Roughhousing.

In the deep of summer and its unrelenting excessive heat, once again our air-conditioning is caput.  Our landlord is great about getting an A/C company out to remedy the problem as soon as possible, but time marches slowly over the days of sweltering heat.  I wonder if time stands still the heat is so unbearable.  During those days, our home often would reach temperatures that exceed the heat outside.  One day, the boys are at camp all morning and then we spend all afternoon at a friend's pool.  We are there until the evening hours and the boys are so drained from the heat, they both pass out in the first minute of being in an air-conditioned car.  I would come to refer to our house as "the inferno" during these few days.  Case in point, that night at 11 o'clock the house would still hover around 86 degrees.

We get through three days and nights of the discomfort and on the evening of the fourth day, our house is starting to finally cool off.  82 degrees never felt so good.

Nine o'clock and both boys are finally in bed and the house is a chilly 73 degrees.    I hang up the telephone with my brother for a mid-week catch up, nicety, 'how are you?' talk, when something catches my eye on Pinterest.

First, an admission.  I am a Pinterest junkie.  I pin and repin and well repin.  The “what if’s…  the “some day” home…  the idyllic childhood crafts that the perfect mommy is doing with her kids…  The superfood recipes and the junk food game-day recipes…  a treasure trove of the “I wish’s” and the “If I were a better mom” ideas.  Or the “Only if I had time” ideas.  Pinterest in itself is an addiction… it oozes visual delights and reflects on self-improvement.  It is all things that busy moms need and love.  A virtual bulletin board of the best and the brightest.  But let’s be honest here, my life boards are piles of magazine cut-outs, notes from the schools, junk mail that needs to be shredded and scribbled unchecked to-do lists.

On this occasion, it's not the multimillion dollar interior of a great room that captivates me or an adorable artsy craft that seems so simple and a great idea in concept...  instead it's a "The 20 Things No One Ever Told Us About Raising a Boy:  And Every One Is True".  I am curious and instantly am taken.  Okay, people if you know me, I am not an "email forward" type of person.  I am not a chainletter person.  I once in a great while read the political comics of a weekly news magazine, but I rarely believe sharing around those adorable puppies or that story supposedly from so-and-so's cousin.  I believe that an article a “Top List" of anything can not sum it up.  At least not for me.

I am intrigued and compelled to click through.  The first one on the list that I click through to is "The Penis Comparisons Start Early".  I start laughing thinking of my boys.  And all products of the Y gene for that matter.  After I read the comical, albeit true, blurb I continue to click through the list...   

• "Star Wars Takes Over Earlier Than You Expect" (You can say that again, check out my thoughts on Star Wars here)...
• "Matchbox cars and trucks will multiply on their own in your home" (yep, step on ‘em every day)...
• "You Will Revise Your Wedding Fantasies -- And Be Fine With It" (my greatest fear come true)... 
• "Rough housing is Innate...  it's normal and experts say it's healthy" (I break up brawls daily in my house)...
• "Boys Love Their Moms" (I smile.  That really says it.)

Faint tears well in my eyes.  I feel my self giggle as I lift my tired body up the stairs to bed.  As I crawl in, I begin telling my husband about the list and we laugh at the humor.  “It’s all so real…  So true,” I tell him.  “You must read this article.”

The next morning my bed feels icy.  I love it.  I stretch and roll over.  I can barely lift my dull head.  I don't know if body is in recovery mode after the marathon of heat, but I linger in bed for some more time.  The rushing of water in the shower tells me that my husband is getting ready to leave for work.  I hear the boys playing downstairs.  Laughter and hysterical shouting fills the house on the bright summer morning.  I want to stay in my ice box bed all day.  The cold sheets encircling me and my lazy head sinks down in my pillow.

I stretch and roll out and greet my husband.  He tells me that I should really go check on the boys.  I feel like telling him that he can.  But instead I slowly drag myself up and then fling my feet over the side of the bed and drop my weight onto my feet.  I walk halfway down the stairs and peer down to see the boys wrestling on the floor of the foyer.  I smirk and remember the article...  "Roughhousing is normal and even healthy."

