Wordless Wednesday: Back To School Edition!

by The Mayor! on August 31, 2010

Sadly, my oh so precious time with my kidlets is nearing it’s end. This school year marks a major life change for me as my last wee baby heads off with her siblings to join the wonderful world of Junior Kindergarten. She couldn’t be more excited. I couldn’t be more devastated. So with my baby girl heading off & my oldest verging on teenaged hell, I’m certain this will be the last summer I truly have them all to myself, just me & my babies, hanging out, doing our thing, not wanting or needing anyone but each other to find our summer bliss. After 13 years of birthing & raising my babies & toddlers, it’s time to put that behind me & move on with the next phase of my parenting life. So, this week, I do my Wordless Wednesday post not in celebration of the rug rats & yard apes heading back to school & leaving me to my peace & quiet after 2 months of being joined at the hip, but rather, in an attempt to come to terms with, & find the brighter side, to what next week will bring.

Back to school!

School Priceless

Funny school cartoon

Funny school cartoon

First day of school funny image

Signed,

The Mayor!

{ 9 comments }

Helpful Hints For a Day At The Beach:

by The Mayor! on August 30, 2010

Do:

-  Bring enough sand toys to go around to avoid having the kids come to fisticuffs over them.

-  Bring snacks such as trail mix or granola that are already crunchy so no one notices the extra crunch of the sand.

Sun & sand image

-  Station yourself well away from the play area of any & all children.  They are notorious “sand flickers”!

-  Ensure you keep hold of your bathing suit when body surfing.

-  Teach your brats to have enough common decency & respect not to trash the sand creations others have spent hours building. Otherwise, Mom’s like me will shoot daggers at you while muttering, “Other people’s kids…”  (under our breath, but loud enough for you to hear).

sandcastles in the sky image

-  Be prepared to shell out for ice cream or you may find yourself on the business end of a hissy fit…or four.

Don’t:

-  Come to the beach if you are hairy enough to claim Bigfoot as part of your ancestry…your recreational time is better spent camping in the woods with your own kind.

Bigfoot funny image

-  Allow your 10 year old daughter to run around topless.  There’s a line people.  The fact that she didn’t have a single tan line proves that you have completely lost sight of it.

-  Wear a bathing suit that isn’t big enough to contain all of your parts…ALL of your parts.  Seriously, no one wants to see that…or that…or THAT!

-  Take 12 year old boys with you.  Their sole purpose in life is to pester & annoy, utilizing any & all tools at hand.

-  Acknowledge any meltdowns, tantrums, or fist fights amongst your children.  Save yourself the public humiliation, pretend you don’t know them, & shoot daggers their way while muttering, “Other people’s kids…”.

-  Be surprised to find sand in places you didn’t know you had…& didn’t wanna know you had.

And never, under any circumstances whatsoever, ever, ever, do THIS…

Beach Balls

Signed,
The Mayor!

{ 8 comments }

@$#*%! Friday!

by The Mayor! on August 26, 2010

Words Of Wisdom…

Accidents Pictures, Images and Photos

Just ’cause it made me laugh my ass off…& that’s what @$#*%! Friday!’s are all about in Crazy Town! Frankly, after the week I’ve had, a good giggle is exactly what I needed! With close friends of ours in the midst of moving, their 3 kidlets have been kinda campin’ out at my place for the last few days…which is fine, I love ‘em like my own & haven’t seen much of them lately, but 7 kids is 7 kids. That’s a whole helluva lot of mess…& food…& noise. On top of that, I’ve found myself thrust head first in to a new project that is quickly becoming very time consuming, leaving me posting for Crazy Town at the ridiculously obscene hour of 4 a.m. Granted, that was a ridiculously long post, but I’d been puttering at it for a few days, only needing to find the time to finish the damn thing. And take a shower. And eat. And maybe sleep frik. Needless to say, I’m not functioning at my best by this point…in fact, I’ve been so discombobulated, that I actually lost a day this week, & completely missed Wordless Wednesday. I posted Tuesday night…but somehow, I was under the misconception that it was actually Monday night. I think I was roofied. And I can’t quite figure out if there just aren’t enough hours in my day, or if there’s just too many hours in my day…either way, sh** still ain’t getting done despite my giving up showering, eating, & sleeping! So, I’m keepin’ it short & sweet today…that was the short, this is the sweet…after the whole spawn of Satan bat incident, I was teasing The Diva that she had missed her chance to join Edward & become a vampire. This was her response…Duh, Mom! My vampire bat is purple…AND sparkly! Don’t you get it Mom??!! Apparently I didn’t. But in keeping with the bat chat, & to give you all a sense of what our evening with him was like, I feel compelled to share THAT scene…the one I spoke of…from “The Great Outdoors”!

