Happy Holidays

I love everything about Christmas. I start looking forward to it in June. It drives my husband crazy. I love singing, hot drinks, cookies, movies, snow, but I especially love the cheerful attitude people adopt for the season.

I love New Years too. Everyone is full of hope and great expectations. I love the loud parties and midnight cheering.

I dread the return of school and early mornings as much as the kids do. I hate homework, schedules, grades, studying.

I think I forgot to be an adult.

Sandy Hook

In light of the horrific incident that occurred in Connecticut, I just didn't have the heart to publish anything frivolous today.

I can't bring myself to listen to the newscasts or read the articles, so I don't know many of the details, and I don't care to. I know too much already. I find I need to discipline my mind away from severe overreactions such as forcibly confiscating all weapons in America and banning video games or movies containing any sort of violence. Action will surely be necessary, but not when emotions are running the day.

I am sad to think that I will bounce back from this.

Then again, maybe I won't. Every moment spent with my kids over the weekend was glorious. Every hug was remarkable. The sweaty smell and messy kitchen was a blessing. Bedtime rituals were not rushed but enjoyed.

If my children are not robbed from me by a sick twist of fate, they surely will be by minutes, hours, and years.

I think I, personally, will honor those who survived and those who didn't by being awake and aware during the precious moments I spend with my kids. Instead of hurrying along our schedule, I will hug, really listen, and laugh.

And I will be thankful for my messy kitchen.  

Wow.

The ocean had it's way with me today.

My gypsy parents, who sold all their belongings in order to spontaneously travel the earth, have set up camp for three weeks in sunny Florida. What else could I do but show up and enjoy the sunshine with them? I'm a good daughter.

So, immediately upon waking in our tropical paradise, Mike and I donned our swimsuits and gave ourselves to the waves. I spent a large part of the day upside down with my feet bobbing in the crashing waves and my head pounding into the sand. After a few hours, the ocean decided it was done with me and spit me unceremoniously upon the sandy beach.

This is where it gets bad.

Since the ocean was done with me, I headed to the pool to find my dad. My balance was gone due to a morning spent being tossed like I was in a washer set to sturdy, so I stumbled drunkenly as I searched.  My glasses were back in the room, so I squinted trying to locate my dad, and finally spotted his baseball hat and headed to his table.

Stumbling and squinting, and with a nest of sandy hair erupting in all directions, I squinted directly at my dad and said, "Wow!"

But, the man I was wowing was not my dad. Just a guy in a hat.

I just stumbled away.

Never Do That Again

"Mom!" Makenna whisper-screamed across my phone. "I hear people walking around in the house!"
"Do you think someone is breaking in?" I asked.
"I don't know. I've been home alone all night, but now I hear people walking around. It sounds like big people. I'm scared!"
"Get Arrow with you and remember your self-defense training," I instructed as I motioned for Mike to call 911. With my heart racing, I reassured Makenna that the police could be there in a matter of minutes. "Do you hear talking? Do you think more than one person is there?" I asked.
"I don't hear talking," she whispered, "but it sounds loud, like a really large man walking around."
"Do you have a knife or something you can grab?"
"Oh! Nevermind!" Makenna spoke loudly. "It was just Nairobi. I forgot she was upstairs."

Yeah. So the dog is on a diet. 

The Gulp

My ottoman shaped puggle often gets overshadowed by my regal husky. Sure, he is stunning and beautiful, but Nairobi has skills. She does things. She can snore like a large human. She can sleep through the day just as easily as she sleeps through the night. She can eat without chewing.

It used to concern me that she inhaled her food rather than chewing it. I worried that she might choke. But then an event, which I call The Gulp, happened, and my fears were eased.

It happened shortly after supper not too long ago. According to her usual custom, Nairobi was hovering  between the locations most likely to receive dropped delicacies of the human food variety.

Before I say anything more, I must explain that my husband has some strange quirks. One of them is that he is compelled to clean out the refrigerator at the first sign of disorderliness. The shelves are all placed at a strategic height that he has figured, and all the items go on the shelf corresponding to its height. When a short jar of pickles shows up in the tall spot reserved for the milk, he develops the twitches. When the mustard gets put on its side due to a small carton of yogurt showing up on the taller condiment shelf, he blows gaskets. It's just the way he is. We still love him.

So, while I was loading up the dishwasher and the kids were carrying plates and cups from the table to the kitchen sink, Mike was emptying, wiping, scrubbing, and organizing the refrigerator. This is not a rare occurrence.

Just as the dishwasher shut and the last perishable good was placed back into the refrigerator, Mike opened the freezer.

"What in the world is all of this clutter?" he asked, horrified.
"Just random stuff," I explained.
"We surely don't need everything we have stuffed in here."
"We might."
"Really," he asked. "We need this bag of bones?"
"Those are for the dogs. I use them as treats."
"Well, what about this large tin foil bundle? What is in here?"

When he peeled back the tin foil, he discovered that the bundle was full of leftover hotdogs - once grilled but long since forgotten. I had a vague memory of one of my offspring wrapping them in foil and freezing them, but the logic behind such an action did not spring into my mind.

Then it happened. One lone completely frozen hot dog wobbled on the edge of the foil for a fraction of a second before toppling over the edge. As if she were synced to the frequency at which food falls, Nairobi ran, ears blowing behind her, to intercept the hot dog. She opened her mouth and caught it before it hit the ground.

In spite of the fact that it was a rather long hot dog, in spite of the fact that it had been frozen for months, Nairobi swallowed it whole. As we all stared, frozen in panic, she calmly licked her lips and walked to her pillow for a long nap.

I told you - she has skills. 

Mixed Signals

Once upon a time there was a man who operated power tools. One day this man, while sawing a piece of wood, accidentally sawed his middle finger. It bled and bled. The man went to the hospital where the kind doctors stitched his finger back together and wrapped it up so it could heal. From that moment on, his children and friends called that finger, "Angry Finger" because it was wrapped to stick straight up, which was an insulting gesture to anyone who happened to pass by the man.


Meanwhile, in a nearby yard, the man's father-in-law happened to smash his thumb between two large rocks, which caused the thumbnail to pop off. It bled and bled. The father-in-law went to the hospital where the kind doctors stitched his thumb back together and wrapped it up so it could heal. From that moment on, his children and friends called his thumb, "Happy Thumb" because it was wrapped to stick straight up, which was an encouraging gesture to anyone who happened to pass by the man.

It was decided that the two men should never leave each other's sides because the son-in-law could go in front and flip everyone off, while the father-in-law could follow and give everyone a friendly thumbs-up so that all the insulted people would end up feeling oddly encouraged and happy.

And they lived happi
We'll see.

Busted

I am a person of science. I graduated with a degree in science, and I lean heavily toward logic and away from emotion. Over time I have had to tame the blunt manner in which I speak to people, and I have made great efforts to be more sensitive.

