One Week

Next Wednesday, one full week from today, the kidlets should be heading back to school. They are already excited about their new backpacks, shoes, and other necessary items. Two out of the three of them already know of at least one friend in their future classrooms. We have started waking up earlier in an attempt to get back into the swing of things. (Okay, fine. I have been waking them up earlier. I switched around my morning routine so I can still sleep relatively late but still wake them up earlier. It's good to be the Mom.) I am fairly certain we have crossed almost all of the items off of our back-to-school list, with the one major exception of their summer math and reading packets.

Before hordes of teachers start scolding me for neglecting my kidlets' summer educations, let me backtrack a moment. Every week, the kidlets take out five books from the library, which we read ad nauseum. Their summer reading packets consisted of a recommended book list and an area where a person could write down the books they read since school let out. I had my daughters create a notebook where they would write each book title, author, and a sentence (for Rooster) or paragraph (for Horse) summing up the story. Then each kidlet drew a picture of their favorite part of the book, and wrote a caption for it. All we have to do is transfer the book title and author to the list and we are good to go. Their math packets had been mostly completed during the month of July when their brother was still going to school for the extended school year program.

Figuring I should get a head start on transferring the information from Rooster's notebook to the summer reading packet pages, I pulled all of that out today. Unfortunately, going through all of those papers meant I found a packet of papers that had been sent home in addition to the summer math and reading packets. Rooster actually still has about twenty pages' worth of work to do in this final week of summer vacation. Now if it had been Horse who still had twenty pages to complete, she would probably rise to the challenge, buckle down, and finish in an afternoon. Not so much for her little sister.

Rooster is the kidlet with whom I have to plunk myself down and physically sit there while she does her homework. If I do not, she will rush through, put a random scribble (and that is literal, not figurative) on each problem or page, then call it a day. When she refuses to do a particular page, no amount of bribery or threats will change her mind. I have, on more than one occasion, sat down with her to do her homework only to be on the receiving end of a two-hour long sobbing marathon. I have had her sneak her homework pages into the recycling bin so that I cannot tell her to complete them. There have been times when I am torn between thinking she is capable of doing the work but being stubborn and wondering whether she is able to complete grade-level assigments at all.

With more than a bit of trepidation, I sat Rooster down to start working on those twenty mysteriously appearing pages. We got through two before she told me she was tired. Then she became hungry. Then thirsty. My daughter was putting on an Academy Award-winning performance to try and get out of completing her work. Thankfully, she was more than capable of doing the work. Once she realized she was Mommy's homework slave until she completed the four pages I had required, she shut her whining mouth, sharpened her pencil, and got moving. I did have to tell her to erase and rewrite a couple of illegibly scrawled letters, but for the most part, she did okay.

My patience, on the other hand, is shot. Just one more week until the usual homework routine kicks in, and I hope this last-minute summer work gets my kidlet prepared for doing homework once more. Here's hoping.

Ah, Kidlets...

Part of our dinnertime routine involves Pig asking the kidlets what their favorite thing was to do today. Invariably, we get offbeat answers that make us scratch our heads. I suppose that is just the way kidlets are, but it still makes me wonder.

Sure enough, when Pig asked the kidlets tonight, their answers were unexpected. Horse, who spent a good portion of the day lamenting how miserable it is to have a sister who breathes anywhere near her, claimed that "everything" was her favorite today. Rooster claimed that her favorite thing to do was to "be cranky." Well, that at least sort of made sense, since she does do cranky well. Pig Jr. informed us that his favorite thing to do was to watch his sisters play on their electronic gadgets. None of them mentioned the play date that they had today, where they looked as if they had more fun than they'd had in months. No one brought up the Wii Fit activities that sparked multiple rounds of high-fives when high scores were made. There was not a single mention of books read, crafts created, or anything else.

After putting the three kidlets' answers together, I am wondering if perhaps they were all actually describing the same thing. Horse loves playing on her electronic gadget, hence the "everything" response. Rooster gets very cranky playing on her own electronic toy and becomes combative when trying to figure things out. Pig Jr. flits from sister to sister while he watches them play. The kicker though is the time frame for those three answers to coincide is about ten minutes.

Now, if anyone had asked Mommy what her favorite thing was to do today, I would have answered differently. There would be no mention of electronics, crankiness, or ambiguity. My favorite thing to do today was to spend a few hours chatting with a friend of mine while we watched our kidlets bounce all over my house with natural exuberance. They were all happy, played nicely together (for the most part), and nobody seemed to fight or boss each other around. Combining that with adult conversation that involved more than monosyllables was a lovely experience.

Maybe tomorrow night we'll remember to ask Pig what his favorite thing was to do, too. And perhaps by then, the kidlets will have answers that make sense as well.

When is a walk not a walk? When it becomes a carry.

Today was gorgeous. The weather was absolutely stunning, and as close to flawless as I can imagine it. I suppose this is Mother Nature's way of apologizing for the wreck of a storm she just put us through, but I cannot really imagine such a temperamental being feeling sorry. Regardless, we had the windows open and were revelling in the cool breezes, brilliant sunlight, and the bright blue sky.

Sometime after lunch, I decided it would be a good idea for the rest of the family to go on a walk together. I, quite unashamedly selfishly, wanted nothing more than to curl up on the couch in front of the open window and read a book in blissful silence. My husband was amenable to taking the kidlets for a walk, so he organized the potty train, sunscreening, and the putting on of shoes. Just moments before they were to head out, I decided I would much rather go on a walk with my loved ones than sit at home with a book. I rushed to get myself ready, and off we went to take in the stunning weather.

Our town is blessed with a number of sidewalks, and we immediately put them to good use. We went all over the streets near our house, looking at fallen branches and damage to property. We heard the groan of generators in a few of the houses that still lacked power. We saw lawns strewn with wet towels, area rugs, and other sopping items that were laid out to dry. We saw trees down both from the storm and by the hands of the tree services the town called in to do cleanup duty. (The tree at the bottom of our driveway was one such tree that had been removed today by such a service. It had weathered the storm admirably, but that was a miracle. When it was finally cut down, we realized the hole in the middle of its trunk was large enough that the kidlets could have crawled through it.)

Numerous neighbors were out doing cleanup duty to their branch-strewn yards. I overheard one of the teenaged neighbors holler to a much older sounding individual, "You go ask Mom. She won't yell at YOU." I suspected that having her teenaged kidlets stuck in the house with her for a couple of days was a little bit more than the Mom in question could handle. At least that mother was smart enough to put those teens to work cleaning up the yard. There were a number of families out for walks like we were, too. I have the sneaky suspicion that a fair number of us were grateful the hurricane was over and were taking advantage of the well-behaved weather today to get out of the house.

The kidlets were remarkably interested in being outside. They were less interested in traipsing around the neighborhood and talking about the sights we saw. A downed wire caused a bit of concern in our eldest. Our youngest could not quite figure out why a huge branch was balanced on the telephone wires on one of the streets, and seemed disconcerted that it was not actually attached to a tree anymore despite hanging in the air. Our middle child simply decided she was not interested in a walk, and she spent the entire time telling us how tired, thirsty, hot, and bored she was. This is the same kidlet who is capable of jumping up and down, running around the house, and will find any possible excuse to stay in motion almost twenty-four hours a day, so we figured that she would most likely survive this family excursion.

After a number of blocks, my youngest was slowing down. He is four years old and tires quickly. That might be due to his low muscle tone, his tendency to wheeze, or some unknown reason. Right about the point we were at least half a mile from home, he tuckered out. His walk then became a carry. I scooped my son up and we continued on our way, this time with me desperately hoping that we were heading straight home. He was sweaty, heavy, and managed to headbutt me on more than one occasion. However, this was probably one of the last times I will be voluntarily carrying my son. Like it or not, my baby boy is not so little anymore, and he inherited his low muscle tone from me. Despite my own growing exhaustion, I carried him as long as I could, then let his newly recharged self finish up the walk home.

I started thinking about how different my little man is now than when he was a baby. He did not like being carried much then. As he grew a bit older, he seemed to understand that Mommy picked him up in a way in which he could handle. For a kidlet with sensory issues, being held is a tricky proposition. Mommy held him firmly, so the light touches that could freak him out were not an issue. He still did not actively seek out someone to hold him, but he at least knew he would survive if he needed to be carried somewhere. These days, though he walks most places all of his own volition, he has suddenly learned to enjoy being in Mommy's or Daddy's arms. I find myself doing what I can to carry him so I can appreciate suddenly having a little boy who wants his parents to hold him.

These four years have gone by much too fast. It seems odd to me that it took a post-hurricane family walk for me to realize just how quickly my kidlets are growing. I know my oldest is nine, and I cannot fathom where those years went. But with each new kidlet our family acquired, I became busier and busier taking care of more people, and that somehow made me lose track of time. My youngest is four, and the days of me carrying him anywhere are almost gone. But by golly, was I content to enjoy that today.

Hurricane Irene

Late yesterday afternoon, we started getting the first raindrops that marked the onset of Hurricane Irene's path through my state. We had prepared as much as possible for us to ride out the storm. The kidlets were (not) sleeping all in one room on inflatable mattresses, and they thought it was fun. My husband thought I was overreacting in my concern, but he genially went along for the ride anyway. My state in general appeared to be very worried about the potential for devastation, and we did our best to take the dire warnings to heart.

I decided to stay up fairly late reading a book. My philosophy was that I needed to be extremely tired before attempting to sleep once the wind started increasing. I have no idea what time I finally crawled into bed, but I do know that I only lasted a few minutes before jumping up at the sound of sirens in the distance. I checked on the basement to see if all was set to try and prevent flooding, but water had already started seeping into one portion of our floor. I woke up Pig to ask him how to operate the shop vac, since I had never done so before, and I still wanted him to sleep. Instead, he came down to the basement with me, demonstrated how our shop vac worked, then dug out the one area of our French drain that seemed to not be draining while I suctioned away the water. Eventually, he agreed to go back to bed while I kept watch over the basement.

