Pre-Driving Protocol for Busy Moms

If there was a survey that could be done and ever was... I would like to know just how many people have been sailing down the highway oblivious to the bag of meat that was on top of their car.  I'm certain I am one of those elite few.  You must know that there are two bad things about having a bag of raw meat on top of your vehicle... 1.  It would be hard to explain to the trucker behind you why meat products flew off your car onto his windshield at seventy miles and hour and ....2.  If you do stop to retrieve the meat, what do you do with it then???  It's not like you want a Ziploc baggie of beef tips dripping onto your floorboard.  Of course, all this being considered, you have to wonder why one would have this item on top of their car in the first place.   I suppose it's just part of being a Brodnax.  Some things simply have no answer.  While traveling from my mother's house to our house, a distance of about fifty feet, my husband is known to place things on top of my car.  I'm never really certain what is up there.   As long as it's not children, I've learned not to complain.   I've traveled with pies, meatloaves and cups of coffee all on board without my knowledge.  It's those times he forgets to remove these items, that become bothersome.  I traveled for two weeks with a bag of licorice on my car that never came off.  That's not as bad, however, as traveling across the neighborhood with a kitten in my engine, that did manage to get out... safely, I might add.  Only because of Facebook and the status of a young child announcing to the world that she had a new kitten, did I know that our family pet had relocated.  Just like the meat products and the licorice, the kitten was retrieved and brought home where it belonged.   I'm sure there is a proper pre-driving protocol for checking your car for unknown contents or even unknown passengers.  I believe the driver's manual in my glove box says to check for tire pressure, cracked windshields, proper running lights and such.   I will never make it to those steps.   My pre-driving protocol consists of making sure each child has a shoe for both feet, removing the left-over latte cups from the last time the kids and their friends were in the car,  and racing to the car charger before someone else lays claim to it.  There is no time to check for tire pressure or meat products on the top of the car.  A quick scan to make sure everyone is buckled is the signal to go.  I've actually made it half way to another city before I realized I had an extra child in the car with us.  She was in the third row with the latte cups I can't reach.  That's no man's land and she is lucky I found her when I did.  At least she wasn't on top of the car like a bag of meat products or licorice.  

Smiling Eggs are Harder To Eat

It's hard to make egg salad when your eggs are staring at you with warm smiles and all have names.  These are the post Easter eggs that fill my fridge. I always have plenty of them because half of the neighborhood kids arrive about the time I drop the first Paas dye tablet into its glass of white vinegar. I don't know if they hear the gently fizzing tabs calling their names or if the smell of vinegar and eggs wafts down the street calling them to my kitchen. That wouldn’t be an appetizing smell, but it does scream of fun at the Brodnax house.  Before the smell can dissipate,  we have dozens of wacky, colorful eggs in the fridge, pastel fingerprints permanently stained on the counter, and someone teary eyed because their last egg to dye had a big crack in it.  


All of this is part of Easter tradition at our house and I am thankful that this Easter season was not  torn apart by shattered beliefs and disappointment.   Let me explain.... It was a year ago at Easter when my daughter announced that she felt so sorry for all those kids who didn't believe in the Easter Bunny. Seeing how she was ready to stand up for Peter Cottontail on the school playground and protect all that he is, I knew it was time to have a talk.  I had safely avoided the Santa Claus talk and had even skirted past the "Wonderfully Made" sex talk that was given to all sixth grade students and still had my little girl with all of her wonderful innocence.  I wasn't ready to turn tail on Peter or St. Nick, but I knew this was my cue.  I sat her down and explained that she may not want to keep such a strong stance in her protection of the Easter bunny. She gave me a puzzled look.  Sweat began to form at my temples and I groped for words.  I cringed at what was about to happen and tried to ease the pain with chocolate and promises of shopping sprees and mani/pedis.   After delivering the news that a bunny did not actually arrive in the cover of darkness and leave eggs and candies all about, I saw her processing this information and I was afraid of what was coming next.  I had no idea how bad it would actually be.  She looked me dead in the eye and asked, "Then what about Santa?  Is he fake, too."  I felt horrible and a rush of heat came over me as I fought back the urge to comfort her by avoiding the truth, but she stood there in front of me, demanding to know. I talked about the Spirit of Christmas and giving and all things good and hoped that she would continue to believe even though the truth had been laid on the table. She said nothing. She sat at the table and tear after tear quietly ran down her face. There was no loud sobbing, simply tears rising up from a broken heart.   She did not want to be comforted.  She did not want to be hugged or touched. While I wanted to to do all of those things, I knew that most of all, she did not want to be lied to and I allowed her the space she needed to process this information.   