How can a highly compartmentalized mind, such as mine, bend around such nebulous ideas as thoughtfulness? By developing strategies.

I tried to read some books on communication, but I had to read the section addressed to men. I was not a fan of that.

Then I stumbled upon a genius idea - my phone. I have had some wild experiences with my phone, but now she is one of my best friends. She was only a handy device until I discovered the "remind me" feature. Not only will she remind me of important appointments, she will also remind me to ask important questions, like, "Remind me to ask Drake what kind of shoes he needs for show choir."


Even better, she has turned me into a thoughtful person. She reminds me to wish friends happy birthday, and she reminds me to send cards in the mail. There is, however, a con to this list of pros.

"Do you want me to answer your phone," Mike asked me.
"Sure."
"Oh, it's not a phone call; it's a reminder," Mike discovered.
"Will you read it to me?"
"Call your husband and tell him you love him," Mike read from my phone screen. "Wait, what is that? Did you set yourself a reminder to call me and tell me you love me?"
"Maybe," I mumbled.
"AND YOU STILL NEVER CALL?"

Doh.

All Things Animal

Drake loves all things animal. When he was little he would create elaborate traps so that he might procure a squirrel as a pet. He once caught a fly and tied a leash of dental floss around its tiny neck so that the fly could be his companion. He suffered through the nasty bite of a mouse in a loving attempt to feed the fat rodent to a cat.

We finally bought Drake some dogs. His love for his dogs runs deep. When he gets home he calls their names before the door shuts behind him, and they run to him like they've been shot from a cannon and attack him with jumping and licking. Which is why Drake never complains when I ask him to take the dogs on a walk. He gets the leashes, and the dogs jump like popcorn until they are fastened and out the door. He is sometimes gone for hours with them.

Recently I learned that Drake doesn't actually walk very far with them. He walks them to a nearby park and plays with them as if they were toddlers. He takes them down the slide on his lap. He puts them in the swings and pushes them. He can even teeter-totter with them. They vehemently object to the merry-go-round.

   



  Adopting Arrow from the Furry Friends Refuge gave us a good feeling - like we were doing our part by rescuing a homeless animal. However, when I see Drake with his eyes closed in a warm, furry snuggle,  I am not sure which of them was truly rescued.

Stunned Bird Triage

The animal kingdom must surely rue the day some smarty-pants invented glass. The invention of glass especially haunts the bird population.To a creature solely dependent upon the laws of nature and physics, glass must seem a mysterious, magical, and deadly phenomenon.

When we moved into the country, I spent the first several months running to investigate mysterious crashes only to find nothing broken, spilled, or even messy. The crashes were loud and often. And totally unobservable. Being a logical person, it took about a hundred crashes before I began to believe that our house was haunted.

Then, as I gazed contentedly out the window at my backyard, a delicate jay bird gracefully left his perch in my tree and sailed on the breeze directly into the window in front of my face. The gonging crash caused me to jump and scream, but also to finally solve the mystery of the incessant crashes plaguing my waking moments.

With extreme relief, I dialed my husband's phone number and told his voicemail, "We don't have ghosts! We have glass!" His relief was on the low side of epic, and I'm pretty sure it was due to a disbelief of my assessment. The ghost assessment and the bird assessment.

Until he walked into my bedroom holding a stunned bird.

"Guess what just happened?" he told me, as if I wasn't used to it.
"Let me guess. That bird crashed into a window."
"How did you know?" He asked, impressed.
"You wouldn't believe how often..." BOOM.

I couldn't finish my sentence because, literally, just then, a bird crashed into the window behind me.

I would like to thank the winged nation for showing my husband that I am a genius.

Phone Funny

I love being able to tell my fancy phone things to do. I say to it, "Remind me to pick Emery up from school," and BOOM - Emery gets to go home. Okay, it's not that I would forget Emery. But I have most definitely been guilty of forgetting things like doctor's appointment, mailing letters, and making certain phone calls. Now my phone helps me remember all these important things.

Recently my phone helped me find a self-defense class and register for it. It was Makenna's idea. She looked at herself and realized that her muscles were not impressive. Then she looked at the wide world around her and decided that she could do with some defense training. Then she suggested that I find a class and sign the both of us up for it because it just makes good sense.

My phone found that the Windsor Heights Police Department was offering just such a class and that I could register for it by stopping at the city hall and paying twenty-five dollars. I knew that the chances were very slim that I would remember to actually stop by city hall and do such a thing, so I enlisted the help of my phone to remind me.

The next day, promptly at 9:00 A.M., I received a reminder stating, "Go to buy the City Hall."

I love my phone. It thinks I'm that important.

Revelation

"I like fall a lot more than I used to because of you," Mike told me as we watched the leaves fall from the trees.
"What do you mean? I don't like fall."
"Yes you do."
"No I don't. It is the death of sunny, warm days and the birth of shivering."
"You like all the colors."
"Well, everyone likes the colors."
"You get really happy about flannel sheets."
"Um, there're soft and fuzzy. What's not to like?"
"And you love wearing sweatshirts."
"Again, soft and fuzzy."
"You like pumpkins."
"Yum."
"And you love all the hot drinks: hot chocolate, hot tea, hot apple cider."
"Again, yum."
"And you love having crowds of people over to watch football and eat football food."
"Yes."
"You like fall."
"Touche."

Apparently I like fall.

Teenage Tricks

Having teenage children in your house is confusing and frightening for all involved. They are pendulums of flesh swinging between adulthood and childhood rapidly and without any notice. One moment they might say, "I worked ahead and finished all my homework for the week," and thirty seconds later they might say, "There was no toilet paper so I just didn't wipe." It is hard to know what to expect.

Let's face it - parents really should have one practice child. We've never done this before. We don't always know if we are overreacting, being unrealistic, or just plain blowing it. We should have a practice go around so we have at least a little bit of a clue what we are doing. When is the right time to dig in and get your point across, and when is it right to take your hands off and let the child make their own mistakes? Poor Makenna. Being the oldest, she has involuntarily sacrificed herself to be the stone upon which we grind our parental teeth. Sometimes I just want to look at her and say, "Sorry kid. Can I have a do-over?"

But, last week I had a breakthrough. Or so I thought. Makenna's room has always been a point of tension for us. I like it clean. She doesn't care what I like. Oh the tension. Then my motherly wisdom kicked in and I decided that her room is a small battle in the big picture and I took my hands off of it. I let her throw her stuff on the floor; I didn't say anything when the sink in her bathroom looked like a science experiment, and I kept silent when her shower became a storage unit. Then I heard a ghastly scream.

