Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Save Me From Myself

Sunburnt

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**Originally posted on Deseret Book’s Time Out For Women Blog January 2013**

Sunbeams are warm and lovely, vibrant and life-giving. But if you get too close, they will incinerate you.

This was my line of thinking as I drove away from church last Sunday after my first week teaching a room full of Sunbeams with my husband Dan. Our new calling is to teach the three-year-olds at church, including my sweet, occasionally potty-trained daughter “Wanda”.

We taught them that they were children of God. We also taught them to sit in their chairs for the lesson and for sharing time, that dresses should be used to cover our bodies, not our heads, and OH-FOR-THE-LOVE-if-two-of-you-sit-still-at-the-same-time-for-30-seconds-I-will-buy-you-all-a-pony.

That’s what we taught them.

What they learned was – Sister and Brother Thompson love us, sharing time is long, and moving up to big kid primary is a lot like getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. One week you’re playing with cars and trucks and snacking it up in luxury, and the next you get to follow up sacrament meeting with an hour sitting in hard chairs in a huge room full of big people, followed by another hour orbiting hard chairs in a prison cell with two crazy dancing grownups waving pictures from the gospel art picture kit. HUZZAH! By the sweat of their brows, indeed. Big kid primary is hard work. For everyone.

And it’s a big change from the Young Women organization, where I’ve been serving for the past six years. I like to think of it as mini Relief Society, only better. You get to teach them the gospel and they actually learn it. There’s something amazing about being part of their lives right at the time that they’re deciding who they are and what they really believe. Also, in the Mia Maid class, the girls are loving and sweet and they notice everything about you.

“Sister Thompson! Did you do something different with your hair? I love it! That is the cutest dress. Where did you get it? OhMyGoshYourEarringsAreSoFUN!”

In primary they notice things about you too.

Halfway through sharing time I noticed one little boy staring up at me intently. He was stroking the hair on my arm.

“Sister Thompson?” he asked.

“Yes, honey?”

“Why do you have so much hair on your arms?”

“It keeps me warm, I guess.” He looked unconvinced, squinting his eyes suspiciously.

“No. I think it’s because you’re gonna grow up to be a daddy.” He then reached down and plucked one of the hairs from my arm. And then another. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even tear up.

With the Young Women, I’m a fashion maven. In sunbeams, I’m a Yeti with man arms. Oh, how far we fall.

The class pretty much ate us for lunch. There was crying, yelling, jungle-gyming it all over the chairs, kids lying on the floor moaning, refusing to participate. It was amazing.

But I refuse to give in. Dan and I brought our four man-arms home, rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We have a plan. We have activities. We have stories. We have cheddar bunnies, and scarves that can be used for dancing or tying people to chairs. We spent this Saturday night preparing and packing the bag and then repreparing and then repacking the bag. We were almost ready.

And then I remembered that I’d planned on printing out pictures we’d taken of each of the kids to use in our lesson tomorrow. So, I pulled them up in Photoshop and…

Look at their FACES! Look again. For realz. I cannot stand the cuteness. It cannot be stood for.

Yes. I have the best calling. Ever. Sunday may be total chaos and the only thing they learn might be that we love them. But that’s okay. We will sing and play and look into those little faces and know that we’re doing a good work. And we will wear long sleeves. And carry hand sanitizer.

Dead Animal O’Clock

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I have a thing about dead animals. They make me cry.

When I’m driving down the road and I see a deer carcass or a dead bird smashed to the asphalt, its wing flapping in the wind, I gasp and tears well up. I hate to see animals hurt or killed.

It’s not like I’m a huge animal lover. I am not a cat lady and as I’ve been working on the edits for the third Drops of Awesome book this week, my editor needed to point out that I hadn’t included any questions about pets in a book that asks questions to help the user write her autobiography. It just didn’t occur to me.

But I can’t stand the thought of a dead animal.

Even though I passionately hate the mice who sneak into our garage, it is gut-wrenching to me to dispose of their bodies from the traps. I fall apart.

So, today when I saw a large squirrel dead but still perfectly formed lying in the middle of the road next to Wanda’s bus stop, I lost it a little. It. Was lost. My friend Stephanie and I had just returned from a bike ride and we had no kids with us. I knew that as soon as they got home on the bus, they’d see the poor squirrel and I wanted to spare them that trauma. Even worse, what if a truck drove by and smashed it to pieces and we had to walk by it’s caked-on guts every day for the next six months? I couldn’t bear it.

