Junior High aka: 7th level of hell

My oldest son started junior high this year. He loves it. I have flash backs to when I started junior high and I start to hyperventilate, but him? He is having the time of his life. He started playing football this summer and loves to wear his football jersey over a white mock turtleneck with his carefully mussed blonde hair. My son is a jock and is way cooler at twelve years old than I have ever been or will ever be.

Last Friday he had his first "social". For those of you not in the know, that is what they call dances now a days, as if changing the name will make them more innocent or something. Anyway, since my job is to work with junior high and high school youth and educating them on healthy relationships, chaperoning dances is part of my job description. So I get paid to basically stalk my son at dances.

Now, I realize that there comes a time in every child's life where their parents are suddenly "uncool", and I was prepared for that. What threw me is that my oldest son is a total mommy's boy in that he always wants to do things with me and be near me. At home he's practically glued to my side, and even at family events I can't shake him. For his birthday he wanted to spend the day with me! What I'm trying to say is that I didn't think he was at the point where I was a pariah to him. But at the dance I found out differently.

At the dance I saw a boy who looked like my son, but I didn't know this cool, hip, center of attention, and way too awesome to acknowledge his mother boy. This boy wouldn't even bring his girlfriend over to meet me. I had to send another chaperone to snap a pic of him and his little girlfriend. And since she had to leave the dance early, I didn't even notice when she left so I didn't get a chance to go up and introduce myself. And although my husband suggested that I slam her up against a locker and whisper that I'm watching her, I wasn't going to do that! Honest! Even if I kind of wanted to when I saw her fawning all over my baby. Is that wrong?

Camping can be fun.(?)

Last week I was so excited when my husband informed me that he was going to take our three boys camping. Without me. I nearly squealed with glee. You see, his cousin, who has three kids, invited him to go camping and four wheel-er-ing (not sure that's a word) with them. My loving husband knows how much I loathe sleeping in tents or anywhere that is not a four star hotel or my own bed, so he told me I could stay home. I immediately called my best friend who also happens to be my sister in law and we made plans to go out to dinner and a movie that night. Anticipation was high to say the least.

Then I found out that my husband's other cousin, whom I love, and her husband, also much love, were coming along as well. Suddenly this was a family get together where my absence would be noted and commented on. I asked my twelve year old and my ten year old if they would be sad if I did not go. My twelve year old said that it would be sad because I would be all alone. After I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes, I explained that the state of being alone is a much valued way to be when you are old and married with three kids. They did not understand, and the sad puppy dog looks were more than I could bear. So I made the decision to go.

The setting was beautiful, a gravel pit, lots of sunshine, many piles of rock and gravel for kids to play in and four wheeler around on. A beaver lived in the gravel pit and would swim around and flap his tail at us. Beautiful. Kids were dashing about on the four wheelers and dirt bikes leaving the adults mostly alone so that we could sit and visit. It was wonderful...until the two nine year old boys went out on four wheelers, then came back in under five minutes. Not a good sign. My nephew came bounding up to me informing me that my son hurt himself. Now, I love my nine year old. He's great, but he is very much like his mother in that he way over dramatizes any sort of injury. So I got up and walked over to where my son was parking his four wheeler picturing the small scratch or slightly skinned knee that would inevitably make up this "injury". Then I saw the blood dripping off of his elbow and his ankle. Apparently he decided to drive through a very bushy/small tree filled area and a large branch gouged the heck out of his ankle. The bloody elbow was merely a trifling injury next to the gaping wound on his leg.

It amazes me how calm you can become when faced with a serious injury. My adrenaline kicked in and I grabbed the first aid kit, my husband, who is awesome in an emergency sat him down and began peppering him with questions. "Where were you when you got hurt? How big was the branch? Was it coming out of the ground or a tree?" and so on and so forth in order to keep his mind off of what I was doing to his leg. The two of us worked in perfect tandem with calm voices and hands to clean and bandage his leg and elbow, while inside I was thinking "Holy crap that looks like it hurts like holy heck!!" If it had been me with a cut like that I would have passed out from the pain and the sight of all the blood.

Of course my patience and uber-calmness only lasted for so long. Twenty minutes after we had patched him up when he was still screaming like a gut-shot hog, I kind of ran out. I explained very patiently that if he continued to cry it would cause his blood to pump faster and make his would throb all the more. Then when that didn't work I just told him to put a sock in it.

A Lazy Sunday Evening

Monday was my nine year old's first day of camp. We were all pretty excited about it, him for getting to go to camp for a week, me for him being gone at camp all week. A real win, win situation, if you know what I mean.

