batty.us

Boog just came home and handed me my Mother’s Day gift. In tears.  As he is apt to do, he got a little rambunctious on the walk home, tripped, and my traditional Mother’s Day flower pot broke into pieces. He was devastated.

I gave him a big hug and told him that I loved it and he did such a beautiful job on the painting. We’re going to fix it and find a new flower to plant in it.

Things that break due to an epic fuckup are still worthy of love. Don’t forget that.

Given to me, by my son.

He picked this out himself. That is a print of a cat with batwings with bonus spider and creepy dude in back.

The awesomeness of this defies any kind of words I can put to it.

To all of you and yours: have a fantastic holiday season.

Boog’s really into minecraft. As in whoa-hold-up-lets-check-the-kitchen-for-boiled-bunnies into it. This obsession leads to many a lengthy discussion with him on the appropriate amount of said game. I am sympathetic, being an formerly obsessive gamer myself. I also understand that a healthy balance must be maintained.

Such a discussion surfaced this past evening, as Boog threw a royal shitfit when I told him it was beddytime. He wanted One More Video, and One More always leads itself to Five. Or 3 hours worth. Gotta cut em off somewhere.

During the conversation, he kept asking me what time I was going to bed. Over and over again. I found that to be odd as this wasn’t something he is typically obsessed with.  Well, now I know why.  At the apex of his shitfit, he told me that sometimes he waits for our bedroom light to go off, and he thinks he wants to sneak his laptop out and play some more minecraft. He *doesn’t* do it, but he thinks about it, and he wanted me to know.

My kid just totally ratted himself out.

There is not one malicious bone in this child’s body.

I’ve been catching boog sporting two pairs of underpants at a time. Like, more than once. His reasoning is the arduous task of removing the old underpants takes way too long, and just putting the new ones on over them gets him to his morning game of Minecraft about 10 seconds earlier.

Way to streamline operations there, son. Mommy is so proud.

Things in my life right now are either all at 0 or ALL THE THINGS NOW. This week is one of the latter. I am thoroughly enjoying my stint with the railroad, although 10 hours of it straight with NO BREAKS EVER leads to some interesting post train land sickness in the evenings. We’ve been graced with some pretty glorious weather so it’s not all bad. Hell, what am I talking about? There was a torrential downpour Friday and it was still glorious and pretty because hi, I’m in the woods. And I get to watch the bald eagles all day, when you can catch them. I have indeed seen the baby and one of the parents.

I am the only female bike handler. The rest of the females either work concessions or at the ticket booths. This is not a reflection of any systemic sexism within the railroad, it’s just that the hired females have preferred to sling M&Ms and beer instead of bikes. Obviously I do not want to sling M&Ms.

We were a heck of a lot of understaffed this morning, to the point where the conductor got involved. Upon seeing my lovely visage as the only hired hand, conductor got on the horn to get more people. I kind of overheard him on the radio when he exclaimed WE ONLY HAVE ONE FOR THE BIKE CAR. ITS A WOMAN.

OH MY GOD, A WOMAN, Y’ALL.

…this is NOT how he meant it, he just didn’t know my name. It just sounds funny. I *AM* the woman, thanks for noticing!  I am sure I could have come up with an excuse to be offended or something,  but I was still wafting on a high from benching 120 this morning.  He *did* ask if I was ok with lifting the bikes into the car. Yeah, it’s ok, conductor. I think I got this. Thank you for your concern.

In all honesty, I do have issues with it at some of the stops because I’m shorter, and the floor of the car is sometimes forehead level. Sometimes I gotta shotput the damn things in there.

Later in the afternoon, a lady took a picture of me hoisting her bike in because she was very impressed and told me she had issues getting her bike just into the rack on the back of her car. It all balances out eventually.

Speaking of balance – I’ve got a string of guest posts lined up from people I admire, respect, and think you should listen to.  These will be posted intermittently and with no real schedule. But I am excited to have such awesome folk make words for my webspace.

In case you’ve forgotten just how awesome this child is in real time, here’s some footage of him performing with his father:

According to Jeremy, this was his best performance to date.

Boog has a buddy down the street. He asked if he could go visit him. I say yes and that he needs to be home when it gets dark.

So the sun goes down, street lights come on. No sign of Boog. I give him another 10 minutes or so to see if he makes good on our agreement. He doesn’t. I walk down the street to find the boys playing in the front yard with light sabers.

