Summer Days Long Gone

Summer days were always scorching in Aurora, Colorado. We would ride our bikes through our desert-like neighborhood streets while the heat rose up from the black asphalt in waves that seemed to distort our vision. 

The end of our street gave home to enormous piles of dirt which marked the border of civilization.  We were sure we could see Kansas in the distance.  We explored those dirt mountains, designed trash museums in them, and escaped there whenever our imaginations called. 

Our backyard was a jungle of weeds, as grass had presumably never been planted. As those weeds grew up over our heads Dad mowed trails through them so that we could play an exciting, blind game of fox and goose, or hide-and-seek, or anything at all, really. The summer sun blazed down on us as a spectator to our many childhood adventures.

Riding a bicycle for the first time in the driveway of that Colorado home was like being given wings. I could fly through the air with speed and freedom; down the hills with wind rushing past my ears and stinging my eyes until tears leaked from them. It didn't matter that I fell from the seat of my bike daily by continually pushing it to it's limits. My bike was a good friend that always scooped me back up and took off again - ready for me to pedal too fast or corner too quickly, always ignoring the scars that I gave it.

Summer's highlight was playing outside and at the close of a long afternoon, hearing the soft, distant tinkling of the ice cream truck. Excitement doubled with each pound of our feet on the pavement as we raced into the house to collect money from Mom or Dad, and then scurried back outside to listen to the truck draw nearer. A snow cone with rainbow stripes of cherry, grape and lime. Cool and sweet on our tongues, and sometimes, when we ate with undue enthusiasm, a brain freeze to remind us to slow down and enjoy it. At the bottom of the paper cone, all covered in melted juices lay a gumball. A prize for each moment of blistering play outside.

The world was bigger in the days of my Colorado summers. Horizons were further in the distance and backyards were larger than life. Bicycles, mounds of dirt, and snow cones were all that I needed to feel excitement and joy. As two of my sons raced to catch the ice cream truck today with dollar bills clenched like treasure in their fists, I hoped that their worlds were filled with magic and endless possibility, as was mine in Colorado.

*Originally posted July 2009.

False Alarm

I send the kiddos off to school every morning with a kiss, an "I love you, have a great day", and a reminder to call me from their phone when they get to school. This morning, I got the anticipated call, but it was not quite the conversation that I was expecting.

About 10 minutes after sending the boys out the door, my phone rang, it was Cameron, and after I said hello, I could only hear some rustling and then Cameron grunt into the phone, "...attacking me!..."

I soiled myself and had a heart attack at the same time.

I could still hear the jostling and the grunts, but Cameron didn't make another sound other than his huffed breathing into the phone. I tried to stay calm as I said into my phone, "Being attacked by what? Are you ok? Where are you?"

More jostling, grunts, I can hear Ethan yelling...

Are they being mauled by dogs? Is someone trying to stuff them into a nondescript van with no windows? What is going on??

"Cameron!!"

And then it all became clear. Cameron told me that Ethan was hitting him and wouldn't stop, and Ethan was yelling so that he could be heard too, that Cameron ran ahead of him and didn't stay together.

They had made it to the school, but apparently Ethan was intent on punishing Cameron for breaking the cardinal rule of walking to school - stay together.

First, I felt relief that they were ok. Then I felt rage that they had scared me so badly. Next came embarrassment at the mental picture of my children chasing after each other through the neighborhood and  brawling in the school yard. And finally, I had a small sense of satisfaction that I had scared Ethan enough about the dangers of walking to school alone that he was terrified to be without his brother. 

Score one for me.

*Originally posted July 2009.

The Curse of the Puberty Fairy

I was looking down at my legs during my last class of the day. It was pre-algebra, and Mrs. WhateverHerNameWas was spieling about positive and negative numbers. We had been given an assignment of some sort and were sitting in groups on the floor.

That's why I was staring at my legs. First staring, and then trying to hide them somehow underneath my body. Hiding legs as long as mine wasn't easy, even back then, when I was twelve.

You see, that day was the first time that I had noticed that all the girls sitting in my group on the floor had already begun shaving their legs, and mine were still covered with that soft, barely noticeable hair that has never known the harshness of a razor.

