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SAJ’s side of the Great Metal Detector Story
How can I possibly top Whoorl’s story? This morning I was busting at the seams to tell all about our fun adventure with the metal detectors… but then Whoorl went and made it a three part series with suspense and plot twists and sad parts that actually brought her readers to tears! Phooey! I can’t beat that.
I’ll just boggle you with the cuteness that is Baby Bug… and Wito instead! I’d post more pictures of Wito but I shared all my photos with Whoorl and I think she’s going to post all the cute collander pictures tomorrow. They are SO CUTE! Have you seen Wito’s toes?
When Wito and Baby Bug sit together, I suddenly start worrying about the size of Baby Bug’s head. She’s so little compared to him! And her head! Well, it’s big enough to house her giant brain, I guess. Poor kid. One of these days she’ll grow into her head.
So you wanna hear about the sunburn. I should have taken pictures but today was a day. As in A Day. As in it ran me over and spit me out so fast I couldn’t even pick up the camera. So I have no pictures. But believe me, the sunburn is stinging this very minute. I think my skin cells are rioting. The cells on my left shoulder are planning on looting the skin cells on the right and the cells on my forehead are throwing tomatoes. It’s just craziness. I might start molting soon.
What was I thinking going down to the beach without any sun block? Well, I wasn’t thinking obviously. I tan really easily. I’m olive skinned with a sixteenth of Native American thrown in. I rarely bother with sun block. I know this is terrible but I hate stuff on my skin. Lotion makes my skin feel like it’s trying to breath through a ziplock bag. I’m weird. I don’t wear make up (Not even lip gloss! And Whoorl is still my friend!). I do put lotion on my legs and feet but no where else. Can’t stand the stuff.
This is usually not a problem because I never go out in the sun to specifically “bake”. I take my walks in early morning or late afternoon. I think I’ve been sunburned maybe about five times in my whole entire life. So I figured a quick jaunt to the beach with Whoorl for maybe an hour or two would be fine. Just some chatting and a little fun in the sun for the beach babes. Not SIX hours with lots of trips back and forth up and down the hill. But you do what you gotta do right?
A girlfriend has to look out for her friend’s best interests. And if that means combing the sand with your fingers, looking for a shiny ring, then that’s what you do. And when your girlfriend pulls herself up by her bootstraps, wipes off the tears from her dry chapped cheeks and tells you she’s going to buy a metal detector and it’s going to be fun, then you better smile from ear to ear and make it the best adventure ever.
I know you are all sick of the lovey-dovey I-have-the-best-mom-friend-in-the-world business but I’m so proud of Whoorl. When somebody makes the best out of a situation like that and you find yourselves actually laughing and enjoying yourself, then you know you’re hanging out with someone with character. It really is true that you can tell a lot about a person by how they react under stress.
I’m only bummed that she found the silly ring in the first ten minutes she started looking for it. I missed the great find and the victory dance that followed. I almost wanted her to throw it in the sand again so we could find it again.
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Spring Break Day Four: Grey Bay Day
Due to some heavy surf advisory we had to change our plans from “beach day” to “bay day”. We took a walk in the morning to go look at the beach and it was scary. Huge waves and lots of brown back wash. Not somewhere two little castle making kids want to go. But have no fear, there is always some other place near. We headed over to the peninsula and played in the bay water instead.
The whole concept of a “bay” or a harbor boggled Rapunzel. “Is this a lake?” she asked, looking puzzled at the water that barely lapped onto the sandy shore. “Where are the waves!!?”
“No,” I explained. “It’s part of the ocean. It’s just blocked by a big strip of land. It’s sort of like the ocean slipped into the land.” Then later I heard her repeat my exact words, down to the “slipped” part, to a local boy who probably plays in the bay water every day. Kids are so funny that way. You really have to think about what you tell them because they listen!
