A Good Way to Repel Mosquitoes

A few years ago I went camping against my will. The humidity was high and the mosquitoes were thick. We did twice the amount of work we do when we are at home. I'm still mad. We took Mike's mom and dad because we figured it would be like returning to their childhood before the inventions of modern air conditioning, electricity, and the wheel. We are thoughtful like that.

We took them and our children eight hours away to a crystal clear lake on the border of Canada. We stayed in a contraption called a yert. Yes, a yert. A yert is a permanent circular structure made out of tent material. Inside were five bunk beds and a table. No bathroom. No kitchen. No couch. No microwave. No happiness. It was, however, apparently in the middle of a mosquito farm.

We fished by day and played cards by night. All in all, we were blessed with gorgeous weather, stunning scenery, special moments together, and lots of family bonding. Except for that one moment that I still get criticized for when Mike's mom tried to climb into her top bunk in her nightgown and couldn't quite make it and got her arm stuck between the mattress and the bed frame while suspended helplessly in the air violently kicking her feet in a mad attempt to gain momentum, and, instead of helping, I just video taped her. I still think I made the right call on that.

One morning, Josiah was rolling out of bed when his grandpa told him, "Hey, Josiah, do you know that you toot in your sleep?" He had to say toot because he is a g rated grandpa.

"Are you sure, Grandpa?" Josiah asked skeptically.
"I'm sure," Grandpa confirmed. "You toot all night long and really loud too."
"I can't believe that. I fart in my sleep?" Josiah is not g rated.
"It is true."
"That is so AWESOME!! I have to go tell Drake!"

To Grandpa's surprise, Josiah ran out of the yert and was heard explaining the exciting news to Drake.

"Wait," Drake responded. "Do you mean you fart really loud all night long?"
"Yep!"
"You are so lucky!"

I wasn't sure that this outcome had been what Grandpa had originally intended and was wondering if I should intervene when Emery looked up at me and said in her baby voice, "Mom, the ways of boys are strange. Don't try to mess with it; it just makes it worse."

Motorcycles and Groceries

I fell in love with my husband while on the back of his motorcycle. It was summertime and we were home from our different colleges just wasting time until the new semester started. None of our old friends had returned, and my best friend, Lori, was practicing being a siamese twin with her boyfriend.

Mike taught sailing lessons at a lake and rode a motorcycle. I thought he was fascinating.

We rode all around town for countless hours on that motorcycle. By the end of summer, I didn't know it, but I was in love.

Four kids and a mortgage later, we still love to ride around on the motorcycle. I think we like it so much because we can pretend that we are still those carefree college kids we used to be. We can pretend we don't have dishes stacked in the sink and bills stacked on the desk. We can pretend that the kids are merely cute, not future citizens whose lives we are shaping.

But, it doesn't always work out the best. The last time we took a long ride, the day was glorious. It was sunny and the warm wind blew all my troubles away. We rode for a long time and felt like adventurers discovering places we had never been before. Then we decided to stop by the store and pick up some bread. However, I saw that barbeque sauce was substantially marked down. I got four bottles. Then I remembered we needed a gallon of milk. And juice. And I kept seeing reduced prices on all the kid's favorite foods.

Seven. We bought seven bags of groceries. We got onto the motorcycle and drove through the pick up lane. The helpful man who was paid to load groceries into cars looked at us kind of crooked, so I told him to just load the bags onto our arms. With seven bags of heavy groceries balancing in odd places, we rode home to our dishes and bills.

Oh Yes I Did

I love my bike. I love to ride my bike. I am a terrible bike rider.

If I lived in a place where biking was the main means of transportation, I would be happy. I love to feel the wind in my face, I love to be in nature, I even love working to get where I am going. I love everything about it. 

I have no grace when I am on my bike. I can't hop curbs on my bike. I fall. I can't turn sharp corners on my bike. I fall. I don't like riding next to anyone. I am afraid I'll fall. I only feel really confident when I am alone on a wide, flat area. I can't remember that scenario ever happening.

A couple months ago my kids bought a moped. I think I love the moped. I told my husband I was going to learn to drive it. He encouragingly responded, "Oh for the love of God, please stay off that thing!" With that kind of support, how could I stay away from it?

When he was at work, I heard the moped call to me. I took the key and sat on the moped. Emery saw me in the driveway and said, "MOM! You should definitely never ride that!" It was OK because I couldn't figure out how to start the thing. It is apparently dummy proofed. 