On that day, when I came to the knowledge that I was lagging behind my friends in the matters of womanly hygiene, those little hairs were as obvious to me as flecks of pepper in a salt shaker. I was mortified to find that I was still a little kid when my peers had made the transformation into seeming womanhood. After all, one who could wield a razor was surely mastering other feats such as proclaiming their need for Midol or dying their hair!

Panic ensued, and I began to wonder if I was the only one in my 7th grade class who had not started her period and were there other shaving areas I had been innocently neglecting? How did one go about shaving legs, anyhow? Seemed like there was something about using soap or not using soap...

I determined that I would just have to figure it out myself; there was no way I was going to ask my mother or my sister, because surely they would laugh at my inexperience and wonder what had taken me so long to enter the world of puberty management. How could I be so stupid as to think that strapping on my first training bra was the only hurdle to be jumped in the road to maturity? (Which may as well have been yesterday, for all the progress I've made in that area.)

Growing up always came slowly for me. I got "the talk" when I was 8 because my older sister was concerned about contracting AIDS, and when one of us needed to be informed of something, the other had to be included or we would just get the news second-hand. I covered my mouth during the majority of the lecture to stifle my laughs and cover my unsquelchable grin. Still ranks as one of my parent's favorite parenting moments with me, I'm sure.

My period arrived when I was thirteen, and thankfully it came when no one was home, so I was able to deal with the transformation without any embarrassing interference; until my sister showed up with her friend, who somehow discovered my secret and proceeded to congratulate me as though I had accomplished something that I had actually striven to achieve.

Thankfully, there were a few areas where I managed quite well on my own: application of deodorant and knowing when to tell my mother that I could curl my own bangs and still obtain the same degree of mockery from pre-teen vixens at school. That was about it, but it was something.

Seventeen years later, I still find myself sometimes baffled by what mainstream society has deemed "normal" in the beauty department. I have never had a Brazilian Wax, a facial, or any kind of Botox or colon cleanse. Maybe I'm missing out, but I think that as long as I have mastered the basics that I was a little slow to pick up on all those years ago, I'll be fine without the rest.

I do have one regret though. Maybe if my mother had fed me more hormone injected beef, I would have graduated from that training bra by now.

*Originally posted July 2009.

Stirred Up By Crickets

In the quiet hours between chaos and slumber, I lay and listen to the sounds of night. The breeze stroking the leaves on the trees to sleep and crickets singing their lullabies. Summer nights are entrancing to anyone willing to fall prey to their spell.

Those crickets serenading me outside my window bring a rush of memories. I close my eyes as my mind staggers in attempt to keep up with the flashes and pictures running through my head. Campfires. Arriving home past curfew from a date. Listening to waves crash onto a dark shore. 

But one picture repeatedly pushes it's way to the back of my eyelids again and again, rudely forcing it's presence upon me.

The Toilet Paper Wars....

......Rural Battle Ground, Washington provided little in the way of entertainment in my day. My sister and friends and I would do anything during summer months to keep ourselves occupied with whatever didn't turn us into Country Bumpkins. That need to refrain from wearing giant belt buckles and listening to twangy music gave birth to the toilet paper wars. Dan and Scott, boys our age who lived about a half mile up the road, may have been the ones to spur the first attack, or it may have been us girls - I don't remember now, but there were many battles.

On one of those vengeful nights, Natalie and I had two friends over, Stephanie and Sandy. We erected a tent in the front yard of our house to deter any enemy activity. After all, who would dare toilet paper a house when the objects of your flirtatious offensive could be hiding just inside canvas walls that allowed in all kinds of suspicious noises? 

The four of us sat inside the tent and plotted our moves for the evening. The objective was simple; toilet paper Dan's house. But execution wouldn't be so easy - Dan and Scott might be expecting us. They could even be driving the road between our base and theirs, watching for our advance. We decided the best way to move would be to split in twos, walking up each side of the road towards our target, and dive into the ditch anytime a car approached from either direction to avoid being spotted by our foe. 

Gathering up our ammo, (copious ammounts of Charmin), we cautiously proceeded out of the tent and made our way towards the road.

