Moving the Petting Zoo ...

We’re going on vacation.  Which for a mom means really means “we’re moving this three ring circus somewhere else for a few days”.  It also means driving around to visit everyone we possibly can in 5 days.  Finding something to entertain the kids who are in “meet new people overload”.  Appeasing all relatives by joining them at their favorite place to be.  Doing that one entertaining thing, like the zoo, that we said we were going to do.  Taking a half-a-gazillion pictures of everyone together.  And of course, apologizing for not getting up there sooner (it has been 3 years).

So I’ve been packing.  Clothes, toys, feeding supplies for Bug, drinking cups for Monkey Man, snacks for everyone.  There’s a list that is so awesomely long of stuff for us to pack that I quit writing it down.  We have to move sleeping bags, play pens, diapers … you name it.  All the while preparing our Zoo here for the house sitter.  Also exciting and fun.  Cleaning up Bean’s room (it’s the “guest room” for that purpose), making sure all the entertainment stuff works and is plugged in, the alarm instructions are set, the littlest dog is at my friend’s house … another long list. 

I often laugh at the word vacation.  I am sure that since we’ve had kids, we’ve not actually been on “vacation” as the word was meant.  You other moms with young children can relate right?  There’s nothing relaxing.  But it is refreshing.  There are people I love that I haven’t seen.  Cousins to play with that even Peanut barely remembers.  Handfuls of people who have never even met Monkey Man or Bug.  And poor Bean only “remembers” what we’ve told her about these people.  Really, all I’m doing is taking a traveling petting zoo.  Everyone will want to hold, hug, kiss, love on, pinch cheeks of, and dote over the kids.   Patting heads, kissing cheeks, hugging necks.  I bring the teeny cute ones for everyone to say “oh my, they look just like Grandma So and So” or “Great Uncle What’s-His-Name”.

But it will be a blast.  We are so blessed that our family loves us as much as we love them.  No awkward family reunion where they’d rather shoot you than hug you.  Sure it’s a 12 hour car ride with 4 kids, which on life’s list of fun things to do …  But it’s so worth it.  My great-grandparents were long gone to heaven when I was born.  My kids have been blessed to know 3 of their great –grandmothers.  They have two left.  That’s one of the reasons for this trip.  It’s not just seeing family, it’s about understanding heritage.  We’re going to a family reunion.  Family that came over to the United States just three generations ago.  In a country where you can be from anywhere and that’s okay, it’s so important to know where you came from.  Who your family was.  Who they are.  And you show them with your kids who it will be.  It’s important to appreciate what makes you “you”.  So, I’ll pack up my zoo, and take them to the farthest regions of car-ride-ability.  We’ll spend what will ultimately seem like not long enough with family.  Clark Kent will be the most awesome Ring Master ever, getting us around, and hauling the circus around.  The kids will have fun and we’ll come home.  Perhaps a little more appreciative of the phrase “where I come from”. 

Social Media Paradox

Growing up is hard.  Especially when you think you’ve already done that.  Realizing that Jane has a best friend that isn’t you anymore.  Realizing that no one really can stand for you to be in their social circle, but really they just don’t want to say anything.  Not getting invited to parties that you don’t know about until pictures are posted.  That’s high school, right?  It’s grown up world too.  And it sucks.  Until you realize that you’re not in high school.  Right? 

No, not really.  I have a horrible time of putting on my “politeness” filter.  I’m a talker (shocked, right?) and tend to say what I think despite what others may feel about it.  It seems bold, brazen, and honest.  But it’s not.  It’s apparently offensive.  Just like those yahoos on TV that say stuff to irk me.  It only irks me because I don’t agree with it.  Because I see it as preposterous.  Because I see it as fear mongering.  I don’t think about it.  It’s how I was raised.  Say what you mean, mean what you say, let others decide for themselves.  I mean, if you constantly have to hide behind a façade of “not wanting to offend anyone” then you constantly watch yourself.  