I figured out the trick to starting it, and the next day I grabbed the key to the moped and headed out the door. Just before I closed the door, I heard Makenna say, "Oh Dear!" My family believes in me. Feeling all warm and fuzzy, I sat on the moped. I started her up. I practiced going and stopping a bit in the driveway, and I liked it. With a huge smile, I took off into my street. I revved her up and flew like the wind. Four houses later, my heart seized up in panic as my speed had increased to a ludicrous 30 mph, and I squeezed on the brakes and stopped like nobody has ever stopped before. 

But then I took some deep breaths and eased back into a forward motion. I eventually reached a corner, and the panic of needing to turn almost did me in. I looked in every direction and was very assured that nobody was anywhere near me. So I breathed deeply and found the button for the turn signal. I signaled, looked both ways, and, oh yes, I turned. I didn't fall. After that nothing could stop me, and me and my moped conquered the streets of my neighborhood.

Today I am riding my moped to Target. 

So, basically, I'm a mopeder. I moped.

Sharks

Emery has always been a bit timid. She was scared of the dark, scared of movies, and terrified of riding a bike.

So, when we went to a water park a few years ago, I thought that she would hang out in the kiddie area with me all day while the older three kids tackled the water slides. But, to my surprise, she grabbed a tube for the slides and got into line. After several warnings that at the end of the line was a SLIDE and she if she continued in the line she would go DOWN it, she insisted that she knew what she was doing and, with great focus of mind, stood her ground.

I stood at the bottom of the slide ready to comfort my wailing child when she exited the catching pool, but she came out of the water with a smile and said, "That was better than I thought! Now that I know there are no sharks in the water, I want to go again!"

I was proud of her, but at the same time very concerned about what she had been thinking at the top of the slide. I can just imagine her standing there thinking, "Well, there are probably sharks in this water so sliding down here is a big risk. But, I am willing to do it!" Somehow in her mind, she had decided that going down this slide was worth risking a shark attack.

I am either terrified of the risks she deems worthy of attempting, or astounded at her bravery. I'm not sure which.

J Lo

Marriage is a complicated and strange arrangement. If being married was a job, I think it would be the highest paying occupation on the planet because so few people are really good at it. That is because weird things happen, and the other person is left to deal with it. We expect them to do it well, but they have no manual and are purely winging it.

 One time I had a dream that my husband went on vacation to Hawaii without me, and I was so mad at him when I woke up that I barely spoke to him all day. I realized that it had all been a dream when he said, "I have absolutely no idea what on earth you are talking about!" It's just that realizing it had been a dream did not take away the anger. Somehow, I ended up receiving flowers out of the whole deal, so everything was fine.

So, I wasn't surprised when I had another weird dream a few nights ago. In my dream my husband and I, together, married Jennifer Lopez. Yep.

And that wasn't the weird part. I stood in a field of daisies wondering how I had ever been talked into agreeing to such an arrangement when the thought hit me, "If I am married to Jennifer Lopez, I can probably travel around with her and go to concerts!" Then I felt better.

So, apparently, Dream Me is very open-minded as long as I am allowed to travel to fun places. Dream Me can be bought with good times. I am very concerned about Dream Me.

Tooth Trouble

Makenna keeps things so interesting around here with her hospital visits. She began life in the scariest way possible by being diagnosed with beta strep after an emergency c-section. She was in intensive care with Life Flight on alert for seven days.

Then, and much more acceptably, she needed tubes in her ears when she was two. After that surgery she stood up all wobbly like in her bed, took a big drink, then threw her cup down on the ground, looked at me and Mike and said, "Let's get out of here guys!"

We took her to India when she was in forth grade where she became so sick we had to admit her into the hospital. Wow. There is nothing like an Indian hospital. I first became worried when I noticed tiny bugs crawling all over the bed she was in. I put myself on bug duty and flicked bugs for the next twelve hours. By then the bugs were the least of my worries. The nurse, or possibly some random lady from the street, came into the room to give Makenna an IV. The panic set in when I noticed the needles were old and preused. I asked if they had been sterilized, but nobody spoke English. I said an intense prayer, and chose the needle that looked the newest. Five hours later another "nurse" entered the room and told me the doctor (who I had not yet seen) wanted a urine sample. I carried Makenna with her IV down the hall until we found the bathroom. It didn't make me feel good when I noticed that the bathroom was shared by all the sick patients on the floor, but when you are carrying a child who can barely move and might throw up at any moment and trying to balance an IV bag, you take when you can get. I noticed right away that there was no toilet paper because I was going to use it to cover the toilet seat. Plan B was don't be picky and sit the child down on the toilet before you drop her. That was when I noticed the bottle the "nurse" gave me was a tiny glass bottle like the one you might have gotten medicine samples in. It might hold a couple teaspoons of liquid. Also, the opening was very narrow. Being a girl, I knew there was no way her aim was up to this task. But we gave it a go. That was when I noticed there was no soap in the bathroom.