Since we still had power, I decided to go online while I waited for my half-hour checks on the basement. Others, too, were keeping an electronic vigil while they dealt with their own flooding issues. At some point, a number of us admitted how freaked out we were getting over the increasing wind, torrential downpours, and the tree branches and trees that were coming down around us. Thankfully, the only major branch that fell near us did not hit our house. Instead, it leaned against the telephone wires strung across the top of our driveway as it rested on the ground. Granted, I do not know what type of wire it was actually touching. Perhaps it was phones, cable, electricity, or some other randomly unidentified wire. Whatever the case may be, I was not about to head out in a hurricane to see if I could electrocute myself on the darn thing. It looked awful in the dark, and I dreaded the light of day and the potential to see just how bad things were.

Sometime around four in the morning, I made the executive decision to move the kidlets down to the basement. We still had power and there had been no more leaks since our midnight-ish experience with the shop vac. The winds were what concerned me, and I wanted the kidlets a little more protected in case the tree in front of our house decided to join the branch that was already down. I informed Pig of my decision, watched him roll back over and go to sleep, then woke my barely-fallen-asleep offspring to make that move.

The kidlets were at first a bit hazy about why Mommy was waking them up before dawn, and they stumbled through a bathroom routine before grabbing their prepacked toy bags and heading downstairs. Once there, and once again on the inflatable mattresses I dragged down with us, they proceeded to have a blast. They played on electronic gadgets, colored, ate breakfast, read books, and found countless ways to amuse themselves in their new environment. At one point, Rooster gasped in horror while I was trying not to doze on one of those mattresses, and I sat up in a panic thinking that the water in the basement might have started back up again. It took me a moment to process that the emergency she was panicking over was, "Your underwear is showing, Mommy!" Gotta love kidlets.

Throughout this basement playtime, I was exchanging a number of text messages and Facebook posts and comments with friends and family elsewhere. I started to realize just how good we had it as I heard of people who had downed trees, no electricity, flooding, and whose possible escape routes had been blocked by water or emergency crews on every side. As the pictures started to flood the Internet, I was more grateful than ever that our house appears to sit on a little island in a section of town that rarely floods, even though the water from flooding down the street from us came up to my next door neighbor's house. An inch of water in one corner of the basement cannot possibly compare to looking out one's window and barely seeing the roof of one's car over the top of the water while trying to bail out several feet of water in the one's basement.

Around seven-thirty in the morning, I woke up a groggy Pig and informed him it was time to face the day. He clumped downstairs with the rest of us and took over kidlet-watching duty so I could pass out for a little while. The ringing phone startled me awake after an hour or so, but by then, the weather wasn't nearly as horrific, and we decided it was time to brave our main floor once more.

Larry, Moe, Curly, and a few of their friends made their appearance once the rain stopped. Those poor folks must have been working all night by the time they removed that tree branch from the wires, but it seemed almost like a comedy routine to watch them work. Their method of branch removal was to try and cut off the supporting branches that held up the heaviest branch. That did not work. Then they tried making partial cuts and kicking at the tree. One guy tried to pull the lower branches back, and they snapped off and he flew backwards onto the street. That was probably the first time he was off his feet in over twenty-four hours. Finally, they hooked a rope on part of the branch and several of them pulled back until the branch was firmly wedged against the power lines instead of the cable wire on which we believe it had initially been resting. Eventually, they managed to knock it down while loosening a few wires in the process. I lifted up a silent prayer of thanks that they had not electrocuted themselves or knocked the dang thing down onto their heads.

By now, the winds are still giving a random gust, but we are hopeful that the worst of Irene is over. I hope no more branches or trees will fall, and that flooding will start to abate. We hope that homes that have power are able to keep it and that homes without are able to have their power restored. We recognize how very lucky we were to come through Irene as unscathed as we did. So many are much worse off than we are. I know that the kidlets came through the storm just fine. They all objected to sleeping in their own rooms and to not being allowed to play in the basement anymore. Horse claimed it was an exciting adventure, but the storm itself was "boring." Thank God it was.

The kidlets are nestled, all snug on their inflatable mattresses...

My kidlets are excited. They are thrilled, happy, hyper, and enthused. The reason for their exuberance is that due to the hurricane that is slowly making its way towards our house, their crazed mother has decided they should all sleep on air mattresses in a room on the back of our house, as far as possible from the threat of falling trees.

Silly me thought that it would be better to move them to the safest location possible before bed so I wouldn't have to wake them up at two in the morning to move them if there was a problem. Unfortunately, the fact that they are having a slumber party of sorts means that they probably will still be awake at two in the morning anyway. I'm not really sure what we gained by this sleeping arrangement other than the complete and utter lack of sleep.

At least my other preparations make logical sense. We have paper plates and bowls, plastic cups and cutlery, and oodles of paper towels and napkins so I do not have to wash dishes should we lose power or water. We are well-stocked in granola bars, oatmeal cookies, and pretzels. We have enough water for each of us to consume a gallon a day for at least three days. We have antiseptic hand wipes. There are a couple of buckets full of water that can be used to flush the toilets provided the sewage system does not back up. We have our boots lined up in the hallway to quickly throw on our feet if needed. The kidlets each have an overnight bag packed with a few toys and a spare set of clothing in a ziploc bag. Everything has been taken in from our yard and we have glared repeatedly at our neighbors' cluttered yards until we at least felt a little better about their potential projectiles. Short of throwing everyone in the car and driving halfway across the country, we're as prepared as we can possibly get.

The kidlets think this is all a grand adventure. They get flashlights, inflatable mattresses, cookies, and a new sleeping arrangement. They gleefully ask if they are allowed to go play in the basement yet, and if that floods can they go play in our walk-up attic, please? They have never seen houses covered in water or trees in the middle of their living room, and I hope they never do. The part of me that isn't busy panicking about the hurricane is thrilled for them that they can look at this as a cool new exciting thing to do instead of the same old boring weekend routine. I would rather have them happy about an adventure than freaked out about all of the what ifs. Here's hoping it stays that fun for them as we ride this out.

The Calm (Sort of) Before the Storm

Okay, so we are supposed to start feeling the effects of a hurricane by tomorrow evening. Somewhere in the wee hours of Sunday, it's supposed to get insane. So right now, people all over my state are either evacuating or stocking up on perishable foods that will go bad as soon as the power goes out. Regardless of whether we are staying or going, we are taking precautions to make the storm as safe as possible.

Most of my friends have stockpiled alcohol. I'm not a drinker, so that was one less thing I had to worry about after hitting the grocery store. I did stock up on supplies to bake cookies, but I figure this will give me something to do tomorrow other than freak out about impending doom.

My husband and I have been taking odds and ends that were on our property and stowing them away in our garage or basement. A strategically made phone call to our realtor led to his decision to go around town and take down all of his for-sale signs before they become airborn and damage someone or something. (There's nothing quite like leaving evidence behind after destroying something, and a metal frame with a sturdy sign that proclaims a company's name and phone number certainly counts as evidence.) I even started taking down the screens and window panes in our Florida room, figuring that the wind knocks them out sometimes just during a normal storm. Might as well not risk broken glass everywhere.

Truth be told though, I am more than slightly worried about all the items in my neighbors' yards. Our tiny house is flanked by two much larger houses that have all sorts of things strewn around their yards. I am guessing that a number of them could easily get airborn in hurricane winds, and could possibly take paths directly into our windows. The neighbor on one side might very well get everything taken in tomorrow before the storm hits. The neighbor on the other side, not so much.

Feeling concerned that our one neighbor might not be up to the challenge of putting things away ahead of time, I called her up to see if she needed the help of her friendly neighborhood minions, also known as my family. To my surprise, she said she was ready for the storm. She had taken a couple of things in from her deck and left the rest huddled outside in a fairly neat pile. Mentally, I pictured those items piled up like cannonballs ready to be hurled at their targets. Given that we've already had items of hers hit our house in lesser storms, there is no doubt in my mind that my house has a huge bulls-eye on it right about now. Thankfully, after talking with her about the items we are going to bring inside, she made up her mind to store a number of items a little more securely. I think it was my joke about taking down the for-sale sign lest it decapitate someone in a hundred mile an hour winds that did the trick. Hopefully, she will be able to get a good chunk of those things put away somewhere they can't hurt anyone or anything.

I worry about friends who are supposed to be evacuating and who have decided to just ride it out instead. Seriously, guys, if you think leaving now is tricky, try evacuating when you're on the roof of your house, clinging to whatever you can while a hurricane rages above you and helicopters, rescue boats, etc. are unable to reach you in the high winds. Don't be stupid. If you're told to get out, then GET OUT! And when you do get out, if a road is closed or barricaded in any way, DO NOT drive around the barricades because you think you know better. To quote Forrest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does." Don't be stupid.

I worry that the very old, large, and not-entirely-healthy trees around my house are going to decide they want to ride the storm out with us inside the house. I worry that my extended family will have flooding issues or other major problems and I won't be able to help them. I worry that the three remaining family members that have not come down with the illness that hit my middle child on Tuesday night and hit me today will come down with it in the middle of a living nightmare. I worry that my son will need a nebulizer treatment during a time when we will not have any power to run the machine.