"What's wrong?" I asked after sprinting into her room.
"A spider! Under all those dirty clothes!" Makenna screamed pointing at a mountain of t-shirts and jeans.
"Oh, that makes sense," I said, relieved.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, spiders like cool, dark places. You've provided them with what they would consider a Marriott Vacation Resort."
"NO! I've got to get this all cleaned up. Will you help me?"
"No."
"Please!"
"No." I'm caring like that.
"I can't do this alone. It's a huge mess."
"That is why I won't help you. I've cleaned it so many times before and you always mess it up immediately afterward. I'm done with it."
"Mom! Please. I don't want to do it alone. I get bored. And lonely." I felt a crack in my grinch heart, and Makenna seized the opportunity. "It could be a project we do together and afterward we could watch a movie and have a day together."
"Makenna, if I spend my Saturday afternoon helping you clean this room and it gets dirty again I will be very upset and disappointed. I will feel like I wasted my time."
"I understand and promise that I will keep it clean."

So, by the end of Saturday her room looked like the lovely space I knew it could be. And, amazingly a week later it was still clean. Even her bathroom was spotless.

"I need to take a shower," Emery complained to me, "but Makenna is showering in my bathroom."
"Why is she using your shower?" I asked.
"I don't know, but she has used it all week. It is annoying me. She gets it all crowded with tons of shampoo bottles. I can barely stand in there anymore."
"Yeah," Josiah added, "and her clothes are all over my bathroom floor."
"Why are her clothes in your bathroom?" I asked.
"I guess she changes her clothes in there, but she just leaves her dirty clothes and never picks them up."
"Also," Mike said, "she has been brushing her teeth in my bathroom. She gets toothpaste everywhere."

Well played, Makenna. Well played.

Coon Dog

Arrow howling at a tree

My dog has never been trained in the art of hunting. I've read Where The Red Fern Grows, and I know how much patience is required to teach a dog such skills. I do not have patience.

So, I was confused when I heard my dog howling while I was making breakfast. Glancing out the window, I saw that he was safe and fine sitting under a tree. But the howling was relentless. Then he began barking and running in circles. I called him inside, but he was not to be moved. Finally, I walked to him and noticed by the torn up grass under the tree that he had been involved in the act of running in circles for many hours.

Why Arrow was howling at the tree

Not familiar with the ways of the wild, it took me a mighty long time to figure out what was going on. Then, in a flash, all that I had learned from Where The Red Fern Grows came back to me - not just the part that made me cry for days. But I remembered the part where the dogs hunted. I looked up into the tree. And there it was - a raccoon. A very large, very frightened raccoon.

My dog could not have been more proud.

And, honestly, I was just a little bit proud also.

Until the next night when he trapped thee raccoons on the neighbors porch at 3 AM and woke their family up with his ferocious barking.

Not proud.

Nature Invasion

I love living in the country. It is peaceful. Nature surrounds us. Nature invades us. That part I don't like.

The kids were in bed, a gentle breeze was blowing in the open windows, the sounds of frogs, and crickets floated through the air. It was utterly peaceful. I seized the moment. I grabbed a book, opened all the windows in my bedroom, and climbed under the cozy blankets to read. Nobody knows how to party like I do.

I quietly read for at least ten minutes, hardly daring to believe I was lucky enough to participate in a leisure activity, when I heard the rattling of the screen door that leads from my bedroom to my back deck. I thought it was the wind, and did not tear my eyes away from the words I was devouring in the book I was reading. But the rattling continued. I chose to glance toward the door, more out of instinct that actual decision, just in time to see a black MOUSE ENTER MY BEDROOM! It squeezed under the screen door, scampered across the carpet, and caused my heart to pound like a jackhammer. I flung books, pillows, and blankets in all directions as I attempted to climb the wall and take refuge on the ceiling. This, along with blood curdling screams, induced the mouse to turn right back around and exit my room by the same route he had entered it.

So, now I know that screaming and throwing things is an effective weapon against mice.

And I think I need a cat.

Terrible Wreck

"Mom! Let me in!" Emery screamed outside my bathroom door.
"I'm not dressed," I explained.
"It doesn't matter!"
Sensing the distress of the situation, I left the water in the shower running, dripped across the bathroom to my robe, and quickly put it on. When I opened the door, a blond-headed, red-faced girl howled in my direction.
"Did someone hurt you?" I asked, alarmed. "Did you break something? Are you scared?"
"Worse!" And she shoved her foot into my face. It will never cease to amaze me how a child, when scared, can contort their body into a multitude of gymnastic shapes in order to bring attention to the injured part. But what I saw left me woozy.
"Your toe is all bloody," I yelled, because I'm good at deducing things.
"I was climbing the apple tree, and I reached for a really big apple, but I fell, and when I was falling down the tree a piece of bark slid between my skin and my toenail."
"Eww," I muttered as the darkness closed in around me and my knees turned to jello. "We'll have to get tweezers and pull it out."
"You can't," she cried. "It's not a solid piece of wood. It's all soft and when you pull on it, it just crumbles."
So I carried her, in my soaking wet robe, to the kitchen and put her foot in the sink. After soaking it in water long enough for my scalp to stop tingling, I told her to bite into an apple really hard as a distraction while I tried using a needle to pry the chunk of bark out from under her toenail. Alas, the child spoke truly when she said that the bark just crumbled. The needle was totally ineffective. Then I placed the poor girl into a bath hoping the warm water would eventually disintegrate the wood. The only thing that course of action succeeded in doing was to irritate the poison sumac rash that covered her body.  Finally, I attempted to use a needle to scrape the crumbly substance out of my daughter's nail bed. That action induced screaming likely to cause deafness in our neighbors. She bit my brush in half and screamed so loudly I expected my eardrum to climb out of my body and run away.


We spent the rest of the evening in the ER where she brought the nurses to tears with her sad face. They rushed to give her ice, Advil, a pillow, a pony. That is when I decided to take her with me every time I have to wait for endless hours.

The doctor finally numbed her toe and dug out all the bark with special tweezers only doctors are allowed to play with.

Then Emery's phone buzzed. She had a text from a friend asking how she was doing. Without even a slight pause, Emery responded, "I am a terrible wreck."

I looked at her laying on the paper-coated table with a nasty rash all over her body from poison sumac, a horrifying big toe,  tears running down her blotchy, red face, and I agreed with her diagnostic.

But she's my sweet, little, terrible wreck.

Disaster Muffins

Some weekends are gentle and leave you feeling relaxed and refreshed. Mine wasn't. It came in like a lion and devoured me. But that is another blog for another time. The point is that I was tired. More like exhausted. So, at 10:00 Saturday night I should have gone to bed, but I had to make muffins for Jesus.

My church is pretty awesome. It is full of great people that I really like, we do a lot of fun stuff, and it meets in a movie theater so sometimes I get popcorn, and that is about all I need to make me happy. Because football season is upon us, and because my church is pretty great, before church this Sunday we had a tailgating party. We all met in the parking lot, brought breakfast food, and celebrated great weather and football before church. Which is why I was making muffins at 10:00 the night before.

I am not what you would call a baker. I don't bake. But, I decided muffins were pretty safe, and to make them extra special, I added some of the delicious Michigan blueberries my mom gets for me every year. They are bigger and juicier and sweeter than any blueberries you can imagine. I added them with a smile just imagining all the church folk devouring the muffins and pounding down my door for the recipe. I would say, "Well, first you have to go to Michigan and pick the blueberries."