I tell Boog that it’s time to come home and remind him that he needed to be home when it got dark.

His reply: I know! I CAN STILL SEE OUTSIDE!

Point, Boog: technicality.

I like to spend my Sundays in denial of what I need to prepare for the week.

I also do this on Saturdays.

I decided we needed to spend Sunday afternoon on our butts somewhere else, so I hauled Boog over for a ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. It was a nice 3 hour, air conditioned, holy-mother-of-god-get-me-away-from-this-computer moment of zen.

The conductor gave Boog his own pin. Because he’s Boog.

We listened to the audio tour (woo! free headphones!) and enjoyed the air conditioning and the movement of the train, and the opportunity to just be. I might have succumbed to buying Boog a train lego set from the gift shop.

Boog’s favorite part? Using the bathroom. MOMMY, I’M PEEING ON A TRAIN. I’M PEEING AND MOVING AT THE SAME TIME! WHOOAAAAAA!

Totally needed.

Yesterday was hot and annoying and so was Boog. I was in desperate need to get some work done, so I sent him out to the backyard to play with the dog. After working feverishly for about half an hour, I went to check on him. He was nowhere to be found in the backyard.

Checked the garage. Bike still there.

Checked the doghouse (um, yeah, he sometimes likes to hang out in there with Lady). Not there. Not in the basement, not in his room. Not in our room. Checked with the houses of his 3 friends and he was not there, either. Panic started to creep in as I wandered up and down the street calling his name at ever increasing volume.

Our neighbor across the street heard my calling and volunteered to get in his truck and scope the neighborhood and he did so. And that’s when I felt I had to initiate the most painful, scary, and mind blowing action that could ever, ever happen in a parent’s life: calling the police and telling them that you do not know where your child is.

I love our law enforcement here. Not a minute into my conversation with the dispatcher and 3 cars arrived at my house. One zoomed off to check his elementary school, another started his own search around the block. The third said, “let’s go in the house and look,” and i am thinking JESUS CHRIST DON’T YOU THINK I DID THAT ALREADY? 3 TIMES I DID. SHOUTING HIS NAME. A LOT. AND I LOOKED IN THE BASEMENT AND THE DOGHOUSE AND. HIS. ROOM. HE IS NOT THERE. NOT. THERE.

And thus, I opened the door to his room for the fourth time, this time with a cop there, too. As if by magic, the lumps of the sheets and comforter on his bed transformed into the shape of a 7 year old boy, quite obviously pooped out from his swimming lesson earlier that day and completely dead to the world.

No, seriously, the cop and I stood in his doorway and talked for like 3 minutes and my child did not. Wake. Up. Jeezus.

A HUGE wave of embarrassment and apologies followed as the cop got on the radio to call off the search. Like, I can count on my fingers just how many times I’ve had to call the cops, and I certainly don’t want to distract them with unnecessary things, especially ones that might say, “hi, I’m not very good at keeping track of my kid”

But that embarrassment quickly faded into gratitude. I am thankful we have kind and generous neighbors. I am thankful for the swift actions of the Lakewood Police Department. I am so fortunate that I have a child that does what he’s told. That he doesn’t wander, he doesn’t go anywhere unless he asks, and when he gets bored, he takes a nap. Tears of relief soon followed.

Boog woke up a whole hour later, and I told him what happened. He got a little look of worry on his face and said, “didn’t you see me go into my room?” and I told him no, I did not, and he hugged me. Because my child is awesome and compassionate and understood that his mommy was scared.

I know, as parents, we all will have these moments. It might be like this, or it might involve sneaking out of the house to go be debaucherous with teenage friends. These are sometimes things that we parents have to endure, as it’s the process of parenthood. Just like everything else in life, parenthood *is* a process – there’s never a time when you can claim ‘ultimate’ parenthood, because there will always be new things to experience and challenges to face, whether you’re 20 or 80. Regardless of where you’re at in your parenthood journey, you have to agree with me that the first time you have to go through something like this is absolutely, excruciatingly painful.

I am glad mine is over.

They’re having some kind of beach party today, so they were required to bring a beach towel. You can’t carry a beach towel without having a fabulous Hawaiian shirt. It just would not be right.

After today, I have a 2nd grader. This kid right here is turning out to be pretty alright.