I guess I just have to have faith. Faith in God that He knows what He is doing. Faith in government officials to make the correct calls when it comes to everyone's safety. Faith that the electric company has crews ready to work to restore power to those who might lose it. Faith that the emergency plans that are in place are sufficient to take care of everyone's needs. Faith that my own virus will run its course as quickly as my daughter's did so that I can be on top of my game by tomorrow morning. Faith that people will listen to what government officials and emergency workers tell them so that there will be no lives lost.

Only time will tell whether or not that kind of faith is justified, but I will do my best to have faith regardless.

Baa...

We're gearing up for hurricane season and the Internet is starting to scare me. Whereas yes, it is fortunate that we are able to see predictions about the nasty hurricane that is threatening to barrel through us, I'm thinking it might be better for me to not know quite as many details. I'm fairly certain I'm annoying my relatives with my questions to them about whether or not they are planning on evacuating, and I'm honestly worried that my flood-prone town is not going to be a happy camper when this thing hits. For perhaps the first time in my life, I am not looking forward to the weekend.

Given that my normal weekend shopping trips will be prevented by rain, flooding, and major winds, I figured I would hit the stores tonight and pick up the few things we need to last us through until next week. Naturally, the ingredients to make oatmeal cookies and wacky cake were high on that list. I also figured I would go to a local department store and see if I could find a few inflatable beds in case we had to bring the kidlets into the safety of the basement in the middle of the night. As soon as Pig came home from work, I headed out to see if I could find those items.

The department store was a mob scene. People were following one another like little lost sheep as they went from one aisle to the next. Foolish me thought I might pick up a couple of new flashlights for the kidlets, until I saw how decimated that aisle was. I vaguely wondered why people were buying flashlights to prepare for power outages when they were stocking their refrigerators full of food that would likely go bad should those outages actually occur. I managed to wind my way through the store and found the camping mattresses I was hoping to locate. Then I resumed my sheep-like walk to the registers, where lines were as long as they normally are during the Christmas holiday season. I was glad I left the kidlets home with Pig because they surely would have been getting frustrated by the wait.

After the department store, I went to buy groceries. I found it highly amusing to see which items were wiped out. Prepackaged romaine hearts? Gone. Water? Well, they were stocking the empty shelves, so that wasn't completely sold out. Antiseptic hand wipes were almost out, so I halfheartedly threw some in my cart thinking I could use them for the kidlets' lunches once school started. There were plenty of the non-refrigerated milk, soymilk, and rice milk packages on the shelves, but the refrigerated ones were fairly depleted.

I heard a few people discussing how they were going to buy ice cream in case the power goes out this weekend. I'm still not sure I understand their logic. Wouldn't the power going out mean the ice cream would melt? Or were they implying they wished to enjoy eating all that ice cream so it would not drip away into nothingness? Given that I was stocking up on junk food baking supplies, I can certainly see that point of view even if I don't necessarily understand it.

I followed the herd through the rest of the store and waited fairly patiently in line. All things considered, the shopping excursion went smoothly even if it took a while to be herded through the stores. I did seriously wish I had a cattle prod at certain points, but perhaps it is for the best that I did not. I will be surprised if most of the things people purchased wind up being used during the hurricane, but I am hopeful that people will have the supplies they will need to get themselves through the storm and its aftermath.

At least while I was shopping, I was away from reading all of the horribly dire predictions that the Internet is serving up for my area. Wish us luck this weekend.

The Letter Carrier Always Rings Twice

Not to put too crude a classification on it, but my family has been stalking our letter carrier. No, we have not been doing anything illegal. We have merely been watching out the window every day for weeks now to see when the mail will arrive so we can find out if the kidlets' school sent their teacher assignments yet. It has been a long and rather unfulfilling few weeks of receiving junk mail and bills, but not the desired envelopes.

Today, Horse suddenly became frantic to find out who her teacher is going to be. Perhaps this sudden desperation came from not having a younger sister to keep her occupied, but Rooster spent the day in her room trying to rest and recuperate from some form of virus that hit her last night and into this morning. Perhaps it was simply because she realized just how few days were left of summer vacation (thirteen, not including today, but who's counting?). More than likely though, she was just getting nervous about the possibility of heading back to school and not knowing where she is supposed to go.

After an early lunch, Horse and I took turns exercising on our Wii Fit. Horse nearly collapsed in agony when she was mid-activity and saw the letter carrier on our front porch. She might not see something that is right in front of her, but I'm fairly certain that proves she has phenomenol peripheral vision. To put her out of her misery, I went out to check the mail. Instead of the usual bills and letters, we received a package of something I ordered days ago and had promptly put out of my mind. Horse was, to put it mildly, quite dejected, and only perked up when I told her it is common for packages to be delivered earlier in the day than the rest of the mail.

Suddenly, I had a very determined nine-year-old. She was going to keep a watchful eye out the window, dang it! That letter carrier was no match for a voluntarily observant kidlet.

Despite her almost constant pacing and peering out the window, it was not until I logged into Facebook and found out that others in our district received their letters today that I felt motivated enough to check and see if Horse somehow missed the monumental event. Sure enough, the mail had arrived and it included three envelopes from the elementary school, complete with classroom assignments for the new school year. Too bad peripheral vision does not go all the way around to the front of one's face or Horse might have actually spotted the letter carrier, not to mention the mail truck that parks out in front of our house for a half hour or so at a time. I guess she inherited my observational skills.

Lest you think that knowing who her teacher will be does anything to calm down my nervous Nelly of a kidlet, you would be wrong. She spent the vast majority of the afternoon from that point on calling up friends and trying to figure out who will be in her class. I started answering the phone, "Horse's answering service. How might we be of service?" Oddly, she has yet to find out one other person's name who has the same teacher. I suppose that today's worrying about the mail shall rapidly transition to worrying about her classmates, but she still has thirteen days to find someone and still know ahead of time. For the sake of being able to use my own phone again, I certainly hope she does.

Stop Shaking the Dang House!

My adoring kidlets decided that waking me up in the middle of the night was a good idea. I am not sure why they thought that was necessary, but it happened regardless of my feelings on the subject. Whenever that sort of event transpires, I mandate naps for all involved parties sometime during the following day. Today was no exception. What made today a little different was that I continued to rest on the couch for a few minutes after the kidlets awoke. They were playing quietly together just a few feet from me, and I figured that I could get away with closing my eyes again for a bit.

Needless to say, I was more than slightly annoyed when the couch started jiggling. Without opening my eyes, I announced that whoever was shaking Mommy had better stop. I continued to bounce. I also heard the basement door rattling and various other items throughout the house were also jiggling. It was as if the whole house was hiccuping gently but rapidly. Since our wood floors can often shake objects on the other end of the house if someone jumps up and down on a particular beam, I figured the kidlets were clowning around somehow. Miffed that the offending party was not stopping their jumping, I became a little more stern in demanding that whoever was shaking things had better quit it or they'd get in trouble. My eldest claimed that no one was doing anything, but I've heard that comment often enough to not take it seriously.

At that point, I was supremely annoyed that they would lie about their misbehavior, so I sat up and informed them that they needed to stop shaking the dang house NOW! Three completely motionless, and starting to get freaked out kidlets sat just out of arm's length from me, and once again professed their innocence while the house continued to shake. To say that unnerved me is an understatement.

I got up and ran across the living room to see if I could find a vibrating truck, or construction equipment outside. It was pretty dang quiet at that point, except for the sounds of things rattling inside my house, so I did not seriously expect to see anything obvious. The kidlets and I just looked at each other, and I wondered aloud whether we had just experienced an earthquake. The kidlets just shrugged and went back to playing quietly, and I took out my trusty laptop to see if there were any earthquakes remotely close by us.

Turns out, I had just accused my kidlets of causing a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that was centered hundreds of miles away from our house. Oops.

The Perfect Sleep Environment

I stayed up far too late last night finishing up a book that was so engrossing, I just could not put it down. Giddy, I crawled into bed, expecting to stay awake staring at the ceiling for a few minutes until giving up on sleep and coming out to my laptop to write here in blog-land. To my surprise, I instead drifted off to sleep in a completely accidental, perfect sleep environment.

I normally sleep poorly, at best. I have not been relaxed enough to enjoy slumber for a number of years now. My middle child has this nasty tendency to get sick in the middle of the night, so I wake at the slightest noise. I have a very narrow temperature window in which I am comfortable, so I wake when too hot or too cold. Let us not even mention the feel of sheets, blankets, and other bed coverings, and how they play a role in waking me when they shift, if they feel scratchy, or as I freeze or burn, and shiver or toss them off me as appropriate. I cannot sleep without oodles of blankets weighting me down, yet they sometimes cause more problems than they solve.

This weekend, I was shopping for a ton of items from one of those big box stores. I happened to walk down one particular aisle in the hopes of finding a mattress pad, since ours had this bizarre tendency to shrink each time it was washed, regardless of the temperature of the water used, and I could barely stretch it across the bed this last time. Clearly, it needed to be replaced. The store in which I would normally purchase such an item had been out of stock during my last few visits, and I just could not justify paying shipping charges to buy one online. The big box store came through, and I tossed a new mattress pad in the cart. Right across from the mattress pads were those extremely soft and fuzzy blankets that the kidlets love, so I looked to see if there were any that would fit on their beds. Alas, there were not, but I succumbed to the temptation and grabbed one for us grown-ups. Then I went on my merry way and finished my shopping excursion.

Once at home, I washed both of my new items, but decided I would wait until my usual laundry day to switch around the bedding. That day was yesterday. I was a bit leery of how much poofier the new mattress pad was when compared to my old one. I decided to add my new blanket on top of my old one, since I had been feeling like I was missing the blanket weight on top of me since we purchased a new quilt for the bed a few weeks ago, and also wanted to keep the older, shorter blanket tucked in between the newer, longer one and the sheet. Then I promptly forgot about those changes in going about the rest of my day.

