and with a busted cell phone to boot

We all look forward to spring, don't we? I am less than thrilled about the allergy meds 24/7, but if there's one thing i love, it's being out in the fresh air, no matter how much I sneeze. This spring has been particularly kooky with the cold winter chill still around and below average rainfalls; when it does rain, it comes in torrential downpours. With spring comes longer, warmer days and the promise of an awesome camping season. I love sitting around a campfire...I especially love the way my hair and clothes smell after an evening of starlight, moonlight and firelight. My Girl Scout troop is planning a trip this weekend, and I have a monster list of shopping to do today. No, don't leave. I swear this gets better.

So I'm out doing the grocery shopping thing with my windows cranked down and the music cranked up. The only thing to spoil my beautiful afternoon so far, is that it is going to end soon. Until now. A perfect afternoon can only be enhanced by sucking cancer from a little burning stick and blowing it around to share with everyone within 20 feet. Of course. I am soooo missing out on this one, so the guy in the car in front of me decides to help me out. A disgusting blast of cigarette smoke blows in through my open window. As I press the button to close off the attack of the stinking zephyr, I watch the jackass flip his butt (what an attractive name for something you put in your mouth by the way...) into the mulch and drive away.

At first glance, yes, someone dropped a butt and it was still smoking. One blink and it was no longer a butt. It became a burning pile of debris and it was headed underneath someone else's car. Holy mother of cows. I jumped out of my car (leaving the door open, how very foolish!!) and started stomping on the fire, which is now about a foot wide and has flames licking 6 inches into the air. Yeah. It took me longer to type that sentence than it did for that stupid asshat's cancer-stick to cause a major problem. I managed to stop the flames, but the mulch was still smouldering, so I ran to the trunk of my van to get some water. I always keep a liter of water in the car for any use but drinking. I have used it in the past to wash ice cream off of sticky cheeks and fingers (Baskin-Robbins napkins are soooo worthless, in case you didn't know). I have used it to rinse off scrapes at the playground, and to dump on hot softball players heads. Today I got to use it to play fire-fighter. Meanwhile the light has turned green, people are honking and trying to drive around me and no one else has seen the fire. So they think I'm just sitting here playing Chinese Fire Drill all by myself!!

I glugged the bottle into the smoking gutter until the very last drops dribbled out. I twisted the cap back on, vowing to refill the thing as soon as I got home. I just glanced at the bottoms of my shoes, and guess what? I need a new pair. As I'm sitting here telling my story, I can just barely detect a whiff of smoke on my clothes. Smells like teen spirit? Nope.

M for mild profanity

I have very recently come to terms with how very fool-hardy I can be at times. I try my hardest to make decisions that are the best for the family, but those decisions aren't always the the right ones. Reality flooded into my head this afternoon when I realized just what I had decided to do and didn't fully think through the consequences of my actions.

What would my baby, my little four-year-old do if I were injured in the back yard in the middle of the day and she had no idea? When would someone notice? At 1:00 when she didn't show up at school? At 3:00 when my middle schooler couldn't get in the door because it was locked and she didn't have her key? At 3:30 when the elementary school called first the house, then my husband's office when no one came to pick up the boys from school? After 5 pm when my husband arrived home to find my baby locked in the house foraging for food, my middle schooler frozen on the front porch and the boys in tow?

I need to stop and think more often.

I did a very stupid thing this morning and I do not intend to repeat it again. It's not news that the eastern seaboard is having issues with weather. One issue being the wind gusting around 60 mph. We had arrived home after midnight from our spring break trip to find that the winds had already damaged the shed. It was sitting at an odd angle and the sliding doors were actually hanging. Not a good sign, but what can you do at midnight in a storm? Nothing. I went out this morning to try to figure out a way to anchor the thing down and set the doors back on their tracks. Don't get me started on how to properly anchor a shed while it's being built....anchoring it to a proper floor is on the "to-do" list. I shouldn't have messed with the thing. While thinking and gathering up lawn furniture, the wind gusted, tipped the shed up and over it's contents. The shed then swooped up into the air and landed five feet from me (in the direction I was walking when it's movement distracted me) and proceeded to tumble across the yard and stop a foot from the opposite fence.

Shit.

I did what I always do when I don't know what else to do. I ran inside and called Tad. Then ran back outside with the phone to stand on the shed wall to keep it from blowing further away and causing property damage to any neighbors. His advice: Since it's already on it's side, load the contents of the shed onto/into the shed and that will hold it down. Brilliant. Using pool noodles, I rolled/pushed the 300 pound shed as close to the foundation of the house I could. I found a heavy wrought iron candle hook spike and drove it into the ground almost two feet in an attempt to anchor it temporarily. I then wore my ass out dragging the lawn mower, bags of sand, six bikes, all the lawn furniture and tools and piling them higgeldy-piggeldy, yet distributing the weight as evenly as possible across the shed wall (which was now acting as the floor). The faster I worked, the harder the wind blew. The only thing that kept me moving long past the time I would have collapsed from exhaustion was adrenaline and the fear that if this fucker blew away and caused damage to any neighbor, our homeowner's insurance probably wouldn't cover it. The swearing and repetition of the words "higher premiums" and "no coverage" became my mantra.

One Aleve and a progress report to the husband later, I am getting ready to take the littlest little of them all to school and thinking seriously about taking a nap. I am worn out. But then...I've been jumping up and checking on the shed every 45 minutes to an hour to make sure it's still there. One hour down, seven more to go until the wind warnings are lifted.

bloggin' poolside (or ain't technology great?)

Spring Break.