The distance between Dan's house and ours never seemed so far as when we were desperate to avoid detection. The chirping of our allies, the crickets, cheered us on with each adrenaline filled step, and the moon was all that lit our way. It wasn't long at all before headlights appeared in the distance behind us and we all scrambled to lay as flat as possible in the deep trenches on either side of the pavement. Thoughts of roadkill and all varieties of insects and rodents plagued our minds as we waited for the car to pass. We could have been laying on anything in those ditches, but it was war. Sacrifice was necessity.

The car passed, and with racing hearts we climbed from our hiding places and resumed the forge up the road. We had made it almost to the bottom of a little hill near the end of the road. Dan lived at the top of the incline - not far to go. 

Without warning another car came rounding the corner right ahead of us! There was no time! We scattered in all directions. Headlights surrounded us in their revealing illumination. Each of us dove towards the ditch nearest us. Then a scream! The roar of a truck's engine passed us, we were safe. Then silence.

"Who screamed?" someone whispered in the welcomed darkness.

The reply came from Sandy. "This ditch is full of water! I'm soaking wet!"

Mouths covered to quiet our laughter, we watched Sandy crawl out of her ditch, dripping with filthy water. Poor Sandy had become the first casualty in The Toilet Paper Wars. She had selflessly helped us to avoid capture, and we were grateful.

At last, we made it to the enemy's camp. Cloaked in a hush, we unraveled the T.P. around bushes, lamp posts, fence railings and shrubs. We rolled it across the lawn in stripe and zig-zag patterns. Stealthily, we tossed the rolls into trees and the tissue cascaded back down to us like a glorious waterfall. We took just a moment to admire our work. The mission had been a success.

Back in the tent later that night, we excitedly munched on our rations of junk food and discussed when retaliation might be coming. No matter - we were the masters, and we were ready to escalate the campaign to complete annihilation if necessary. 

With giddy enthusiasm, we settled into our sleeping bags to listen to those crickets pass the news of our victory to all the nocturnal world. And then we slept, confident that, for that night, we were impervious to raids from our worthy opponents. 

*Originally posted September 2009.

Mourning My Good Metabolism

Let's talk about food, shall we? I love to eat. The best time of day for eating is about 5 seconds after all the kids are in bed. It's the first moment of the day when I can completely relax, and relaxing sometimes equals food.

When I was a child, my parents would send my sisters and I to bed and then waste no time in plugging in the hot air popcorn popper and pulling out a bag of MnM's.  They always poured the candy into a GLASS bowl so that we could hear them chink-chink-chinking into the dish, and our mouths would water as soon as we could smell the butter melting in the microwave.  Sisters and I would lay there in bed, sure that Mom and Dad did this just to show us how much they despised us.  It was pure mean. We whispered to each other that if they couldn't indulge while we were there to share the feast with them, then kinder parents would have at least waited until we were asleep and oblivious to the prepping of goodies.

Now that I'm the parent, I have to admit that there are foods I won't share with my kids, either. It is a sad day around our house when Drew has committed another atrocity and there is no candy or chocolate to provide comfort after cleaning up whatever disaster has occurred. Chocolate is therapeutic, but I must admit that anything conceived of Mr. Wonka is also uplifting. I never grew out of my appreciation for Nerds, or the giant, soft SweetTarts that come in a four pack, (and, unfortunately, two of the flavors have to be lemon and green. That's right, Green. I'm not actually sure what fruit flavor it is supposed to be, so it is referred to as Green).

While we're on the subject, why do food manufacturers insist on putting undesired flavors in the packages with the good flavors? For example, does anyone ever go for a Lime Popsicle when there are still Banana and Root Beer to be had? Not in our house. We push and shove and knock each other down to get the Root Beer, and then we let the kids choose from whatever is left. 

My mother is a fantastic cook. In my youth she treated me to many fabulous dishes, all of which I loved.  Except for the grilled cheese, which she will burn even if she stands right in front of the stove, spatula in hand, staring, waiting for the perfect moment to flip. It's an unfair curse, really. 

Worse than the grilled cheese though, was the meat loaf. 