I realized something was different the moment I slipped under the covers, still stupid giddy from a happy ending to the riveting story I stayed up to finish. Everything just felt perfect: the weight of the blankets, the temperature under the covers, the softness of the new mattress pad on top of my extra-firm mattress, and the way the newly purchased soft blanket held the other blanket and the quilt together so they stayed where I pulled them on top of me. I had long since found a texture of sheets that worked for me, so that was an added bonus. The fact that it was a random fluke because of two purchases I would not normally make at a particular store just made it that much more special. I was asleep almost instantly for the first time in years, and I even dreamed that I was raving about how I finally found the perfect sleep environment for me. It was pure bliss for an overtired mother.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that two of my kidlets, who had both slept through the night for ages, with the exception of one night when an ear infection had kicked into overdrive, woke me up in the middle of the night. Oh, well. At least I know the new arrangement works for me when the kidlets let me sleep.

I'd introduce you to my dopplelganger, but I haven't met her yet...

Today was a fairly relaxing day. I baked some cookies which the kidlets helped me sample. Horse read a few stories to her siblings who, for some reason I cannot quite comprehend, will sit for her to read to them but refuse to do the same with me. Rooster and I both took turns on the Wii Fit. The kidlets all turned to their own activities in the afternoon and I took the opportunity to read a book while they were all blissfully behaving.

One of the intriguing thing to me about this particular book, besides being a mystery, was that it took the main character to a small town where almost the entire population consisted of doppelgangers from her hometown. Since this book was just one out of a series I have already half-finished, I was amused to see these new characters imitate the personalities with whom I was already familiar. The only character that did not seem to have her doppelganger appear was the narrator and heroine of the story. I spent most of the book trying to determine who was really her alter-ego and who was just extraneous fluff to help keep the plot moving.

All of that talk of people reminding the narrator of others she knows set me on the path of debating whether I have ever met carbon copies of the people I know and love. There have been a number of people who remind me of someone else whom I just cannot place. A very few select people have jolted me over the duplication of certain personality characteristics that they share with someone I have known for ages, but this is a rare occurence. I cannot honestly say that I have ever met someone who reminded me exactly of Uncle Hubert, for example, but I can be reminded of that lucky relative in someone's hairstyle, manner of dress, favored phrases, or even their posture.

Despite my being unable to personally know anyone who has seemingly lost their identical twin, I have been told countless times that I remind people of someone else. My doppelganger must get around, because she has been spotted in numerous cities I have never visited and taught in countless schools that weren't ones in which I ever set foot. She makes the same type of snarky comments that flit off my tongue far more often than I'd like, has the same plain-Jane appearance, and, to my great relief, appears to be quite intelligent. There's nothing quite so insulting as finding out your doppelganger is dumber than dirt.

I have lost track of the number of times people have looked at me a bit funny when they first met me, then asked if I've ever been to [insert city, state, or country here], then shook their heads in befuddlement once they have determined I am not the droids they were looking for. Seriously though, a large number of people seem to think they've met my double somewhere else, and I am starting to wonder whether they all know the same other person or whether there is an entire clone army of me out there somewhere.

When in doubt about my originality though, I need look no further than my kidlets. Whether they like it or not, they have the best chances of duplicating either my look, mannerisms, or behaviors. Granted, it's not quite the same as having a corresponding me living the next state over, but at least my kidlets are close enough that I can smile at each and every mini-me. Truly, no one who is part of a family can ever claim to be completely unique. I shall gladly share my looks and traits with my babies, though not as willingly with my doppelganger self. But if you should ever meet her, do me a favor and tell her I said hello.

What day of the week is it?

Ah, summer. That glorious time when the kidlets are home from school and we have no idea what day of the week it is anymore. Then again, I rarely know what day of the week it is even during the school year, so perhaps I should not be so quick in thinking that is one of the ways summer is special.

Every day of the school year since Horse started kindergarten four years ago, I have written her a note that I slip into her lunchbox. When Pig Jr. and then Rooster started school, I did the same for them, too. And no, I did not mix up the order of my younger two kidlets. My youngest actually started going to the elementary school before my middle child did. His speech delays qualified him to go to the preschool that is affiliated with our local school. Anyway, I liked to incorporate some form of comment based on what events were going to transpire at school that day. Unfortunately, that meant I had to actually know what day of the week it was on any given day.

If I was lucky, I was able to stumble upon the correct day without having to ask anyone. Sometimes, I turned my computer on to let it tell me the date. With a calendar on the wall, matching the correct date with the day of the week was a snap. On days when my brain was still in bed sleeping when the rest of me was preparing the lunches, I resorted to starting the lunchbox note with something insipid such as, "Happy Weekday! I hope you're having fun at school!" Horse quickly saw through such nonsense and would rib me endlessly for my failure to identify the day of the week. By the time Pig Jr. entered school, the two of them would sing some obnoxious days of the week song in order to try and "teach" me what day it was. Harrumph.

Truth be told, I probably just need more sleep. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking with it. Hopefully, summer vacation will give me the opportunity I need for some incredibly rejuvenating slumber. Unfortunately, given that it is summer, none of us will likely remember the days of the week anyway. They all just seem to blend into one another, and that is just fine by me. I'll worry about it again once school starts up in September. Until then, happy weekday to you all!

Poor Obi-Wan

Tonight was movie night in our household. We set up a blanket on the floor in our living room, plunked ourselves down with our plates of dinner, and watched a movie all together as a family. This was only our second family movie night ever, but we figured it was fun the first time so we might as well make a regular event out of it.

For reasons not entirely known to us, we felt it was a good idea to show the kidlets the original Star Wars movie. I'm talking about the original theatrical release from the 1977 Star Wars movie. You know, the one that was numbered IV despite the fact that it was the first one being produced? Yep, that one. We figured the kidlets ought to know why Pig and I sometimes look at each other and say, "These are not the [insert noun here] you're looking for."

Anyway, the kidlets were excited to finally watch the movie. We did get asked approximately three jillion times whether there were any Lego people involved. To be fair, this was probably because they have seen our Wii Lego Star Wars game and just assume that Star Wars was a movie about those tiny building bricks. The kidlets were excited to hear that not only were real people in the movie, there were robots, aliens, and all sorts of spaceships.

I found it hysterical to watch the kidlets watch the movie. Rooster could never figure out who Obi-Wan was, and wound up just referring to him as "the old guy" throughout the course of the movie. Even that was better than how she called Darth Vader "the black guy" and his minions were "the white guys." (Nah, can't see that as ever being repeated out of context and causing issues...) I really have to work on convincing her to call Vader by name and refer to his Stormtroopers instead. Then again, she kept calling Luke Skywalker "Lick." I think I could have been entertained just listening to Rooster throughout the whole movie. Horse was old enough to get a number of the jokes, and would burst out laughing sporadically. Pig Jr. was only somewhat interested until the spaceships appeared. Then he suddenly became animated, jumping up and down, and yelling at the guys on the television set to, "Go faster! Faster!"

There were a number of times when we felt it was necessary to forewarn the kidlets of impending doom. We also blatantly lied when necessary. "Yes, those guys are going to fall down. No, they're not dead. They're just, um, stunned and need to lie down for a bit." Thankfully, blood was not visible, so as far as the kidlets were concerned, that might have been the truth. Horse seemed to understand that a war such as the one portrayed in the movie was going to involve death and destruction. In fact, her only real comment on the movie was that there were too many deaths in it. Given that the vast majority of the movies we watch are Disney-based and the only deaths seem to be when the powers that be bump off the mother or the father, I suppose Star Wars must have seemed a bit like a bloodless bloodbath. Rooster did not seem to grasp most of what was going on, although she was acutely aware of the threat of the characters being squashed like bugs in the trash compactor. Good thing we don't have one of those in real life. Truth be told, the kidlets seemed more afraid of the various aliens that were involved in the plot than they were about the casualties of war.

I wonder how much of the movie the kidlets were even able to hear. Rooster kept up an almost constant stream of questions, generally the same one repeated over and over for a stretch of time, and we spent a huge chunk of time just trying to answer her. Horse at least could read the closed captioning that we always have running at the bottom of the screen, but Pig Jr. was probably completely lost. There were several times when Rooster would ask a question that the characters were in the process of answering, but she would not stop talking long enough to actually listen to the onscreen conversations. Thank goodness we were merely watching a DVD at home instead of trying to sit through a theater screening of a movie, because we would probably have gotten kicked out for all of the chatter.

All in all, the kidlets really seemed to enjoy themselves. Of course, that might have been because they were allowed to stay up an hour past their normal bedtimes to watch a movie, but I think they all took something positive away from the experience. Pig Jr. adored the spaceships and flying sequences. Rooster kept rooting for the princess. Pig and I kept cracking jokes about how "the princess is in another castle." And Horse finally got to watch a movie that was more adult than the normal fare we watch to keep it safe for the younger two. The fact that Luke Skywalker had the same haircut as Justin Bieber probably had something to do with her enjoyment, too.

Now we'll have to see if we will show the kidlets the next movie in the series next movie night. I'm just not sure Rooster will understand why "the old guy" will reappear as a ghost-type character talking to "Lick" when she clearly saw him disappear when fighting with "the black guy". Maybe we should wait until we can get those names corrected before attempting to delve further into those movies.

Do I hear an echo?

My son is of an age where a lot of things get partially mimicked, imitated, or replicated perfectly while simultaneously being taken completely out of context. He is almost constantly reminding me of why I need to keep the language in the household to a G-rating. Everything that I say can and will be used against me when I least expect it, and generally when there are witnesses to see me blush. I learned this lesson a number of years ago, and have been careful to keep my vocabulary limited to things that are not overly difficult to clarify if need be.