I used to find that scene absolutely hysterical…yeah, I don’t anymore. Now I just experience some horrible brand of Vietnam post traumatic stress flashback, & by the time this clip was done playing, I was curled in a ball on the floor, rocking back & forth, & maybe possibly, sucking my thumb.

Signed,

The Mayor!

{ 3 comments }

But Wait, There’s More!

by The Mayor! on August 26, 2010

Seriously, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’ve already read from the beginning…if not, you have no one to blame but yourself for being lost as to what this is “more” of!

No Word Of A Lie…

…because people really do ask me if I make this sh** up. I do not. And I would have traded this particular wild life adventure for a whole family of Stalking Moose & a cottage full of Ninja Racoons. With crummy weather & fresh memories of our last visit full of wild life, the kidlets had opted out of any campfires, preferring the dry safety of the cottage for our evening fun. Our week was pretty uneventful, even a little boring given the lack of hot, sunny weather. On what turned out to be our last night there, partly due to this “incident”, we suddenly had a little too much excitement. It was a scene right out of “The Great Outdoors”. The cottage is one big room, with the kitchen at one end leading to an enclosed porch that has a door to the outside. The end with the living area has 2 bedrooms & the bathroom along one wall, while the opposite wall has windows overlooking the lake & another door to the outside. Since this door leads to a very long drop off a cliff down to the lake, it is rarely used in favour of the porch door off the side. Dusk had fallen & I was admiring the sunset…so much so, that I was moved to open this door & snap off some photos. The Diva stepped out with me, & before I had even raised my camera, I hear The Boy, ever so calmly from his chair where he’d been reading, say, “That’s a bat.”. Not one of us four girls had any response to that initial statement…The Boy who cried bear, racoon, moose, & any other nature of creature he could think of, merely to frighten & torment his sisters, was not always to be believed. Aside from that, we had already noted bats swooping around outside at dusk, this was nothing new. Then he said it again. Then my oldest daughter screamed. Then I hollered, “INSIDE??!!”, & he again, very calmly, replied yes. I go flying in, telling The Diva to stay put & the other two girls to go shut themselves in my bedroom. All three girls are now screaming & crying, with The Baby near hysterics. Then I see it swooping around the room, & as it turns out, I really really really really really don’t like bats. Who’da thunk. Now I too am screaming. The Boy is laughing, as he goes around closing doors to keep itBatCountry in the main area, & The Diva is alone outside, in the dark, at the top of a cliff…screaming & crying. I run back outside, scoop her up, & go around to the other door to deposit her in the enclosed porch. I can hear The Baby crying for Mommy, & The Boy yelling at everyone to calm down. I am once again faced with the Ninja Racoon quandry…I’m loathe to have to go out there now that I’m in the relative safety of the porch, but I’ve left my son to fend for himself against a rabid creature of the night. Sh**. FML.

