Around Town

My brain is singing today. It is filled with the joy that is sunshine in the middle of a Seattle winter. It is dancing and tripping and gurgling in the spittle of its own giddy Vitamin-D-overdosed hysteria. Did you ever see the SUN?! I did. Today in fact.

The light next to my bed is set on a timer to turn on and flood my face with light half an hour before my alarm goes off. My shrinker thought it would be a good idea to remind my brain what light looks like and simulate sunrise and something about moods and SAD-ness since the sun is not seen to rise in the Puget Sound area for several months each year.

My naturopath took out around ¾ of my blood last week and tested it for several things like vitamins, minerals, chemicals and cutenesses. Despite being ridiculously adorable, my blood is very low in Vitamin D and he suggested I come by his office and pick up a supplement today. I bailed. We were having too much fun in the sun, soaking up D the good old-fashioned way and eating sand because I think my blood is also low in sand. Well, not anymore.

We headed to the park where we met up with some friends. The kids bounced around like air molecules in a 7th grade science animation, smashing into each other and leaving socks, shoes and grapes scattered for acres. Laylee and Magoo took turns playing in the sand volleyball pit and the children’s play area which are located on opposite sides of the park, careful to avoid ever both being in my sightline at the same time.

I stood between them like an oscillating sprinkler, swiveling from one side to the other as I chatted with other oscillating moms, rarely making eye contact but hardly pausing for a breath as we gabbed away. And the sun was beautiful.

At some point Laylee’s friend Missy asked for her sunglasses back. She had leant them to Laylee who wore them around like a be-pony-tailed rock star for approximately 10 seconds before digging a hole from the sand volleyball pit to the center of the earth and dropping them in. She then filled in the hole and patted it down.

When we asked her to dig them up again, she began a frantic search which was honestly more “frantic” than it was a “search.” Eve explained that glasses should probably never be buried in the sand because it could scratch them and because they could possibly be lost forever.

Laylee was concerned. She said she didn’t know the rule about glasses and sand before but now she did and she wouldn’t bury them ever again. Her main problem in retrieving them was that “somebody moved the X.”

Apparently she had placed a small X made out of grass or debris or microscopic pollen flecks and someone had come along and accidentally moved it. We spent the next several minutes doing our best Stanley Yelnats impression before Eve told us not to worry about it.

So instead we turned our attention to Magoo. He’s much bigger than sunglasses and he moves around a bit more but we still made sure to mark him with an immoveable X, just in case the sunshine made us forgetful.

I know what you’re doing. I’ve done it myself… repeatedly. The thing is — I’m much better at it than you are. If I were currently stalking someone for their Costco parking spot, I would not choose the mother with two small children pushing a cart overflowing with groceries. I would choose the man in the track outfit carrying the single case of rocket-propelled fitness water on his left bicep.

The mother with two small children pushing a cart of overflowing groceries will need to drive the cart very slowly over every single little yellow speed bump so her children’s brains will rattle around with glee. She will swerve from side to side across the parking lot so as to catch every rain puddle with her cart wheels. At some point her male child will casually toss one or more asphalt-colored shoes overboard onto the asphalt. She will then need to backtrack and look for it. When she finally makes it to her van, she will need to unload both kids from the cart where their knees will have become semi-permanently lodged. She will yank and pull from several different angles to free them.
Then she will load them into the car, buckle all 5 points of their harnesses, check the buckles, load all 50 boxes of groceries into the back of the car and then return her cart to the cart return because she’s a good citizen like that.

In this time, you would have been able to steal track guy’s parking spot, eat a chicken bake and a very berry sundae, do all of your shopping, try every free sample in the store and read half of Oprah’s latest book club selection in line. As it is, you chose to drive slowly behind the mother of 2 until she reached her parking spot and then sit with your blinker on for 10 minutes. I would have gone with track guy.

Well after reading your comments today, I checked back into the “male nurse” fiasco and discovered that he is actually a Nurse Practitioner so I feel a little sheepish. I feel much more calm after letting it sit for another 24 hours. Do you ever go back and read a blog post and think, “Wow. I was really worked up about that yesterday. Hmph. Oh well.”? I do.

As a side note though, do you call a nurse practitioner a “doctor” because that’s what she called him? I should also point out that the ER was clean and everyone treated us very nicely when they weren’t ignoring us for hours at a time. Several of you also mentioned that you ARE the ones mostly responsible for your children’s health care. I’m also the main caregiver for my children. I just resent that the assumption was made, to the extent that they left Dan completely out of the conversation.