Mama Bear

Duck and Cover... Or At Least Remember

Mama bear — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:32:42 GMT

Where were you twenty years ago, on October 17, 1989, at 4:45 in the afternoon?

I was twenty years old, working as a nanny in Rohnert Park, which is a little north of San Francisco, supervising the three children I was in charge of and visiting with my employer's mother, who was visiting from Texas. Annie Laurie (the grandma) was half-bragging, half-wistfully saying that "in Texas they have all the biggest everything -- bugs, snakes, weather, natural disasters" -- except she'd never been in an earthquake. I chuckled and said we'd see what we could do to add that to her list of experiences, and I slid the pan of stuffed pasta shells into the oven. Annie Laurie went to the kitchen table to help Keith with some spelling homework, and I peeked out the front door at Kara and Ryan, who were happily playing with one of the family pets, Charlie Handsome. (He was a cat, and he wasn't... but the six year old named him, so that was what she called him.)

The kids' parents worked in Santa Rosa at a software company, and both were due home at the usual time -- 5:30.

A few minutes after 5:00 I remember chuckling under my breath at Annie Laurie's wish to experience an earthquake -- not in a mean way, but in a wouldn't-it-be-funny-if way... and then I was bending over the dishwasher, and it was rushing up to meet me. I thought I was getting a dizzy spell or something, and I put a hand on the counter and looked up across the family room. The whole wall at the far end of the room was covered in shelving, with a state-of-the-art stereo system (they had the first CDs I'd ever seen) and a top-of-the-line television system, complete with huge speakers. The entire wall lifted up and settled down as I watched, with the ripple then lifting the couch and setting it down, then the dining room, and then the kitchen. It was exactly what the surface of the ocean does -- swells that move in one direction, effortlessly, unconciously, powerfully -- but it was IN THE HOUSE.

At the dining room table Keith and his grandma looked up in confusion and the chandelier began to sway. I looked at Annie Laurie, and the look on her face said that I was clearly in charge -- so I went into automatic mode and shouted for them to get under the table. There was no table near me, so I got under the nearest doorway, where I could see the girls in the front yard, staring down the street with perplexed looks. The moment the shaking stopped we hurried outside, where Kara and Ryan complained that the ground was funny and they didn't like it. All up and down the street neighbors were coming out to stand on the sidewalk and stare at each other, as if attempting to understand what had just happened.

When an earthquake hits, you aren't sure if this felt like a strong one because it was so close, or if it was just the tail end of a much stronger one that was centered further away. You don't know if there will be aftershocks, or if the one you felt was a foreshock of a much stronger one to come... All you can do is get somewhere safe and try to get information any way you can.

I remembered the warnings about turning off gas, but I had no idea where that valve would be on the house. I settled for the next best thing: once everyone was settled on the front lawn I ran back inside, turned off the oven, and grabbed the portable phone and my car keys. We turned the radio on in my car and listened to the news coming in from the Bay Area -- wild reports that Berkeley was on fire, that the bridges were down, that San Francisco was going up in flames. (Later those were proved to be a bit exaggerated -- there were fires, and a section of a bridge had indeed gone down, but most of the greater Bay Area had not slid into the Pacific.)

Kelley and Kriss -- my employers -- had been getting ready to come home when the quake hit. Kriss was in her car, and she later grumbled that she didn't really get much of an impression of any force. She wasn't sure why everyone was so impressed with the rolling motion, because to her it felt like when wind buffets the car, a gentle sort of rocking. Kelley had been standing in front of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a vast parking lot, and he watched the same swells I saw roll through the lot, lifting light poles and cars and asphalt with no pausing or trouble. He said he was so fascinated by the effect, he didn't think to get away from the windows until well after the shaking had started -- and as president of the company his corner office was situated in a cantelievered position over the building's driveway!

Traffic was surprisingly light, which the newspeople put down to the big interest in the World Series game set to play at 5 PM that day... San Francisco and Oakland, the Bay Series, a rivalry that drew even people who weren't all that much into baseball. Kriss and Kelley made it home in no time, and I gladly handed over the responsibility for the household!

When there were no more big tremors we moved back indoors and took stock of the minor damage. A glass had knocked over in the sink; some items on a shelf were tumbled to the floor; the cat's water had sloshed out of the dish. On my pillow was a big rock paperweight that had fallen from a tall armoire next to my bed; if the quake had come in the night, it would certainly have hit me.