When enough time had passed, I offered to take her to the mall where we spent some quality Mom and Daughter time.  After new hair highlights, a few new outfits, a  2 pound bag of candy and the depletion of my checking account, we were headed out of the mall, with spirits lifted a bit.  As we neared the exit, we spied the Easter Bunny one floor below sitting amongst a spread of giant pastel Easter eggs and floral displays.  We both stopped at the railing and looked down.  Testing the waters, I smiled and asked my daughter if she would like to go see the Easter Bunny. She looked up at me with one of those looks that says, "I'm smiling on the outside, but don't be fooled by it" and replied, "...and perhaps I can ask him for ...The Truth."    I commented on how nice her highlights looked and we walked past the bunny without ever looking back.  This year, as Easter rolled around,  all traditions were still in place.  We dyed eggs and filled baskets with treats and celebrated in Christian fashion at our church, focusing on the real meaning of Easter without letting go of the fun a child finds in the season.  It is a wonderful relief to know that my refigerator is once again filled with smiling eggs that nobody will be able to eat.

Laughter Is Good Medicine

 

They say that laughter is the best medicine.  While laying in the Emergency Room of the local hospital getting updrafts and steroids to open my lungs, my son was somewhere else in the hospital shooting bizarre photos of my family members and sending them to my phone.   This obviously failed brain transplant photo did more for me than the meds being pumped into my veins.
My daughter's picture soon arrived and carried the look of "Will she ever get home... This is taking forever." This is a genetically inherited look of frustration and tells those around her that one eye is about to pop from the socket and fly into orbit around her head if somebody doesn't do something to rescue her.  I wear this exact same look at tax time, when standing in line at a Wal-Mart store and when I learn at ten o'clock on Sunday night that my daughter has to write twenty poems before Wednesday and I'm boarding a plane at 6:00  a.m.  the next morning. Unless I want to be writing cinquains and haikus from the airport bar, I have to push my eye back in the socket and help her start crafting poetry and rhyming words while the rest of the world is fast asleep.    

The more I look at this photo I realize that this is the same look of an exhausted working mom.  Yesterday, we were trying to get to a 2:00 appointment.  We began our exit from our house at noon when we discovered that not everyone had exactly two shoes.  I'm not sure how you lose a shoe, but it's a common occurrence here. We discovered the missing shoe in the backseat of my car about the same time I turned quickly and knocked over the giant blue drink someone had left in the car near the shoe.  As my daughter rescued her glittery pink mule, I was ripping floor mats from the car and sopping up blue goo.  My son is wired in to great music in the front seat of the car and is oblivious to the chaos around him as he slowly floats away to the melodic sounds of Muse and some folk group not yet discovered. The cats have discovered that there is a tasty substance dripping from the sides of my car and they are now underfoot, licking up blue raspberry goodness.  It's raining, so I toss the floor mat into the rain hoping Mother Nature can lend me a hand and wash the carpet for me.  My daughter and I carry similar facial expressions and neither speaks while we go through the motions of trying to fix this without complaining or crying.  We are finally in the car,  free from blue liquids, each with an even number of shoes and are headed out the drive when I realize I have no gasoline.  Refusing to accept the rising cost of gas,  I always fill my car to $50 no matter what the current price per gallon is.  This way I don't stress over the rising prices and I'm more cautious to make it last longer because the tank isn't actually full. During the 30 seconds it takes now to pump in fifty dollars of petroleum,  my daughter has jumped from the car, entered the station and returned with yet another unnaturally blue drink product.  The muscles around my eye tighten as I try to keep my eye in place and I say nothing, because deep down inside I know that I want one too.  I remove the earphones from my son who actually doesn't have the big head you see in the photo and we all go inside to get something to drink.  Before long we are sailing down the road in a car with a half full gas tank, sipping on sodas, laughing and talking.  Our eyes are in place and stress levels have dropped to acceptable levels.  It is true, laughter is great medicine.