I'm not sure what happened. There really is no explanation. They were a disaster. They never got puffy on the top, and they needed to bake much longer than the recipe called for. When I tried to take them out of the muffin tin, they exploded.


Due to the large amounts of hysterics, my husband sensed something in the kitchen was amiss. He entered the kitchen, sized up the situation, told me to go watch TV, and totally redeemed the situation. He, the muscular construction guy, made beautiful muffins.

I'm not a baker.

Classical Music

The classical music station owes me about a thousand gallons of gas.

When my kids are riding in the car with me the radio station has to be set to screamo, rap, or rock that rocks. And we have to listen to it loud. While I can only handle about three rap songs before I begin to rip out my hair by the roots, I am actually growing to enjoy the screamo. I sometimes even play it while the age appropriate people aren't with me.

But, sometimes, when the rulers of the radio dial exit the vehicle, I push that dial to the classical station. Violin concertos and piano sonatas fill my mind. They fill my mind and leave no room for such mundane thought as, "I'm going to the grocery store." I just drive. I don't mean to. I mean to do my errands in a timely fashion and return home to accomplish housework. But, instead, I just drive. I have ended up downtown when I was headed to the jr. high school. I have chased a long forgotten gravel road, wondering where it ended, when I intended to show up for my haircut.

Violins are my favorite. They make my soul smile.

I get wrapped up in the story of the music. I want to lie in the grass and watch the clouds decorate the sky. I do not want to shop for bread and milk and boy's underwear. And I usually don't. Which is why the classical music station has cost me a thousand gallons of gas. And my boys wear old underwear full of holes.

"It's okay kids," I want to say. "You might not have breakfast or underwear, but my soul is smiling."

Worth it.

It Happened

"Mom," Makenna sobbed over the phone, "I've had an accident."

My heart stopped moving and my lungs ceased breathing. Then came the words I was waiting to hear: "I'm not hurt. Everyone is fine."

Having teenagers is scary for so many reasons. The number one reason for fear, in my opinion, is that they are legally able to place themselves in the driving position of a motorized vehicle and DRIVE AWAY. Whoever made this a legal activity did not have teenagers. My daughter thinks Raman Noodles constitutes a great breakfast, and she has lost her debit card three times over the summer. Yet, she is legally able to DRIVE AWAY.

And just to ensure that I will someday be very good friends with a heart doctor, my two sons are also now driving. These are the boys who drove a go-cart into the bonfire. Yes, the actual fire. Luckily my son's only accident since legally driving has been to crash my precious Jeep into a tree. Nobody was hurt.


Mike and I hightailed it over to the accident site where the police assured us that Makenna handled herself responsibly and was not at fault in any way. We hugged Makenna and her friends, who were shaking and chattering like frightened birds, and we spoke to the woman who had pulled out in front of Makenna's car, who was wandering like a zombie. I think the police were glad when they could finally leave.

"The most scary part," Makenna said, "was that even though I was responsible for what happened to everyone, I had no control over the situation. It just happened."

Ironic, I thought to myself as I watched her get into her sad, broken car, that is just how I feel.

Death Machine

Isn't there some unwritten law that a person should only defy death one way at a time? Because I would like to make a citizen's arrest. I saw a man riding a Harley. Riding a Harley is not bad, but, while placing his unhelmeted life on his death machine, he was also smoking.

First of all, how does a cigarette stay lit while being blasted by wind? Doesn't it blow out? Or, doesn't it - literally - blow out of a man's mouth and into the road? I experienced moped riding last year for the first time, and, while exhilarating, it was also quite windy. Things blew off of me all the time: my sunglasses, my headband, thirteen sacks of groceries I was trying to transport, my skirt. I don't want to talk about it. Admittedly, I raced that thing up to 25 mph, so the wind was quite strong. But, I have a feeling Mr. Harley was planning on going even faster. How does a measly cigarette stand a chance? I've seen the way people hold those in their lips. There must be another unspoken rule that, not being a smoker, I am unaware of. It must state that the cigarette should only barely touch the lips and only one millimeter of the cigarette is actually allowed to come in contact with saliva. When talking to someone in such a situation, it is impossible for me to tear my eyes away from the smoker's blatant dare to gravity. I just stare at the butt of the cigarette sitting precariously on the outer half of a lower lip and wait, with baited breath, hoping that it does, and then hoping that it does not fall to the ground. I'm torn.

That's not all though. This man, while placing his life on a death vehicle and simultaneously inhaling cancer, pulled out his cell phone and began texting. I nearly rolled down my window and yelled, "Excuse me! Both hands should be on your death machine at all times!" If I had his cell phone number, I would have texted him the phone number for the suicide prevention hotline. Clearly, he was looking to end it all.

What has this world come to?

That Dog

My dog will be the death of himself.

Just because everyone in the family is under the spell of his beauty and love, does not mean that we spoil him. It just means that he is the king of us.

When we moved to our new house, Arrow was convinced we had done so just for him. Not only did we provide him with plenty of room to run, he also suddenly acquired a forest, a pond, and cats.  The cats rue the day. It only got better after that because when spring rolled in he suddenly found himself the owner of geese, baby birds, and squirrels.

Why can't he be satisfied with that?

"I'm calling about your dog," the voice on the phone told me.
"Yes?" I said after deciding against pretending I only spoke Spanish.
"I think I have him. I work on a horse farm, and we have a husky here. He's a friendly fellow, but he keeps chasing the horses and making them panic."
"Sorry," I mumbled, trying to sound like a responsible adult.
"He's only trying to play, but he's gonna get himself hurt or get a horse hurt."
"I'll be right there."

And now we have to keep the friendly fellow on a leash where he sits and looks at all the freedom he once had. He cries and whines and barks. He walks in circles and gets himself tangled around trees. And, in some way which I cannot explain, he gets his leash wrapped around his legs, his chest and his tail until he cannot move.

What I really don't understand is this:  How can a dog, who does not have an opposable thumb, figure out how to open a door knob so that he can get inside, but he cannot figure out how to walk in an opposite direction so as to untangle himself?

Not one to embrace captivity, he turned into a canine Houdini - escaping at every possible minute. Sometimes he was caught in the act, but he usually just got away. Then I would get a phone call. So we had the brilliant idea to let him run around at night. The horses were safely asleep in their stables, and small children were locked up in their houses. So we let him loose. He ran like the wind. He raced like a bolt of lightening into the nearest cornfield and never looked back.


"What if he gets hurt?" I asked Mike. "Or, what if some horse was accidentally left outside, and Arrow hurts it? Or what if he never comes back home?"
"Let's watch a movie to get your mind off of it," Mike suggested.
"I guess we can look at a movie as we sit on the couch and worry."