We turned the oven back on and heated up the stuffed shells --- renaming them Earthquake Shells, which they remain to this day in my recipe book -- and began to take in the news.

The images were horrifying, and surreal: three story houses collapsed into what looked like card houses, with a roof balanced on windows balanced on sidewalks. The pancaked Cypress freeway, with motorists trapped in concrete tombs. (Again, the commute was incredibly light -- normally those roadways would have been packed with thousands of people returning from work, their minds on dinner and getting a load of laundry started and if they needed catfood -- but the ones who were on that freeway at the moment the shaking started had nowhere to go, and no hope of surviving.) The cameras captured dazed expressions of people who had lost possessions, were missing loved ones, or who were simply too stunned to react anymore to the world around them.

Compared to the devastation of the areas closer to the epicenter, we had no complaints. We were all safe, we had a roof over our heads and food in our bellies... and Annie Laurie had a doozy of a story to take back to lil' ol' Texas about the day the ground rolled like an ocean in California!

What are the Chances?

Mama bear — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:49:59 GMT

A couple of weeks ago a letter appeared in my mailbox with those happy four letter words smiling up at me: JURY DUTY. It seems my presence is required at such and such room on such and such date, after calling this number after this time and referencing this number and then following the directions.

I brought the paper with me to work, intending to tell the teacher I work with about my potentially missing some days in October, and lo and behold, she had gotten the same happy summons a few days before me! What are the chances, right?

The speech therapist came in that morning, and we were joking around with her about something; at one point I teased, "Oh! Be sure to check your mailbox for a very important letter very soon!" When she looked questioningly at us we told her about our dual summons, and she unhesitatingly said, "Oh, I already got mine -- yesterday."

Sure enough, all three of us have the same week.

Now, the chances of all of us getting called to come in on the same day are pretty slim, right? Our principal decided we'd all just do our duty thing -- call in each evening to see if we have to report -- and hopefully we'll be able to wrangle the schedule if one, two, or all three of us DO have to go in.

Oh, and there is a case coming up soonish that I know about... remember the respite worker we had who was later arrested for killing her boyfriend?

But come on... what are the chances that THAT would be the case I'D get called to jury duty for?

Holy Tights, Batman!

Mama bear — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:18:34 GMT

<<Rant Alert!>>

Call me old fashioned, but I'm beginning to worry about our young people's reproductive health.

I mean, come on -- have you seen what passes for "pants" these days? I have nylons that fit less snugly... and they have breathable sections in strategic areas, which these "jeans" do not. This can't be comfortable for personal regions -- on Mars or Venus.

Now, admittedly, the big'n'baggy'n'hanging-off-the-undies look was pathetic, but do we really have to swing ALL the way to the other side of the pendulum? Have fashion designers lost all sense of proportion, body shape and function? In my mind it's simple: pants are meant to cover the lower parts of our bodies; allow us to sit, walk and breathe comfortably; and give us a place to stick our keys, cell phone, iPod, wallet, gum, change, and maybe even our VISA card. How hard is that to get right? Apparently very, very, very hard -- because if the teenagers I saw the other day had a VISA card, it was nowhere near their pants...trust me, I would have seen it!!

Train Town -- Sonoma, California

Mama bear — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:45:30 GMT

If you have a boy -- or a husband -- you know that trains are a universal obsession with the tykes. We are fortunate enough to live a short drive from one of the most amazing "amusement parks" for families blessed with the boy chromosones -- Train Town in Sonoma, California, just north of San Francisco.

Train Town has been around forever -- the tunnels have a date in the late 1950s pressed into the concrete -- and I have been visiting almost every year since I was first taken there as a toddler, about a dozen years after it was founded. I went often as a kid; renewed my visits when I was a nanny; and then again when I was a mom. When my kids get too old I may have to borrow little ones until I get to tote my grandkids...!

The place is magical to kids, but it's even more magical to their parents and grandparents... the wonder on the kids' faces is like a tonic to the weary soul, and the sheer enjoyment of the experience brings a smile to everyone's face regardless of how old they are!