Back when Horse was a toddler, she was my lone companion on most of my shopping excursions. She learned quickly how irresponsible drivers irritated me. The first time a guy cut me off and I heard a tiny voice from the back of the car say, "Bad driver!" I realized that my little parrot would repeat anything I said. Thankfully, the worst thing I had done at that point in time was to waggle my index finger in a scolding manner and call those reckless folks bad drivers.

By the time Horse entered preschool, she was parroting back a lot of my vocabulary. I still remember her teacher's giggles when she told me that a three-year-old Horse would start off an explanatory sentence with, "Apparently, such-and-such just happened." The teacher had never heard a child that age use the word "apparently" before my kidlet entered her class.

By the time Rooster joined in the fun, she learned to scold drivers who were trying to run us off the road while we were pedestrians in the middle of crosswalks. "Way to go, buddy," spoken sarcastically by a three-year-old with her hands on her hips and glaring at someone who just ran a stop sign reminded me again why I should just keep my fool mouth shut. My toddler might think that the driver is just being stupid, but I am only too aware of how dangerous people can be behind the wheel of a car, particularly if they happen to have a handgun in the glove compartment. I do not trust people, and the last thing I want to do is give someone belligerent and potentially unstable an excuse to come after a mother trying to walk her three small kidlets to school. It was a bit of a relief that Rooster had speech delays that probably prevented the drivers from comprehending her scolding.

By this stage in the game, I direct my commentary on other people's driving skills, or lack thereof, to a dialog with my kidlets about how it does not really matter who has the right of way, because in the argument between a person and a car, the car will always win. We talk about what the law states in terms of who has the right of way, and I've already threatened to take away their future driver's licenses should I ever find out they have talked on a cell phone, texted, or not yielded the right of way to pedestrians while my kidlets are driving. They might be only four, six, and nine, but I figure it cannot hurt to mention such a dire threat already. They now recognize that the drivers we see are not behaving safely, and know that they are expected to do better than that or not be allowed to drive at all. At least this way, I'm not muttering sarcastic and repeatable commentary to the very drivers that were trying to run us over.

Despite my awareness of the kidlets' mimicry, Pig Jr. has never shown any desire to repeat what I say to careless drivers. That was always his sisters' domain. However, he picks up on other things that I say. I have heard his little voice exclaim "dagnabit", "daggum", "oh, man", and "harrumph". I have yet to hear him repeat "sissa-frassa", probably because he still has issues with pronunciation, but I'm sure it is only a matter of time before he pipes up with that grumbled comment.

The worst part is that my son uses those G-rated oaths correctly. He has completely and utterly picked up on their use to vent frustration over a situation that is less than perfect. I can almost picture him telling his preschool teacher, "But dagnabit, I don't wanna clean up now!" I just know this is going to get me in trouble someday, and I am trying to be even more conscientious about making sure that my expletives are as kid-friendly as can be.

I am positive that there will come a point where my kidlets will repeat something that has been uttered that should never, ever, under any circumstances be repeated. Either they will mention that someone looks like they have gained weight or is losing hair, looks hideously ugly in that shade of green, or they will come up with a particular word or phrase that was certainly not something they could ever have learned from me. I am sure I will turn beet red and stammer apologies to the offended parties, but I want to go on record to state that I am doing my best to make sure that when they repeat something I've said, it is relatively innocuous. Dagnabit.

Welcome back to the pediatrician's office...

The school year has been known to strike terror into my heart. The reasons for this level of paranoia are the germs and viruses it sends home with my kidlets. In fact, my main reason for loving summer vacation, after being able to spend more time with the kidlets of course, is that we tend to be a heck of a lot healthier.

So when Horse woke me up at two in the morning to tell me her ears were hurting her, I had a momentary lapse and wondered if the school year started without my knowledge. I belatedly remembered that I had been neglecting to put any form of anti-swimmer's ear drops in her ears after her weekly swim lessons. Oops. I probably should have been doing that. There's nothing quite like guilt on top of a lack of sleep to make a mother feel incompetent in this whole parenting gig.

At some point in the sleep-deprived morning, I realized it was late enough to call the doctor's office to determine whether they would just prescribe eardrops over the phone or whether we needed to be seen. Apparently, they missed our copays these past couple of months, and told me that Horse needed to come in and we should just use their walk-in hours today instead of making an appointment. Given that their walk-in hours encompass pretty much every hour they are open, I thought they might only make well-visit appointments these days and just hope all the sick and/or injured kidlets do not show up all at the same time. Whatever the case may be, the kidlets all grabbed something to occupy them at the pediatrician's office, and we headed out to the car.

Upon arriving at the parking lot for the pediatrician's office, I realized the actual reason for not assigning us an appointment time: there were no appointment times left. That parking lot was packed. We managed to find a spot and entered the building only to have to cram the four of us into two chairs and smush up like sardines while awaiting our turn. Thankfully, we were called in fairly quickly.

In hindsight, I realize we were herded into the small room to await the pediatrician simply because they could throw us into one of their sick-visit rooms. All of the well-visit rooms were packed with people trying to get their back-to-school physicals done in time for school to start. Very few people were there for the walk-in hours we used, so they had a place to put us to make the waiting room look slightly less crowded. This, however, did not mean there was a pediatrician anywhere near ready to come and take a look at my poor girl's ears.

Thankfully, the kidlets all came prepared for an insanely long wait time. Horse and Pig Jr. brought their electronic gadgets to amuse themselves with whatever game they brought. Rooster carried with her a huge bag of crayons and a coloring book. In approximately thirty seconds, the only one still using the item she brought was Horse. The other two insisted they did not want to use their stuff from home.

Here is where I came up with my dumbest idea of the day. I am going to blame a lack of sleep on my stupidity. I suggested that Rooster and Pig Jr. trade the materials they brought from home and each use the other person's stuff. What a brilliant idea! And they loved it for a whole whopping ten seconds! That's about how long it took for Pig Jr. to realize he really, really did not want his sister using his electronic game. I wound up spending the next umpteen minutes trying to pacify my highly irate son while his sister played with his toy. I tried to remind him about how he willingly said he would color in his sister's coloring book and she would play the game instead. I reminded him about how this was only temporary. Once the doctor came in, they could switch back. Then I prayed for the doctor to get there now, dang it! Pig Jr. did eventually return to his sister's coloring book, but that took a lot of cajoling on my part to get him to do so.

Eventually, we were graced by the presence of the nurse practitioner, who took a thirty second look at Horse's ears and pronounced both an inner and outer ear infection in one ear, and stated that something was brewing in the other ear, too. She said she would notify our pharmacy about the antibiotics and eardrops that Horse required. Thank you, and have a nice day.

We waited for about two hours for the privilege of not even seeing the pediatrician.

I suppose that all things considered, it could be worse. We were able to have Horse looked at today, so hopefully those medicines will start kicking in and the whole family can sleep through the night tonight. Ear infections are not contagious, so I do not have to worry about it spreading through the family like wildfire. The medicines were not cheap, but at least they were not overly expensive. And as far as not seeing one of the pediatricians is concerned, I am sure we will be seeing both of them soon enough once the school year starts.

An Ultra-Rare Accomplishment

Okay, by now I hope we have established that Pig and I are gamer geeks. We met in a game store, for goodness' sakes. We still eagerly play the same online game when real life permits, and have been doing so for the past five years and counting. We have a method of not really competing with one another while telling each other that, "No, honey. You are so much better at this game than I am!"

Well, a couple of weeks ago, my darling husband managed to accomplish something neither one of us had ever managed to do before: encounter an ultra-rare monster. Not only did he encounter that ultra-rare beast, but he felled it easily, thus earning himself an ultra-rare item. Now, you might think that's just something stupid, and yes, you are correct. It is a virtual item in a game that has no real meaning at all. But it's fun, and it's a very special thing to have happen in this game. People might play forever and never encounter an ultra-rare monster. That's kind of what makes it "ultra-rare." Heck, it took Pig over five years of almost daily playing to run into one. He was ecstatic.

I, on the other hand, threw an almost immediate pity party for myself. The particular item that Pig won was one that I had been trying to find for years now. I was spending thousands of my turns in the one area in the game that this particular ultra-rare monster might appear, and he just happened to be there for a few turns one day and some random number generator decided he could have it. I did not even have it in me to feel happy for him. I felt like I was robbed. Jealousy is a nasty, hurtful creation, and I let it totally take over my emotions.

If my kidlets ever sulked like that over a game, I would have sent them to their rooms for time-outs.

Poor Pig's major in-game accomplishment was completely overshadowed by my immaturity. He wanted to give me his ultra-rare item. I refused it. He even sent off a message to the powers that be, requesting permission to gift it to his wife. (When multiple people play on the same computer ID numbers, the game sometimes thinks it is really the same person playing multiple characters, and sending spectacular items from one account to another can be perceived as "multi abuse," which can get all characters shut down.) I informed him that if he sent it my way, I was sending it back. I was just plain cranky and irritable.

Eventually, I realized that the hurt I was feeling was erroneously directed at my husband. I was taking out my frustration on a random number generator on someone that I love, and that is never acceptable. I wound up apologizing and slowly started to feel happy for my husband that he could have such a cool thing happen to him in the game we both enjoy. I even joked with Pig about how I have "forgiven" him for getting the dang encounter in the first place. I still felt my own frustration in not having an item I had been trying to get for years, but that frustration was directed at the people in charge of the game and at the random luck of the draw instead of at Pig.

I continued to spend my character's turns trying to find the same ultra-rare monster, but I doubted very much that it would happen. I just set up a script to play my turns for me (because seriously, do you know how boring it is to play the same few adventures over and over for thousands of turns?) and went about life.