Bat Sh** Crazy…

With all the screaming, crying girls wildly running around waving their arms in full blown panic mode, my mind actually did flash on that scene from “The Great Outdoors”. And it gave me an idea. Being that I was on the porch, I grabbed two hoodies, & two canoe paddles. I slipped in to the kitchen, closing The Diva in the porch, & The Boy & I huddled together tying our hoods so tight that only our eye bobs were showing. Admittedly, I was completely unable to control my own shrieks every time it swooped in my direction, but my son, God bless him, was truly a man…even if he did keep laughing at me…though I suppose that simply added to his new found macho man status. Meanwhile, The Diva has her tear streaked face pressed up against the window from the porch in to the kitchen begging me to take her to her sisters, so once again I scoop her up & do a kamikaze run shielding her with my body, to shove her in with her sisters. The Baby is still crying for me, & my oldest girl is hollering, “Someone had better be filming this!”. She had a point…as horrific as it was, it was also pretty comical…& ya gotta know I need proof of my Griswold adventures for those who just don’t believe this crap happens to me on a regular basis. Throughout the chaos, this frikkin’ bat is just swooping circles around the cabin, ignoring the wide open door & the darkness beckoning from beyond. For whatever reason, his pea sized little bat sh** crazy brain was also avoiding the kitchen area, & despite my motherly instincts screaming at me to protect my babies, I found myself rooted in fear, crouched in the kitchen…too scared to even stand up, afraid of making myself an easier target for the swooping. The Boy? Chasing it around at top speed, waving his canoe paddle (a paddle for a bat & a bat for a ball??!!) while very quietly & soothingly suggesting ways of how “we” could get it outside. We also had a brief discussion about simply giving it a good whack with the paddle, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that he wasn’t quite ready for his batcavefirst kill, nor was I, so we continued to chase it, waiting for it to find the damn door. After almost an hour of this, with the two of us waving & throwing anything that wasn’t nailed down at the spawn of Satan, it suddenly disappeared. Since I myself had spent that hour with my eyes squeezed shut, crunched in a little ball crawling along the walls, with my video camera randomly rolling in one clenched hand & a canoe paddle in the other, I had no idea where it went. As I pleaded with my son to just tell me it had FINALLY flew out the door, the smirk on his face told me otherwise. He pointed out the corner it flew in to, & I determined it had likely squeezed up beside the stove pipe in to the ceiling…frik.

A Brief Respite…

By now, The Baby had cried herself to sleep & I was at a loss as to how we should proceed. After poking around checking out the ceiling with a flashlight, I tried to reassure the kids that it had probably found a way out through the roof. Now if only I believed that! Eventually we began to relax, & even I half believed it had found it’s way out. We spent the next two hours playing charades & goofing around, & finally I began tucking kidlets in to bed. The Boy & I debated whether their door should be kept open or shut…if it was in the ceiling, I could see openings that would allow it to get in to their room, with him in the top bunk mere inches from said ceiling. But if it flew out in to the main room again, it was preferable to have their door closed. We settled on closed. With the three big kids drifting off, I climbed in to my bed beside The Baby & threw a DVD on my portable player to ward off that overwhelming blanket of darkness that descends in such a place. There was no comfort to be had in the dark tonight! For some bat sh** crazy reason, I kept my door open. My sense of responsibility to both my kids & the cottage had me feeling as though I couldn’t allow this horrid creature the luxury of dwelling within, & I needed to know if it was still “hanging” around. Somehow I had already forgotten that I had been in a full blown panic attack during my first encounter, & apparently thought I would be capable of dealing with it should it return. I was not. Mere moments after hitting play on my DVD, I was swooped…& I lost my sh**. Screaming, I whipped the covers over my head even as I was rolling to scoop The Baby under me & protect her…who, of course, I had awakened…& likely traumatized for life. We’ll just file that under emotionally scarring…for both of us. Now we’re both screaming, the bat’s swooping, & The Boy can’t hear me because their door is closed, & he’s got his iPod headphones on. But I can’t seem to force myself to move…’cause ya know, I gotta protect The Baby…so I just keep screaming his name, having gone absolutely bat sh** crazy by now. Finally the girls hear me & I holler for The Boy to turn on all the lights & make sure it’s not in my room before I can make my legs move & dart out of bed. As I shut The Baby in, she screams in terror at being left alone, so the other girls make a break for it & join her. And here we are again, a basketcase, a boy, & a bat.