Are Four Cans of Tuna Enough When Packing for The End of Days

  

Yesterday, while in a meeting preparing for the possible shutdown of the government, I received a text message from my son wanting to know if I still had a job.   I also received a message from my daughter telling me how cute her shoes were. It was followed with "Luv ya" and three emoticons, all too tiny to see.  Both children should have been heavily involved in mathematics or history and were obviously secretly packing cell phones while in school.  I assured my son that we would be fine.  The thought did cross my mind, however, about what would happen if I suddenly found myself without a paycheck.   The twelve pack of soda and assorted baby bottle pops in the back of my car wouldn't carry our family far.  That night, while we were all gathered around the kitchen counter discussing the end of days as we knew them and life without Netflix or "Words with Friends", the power abruptly shut down without notice or advance flickering. We were thrown into a sudden blackness where you could not see your hand in front of your face.  While I groped in the darkness for matches and candles, I discovered they had all been replaced with plug in "Scentsy" candle warmers.  I was living in a wickless, flame free world.  My cave people relatives from the beginning of time would be so ashamed.  My son grabbed his cell phone for light and communication to the lighted world only to find that AT&T was off-line as well.   The invisible cell phone signals and wifi networks that normally surrounded us with a pleasing false sense of security were gone.   My daughter, very astutely announced in the darkness that the government must have shut down. Brilliant observation, I must say.  As we sat there in the falsh wash of light we had mustered up from our cell phones, my son whispers to me, "Do you think we've been EMPed?"  I only knew what this meant because of watching too many end of the world movies.  It's an electromagnetic pulse that arrives just before the nuclear bomb, shutting down all things electrical and wonderful.   I assured him that this was not the beginning of something horrible other than the fact that my burrito was now cold and I couldn't find the pica de gallo in the dark.   Because we are curious creatures and it was so dark in the house, we decided to drive around the community in hopes that we wouldn't drive off into some giant chasm or be zapped by the alien space-ship possibly hovering over city hall. We discovered people everywhere, just standing outside in the dark, waiting for something... a sign, a spaceship, a giant plume. I'm not sure what they were all looking for other than just an answer. I wondered if we had not all been so sucked into this 2012 end of days prophecy and fear of sudden terrorist action that we did actually believe that it was the end of time as we know it. I found myself driving around in the dark thinking that I should really change my investments in my 401K plan to something less riskier now and that it might be good to have some kind of emergency plan.   Today while at the grocery store, I picked up four cans of tuna and a really big bottle of water. And yet... somehow I think my emergency preparedness plan is lacking something. I toyed with the idea of actually taking those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner that they leave for you in hotel rooms.  That could come in handy for bargaining or simply for hygienic practices in the end of days or if the government shuts down.    My plan is obviously in the formative stage right now and I can see many things that might be helpful to have should we suddenly be thrown into the darkness with no communication or access to the deli-mart in Kroger.    I realize that it depends on what level of isolation we find ourselves in.  Would we need seeds to begin planting for subsistence living or would it be more of a need for weapons for protection of life and property?  I do have a giant spatula that could be handy and I'm adding it to my toolbox of things I may need if the world comes crashing to a halt. I know that when this day should possibly come, my husband will be 200 miles away on a lake completely oblivious to any change in modern day living.   While I'm at home fighting off Mayan warriors reincarnated or duct-taping the windows and doors, he will be gently rocking on the waters waiting for another big eyed Bass to tug on his line.   I will be attempting to shape tuna into McDonald's chicken nugget shapes and praying that we have the things we need to survive.  I'm certain I can grow things like kale and cabbage, but my children wouldn't know what to do with it. What I really need is emergency packs of P.F Chang's Honey Glazed Chicken or to be on the lake with my husband when the bottom falls out.  Our family could live out of the boat and eat the fish of the waters until the skies open up and a hand reaches down and pulls us out of the darkness.   That final act is the best part of my emergency preparedness plan and will take us much further than four cans of tuna or a giant spatula.