Of course, with a name like Train Town, there's bound to be trains everywhere -- and don't worry, there are! The main attraction is a train to ride on -- a steam locomotive with a nice loud whistle toot that alerts you to tunnels and the arrival in the station, or the town we get to visit during our ride. The little old-fashioned town has grown since I was small -- there are animals to pet and feed, and small buildings to explore, including a school, saloon, jail and fort. All along the train route there are lots of bridges, huge lakes and waterfalls and rivers, and then there's even an actual people-sized amusement park with a Ferris wheel, merry-go-round and roller coaster, just to name a few of the attractions! There's an old train set up for climbing on and exploring, and a set of stairs that you can climb to take in the view from way high up above the station, taller than the fountain and in a good position to see the wheel house and many of the rides.

We took Grandpa along, and he enjoyed the visit as much as the kids -- although he sat out the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round, for some reason. (Daddy and I both rode the Ferris wheel, one with each kid, but then we did rock paper scissor about the merry-go-round and he won, choosing a nice steed for his ride. I took pictures. And yes, I cheated.)

I'm including lots of our pictures, because they tell the story better than I ever could... and the phone number and address of the place, because you WILL want to go visit, I promise!

Train Town Railroad Rides, Petting Zoo and Park, 20264 Broadway, Sonoma, California. (707) 938-3912. Have fun!

HOW Old Am I?

Mama bear — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:23:30 GMT

Growing old is not for the faint of heart. The days creep by slowly, and suddenly you look around and decades have passed... and you have to find your reading glasses to even see what the date says on the calendar! I don't remember my grandmothers being so aware of the passage of time, but maybe that's because I was still young enough to see dust motes and think they were like magical fairy crystals floating in the sunbeam...

When I was growing up I was incredibly fortunate to have two wonderful grandmothers who were a part of my life. They could not have been more opposite -- one was brought up in San Francisco, one grew up in tiny, rural Ukiah, California; one adopted one child, a girl -- the other had three children, all boys; one traveled all over the world, the other was content to read her way through stacks of books. From them I inheirited an appreciation for fine things and a down-to-earth sensibility; a collection of recipes for everything from Wine Country Chicken to homemade ice cream; and a balanced view of the way the world works.

Grandma M. was the original Low Maintenance gal. If her face was washed and her short hair combed she was ready to go. She never wore dresses, except under extreme duress, and she favored a shade of blue that brought out the silvery tints in her hair and made her blue eyes bright, but that was one of her few concessions to appearance. (I sooo take after her in the less-is-more category!)

Grandma B. was vain in the nicest possible sense of the word. She cared about her appearance -- if her "face" wasn't on, she went NOWHERE, and she could pair a sweatshirt and jeans with diamond jewelry and not look like a trailer park escapee. I have fond memories of her sitting at her dressing table, her makeup and brushes and eyelash curler arrayed at her fingertips, pink hair tape securing small curls near her ears, her fresh scent powdery and elegant and somehow rich with good taste. She always had a special makeup mirror -- round, with one side magnified and the other REALLY magnified, and small lightbulbs marching along the sides of the mirror's support -- which I assumed was just a fancy way of putting on makeup, like the eyelash curler or the hair tape.

Would you believe it was only yesterday that it dawned on me why she had that mirror?

I noticed that my eyebrows were once again threatening to take over the spaces that my sweet hairstylist had so carefully carved out, and thought I'd take a tweezer to the offending interlopers. Unfortunately, SEEING the doggone things in the mirror was a bit hard -- and if I put on the reading glasses to get a better view, the doggone glasses were in the way of doing the actual tweezing!!!

Oh my God, I'm old! And I'm going to have Brooke Shields eyebrows (from her early "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins" days, not the sunscreen and dental health version of more recent appearances). And I'm going to have to either suck it up and go buy a grandma mirror or pay to have someone with actual eyes do the dang job.

I'm torn, I have to admit. I like the neat look, and I always admired how pulled together Grandma B was in every situation, but Grandma M's genes are starting to whisper really loudly in my DNA... forget the eyebrows... forget the hair...just wear blue and no one will notice the strays... blue is the answer to everything... blue!

Oh, and the next time somone says that the forties are the new twenties you can snap back that they are idiots. Twenty-somethings don't need reading glasses to "put on their faces," and forty-somethings can't laugh without first visiting the ladies' room. The good news about being in your forties? Dust motes are once again magical -- not just the belief in the invisible fairies that created them, but the powerful magic needed to see them: at least two more numbers up from whatever current pair of reading glasses you have.