I can't tell you how much we dreaded meat loaf when we were kids. The meat loaf itself, was always fine, no complaints. But meat loaf always meant lima beans. Mom put the meat loaf, potato wedges, and lima beans all in an electric frying pan together, and fried it until the meat loaf was done. That meant the potatoes were crisp on the outside and perfectly soft on the inside, but the lima beans were usually blackened. And not in a spicy, Cajun way. They were just black and hard and covered in grease from the meat loaf. We ate them because we were afraid not to, but we hated it. And yes, I can speak for myself and every one of my siblings on that one. Years later, I realized that fried to death and covered in grease is actually the best way to eat a lima bean.

I grew up never having to worry about how much I ate and where on my body it might land. I was blessed with a metabolism that loved to work over-time. 

In high school I weighed around 120 pounds. Then came my early twenties and giving birth to two children. About 2 months after Ethan was born, I settled in at an acceptable 135 pounds. Then came Drew, and exactly 10 months after he was born, I finally got back to that blessed 135, and I got there without exercise or dieting. Patience and time is all it took. (Go ahead and hate me now if you want to, but rest assured, my comeuppance is hurtling towards me with frightening speed.) Exactly one week after I returned to that 135 pound pre-baby weight, I found out I was pregnant with a very unexpected fourth baby. (Curse my body for spontaneously deciding to ovulate again without the aid of medication, and curse myself for being so stupid as to think anovulation is acceptable birth control. Not that we don't love Trent to death.)

So here we are, another ten months after child birth, and I cannot get below 142 pounds. Fine. I can live with 142. What I cannot live with is where those 7 extra pounds decided to set up camp. - Right behind my belly button. Standing naked in front of the mirror is now comically sad. I look like a character from a Dr. Seuss book - dangly arms with a narrow chest which slopes down into a round, protuberant belly, then back into skinny legs. I take comfort that at least I am not as hairy as a Seuss creation.

So if the trend continues; 120's in my teen years, 130's in my twenties and 140's as I creep up on my thirties, then I will weigh 180 pounds by the time I am seventy - but it will all be in my mid-section so that my stomach will enter a room before I do, and may in fact be able to flip light switches up or down of it's own accord if I should happen to turn around too hastily.

And that, Dear Readers, is the plight of me with my super powered metabolism that died off on me after I've lived 29 years.  Twenty-nine years of bad habits that I will now have to break if I ever want to fit back into my jeans.

I am going to have to start exercising. I am going to have to stop eating every time I walk through or past the kitchen. I am going to have to change everything I have taught myself about self control, which so far has only been something that other people have to worry about.

Crap.

*Update:  Since this was written one year ago, I am still at 140 and I have back fat.  Age is the Achilles Heel of a good metabolism.*

Because I Clean Up Enough Poop Already - Take Two

Poppy, the woman I wish I had the balls to be, suggested that this story was worthy of a re-post.  Who am I to argue?  This version, however, has been drastically edited so that the average person can finish reading it in the span of one lifetime....

My kids are not privileged. Andrew and I provide them with the things they need, ie; food, clothing, shelter, love, etc. They have never been to Disneyland, Chuck E. Cheese's is a fictional place they see on TV, I have never seen a reason to buy them a pair of Heelys, (there are plenty of other ways for them to brake their wrists and rudely cut off other people in the grocery store aisles), they do not have their own laptops, I frequently buy their clothes at a consignment shop, and a second hand Playstation 2 is the closest they will ever get to having a cool gaming system.

Experiencing want gives a person character and depth. Gratitude. Generosity. An ability to empathize with others who experience a more meaningful want. I regularly deprive my children of material goods both to save myself a heap of money and to raise them up to be decent people. I certainly hope it's working.

There is one area, however, where I feel I have short changed my kids, and might continue doing so for a good, long while: We have never had a pet. Unless you count the time that I bought them each a fish when Cameron was four and Ethan was two. Andrew and I let Cameron and Ethan each pick out one fish. They were both thrilled, and I was amused at the naming process.

"Cameron, what are you going to name your fish?", I asked.

"Fish."

"Yes, I know it's a fish, but what are you going to call him?"

"Fish."

Okay.

"Ethan, what are you going to name your fish?"

"Blue," was Ethan's firm reply.

"But he's yellow?" I pointed out.

"No. Blue."