We packed the kids and several large containers of food and belongings into our trusty minivan, headed for the cabin in the mountains to meet up with Grandma & Grandpa visiting the Eastern Seaboard from a state far, far away. Well, "cabin" is stretching the truth a little. The cabin was a spacious four-bedroom townhouse style double-unit in a timeshare resort. The low-maintenance Bear and Schmoo slept upstairs in Grandma & Grandpa's unit and the littler, more-likely-to-wake-in-the-night-and-need-something Hercules and Princess stayed in the lower unit with us.

The first day was spent settling in, planning for and carrying out the unprecedented "lunch with all four Grandparents." Our parents last met, last spoke as a matter of fact, more than a decade ago at our wedding ceremony in the fall of 1995. There was no bad blood or feud between them; of the many paths taken in the past years, they never seemed to cross until now. The plan for Easter morning was not discussed until after the kids all disappeared when our traditional viewing of "The Sound of Music" was finished at 10:30 Saturday night. It was then we discovered that the children would need to be up and ready for their egg hunt before the Easter Sunrise service. Think think think.....think faster it's almost 11! We decided to save the hunt until the return of the grandparents. Somehow.

The plan was to delay until the church service ended, meet the Grands for lunch, then return to find their fun and a smart-aleck note from Mr. E. Bunny himself decrying our lack of thoughtfulness to leave a note of our whereabouts. It was pure genius. We stayed up until 1:00 am writing poems and rhymes and puzzles, taking the kids on a multi-story giant treasure/egg hunt. Each clue scribed on an origami fortune-teller note was designed for a specific child to solve. Each child led them to a different room with a set of eggs and small Easter basket goodies hiding within. Each clue brought them closer to the end of the hunt and the grand-mother of all the goodies for the day: a set of four giant, beautiful, hearty, well-made kites. There was a colorful butterfly, a Patriot jet, a black shark with Hot Wheels flames, and a gorgeous mermaid all made from high quality ripstop fabric, tri-winding reels holding 75-lb hard-to-tangle kite string. Did I mention how cool these kites were?

Easter morning the kids awoke to nothing. No towering baskets stuffed with candy, animals and dollar store wares. No hidden eggs, real or plastic. No festive decor. Nothing. And they didn't even notice. We fed them cold cereal and scrambled eggs, hoping that no one would snap out of their reverie and notice that today was the day that the Bunny forgot them. We dressed the kiddies, then lured them into a bedroom with cartoons, gently shut the door and scattered. Thank goodness our kids are so television deprived that the allure of Cartoon Network can leave them slack-jawed and drooling in an almost comatose state for hours. If we let it last that long. We hid everything in the upstairs unit and locked the door securely. After peeking in on them, we finished off two of the downstairs rooms. I made a big fuss about me not being ready on time and sent Fergus out to buckle the kids into the car while I raced to finish hiding the last four eggs and goodies.

It was as successful as we'd hoped. The Grands had no idea what we had planned and delighted in watching their grandkids solve puzzles and run screaming up and down the stairs searching for their precious booty. The screams told me that the kids thought the kites were as wonderful as I did. Fergus & I hunched onto the floor and assembled the four kites (which wasn't as difficult as I was afraid it might be) and we headed out the door. Fergus suggested that we load up and find a place down in the valley for flying; Grandpa & I scoffed at the idea since we were practically at the top of the mountain, the stiff breeze up here would be perfect for flying. We walked to the end of the row of houses and we were in a clearing. The wind swooshed straight up the mountainside and whisked the kites into the air....for a few seconds before abruptly stopping and sending our prized possessions crashing to the ground nose- and head-first. It soon became obvious that there was not enough constant wind, nor space to fly four kites at once. We heard a shriek of joy and found that Grandma and the Princess had successfully managed to hold the butterfly aloft. Grandma handed the string to a triumphant Princess who promptly ran down a hill to "show us her kite" and let out enough string along the way to lead it straight into a grove of trees. It was stuck. And then some.

I did what anyone would do, if they were hellbent on saving the kite flying from melting into vats of tears. I shinnied up that damn tree to fetch that kite. About twenty feet off the ground, I realized I still had about 15 feet up and four feet to the right to go. And I had run out of thick branches, courage, and feeling in my hands. You see, it was only about 40 degrees outside and I had shed my coat to make climbing easier. And just then the wind picked up. Grasping the trunk with one arm, I leaned out as far as I could. The string wasn't caught, that fabulous wonderful string. The streamers were wrapped, wrapped and then wrapped once more again around several branches, but the string was loose. I thought if I could get hold of the butterfly wing, I could snap the plastic streamers (easily replaced with surveyor's tape at the hardware store) and save the beautiful kite and be a big hero. At this point the hero part was fading quickly and all I wanted was a death grip on that damn kite. The wind got stronger and stronger, and the kite actually brushed my fingertips three separate times, but I couldn't get any closer. I had to give up. I hate giving up. The next dilemma became, "How the hell do I get down?"

Needless to say I am down, thanks to someone who could see better than I what was under my butt to hold my weight (darling, devoted, dear husband of mine....) and I sustained no injury other than that of my pride. I did the I- Told-You-So Dance for Fergus, which consists of me saying "You were right and I was wrong" over and over to a little jig. It's a matter of pride that I very rarely have to do the dance at all so I make sure he has witnesses when it happens. We still have four more days here and every time I drive by, I see the poor, pathetic, beautiful kite flapping forlornly in the cold mountain wind, it saddens me. I just hope I can get hold of another kite to replace the one I lost by foolishly choosing to fly them close-by, rather than driving down the mountain to a better location. I guess that's why it's called "live & learn."