I am snapped into a new dimension of boy insanity, as the most unbelievable event happens right before my eyes.  The boys don't even realize that I am watching.  Dylan stands up before I can even comprehend what's going on as he hurls a fluffy, white object at Michael's head.  I rub my eyes, still trying to wake up and be sure that I am seeing the scene accurately.  The object smacks Michael squarely in the face and explodes.  LITERALLY, EXPLODES into a million tiny pieces.  I can't really make out what it is, but the large object gives the appearance that it's a sack of flour dulling slamming into Michael’s face and raining tiny white particles everywhere.

Next, I see the remaining object that wasn't decimated sink from Michael's face to the ground with an exhausted thud.  I react immediately since Dylan threw it with such menace, and the residual mess is now undeniably decorating my foyer.  As I run down the stairs, Dylan laughs his mischievous snickers.  Michael is frozen in his place completely stunned.  His expression still in a state shock.  He doesn't know whether to laugh at his brother's antics or to start wailing out of anger.  I begin yelling as I approach and Dylan throws his hands over his ears.

Roughhousing, yeah right.

Matters only get worse when I identify the weapon of mass destruction.  A diaper.  A fully-loaded pee-soaked diaper that Dylan had been wearing overnight.  No mistake.  Size 6.  Heavy in mass and large enough to hit a target like his brother.  I don’t know if this kid is insane or brilliant.

The particles that are now all over Michael's hair, his shirt, the wood floor, our throw rugs and frankly the entire foyer are the gel beads of a diaper.  These weird spongy gel beads absorb the urine and its yuk smell.  You might never know they are present in the high-tech diapers of today, unless, frankly, your three year old lobs one at his brother.

My GAG reflex is emerging.

Only my boys.  And, to think, for once I was going to let the roughhousing go...  Normal and healthy...  I snort at the thought.

Dylan is now (clearly) pants-less, Michael is coming to, and my husband is late for work.  I am in a fit yelling in tongues.  Somehow, I am able to communicate to my husband that Michael needs to be bathed and Michael heads upstairs to get cleaned up.

Dylan is sent to the "thinking spot", which is our version of time out.  How politically correct of us.  I feel myself sneer as I send him to the “thinking spot”.  The term, thinking spot, doesn't exactly carry the "heavy-hitter" weight to underscore how truly upset I am.  Something like "the drama dungeon" or the "smarty pants asylum"...  anything else might have more zest or umph where they can wait out their issues.

I refocus.  This is not just a mess, it is downright UNSANITARY.  GAG again.  I wonder where my mom HAZMAT suit is at this moment as I envision a urine cloud over the area that I am trying to conceive of cleaning.  Might it take a mushroom cloud appearance?  Or more of a stealth odorless, tasteless WMD that we are dealing with?  I had no idea years ago that moms also earn a degree in chemical or biological weaponry.

I try to vacuum the gel beads with the hose of the vacuum.  Only half of the beads give way and are swept up.  The other half remains on the floor further provoking me after a pass with the vacuum attachment.  The gel material is sticky enough that it doesn’t immediately pull into the suction of the vacuum.   I concede and try the vacuum in the upright position.  None of the gel beads move.  I try wiping it with wet paper towels and the gel beads bounce around in all different directions taunting me.  They pull against the paper towel and do not cooperatively sweep up or disappear.  Finally, I try sweeping these suckers up with a broom and pan.  They bounce, stick, and pull with traction against the flow of the bristles of the broom.  I am livid.  HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO CLEAN THIS?!

I excuse Dylan from the thinking spot and direct him to come and help me clean the mess.  Like a lengthy question on a final exam, I mentally answer out my answer the best of my options.  Dylan stands there and stares at me as I try to gather my thoughts on the multiple choice Mommy exam.

“If you were a mom, and your kid obliterated a diaper, how would you clean the mess?”

A)   A vacuum that only works moderately

B)   Wet papertowels which does a mediocre job of catching the loose material

C)   A Broom that spreads the mess around

D)   Leave the house running and screaming down the street

E)    D is not an option.