Today, my silly script gave me an error prompt. Basically, it told me I had to play a turn by myself. It wasn't going to do it for me. That can happen under certain circumstances, and I've had to figure out the problem, finish the turn the old-fashioned way (pointing and clicking), and then re-set the script to run again. So when I clicked on the little red link telling me to play it myself, I was resigned to dealing with some mundane issue and then going off to do the dishes.

It was the same ultra-rare monster that Pig had encountered just a couple of weeks ago, but this time, it was for me.

In hindsight, I am quite glad that I did not receive my own ultra-rare item until I had grown up a bit. I was more or less at peace with not having one, and was simply going through the motions of trying for it. Now don't get me wrong. I am thrilled to have my very own ultra-rare item. But I was happy for my husband first.

I am currently putting that lesson to good use in a real-life application: I am trying to feel very happy for every other homeowner out there who is able to sell their house. I shall just go about my business of trying to keep the house clean for a potential buyer to see, and I shall rejoice when I hear of other people selling their houses. Here's hoping real-life will imitate my favorite online game.

When exactly are we "middle aged"?

My kidlets think I'm older than dirt, which I find rather amusing given that I still think of myself as being in my early twenties or younger. I tease Pig and call him an "old fart" on a somewhat regular basis, but that has more to do with his being four years older than I am rather than me actually thinking he's old. (Because seriously, why would I want to think someone only four years older than I am is old? Do you know how quickly four years flies by at my age?!?) However, when I read a magazine article that referred to a sixty-three year old actor as being "middle aged", I laughed my fool head right off my shoulders.

In my way of thinking, if a person is middle aged, then they still have half of their life expectancy left. I could see people in their forties and fifties as being middle aged because I would hope people can live to their eighties, nineties, and even passing one hundred. That would imply that a sixty-three year old man would be expected to live to the ripe old age of 126. I am not sure I can suspend my disbelief in that age possibility long enough to still consider him middle aged. I plan on living to at least 148, since that's the age I've been claiming to be for years now. However, I do not expect the majority of the population to keep up with me, at least not until significant advances occur in science.

To be fair, however, I did some research on what it means to be middle aged. By this, I mean I looked it up on Wikipedia and hoped that whatever nonsense was spouted there would at least sound convincing. To my surprise, middle age seems to mean different things for different people. Some say thirty-five to fifty, which is not amusing to me because it implies that I am now middle aged, regardless of my claim to the contrary. Others say from forty to sixty. Still others claim it is from forty to sixty-five. I have the sneaky suspicion that the older the person defining middle age, the longer middle age appears to continue.

I went in search of online dictionary definitions of middle age. Merriam-Webster claims it is, "the period of life from about 45 to about 64." Oxford Dictionaries almost agrees, but says the upper limit is sixty-five instead. The Free Dictionary by Farlex pushes that down lower as, "usually reckoned as the years between 40 and 60." Since the numbers were decreasing on that last example, I stopped looking up dictionaries online, lest I find out my nine-year-old is actually middle aged.

None of this should really matter to me. Who cares when someone is considered to be middle aged? Truth be told, most days I could not care less. Today, however, is not one of them. Some friends of mine a year ahead of me in high school had posted today on Facebook that one of their classmates died. He was not one of my friends, but I still feel that someone around my age should not be passing away. Another high school friend had died earlier this year. And according to those dictionary definitions, we are not even middle aged yet. (Shaddup, Wikipedia. I'm not talking to you anymore.) And I have the scary sensation that there will only be more of those announcements as the years pass. These two men who died this year were young, at least according to me. They weren't middle aged and they certainly weren't considered to be elderly. It just seems wrong that anyone would die before they reach the ripe old age of a hundred.

I have the sneaky suspicion this is one of those concepts that I always thought would make sense when I was a grown-up. I suppose I shall have to hope it makes sense by the time I hit middle age...and if the editors of those dictionaries keep on aging, that might not be until I'm eighty. Here's hoping, at any rate.

Picking on the Trainees

Thanks to the wonders of back-to-school shopping and the almost constant need to have groceries in the house, I have been doing oodles of shopping in recent history. And for some odd reason, almost every cashier I see in the stores these days is a newbie. Those that aren't, appear to be noobs (or n00bs, depending on your preference in spelling). For non-gamers out there, this means that newbies are just starting out learning the ropes and noobs are ones that know what they are supposed to do, yet choose to ignore that and act like newbies. In other words, some of the cashiers are still trying to figure out how to work their registers, and the others can't be bothered attempting to pay attention to things they should have learned years ago.

I have found that customers have been increasingly obnoxious towards the newbies, and nice and polite while trying to scam the noobs.

Take the cashier at the grocery store today. A huge, blazing red sign proclaimed that the cashier was in training and to please be patient. Needless to say, few people were in her line. I figured that everybody has to start somewhere, and I chose to enter her shorter line rather than waiting for the four or five people queue that would await me elsewhere. Then I stood there waiting for what seemed to be three decades. A customer, two people ahead of me, was arguing with the cashier about the price of the onions she was attempting to purchase. The cashier was explaining that she just enters the code, and the computer does all the rest, but that customer was berating her rudely. Finally, the cashier called over her manager, who double-checked what the newbie was doing, and told the customer that the sale price she was debating was from a week ago. I think we were all grateful when that rude and cranky customer left.

At a different grocery store a few days prior, I witnessed a customer trying to scam a noob. The kidlets and I got in line behind someone who was fiddling with different means of paying for her candy bar and cigarettes. She mentioned food stamps, and I tried to turn my attention to the kidlets because it really was none of my business whatever she was doing. After she and the noob cashier arrived at her balance due, she handed over a check and requested it be cashed for thirty dollars over her amount due. The computer rejected the check. The noob cashier tried it again. Another rejection. She called over her noob manager, who tried again, and received another rejection. The customer was all smiles and manners and calmly saying the bank had to have made a mistake.

Now here's the thing. I worked in retail for a number of years around the time I was in both high school and college. I held several positions, including cashier, customer service manager, and cash office employee, and worked in several different stores, depending on who could give me the hours I needed. One of the first thing trainers make sure the trainees know is that if a check is rejected, do not try it again. If it is a never before seen check, some I.D. is generally required. If the computer is confused, it will request a manager's approval in some way, shape, or form. If a check is rejected, it means that the person has already bounced checks somewhere in the network of stores that all use the same check-monitoring system. If the system was sensitive enough to pick up on that sort of detail...um...a couple of decades ago (Note to self: Never calculate the number of years it has been since a particular event has transpired.), I am sure it has only gotten better with time. I feel fairly confident in stating that the woman knew the check was no good, and the employees were noobs for not following the proper procedure. Yet this woman was as polite as could be when dealing with her cashier.

Noob manager then told noob cashier to just cancel all of the customer's items and then ring me up. I refused and went to another register instead. You see, that other customer's personal information was entered into that sale, even if the balance was zero. I did not want my credit card information placed alongside her numbers in the off-chance that someone tried to make good on that lady's debts by thinking that my credit card was hers.

This brings us to the newbie cashier who managed to double as a noob. This was back at the original grocery store, with a clearly labelled cashier-in-training. She was pushing my items down the conveyor belt much faster than I could bag them, which in and of itself drives me crazy. Whatever happened to the cashiers bagging one's groceries? I miss those days. Anyway, the newbie tossed a container of rice milk hard enough that the package sprung a leak. As a point of interest, I have been drinking rice milk for the past seven years now, and have never managed to break one of those suckers open simply by tossing it. I have dropped them, pushed them around, stacked them on top of each other, and have not spilled a drop. So I was stunned when I realized the tossed rice milk was leaking all over my other piled up groceries. I stopped the cashier and told her the problem, then asked if there were paper towels anywhere because my dry goods were getting a bath. She found some, turned into a noob, and handed them to me for me to clean up. I went to the manager about her. Sorry, noob, but you do not mangle my food, make a mess, and then make me clean up what you just got paid for destroying. Even the manager said she was supposed to have learned not to do that before even being put on a register.

At this point, I am a little leery of ever setting foot in a line again. I do not mind newbies while they learn their skill sets, but I despise dealing with noobs who really do not belong in that line of work. The sad thing is that in this economy, I am sure there are plenty of people who are willing to be newbies in just about any job, just as long as they can put food on their tables. So why the noobs are still taking up valuable positions is beyond me.

If the shoe fits...

Ah, back-to-school shoe shopping. Thank God you only come once a year.

We had a list of what we wanted to buy the kidlets, in terms of footwear. We wanted each kidlet to have two pairs of sneakers in the next size up, and we wanted the girls to have two pairs of dress shoes apiece. There was no need for Pig Jr. to have dress shoes because he hates wearing them and is required to wear sneakers to his preschool anyway. Since shoes and winning lottery tickets do not grow on trees in my backyard, we headed to the local el cheapo shoe store for their buy one, get one half off sale in an attempt to purchase ten pairs of kidlet shoes and possibly one pair of sneakers for Pig.

While driving through the almost-empty parking lot to arrive at the shoe store, the one lone car even remotely near us suddenly veered across rows of empty cars, cut in front of us, and appeared to be racing us to the front door of the store. Really? Was that truly necessary? Did you think it was likely that we would buy out the entire selection of shoes from the store before you had the chance to find something? And there was only one other car in the whole parking lot. Were you afraid that our mini-van would take up all of the rest of the spaces? I personally think that would be impossible, but apparently that other driver would disagree.