All week I had been getting his bag ready, making mental notes of the things I would need to purchase at the store for him and checking to make sure that the sun screen I had wasn't expired. So Sunday evening around six I got online to double check everything and saw a link for a parent handbook. Out of sheer boredom I clicked on it only to find out that the particular camp my son was attending required him to have smooth soled, non-vibram, boots. After figuring out what vibram is, and concluding that all shoes owned by my son are indeed vibram soled, I realized that I was going to have to venture out on the town at 6:30 on a Sunday evening looking for child sized cowboy boots. In Fairbanks, Alaska. Right.

We have two options that late on a Sunday. Walmart or Fred Meyer's. I tried Freddy's first, purely because I loathe going to Walmart on a weekend and avoid it at all cost, the aisles are usually filled with mouth breathing rednecks on a weekend. Struck out at Freddy's so off we trek to Walmart. After wandering through the shoe aisles with no hope to speak of I find two types of women's cowboy(girl?) boots. My son is dubious to say the least, but he is just as desperate as I am at this point. I convince him that his jeans will cover the tops and only the bottom of the boot will show. No one will know, I say to him. We find a pair that is only slightly too big and make our purchase. I won't go into how much they were, it makes me a little stabby. ($28!! I know! It's crazy!)

So we rush home and I tell him to go grab a pair of jeans to try on over the boots and go show his dad. He goes in all proud and shows dad who says, "Aren't those girl boots?" Yes. He. Did. I now have to convince my son all over again that he will not get beat up for wearing girl boots.

I pick him up tomorrow morning, so I hope that what I told him was true.

Last week we found out that #1 will be needing braces. Badly. I mean, I knew that his teeth were a little bit messed up, but when the orthodontist showed me his x-rays it looked like he'd been chewing on trucks. Luckily the orthodontist works with a payment plan for those who don't have insurance such as ourselves, but we will still be paying in the end $8,000. Let me write that again. $8,000. For teeth. To be straight. UnBelievable.

I was griping to a friend about the expense and she offered up an idea. You see, my mother in law has a quasi-farm. She raises chickens and the occasional pig or three. #1 is over there every day in the summer while hubby and I are at work and he helps out by doing chores. The other day he butchered 10 of her chickens and she offered to pay him if he finished butchering the rest. In chickens. What twelve year old wouldn't love to be paid in poultry?

My girlfriend had the bright idea to have #1 set up a chicken stand not unlike a lemonade stand. When she told me this I had the immediate visual thought of my son standing at the side of the road wearing overalls without a shirt and one strap undone, with a piece of hay jammed in his jacked up teeth, with dead chickens hanging from a stand that said:

Chikens $5!

In my vision he also spoke with a southern accent. Not sure why.

It may actually come to this.

So the scene in my house last night: It's 9:00 and I tell my two oldest boys to go and brush their teeth and get ready for bed. (the youngest had already passed out in his room watching Bugs Bunny, 'cause yeah, I'm an awesome parent) They go into the bathroom and we hear water running and the types of noises you usually associate with teeth brushing, then suddenly we hear our 9 year old screaming bloody murder. My husband reluctantly gets up to go and see what sort of shenanigans are going on after I make frustrated hand motions in his general direction. When he opens the door I see our 9 year old, who I shall call #2, sitting on the toilet, completely naked, clutching his hand as if it is broken and screaming as if it has been cut off. Our twelve year old, who I shall refer to as #1, is standing by the sink pretending that he has been doing nothing more than brushing his teeth. Because yes, he does think we are that stupid.

We were not able to ascertain exactly what occurred as #2 was to incoherent to explain and #1 wasn't fessing up to anything. So my husband took away both of their electronic privileges for a week. That means no computer, no video games, no TV, and no ipods. That means that I have two kids with nothing to do loafing around my house for the next week. Why is it that I got punished too?

Giving it a go.

So, for a while now many people around me have suggested that I write a book. The only problem with that is that I lack discipline and am inherently lazy. So with that in mind someone suggested that I try a blog instead.

Now, no offense to those who blog...but I just couldn't imagine that anyone would seriously want to read anything that I have to say. There are a few blogs that I read myself, but for the most part I view blogs as a sort of verbal diarrhea that is spewed into cyberspace with absolutely no merit or notice. You might say that it is hypocritical of me to write one. You would be right. But just ask my children and they will quickly tell you that I am a hypocrite. I don't even try to hide it. At my house, it is totally "do as I say not as I do". Call me crazy, but I don't think that a four year old should drink wine or watch reality television!

And so here I am giving this whole blog thing a go. Maybe no one will read it, and that is fine. If it does nothing more that give me an outlet to vent and make myself giggle at my own supposed wit, perfect.