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.