Fishing, Fun and Family Vacations

With the price of gas now closely creeping up on the price of a gallon of milk, our vacation plans have changed greatly.  We will drink less milk products and drive fewer miles.  Spring Break was spent in-state, this year,  sipping on filtered water as we explored the mountains of the Ozarks.  As we loaded the car with all of our necessary belongings, I realized that our family can probably never fly again because none of us know how to pack in moderation.  For the life of me,  I don’t know why we had a dulcimer or a 30” supersized  pink polka dot kickball with us, but we did.   We traveled to a small church retreat on top of a mountain that was closed for the winter.  Apparently, they will rent a lodge that will sleep a small church for a deeply discounted price in mid-winter.  We were instructed to only use four beds and leave the other rooms untouched.  I had visions of “The Shining” and the empty rooms of a lodge closed in winter.   Realizing I would be alone on the top of a mountain with three children, I convinced my husband to tag along for one night so he could protect us from any two headed wolves that might be laying in wait at the wood line.   My thoughts raced to pictures of us running from the toothless man who lived down the path as I tried desperately to get a few bars on my phone.  I am not a wilderness girl and having no wifi connections or immediate access to Facebook was going to be difficult for all of us. Upon arrival, we found the camp to be quite nice. The lodge was simply a large home from the 50’s filled with twin beds.  It sat only feet from a cliff giving us the most amazing view of the valley below.  This was the perfect place to have an oversized kickball…. for about twenty seconds or until it rolled off the cliff.   As I unpacked totally un-necessary items, my kids practiced cheerleading stunts precariously close to the edge of the yard and the 400 foot drop off.  One bad hurkey jump and they would be plummeting downhill with the kick ball.   There was a small stocked pond outside our front door and my husband went to fish.   Why is it that men always think that fishing with the family will be fun, until they actually have to do it?  He instructed all three kids not to cast the reels so they wouldn’t backlash the line.  They were also instructed not to reel the line in until he verified that there was, indeed, a fish on the line.  Basically, they were to sit still holding a large pole and wait.  I knew this plan would never work, unless you are sixty, smoking, and sipping on a little whiskey under a tree.    The kids looked to me for a sign that this plan was not a good one and then slung those rods and line across the pond.  Fifty feet of line came whistling out at light speed.  Two feet reached the pond and the remaining 48 feet wrapped up in a large ball of tangled filament around the reel.    I tried, in earnest, to untangle the mess before my husband could see it, but was caught red handed and now fully understand what a backlash is. 

Fishing lasted about as long as the kickball and we moved on to horseback riding leaving my husband by the pond to wonder why he agrees to these trips.   We discovered a wonderful stable with an array of horses and baby animals all just waiting for my daughter to come and love on them.  As the sun set, my son and I went to the open air chapel to watch the colors of the sky change.  Since no one was around and neither one of us can resist  an unattended podium, we took our places at the front of our empty chapel.  My son belted out “Amazing Grace” from the mountaintop and I cheered him on in our two person service.  What we didn’t realize was how it would echo across the hills for others to hear.  While the rest of my family was a mile away, still untangling fishing line, they heard the soft voice of a child come whispering on the wind, singing God’s praises.   Everyone stopped and listened and took in the beauty of their surroundings as the sun disappeared behind the hills. The reels were put away, the campfire was prepared and we all gathered round to roast hot dogs and any other food product that would fit on a stick.   The trip was turning out to be quite the successful outing.  We hadn’t spent a fortune for a vacation and we weren’t punished for our excessive baggage.   The lodge was cozy and comfortable and provided a safe haven from the two headed wolves and crazy axe-man who might be lurking outdoors.  We will definitely travel this way again.  

Let's Play A Fun Game of Touch the Sink

A curious game that my children enjoy is one known as "Touch the Sink."  This game only works if one child has an unhealthy fear of germs and in my family, that fear is alive and well.  My daughter is a true germaphobe and has developed very detailed plans on how to enter and exit a public restroom without ever touching a door handle or bathroom surface of any kind.  I have learned to manage this fear by employing my own internal time clock that tells me if she has been in the restroom too long and is trapped on the other side of the door waiting for the next person to enter so that she can make her escape.  It is common practice, while dining out, for me to leave the table in mid conversation, chewing on my last bite of buffet turkey from the Luanne Platter, to push open the restroom door and return before anyone can ask what I'm doing. This child of mine is the same one who will not use an eating utensil if it has touched the table at any point before or during dinner. Should her fork accidentally fall from her plate to the table, she will instinctively hand it to me, take my fork, continue eating and watch to see if I fall to my death as I put her tainted fork to my mouth. Once my possible demise is no longer a concern, dinner continues on with no notice to the strange exchange of germ laden forks and spoons that occurs throughout the meal without question by those at the table.  It is as natural to our dining experience as buttering a dinner roll.  We accept it as a normal practice and things go much smoother this way.   I learned a long time ago not to make a big deal of her anxieties or I would be fueling them with my own fear of germs.  I have come a long way, licking dinnerware that has fallen to the wayside simply to convince my child that we are stronger than the germs or her fears. There are times however, that my insides turn to jelly as she hands me the next germ covered item.  We were in church recently and it happened to be the day we were taking the Lord's Supper. They began by passing out tiny crackers that represented the body of Christ.  We each took our cracker and as we waited for the juice to arrive, I heard a gasp come from my child's lips as she stared down at the floor at the tiny representation of our Savior, now lying amongst the germs. She carefully picked it up and handed it to me.  She instinctively took my cracker and left me with the one from the floor.  Panic set in as I realized you can't just throw out the cracker that represents Jesus.  I had to ingest it.  I stared down at the cracker in my hand and knew that I had to place it in my mouth after it had been on the floor where many a sinner had trod.  With wide eyes, my daughter looked on as I carefully put the tiny cracker in my mouth and swallowed, praying that eating from the floor would not kill me.  As luck would have it, I was saved and life continued on. We deal with my daughter's fears as best we can and have taught her to laugh at the situation whenever possible. Which brings us back to the nighttime game of Touch the Sink... My son will grab his sister and drag her down the hallway, giggling and screaming, in an attempt to make her touch the bathroom sink.  While the sink is clean, to a germaphobe, it is teaming with bacteria and deadly organisms that can cause you to drop dead upon contact.  She will scream with fear and delight as she knows the sink is getting closer and closer. While my own brother used to tackle me, pin me down and threaten to let spit drool down onto my face, I can't imagine that "Touch the Sink" could be much worse.  I survived my brother's spit and I'm certain my daughter will make it past a few nighttime games of "Touch the Sink."   I understand that facing your fears is a cognitively sound way to move past them, so I allow this game and will continue to lick a few dirty forks on our way to wellness.