Excuse me while I go change into something blue.

Food for Thought

Mama bear — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:25:16 GMT

In the nearly 12 years I've been married to my One True Love I have developed a pretty accurate radar about what he might like/dislike in movies. He has the same sensitivity about my preferences... so if he wants to watch Lord of the Rings (HATED IT!) or some gory action flick, or I want to watch some mindless romantic comedy, we just save them for a time when the other is not going to be around. There are plenty of movies we enjoy together, so an occasional solo doesn't seem to be any problem.

This weekend I have a bunch of recorded shows and movies lined up to choose from, because Matt is camping on a "Dad's Retreat" with a few good friends. (They claim they're roughing it, living off the land, but I saw the makings for s'mores go into the bag, and I'm pretty sure cowboys don't pack an airbed, pump, and adaptor. Also, do cowboys eat blackened Cajun salmon? I didn't think so...) One of the movies seemed super extra mindless, but fun, so I put it on last night while I folded laundry and tidied up the kitchen. Maybe you've heard of it, or even seen it...Knocked Up.

This movie has an up-and-coming professional woman getting accidentally pregnant by a down-and-out stoner loser guy, and then they sort of stay together to go through the experience together. Of course there are hiccups in the relationship, but because this is a movie, it all works out in the end... happily ever after, right?

First of all, movies like this demand you not only suspend disbelief, but move to a parallel universe. Suuuuurrrreee this could happen. Suuuuuurrrrreee this is how these characters would react. Suuuurrrrreeee. But once you get past that urge to sigh and roll your eyes, it's just plain fun. (Here's why Matt can't enjoy them: his urge to sigh and roll his eyes is really, really strong. He can't help it. And he can't help an occasional snort, either, which is distracting when you are trying to pretend that this pot-smoking shlub is just what this TV host needs in her life.)

At the end of the movie there was a montage of baby photos from the cast and crew, and I was bawling in that sappy, tired, "oh-my-God, it's a newborn!" sort of way -- well, it was way past my bedtime, and I am a sucker for babies, so I got hit with a double whammy there -- and I thought about one of my "101 Goals" -- namely, to be present at the birth of a child. (Other than my own, obviously -- I was there, and I have the Mini Me clone kids to prove it.)

I love the miracle of birth, the moment that a new life emerges into the world and completes a family unit in a whole new way. I love the elation that wipes out all the hard work and pain. I love the sound of a newborn protesting the change in environment, and then the squeaking mewling sounds as baby and mom lock eyes and bond. I love it all...

When my two were born, Matt and I didn't have any extra people in the delivery room. (One of my relatives wanted to be there, but since they don't give epidurals from the neck up, I vetoed the idea. I didn't need the stress...) We were perfectly happy to have that moment all to ourselves, and then to invite everyone and their brother in to see the brand new baby immediately after. At the other end of the spectrum, one of my sisters in law had everyone she's ever known or gone to church with present for the births -- seriously, ushers and stuff showed up -- but I didn't want to add to the circus. Another friend of mine had both sets of grandparents-to-be in the room... except when she sent her dad out to get an ice cream sandwich, and he returned with a Costco sized box. ("Well, you wanted an ice cream sandwich!" Don't you just love dads??) I remember thinking it was pretty big of the laboring woman to tolerate all that commotion, but if it gave comfort, then I guess it was worth it.

Have any of you been present when a baby was born? How does it compare to being the one birthing the baby?

Just Sayin'

Mama bear — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:09:29 GMT

Recent title seen on Yahoo!:

Tony Romo breaks up with Jessica Simpson the day before her Barbie-themed birthday party

I'll be right up front and say I didn't even bother reading the article that accompanied this title, but I've just gotta say if you're old enough to date a quarterback, shouldn't Barbie-themed birthday parties be a thing of your past?

Just sayin'...

House O' Plague

Mama bear — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:01:05 GMT

We were supposed to be playing on the massive waterslide jumpie, laughing with friends and neighbors, and eating tables full of Fourth of July goodies today. Instead, we're spraying Lysol on doorknobs and lightswitches, watching SpongeBobSquarePants, and reminding each other to drink plenty of fluids.