So we made it into the store without having been run off the road, simply because Pig hit the brakes to avoid the reckless driver, and started searching for shoe sizes for the kidlets, in order of their ages. We knew that both Pig Jr. and Rooster have required wide width shoes in the past, but there were almost none available in the next size up for each of them. Eventually, a store employee came over to us and asked if we needed anyone sized. We said yes, that all three kidlets' feet had grown, and thanked her for getting the sizing guide for us.

She did not know how to read it. First, she told us that she could do only one of each of their feet. I objected to that since not everyone has two feet that are the same size. In fact, Horse had one foot that was a two-and-a-half and another that was a three. That half size makes a world of difference to a growing kidlet's comfort in a pair of shoes. Then we asked the sales clerk to see if any of the kidlets needed wide width shoes. Horse needed them as a toddler, but her feet changed shape as she grew and does not need them now. The shoe store employee told us the incorrect answer for two kidlets. She read "regular" instead of "wide" for each of them instead of looking at the numbers that actually showed where the shoe width changed for each shoe size. When I pointed this out to her, she physically shoved my kidlets' feet over as far as possible, so they were actually popping over the side of the sizing guide's edge just so that she could claim they both had regular, not wide, feet. It turns out, that el cheapo shoe store had significantly reduced the number of wide width shoes they carried, and that employee did not want to miss out on a sale. Good thing my kidlets have stubborn parents who decided we were not going to buy shoes in larger sizes just to avoid the width issue.

We found one wide width pair of sneakers for Pig Jr. Then his adoring eyes lit upon Lightning McQueen sneakers, so we sighed and found them in the next larger size so that he could have a pair he really liked, even if they were not the width he really needed. We found plenty of regular width sneakers and dress shoes for Horse. She picked out what she liked from the selection we set aside that had decent soles on them. We walk a mile-and-a-half round trip to school, so the kidlets' shoes have to be able to withstand a fair amount of abuse from my little foot-scuffers. We found absolutely nothing in Rooster's size. Pig was unable to find anything decent that fit him, either.

We paid, and loaded ourselves into our mini-van. While I was strapping Pig Jr. into his carseat, I noticed the little girl, who could not have been much more than one, in the car next to us. Their door was opened, and she was climbing up and down on the seat, not safely strapped into her carseat at all. Her father, or at least the man who was fiddling under their hood, was messing around with the car battery while using a tire iron in some non-approved fashion to try and access something. He went around to the driver's side of his car and started rocking the car back and forth in his parking spot (Remember that loose one-year-old? I was panicking for her sake.) before returning to mess around with metal tools and a live battery. Pig and I just looked at each other, and Pig pulled the car away from that guy as quickly as he could. Both of us were afraid that the man was going to electrocute himself and fry everything nearby in the process. There was a woman, presumably the little girl's mother and the man's wife, who was on a cell phone nearby who appeared to be calling for help, so we are hopeful that no one got injured.

While waiting for our heart rates to return to normal, we checked out a more expensive store nearby to see if they had any shoes that would fit Rooster. That was an epic fail, and we did not bother checking for sneakers for Pig. We went home for lunch instead.

After lunch, we tried the really-not-cheap shoe store that is near where we live. Some people might think it is an affordable place, since they sell eighty dollar shoes for "only" fifty bucks, provided they have your size in stock. I don't care what anyone says. Fifty dollars is still a lot of money for me to fork over for a pair of shoes. We struck out in finding wide width kidlet shoes, and Pig was also unable to find the shoes he needed.

While I was entertaining three very bored with shoe shopping kidlets while Pig was hunting down his size, I took the kidlets up and down the aisles and pretended we would look for shoes for me. I really do need a pair of white walking sneakers, but I can almost never find my extra-wide size in stores. To amuse the kidlets, I had them find me boxes that said "wide" on them, and I would try the shoes on if they were anywhere near my normal size. Obviously, nothing fit, but the kidlets were eager to tell Daddy about the different shoes that Mommy was trying. Somehow, this led to us walking around some more and looking for a pair of boots for me.

Now I am a jeans and tee shirt kind of gal. I am not, in any stretch of the imagination, a style maven. I choose my clothing based on comfort and the ability to get away with leaving it in a laundry basket overnight if I don't have the time to fold clothing once it's washed. Fifty dollar sneakers might be the most extravagant type of footwear that I will ever purchase. But I somehow found myself drooling over some of the boots in the store, and no, I am not referring to the gaudy rain boots that Rooster was trying to put over her arms. I mean the sleek, leather, could-be-referred-to-as-sexy-if-anyone-other-than-me-wore-them type of boots.

Pig saw my eyes light up. He encouraged me to try on a pair that the store actually had close to my size. They fit. I wanted them. Pig told me to buy them. And somehow, I could not. They just do not have a place in my jeans and tee shirt life, and I cannot justify purchasing an outfit just so that I could wear those boots once in a blue moon. We left that store empty-handed.

When we returned home, I promised Rooster I would look for special shoes for her online. I reassured her that we would not send her to school without shoes.  We even explained that the schools do not allow kidlets to enter without proper footwear, so we would have to buy her something appropriate. Then I went online and ogled boots for me.

I found a pair that I adore. The manufacturer even makes them in my hard to find extra-wide size. Pig told me to go for it and buy them. I'm torn, because I would love to do so, but the responsible Mommy and wife in me cannot justify the cost. They are even more expensive than the boots in the fifty bucks store, and certainly oodles more money than the el cheapo store we hit first today. I would rather spend the money to buy a couple of pairs of decent sneakers and dress shoes for my little girl, and know that she, at least, is getting our money's worth out of them.

Sometimes, though, after a long day of trying to find footwear for three kidlets, it is comforting to dream about a pair of sleek, black boots that I would never have the chance to wear. And it's even more comforting to know that my kidlets will be well-shod instead.

A cake to die for...

I am not used to getting my recipes from murder mysteries. I do not care how yummy the described food might be, when it is referenced alongside someone getting stabbed to death, it loses its allure. However, when reading Apple Turnover Murder, by Joanne Fluke, I was interested enough to make an exception.

The murder mystery I was reading was part of a series whose shtick is to have a cookie store owner bake goodies and solve the murders that seemingly fall into her lap, sometimes literally. On the whole, I tend to gloss over the provided recipes that detail the baked goods being described in the chapters because they seem to be what I consider to be cheats. Either they rely solely on butter, heavy cream, and other milk products to make them delectable, which does not work for our dairy-allergy household, or they lean heavily on processed foods that we cannot eat anyway. If I am going to go out of my way to bake, I am not going to intentionally use different types of crackers, premade puff pastries (whatever they are), or other brand-specific, full of preservatives and allergens, products. I want to make things from scratch, dagnabit, or as close as can be had without me having to own a farm and mill.

So it was against my better judgment that I was thumbing through the recipes as I was attempting to figure out Whodunnit. When I saw a recipe that a) was both made and baked in the same pan, which works out very well with me being the designated dishwasher in our house, b) did not involve prepackaged foods, c) had no milk or eggs involved, and d) involved cocoa powder, I decided it was worth the attempt to make it. Someone years ago during the Depression Era dubbed the recipe Wacky Cake,  but the name alone made it worthwhile to try out. Even better, there were nine ingredients to use, which divided nicely by my three kidlet helpers.

Armed with a copy of a recipe that would hopefully not leave us as dead as some of the characters in that mystery series, my kidlets and I whipped up the cake and I threw it in the oven. I tweaked the icing recipe the book suggested so that I had a lovely liquid icing to drizzle over the finished pieces. We managed to wait until our Wacky Cake was cooled sufficiently to not burn ourselves once we started devouring it. Since our frosting was going to stay in a drippy format, we did not need to cool the cake completely. (I promptly filed that thought away in case I ever cannot keep my hands off a still-warm cake, which happens a bit more frequently than you might think. Just slice it, plunk it on a plate, and drizzle away!)

Four sets of forks brought four sets of tastes-like-a-brownie-with-a-mouth-feel-of-cake up to our mouths. Four people hungrily devoured our Wacky Cake and sopped up the remaining goopy icing with the crumbs. Pig Jr. even licked his plate clean. Then, for added measure, I sent a picture of our delicious if not nutritious snack off to Pig at work, with the promise that he could have some later. Unfortunately, that means I had to stop eating it so I could fulfill that promise. I probably could have thought that one through a little better. At any rate, the four of us who taste-tested the Wacky Cake were thrilled with the results.

Here's where it gets tricky. This recipe was one from a murder mystery, but I cannot remember how the Wacky Cake was used in the storyline. I am fairly certain that there was no mention of kidlets getting hyper beyond belief upon ingesting such a goody. And boy howdy did my kidlets get hyper! They were giggling, bouncing off the walls, attempting to wrestle, and just having a grand ole time. They went from somewhat sleepy after lunch to hopped up on goofballs within five minutes of eating Wacky Cake. I am starting to think that the cake was named based on the behavior of those individuals who consumed it. I really, really hope that whoever ate the cake in the story was not the one who was brutally offed, although if I had not eaten any of the cake myself and witnessed my kidlets in their glorified sugar rushes, I would have suspected them of committing the murder. This cake seemed to remove far too many inhibitions.

In other words, Wacky Cake was an immediate success, and the kidlets and I have plans to make it again soon. I will just have to write out the recipe on a separate card so I am not reading it from the midst of a crime scene. Seriously, this cake is too good to not be able to stomach after reading about someone's gruesome demise.

Drop the library card and step away from the computer...

I have recently discovered the joys of placing holds on books that are available through interlibrary loan. That really is a wonderful service, and I find it hard to believe that I have not been using this catalog database for years already. In fact, I'm fairly certain that I am now fully addicted to hunting down books from the comforts of my own home, generally in-between activities with the kidlets. If I had to rely on going out to the library to find books on my own, I would never be able to find anything. Two kidlets prefer to go in completely different directions at any given time, and the third would plunk herself down on the floor somewhere to start reading her own books and I would be panicking trying to find her after chasing down her siblings. Placing holds and picking up the books when they are delivered to my library is much easier on my stress-levels.