My mouth gets me in trouble a lot.  Always has.  Ever since I was about three years old.  Say what you think to your parents and you get time out.  Or a spanking.  Say what you think to your friends, and you get less friends.  It is what it is.  In the world of social media this is truer than anywhere else.  In “type” things like sarcasm are lost.  I’ve found that often what you type and what you mean are so very different things.  Because it’s left up to the reader.  It’s their interpretation.  And boy do I get interpreted wrong a lot.  Or maybe I don’t.  I find that in the realm of social media we are all having to adjust to the way life is run.  Things are literal, or they aren’t.  It is a great act of discerning what was really said.  Reading between the lines becomes most important.  I don’t know that I quite get it.  Certainly have caused a few rifts in the past few days in my social media world.  So, for now, I’m choosing to keep my mouth closed everywhere but right here. Right here I can say what I want.  And I’ll say I think Jon Stewart is genius, and I don’t know why an 8 year old boy was walking home by himself in a big city anyway, and I don’t think they’ll ever find that missing college girl here in Tennessee.  You can read about it, or not.  There’s no need for interpretation.  I say what I mean, just how I mean it.  It’s who I am.  I was taught that you do that.  Tell them what you mean, and no one will ever see you as fake.  They may not like you, but at least they know where you stand.  I’d rather be me than liked.  It’s who I am.

Where I come from ...

My family is from South Carolina.  I was born there.  My parents were born there.  Their parents were born there.  And theirs, and theirs, and theirs.  For generations my family has lived in South Carolina.  I’d say they’d always been there except I’m fairly certain that, despite how perfect South Carolina is, the Garden of Eden wasn’t there.  There are a few things that all South Carolinians are born to love, raised on, and survive on.  Sweet tea, real peaches (don’t let those yahoos in Georgia tell you they’re the ones with the best peaches), good manners and grits.  Good ol’ white hominy grits.  Grits for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  They go with everything.  Sausage, shrimp, steak, ham, eggs … you name it, grits makes it great.  And Lord have mercy, add cheese to them and they are (is it possible?) even better. 

Now, Clark Kent’s family hasn’t been in the United States as long. His great grandparents on both sides came here from Europe.  They came to Ohio.  They don’t eat a lot of grits.  Oatmeal.  Warm cooked oats with cinnamon and sugar, with raisins, made with water, made with milk, made however you want.  They eat oatmeal.  Clark Kent isn’t a big fan of grits, and I’m no fan of oatmeal (read here can’t stand the stuff and its gross and mushy yuckiness).  So we raise our children that both are just the best stuff on the planet.  My kids, though, have good genes.  They have Southern running through them.  They don’t like oatmeal.  Or cream of wheat (which in my opinion is some sort of oatmeal/grits hybrid mess up thing that Virginia created).  I’m proud.  They love grits.  Cheese grits.  Good ol’ southern kids is what they are.  Raised in the south, eating like God’s people should eat. Seriously.  I’m fairly certain that manna was like Hebrew grits.  Just sayin’. 

So in this cultural melting pot, where Clark Kent and I come from two different styles of breakfast, we’ve discovered that oatmeal and grits can live in the same house.  He even eats grits, so long as they aren’t “quick” or “instant”.  I won’t eat oatmeal.  That’s yankee food and I don’t want it. Probably the truth is my family didn’t eat oatmeal because it was more expensive than grits.  Grits were cheap, and still are.  My family for generations were cotton farmers.  Not the big fancy plantation owners, no sir.  The poor share croppers who worked their whole lives for nothing.  Then they were in the cotton mills.  Worked long hours for little pay and a house on the Mill Hill.  The Great Depression didn’t affect them.  They wouldn’t have noticed except the rationing of food thanks to the “Great War”.  They had grits instead of rice.  Shrimp and Grits?  Poor mans meal, really.  Not in those fancy chain restaurants, of course.  But out in the boondocks, where you catch the shrimp yourself.  You can have very little meat and serve it with grits, and it’s filling.  It’s a poor man’s food to be sure.  But it’s so South Carolina.  The state still recovering, 150 years later, from a war that was its idea.  So I’ll take my grits, the best peaches anywhere in this country, and my sweet tea.  Because grits is who I am.  I’m not oatmeal fancy.  Thankfully, Clark Kent doesn’t mind that one bit. 