We've got a bug, and it's not fun.

Thomas started this one. He's had a cough for a few weeks, but it was a dry, asthma-type cough. Then it got a little wetter, and Wednesday night he coughed, choked, and threw up an impressive amount of phlegm. He was running a fever of 103, which I could get down to 100 or 101 with Tylenol, and he was calm and passive -- which always freaks me out. Needless to say, he stayed home on Thursday, and a visit to the doctor's confirmed he has a virus of some sorts.

Thursday night I started feeling a little punkish, and Megan started coughing. By Friday morning we sounded like a TB ward, with three of us coughing to beat the band. I felt wretched -- completely tired and achy everywhere from my eyeballs to my knees -- and we were all on a Tylenol/Advil routine.

Today's activities were of course cancelled, but as much as we wanted to be able to go, we wouldn't have made it. Matt's started coughing, and now Megan's running a fever of 101 -- on Advil -- and I just got up from a two hour nap.

The good news? Thomas is still coughing, but he seems less feverish and more energetic. The end is in sight! Plus, we all got to watch the fireworks put on by our town last night from my bedroom window, so it's not like we're missing out on all the Fourth Festivities!

Happy (cough, cough) Birthday (cough, cough) America! (cough, cough)

New Series

Mama bear — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:31:53 GMT

If I were to publish our Netflix list, I wonder what it would say about us?

First of all, you could certainly see that we are harboring small children, since a third of every Nickelodean and Disney movies ever invented are represented. (And those are just the ones we don't OWN.)

Next you might notice a glut of mysteries, all grouped together, as if someone found one Agatha Christie and kept hitting add to queue every time a suggested similar movie came up. There's also a long list of romantic period movies and English manor house movies, also grouped together. Then there's a bunch of random stuff -- Alaska on IMAX, for instance. (I can't recall the thought process that brought that one to the list, but every time I see it hovering in the low 40s I think, ooh, that might be pretty cool... and then I bump up another SpongeBob or High School Musical and forget all about natural beauty.)

For a long time we tried to balance kids' movies with movies Matt and I would like to watch, but it's become hard to watch a movie together. We have to 1) agree on a movie -- not too action-y, not too high-brow romantic-y, not gory or missing child-y or otherwise objectionable; 2) arrange for it to get here in time for us to watch it over the weekend; and 3) watch it.

See, it takes us three or four nights to get through a movie, sometimes. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak... and sleepy as all get out! Matt gets up at the ungodly hour of 4 to get into work; we don't generally start movies for us until the kids have gone to bed; and both of us are falling asleep at 9:30, 10 tops.

Usually I don't care how long it takes, as long as there's something I like to watch handy for when Matt isn't around... which is when my Agatha Christie mysteries, or my Last Detective mysteries, or my Blue Murder mysteries come out to play. I spent many happy hours devouring the Foyle's War series, and went into a tailspin of gloom when I'd exhausted all they had... mystery, British acting, and WWII history -- the perfect trifecta!

I got a new series just the other day with the star of Blue Murder (Caroline Quentin -- the inspiration for my new haircut, via bringing in the DVD and playing several scenes for my hairstylist while balancing my laptop -- no, really!) playing the lead character. The new series is a British TV show called Life Begins, and it's about a married couple splitting up and the wife having to sort of start over again. I watched two episodes right away, and last night I suggested Matt might want to join me in watching episode 3. He watched for about ten minutes -- Maggie and Phil (the wife and husband) were at the mediator's to settle the money issues stemming from Phil leaving, and she'd just found out he was trying to book a holiday get away to Istanbul with his ("We weren't sleeping together before we broke up!") girlfriend. I was devouring it -- it's realistic, but funny -- and Matt said,"You LIKE this??"

Well, yes. I do. I like the characters, and the way Maggie has pulled herself together, and the real life way the kids and parents act together, and the extra characters, and the way the topic is addressed head-on, as if the writers were themselves going through similar situations while writing this screenplay.

He did not.

That's okay. I finished the first disc, and as soon as Dora and the Three Little Pigs gets here, I know the next Netflix is mine, all mine!

Maybe I'll add one of the Terminator movies to the queue, down somewhere in the 80s, and we'll have a lovely date night.

But then again, I may just put the Foyle's War discs at the top of my queue, and see if I can get Matt hooked, too!

