SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!!!
Good morning from la Casa de Testosterone! Super exciting times here in la Casa, as Thursday was the last day of Little League and Friday was the last day of school. While the boys are obviously only excited about one of these things ending, the parents are ECSTATIC about the combination. We've been celebrating since after work on Friday. Saturday is a blur in my mind of buying new swim trunks, celebratory fidget spinners, sure you can have donuts for lunch, and staying up late so we'd sleep in this morning. The house looks like a frat party happened here, and I'm not going to lie I feel about as groggy and shell shocked this morning as if it had.
There is SO MUCH TO CLEAN. Part of it, obviously, is the every week cleaning that needs to be done. Part is because we no longer have to leave every morning with fifteen assorted bags of changes of clothes for throughout the day, laden down like pack mules trying to make it to the trunk of the car with only one trip so we won't be too awfully late, and now all of the bags get to be put away. And part of it is because my kids celebrate harder and messier then any two humans in history. It's actually kind of amazing to watch, provided you've had a beer and just inwardly repeat the mantra "it'll wash off" or "it'll stop bleeding once it scabs up" over and over in your head.
For example, Thursday was the year end baseball party/picnic/pot luck. The original plan was for the boys to play wiffle ball. But wiffle ball stopped being entertaining about fifteen minutes in and then someone whipped out about 8 million water balloons and water guns and just plain old buckets of water. I had no beer, and was trying a new mantra "it'll dry," which worked until the water source ran out. The boys then decided to go play kickball on the ball field they have torn up all season long sliding between bases...and suddenly they were caked in mud. But it was only from the waist down, and so I started slowly strategizing about how I could wrap them in something for the ride home. And while I racked my brain and my trunk for what to wrap them in (I don't carry around spare tarps anymore now that I'm no longer disposing bodies for the mob) they decided they would start "mining" on the steep hill side, using pointy sticks to chisel away at dirt and their hands when the sticks fell short. I looked up and saw a group of children perched on the face (no, not the edge, not the base, the actual FACE) of a high cliff like mountain goats, swinging wildly with sharpened spears of wood, literally caked from hair to toes in red clay mud. Not just boys, either, because all the sisters were out there too. About 15 feet above the ground, impervious to danger or injury, and literally SOLID mud. Like, Arnold Schwarzenegger in predator. Their body heat would have gone undetected by any alien species here to hunt us, for sure. Only their little eyes glowed out of the mess. There was no mantra for this situation. I looked lovingly at my heated leather seats in the car and realized that sometimes sacrifices just have to be made.
But it wouldn't be my car.
And that's how the boys came to realize that I have no respect for their modesty, because I made them strip down to underwear at the public park, handed them less dirty sweatshirts and shorts I located in their backpacks (yay for having to change EVERY DAY for something, boo because I haven't seen these clothes in long enough for me to know they haven't been laundered in a while and it could be the source of some of the backpack smell), and made them hold quasi-yoga poses in which their arms, legs and heads touched nothing while we drove home. It was a great core work out. They'll thank me one day. The car thanks me. And as for their modesty, these are boys that one week ago were lined up at the bushes behind our dugout to pee before going up to bat during a relatively long evening game, so I'm pretty sure they aren't quite as bashful as they let on. I'm also pretty sure the bushes behind our home dugout aren't going to survive, and by next season we may have to actually plan on walking all the way to a bathroom. That's not going to be a real popular change, so I'll just wait to broach that subject until next year.
For now, I'm off to clean up the remnants of our celebration. The dog just revealed a stash of hidden food wrappers that she's been hiding after she steals them and licks them clean, so I've got THAT to look forward to, which is nice...
Until next time, happy summer from la Casa!
There is SO MUCH TO CLEAN. Part of it, obviously, is the every week cleaning that needs to be done. Part is because we no longer have to leave every morning with fifteen assorted bags of changes of clothes for throughout the day, laden down like pack mules trying to make it to the trunk of the car with only one trip so we won't be too awfully late, and now all of the bags get to be put away. And part of it is because my kids celebrate harder and messier then any two humans in history. It's actually kind of amazing to watch, provided you've had a beer and just inwardly repeat the mantra "it'll wash off" or "it'll stop bleeding once it scabs up" over and over in your head.
For example, Thursday was the year end baseball party/picnic/pot luck. The original plan was for the boys to play wiffle ball. But wiffle ball stopped being entertaining about fifteen minutes in and then someone whipped out about 8 million water balloons and water guns and just plain old buckets of water. I had no beer, and was trying a new mantra "it'll dry," which worked until the water source ran out. The boys then decided to go play kickball on the ball field they have torn up all season long sliding between bases...and suddenly they were caked in mud. But it was only from the waist down, and so I started slowly strategizing about how I could wrap them in something for the ride home. And while I racked my brain and my trunk for what to wrap them in (I don't carry around spare tarps anymore now that I'm no longer disposing bodies for the mob) they decided they would start "mining" on the steep hill side, using pointy sticks to chisel away at dirt and their hands when the sticks fell short. I looked up and saw a group of children perched on the face (no, not the edge, not the base, the actual FACE) of a high cliff like mountain goats, swinging wildly with sharpened spears of wood, literally caked from hair to toes in red clay mud. Not just boys, either, because all the sisters were out there too. About 15 feet above the ground, impervious to danger or injury, and literally SOLID mud. Like, Arnold Schwarzenegger in predator. Their body heat would have gone undetected by any alien species here to hunt us, for sure. Only their little eyes glowed out of the mess. There was no mantra for this situation. I looked lovingly at my heated leather seats in the car and realized that sometimes sacrifices just have to be made.
But it wouldn't be my car.
And that's how the boys came to realize that I have no respect for their modesty, because I made them strip down to underwear at the public park, handed them less dirty sweatshirts and shorts I located in their backpacks (yay for having to change EVERY DAY for something, boo because I haven't seen these clothes in long enough for me to know they haven't been laundered in a while and it could be the source of some of the backpack smell), and made them hold quasi-yoga poses in which their arms, legs and heads touched nothing while we drove home. It was a great core work out. They'll thank me one day. The car thanks me. And as for their modesty, these are boys that one week ago were lined up at the bushes behind our dugout to pee before going up to bat during a relatively long evening game, so I'm pretty sure they aren't quite as bashful as they let on. I'm also pretty sure the bushes behind our home dugout aren't going to survive, and by next season we may have to actually plan on walking all the way to a bathroom. That's not going to be a real popular change, so I'll just wait to broach that subject until next year.
For now, I'm off to clean up the remnants of our celebration. The dog just revealed a stash of hidden food wrappers that she's been hiding after she steals them and licks them clean, so I've got THAT to look forward to, which is nice...
Until next time, happy summer from la Casa!
Comments
Post a Comment