Fish and Blue were members of our family for about a week when we noticed that Blue was taking bites out of Fish whenever Fish happened to swim in Blue's personal space. This went on for a day or two, and finally, when Fish's back-end was missing several scales and he was swimming a little bit lopsided, I decided that we would have to exterminate poor Blue. I didn't want to have to explain to Ethan what had become of his beloved pet, so I told him that his fish was being very bad and hurting the other fish, so we would have to flush him down the toilet to go live with the other naughty fish. 

Ethan was fascinated by Blue swirling around in the toilet bowl, and finally disappearing into that mysterious world of Fish Rehabilitation.

A day or so later we went to the pet store again and replaced Blue with two fish that looked like Dalmations, and which I took the liberty of naming Pongo and Perdita.

Our fish experience did not get better from there. Shortly after the arrival of our two new fish, I became very tired of the weekly tank cleanings. They were more of an exercise for my gag reflex than anything else. I was sure that cleaning the tank so often shouldn't have been necessary, and so I again paid a visit to Pet Smart, where I was helped by a girl who falsely advertised intelligence by wearing black-framed glasses. She told me that a couple of snails would do the trick. The snails eat scum, see, so two of them ought to be able to handle our little ten gallon tank. No prob. I picked out two black fellas and, after acclimating them to the temperature of our tank's water, dumped them into their new home, which featured a smorgasbord of delicious, green slime.

The next day, neither snail had moved so much as an inch from where they landed upon their arrival, and had not even had the courtesy to emerge from their shells and introduce themselves to their tank mates. I assumed, after another day of observation, that going so long without activity could only mean that they were dead. I guiltily buried them in the kitchen trash. I later learned that such behavior is normal for snails and that I probably gave our two black friends a live burial, but what can I say? Someone should have warned me.

Back to Pet Smart, where I got two more snails, yellow this time, in case they might be more durable than the black, and home we went. The yellow snails were not a bit shy about exploring their new surroundings and took no time at all in searching each other out and enjoying one another's company.

"Why is that snail on top of that other snail, Mama?"

"They are giving each other piggy back rides! Snails like to do that. Aren't they fun?" Bullet dodged for another day.

Now, I am not an expert on snails or their reproductive habits. They could be asexual, for all I know. But I do know that there were constant piggy-back rides going on in the water, and in just a matter of a week we had some kind of alien-snail egg sacks lining every corner and crevice of that darn tank, and the snails were so busy with their games, that they were forgetting their dietary needs altogether - which meant that I was left to clean the blasted tank again - this time being forced to empty the entire thing, chisel the repulsive egg sacks from their many hiding places and remove the disgusting, sludgy particles from rocks and fake seaweed. 

I have never spent so much time trying to force my brain into it's happy place and failed so completely. It was disgusting. But after about an hour and a few dry heaves, the tank was sparkling and the fish were happy.

A couple of days later, the snails, who must have been very bored and resorted to their old games, had produced another crop of potential young. I was outraged! How dare they commit such an act in a spotless tank?!? I felt like I was living in a science fiction movie and would wake up one night to the sound of an ominous sucking/popping/gushing sound and creep out to the living room to find a mass of jelly-like pods pulsing with giant snails. They would surely hatch and begin oozing shiny trails all over my walls and floor.

Not long afterward, I began avoiding the tank in every way - no wandering glances, give it a good, wide berth when walking past - until Cameron yelled to me in a high-pitched, alarming voice, "Mama! There are baby snails!"

No. Please, no.

Sure enough, there were about thirty million teensy snails, complete with translucent yellow shells stuck all over every wall of the tank.

That was it. I couldn't take it anymore, and I threw the entire thing in the garbage that night. I am not an animal person, and I have no regrets.

And that's why we don't have any pets.

Re-Vamping: Brotherly Love

I'm going to be on a bit of a blogging hiatus for a few days, so I decided to do a little re-vamping of some old posts and plaster them up here for your discovery.  They are all older ones that most of you are unlikey to have read.  


Enjoy, and I'll see you all soon!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brothers are a wondrous thing. Quarrels between them never last, wounds of both the physical and emotional kind heal with lightening speed, and there is always someone who will laugh rather than scowl when you fart.