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I told Stephanie I’d dispose of it if she’d provide the shovel and moral support.

Then, just as I was approaching the beast, she suggested that maybe he was just stunned and as soon as I touched him he might jump up and run toward me.

This was not helpful.

We decided on a two-part approach. First I would poke said beastie with the tip of the shovel. If he made no movement, I would proceed to phase 2, wherein I would push him with the shovel across the road and into the drainage ditch for the coyotes to mange.

She started recording.

There was something about the soft feeling of the shovel touching the squirrel’s belly that sent a shiver through my whole body. It wasn’t pretty. I asked her to stop recording.

But she started again.

And caught my finest hour in pixels.

Because that’s how heroes DO!

I thought it was over.

The kids hopped off the bus and I headed home and retired to the solace of my favorite chair in the corner by my favorite window, working on work and watching Wanda and her friend as they played outside.

When what should fly past my ear but a giant bug. No. Not a bug. A bird. A freaking bird was inside my living room.

It landed on the window sill a few inches from me, flapping it’s wings frantically and slamming into the window over and over again.

I screamed and dropped my water bottle on the floor, wetness spilling everywhere. The bird also started spreading “wetness” all over my window sill. Bird poop. In my living room.

I called Dan for moral support but he was in a meeting. I took some semi-hysterical video tracking the bird.

“Girls,” I yelled outside, “You left the door open and now there’s a bird in the house.”

I heard my neighbor laugh from her house next door.

“Do you need my help?” she asked.

“YES!”

“Seriously? Okay. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

While I was waiting for her, I closed all the blinds in the house except the ones on the window where the bird was thrashing and opened the front door to entice him out. I grabbed a broom and started shooing the bird toward the screened-in part of the window, thinking if he was near the screen, I could push it out and let him free.

I can’t adequately describe the feeling of adrenaline that was coursing through my body as I worked to get this crazy bird out of my house, a bird who moved sporadically, frequently startling me, and who I knew could fly up in my face at any moment, freaking me out and very likely pecking the flesh from my eyes in a Hitchcockian display of terror.

It’s like that feeling you get when you’re poking a dead squirrel in the middle of the road with your shovel, knowing he could jump up, run along the handle of your shovel and start climbing up and down your face while you scream and flail around like a psychobot.

After I moved the bird where I wanted him, I put down the broom so I could have two hands free to remove the screen. As I did this, he dropped out of sight behind my long, dark curtains. I quickly closed those curtains as well, those curtains which hang in an area behind the end table, an area that has become the dumping ground for my church bag, the kids’ piano books, and a bunch of other stuff. Arg.

With the blinds all shut, the living room had grown dim.

The bird was in the mess. In the dark. And he’d gone silent.

No more flapping.

No more pecking.

Silence.

Did he die of fright and fall into my church bag to fester? My neighbor had arrived by this point and she helped me pull items one by one out of my bag, looking for a dead bird.

Nothing.

In the dim light we moved the chair. The end table. The piano.

Nothing.

Ever.

We never found the bird.

I see the writing on the wall. At some point in the next couple of weeks, I will move a cushion or a piano book and BAM! Dead rotting creepy bird carcass!! It’s an exciting game we’re playing here.

My neighbor asked if there was ever really a bird or if I was possibly losing my mind. After SquirrelGate 2016 earlier this morning, I almost doubted myself.

“But no,” I told her, “I have video proof of the bird.”

Then I showed her this.

A minute of me hysterically trying to creep up on a bird that never quite makes it into the video.

Good proof, right?

She looks at me.

“It must be on the other video.”

And here it is.

So the bird is real. And the squirrel is real. And the terror is real. I wanted to find the bird so badly at first, but I’m at a point where I don’t so much want to find it now. Ever.

They say these things happen in threes. I don’t think that’s possible. Because if I have another run-in with a helpless and/or deceased animal today, I will perish as well. And then there will be four dead animals.