Several hours later we heard a happy bark at the door. With relief racing through our bodies, we ran to the door and opened it. Arrow drug himself into the house, smelling of adventure and skunk, plopped himself onto the cool kitchen floor, and slept till noon the next day.

I washed him with vinegar. I washed him with tomato juice. I washed him with special apple anti-skunk shampoo. Didn't make a dent. He reeks.

I wonder what happened to the skunk.

Fire

We haven't had many good ol' Iowa thunderstorms this summer. It has been nothing but hot, dang hot, and dry. So, when we saw the sky darken and watched lightening dance across the sky, we were thrilled and ran outside to watch. We kept watching when Mike went inside to answer his phone, and we kept watching as Mike came back out.
"I have to go," he announced.
"What's up?" I asked, peeling my eyes from the flashing sky.
"A tree got struck by lightening on a property that I own."
"Did it fall down?"
"No, it's on fire and the fire department can't get the fire out."
"So the firemen are there?"
"Yes, but the heart of the tree is on fire, so I have to have a tree service come and cut it down while it is on fire and the firemen can't leave until the tree is down and the fire is out."

It seemed to me like an unusual occurrence, so I rushed out and bought some lottery tickets. Then I realized that the fire was a bad omen, not a good one. Because later we decided to have a bon fire.

"Dad needs you," Emery told me. "He is in the bathroom."
"Uh oh," I said. But it was a much different situation than I expected when I opened the bathroom door.
"I caught my legs on fire," Mike said.
"WHAT???" I panicked.
"I was starting the fire and it kind of exploded and caught my legs on fire."
"WHAT???" I repeated, because I did not go to nursing school.
 "Can you get some ice or something?"

So with a large bill from the tree service that I might have to sell plasma to pay, and blisters covering my husbands legs, I decided that fire is serious.

Where is Smokey The Bear when you need him?

Boys Aren't Men

I'm not an overly protective sort of mom. I don't usually worry or fret. I don't have a lot of rules, like eating in certain rooms, not watching certain shows, or not throwing aerosol cans into the bon fire. My kids don't have play clothes and church clothes. But they do have clothes, so I consider them lucky.

Even I got worried, though, when I dropped them off to work last week. They were doing a lot of work at a house that had been neglected for years. Some of their jobs were to paint the basement with waterproof paint, remove the vine from the brick exterior of the house, cut down the overgrown bushes, weed whack and mow, and spray the weeds. It was hard work. It was man work.

My boys are not yet men. Which was the main thought in my head when I saw the tools they unloaded from the truck to do the jobs on their list. It started fine with screwdrivers and paintbrushes. But when they both grabbed a chainsaw, fear seized my soul.

"Wait!" I commanded in my mom voice. "You guys aren't using those chainsaws are you?"
"Well, how else can we cut down these bushes?" they asked, logically and innocently.
"Any other way!" I told them. "You may use a regular saw, or a butter knife, or even a herring."
"Mom!" they groaned. "We know how to use chainsaws. Dad taught us."

I felt proud of myself as a mother when I drove away after forcing them to agree to a contract signed with their own blood stating that they would UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES use man tools without a REAL LIVE MAN watching them, and they would only use such tools in a way that would make a responsible mother HAPPY.

Then they sent me these pictures.

I've lost control.

Dog Hot

I may have mentioned that I have an Alaskan Husky. ALASKAN.

Not only is this poor dog out of his climate, he is in the middle of the most miserable heat wave in recent memory. The earth is scorched. The grass is dying. The sun is blazing. Just opening a door to the outside causes my children to run for ice to rub on their faces and necks.

Both me and my dog are going to great lengths to keep his furry body cool. I bought him a swimming pool for those times when he has be outside for more than ten seconds. When I water the flowers he treats the event as his own personal water park experience.


But he is even more creative than that. One time we shouted for him for ten minutes before finding him happily splashing in the leftover water from an earlier shower. He refused to exit that shower until the sun set.

Then he discovered that he could use his paw, although he does not have an opposable thumb, to remove the vent cover and place his entire head into the cool air coming from the vent in the floor. He slept that way for hours. He dreamed happy dreams of snow, ice, and sleds.

I tried his method and stuck my entire head into the refrigerator. It works.

He makes a good point. It's not just hot out there - it's dog hot.

The Hulk

Lately it has been a zillion degrees. It starts out hot and gets hotter through the day. It makes simple things hard, and it makes me grumpy. The air conditioning is trying, but in the case of air conditioning vs. a zillion degrees, a zillion degrees wins. I think the only way to really make it feel nice and cool inside my house during these oppressively hot days is to go outside for fifteen minutes and then reenter. Then it feels positively lovely for a few moments. 

I woke up to a disaster last week. The two pillows I use were flung in opposite directions across the room. The top sheet was yanked out, pulled up and over my head, and crammed into the space between the headboard and the mattress. The bottom sheet was peeled back from the mattress and lumped up under my feet. Even my husband's pillow was resting precariously on a floor lamp across the room. 

Since I was pretty sure that everything was tidy and neat when I fell asleep, I rubbed my eyes and took another look. Still a disaster. I looked across the top of the bare mattress at Mike to see what in the world he had done.

"You did it," he said, exhausted.

"I did what?"

"You did this mess."

"While I was asleep?" I asked, skeptical. 

"You kept saying you were hot and you tossed around, yanked at the sheets, threw stuff. All Night Long." 

"I do kind of remember being hot, but I thought I just folded the sheet back."

"Being hot turns you into The Hulk," he mumbled on his way back to a pillowless sleep.

The Hulk. That is something nobody has ever compared me to.

I think I like it.

Crazy Cardinal

Being Bored

Flying With Gusto

I know sometimes birds fly into large windows. I get it. But we have a crazy cardinal at my house who is persistent beyond normal persistent behavior. He has been dive bombing my window every day since April. The same window.

He sits outside on a wooden railing acting like he is going to do anything but dive straight into the window. He looks around, as if bored, glancing to and fro but never at the window. This is the tactic he chooses to use to convince the glass to relax and be caught unawares. Then, in the smack middle of glancing at a tree or stick, he spins like a lightening ballerina, flies with gusto, hits the glass, slides down the glass, and lands in the rocks in the yard. Then, he eventually ends up back on the railing staring anywhere except at the glass.

Dive Bombing

Sliding

We are so used to the staccato hammering that we don't even notice anymore.

But our guests are quite entertained.

Poor bird.

Drama in the Theater

I went to two movies this week, which is not normal for me. I love going to see movies, but it just seems hard to find the time to do it very often.

One thing I especially love about seeing a movie out in public instead of at home in my pajamas is the drama that takes place before the movie. Like in the ticket line. Or the popcorn line. There are so many different kinds of people all shoved into a small space, drama is bound to happen. And it did.