Round 2…

…& suddenly it’s gone, back up in to it’s hidey hole. We take this opportunity to come up with our rather elaborate plan of attack…we now know we can lure it out by turning off all the lights, so we decide to do exactly that. Once it appeared, we’d hit the lights, with one pointed right at the stove pipe to keep it from going back up, while leaving the kitchen dark to lure it in to the enclosed porch. Then we could slam the door between the kitchen & the porch, locking it in there, go out the other door & around to the side door, open that up, & cross our fingers it would fly outside. And if it didn’t, at least it was in the porch & not any of the living areas anymore! Plan in place, we once again “suit up” with hoodies drawn tight, paddles in hand, & towels nearby in case it landed long enough to toss one over it. Then we sit in the dark & wait, each of us with our fingers wrapped around a light switch. The winged devil bided his time, but finally, after about half an hour, I saw it swooping towards me…& lost my sh**. I hit my switch, he hit his, & I’m immediately on the floor…no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t allow myself to get within “swooping” range. I head for the stovefunny-pictures-bat-snugglespipe, & all I can muster up in the way of help is to crouch there beside it, banging my paddle against the hollow metal to keep the vermin away from his hidey hole. My hero, my son, jumped in to action, trying to herd it towards the kitchen & porch. Trying. With absolutely no success whatsoever. Since I’m a quivering mess on the floor with my eyes squeezed shut & my paddle banging away, I missed what came next. But suddenly my awesome little man was quietly telling me it was alright, he got it, take a deep breath Mom, & open your eyes, I need your help now. At least I think that’s what he said, I couldn’t quite hear him over my metal banging. I open my eyes, & he has the bat pinned to the floor with his paddle. He tells me he knocked him with it & stunned him enough to make him drop, but he’s alive & could I please get a towel to toss over it. I toss a towel over the bat, & now The Boy & are looking at each other in stunned silence. I finally pipe up & tell him we need to scoop it up in the towel & toss it outside. He agrees. We continue to stand there looking at each other. Then he says he’ll do it, & I say no, I can’t let him do it, I just need a minute to gather my courage. We throw a second towel on him, but still I struggle. He says he’ll do it. I say no, it could still bite you, I can’t let that happen. I poke through the closet for work gloves, but no luck. We both start pulling our sleeves down over our hands, & discuss the best method of scooping the bundle. I still can’t seem to take action, & he moves towards the pile on the floor. Again, I tell him no, take a deep breath, &…I’m struck with a brilliant idea! The front door is only a few feet away, all we need to do is use the paddle to push the bundle to the door & shove it out! Better yet, I’m okay with him doing it. And that’s exactly what we did. Now that it was finally out the frikkin’ door, we were suddenly concerned for it’s well being…go figure. So off we go, out the side door, flashlights in hand, to head around front & ensure it had gotten itself out from under the towels. Once again using our handy dandy paddles, we flicked back the towels from a safe distance & were relieved to discover our spawn of satan was gone for good. It was now 3 a.m….& all three girls were now asleep in MY bed. FML.

A New Day Dawns…

…& I’m tired, stiff, & cranky as hell. Chasing bats all night & being crammed in a bed full of knobby little knees & elbows does not a happy Mommy make. Plus, it was pouring rain. Yay. I head out front to collect my towels & ensure there isn’t a dead bat lying there. There is not. However, in the light of day, I can clearly see blood all over my towels…bat blood. I never did tell my son. Clocking it with the paddle had been accidental, & I knew he’d felt bad. His relief at seeing it was still alive had been evident, & since it had managed to wander off somewhere, I didn’t see the need to tell him it had been hurt. Especially since he now had The Baby calling him a Super Hero, & the eternal gratitude of all the girls…especially his very proud, & apparently severely bat phobic, mother. A mother who had enough of the Griswold curse, the wild life, & the rain…so I packed it in a day early, knelt in fervent prayer for my truck to start, & headed back to Crazy Town. Turns out I prefer the Brink of Insanity to bat sh** crazy.