Adolescent La La Land ...

It’s almost nine o’clock at night. I’m 16.  It’s September and it’s hot as all get out.  I’ve been outside with 180 of my closest “friends” for 3 hours working my behind off.  I’m tired, sweaty, and we’ve done this drill 50 times just tonight.  My six pound baritone feels like it weighs 100 pounds at this point.  My arms hurt, my head hurts, my legs are jello.  I’m out of breath.  We stop. Run back, and do the same 20 count move again. And again.  And again.  Finally, the guy next to me says something to me about the fact that we’ve now done this same running move a bajillion times. “MISS S … we are not done.  Drop and give me 50 for talking!” “I wasn’t talking sir” “50 more for arguing with me!” “Uh, yeah, but it wasn’t me … it was B…” “FIFTY MORE!” I drop my horn to the ground, get in position and burst in to tears as I begin my 150 push ups.  Why was I upset?  Because it wasn’t fair?  Because this would be on top of the 200+ push ups I’d already done that night?  Because I was tired and hot?  Maybe, but mostly because I hated that man.  Marching band.  High School marching band.  And that man was the one person I loved to hate.

Late back from a trip to the mall (because you’re 14, it’s a big mall in a city you don’t know and the people you’re with can’t remember what door we came in)?  March across the parking lot at perfect attention and do 40 push ups in front of the whole band.  Run into the drum captain on the field because even though you’ve pointed out at least 50 times that the drill sheets are wrong and this set doesn’t work this way, and it’s really not your fault? 40 push ups.  Fall doing a drill because the freshman behind you hasn’t learned how to do 6 to 5 yet? 40 push ups.  Some guy in your section can’t march for poo and has missed the set you got right? 40 push ups.  Messed up the “eights in eights” because we’d been doing it for over an hour and it hurts like heck to break one step down into eight parts and so you sway the slightest bit? 40 push ups.  The man was teaching me something.  At the time I was pretty sure it was just that he could say “Anaphylactic Adolescent La La Land” a million times a day and punish me.  And concert band was no different.  I was the only senior in the freshman concert band.  Something about how I “wasn’t as committed” as he’d like, and this was for me.  Degraded.  Worthless.  These are the words that summed up some days in band for me.  It was him.  The director.  He had a temper (many broken batons can attest to that), he had an attitude (I think he invented witty sarcastic innuendos), but he was genius. 

That day on the bus after the humiliation lesson at the mall, he sat down beside me, wiped my tears, hugged me, and said “you know I love you.”  Yeah.  Probably so.  He cared so much.  He never once again was nice to me, I don’t think.  Not until college when he touted me as the greatest trombone player ever to my college director (okay, psycho, who are you and what did you do with MY high school band director?)  But he taught me that I was good enough, better than I gave myself credit for.  He taught me I could rise over any adversity, no matter how great, to really shine.  He taught me that I am bigger than any problem and worthy of my own self esteem.  Perseverance, integrity, honesty, strength of character.  And music.  He taught me to love music, to love my instrument, to love a composition for all its parts.  Amazingness.  The man could play.  All of it I learned before I was 18.  It really shaped who I am today, I think.  It at least has helped me develop my own witty sarcastic innuendos. 

Yesterday, this man, this amazing force, passed away.  So many people all over the country will mourn his loss.  Goodbye, Mr. Dinkins, you’ll be missed. 

Why I'm not allowed to help strays anymore ...

Sarrah in the snow

I am a huge sucker for animals.  Those commercials for the ASPCA on television make me cry.  The “Friends of the Memphis Animal Shelter” facebook page makes me want to adopt a million puppies every day.  I don’t love them quite like that crazy cat lady from Youtube ™ mind you, but still, I love them.  It gets me the biggest sighs of “what the heck is wrong with you” from Clark Kent.  It has gotten me three dogs. 

