Monthly Archives: July 2012

Welcome to our Ool

Posted on July 10, 2012 | 7 comments

You may note that there is no P in it.

But do not join me in the Pshower at our Ool. Not if you are not a fan of pee.

I love my feet. They get me from place to place and they are just perfect. They are enormous. And they smell very, very bad. But that is the fault of my Chuck Taylors and my Vibrams and my hatred of socks. It is not their fault at all. I take care of them. They are the only feet I have.

I have never really been what you would call an Athlete. And yet I have had Athelete’s Foot a billion times. Just lucky, I guess. You might know where this is going.

I pee in the shower. Not at home. Because my shower is clean and fungus free. MQD pees in the shower. So I know his feet are clean. But in public showers, I pee. Judge me. I don’t mind. Smell my feet while you’re at it.

I have not exactly told Emily that I pee in the shower. And until today it did not pose a problem. It has been one of the many lies by omission of which I am guilty.

Emily takes a shower at the pool. The water pressure kind of stinks. It takes forever for her to get the shampoo out of her hair so today I joined her. In the shower at the pool it might as well have a sign “C’mon in and shower, get some Athlete’s Foot.” Not specifically at our pool, just pools in general. Showers, in the steamy outdoors, cleaned by underpaid teenagers.

So, I have set the scene well enough. At the pool. In the shower. In the morning.

“Mom, it is so weird, this shower smells like coffee.”

“Yeah, that is weird, Em. Real, real weird.”

7 Comments

Posted in Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged Family, Humor, Life, Pool

Road Trip: Part 3 – The Boardwalk

Posted on July 9, 2012 | 6 comments

Some things never change.

That is one of those things that people say when what they really mean is “Can you believe that asshole? They haven’t grown up at all!” But sometimes you get to say it and all you mean is that some things do not ever, ever change.

Zoltar told us our fortune. We piled in a photo booth and had our pictures taken. We ate ice cream cones and greasy pizza for dinner. We went on the Gravitron and laughed as our arms turned to lead. The Freefall had me hysterical. The bumper cars did not let us down.

The Boardwalk at Rehobeth beach. Some things really do stay the same.

I walked over to ask a game attendant a question. “A million years ago there was a mermaid,” I said…. Instead of looking at me like I was tripping on acid she started to point towards the rides for small children. She didn’t need to answer. Because I saw her. And some things really never change.

She has been repainted a time or two in the twenty years that have passed since I have seen her. And it seems someone did something to the water that the boats go round and round in. It is no longer so … tan and sludgey. But she is there. I crouched down next to Em and said “This was my favorite ride when I was little, baby. I loved that mermaid. And now I am here with you and it is so crazy…” I hugged her. Emily more than tolerates my dramatic moments. She feeds right in to them. “I will go on that ride for you, mama. Even though it is for babies.”

I didn’t make her ride it. But I thought about it. But we had big girl rides to ride and more importantly – we had games to win.

I thought I should prepare Emily. Explain to her that carnival games are designed so that you almost win every time. Her first time out, it was the horse races. You roll the ball like skee ball and your horse advances. She won. Beginner’s luck. And then she catapulted a rubber frog on to a lily pad with a mallet. And then she tossed a wiffle ball right on to the red plastic cup. The kid was on fire.

She comes by it naturally. When my brother and I were kids my mom would win us stuffed animals on the boardwalk. It was the horse races that were her ace in the hole. She would get in the zone. The same stare she gets playing skee ball. And we knew that we would be going hone with the Jumbo prize.

Some things never change. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

6 Comments

Posted in Family

Tagged boardwalk, Rehobeth Beach, road trip, vacation

MQD 3.0

Posted on July 8, 2012 | 1 comment

This is the last year with the MQD 2.0. On July 5th, 2013 MQD 3.0 will be released. I think I get an automatic upgrade. There is no option to keep the 2.0 that I have even though it works beautifully.

Before Mike got his hair cut, when he was inclined to punish can upon can of PBR and wear band t-shirts to work and sleep in his favorite hoodie and hoot and holler like a twenty-some year old boy he would occasionally get a little tanked. And if something happened that was in the least bit awesome…. you were fucked. Because he would announce that it was SO METAL.

Only he would not just announce it. He would holler as if he was in the fiery pits of hell with nothing to save him but the sound of his own voice. And if you rolled your eyes in the least bit it got worse. And louder. He lost his voice one night declaring time and time again that our friend Jenny’s sister’s mini-van was SO METAL. We were not giving it the respect it deserved evidently.

Maybe you haven’t heard. But twenty nine is so metal.

For Mike’s 29th birthday there was only one option for a theme. TWENTY NINE IS SO METAL. And that is where my creative juices came to a screeching halt.

