHER WORD! NO TALKING TO EACH OTHER BACK THERE!!!".  Which works.  For about 50 seconds.  Then they start the post-mortem.  

"Marco is so mean.  He totally cheated", 

"Yea - he cheats, like, all the time!", 

"And its so not fair because noone else cheats except him", 

"Yea - just him.  He's such a cheater!", 

"That ball really hit his hand and he said it didn't but it really did 'cause I saw it and James saw it and we both said we saw it and he's like, "NO WAY!  I DIDN'T AND YOU'RE LYING!!", and HE'S TOTALLY LYING he's such a LIER!", 

"Yea...."

"Yea.."

"Yea - he TOTALLY lies, everyone could see he was lying because he's such a cheater..."  

On and on and on.  And on.  At least they stopped fighting with each other and are fighting the injustice of this obvious cheater.  (side note:  Names have been changed to protect me from being sued for slander.)

Of course "Marco" is 40 pounds heavier and 2 years older.  Marco is a bully and a pain in my ...

neck.  Today he pushed my oldest to the ground and I was ready to go "crazy mom" on him.  But, because my child begged me not to, (and the fact that I was wearing slip-on shoes and knew I would most likely suffer a blow-out and break my ankle storming over to bully the bully), I didn't "talk" to him.  Another (more attentive) mom saw what happened and came over to check on my son (and make sure he had a mother who gave a crap) and commiserate with me.  A couple other parents asked what happened (Marco wandered off by now) and we decided on the gang idea.  

We are in the preliminary stages of gang-formation, but are moving forward. We decided on purple as our "color", and agreed to look into some kind of pattern - maybe a stripe or subtle plaid - and re-group tomorrow.  There is alot to do, I realize, (gang sign, tags, tatoo, hood boundaries, aliases...) but you have to start somewhere.  I think I'll bring a purple blanked (I don't think I have a purple blanket so it may have to be a towel, or maybe a pillow case) and set-up our first meeting smack-dab in the middle of the field.  And I'm going to wear sturdy shoes.

Mutual of Omaha

Spring has sprung here in New England.  Every day here things get greener, buds appear, and bugs are being killed.  I am all for the Wild Kingdom in my backyard -  I am one sad Indian closer to having my own TV show - but I am walking on egg shells waiting for the big bugs. 

I walked around a few weeks ago with an industrial size can of raid and sprayed everything that was not man-made in my basement and garage.  Cobwebs and odd shaped sticks could not outrun my trigger finger.  I sprayed until I choked with the fumes, then I sprayed holding my breath.  I yelled at the kids if they came too close, I  doubled back and sprayed everything two or three times.  Especially the webs that look like tunnels that seem to be all over the place, hoping to God I was killing whatever was making them and that they would not panic and run in my general direction.  My friend told me I should look them up on the internet, and they I wouldn't be so afraid of them - she herself had a yellow spider the size of a grapefruit outside her door (a Yellow Orb Spider, I believe) and had researched it and actually enjoyed watching it everyday.  She is very, very brave. 

I can do snakes.  I like snakes, actually.  I can do mice or rats - pft!  Whatever.  I even get excited when we catch site of the ROUS (rodant of unusal size) that sometimes pokes around our backyard.  (We haven't figured out if its a woodchuck or beaver or a wolverine, but its big. It looks like its out there digging for bugs, so therefore, he is my friend.)  Bugs, like syrup of ipicack, cause nausea and vomiting.  They make me want to run, screaming like a pack of 4th grade girls running away from boys on the playground.  I DO NOT tolerate them well.  

So, while we're ooo-ing and ahh-ing over the baby deer and the wild turkeys dancing and singing (spring is mating season) across the backyard, I am biding my time.  I know they are much smaller than me, and generally travel without helmets, leaving their little noggings un-protected from my shoe - but I also know they have speed on their side. 

 One about the size of my thumb nail brazenly walked across floor in front of me the other night.  It was like I was in some Wild West movie - I swear I could hear that music that plays when the bad guy rides into town.  It, like me, froze in position.  I quickly looked around - trying not to be too obvious and give my intentions away - for some kind of weapon.  Not my new People magazine, (I haven't read it yet), tissues don't offer enough protection,  no shoes around, cup is too odd a shape and difficult to use if you don't get it on the first go.  Reluctantly, I went with the dictionary.   I got up slowly - and here is where I made my first mistake - slowly circled around it.  Like it didn't have four million eyes and couldn't actually see in back of its head.  I went in slowly to get closer then slammed the book down.  I made some kind of growling noise I believe as I pushed the book into the ground.  The I saw it.  I had only caught three of its legs, and only the ends at that.  Well, you might as well give it an oozy and let him snort some drugs, because now he's going crazy and I'm out of ammo.  Now I am growling/screeching louder,  pushing the dictionary harder, and panic has set in.  I need to reload - he has moved himself into a corner I can't wedge the book into.  Luckily, I was a girl scout, so am somewhat prepared, I think I finished him off with a catalog.  

