The Other White Meat

I was out after dusk last night with my husband trying to get some gardening done. Every mosquito from the county must have smelled my sweet sweet blood, because they all suddenly decended at once, and I literally ran inside shrieking. I HATE mosquitoes. I know you think you hate them, but I really really hate them. You see, I'm allergic to them, or hypersensitive or something, so when they bite me I swell up like a balloon. When I was younger, I remember getting bitten on the back of my hand. Within a few hours my hand had swollen to 3 times it's normal size. Another time I went to summer camp and failed to cover my entire body with the sleeping bag. When I woke up in the morning I was clean from the eyes down, but my forehead and scalp were disfigured beyond recognition.

It's bad enough that I have a bad reaction to mosquito bites, but they also seem to PREFER me over other people. When our parents would take us camping as kids, I would always be swarmed and eaten alive, with the rest of my family only sustaining a few bites here and there. I had so many bad experiences with mosquitoes as a child, that nowadays if I ever hear any kind of buzzing sound near my ear I turn into a flailing, screaming mess.

Anyway, here are a few fun mosquito facts found thanks to Google. I did not make these up:

- Mosquitos are attracted to carbon dioxide and pheromones, they also prefer children to adults, and blondes over brunettes.

- They can "smell" you from 100 feet away using their chemical sensors.

- There are over 2,700 species of mosquitoes in the world.


Let's all say it together, now: Ewwwwwwww!

There's a Visine For That

Raising kids is hard. All of the poop wiping, nose blowing, hair washing endlessness can really get to you at the end of the day. For me though, all of that pales in comparison to one particularly difficult parenting task: the dreaded opening of the tied-with-six-million-twist-ties-and-four-rolls-of-tape new toy.

I ordered a Little People farm set from Toys R Us because it was on clearance for only five bucks! How could I resist! It arrived at my front door yesterday. Little Person Sonja smiled up at me from behind the clear plastic, beckoning to me with her tiny hands. "Come play!" she seemed to whisper. "The only thing between you and an afternoon of fun and games is this silly little plastic packaging!" Oh, how you fooled me Sonja. I now know the truth of your evil ways.

Instead of doing the SMART thing and opening everything before I showed it to my child, I foolishly held the box up in front of E-- to show her the fabulous new toy. Bad, bad move. Now I not only got to wrestle with the bajillion twist ties and multiple rolls of tape used to prevent parents from opening new toys, but I got to do this while being yelled at by a 15 month old standing right next to my ear.

"Aaaah!" She yelled, oblivious to my plight. "Aaaah! Ooooh! MAAAAA!!"

I'm not sure how long it took me, opening this toy. It was a savage battle of woman-versus-evil packaging, a battle which I do not care to repeat.

I know you can hire a nanny if you feel like you need help taking care of your kids... but is there a job for Official Toy Opener? Just thought I'd throw it out there in case anyone is interested in the position.

There's something about an Aqua Velva man...

We just returned from the most glorious vacation at the beach! We spent a week lounging by the pool and tanning on our beach towels. Well, it was actually more like getting splashed in the face in the pool and getting burnt to a crisp (twice) down on the beach. But still, much fun was had by all! One of A~'s favorite events was when she got to go out in the rowboat with Daddy.



Although the picture looks peaceful and serene, I am actually freaking out and yelling at him to not! row! out! any! farther!!

We went to the zoo and got to see the new bird exhibit.



And roasted marshmallows over a beach fire.



It was so nice to just relax and not worry about all the daily drudgery that life can become. We're going back in August, and I can't wait!

By the way, I've declared this "Using Ad Slogans For My Titles" week, so if you think of any good ones, let me know. You know you love it!

Let's Talk For A Moment About What A Paranoid Freaky Freak I Am!

Yesterday was my husband's 29th birthday. It was celebrated appropriately with much presents and ice cream and scribbled love notes from the girls. However, the real celebration was an internal one. You see, a few months ago when Ammon and I were talking about the forbidding closeness of the big 3-0, he mentioned that he had never really thought about his future. When I asked him why, he told me that he had always assumed he would die when he was 28. Since we were having this conversation when he WAS 28, I had to be revived with smelling salts before we could continue.

Apparently he had to write his obituary for a high school English class (by the way, what the heck? What kind of sick-o teacher was THAT?) and he wrote that he died in a single-car crash at age 28. I guess he kind of internalized it and never thought about what having kids or growing older would be like. Anyway, I FREAKED OUT.

Was this some sort of personal revelation he had? Did he somehow know instinctively that he was destined to perish at the tender age of 28? Pretty much any time I thought about it in the months leading up to his 29th birthday I had a minor panic attack that required deep breathing and chocolate to recover from.

Finally, the blessed celebration of his birth was only weeks away, then days, then hours... At 10 pm on the day before his birthday, we were only 2 hours away from him officially surviving his 28th year. We were pretty much home free! He was about to run to the store because we needed... um... fine, we needed condoms, ok? We needed condoms, and he figured it was important enough to go to the store at 10 pm. He's a guy, what do you expect? Keys in his hand, shoes on his feet, he kissed me goodbye and walked toward the door to leave. And that's when I remembered it... The eager fairies in Sleeping Beauty took her back to the palace on the eve of her 16th birthday, because they figured they had made it! But of course they hadn't, there was a spindle in the attic and she pricked her finger and DIED. Or slept, whatever, the point is they were FOOLISH and COULDN'T WAIT THE EXTRA FEW HOURS AFTER WAITING SIXTEEN YEARS. And the mean witch won.

Needless to say, I suddenly clutched desperately at my husband's shirt and told him that if he went out he would DIE and we had been SO CLOSE! He backed away from me slowly, murmuring calm, soothing words, and carefully placed his keys on the counter where I could see them.

"I won't go, ok? Everything is fine, I'm not going to die" he told me, as I hyperventilated and trembled, hunched over on the couch. He sat next to me, patting my back and I'm sure he was probably thinking that maybe he should go get in that single-car wreck so he wouldn't have to live a lifetime of talking me out of the bizarro crazy land I live in. But he DIDN'T die and now he's 29 and everything is ok! We can now grow old together in peace. When we're 80 we'll walk down the street holding hands and people will say fondly, "Oh look- there goes Old Lady Crazy and Old Man Should Have Died But Didn't, aren't they the cutest little couple?" The future is full of possibilities!

A Flair For The Dramatic

I promise I am not an evil dictator. Nor do I beat, starve, or tie up my children. Cross my fingers, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. I hope you believe me. And I hope you weren't listening outside my door the other day when A~ was on time out for a minor offense... and yelled at the top of her lungs:

"I! Am not! A PRISONER!"

What the heck am I going to do when she's fifteen?