Unfortunately for the librarians connected to the database, I will sit down and place a zillion holds at a time. If I am lucky, they will not all come in at once. Most of the time, however, they do. I will give the librarians a lot of credit for not rolling their eyes when they see me dragging myself in with three kidlets in tow and trying to keep a straight face that I'll be able to finish reading anything, let alone the whole stack of books, by the time they are due.

I absolutely love reading, but it can be both a blessing and a curse. Reading will take me on adventures that I would not dare brave on my own, and in the comforts of my own living room, too. However, once I start a book or series, I feel the compulsion to keep reading until I have covered every single last page. I have given up sleep both to finish reading and because I cannot stop thinking about storylines. The jury is still out on whether it is better to give up sleep entirely in order to finish reading when it's just going to keep me up anyway trying to figure out how it will all end. Staying awake in order to finish is no guarantee of eventually sleeping, particularly if the curtain closes with an incredibly suspenseful finish to the tale. On the other hand, if I attempt to sleep without figuring out Whodunnit or how it all ends, then I'm likely to be up for hours in my contemplation regardless of how simplistic or boring the closing might actually be. It might be best for me to simply not start reading unless I know I can finish in one sitting, but that is next to impossible to judge when kidlets are involved.

Today, I finished a particularly distressing murder mystery. I was not at all keen on the ending, despite having figured out the bulk of it about halfway through the story. The fact that I was separating parts of chapters with reading books to the kidlets, folding laundry, doing dishes, and engaging in banter with busy kidlets who still wanted Mommy's attention even when they were busy doing their own things made it a bit more difficult to digest. I attempted to eat a few cookies to ward off the feelings of blah that followed the last few pages of my book, but all they did was give me heartburn. So I then turned to my laptop.

Within just a few moments, I had my library card information entered into the nice, happy catalog database that has so recently started to enthrall me. I figured I would place holds on all of the book club selections I need to read over the next few months. Then I looked up the next book in the series that so distressed me this afternoon. Mumbling nasty things about the author for leaving me hanging like that, I also realized I had missed a few other books in the series, and placed holds on them, too. I looked into completing my read-through of a few other mystery series that I have only recently started.

After just a short period of time, I had placed more items on hold than I can possibly attempt to read in six months. And knowing my luck, they will all arrive at my library at the same time and need to be completed within the very same three week period. I suppose I can always renew the ones I do not finish, but I shall probably be having to choose between paying fines or placing holds on the same reading materials again in the future. It's a shame my librarians are such nice people. I'm already feeling guilty about the excess work I am making them do simply because of my spontaneous decision to dork around looking for books.

I think it's time I put my library card away and step away from the computer before my face gets plastered on a "For the love of all things sacred, cut up her library card!" poster. It might even get faxed to other libraries for miles around, lest I move to another area and try overly-holding books there, too. If libraries don't have such things, they should. Hopefully, I will never have to find out.

Enter the Grandparents

I love my kidlets, I truly do. But when I get caught up in the day-to-day stress that comes with three kidlets who have a highly contagious case of siblingitis that they keep passing back and forth, I realize that taking a break is necessary to preserve what is left of our collective sanity.

Enter the grandparents. Those blessed people love their grandkidlets more than life itself. There is nothing they would not do to keep my kidlets happy, relaxed, and safe, not necessarily in that order, and provided they are aware they are supposed to be keeping tabs on the kidlets at the time. It does not count as having Grandma or Grandpa watch the kids if they think someone else is doing so. Always make sure the adult in charge knows that he or she is in charge. Otherwise, kidlets wander off and try to flush their sibling down the toilet, style the dog's hair using Sharpie markers and blunt scissors, or strip completely naked and run off down the street. (If any of those sounds far-fetched, you clearly have not been around small kidlets. Just trust me on this one.)

Grandparents do not always remember what kidlets were like at certain stages of life, and even if they had perfect memories of such things, life is different now. If I thought peer pressure was bad when I was a child, it's nothing compared to what it is like now, and that's just one example. Thankfully, kidlets still try and manipulate adults in the same ways they always did, so the grandparents are already old (pardon the term) pros at fending off such attacks. Each generation is also a novelty to one another, and not dreading each other's visits because of their frequency.

So when my kidlets' grandparents volunteered to take the older two off my hands for a day, I jumped at the chance. The kidlets had been fighting non-stop, and their best chances of survival would be to go fight somewhere else and give Mommy a break. If nothing else, their visit to their grandparents' house would give me a chance to go buy a pair of earplugs. There is a carnival not too far from where they live, and my girls would love to go experience the wonder of kiddie rides, hopefully tire themselves out, get spoiled by their grandparents, and come back home to me all refreshed after their adventures.

It took me several hours to get the girls organized for a twenty-four hour visit with their grandparents. My middle child has pretty severe food allergies, and I had to pack up a day's worth of food, medicines, and emergency contact numbers in addition to the normal supplies one would require for an overnight stay. Then I had to schedule a panic attack in wondering whether her behavior would allow the trip, let alone the sensory-stimulating environment of a carnival. (In notable times past, she has freaked out on overnight trips to her grandparents, her uncle's wedding, and a number of times while merely walking to school to pick up her older sister. She is the master of the meltdown when she wants to be.)

But once again, the grandparents came to the rescue. They assured me that they were willing to take two cars to the carnival so that if one kidlet needed to leave, someone could take her to the relative calm of their house. They drove up here to pick up the girls. They even calmly talked to my daughter about how people rarely throw up on the rides, no matter what her older sister decided to tell her in order to freak her out. They had the girls call home upon arrival at their house, and both girls seemed to be settling in just fine, to my intense relief. We'll see how the carnival goes, but it's thankfully all on Grandma and Grandpa to man the ramparts and make sure the kidlets are safe and secure.

In the meantime, I am enjoying my alone time with my son, who almost never gets Mommy all to himself these days. I am trying to relax and just enjoy the silence that comes with sending the two squabbling kidlets off to play nicely with Grandma and Grandpa, who I know are appreciating their alone time with their granddaughters. And it's two-on-two, which makes it a little easier to prevent the girls from attempting to gang up on the usual one adult in charge. I am fairly certain everyone will have a blast.

I still can hardly wait to see my babies again tomorrow.

Playing in the rain must be genetic

Today was supposed to be partly cloudy. I was surprised to see that weather report this morning, since the past few days have predicted thunderstorms. Naturally, despite having a number of days with the threat of thunderstorms, we did not actually get any until today, once the weather powers-that-be decided they must have been wrong. Way to be wrong twice in a row, guys. Next time, just stick with your initial forecast. Even if you're wrong, you're still only wrong once. Changing it and then having it be the way you originally guessed makes you seem wrong twice.

Anyway, once the thunder had passed and we were merely stuck on "heavy rainstorm", I asked the kidlets if they would like to go outside with their boots and umbrellas and splash around for awhile. I am fairly certain I have never seen them react so quickly when I asked them if they'd like to play outside. They all had their boots on and were hunting down umbrellas before the words even finished coming out of my mouth.

The kidlets raced outside and splished and splashed to their hearts content. They ran through puddles, attempted flying leaps in order to see who could produce the biggest splash, and turned their umbrellas upside-down to try and catch the water. All was well until my little sensory guy, the one who detests actually having his clothing or himself wet, fell on his belly into a puddle of murky water.

My little man froze and could not even pull himself up on his own. That task was left up to me. He walked about as if petrified, and held his body stiff as a board. He seemed miserable. He had also managed to flatten his umbrella and was thoroughly upset that he could not put it up over his head anymore. It appeared as if the kidlets' playtime was going to come to an end.

As my drenched son was doing his stiff-legged walk up to our back porch, I wondered if he would be okay with getting even more wet. You see, he and I share a lot of the same sensory issues, and I can't stand being partially wet either. However, I used to love going on long walks in the pouring rain as long as I could get completely soaked. Individual drips or splashes on my clothing drove me crazy, but I could handle the sensation if I was drenched, provided it continued raining. The second it stopped pouring or I went inside, I needed to immediately get into dry clothing. I wondered if my son was the same way, so I asked him if he would like to forget his broken umbrella and just play in the rain.

There was a pause while all three kidlets processed what I was telling them. In a flurry of tossed umbrellas, all three started cavorting in the downpour. My completely upset son became a gleefully scampering little boy as they all played. The girls threw themselves into the task of getting soaked. My son no longer worried about his partially wet clothing and instead went about making it completely drenched. Now that they were no longer worried about accidentally getting wet, they could play with wild abandon. And so they did.

After a nice, long frolic in the rain, we once again heard a distant peal of thunder and went back into the house. I threw a towel around each kidlet and they each put on dry clothing. We dumped their filled rain boots out on our porch and left them outside to dry out sometime within the next year or so. Now that I know all three are fine with getting drenched, I think we'll go for flip flops and bathing suits next time.

I am so glad that my kidlets liked being outside in the rain as much as I used to enjoy it. It has been a number of years since I have frolicked in the rain, and I do indeed miss it. Watching an overly-drenched tree come crashing down just a few feet in front of me has kept me from enjoying rainstorms in recent history. (My thoughts at the time, as I was staring out my kitchen window at that lovely downpour, were, "I should go find my shoes and go for a walk in the...TREE!" It scared the dickens out of me, which is fairly impressive given that the only Dickens I knew about at the time was Charles.) I think it's time I start cavorting in the rain once more, this time in the presence of my three very cheerful kidlets.