Signed,

The Mayor

*Be sure to join in the Friday fun & share the giggles with Mr. Linky! And forgive me this totally long ass post, absent my usual imagery…I’ve had 7 kids for the last 2 days straight, it is now 3 a.m. & I can still hear the boys whispering…I’m forgoing the imaging in favour of knocking some heads together & getting some sleep!

{ 4 comments }

Let’s Begin At The Beginning…

by The Mayor! on August 24, 2010

Did You Miss Me??!!

Don’t you be gettin’ all lippy with me dudes! As Mayor of this here town, it’s my prerogative to dispense my Mayoral duties as I see fit…even if it means ditching them altogether for the dog days of summer! That being said, I find it rather gratifying to know I’m not the only one…you know who you are. In the meantime however, I find myself with so many tales to tell, I hardly know where to begin! So I’ll begin at the beginning…

Bottles of beer on the wall

Here’s How It Went Down…

As I set out to venture past the Edge of Reason & the Brink of Insanity for yet another week at the cottage beyond the reach of civilization, it occurred to me that despite escaping the trappings of the “modern world”, I had not, by any stretch, escaped Crazy Town. I’d simply packed it up & brought it along for the ride. The realization may have come to me as I sat broken down at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with 4 small children. Or maybe it was when that eagerly awaited e-mail announcing the winners for the Famous Bloggers/Comment Luv contest came in just prior to losing cell service for the week, & despite the excitement of finding my name amongst the winners, the amounts won would be posted “shortly”, thus I still wound up being kept in suspense for days. But if you’ve read along with me long enough, it should come as no surprise that the Griswold moments would hit just by virtue of having stepped foot outside my door. Such is the nature of the curse…it’s a stain that no amount of scrubbing can ever seem to remove. But I digress…back to sitting at the side of the road. I had pulled off a busy two lane highway for yet another potty break for small child. Doesn’t matter which one, the sheer number of kidlets makes it a common annoyance on long trips & I have neither the time nor inclination to dig up an actual toilet every frikkin’ time. Thus it was that I was once again parked half way in to the bush along some back country road & in the 2 minute process of whipping a kid in & out of the car for a pee, my battery had decided to screw me. Fine, whatever, screw you too…I got this. So I head off up the road with a string of kidlets & we meander our way to the nearest gas station. Thankfully the sight of an extremely attractive woman in distress can easily garner willing young men anxious to do their civic duty & help their fellow citizen. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the four adorably bedraggled children dragging along behind me, nope, un-uh, nothin’ at all. With my truck getting the boost it needed, I’m now on my cell trying to determine if the one town left to pass through before reaching the edge of civilization would have a Canadian Tire open at 5p.m. on a Sunday…it did not. Choosing not to spend the night sleeping in the car waiting for said Canadian Tire to be open, I chose instead to carry on to my destination…on a wing & a prayer. Foolish, yes, given the lack of phone service, people, or another car battery with which to boost mine. However, I’m a smart woman, I was certain I was dealing with the battery rather than the alternator & figured if I made sure to start the truck once or twice a day, it was likely I’d get it home again at the end of the week…& there was a small part of me that really could have cared less if I wound up stuck in my happy place…there are worse places to be. Sadly, someone would find us eventually anyways.

Between Heaven & Hell

But Wait, There’s More!

And it will have to wait for another day…since the “more” truly deserves a post all it’s own. However, since I know you’re just dying to hear the final outcome for The Mayor & her winning contest entry, I eventually…fine, I pulled over & checked the second I reached a signal again on my trip home…discovered that I had won $100 for my “validate each other” post…how wonderfully validating! And I couldn’t have done it without the support of this tremendous community, so thank you for showing me the LUV!

Signed,

The Mayor!

{ 6 comments }