It was Em that said there had to be a band.

I can take credit for having Iron Maiden’s “Wasted Years” playing as he came in the house. But c’mon “Realize you’re living in the golden years…” that song is begging to be played at a twenty-ninth birthday party.

Lucy’s dad rocks.

We laughed. We ate cake. We listened to Judas Priest. It was a good birthday.

I hope the drummer goes home before MQD’s 30th birthday. He is still hanging out on the wall in the kitchen. Luckily he is smiling.

We wrapped the entire kitchen in black sheets. And what wasn’t wrapped in sheets was wrapped in tin foil. Because tin foil is very, very metal.

Last year we made a tin foil hat for MQD’s Alien Birthday.

I’m not really sure how we are going to keep the tin foil alive for his 30th birthday next year. Somehow THIRTY IS SO TIN FOIL SWANS FILLED WITH LEFTOVERS just doesn’t have the ring to it I’d like. Fortunately I have a year to think on this. In the meantime I’m having trouble figuring out how my adorable twenty five year old boyfriend turned in to my almost thirty year old husband.

1 Comment

Posted in Parenting

Road Trip!! Part 2: The Beach

Posted on July 7, 2012 | 3 comments

I used to go to the beach. On vacation. I got up early and I spent as much time as possible over the week with my feet in the sand. I read. I took walks as an excuse to parade my teenage bikini-clad body back and forth. I ate dinner and went back to the beach again at night to look for shells. I filled grocery bags with shells and had plans to wash them when I got home and make something spectacularly crafty.

Then in my mid-twenties I moved to the beach. “Beach days” were good days. Locals don’t camp out on the beach all day nearly as often as they should and a solid beach day was a good day. I stopped my car at a beach access and took a long look at the ocean nearly every day.

It is the only way to justify your outrageous mortgage payment. I no longer collected shells. In fact, I grew to hate the beach motif. “How do you like living in the Outer Banks?” people would ask me. “It’s fine unless you want to buy some place mats that don’t have a lighthouse on them.”

I have had my fill of sand between my toes. But “going to the beach” is more than just sitting in the sand. We trucked it down to the ocean a handful of times. Enough to get some sun and some sand in our swim suits. We rode waves. We peed in the ocean. We put on sunscreen religiously.

We went to the beach. But I am at peace with my decision to go to the pool just as often. So we could just sit. And relax. And not pack up the entire house.

And I find an even greater peace with our decision to spend one entire day at the outlet malls. Ahh, Delaware. Where the beaches are wide…. and so are the outlet malls.

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged road trip, vacation

Road Trip!!! Part 1

Posted on July 6, 2012 | 4 comments

The battle cry of ROAD TRIP! used to mean something totally different to me. I would stock up on Marlboro Lights and Diet Cokes. I might organize my tape case on the front seat of my Geo Metro convertible. If I was trying not to feel totally reckless I’d apply sunscreen to the part between my pigtails and I’d hit the road. I always arrived at my destination earlier than I thought I would because I could drive for hours and hours without stopping to pee and I held steady at ten to fifteen miles over the speed limit.

Things are different now. Lucy and I hit the road early in the morning. It was almost two weeks ago and I have only just now recovered enough to write about it. To say that we made frequent pit stops would be an understatement. She was hungry. She needed a new diaper. But mostly? She just needed her mama. And I cave like a wet paper bag.

I know you, rider…

I picked up Emily and it was smoother sailing from then on out. Lucy loves her mama. But her big sister is supremely entertaining. We laughed. We sang. While sitting in traffic I thought I might pee in my pants. Emily informed me that if she had a magic wand she would turn all my pee to blood. Not eliminate the traffic, mind you. We made it to DC. We regrouped. Lucy, my mom and me in one car. Em and my step-father in the other. We took off for the beach.

A hundred years ago my mom and I went on road trips. Sometimes they would be small adventures. Denny’s for breakfast in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. She would come down to Williamsburg to visit me in my twenties. We would tear up the town. In the summer we would usually steal away for a night or two at the beach. As we hopped in the car to head to the beach I was reminded of those long ago beach trips. In spite of the car seats, the pool floaties, the sleeping kids in the back seat, the sun shades and the SPF 3 Million in my car for a moment it was like I was sixteen and we were headed out just “us girls.”

Twice in the car she laughed until she spit her water. Her Perrier. My mom likes “bubbly water” without it seeming like a “thing.” I have some on my dashboard right now and I might not wipe it off. Not because I am a slob (which I am, in my car only) but because every time I see the splash marks on my window and my dash it makes me laugh.

Rarely is your Vacation complete before you arrive at your destination. But it had been too damn long since I had made my mom laugh until she spit her drink. Too damn long.