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ERRRRRRR…. I Don’t Think it Goes That High

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Wanda wasn’t feeling great when she woke up yesterday morning. She had a 102 fever and said her tummy hurt. Who am I to send a walking biohazard into a building full of children on the cusp of spring break? Not a terrorist. So I kept her home, gave her some watered-down Gatorade, and got to work blogging in my pajamas.

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Early afternoon I made her turn off the Power Rangers and she quickly drifted off to adorable sicky sleep. But when she woke up, she looked horrible. She started sobbing that her tummy hurt and her skin felt hot to the touch. When I asked her to show me where it hurt, she pointed to her lower right side and moaned. I had her try to use the restroom while I Bing-ed “What side is the appendix on?”

Soon she was yelling for me to help her because it hurt too bad to get off the toilet. As I lifted her from the throne, I could tell her fever was really out of control and the forehead thermometer confirmed, 105.8!

Now, for normal kids this is insanely high but I’ve measured Wanda at over 107 in the past and anything under 103 is no big deal for her. However, combined with the side pain, I thought I should at least make an appointment with our pediatrician.

So I called. And his nurse told me to get to an ER quickly. Just like me and Bing, she was vibing appendicitis. So I rushed around like an unshowered maniac, grabbing my purse and phone charger and some grown-up clothes. Five minutes later the nurse called back to make sure she had told me the correct ER and to encourage me to leave as soon as possible.

We zoomed. But it takes about 45 minutes to get from our house to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and my red-hot bubs cried off and on all the way there. “It hurts, Mom!”

I feel so helpless when one of my children is in pain and there’s nothing I can do about it. I was doing what I could, which was praying and driving faster than the law allows. I also texted my family on the way out the door and they all said they’d send up a prayer as well.

We pulled into the ER parking lot and I loaded Wanda and her barf bowl and Gatorade into the softball gear wagon and wheeled her into the hospital, red hot and whimpering. The check-in nurse commented on how awful she looked, took our insurance card and sent us to the lobby to wait.

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For twenty minutes I watched Wanda become absorbed in a Disney movie and slowly but surely the violent red flush of her cheeks disappeared and her skin color returned to normal.

“Wanda,” I asked, “How does your tummy feel now?”

“It still hurts a little.”

“On the right side?”

“No. Just kind of in the middle.”

They called us back. They took her temperature.

99.9

Magically. Healed. By. The. Hospital. Lobby.

The intake nurse looked at Wanda. And then back at me. Then back at Wanda.

She asked all the questions and Wanda answered them like a person who should stay in for recess and maybe miss school just to be safe, but not someone who needed to be taken to a doctor and certainly not the ER.

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I was relieved, truly, that she was feeling better. And if me looking like a hypochondriacish idiot was the price I had to pay for her health, I was willing to pay it. Grudgingly.

They gave her the world’s most expensive popsicle and, as a bonus, she got to pee into a cup and all over my hand.

When the doctor asked me again how high her temperature had been at home, I told him 105.8 and he startled and asked what kind of thermometer I had used. I pulled it out of my purse to show him.

“I don’t think they go that high,” he responded.

“They sure do. They don’t get an error until 108.”

He had no response to that.

I texted my family to tell them that all was well except for the fact that I looked like an idiot. He said they must all be really good prayers if their prayers could bring her back from the brink of death that quickly.

I decided not to share the prayer hunch with the ER doctors but I did wonder how I would ever know if she had been miraculously brought back from the brink by divine intervention. I tend to be more of a Heavenly-Father-please-help-my-daughter-no-wait-she’s-fine kind of person. This could use more in-depth pondering.

Everyone was super nice to me, the way you’re nice to a crazy person. And, according to the supervising ER doctor, it was good that we came in, just in case. Apparently, there have been several cases of this crazy stomach virus in the ER lately. The cramps are intermittent, localized, and extremely painful, accompanied by high fevers.

They look like appendicitis.

The doctor said she had watched kids have acute episodes that had totally faked her out and she’d ordered all kinds of tests that turned up nothing, only to have the kids seem fine half an hour later.

Such is the humbling life of a mom. You sacrifice your pride for the safety of your kids, people who delight and terrify you every day.

On the bright side, at least they discharged her just in time to hit rush hour traffic so we’d have plenty of time to take a rare look at the gorgeous mountain that was showing up against the clear Seattle sky.

