When It Rains It Pours. Grab a Bucket

In the course of 48 hours I have broken the tip of my middle finger, boiled snow and contemplated peeing in a bush.

I'm no longer just the redneck mommy online. I've morphed into a card-carrying member in real life as well. In fact, if my brother were to come over, offer to feed me road kill and bring me a bottle of clean water, I can't say I wouldn't swoon at his feet and offer to marry him.

Okay, yes I can. Sorry Stretch. The dehydration combined with the pain of typing with a broken finger is clearly addling my mind.

This is what happens when I'm left alone with three children, in the middle of nowhere during a Canadian winter. I start to twitch. And invariably, things go wrong. Really wrong. Like our water line mysteriously collapsing. No big deal. It's only buried 25 feet below the surface of the earth, and runs through the middle of my newly landscaped front yard and underneath a very large, very expensive deck we may now have to tear off to gain access to the line. Running water is over rated anyways.

So we're hauling water up from our cistern, like drawing water from a well. Only my daughter dropped the bucket into the giant cement pit of darkness and somehow I have to figure a way on retrieving it without contaminating our entire supply of water. It's cool though, because I like a challenge. I'm not losing my mind or anything. Really. *Twitch.*

It's not all bad. I mean, there is four feet of snow outside my front door. And I have twenty acres covered with the white stuff. I just have to make sure there is no yellow in the snow I collect. I now stand outside on the deck and yell at the dogs, cats and general wild life whenever they wander onto my pristine patch of snow. I'm a crazy lady armed with an air horn yelling at the animals to go pee on someone else's lawn. Someone who has running water.

This is *normal* for me now.

I'm suddenly a woman who has encouraged her son to pee off the back of the deck and then offered her daughter a Go Girl product so she could do the same all so I won't have to lug in water or boil snow to flush the toilets.

I may have encouraged my teenaged children to stay over at random friends' houses to steal their water. I like to think I'm teaching them the invaluable skill of couch surfing. Learning to mooch effectively can never happen early enough. So far neither child has been thirsty enough, or smelly enough to flee the nest, but I'm betting by day five the combined power of our collective stench will soften their stances and send them packing for the first friend they can trick into taking them.

I've taken to waving my throbbing broken middle finger around like it's a magic wand and can magically make water run from my spouts. I swear I'm not just randomly giving the universe the finger or anything.

Okay, yes I am.

I keep telling myself this will end soon enough. By this time next week my husband will be home and one way or another I will have running water. And even if I don't, it won't be my problem for long as I'm fleeing the country with my daughter. My life could be plenty worse. Just ask the people of Japan.

Perspective, I have it, even if I don't have indoor plumbing.

In the meantime, I'm totally knocking on my parents' door.

They have working toilets and a girl needs a place to poop in peace. Even if she has to drive 3 miles to get there.

*Twitch.*

Jumby waving the white flag of surrender. Or my bra. Whatever.

(Also, note to all of you: When a door is being slammed shut, don't use your fingers as a door stop. You know, in case you didn't know.)

A Mother's Hormones

I watched my daughter push a grocery cart through a snowy parking lot the other night and my eyes misted up. I couldn't help myself; it was a biological response to the flood of hormones that surge through me at a certain time of the month. Don't judge me. I'm a woman.

I was furtively wiping the wetness from my eyes when she hopped back into the car, sitting in the passenger seat like the little adult she is so quickly growing into. I must have had a flashing neon sign on my forehead, blinking "Proceed with Caution, Hormonal Woman Ahead," because she gave me a strange look and asked me what was wrong.

"Nothing," I sniffed as I turned the key and proceeded to put the vehicle into drive.

"Something's up. Two minutes ago you were normal and now you look like someone kicked your dog."

How does one describe to their offspring that they were suddenly attacked with a severe case of maternal love? That watching my long legged daughter bound across the parking lot suddenly reminded me that she was no longer the wobbly-footed toddler from many moons ago? That in watching her I realized I was watching my future and I was suddenly overcome with a huge amount of mommy pride.

I made her. And I didn't do a terrible job.

Even more mind boggling, I made her when I was just barely an adult myself, with no real clue to who I was and with nary an instruction book in sight.

I'm thirty-five years old and suddenly the sounds of a clock ticking out the seconds passing rings in my ears. Every day. Loudly. While other women around me hear the tick tock of their biological clock, I remain deaf to that noise. It's been a decade since I last gave birth to a child, a kid who not only stole my heart but my ability to have any more biological children.

Three kids by the age of 25 and another one picked up at age 33 and I don't feel the biological imperative to bring forth life. I've been there, I've done that. I'd love more children, absolutely, unabashedly, but I have no actual desire to produce them myself. I would be equally satisfied to adopt another, as I would be to purchase one off of eBay.

The sound that haunts me every day is the knowledge that my time with my kids is ending. Their childhoods are almost over, my role as their guide to life is coming to an end. The contract is expiring. Fric is standing on the doorstep to 15 and Frac is right behind her, chasing down the days to 14 like a dog runs after a rubber ball.