It was noon the next day, and I had not yet seen a doctor, when I noticed her IV bag was nearly empty. I went to find a nurse to change the bag, but it was noon. There was nobody around. Even the front office was empty behind a metal gate that was closed and locked. Since I know nothing about nursing, I was at an utter loss. I had heard that bubbles in the blood stream is really bad, and I didn't know if the tube would draw in air once the liquid was out of the bag. So, I panicked and decided to change the bag myself. There were three extra bags lying next to the current one, so I said another intense prayer, randomly picked one, and switched it out. It must have been okay because when the next person walked into the room I told her, by means of pantomime, what I had done, and she just nodded. I took that as, "Good job fending for yourself in a third world hospital where you are doing stuff you have no way of knowing how to do!! You will surely get an award when you get home, and people will sing songs about you for years to come!" We saw a doctor in the morning, but by that time she had pretty much healed up on her own. We left soon after that, and I went to the front office to pay our bill. It came to $3.17. I still have the receipt.

When she was in fifth grade her stomach wasn't cooperating with her, so she had a tube with a camera on the end of it shoved down her throat to take pictures of the inside of her stomach. After that she got into the car and announced, "I need Olive Garden NOW!"

Now she has a tooth that just won't move. It is stuck up in her gums. You can see the outline of it. To solve that problem, the surgeon cut her gum around the tooth, exposed the tooth, glued a bracket to it, and connected a chain from the bracket to her braces that will pull the tooth down. After that surgery, she got into the car and said, "While I was in that room, I was singing a song with Sloth from Ice Age. Then the doctor walked in and started singing with us and we all danced around on a giant calendar."

I'd really like her to be a bit more boring.

Camping

The word camping shouldn't really be anywhere near the word vacation, in my opinion. A vacation is relaxing and fun. Camping is an exhausting, dirty, bug infested experience where we pretend to be pioneers. We do everything we have to do at home, but in the hardest way possible.

But, I am outvoted. I have a husband who loves camping, which I will never understand no matter how many times he attempts to explain it to me, and kids who also love to camp. That's the thing about having a large family - you are often the only one voting sensibly.

So, several years ago we took a camping trip to northern Minnesota near Canada. We went to a place called The Boundary Waters. No motorized boats are allowed on the water, so we loaded up canoes and rowed across the crystal clear water to a small island. By the time the canoe touched land, my arms resembled wet spaghetti noodles due to prior lack of moving in EXCESSIVE, MONOTONOUS ROWING MOTIONS. I couldn't have been happier to be on land.

Until I was informed that we needed to carry all of our camping supplies AND THE CANOES across this small island to the next lake and continue rowing. Continue rowing. After carrying all of our stuff. Why can't we just camp here seemed a reasonable question to me, but I was informed that it would not do to camp on the first island because all the good fishing and isolation was further ahead. But, I do not like fishing. Or isolation. But, again, I was outvoted.

The worst part about carrying all of your supplies is that your hands are occupied, leaving your body as an uncontested prize for the mosquitoes. And they love that.

We repeated this torturous exercise of rowing, carrying, rowing, carrying until we finally reached a campsite deemed worthy of us. We pushed our canoes onto the land, unloaded, and then, instead of resting from all that work, we had to set up camp. And, after that feat was managed, we had to prepare and serve a meal in the manner used more than 100 years ago. Camping is like going back in time with only the parts that include a lot of work and none of the good stuff.

But, I do have to admit, the peaceful, beautiful atmosphere was astounding. And the uninterrupted time with the family was precious. The conversations were meaningful, and the smores were exceptional. I'm not going to say I'd like to go back, but I do miss the moments around the campfire.

This trip revealed something different about each child. We discovered that Makenna can survive almost anywhere. She evaluates her environment, conquers her surroundings, and then thrives. Josiah is happy and carefree whether covered with tics or swimming naked in a lake. Nothing gets that guy down. Drake is stinking hilarious and makes us laugh constantly. Emery is excited and precious. She brings an innocence and sweetness to every activity. Oh, and she can bring the fury. For real.

A better mom than me would have stopped filming and comforted her child during an episode such as the one I am about to show you. But, I never claimed to be a better mom. I do, however, recognize something worthy of being on film when I see it.