The bay was fun. There was a playground there and Rapunzel really liked playing with all the neighborhood kids. She’d been sort of giving me small guilt trips whenever we went on walks and she saw neighborhood kids riding by us on their bikes. She wanted to go play with kids her age but I wouldn’t let her just go out and make new friends all by herself. Even though we live in a super safe neighborhood, it’s still a little too much big city for a kid from the sticks to roam wherever they please.
Of course Baby Bug liked the bay too. What’s not to like? Other kids to watch, sand to eat and water to just walk right out into and give your mom a heart attack over. That kid has no fear. If I let her, I think she would just walk right out into the middle of the harbor and drown herself. I hate this because drowning is probably my greatest fear. It happens silently. You could look away for a moment and the next thing you know, your kid is floating face down in the water. I have nightmares about this all the time. I really wanted to let Baby Bug play freely with the other kids but I couldn’t. My heart was in my throat the whole time.
I just know Baby Bug is going to grow up and be one of those surf rats who goes tumbling around in the surf like it’s second nature and I’m going to be one of those mothers who bites her nails down to the quick and goes gray worrying about her. I will never get over my fear of the surf, even though I love the ocean and would never want to live anywhere else. The ocean is just too big and awesome, it could snuff out a life in an instant.
Enough doom and gloom! You probably want to hear about how I wrecked my car instead! That would be interesting, right? I didn’t really wreck it but it feels like it. I love my car. It’s new(ish) and red and shiny and fast and sporty and way too small and cool for an old haggard mom like me. I didn’t want it ever to get a nick or a ding or a scrape or a whack. It’s my special car.
Well…I was having a rough day. Rapunzel was rattling on a mile a minute like she always does and begging me to play the same old dumb song on my cd player over and over and over again until my head pounded and my eyes hurt and I just wanted to pull over and bang my head against the steering wheel until the world stopped and let me rest for a minute. Baby Bug was crying and carrying on. Snot has been running down her nose (she has a cold) and her rash is so red and inflamed it’s just making me sick over it. All she wants is her pacifier that I keep trying to take away from her because it’s just making all the redness worse. I need to go buy some new pacifiers with bigger breathing holes but I haven’t had a chance with all of our spring break activities. I could go on and on… excuses, excuses…just another day in the life of a mother, right?
With all this in my head, I’m driving down my alley to park in my regular parking spot. There is an old man in a black car coming down the other way towards me. As usual it’s a game of wills to see who will back up and let the other pass since the alley is narrow and there is not enough room to fit two. However, the old man has two choices. He could turn left and go down alley and come around the block to get where he wants to go or he could go the way I am blocking.
Of course the old man wants me to back up. Being the polite citizen I am, I back up. But that’s not good enough. He wants me to back up further and he starts shaking his fist at me. This flusters me and like an idiot I back up further without looking. Crunch! I back right into a cement pillar behind me. The man whizzes by me and the kids yammer and cry like nothing ever happened. I just want cry.
I want to say it was just one of those days. But that wouldn’t be right. It was a beautiful fun day at the bay and this is just one of those things that happens. When I got upstairs (and after I grounded Rapunzel to the couch because no, she could not have some more ice cream for the fifty-ninth time) I pulled out my calendar and counted the days. Yep. One, two, three…. twenty three, twenty-four and I’m right smack dab in the middle of P.M.S! I should have known. I don’t handle stress very well on these sorts of days. Poor Rapunzel, I was just about to have her pack up and ship her back home. Thankfully after counting the days and a brief cool down, I realized a lot of this tensions and stress was my own doing. I shouldn’t punish a precocious and very normal eight-year-old just because I can’t keep my cool. I took a moment to explain why “Auntie is so grumpy” and she said it was okay. I love that about her. She always forgives me.
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In other news, we had the best day today (Spring Break Day 5). We went to the flower fields in Carlsbad. I’d post a post but I have too many pictures to show you. It would just kill my server’s bandwidth to put them all up along with today’s post. I know, nobody reads over the weekend but if you do go online, click over here. It’s going to be worth it. I promise!