Kyla, aka Bat Dog

I love my dogs.  Sarrah is our first baby.  She was ours before Peanut.  She’ll be 11 this year.  I love her.  She’s a SPCA mutt.  The best kind of dog there is!  Kyla is our “middle” dog.  She’s a rescue center mutt too.  She was terrified of people when we got her, and she’s still terrified of our water bowl.  She’s 6 years old.  She’s not the brightest crayon in the box by about 40 shades, but she’s loyal.  She loves to go get the mail and newspaper with Clark Kent.  But my little dog, he’s special.  And he comes with a great story of triumph.

His name is J.D.  He’s my shadow.  My mini-me.  My “oh for the love of God please don’t get right under my feet while I’m trying to do housework” dog.  My lay beside me in the chair dog.  My sleep under your bed because I love you dog.  He’s mine.  But only since last September. 

J.D.

There I was, 4 ½ months pregnant and it was 8am and hotter than … well, it was hot.  I was walking with one of my best friends (who’s really more like a sister to me, but that’s a whole ‘nother story) after dropping Peanut and Bean off at school.  Pushing Monkey Man in a stroller.  As we cane up the hill from the school there was a little dog running around the intersection like a mad chicken.  I couldn’t let him run around like that.  He’d get run over and smushed.  So I called him (here puppy, puppy style) over to me and picked him up.  He had no tags, but a smashing John Deere collar.  I figured with a cute collar like that, and as well groomed as he was, he had to be somebody’s lap baby.  So I hauled him back to my car (it wasn’t so far, okay? And he’s little, too.  So no comments about pregnant ladies and rabid dogs and all that).  Then Monkey Man and I took the little guy over to the local vet.  Surely he was micro chipped. All dogs are these days (except mine, because I’m not quite that trendy).  Nope.  Nothing.  No tags, no chip, nothing.  Crap.  So I go home and start with the postings.  Facebook, Craigslist … and make a poster.  I called the Animal Shelter, which has the most unhelpful staff on the planet unless you want to drop some animal off there that they’ll just likely kill in a couple days because he sheds wrong anyway.  I called the Humane Society.  They said to put up posters, but only for 5 days.  After that I’d start getting strangers calling who just wanted a dog.  So posters went up.  Found: Jack Russell? Please call.  Nothing.  We called him J.D. because of his John Deere collar.  Didn’t want to give him a “real” name because he wasn’t ours.  Clark Kent, who was in London at the time, asked at least twice a day if he had gotten picked up. He is not as big of an animal lover as I am.  But I wasn't as worried.  The pup cheered me up.  He seemed to like it here well enough.

All the while I sat at home for 3 days waiting for a call.  After 5 days one lady called saying she just knew someone who would love a Jack Russell. Posters came down.  No more creepy phone calls.  Now, these dogs are known to be hyper.  Not J.D.  He just lay around the whole first day.  I figured it was because he was tired from all that running.  The second day he ran out the front door thanks to Monkey Man.  I had to chase him 4 houses away, because what if his owners called? Yeah, then I’d look stupid, hu?  But days 3, 4, and 5 he just lay around.  The kids played with him.  He stayed right with me.  No one ever called.  The kids loved him; he was house trained (for the most part) and had an amazing temperament.  He just lies around all day.  He lets Peanut and Bean put doll clothes on him.  He lets Monkey Man pull on him.  He lies with me.  He cuddles on the chair with me.  All through my pregnancy he lay by my side, cuddled next to me at night, you name it.  After Bug was born he tried, but of course nursing a baby and cuddling a dog don’t mix.  We’re finally starting to cuddle again.  He’s my snuggle puppy and he makes me smile.  He’s loyal to me.  Not to our family, mind you.  Me.  He never gets more than a couple feet away from me unless he’s sleeping.  I don’t know where he came from and I don’t know why they didn’t want him back.  He’s not a Jack Russell, he’s more a Rat Terrier, but that’s okay. His bark is insanely annoying.  He is still a bit of a puppy (though we can’t be sure, he’s about 2).  He runs and hides when he’s done something wrong.  But he snuggles.  Sometimes a random event that seems like it’s just a good deed can change your heart forever.  That’s what J.D. did.  I can’t imagine our family without him now.  I’d be snuggle buddy-less.