Charlotte be dammed, I would step on her just as soon as look at her.  And her little spiders, too. 

Wold's dest Mom

There were two day every year when the local playground/park is full of dads and kids :

1. Mother's Day

2. Father's Day

I always thought that was funny - what better Mother's Day gift than a little alone time, and Hey Kids!  It's Father's Day!  Why don't you go do something special with daddy today!  I'll wait here for you...really...go...I'll make due without you...ok, go. now.  

Of course, my favorite is always the homemade cards - I always try to save them, and somewhere is this mess of a house I have them.  Some quote's off my cards this year (copied exactly as printed on the cards by my kids - the knack for spelling is a gift from me):

"Wold's dest Mom"   (World's Best Mom)

"Exelent at makeing dro"  (excellent at making brownies)

"Your nose is like mine"

"Thak you Mom"

"My mom your like mine mouse"  (you're like Minny Mouse)

"Mom what is your favret coler"  (what is your favorite color)

Minny Mouse....hu.  He didn't explain, but he read it to me with conviction, so I'll take it as a compliment.  Maybe its my big red bow.   As for my famous "dro", I'll have to agree, they are excellent, and they come from a box and there is nothing wrong with that.  The nose thing got me choked up.  It was a conversation with one of my kids so long ago, - I had to pull it out of storage locker in my brain - but I did remember.  I was having some of that great one-on-one time you sometimes get with your kids, this happened to be bed time, when somehow we discovered that we had the same nose.  Squishy on the end, so that if you push it like a doorbell it kind of flattens on your face making you look like a prize fighter.  My husbands nose doesn't do this - when you ring his nose it doesn't squish.  (Ok, who just tried to squish their nose?  You know you did...come on, admit it...ok now leave it alone and you can test your kids noses tomorrow)  So anyway, it was one of those quick, random conversations that just sticks and I'll always remember, and I guess, so will he.  I love that.

There were also some great pictures to go along with this creative writing, and I regret that I am not able to figure out how to show them here.  My youngest  drew a stunning self-portrait  - not an easy task when you are using the oven door as a mirror (while daddy is cooking breakfast  in bed - I am a lucky woman!) to view yourself.  Next to him (presumable standing) is me.  Well...my leg, to be precise, but cut a kid a break, Rome was not built in a day.  I must say, I do think it is the finest stick-figure drawing of my leg I have ever seen - long, skinny, no spider-viens, and no feet - which is handy because then I don't have to worry about needing a pedicure, like, ever.  I probably could have figured out eventually that it was indeed my leg, but it is always helpful to have  the artist himself explain things.  

 Another one of my cards had a picture of me with, um, a club foot.  Now, one foot is fully formed and apparently functional (perhaps a bit swollen), but I seem to have been in some kind of accident.  In the picture, I don't seem to be worried at all about it, I look like I'm having a good time, so I guess although I have a disability, I have very good coping skills.  Or maybe I'm just in shock, and the gravity of the situation hasn't sunk-in yet.  Either way - I'm having a good hair day in my picture, and some days you can't ask for more than that.

Runners, on your mark...

So moving to a new town means meeting new people, which had me thinking about my first foray into making mom-friends.  Hind sight is 20/20 I realize, but I was thinking about how having your first baby is a great equalizer.  It doesn't matter if you were a butcher, a baker, or candle stick maker.  (or a lawyer, a government employee, or teacher) Everyone is on an even playing field - usually first time moms, first time kids, nobody quite knows what they're doing, and thats ok.  Because usually, you are too busy and tired to know that the mom next to you doesn't know a diaper rash from a yeast infection either.  She's most likely taken her infant to the doctor with what she's sure is Scarlet Fever only to be told its heat rash, and honestly Mrs. Newmom, your baby doesn't need a onesie and socks under the flannel pjs and blanket bag, because, well, its July. 