For brothers, tattling seems to come with unspoken guidelines. It's perfectly acceptable to tell on your brother when he does something to harm or annoy you, but to rat on your bro for jumping on his bed after "lights out" will bring you no satisfaction, but rather shame and dishonor. 

Unfortunately, boys are rough, and most of the tattling in our home comes from a wrestling match getting out of hand. One child will cross the line between playful jabs and malicious wallops, and then everything is fair game, including intentional knees to the groin or running to mom and crying foul.

I once got tired of hearing the complaints of who smacked who first and whether someone hit on purpose or too hard, so I removed myself from the equation with the regrettable words, "I don't want to hear it. You two deal with it yourselves." Cameron and Ethan were six and four at the time and "dealing with it themselves" was wholly beyond their capabilities, and I would surely pay for suggesting it. 

Five minutes later, I heard a ruckus from upstairs followed by crying, then a shrill scream, and then more crying. My reward for excellent parenting had arrived sooner than I'd anticipated. I called the boys back downstairs.

"What is going on?" I demanded in my most exasperated mother voice.

Cameron whined, "Ethan hit me in the face with a baseball bat!"

There was only a plastic bat upstairs so, in spite of the blood slowly running from his nose, I wasn't overly alarmed. "And so what did you do to him?" I asked.

"I threw a hanger at him."

I looked at Ethan's face, and sure enough, there was a small scratch on the surface of a bruise that was already forming under his left eye.

Tattling then became the mom-endorsed form of retaliation.

Blunt honesty is also a trademark of brotherhood. A boy can tell his brother anything and know that he cannot be demoted to the status of a mere friend or acquaintance. Brothers they will remain. I have noticed that in our house, the boys tend to listen to each other's words of advice more than they will mine or Andrew's. They have an ability to reason with one another that we, their parents, will always be left to envy.

It was a few years ago that I was in my bathroom getting ready to go shopping with my mom and I heard the following exchange between Cameron and Ethan, who were bickering loudly over something completely ridiculous, I'm sure:

Ethan: Just relax, Dude! (He was three at the time.)

Cameron: What?!?!?

Ethan: It means, Don't be grumpy.

Cameron: (telling Ethan off for being bossy, which lasted long enough for me to remove 8 curlers from my hair...and was finally interrupted by Ethan shouting...)

Ethan: Don't be an ASS!

Cameron immediately stopped being an ass. Problem solved. Ethan's vocabulary, however, has been undergoing constant therapy ever since.

Ethan was able to enjoy four years of being the youngest of just two children before he became a big brother himself.  When Drew came along Ethan was immediately smitten and became the best older brother in the history of siblings.  That lasted about a year, and then Drew learned to walk.  Overnight Drew became the biggest pain in the butt that Ethan had ever encountered. 


That feeling is one that largely remains present in our home today.

I have never understood it, but Ethan's favored form of entertainment is to put on a movie, grab an action figure that somehow goes along with that movie, and then skip, hop, and run back and forth from one corner of the living room to another acting out the scenes in the movie and making one kind of bizarre sound effect after another; an ability which seems to be coded in the male DNA.

About two months ago, and much to Ethan's horror, Drew began to mimic Ethan. He would find an action figure of his own and follow the odd room-crossing procession right on Ethan's heels. Ethan has been very distressed by this new development in Drew's interests, and told me one day that I needed to make Drew stop following him.

"Why do you care if he follows you?", I asked. "What's the big deal?"

"He's making me feel like an idiot!" came Ethan's frantic reply.

I just laughed and told Ethan that Drew follows him and copies him because he loves him and wants to be like him. Ethan was neither flattered nor gracious about my explanation, but now stops his scene reenacting whenever Drew joins ranks. Too bad, really, because Ethan did look a bit like an idiot when he did it, and I really enjoyed watching him.

I think that I am not alone in looking forward to the day when Trent becomes a viable playmate for Drew and the older boys can occasionally be left in peace. In a house filled to the brim with active, boisterous male-type children, I fancy myself an expert in the field of brotherly love, but I know that they have more tricks up their sleeves, and I will continually be taught by them. Like it, or not.

(Originally published October, 2009.)