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When I checked her temperature this morning, she was back up to 104.9. Or not. I don’t think the thermometer really goes that high. But I should probably shower this time, just in case.

What Can You Bear to Do Today?

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motivation-clean-and-organize-life3Sometimes I can’t bear to clean the kitchen, but I can bear to fill the sink with water so the dishes will soak. So I do that. And the kitchen is one step closer to being cleaning. I find that breaking down my tasks into lists of tiny steps and choosing which one I can bear to do helps me be productive. This and more revolutionary, life-changing tips are available in my most recent post on HowDoesShe.com.

Can you bear to click this link? [click to read more]

Red Wagons and Knuckerholes

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I’d been planning all my life for the first day of school, or at least all month. I often say, “DOWN WITH PERFECTIONISM!” But then there’s this small part of me that really really wants to just be perfect. Because that would make life easier and then I wouldn’t have to be obsessed with perfection anymore because I would have already achieved it. It’s like when you can’t stop playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii until you beat the game and then you never think about it again. That’s how I see my life being when I achieve perfection, total Zen.

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We had planned the heck out of the first day of school, family meetings, calendar items, to-do lists, backpacks packed and clothes laid out two days early.

But when the day actually came, we ended up forgetting things, losing lunch boxes, running over little red wagons with the van, showing up late to kindergarten assessments because we were so busy trying to do all the morning routines perfectly, praying that the kindergarten teachers were not assessing personal hygiene because we forgot to brush our new kindie’s hair.

When the day ended, I popped on Facebook and saw all my friends post pictures of their kids on the first day. And they weren’t just pictures. They were pictures with props.

Framed art that said what grade they were starting.

Actual, flippin’ ART. In frames. That said what grade they were starting.

Why is this a thing? Why?

Anyway. I took a picture of the wagon I ran over. So that’s something. And I learned a new fake swear, thanks to our friends at Dragon Tales. So that’s something else.

When I signed out of the school, Wanda discovered this book in a basket in the office.

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She asked me to read it. I really really needed to find out what a knuckerhole was so I sat down and read it to her.

It turns out that a knuckerhole is a magical tube you can jump though that basically takes you to nowheresville where you sit and think about how you should have done a better job cleaning your bedroom until a dragon saves you and takes you to the fireworks show.

I prefer to think of it as an awesome new slang term for pretty much whatever.

Ex. Why did Zack take such a cheap shot and punch Wheezy in the knuckerhole?

Or

Shut your knuckerhole!

Maybe

Why in the knuckerhole did someone put the red wagon behind my car wheel?

Or

Stop being such a knuckerhole and load your lunch dishes in the dishwasher.

So, we decided to send that day down the knuckerhole and started over. And the school year is actually off to a pretty decent start at this point. I still haven’t taken first day of school pictures for all three kids because I’m not done crocheting doilies that say which grades each of them are starting. But I am at peace with that.

Wish Me Peace and Comfort at This Most Difficult Time

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Every once in a while, it does a body good to do something scary, something good and productive that scares the Chacos off of you. Two years ago it was a sprint triathlon. This year it’s a 10k.

And I don’t run.

Ever.

Once many years ago my physical therapist told me I had wobbly joints and I should never become a runner. I listened to her because she was singing my song. I can never run? Oh, the tragic humanity of it all. Do I want to get up at 4:00AM and slam my body repeatedly against the cement until I vomit? Of COURSE I do! Who wouldn’t!? Sadly, I can’t. I’ve been medically advised not to.

No. Under the council of my almost physician, I’m afraid I will have to eat cheese and watch Pride and Prejudice instead and think about how hardcore I’d be IF (as Cinderella’s stepmother would say) I were physically able to wear tiny shorts and exert myself to the point of almost-death. But I can’t… so… nom nom nom… Netflix.

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I’ve done a few 5ks in my life, always walking them, re: my off-the-cuff diagnosis of wobbilitis. When I competed in a sprint triathlon a couple of years ago I walked the 5k portion. I wanted a big goal, a scary goal, but one with no running involved. I finished. I cried. It was glorious.

Then my body fell into disrepair. I’d met my big fat goal and I didn’t have another one and I just stopped pushing myself.