Someone's Granny was the absolute highlight of one movie experience. I was getting my popcorn as I noticed Granny, who had to be at least 80, shuffling through the line next to me. She was stooped at the neck, wrinkled, and gray haired. She was wearing biking shorts, a tank top, and a biking helmet. She was alone and she was there to see Magic Mike. Yes, the movie about the male strippers. She got herself an extra large tub of popcorn, shuffled her way into the theater, and wore her helmet though the entire movie. She is now my all time goal of what I want to be when I grow up.

The other movie experience was much more horrible. I was in an extra fine mood because it was date night with my husband. He is funny and I always find myself laughing when we are together. We arrived at the theater, and I made a trip to the bathroom while he ordered the tickets. Then we stood in line and ordered our popcorn together. But, I took those moments to be extra friendly to all those standing around me. I conversed and cracked jokes with total strangers. I was feeling good, and I knew I was funny because everybody kept laughing. Even when I thought my jokes were a bit lame, people just laughed. I had them eating out of the palm of my hand.

Then I felt a tugging on my skirt and heard a voice whisper into my ear, "Your skirt is tucked into your underwear, and your underwear is inside out."

Humility.

I'm so glad they keep those theaters dark so I could melt into my chair and disappear.

Shoeless

Ahh. Vacation. I love it so much. I was born to vacation. I love getting away. I love exploring new places. I love squishing the whole family into a van. Except when one of us is covered in poop. Then the togetherness just looses it's appeal.

It wasn't really Drake's fault. The poor kid gets carsick. VERY carsick. One time he threw up all over a complete stranger even though he was comatose due to dramamine and jet lag. Since this vacation included driving though the mountains, I gave him a nice dose of dramamine. After the unfortunate sleep/hurl incident, throwing up has been banned on all vacations. I've made that clear.

Dramamine has a way of making a person completely unconscious. So the poor guy was tired. He managed to rouse himself from his sleep long enough to mumble something about "need" and "bathroom," but then he fell back asleep. We continued driving. The second time he woke up he was much more insistent. The kid had to go to the bathroom, and waiting was not an option. Since it was dark and we were a long way from civilized toilets, we had the brilliant idea to pull to the side of the road and let Drake find a spot in the weeds to claim as his own.

"Hey, guys," Drake called from the weeds. "This whole hill is muddy."
"Can you step around it?" Mike suggested.
"No. Literally, the WHOLE place is muddy."
"Well, I guess you'll just have to do the best you can."
"But the mud is super deep. My shoes are sinking."
"Just finish up and then we'll stick your shoes in a plastic sack."

Drake sat on the side of the van to remove his sandals and place them into a plastic sack we found under mounds of pillows and blankets, and we knew immediately that we had a problem. The smell from the sandals nearly caused us all to break the ban on throwing up.

"Drake!" Josiah yelled. "That's not mud. You stepped in poop!"
"GROSSGROSSGROSS!"

We made it down the road almost a mile before the smell was too much and we had to abandon Drake's shoes.

"Dad, did you just throw away my shoes?"
"Sorry, Buddy. You'll have to wear your tennis shoes for the rest of the trip."
"Remember how my tennis shoes fell apart in Utah and we left them in the motel room?"
"Oh. Yeah."

And that is why Drake spent the rest of vacation shoeless.

Poor kid.

Death By Mountain

Who wouldn't want to go mountain biking in the mountains? We are in Utah for a family vacation, and we are staying on a mountain. The scenery is beautiful, the people are wonderful, the air smells like pine, and there is a bike shop two minutes from our front door where they rent bikes. Perfect.

My daughter's health class did a piece this last year on the damaging effects of alcohol. As a teaching point the kids were given "beer goggles" to wear, and then they were instructed to perform different tasks. As instructed, my daughter put the goggles on and was then told to ride a bike. She never actually made it on the bike unless you count laying atop it while it was horizontal on the grass. She scraped up her leg and arm. That is pretty much how I rode my mountain bike in the mountains.

For one thing, I live in Iowa. Where we have air.

It started nicely. Mike and I woke up early, donned helmets, hugged a tree, and took off down the bike trail with smiles on our faces. Mike zoomed away like he was born to ride a bike directly upwards, but the slant of the bike trail quickly bossed me around. I made it two blocks.

"What's wrong?" Mike asked after circling back to find me near our starting spot.
"My lungs aren't working!" I wheezed, doubled over in the grass.
"Oh, it's the altitude. Raise your hands over your head and take a deep breath."
"Aaaa!" I screamed into the sky with my hands raised high.
"Are you going to be okay?" Mike asked, hoping the people who had begun to stare would keep on walking.
"There is a boulder on my chest!" I yelled into the sky.
"Do you want to go back?"
"No. The mountain is not the boss of me."

Five minutes later Mike circled back again to find me doubled over my bike huffing and panting like a teenager making a prank phone call. After more hand raising, some growling, and a pep talk, we biked on. For two feet. Then we faced reality and chained our bikes to a tree in order to attempt conquering the mountain on foot.

"If you breathe more consistently it would be better for you," Mike said after I flung my body to the ground and growled at the sky.
"I can't breathe more consistently because I can't breathe AT ALL!" I shouted from the ground. Wheezing and panting, I stretched my arms out wide in a futile attempt to fit more air inside my lungs.
"We are almost to the summit," Mike told me.
"I'M GOING TO DIE HERE!"
"You can make dirt angels as long as you need to," Mike said because he is a sassy pants.

"How long have we been doing this?" I asked after Mike's dirt angel comment spurred me into action.
"A little over an hour, but a good chunk of that time you spent on the ground. It should only take about fifteen more minutes to reach the summit."

Fifteen minutes full of growling, hand raising, rolling in the grass, and threatening to throw up, ended with two Iowans on the top of a mountain in Utah. I believe it was beautiful. I was breathing like a 90 year old man with emphysema. It was distracting.

We then altered from leaning into the uphill and instead braced against the downhill. When we arrived back to our room, my wobbly legs barely carried me to my bed where I immediately fell asleep. I decided one thing:  the mountain IS the boss of me.

Canine Potty Time

You never know what will happen when you step out your front door. You think you know. You think, at least, that you have a pretty good idea. But then you are so, so wrong.

We have a nightly ritual around here. I put the girls to bed while Mike puts the boys to bed. Then we take the dogs outside. The dogs run around and remark all of their territory in case anybody might have forgotten that this is their land while Mike and I gaze up at the stars and comment on how bright they are now that we live in the country. Seriously, those things are VISIBLE out here. So, we met at the front door with our dogs, opened it, and then things got weird. Really weird.

Being that we live in the country and being that the night out here is dark-dark, we didn't see it at first.
"Hey," Mike said after tearing his gaze away from the brilliance of the heavens, "someone is here."
"Who?" I asked.
"I'm not sure, but there is a truck in our driveway. See?"

Indeed, there was a truck in our driveway. Assuming it could be any number of people who are known to randomly visit us, we walked over to figure out who had decided to say hello. Since our front yard is quite large and we were on the opposite side, it took us awhile to make the trek.
"I don't recognize that truck," Mike commented.
"I don't either. Do you hear a noise?"
"It sounds like someone inside the truck is locking and unlocking the locks."
"That's a weird thing to do."