Shameless Plug

Monkey Man and his "Countdown" poster

Betty White didn't want to do Saturday Night Live.  She was done with stand-up, she felt she was too old, whatever was her excuse, she didn't want to do it.  Then Facebook got involved.  "Get Betty White to host SNL" was the page (or something like it).  All you had to do was click the "like" button.  If enough people did, surely she'd notice.  And she did.  Or her PR guy did, which is more likely.  I mean, is Betty White on Facebook?  Pages are started all the time for things people want you to "like" in order to get attention.  It's social media at it's finest (or at least most popular).  So, I am utilizing the same thing the Betty White page did.  Popularity.  Monkey Man loves Taylor Swift.  I've mentioned that before.  Her concert is October 30th, and he has tickets.  He has all his birthday money saved up to spend.  He really wants to meet her.  Not likely you say? Well, it could happen.  We've got this Facebook page.  We figure if enough people like it, and post it to their Facebook walls, and their friends post it, etc. then someone will notice.  Probably not Taylor Swift (or her PR guy).  But maybe the local country music station or local news station.  Then they will want to help Monkey Man too.  Perhaps then she'll notice.  I'd love to see the power of social media work its magic.  So if you read this, click on the link, then like the page.  And tell your friends.  It worked for Betty White.  She noticed.

UV protected hands

Swimming in our pool, fully sunscreened

The palms of my hands are never, ever, ever, ever going to get sunburned.  Can that even happen?  I don’t know.  But if it could, mine wouldn’t.  I’ve rubbed more sunscreen into the palms of my hands than most people put on in a life time.  Four kids out into the sun equals lots of sunscreen application.  And even the spray stuff you have to rub in some parts.  It’s the way things are as a mom.  You’re sun proof, and there are parts of you that have extra sunscreen protection because, well, you put too much on your hands for that tiny face and you’re not going to waste it.  (Do you know how much that junk costs these days? I mean really, if they want us all to use it and they want to have a cancer free society, seems they could make the stuff a little cheaper.  Don’t insurance companies have a stake in this?  Probably why the stuff is so darned expensive.)

We have this ritual just about every day here.  After morning snack, my children grab their swim suits from the bin by the back door.  Monkey Man gets upset that his swim suit doesn’t look like Peanut and Bean’s swim suits.  Peanut and Bean fuss that they don’t have matching swim suits.  And they all strip down and get dressed in the living room leaving a trail of clothes that would make one believe that perhaps the rapture had happened, but God only took children who wear dirty play clothes.  On with the suits and then the sunscreen.  There are a few sunscreen rules here – 1) Mom is in charge of spray on sunscreen.  No one else needs to be spraying anything on anyone’s body. 2) Your face has to have sunscreen, even in the parts that you squench up, so just hold still so I can get it and you can go swimming. 3) If you fight about sunscreen you will get the “without sunscreen you will get skin cancer. In the olden days they didn’t use sunscreen and that’s why Mimi had to have so many spots removed from her face” lecture.  4) No sunscreen = no outside. End of discussion.  And so I lather them up and prepare for the pool.  As I go outside I notice that my hands don’t tan as well as the rest of me.  Why? Mom’s Sunscreen Rules.  But that’s okay.  They are protected.  And my palms are safe forever. 

All moms can relate.  It’s our “take one for the team” sunscreen contract we make when our children are finally old enough to get out in the sun.  Which for Bug is now.  For Peanut I think I kept her away from the sun for months.  Paranoid she’d spontaneously combust or something.  Number four doesn’t get the same consideration.  Not because I don’t love Bug, but because hey, by number four I know what works and doesn’t work.  Doc W and I have come to an accord that I’ve mostly got this thing down pat and can do it fairly well.  So don’t worry first time mommies … they won’t spontaneously combust, and they aren’t vampires (though some of you are probably genuinely sad about that since Edward is so amazing *gag*).  So, moms of the world unite your pasty pale hands and hold on tight while you can to those most precious to you as they slip into the out of doors because you lathered them up with too much sunscreen.