So, when a friend asked on facebook who wanted to run a 10K with him this September, I said, “Yes,” before I really thought about it. I needed something to push me. This would be the thing. This race has everything – cartoonists, Nutella and cupcakes at the aid stations, couches along the route, and creepy guys in fat suits chasing you to make you run faster. How could I refuse?

I consulted my new PT and she said, “Sure. You can run it if you train properly.”

Well, crap.

So I’ve been training for several months. At first I did this in secret, not wanting to tell my running friends for fear they would brand me as one of them, invite me to sleep in their stinky Ragnar van, or “do a quick 14-miler” on a Saturday morning, only to find out I was simply pretending to run.

I’m still running slower than many people walk. What I’m doing is pretty much what they’d call jogging in the eighties but since it is not the eighties we are all runners. Always. And athletes. Never say “jogging” to me.

But eventually the secret came out and everyone’s been nothing but supportive. Runners are people too, it seems.

And I’m tri-ing again this week as a step on the road to the 10k. ¼ mile swim, 14 mile bike, 5K run.

It’s been a rocky process. I haven’t lost an ounce of weight. I’ve had some training days that have made me happy cry and more days where I’ve sad cried. Mostly I’m just proud I’ve stuck with it this long. I feel stronger and more certain I can do hard things, even if I do them really REALLY slowly.

Last week was one of the Dark Times. We’d been on vacation, a veritable tour of food, and when I got back I’d lost a lot of ground physically. Five-year-old Wanda overheard me asking a friend to pray for me because I was worried about the tri and the 10K of doom.

So she went up to the card drawer and picked out this lovely specimen for me, which I’m 98% sure she had no idea how to read.

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Then she wrote this inside.

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“Mom. I know that you can do the triathlon next year. Love, Wanda.” The picture is me and my three friends running. I am not tall.

Notice what the original card says.

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It truly is a most difficult time. Wish me peace. And comfort. And several months of post-race carb loading.

 

 

Wherein I Ramble About Pie and Loss and Being Apprehended by the Police

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I am blogging while I wait up for Laylee to get home from her evening activities and then I’ll sleep. I was going to wait up for the pies to cool but I don’t know that it’s worth it. Because there are no pies. Only pie soup with floating meringue. Two hours of my life in a dish with floating blobs of meringue.

And I’m good at pie. I SLAUGHTER AT PIE. But not this time. Because this time it matters. This time I’m making pie for two pie competitions, one at Magoo’s school that he desperately wants to win and one at Dan’s work that I desperately want to win because he’s in his new job with his new co-workers and I don’t know anybody and I have this irrational desire to win Stay-at-Home-Mom/Wife, Microsoft edition. It’s not a thing, but in my special brain-world it is and if I’m going to place in the top 3, I at least need to be able make a freaking pie. Right? Right?

I want to punch myself in the face for typing that because truly? Truly? Who cares? No one. And tomorrow not even me, I guarantee. But in this moment I’m epically sad about losing at pie.

I did good things today. Drops of Awesome were everywhere, but I ended the day exhausted, with liquid pie guts in a dish and I say, “Serve me up a different day, please. Because I’m sending this one back to the kitchen.”

The weather was gorgeous.

One of my kids left the house this morning seething with hormonal rage, aimed at no one in particular but flowing in my general direction. My throat hurt. I had a writing deadline and the post was taking me forever.

By 9:45am, I had heard that someone I care about had passed away, I had gone out in public unshowered and with Wanda looking like a pajama-clad orphan and I’d been pulled over by the police for speeding on a street where Dan has told me no fewer than 30 times to slow down because I would likely get pulled over for speeding.

Preschool, road construction, baseball practice, errands, more road construction, lateness, tween rage, nothing for dinner, trashed house that was clean YES-TER-DAY, instrument practice, play rehearsal, homework, shoes and backpacks everywhere, WAY more shoes and backpacks than there are humans living in my house. Way more. Like I could start a shoe and backpack emporium for people who like shoes with shredded laces because no one under the age of 30 in this family will ever EVER tie their shoes. They just let the laces drag behind them until they wear down to the length they want. Like beaver teeth.