With few options, I grab the vacuum and tediously begin cleaning with the attachment.  I have to pass and repass the same spot a couple times to clean up the disgusting gel beads.  I make Dylan help me with the clean up.  My husband has bathed Michael and heads out the door.  As he walks toward the door, frankly with freedom in view (lucky guy!), Dylan is frantic and upset.  He begins begging Daddy to stay.  After quite a few hugs, high fives, fist pumps, blowing kisses, waves, Dylan runs out the door after my husband.  I see his bare bottom head out the back sliding glass door, his little feet moving frantically and his voice wailing.  I run out after him and my husband sees pants-less Dylan running toward the car.

Daddy scoops him up and brings him back into the house. We get Dylan in a pair of underwear so he is no longer baring it all.   Now on the third try, my husband successfully makes it out the door.  The boys and I sit on the front porch and wave at him as we do every morning as his car pulls out of the drive way.  The boys shout their send-offs to Daddy for the day.  “Daddy, tonight I will read you THREE stories!” Dylan yells.  Michael projects, “I love you, I will tell you stories tonight, Daddy.”

Undeniably, there is the truth staring every parent of boys in the face...  the things that occur when you raise boys.  The ones you wish you knew before you even considered having kids.  The ones you wish you were prepared for.  And the ones that there is no conceivable way you CAN prepare for.  To say the least, I would’ve never believed that one morning I’d watch my own toddler son squarely nail his brother in the face with a soppy diaper.  To raise boys takes will, guts and tenacity.  To raise my boys, well that’s a whole other level. 

And off we go.  Another day at the races and I haven’t even had my cup of coffee.

Darwinism.

I find myself with one foot stuck in the thick muddy tasks of every day life and the other foot in the rapidly swirling, rushing waters of the impending move to-do's that are ever mounting.

One weekday afternoon, I am standing at my kitchen sink, day-dreaming over countless plastic pieces and scalding hot soapy water while washing the boys' nebulizers for their daily breathing treatments.  I am gazing into space, lost in my thoughts of how the hell we are going to get life in order.  Pretty standard for me, but on this afternoon it is a thought that is quickly ballooning larger than life.

I am startled out of my cloud when I hear Michael screaming agitatedly.  Actually, he is screaming as though an ax murderer has stormed through the front door and arrived in the kitchen.  I glance up with confusion trying to piece together what is going on.  He is standing only 15 feet in front of me having the loudest spaz attack I have ever heard.  It is deafening.

He is frozen pointing at our visitor, although it isn't an ax murderer, rather a black bird with a red stripe on it wings.  The bird is hacking nervously on one of the screens of our kitchen windows situated around our kitchen table.  Michael, who happened to be standing right in front of the windows is now beyond Level 2 Kid Panic Mode and has entered full blown Level 1, Red Alert Child Hysteria.  My brain is still not understanding his fear.  I witness veins popping out of his neck as he screams.  His face is almost scarlet red.  Then it hits me in the decibel shattering chaos...  The bird is INSIDE my house perched on the screen and pecking furiously trying to get OUTSIDE.  Now, Michael's face nears a hue of purple.

I suspect that I myself have gone to a shade of ghost white since I swear I feel the blood drain out of my body.  I know if I look down I will pass out.  The bird continues to angrily flap its wings.  The bird and I at this point are both trying to figure out how we got in this situation.  I drop the nebs and stop the rushing faucet.  I make eye contact with Michael and as calmly as I can tell him to quiet down.  I swiftly usher Michael out of the kitchen and try to focus on what to do.

What the hell...  what the hell?!!  The what hell do I do next?  Some retail stores are stuck with birds permanently because they just can't get them out the door.

I grab a magazine off of the counter and fling our back door open.  I will this stupid bird, who obviously isn't the smartest thing in the world, to leave.

Please, please, please, please leave!  Isn't this a really bad omen or something?   Who the hell besides me has a damn bird fly into their house?  I make long gliding, controlled motions from the bird to the open door.  I am whoosing air with the magazine past the bird.  As I am telepathically commanding the bird to leave, I start thinking of Darwinism.  This stupid bird surviving in the wilderness of surburban Chicago is amusing.  And likewise, this bird surviving in our home is even more ludicrous.  How did it fly into our house??

