Would someone please find the adult around here?

Growing up is definitely over rated.

You don’t discover this until you have kids and then it hits you like a ton of marshmallows.

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m a victim of arrested development. Or worse, perhaps I’ve caught some sort of “Benjamin Buttons” reverse aging disease.

For example, just the other day I rode the grocery cart like a modified scooter all the way back to my car. Did you know there’s no steering on those things? Good thing they put those little rubber bumpers on them.

Then I caught myself lingering over the bubble gum at the convenience store, finally opting for the one with the comic inside. That Joe Bazooka. What a goof.

More than once I’ve turned off the news in the car and opted for a kids book on tape. If you haven’t heard a good Hank the Cowdog lately, you’re missing out.

At this point in my life I imagined I’d spend a great deal of my time doing all the grown up stuff. Learning about a bunch of dead guys, reading labels carefully to select the products with precisely the right amount of trans fats, or watching the news until facts on world events leaked out my ears.

Instead I’m avoiding stepping on cracks, stopping to see what prizes they’re offering in sugar coated cereal, and whistling tunes from cartoons. I fully expect to start finger painting any minute.

I suppose it was inevitable. After all this kind of thing is infectious. It’s simply not reasonable to expect that you’ll catch your kids’ colds but not their sense of fun.

In fact, this whole thing reminds me of the famous entomologist who discovered the organ that ants use to get others to follow a trail to food. Scout ants lay down a scent trail with an organ in their abdomen.

Of course this entomologist had to go around the country and demonstrate how this scent thing worked. But he didn’t just toss up some slides.

He wrote his name on the top of the table using the scent, then let out a bunch of ants. All of the ants ran immediately over and spelled out his name, following the scent trail he’d written.

Now that’s cool.

Proving once again that in a very real way, lots of us never grow up.

Weeeee!


('course now I feel a little guilty about the ants I'm killing with ant bait in my kitchen. Luckily it's just a little guilty. I can do little guilty standing on my head.)

Princess and the Arachnid

There’s a phrase they use in theater that I’ve always found fascinating – “playing against type.” It’s when an actor, who is known for their roles in one kind of part, plays the opposite. Like when Robin Williams dropped the wackiness and played a doctor in Awakenings.

I’m trying to keep this phrase in mind now that Mireya has her first speaking part in the school play.

First, let me say, that anyone who decides to have a play with sixty first graders deserves some sort of medal of honor - after they return from a long trip to the Bahamas. I’m still amazed that they get that many children through the lunch line in school, let alone through stage direction in the auditorium.

But I was shocked when Mireya came home with her role. She had been completely confident that she’d have a speaking part, due largely to the fact that she can read.

So I was anticipating something interesting, but not too demanding.

Mireya is the spider.

My shock had nothing to do with the role. In fact, the role of the spider isn’t a bad role at all. From what I gleaned, her character undergoes a transformation from bad to good. And many great actresses excel as villains. Plus she is going to have the coolest costume ever, thanks to Grammy and a few black socks.

No, it was the enormous irony of the role. Mireya is terrified of spiders.

Run-screaming-from-the-room-from-even-microscopic-spiders terrified.

Yet now she’s going to be a GIGANTIC spider (as spiders go).

“Wow. You’re going to be the spider?”

“Yes.” She looked at the script a bit skeptically, as if it might grow legs right in front of her.

“That’s really great! You think this will help you not be afraid of spiders anymore? I mean, you’ll kind of have to get in touch with your… inner spider.”

She looked at me as if I’d lapsed into Swahili. “Um, no, mommy.”

“Oh. Okay.”

A few days later following her costume fitting, she made it clear she’d gotten more excited about her part.

“You know what is so cool about my part in the play?” she said.

“What?”

“I have more arms than anybody!”

Which begs the question: do you tell a 1st grade spider to break one leg before the big night, or two?

(Mireya after her successful debute)

Bare Inspiration

Sometimes people will ask me if it's hard to keep writing a column every week.

Not with this cast of characters.

In fact, there are weekends where my column just writes itself - like one particularly memorable weekend. I'd just dropped off my grandmother after we'd been out for twice as long as anticipated.

It's never good at my house for Mommy to be gone twice as long as anyone expects. This is how we end up with pet lizards that require live crickets for lunch and captured tarantulas that everyone is too scared to look at, let alone release back into the wild. So I was anticipating trouble.

When I pulled into the driveway, I came upon my husband and two daughters sitting outside in that unmistakable posture of people who have narrowly avoided complete mental breakdowns.

Apparently, while I was out (for once, my timing was perfect), my husband had released the girls to playing in the backyard while he vacuumed out his truck. A fairly picky guy about the condition of his vehicle, he was soon lost in the task of master detailer. He didn't notice the long stretch of relative silence that is a sure sign of impending disaster until it was too late.

Suddenly there was a cry from the back yard. He ran over to find that our youngest had been knocked over by the dog, bumped her head on a rock, and while fine for the most part, was quite upset.

And naked.

I believe I deserve some sort of award for not bursting out laughing at that point in the story. In fact I may have given myself a hernia in the process.

Everyone involved, including the four year old, denied any knowledge of exactly how or why she came to be naked. When I asked her point blank, she just looked at me as if the question itself made no sense.

So like the mystery of lost socks, the Bermuda Triangle, and why bumble bees can fly, the day Mireya decided to play in the buff is just one of those episodes in our life that will remain shrouded in obscurity.

Maybe shrouded isn't the right word. But you get the idea.

Hopefully the next time I'm delayed coming home I'll get another column out of it – as long as I can avoid getting a hernia in the process.

..

The Return of the Dog People

Before we had children we were dog people.

You know, those people who buy expensive toys for dogs, who take their dogs everywhere, who have pictures of dogs on their desk. Those kind of dog people.

Then for the first few years of being parents, the dogs faded in priority. Suddenly they were just, well, dogs. I missed the time I had with the four-legged friends I'd referred to more than once as "my training children."

Ha! That goes to show I had no clue.

I just couldn't find time between diaper changes and soccer practice to give them any where near the attention I used to just a few years earlier.

But I've made it up to them. Our German shepherd and beagle – Aussie mix now have far more fun with my daughters than they ever had with me.

Our girls have both become dog people. They have taken the leash from our hands and run off with the dogs to places I never imagined.

They have taught them tricks I never thought of, a half dozen of which involve the trampoline.
They have discovered the joy of the doggie vacuum, bringing in the dogs for clean up duty when the goldfish crackers get "accidentally" knocked over.

They have become regular hostesses of previously forbidden left overs lunch party, where many a rejected food item is snuck outside while I "wasn't looking" (often because I was told "Mommy! Don't look!").

They have loved on these dogs, full body hugs, even when it seems clear to me that both dogs have had a skunk visiting during the night.

They have taught both dogs to find the ball when it's buried in the playground, tossed into the pretend grocery cart, and stuck in a tree. Did you know a beagle/aussie (known as a Bossy around here) can, when properly motivated, climb a live oak?

They have taught the dogs to wear feather boas gracefully and tolerate a change of fur color when the poster paints are brought out for "rainbow dog day."

And most of all, they've taught me just how fun it can be to have a couple of dogs in the family again. Even if they smell like skunk.