The super-darkness didn't allow us to look in the window to recognize our guest, so, thinking that whoever was visiting us might be slow to exit due to carrying a bunch of stuff, Mike opened the driver's side door to lend a hand. Turned out, we had two guests. And we did not know them. And they were not really visiting us. But they were really busy. With each other. Naked. REALLY busy. And naked.

I think I should explain that when someone is IN YOUR VERY OWN DRIVEWAY, you just assume they are there to see you. But when you are facing two people you have never seen before and they are getting busy IN YOUR VERY OWN DRIVEWAY, it takes your brain a moment to process this strange information. How our brains decided to handle the situation was to stand and stare with our jaws hanging open. But that didn't fix anything because all these two people did was act startled and confused. They didn't scream; they didn't even stop.

Nothing will surprise you like experiencing pornography in person during your canine potty time.

"Why are you here?" Mike asked, and, really, it was a good question.
"Uhh," the ultra intelligent guy responded.
"I LIVE HERE!" Mike explained to him. Then just to help him out a bit he added, "YOU'RE IN MY FRONT YARD!"
"Sorry," he mumbled.

And then, because what is better than making an awkward situation even more awkward, my fat, lazy puppy who never runs, jumps, or gets overly excited, took a running leap, and jumped into the truck. She landed amidst four tangled feet and began smelling around. Since she was in the truck, Arrow felt that he should also participate in the fun. However, he was tall enough to just place his paws on these two naked strangers and stick his nose between the two of them.

Then some pandaemonium ensued during which we tried to pull our dogs away from the naked people and the naked people tried to find their brains. We couldn't have been more relieved as we stood and watched them drive away. But then, the truck stopped at the end of the driveway. Then the horn honked. And honked again. They were back at it.

The police came an hour later, but it took awhile to wake them up. We went to bed feeling highly entertained.

I don't make this stuff up.

I don't have to.

Port-A-Potty Nonsense

I love my sister-in-law, Lori, for so many reasons. First of all, she was my best friend for six years before she insisted that I marry her brother. So, I owe her that. Mostly though, I find her hilarious.

There was the time we were walking into church together and she fell into a snowdrift upside down leaving her skirt to cover the wrong part of her body. Or the time we were playing Pictionary and she got so frustrated she slammed her head on the table and sported a deep, purple bruise across her forehead for the next two weeks. Or the time she searched through the McDonald's trash for an hour before she found her "missing" keys in her pocket.

Last week she was at her son's baseball game and held out as long as she could before she finally decided to use the port-a-potty. Nothing can make me as grateful for modern day conveniences like a port-a-potty can. A port-a-potty experience is never a good one, and, certainly, one in which spontaneous decisions should never be made. She dared. While holding her breath and moving at lightening speed, she suddenly had the thought that she was sick to death of her piece of old, flavorless gum. She had to get rid of it. Now. "Simple," she thought to herself. "I'll just quickly toss it down this repulsive, bottomless hole." And so she did.

Mission accomplished, she returned to the hot, metal bleachers to bake in the sun, cheer in the appropriate places, and collect in her waistband the sweat rolling down her back. The team did great, and they headed home sweaty, but happy.

After a long afternoon at a baseball game, nothing feels better than a shower. But for her, a shower was more complicated than expected. This was due mainly to the discarded port-a-potty gum which had somehow ended up in her underwear instead of the bottomless hole. After being squished into her skin by the hot, metal, bleacher for hours, it became smeared by sweat and walking motions all across her nether regions.

"Kevin!" she called from her bathroom. "Bring the peanut butter and come here." With fear in his heart, Kevin visited her in the bathroom and analyzed the damage.

"How can you not notice gooey gum baking on your behind?" Kevin reasonably asked.
"Well, my underwear did keep sticking to me, but I just thought I was sweating a lot," Lori explained.
"But, wasn't it sticky?"
"Yes. I just kept adjusting."

Being a wise man, Kevin put his foot down and sent her into the shower alone with a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of Goo Gone.

It was a long shower.

She didn't smell like flowers when it was over.

Smooth Mother-In-Law

My son, Drake, never intended to be in show choir. However, his father and I are monsters and force him to choose some musical venue in which to participate every year. He signed up for choir. His teacher heard him sing, gave him an secret and impromptu audition, and, ta-da, he was in.

My Mother-in-law, a retired music teacher, is quite pleased with the musical activity of her grandchildren and tries to attend all of their concerts. Fortunately, since she has fourteen grandchildren, when she retired the school district gave her a card that lets her into activities at half the admission price. Drake's concert was downtown, and I knew it would be packed out. I bought a ticket for Mike and I, but I left her to get her own ticket since she has her magical card. I told her I would save her a seat, and then I went to make myself unpopular by placing jackets on the seats I needed to save.

She found me about five minutes before the show began, fought the crowd to reach her seat, and sat beside me.
"My card doesn't work here for some reason," she said as she sat down.
"You had to pay full price?" I asked.
"I showed the guy my card, but he said it didn't mean anything to him. I said it should. But, I didn't want to make a scene, so I just told him I would pay full price. Then I felt stupid when he said it was only a dollar," she said, laughing at herself.
"What? The admission price was six dollars," I told her.
"He said a dollar," she looked confused.
"Did you get your ticket from the ticket window downstairs?"
"No. I just went to the booth by the door."
"The booth where the man is selling bottled water?"
"He had water."
"You haggled with the water guy."
"No!" she shook her head even as the truth was dawning on her.
"So, let me get this straight. You walked up to the water booth, told the guy you should get your water for half price, then paid full price, walked away WITHOUT a bottle of water, and walked into the concert WITHOUT buying a ticket?"
"I think so," she whispered.

I have so much to learn from her.

Rum Pum Pum Pum

Lately Josiah has been carrying a practice pad around with him and drumming at all moments of the day. He has a piece from school that he wants to get just perfect, so as I made supper he serenaded me, and I couldn't resist filming it. About twenty minutes after I filmed this, several of his friends showed up for a sleepover, and, let me tell you, when your son is a drummer and invites his drumming friends over, the entire family gets the rhythm. As I write this, my floor is thudding and thumping. Just to walk to the kitchen makes me feel like dancing Masaai style.

Our drums are in the basement, but they might as well be in my ear cavity. Which is only a problem if you have any hope of conversing, hearing a movie, or concentrating. But we ignore all of these activities and let the boys drum their little hearts out. Besides, that gives us time to prepare the food they require as they emerge, sweaty and hungry, from the basement every hour.

I believe that music is a healthy and valuable place to belong, so I put up with a lot of cacophony in order to ensure that music remains a part of my children's lives. But, honestly, there are fifteen seconds of the drumming experience I absolutely live for.