As I stand in the garbage pile that life has thrown my way, I have to believe I am paying my dues and that the storm clouds will one day part.  Or there is something more behind why these baffling things happen to me.  It defies reason that certain events happen.  In this case, it's just plain stupid.

Sometimes, I can't figure it out, even if I tilt my head to the right just a bit to view a situation from a different angle or even if I stand back to look at the forest instead of just the one damn tree.  I used to be that young professional who was polished.  I used to be a great friend who would just call to see how you are doing.  I used to have it together and spend time quietly reading my favorite novel or even oil painting.  I USED TO BE THAT PERSON.  Now, I am schoo-ing a squawking living creature away from my dinette.

Hello?! Bird, this is prison for you...  you might want to ask our dog some days.  Please, PLEASE!  The bird stretches its wings broadly after a few minor flutters and as quickly as it arrived in my kitchen, it departs.  One swoop and it is gone, but not after leaving an aftermath of poop.

Oh, the damage.

First I am off to investigate for its point of entry.  I reason through the possibilities.  We have no air-conditioning as we have been in a embattled discussion with a company who we suspect contributed to the demise of the air conditioner as caused by the death of our furnace (refer to our-furnace-outage-in-the-dead-of-winter-blog titled "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"...).  No air, means open windows...  WITH SCREENS.  And then it hits me like a semi.  The guest room.  We have family staying with us and it is the one room in the house that has no screens and gets the hottest.  Earlier I had jimmied the windows so that they were open at the top where the blinds were gathered up and blocking the opening.  It was no more than open six inches wide enough to let air pass through, but the blinds were covering the opening.  The damn bird hit an unbelievable target and pushed its way in.  What are the chances?!

I walk the first floor to find bird droppings in the family room and the kitchen, which is exactly the same decelerated path a bird would likely take from the second floor guest bedroom.  I clean the mess as I go.  I don't even have to do any more Sherlock Holmes sleuthing at this point.  There are bird droppings on the rail over looking the family room and all over the guest room.

On the carpet, on the window sills, on the linens.

Evidently, birds must poop when they are In survival mode.  YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING ME?!

All I can wonder is how much bacteria has entered my house (clearly, I am not rationale at this point since obviously a home naturally has a wealth of bacteria anyways).  And what bacteria?!  After I clean this mess I will need to be dipped in a bath of bleach to feel clean again.  And I can't even consider washing the boys nebs.  I ponder if I can bleach the carpet.  Then reassure myself that, no, it is probably not a good idea.  At leas maybe the window sill???  I realize my insanity setting in.  Agh.  I feel like disease is all around me.  Damn bird.

Survival is my only mode.  I have learned that during this phase in my sweet family's life, I am responsible to react every moment of every day from sunrise and survive until another sunset.  Weeks after the bird's cameo, I wake up to the dog puking.  And minutes later find that my husband has left a pack of gum in his pocket and it went through the dryer.  And, yes, I check pockets.  He put it in a random cargo pocket.  To add insult to injury, the dryer is new.  Only a couple days old and now the drum is covered in minty, green freshness.  I spend plenty of elbow grease cleaning it so the next batch of garments aren't also plagued with gobs of pliable chewing gum.  Survival.

It's almost laughable.  Or cryable.  It's a toss up.

The boys excitement for a new adventure is apparent.  We read Mister Rogers, "Moving" and talk about our trip to the new house in New Jersey.  The bon voyage party has come and gone.  Most of the good-byes and tears are done.

Now, it's go time.  The boys spend the day at their grandparents as my husband and I are getting things orderly.  Among the boxes, he casually informs me that he also needs to get something critical completed for work by midnight two days from now.  He works best under pressure.  He really has a talent for it.  I on the other hand am a planner, but the whole bird thing is teaching me to simply react.  Planning lately is just not an option.