I'm Sooo Not a City Girl!

Mama bear — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:56:24 GMT

Friday night my husband and I drove down to Sausalito with a bunch of relatives to catch the ferry to San Francisco for a dinner out. The babysitter showed up -- hooray! -- and we beat the traffic down to the Bay Area -- hooray! -- and everyone was ready to have a good time! We had been looking forward to this dinner for a few weeks -- we were meeting up with my husband's brother and his boyfriend, up from Los Angeles to begin the AIDS LifeCycle ride -- but for Matt and I it marked the end of a very, very busy week. It was also one of the rare nights "out" that we get, and it was fancier than our usual "dates," so that was extra nice.

My brother in law chose the restaurant, and it was a very trendy place right in the Ferry Building, overlooking the water. The cuisine was Vietnamese, with a sort of Pacific Edge fusion thing going on, too... Now, I am not very adventurous when it comes to food, and I admit this freely. I looked up the menu online and was preparing myself for a long list of unfamiliar items. (My personal pet peeve is when there is something I will eat, but it is in some sauce that is objectionable, or is served with some combo of foods that I can't for the life of me figure out -- steak with fingerling potatoes, for instance, and then they go and add figs, or oyster sauce, or curry, or something. Why? Why not just steak, and potatoes? Hey, wait a minute... Don't I sound very Archie Bunker-ish? LOL) Anyway, the food turned out to be very, very good, and I found plenty to eat. (And drink, although the mai tai I ordered didn't look like any mai tai I've ever seen before... and it had mint! LOL)

The biggest thrill was totally unexpected, though. When I excused myself to use the restroom, I found there was a sort of community bathroom going on... four stalls, but they were all more like mini bathrooms, with locking doors, opening onto an area that had sinks, which was all open to the hallway. The little attendant guy leaped up and opened a door for you as you approached, and there was a little tip jar for him. For some reason, this was the highlight of the restaurant for me... which just goes to show what a suburban girl I am, I guess!

If anyone is curious, the restaurant is called The Slanted Door, and it can be found at http://www.slanteddoor.com. We give it five stars!

Three Days to Go...

Mama bear — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:46:03 GMT

The official countdown is one full day and two minumum days left to the end of the year, but who is counting?

The kids. They are beside themselves with glee about the end of the year festivities -- field day and movie parties and ice cream parties and dress up days and water days and whatever other days they have dreamed up.

The parents. They are exhausted from attempting to unwind the glee at home and they've been kept extra busy scrounging up patriotic clothes for the patriotic assembly, Hawaiian clothes for field day, bathing suits and aqua sox and whatever you wear to movie parties...

The teachers. Good Lord, are they ever counting down!! They have so much to do, still, and yet, there's this light at the end of the tunnel...

The other school staff. Do you have any idea what field day does to five, six and seven year old children? They're hot and tired, but do they sit quietly in the shade and talk amongst themselves after a refreshing lunch? Oh, no. They were psychotic, for lack of a better word. The lunchtime recess was a fiesta of tears and drama of the worn out kind: ("He said I could play and then he LIED and said I couldn't!!" "He pushed me right in the stomach just because I told him to!!" "But I don't want to play with this ball, I want that one, over there, the one THEY are playing with!")

The retiring teachers. This is a bittersweet time for them... They are leaving a job they love, children they love, coworkers they love, an entire world that made up their universe for ten, twenty, thirty or more years... but they are also leaving the "He said I could play and then he LIED and said I couldn't!!" and the moments when you ask a child returning from recess where his shoe is --he will look down, utterly surprised -- whoa! It's gone! -- (actually, maybe they will miss that, come to think of it!) and the handing out of hot lunch cards and the reminders to keep hands to yourself...

Summer is calling to us all, beckoning with promises of sunshine and breezes, watermelon and ice cream, swimsuits and sunscreen. It'll be here before we know it... or at the end of one more full day and two more minimum days. Just sayin'.

Close Encounters of the Wrong Kind

Mama bear — Sun, 17 May 2009 23:08:18 GMT

I don't like snakes.

That's the understatement of the year, but it's hard to write how much I don't care for the icky creatures without using language that is not G-rated, so that's what I'm settling for, okay?