My son, and his friends, drum to the music on their iPods. So, they put songs on there that they want to learn, favorite songs, or songs they are practicing for church. Then they stick the earphones in and drum away. That leaves us to only hear the drumming and not the actual song. As they drum along, they cannot really hear themselves at all, but we can. Every once in awhile there is a space in the song where the drums are quiet for about fifteen seconds. During those fifteen seconds all we hear is their loud, shouting voices as they sing along to music we cannot hear. I stop everything and listen. It is the most wonderful thing I have ever heard.

It makes me wonder. What if we did life like my son does those fifteen seconds? Loud and bold. With everything you've got. Like you are the best that you can be.

It might be great.

Just like teenage boys, lost in music, with all the potential of their unwritten futures still inside of them.

Can anything be better than fifteen-year-old boys singing like no one is listening?

Speaker Phone

I've never thought of myself as someone who has an abnormally fat face. But my phone does. Apparently, during my phone conversations, my cheek becomes animated and does surprising things. It will often touch the button on the screen that mutes me. This is irritating. My cheek also dials numbers causing a loud beep to frighten both me and my listener. Again - irritating. My cheek has also been known to randomly dial someone from my contact list changing my two-way conversation to a surprising three-way phone call.

The most common thing my cheek does is to suddenly touch the button on the screen that changes my conversation to speaker phone. In the grocery store, in the waiting room at the doctor's office, in a car full of people, my private conversation is suddenly loud and public.

This happened recently as I was talking to my husband while driving a car full of teenagers to church. I had forced him to watch a television show with me that was certainly intended for a female audience. Halfway through the show, he admitted he was mildly interested in the characters, and by the end of the show he admitted that he had actually enjoyed it. I was telling him that I was thankful that he had watched a show I had picked out instead of Transformers or some other manly show that I can barely stand. He told me the show had surprised him and, in fact, he would watch the next one with me because he had actually enjoyed it that much.

That is when my cheek took action and he was unknowingly and suddenly on speaker phone. Which is unfortunate because his next sentence was, "I GUESS I AM MUCH MORE FEMININE THAN I KNEW." It was loud. It was shocking. It was said to an audience of our teenage children and their teenage friends who had spent the night.

I nearly crashed trying to hang up.

Then I nearly crashed from laughing.

I'm not nice.

Spring Rodents

There's just something about spring-time that makes a dog want to bestow upon his people a dead rodent.

My dog, usually so cute and loving, has begun to think of dead rodents as flowers. He offers them to me as if they were a vase of red roses.

When he is super proud of himself he prances around as if he were a show horse. When I saw him prancing back and forth across the garage floor, I smiled and thought upon the adorableness of my dog. But upon closer inspection, I was bothered. Something identical to a limp tail was dangling from his mouth. Filled with disgust I shouted at him to, "GROSS DROP IT GROSS GROSS GROSS!!!" He complied immediately and respectfully and proudly placed a very sad baby squirrel at my feet.

After shouting at the sky, wringing my hands in despair, and walking in aimless circles looking for help, I decided to use the push broom while holding the tip top of the handle to gently push the poor, dear, creature out of the garage and into the grass. Which I did. With my eyes closed. Tight.

I immediately went into the house and took a scalding shower which did not remove the gross from my memory. But, feeling assured that I was free of dead rodent germs, I resumed normal life. But then normal life dropped me like a hot potato.

Later in the afternoon, I opened the screen door that leads from the garage to the house and almost fell over. Strewn across the floor was a carpet of dead rodents. Okay, maybe not a carpet, but there were several. All dead.

In shock, I stood with my mouth agape while my dog approached in his proudest prance, kneeled, and placed his head on my feet.  If my garage floor had, in fact, been strewn with red roses, it would have been one of the sweetest highlights of my life.

However, it just wasn't.

Texting At School

As I sat in the carpool lane at school waiting for Drake to exit the building, I received a phone call. I didn't recognize the number, so I was immediately skeptical.

"Hello?"
"Mom? It's me - Drake."
"I'm in the parking lot. Where are you?"
"In the principal's office. And I need you to come into the office, please."
"Is something wrong?" I asked as sweat began to form on my forehead.
"I just need you to come and get my phone. I got it taken away today because I was texting, and when that happens they need a parent to get the phone back."

I marched into the school like thunder and gave my son the evil eye as I signed the form stating that my son had broken a rule and we were ever so sorry. Hoping to make a good impression on the principal and office staff, I began to fix Drake right then and there.

"Son, you should never text during school," I told him in my how dare you voice.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You know better," I told him in my shame on you voice.
"I know, Mom. I'm really sorry."
"Having your phone is a privilege, and I expect you to treat it in such a manner."
"I will. I promise," Drake hung his head.
"Who were you texting anyway?" I asked, thinking to eliminate that person from the list of acceptable friends.
"You."
"What?"
"You texted me and asked if I had show choir, so I was responding so you would know that it was not today."

Doh.

Fresh Air

Unpacking boxes teaches you a lot about yourself. Like, I learned that I have less clothes than anyone in my family. And I learned that I have a lot of extra blankets. I have enough tea to open my own store. And, sadly, my husband was right about the addiction I have to air fresheners.

I like them.

I know I like them, but I have been defending myself against his accusations of excess for years.
"You know you have a lot of those at home," he told me at Wal-Mart after I tossed a package of plug in air fresheners into the cart.
"I only have a few," I informed him.
"You have more than a few."
"Nuh-uh." I argue brilliantly.

Then I unpacked a box. Then I wished I had left it packed. Because I finally had to admit that Mike was right, and I did, indeed, have more than a few.

I'm not going to talk about the box I opened yesterday that was oddly similar to this one. I already admitted I have a problem.

But I like them.

I do not plan on getting help.

Fire, Go-carts, and Deoderant

What could be better than a huge bonfire? Answer: six teenage boys, a go-cart, and cans of Axe deodorant.

Since the house we are trying to tame was previously cared for by an eighty-six year old woman, the vegetation is a bit out of control. My husband and boys spent some quality time with a chain saw and, subsequently, we had a pile of twigs, limbs, and brush that was taller than a building. In anticipation of the largest bonfire to ever exist, my boys invited their friends to our house.

I'm not sure if our bonfire was visible from the moon like the lights of Belgium, but I know it was visible from the next county. I know because we got a text from a friend who lives there saying, "Nice fire." Our wordy friend could see it from his deck.

Fire makes boys giddy. They found a release for their energy by riding the go-cart around the yard like drunken clowns.

The sun set, the fire raged, the go-cart raced. Could anything be better? Yes. Because then Drake ran into the house, grabbed his can of Axe deodorant, and threw it into the fire. After about forty-five seconds, we were treated to a glorious explosion.

We stood in awe, transfixed by the sheer power before us. Until the sheer power of the go-cart, under the influence of a teenage boy driving in the dark, almost ran us over.

Then we ran for our lives.

Upon further reflection, I do admit the irony of running for our lives AFTER calmly watching the explosion.