The frenzy of the house getting packed happens faster than a blink.  The packers descend on our house and start their drill.  I can't even sort the remaining socks and pair them.  Nope, they packed them.  The garbage bags, where are those?  I need one.  Yep, they packed those too.  Good thing for the bird that it got out.  Otherwise, it would've been packed up along with the rest of our life.  The dog pouts under the bed, angry that we are moving.  She might also be wondering if the the packers are coming for her too.

The afternoon wraps up and boxes are nearly all the remain.

The dog is clearly confused and my husband and I start to plot out what is ahead.  I leave and head to Papa and Nonna's to help put the boys to bed and relax for a while.  Bathing the boys, getting in their evening treatments, and trying to get them to settle in and sleep over at their grandparents is not an easy task list, but all are critical.  After they are finally winding down and almost asleep my husband arrives after wrapping at our house and signing off with the packing crew.

Before he starts to tackle his work, he heads up to take a quick shower.  Over a cup of coffee and conversation with Nonna, I hear him scamper down and stunned he realizes that he has no t-shirts in the bag he packed.  No shirts at all.  Yep, the movers packed those too before he could get them in the bag he had also set to the side.  See, I told ya, it's that survival thing again.  I shake my head and laugh as I sip my coffee hoping the scorch the nervous butterflies in my stomach.

He scavenges random shirts at his parents as though they are his life-line for the coming move.  Once he is satisfied with his new collection of old sports t-shirts and random fundraising shirts for his wardrobe, he hunkers down to focus on his work.  After a good hour it is a obvious that his efforts (of course) would be thwarted.  His computer is giving him trouble.  After trouble-shooting with 24-hour IT people on the phone, it is inevitable.  He has to go into work the next morning, battling rush hour traffic into downtown Chicago, to fix the glitch with his computer.  Conveniently, the moving truck will roll up promptly at the same time at the house.  We'll do what we gotta do.  Survive.  Exasperated, I yank on a lock of my hair, nervously laugh, and giving up plunk my head on the kitchen table.

The next morning, hubby hurries out the door as I ready the kids to meet the movers at the house.  Michael and I watch as Optimus Prime (the best way we could describe to Michael what the moving van would be like since he is obsessed with Transformers) arrives at our house, backing up gingerly onto our small cul-du-sac.

A wave of sadness swells in me.  The memories in this house like that damn bird are irreplaceable.  Random memories scan through my brain at warp speed like a high-res imaging computer.  Our dog first walked into our home as a puppy and the first thing she did was poop under the dining room table.  The Chicago White Sox won the World Series when we had just moved in here.  Time stopped both times with the joy of learning we were having a baby in this home.  And time stopped again when they each were diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis.  The Christmas parties filled the walls of this house with smells of food, wine, and cinnamon.  There have been countless times we have all been sick in this house.  I think of our beloved next-door neighbors who have helped with a cup of sugar way more than I can begin to explain.  I envision the Christmas tree there and the Easter baskets over there.  I reminisce of cups of coffee with family and friends at the kitchen table.  And all the glasses of wine at the dining room table.  Weddings, parties, first birthdays, Thanksgivings, and just hanging out in comfy clothes on the couch.  The bustle of bath time every night and Dylan streaking through the upstairs hallway and rooms.  The dance parties with the boys and the music blaring in the office.  The laughter.  The drama.  The commotion, the activity, and the life.  In this house.

I wipe away a tear and stand very still watching the truck halt in front of our driveway.  It stands in its temporary spot, ready to start loading our home.

My heart gives way to thrill and new things.  New friends.  A new little red school for Michael.  A new home.  A new role for my husband at work.  A new pulmonologist, a new hospital, a new pharmacy.  Even new insurance.  New experiences at the shore as the boys see the ocean for the first time.  These too will some day be irreplaceable, I remind myself.

I pull Michael close, and together we inspect the eternally good Transformer parked in front of our home.  Optimus looks ready.  And so are we.  I grip Mikey as he stares in sci-fi fantasy at the behemoth.  Entranced with wonder, he stares at the truck waiting any second for it to transform into a three-story robot.

There is but only one way to survive this time...  laughter.  At least for now, I will survive.

The laughter continues...  stay tuned.