And then Magoo and I spent two hours that I didn’t really have making lemon meringue pies from zest-and-squeeze-your-own-lemons scratch and the lemon fillings wouldn’t set at all. It was like yellow water in soggy hand-rolled crusts. And I blopped the meringue on top and baked them anyway because I was so mad at those pies, I thought a good fifteen minutes in a hot oven would serve them right.

And while I was typing this rant, Laylee came home from her rehearsal and I told her about my day and I cried a little and I told her sometimes it’s hard being the mom. And she said, “Your friend died and you got picked up by the police. That’s a hard day for anyone.” And she hugged me and told me she loved me.

And I loved her more.

I feel better now and I considered letting this post die on my computer without seeing the internet light of day. Because I am Drops of Awesome lady. I’m an author and a public speaker. I think positively. I love myself fully and never ever want to put my kids to bed at 5pm and hoover all the chocolate in Washington State. But that’s not always the case.

Sometimes I’m Drops of Awesome lady. And I’m tired.

And I’m fed up.

And I’m not rational at all.

And I murder pies.

And I thought you should know.

My little tween mom-substitute told me I should go to sleep. I think she’s right. Everything will look better in the morning.

 

It’s Alive!

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Wanda has developed a taste for fruit leather. She loves it and she will have it and there is no limit to her insatiable dried fruit-squish thirst. The other day she ate four.

“Don’t eat four,” I said, my words like feathers in the wind. “Eating four is bad. Eating four will make you sick.”

She gave me a look.

I didn’t enforce the Don’t Eat Four policy.

Four were eaten.

Later that night I was using my magical lay-her-to-sleep powers by laying with her until she fell asleep and she lurched to a sitting position.

“AHHH!!! I just felt my heart beat!!!”

“Yes. That is normal. Because you are a human child,” I said.

“Woah.”

She laid back down.

“MOM!! It just did it again! HA!”

“Ha?”

“Yeah. Ha. You said I would totally get sick if I ate four fruit leathers. And I ate four fruit leathers. And my heart still totally did two beats. So. HA!”

Well, my heart is still beating today but so are my mucus producular glands. And my dizzy glands. And my lay around on the couch all day while building a mountain of balled up tissue glands.

I am a horrible sick person. I always tell myself that if I were terminally ill, I would be extremely positive and long suffering. But, give me a cold, hooooo mama. Call the wambulance. It’s not that I whine out loud, but my inner whino is super duper annoying. It’s like I can’t remember ever having energy or functioning sinuses or a head that wasn’t full of liquefied slugs.

My kids were sick today too.

And they weren’t annoying. At least not about being sick.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. HA! My heart just beat THREE times! I guess I’m fine.

I Could Have Danced All Night

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It’s jazz night at the Senior Center. Dan’s playing saxophone in the band and the kids and I are eating delicious gentle-on-the-dentures delicacies, reading middle grade fantasy novels, and periodically dancing like spasmodic maniacs.

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My feet move in a pattern somewhere between awkward tween shuffle and the jive. My arms twirl and throw Laylee around until she’s dizzy, grinning and confused. We’ve got moves. They just might not be sanctioned by any of the currently ruling international dance organizations.

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Out on the floor is a couple who knows all the moves. They’re probably in their eighties or nineties. She’s beautiful and he’s a little hunched over but incredibly strong and confident. They glide through turns and lifts like they’re still in their twenties and people applaud them whenever they take the floor.

Near the end of the night, the man taps me on the shoulder and asks me to dance.

“I don’t really know how,” I laugh.

His smile is warm as he gestures to the floor. “It sure looks like you do.”

“You are kind, but last time I danced with someone at one of these things, he was very disappointed.”

“I can’t believe he would tell you that. I have never in my life made a lady feel bad about her dancing.” He looks incensed.

“I’ll try if you promise to help me and be patient.”

His look says, Don’t be ridiculous.

It’s an understatement to say he’s good. He is A-FLIPPIN-MAZING! Hands down the best dancer I’ve ever danced with, of any age. I shuffle along at first but gradually start to pick up on his lead and find myself doing moves I’ve never attempted. My face is locked in a perma-grin.

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Between songs, I thank him for dancing with me. “My husband is in the band so I rarely get to dance.”

“And let me guess,” he says with a twinkle in his eye, “If you’re husband’s in the band, he’s probably not much of a dancer anyway.” He winks. This ninety-year-old man is flirting with me.