Homey the Autocrat

Many a stray animal has sought refuge at our home and while some are simply passing through, others tend to stay for a while.  The latest addition to the clan is Bella, the lab that nobody noticed was pregnant until suddenly there were eight dogs in her house instead of one.  We have taken in flying squirrels, tail-less lizards, baby deer and a chicken that fell off a Tyson truck on its way to certain demise.  My daughter claims each and every one of these pets, immediately names them and picks the smallest, weakest one to begin dressing it in tiny pet clothes much against its silent protests.  My son makes it quite clear from the onset that none of them, but one, is his.  He lays claim to a temperamental Siamese cat named Homey.  Homey is a self proclaimed autocratic leader of all the animals in this little Kingdom.  He has no use for the sick, lame or lazy and will run them off when nobody is looking.  Thank goodness my daughter is two steps ahead of him, nursing the ill in private hideaway places out of sight from Homey and his unfair practices.   Our guest bathroom has seen its share of injured woodland critters. 

Homey spends his days roaming the woods and stalking the neighbors.  It is nothing to see him bolting across the neighbors yard, four or five houses away (That’s four or five towns away in people distance).  I catch glimpses of him racing from the woods or jumping from the roof. He will dart in front of my car at precariously unsafe distances and he always comes out unscathed.  I have great respect for Homey and his survival skills.  While I don’t have an ex-husband, I think that Homey is much like one would be. He’s always out there, somewhere in my peripheral vision, just out of clear focus, having fun, chasing she-cats and enjoying life.  He is smart enough to know when a storm is coming and always makes it home just in time, to shoot through the back door, completely unnoticed, and bed down in my freshly washed linen or lay backwards on my couch.  He is quiet, sneaky, bold and self-sufficient, yet still has an attachment to us that will never end.  He is one of those guys that you will always love, even thought you know they are absolutely up to no good.   For a short period, we hosted a family of chickens that lived behind the pool near the wood-line.  Homey’s mouth watered for just one big tasty chicken and he would lounge on the roof of the chicken coup mapping out a plan of how this might come to be.   His tail moved back and forth in this rhythmic pattern of anticipated satisfaction while droplets of cat drool fell from the roof onto a few nervous hens.  Unfortunately,  someone or something beat Homey to his Chicken delight meal and one morning we woke to find the chickens were all gone.  This was, oddly, just about the same time, we discovered a den of red fox living even further back in the woods.  I don’t know if Homey felt he had been robbed or if it was just his natural curiosity, but he went to meet the fox family.  This was not one of his wiser choices.  I was lounging in my hot-tub that particular afternoon, enjoying the peacefulness of the day, when Homey came bolting from the woods like a streak of lightning.  Right behind him was a red fox with the same chicken-eyed look that Homey had recently had.  Homey flew over the top of the tub and while certain that I was about to be bathing with the fox, he stopped short, turned and ran back to the woods.   It only took a few days before Homey came limping home with a giant red fox bite out of his leg.  My daughter immediately scooped him up and planted him on a bed of clean towels in our guest bathroom to begin his recovery process.   A few weeks passed and he was soon good as new.   He currently spends his days lounging on the lid of the hot-tub, soaking up the heat and moisture to continue his healing.    I can only imagine that late at night, when all is dark and still, there is a tension out there behind my house as a family of fox are keenly aware of Homey, seven puppies hunker down in a bed of hay unaware, two white shephards patrol the property eating shoes left outside and one mean cat sits on the roof swooping his tail back and forth just waiting for one wrong move and an opportunity to exert his complete power over them all.  

Homey in his early days learning of the world....