One day soon, in a blink of an eye, it will just be the Jumbster and I, alone, waiting for the phone to ring, eager to hear from a husband or a child who has flown from the nest to soar into their own independent world. The downy feathers of childhood are quickly falling out being replaced with the colourful plumage of adulthood.

I don't know if I would have been this sensitive to the passing of time if Bug hadn't died. I never would have thought I'd be emotionally affected by the thought of an empty nest. Most days I stand behind my kids, eager to shove them off of a cliff. Somehow, along the way, I've surprised myself with this maudlin sentimentality I've acquired.

I never expected to enjoy being a mother. Even as I pushed out my first child I was overcome with this horrible sense of 'what the heck did I just do?' But here I am, enjoying the heck out of being responsible for live young. I'm haunted forever with the absence of my third child and his death looms large over everything. I can't help but feel an eternal sense of guilt for the time I lost with him because of his death.

It hangs on my very being and reminds me not to take every minute I have with my existing children for granted. It's the reason I attend every sports event, volunteer to chaperone mind numbingly boring field trips, offer to have one endless sleep over after another under my roof. I don't want to miss a moment of my kids' childhood when I've already lost so much of one child's life.

But it isn't just grief or guilt that inspires such parental involvement. Somewhere along the way I discovered I get a charge out of watching these children grow. It fuels me and I've grown up into the woman I finally am just as my children have grown alongside me. I found what I didn't even know I was looking for all those years ago. My kids make me want to be better. To do more. To try harder.

Like a rollercoaster ride you never want to end, I find myself wishing for more time with my kids. I am plagued with a desperate wish to slow down the sands of time just to prolong my daily involvement in their lives. I want to wring every drop of joy I can from simply being their mother because I know it will fuel me for the rest of my life.

Of course, if they turn into unemployed bums mooching off my largesse as they live on my couch when they are 30 years old I'll likely read this and want to slap myself silly.

The mere act of having children, both accidental and planned, has turned into the greatest thing I never intended. More important to me than the fame and fortune I once dreamed of as a child myself.

For one moment, in a small town parking lot, I was suddenly seized with gratitude for not having the sense to use protection all those years ago and bring forth life.

As Fric stared at me like I had just grown a set of horns in the middle of my forehead, I instead chose to keep my maternal pride silent, and looked into her questioning eyes and simply told her, "I bit my tongue."

"Oh I hate when that happens."

Me too kid, me too.

Time really does fly when you're having fun.

A Taste Of My Own Medicine

There isn't a person on this planet that knows me as well as my husband does. He doesn't just know me inside and out because he's occasionally seen me naked. No, Boo and I are six months apart in age and our father's were best friends. We've known each other our entire lives. He remembers me as the little girl who sat on the couch and was too scared to go outside to see the horses and I remember him as the obnoxious sprite with big lips, bad hair and a dirty orange and brown striped shirt who wouldn't leave me alone.

We were destined to be together, much to both of our fathers' mutual horror.

We have grown up together, Boo and I. Literally. We've seen each other through puberty, adulthood, death, disease and marriage. Our very selves have shaped the other into the people we are today. So it comes in handy that we both still like one another. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous.

I have poked fun at Boo in the past here on the blog and he has always taken it with the spirit in which it was intended. He's put up with my over shares and he has learned to live with the fact that more people in our lives read my blog than don't. Even if those people happen to be his boss or his coworkers. My husband is in fact, the picture of grace and acceptance when it comes to me using him as entertainment fodder for the masses.

He should totally get an award for that. Or at least have a wife who will fold his darn laundry.

Other than an irritating habit of not changing the empty rolls of toilet paper and not allowing me to adopt every stray dog that wanders into my field of vision, he's practically a perfect husband. Heck, I don't even have to cook for him most of the time since he only lives here part time due to his job.

Like a good husband, he keeps me on my toes. He keeps me honest, and makes me want to be better.

He also knows how to turn the tables on me and feed me my own medicine when I least expect it but likely warrant it.

Last week my daughter and I received our travel itineraries for our upcoming school travel club holiday. Upon viewing our travel plans, I realized there might be a wee problem with the itinerary regarding arrival times, departure times and only 30 minutes allotted to go through international security. I spoke briefly to our travel advisor at the school about my concerns. I may have also voiced my concerns in a slightly screechy manner to my husband when he called home to check on us.

I must have made an impression on my husband because Saturday morning I woke up to find this in my inbox. An email my husband wrote to the travel advisor and forwarded to me:

 



Clearly my husband loves me and wants our upcoming trip to be spectacularly awesome. And clearly he wants to prevent me maiming anyone inside a crowded airport if we miss our connection. His love and dedication to his family just shines through in this email. Clearly.

There is a moral in here about the shoe being on the other foot. I'm sure of it.

Like I said, my husband keeps me honest. Even when that means blowing my cover to the teacher who will be joining us on the trip and exposing me for the nutter I truly am.

I really liked it better though when *I* was the only one exposing our family's secrets. Please, for the love of God, don't let Boo ever decide to start a blog. I don't think my carefully constructed self-esteem could handle it with the same grace that Boo does.