Anyway, in the last couple of weeks I've had a couple of opportunities to reassess and reaffirm this aversion to reptiles, and both opportunities were against my will.

Opportunity Number One: While taking a walk with my 9 year old daughter on Mother's Day, in a fully residential neighborhood.

We were on the homestretch, literally just a couple of blocks from home, when Megan did a doubletake at a tree growing between the sidewalk and the street. "What's that? Ahhhhh!"

The "that" in the the sentence above was a snake. In the tree. Dead, thankfully. But IN A TREE. It was folded in half over a branch, right at eye height.

That is just plain wrong, and you can't convince me otherwise, so don't bother trying.

It could have been playfully left there by some kids, or it could have been dropped by a hawk of some sort on her way to the nest -- I don't care, really. It was wrong.

I don't know what kind it was, and again, I don't care. It was a snake. In a tree.

For the next week I couldn't walk under trees without worrying every odd branch was really a snake. Plus, of course, I had to keep an eye out for snakes in their natural habitat, i.e. the ground.

Opportunity Number Two: Just another day at the Big Toy.

My Yard Duty zone this week was the big climbing structure we call Big Toy. It sits in a raised area filled with bark, and it is on the far edge of the playground, near the "wild land" that separates the school from the park next door. The sandbox area is also at that edge of the playground, and then another climbing toy shaped like a fire truck, all in a row. When you are on Big Toy Duty you are expected to patrol the Big Toy and sandbox -- the fire truck falls under the Old Big Toy's jursidiction, and that play structure is situated against the field, which is waaaayyy over there.

The first graders have lunch first, and then play while the kindergarteners eat. As soon as the first graders are fully lined up and gathered by their teachers, the kindergardeners can come out to play. We Yard Duties help round up the stragglers -- because it's only May, how are they to know the school bell rules that they've been playing under for the last ten months? -- and then quickly turn to meet the onrush of five year olds.

I was still fifty feet away from the Big Toy, headed across the blacktop, when I saw a kinder stop and point at the ground. "SNAKE!"

The blacktop has an extension -- a little access road, really -- that runs a little past our play structure, and squirming across it in the bright sunlight was, indeed, a snake. It slithered into the weedy grass next to the Big Toy and disappeared, but the kids were ready to go after it.

Now, realistically, I recognize that it was most likely a gopher or garden snake of some sort, one of the alleged "good" snakes, but I don't believe in "good" snakes -- they are all bad in my book; again, there is no reasoning with me, don't bother. I do know that we have had instances of rattlesnakes on campus -- two last year, alone -- so I kept the kids back to be safe. I dispatched a little contingent to go get Mark, our Custodian, and held my arms out in a line to hold the kids back to the edge of the Big Toy and a straggly line along the blacktop.

(Not to be looking for praise, or anything, but did you notice I did not run screaming from my post, terrifying small children forever with my phobia-induced terror? I should so get a raise!!)

Mark came and did a patrol of the grassy area, but the snake was gone. He let the herd of kids help him ("Come on, guys, see if you can find him! I need your eyes! Everyone, just walk and look with me!") and pronounced the weedy spot "snake-free."

"It probably went into the Wild," Mark told the gathered crowd of five year olds. "But it was probably a good snake, the kind that keep mice from my classrooms! We like those kind of snakes!"

Uh. No... We don't.

I spent the remainder of lunch recess watching the snake area, and stepping extremely carefully every time I had to leave the safety zone of my raised bark island to patrol the sandbox. The thought that a snake could be resting just under the lip of my wooden edge made me take ginormous steps each time; I had to constantly scan the line of the fence for signs of snake action, and repeatedly call to the kids to get off the fence (they were also looking for the snake, but they WANTED to see it, whereas I was desperately hoping it was never going to come back, ever, ever, ever); and of course, I had to give a cursory scan of the trees each time I managed to look up.

By the time the kids' recess was over I was exhausted.

There better not be a third opportunity, because I'm not entirely sure our health insurance covers moving to Ireland for peace of mind.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm

Mama bear — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:52:38 GMT

This morning I had One of Those Thoughts that just made me stop in my tracks. Here it is:

If toothpaste is meant to clean enamel, why does it make sinks all dull and spotty?

Hmmm???

Feel free to add your own Thing That Makes You Go Hmmm...

Your New Section

Mama bear — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:49:22 GMT

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