wild*life

Have I mentioned how I totally screwed-up?  Yep.  Completely.  Mama-llama-ding-dong.

I signed-up for basketball and flag football and baseball.  In my defense, it’s impossible to tell by their infrequently updated websites when the seasons will start and stop.  The boys have been begging to play flag football for possibly two years.  And after a year off, Jake’s ready to give baseball another crack.  Meanwhile basketball has been so much fun I can’t believe we’ve waited until now to try it.

And so it’s the calm before the storm.  I just spent an hour getting all the practices and games on my calendar.  Including the absurd 4PM start times– doesn’t anybody work in this town?!  It looks as though next week we have 4 different practices and 3 games.  Somehow the football gods shined their glory upon us and put the boys on the same team.  And it seems the gods of baseball are the same divine beings.  This past Thursday I watched from the warmth of my car and my laptop as the boys played football in the…. wait for it…. snow.

So the good news is, it appears there are only two weeks of “Mom, what did you do??” and then basketball ends.

Pray for rain.

Around Thanksgiving, Maestra Vega started socializing an upcoming fourth grade poetry assignment: Memorize and recite 25 lines of poetry in Spanish.  No cue cards.  No help.  It can be one or two poems.  Plus utilize all of your best presentation skills such as eye contact, projecting your voice, hand movements.  No um’s.

Of course we pick our favorite poem about a kid getting eaten by a giant snake.  Jake starts in with his usual woe is me business and the entire world creating impossible tasks and his old school (aka first grade) being so much easier.  Every week he has a bit of a panicky “How many more days until my poems?”  “Mom, I think it’s today.”  “Mom, I’m sure it’s tomorrow!”  (Meanwhile he hadn’t even gotten the assignment yet…)

And once the wave of crazy has passed, he buckles down.  We practice in the shower.  We practice in the car.  We learn these two poems so quickly that when el 29 de enero (January 29th) comes around, we totally forget it’s The.  Big.  Day.

I pick Jacob up that evening from school and he casually mentions, “Oh yeah, Mom.  Today was my poem day.”

“Oh sheesh.  How’d it go?”

“Great.  So easy.”

And the note from Maestra Vega confirms– an enthusiastic ¡Excelente!

Aye niño.

Boa Constrictora
Por Shel Silverstein
Traducida por Jesús y Rhonda Garcia

Me devora una boa constrictora,
Una boa constrictora
Una boa constrictora.
Me devora una boa constrictora,
Y no me agrada para nada.
Ándale pues,
Está en mis pies.
Madre mía,
Está en mi rodilla.
Qué lindura,
¿Está en mi cintura?
¿Que ha hecho?
¡Está en mi pecho!
¡Mira aquello!
¡Está en mi cuello!
¡Ay! que loco,
¡Se come mi cocoooo!

El Monstruo Grotesco
Por Shel Silverstein

¿Qué es aquello qu se ve
por la niebla aparecer?
Es el monstruo grotesco,
que anda por ahí suelto.
Si su cola tan larga es,
¿de qué tamaño puede ser
este monstruo grotesco
que anda por ahí suelto?

Every year I keep a careful eye on the mood and tone of Valentine’s Day.  As we’re crowded around the coffee table, piled with chocolatey love treasures I nonchalantly observe:

Is anyone reading the notes they get?
Looking for covert messages of elementary school love?
Is anyone writing the notes with a special someone in mind?

I’ve noticed there is a special effort and concentration in writing one’s name in cursive.  Nate’s new N is beautiful.  And that’s about it.

No one is worried that their Reese’s peanut butter cups came with XOXO stickers and that someone might get the wrong idea.  They’re only worried about peanut allergies and that ironically, our buddy Reece can’t eat Reese’s.  He’s vegan.

Looks as though this year’s the same as the last.  They’re still entirely consumed with their love for…

candy.

I was putting on my wellies this week and I peer into our outdoor teak shoe box.  Right in the bottom of Jacob’s rain boot is a blue belly lizard belly-up.

Who’s laughing now?  Bwahahahahaha.

Joke’s on you little boys.  Except the boys won’t seem to wear their rain boots anymore ever since they painted the shed with their dad and now “There’s paint all over them!”

So I guess the joke’s still on me.  Pffft.

My tall Hunter wellies are well, shall we say, worn-in.  No longer are they fashionable British rain boots.  After several years of mud and chickens and brush clearing and dogs, they’re farm boots now.

Every time I go to put them on, I’m reminded of riding in the car not long ago.  James is driving and I’m in the passenger seat.  For some reason my boots come up in conversation and the boys start to giggle.  That same stifled giggle from years ago when they thought they were pulling one over on me by referring to their derrieres as bum-bums.

I glance into the backseat suspiciously, “What’s so funny you two?”

“Daddy used your boot to kill a mouse.”

Yep… the rodent blogs just keep on coming.

Lately we’ve been enjoying a “family show” after dinner, sha-sha, and homework time.  Mostly we like The Zoo and Crikey! It’s the Irwins.  Well the show, not necessarily the title.  Let the record show that I am against titles sporting exclamation points in any and all circumstances.

I’m always fielding questions.  Reincarnation.  Rabies.  The depth and breadth of my expected knowledge is varied and unpredictable.  Tonight Nate was a perpetual stream of questions.  I missed almost the entire soundtrack to the show.  At some point he asks, “So it laid twins?” referring to a set of baby lemurs.  Jacob pipes-up in typical Jacob fashion, “They don’t lay, Nate.”

The vet is drawing blood from the Mama white rhino’s ear.

Nate: Are they taking out all her blood?
Me: No Nate.  Just a little bit.
Nate: What happens if I fall down and all my blood falls out?
Me: All your blood?
Nate: Yeah.  Am I dead?
Me: Yeah.  Try not to do that.
Nate: OK.