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I don’t let him lift me off the ground, although I can tell he wants to, and when the song ends my dip is not as low as he intends. At 35, I’m not as graceful or petite as his bride. But I feel amazing.

As he leads me off the floor, everyone applauds, and I realize that I didn’t once notice anyone around us while we were dancing. I’ve rarely been so absorbed in an activity. My cheeks ache from smiling and I’m drenched in sweat.

That dance was a gift.

I take a minute to imagine myself as a young girl in the 1940s, having a night out at a dance hall. Instead of Chacos and a t-shirt, I’m wearing pumps, hose, and my best dress, my hair curled in victory rolls. I wonder what my dance partner looked like back then.

Then, I laugh to think what senior centers will look like when I’m in my nineties. Will we be crowded around an aging DJ, cranking out Milli Vanilli and Dub Step remixes, while we imitate MC Hammer and pop and lock? Maybe one of my friends will teach krumping on Tuesday afternoons.

But no. We will never grow old so I don’t even need to think about it. I could better use my energy preparing for the hip hop class I’m taking with my friends later this summer…

Slug Friends Probably

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Slugs sick me out. They make me want to vomit. If you’ve never stepped on a slug with your bare feet and felt it pop, you might not be emotionally equipped to understand what it feels like to truly hate a slug the way I have come to hate them. That being said, I’ve made it one of my many diverse missions in life to help my kids be okay with slugs.

When they see a slug, I compliment it. “Wow,” I say, “What a cute slug friend. We should name it.” Or, “Aren’t we lucky that we have slugs to leave sparkly trails all over our front door and car door handles? People who don’t have slug friends wish they were us.”

Maybe this is disingenuous. I prefer to think of it as positive psychology or self-deception for the greater good.

So, Wanda is convinced that she loves slugs and they love her back. She talks to them, adopts them, cries when we wake up to a slug-free morning. One thing she never does is touch them. This is telling. I can say I think a boy is cute, but if the thought of touching him makes my skin crawl, I probably don’t like him all that much.

So, last night Wanda left her shoes out on the lawn by the trampoline… so the balls and shovels and popsicle sticks wouldn’t be lonely. Tonight when she was coming in after a parentally-mandated, screaming-fight-with-her-brother-motivated cease and desist order, I told her to bring in five or ten shoes from the area around the trampoline.

She began gathering them up and soon screams erupted. “AAAAHHHH! MOM!!!! They’re in my shoes. THE SLUG FRIENDS ARE IN MY SHOES!”

These were not screams of delight. They were screams of terror. They were screams filtered through tears, shaky tears.

“GET THEM OUT! I’m seer-yuss.”

I couldn’t help laughing. I could help taking a picture of her distress but I chose not to.

slug friend

My favorite part is probably the position of her fingers as she tries to hold the shoe with as little of her hands as possible. Eventually, I made my way out to the front porch to shake the slugs out of her super fast cheetah shoe. Four slugs people. Four invaders. Or so I thought.

There were five.

One more slug had somehow clung to my person as I came inside and several minutes later Laylee noticed it shlumped on the middle of the living room rug.

Chaos.

I was busy sitting, so I asked Laylee to get a kleenex and flush it down the toilet. She looked at me like I’d asked her to fill her own bed with rat babies, but eventually agreed. “Oh… kaaaaay.”

She left to grab the tissue.

She returned with hands full of half a roll of paper towel, bunched up into a toddler-elephant-sized wad.

“Aaand I guess you won’t be flushing that.”

She giggled nervously. But she bravely did the deed. Slug friend was disposed of and we salute the many trees who gave their lives so our house could be free of living slime.

When we say our family prayer each night, every person gets a chance to say one thing they’re thankful for that we then incorporate into the prayer.

Tonight, Magoo said, “I’m thankful that we got rid of all the slugs in our house… probably.”

Laylee said, “I’m thankful that the slugs are gone.”

Wanda said, “I’m thankful that there are no more slugs in my shoes.” She then gave a cheery smile and continued, “Isn’t it cool that we all said slug things for the prayer?”

I prayed tonight and when I got to the slug portion of the oblation, I said, “And we’re thankful that we got rid of all the slugs in our house.”

Magoo whispered, “Say, ‘Probably.’”

Probably.