When my oldest was a few weeks old he had a Serious Circulation Problem (in caps because it was an awful disease).  No matter what I did, no matter how many blankets I wrapped him in, his fingers were cold, and I swear, blue.  So, after a sleepless night of hovering over my terribly sick newborn, and was too much internet medical research (leading to me believe that my pediatrician doesn't know anything and why didn't I become a doctor because I am WAY more capable of figuring out that he has a liver problem that has lead to a heart infection, which - combined with his obvious lung obstruction and brain tumor - has caused is this Serious Circulation Problem.)  

So, of course, I called my sister.  She had four kids under her belt by this time and what I consider to be the love child of Dr. Spock and Madam Curie.  She suggested I put a hat on him.  Huh.  A hat.  And...that was that.  Fingers warm and pink within thirty minutes.  Who.  Knew.  

In my (weak) defense, I had put hats on him, but stopped doing it because somehow the thing would always end-up sliding down and covering his face, which, I'm sure you know, babies do not like.  So I stopped the cute little hats - but - guess which hat was perfect - the only hat that ever fit my newborns perfectly everytime without the threat of suffocation.  The lovely stocking hat they gave them in the hospital.  The one that was tied on the end with a curling ribbon you use to wrap packages, which I guess is appropriate.  So I guess those hospital-types actually do know what they're doing, they just have no sense of style.  

Sorry - back to original thought now...

When the doctor put my first child on my chest, looking like he's just been exercised through the bathroom ceiling like Carolann in poltorgist and making lottle wimpering noises (not unlike the wimpering I was doing), my very first thought -honestly - was "Now What?"  You're just giving him to me?  I don't think my child birth class (which the only thing I took from was my love of Crystal Lite that they served at every class), and a baby shower really qualified me to take this thing home.  It was the new mothers group that saved me.  A bunch of really tired woman sitting on the floor in ill-fitting clothing covered in spit-up, and having really bad hair days.  This was not a beauty contest.  Well, ok, the babies were usually dressed to the nines when they came in - my oh my how priorities change.  I remember that I wanted to cry, I was never so happy to see a room full of miserable people in my life.  

No one talked about what they did pre-child, no one bragged about how advanced their baby was, come to think of it, no one really formed full sentences, and that was just fine.  The group leader was a nice woman with a soothing voice and instantly made you want to ask her if she minded if you lied down and put your head in her lap (feel free to play with my hair or rub my back), while she talked.   But, looking around the room, you know everyone was thinking the same thing - can I go to sleep?  And,  by the way,  if Captain Loud talker sitting next to me doesn't bring her voice down an octive she will wake my baby up, and I will be forced to open a can of whoop-ass on her right here in front of all these people. Yet, even though the new mom sitting across the room was a police woman, I think she would have had my back, as would the new mom scientist next to her.  I like an even playing field and misery loves company. 

Mourning

I am sorry to report that Bob the beetle has died.  

He lived to be a ripe old age of about 4 days longer than I would have like.

I am grateful to him to him for bringing out good qualities in my kids, such as compassion, although not so grateful for the eye twitch he brought out in me.

He instilled a real sense of team spirit in the boys, which is really fun to watch.

He instilled a real sense of fear and loathing in me, and I did not think he was fun to watch.

Bob inspired my oldest to do some research, and I'm all for learning new things.

Bob inspired me to lie.  When my oldest asked me to do some research and find out what Bob like to eat, I said I looked into it and he wanted to eat leaves and grass and dirt.  (I had to really sell the dirt thing, which also inspired me to be creative, so thats a good thing.)

He showed me that my kids are full of endless amounts of hope, that was refreshing to see.

He showed me that I still really hate bugs (insects?)*, and never want to see one again.

My oldest wants to build an elaborate (yet tasteful) coffin out of legos.  Which he would also like to line with "some red, shiny material..you know, to make it look really fancy".  Uhhh, no.  Because in three weeks, when he's looking for "that" lego - the one that was used for a hinge on Bob's burial bed - I'm not digging him up and cleaning off all those legos.  I mean, yes, I'd make HIM dig it up and clean the legos, but then I'd have to clean the legos because he won't get it clean enough.  For me.  We will have a nice, quiet service for Bob (closed jewlery box) in the back yard - I will not be speaking, but the kids understand.  

*Bug/insect?  I know you can tell which it is by counting the legs, but come on.  I was not able to focus on him long enough to see anything other than what looked like 85 legs, and each and everyone of them were reaching for me like Johnny coming through the bathroom door in "The Shining".    Bye Bob.