Jacob has developed a new interest in pranks.  It seems finding clever ways of creating mayhem is infinitely fascinating to nine-year-old boys.  After some sort of literal interpretation of my rules, he likes to gleefully exclaim, “I beat the system!”

Meanwhile, corporate office life continues to consist mostly of meetings and video conferences and plugging and unplugging six cords from my Mac dozens of times a day.  Two weeks ago, I was walking past the same white console table I pass every day, when I notice this ugly green doll staring at me.  It has real looking teeth and buggy eyes.

I turn it around to face the wall.  And of course I notice it has a button right in the middle of its little alien green bum bum.  Of course it does.  I’ve come to find out it’s a BUTTonhole.

A few hours later I pass by and the thing is staring out at me again.  This is right outside my office.  The thing’s so creepy it’s probably come alive and turned itself around.  I turn it to face the wall.

The next day I walk by and there it is with its brown human teeth and alien eyes.  I pick-up a book sitting next to it and open the book in front of its face.  Now it’s blocked and it’s cleverly “reading.”

Forgive this random tangent, but I’m telling James about this ugly doll and he tells me it sounds like one of those dolls people are making and sewing their own children’s teeth into.  Wait, what??  I google it and am confronted with this disgusting Etsymom phenomenon called “Tooth Monster Dolls.”  But then I click the second link and figure out it’s really just this brand of gross dolls.  Thank goodness.  Mothers are not sewing their children’s baby teeth into dolls.  Turns out my doll nemesis is a Fuggler.  I found him on Target.com and his name is Squidge.

So Squidge is reading corporate self-help books.  That afternoon I pass him and he’s now sitting on top of the paper towel roll that was abandoned nearby— his creep city face sticking happily up over the top of the book.  I snort out loud.

Game on.

I put a full Kleenex box on his head.  The next morning, my opponent has ripped a little window so his non-pearly whites show through.

The boys and I have been discussing our planned prank for days.  First Jake brainstormed ideas for how we can cover his hideous mug using only props found in my office.  The boys are fascinated by who we’re up against.  They’re certain it’s a man.  Meanwhile, I’m sure whoever it is certainly knows it’s me.  I have to conduct my side at lunchtimes in the middle of their workspace.

I prefer not to know.  Like being pregnant, I’m perfectly happy not knowing who’s kicking me in the stomach.  It’s half the fun.

Jacob’s fascinated with strategy.  It dawns on him that my enemy has an advantage– I have to think of all the new ways to cover-up his fugly countenance.  They just have to expose it again.  We talk about what makes a prank fun and also not something that will get you in trouble with Mr. Jones (our principal).  We come up with:

1. It’s all in good fun for both sides
2. Nothing gets ruined
3. Nobody gets hurt
4. It doesn’t belittle the other person
5. And it doesn’t make a mess or break something that then someone not involved has to clean up (i.e., our school custodian, Mr. Richard)

Last weekend we’re on our way back down Broad after Jacob’s very first basketball game.  We swing by my office for our next combat maneuver. The boys find a bonus bowl of random candy.  We whisper and sneak around.

And then I did what any responsible mom would do.  I took the boys TeePeeing…

Over the Christmas holiday break, we did as the Spaniards would say, “una gira del sudoeste.”  Roughly translated to “a giant loop of entrance fees to various lands.”

Our first stop was Tucson, Arizona for a wedding and family reunion in the saguaro forest.  The wedding was beautiful.  The company outstanding.  On the first day we went to the mysteriously named Desert Museum, conjuring mental images of dusty taxidermy.  Perhaps because it far exceeded this picture… or because it had the best tamales of the trip, we rated it highlight numero uno.  Well, except for the pack of wild javelinas knocking over garbage cans in the hotel parking garage.  Baby javelinas are so cute.

We also visited the Pima Air and Space Museum, where Jacob spent the entire time looking for a B-25 bomber and debating WWII history with elderly docents.  James’ favorite part was probably the old leather jackets painted with pin-up girls.  Similarly, my favorite part was the exhibit on naked lady airplane nose art.  I definitely channeled my inner Grandma Suzy as I enthusiastically announced we were going upstairs to get a closer look at the topless lady paintings from the second floor.  I successfully embarrassed the retired pilot volunteer more than my own children, who think boobs are hilarious.

In subsequent days we visited the Tucson Zoo (meh), the Tucson Public Market (yum) and our hotel hot tub (brrr).  Then we flew to San Diego and drove to Carlsbad.  The entire time Nate kept asking if we were in New Jersey.  He has a weird obsession with the Garden State.

In Carlsbad we spent too much money to go to Legoland in the dark.  I remember being freezing and eating cinnamon-covered apple fries dipped in whipped cream.  It was New Year’s Eve.  I wish I’d eaten two batches.

And on New Year’s Day we visited the San Diego Safari Park.  It was truly beautiful.  I especially appreciated the founder’s ability to picture an african savannah in a SoCal valley.

Early in the day, we were wandering through the bird sanctuary and Jacob starts telling me about his chosen “spirit animals.”  Apparently he’s a cheetah.  Or will be a cheetah?  I’m not sure how spirit animalization works exactly.

Nate’s taking it all in.  We pass a monkey on an island.  He’s peppering me with questions on reincarnation.  Can he come back as anything he wants?  How does it work?  Do you get to choose?  If he wishes hard enough, do I think it will work?

Of course I see no reason why it wouldn’t.  Who am I to burst one’s animal reincarnation dreams?

“Mom.  I really wish I was a monkey.”

I swap a knowing smile with a lady that overhears our little exchange.  She can’t help but chuckle.

I coax him along, “Let’s go little monkey.”