Category: At the Moment

(By the way, that’s supposed to read “look BAD in front of the kid.” This is what happens when I Twitter before my morning coffee. 😀 )

You might have seen this on my Twitter stream this morning … here’s the story behind that tweet.

When you’ve been married for as long as I have (19 years), you learn there are certain things you should, and should not say, in front of your spouse.

Especially when young ears are around.

Jazz has band practice every Tuesday evening. So last night, Kevin and I got into the car to run up to the school and pick him up.

We drive up and park in our usual spot. It’s a spot away from the main stream of traffic because we can get out of the parking lot a lot faster. We’ve been parking there to pick Jazz up from practice since school began.

This is nothing new.

But somehow, Jazz missed seeing us drive up and though we could clearly see him, he didn’t notice us.

Annoying.

So, I called him on his cell phone …

One time

Two times

Three times

Four times before he finally realized his phone was going off and he picked up.

Annoying.

(I could have gotten out and just walked over to get him but 1. that would have embarrassed Jazz and 2. I would have been walking in front of several cars with their headlights shining and OH LOOK AT ME! I’m on stage, I hate that).

Why did he not notice his phone was ringing (or vibrating, as the case may be)? Because he was busy being chased around the yard by another kid.

They were just goofing around, it was no biggie. Jazz stopped long enough to answer my call, realize that we were waiting for him and started to our car.

Only the kid that had been goofing around with him, came with him. And tackled him. The boys were so busy laughing and acting like idiots that they didn’t look before they crossed the parking lot AND THEN thought another car was ours and went so far as to open the back door of this strange car.

The kid hanging on to Jazz opened the car door – I guess he was going to shove him in. But Jazz pulled away and they closed the door. Only not entirely and the poor owner of the car had to get out and shut it all the way when they laughingly stumbled off.

The boys reach our car and the kid takes off laughing and waves goodbye.

I didn’t really think too much of the incident, it just warmed my heart that he was getting along with his peers, having a good time and I don’t know, acting like a boy.

But Kevin was not amused. At all. He scolded Jazz and told him that he was acting like a middle school kid and not a high schooler and did he look before he crossed that parking lot? And did he apologize to the woman who’s car door they opened?

Jazz’s good mood immediately deflated and I jumped in and said, “It’s no big deal, he was just acting like a kid.”

……..

Dead silence.

……..

I knew, as soon as the words left my mouth, that I was in trouble. We made a pact, a long time ago, that we would always stand united in front of the kids. Even though we may disagree with the other’s stance, we would talk about it later when the kids weren’t around.

I was a little annoyed with Kevin. After all, he was acting like a kid having a good time, did he really have to criticize him so much? But life went on and I didn’t think too much more about it ……

…… until this morning when Kevin let me know, in no uncertain terms, that he didn’t appreciate my contradicting him in front of Jazz. It embarrassed him and undermined his authority.

I didn’t answer him and we went our separate ways – he resumed getting his breakfast and I continued drinking my coffee and checking emails.

But I stewed. And I thought about what he said. And I replayed the incident back through my mind and really SAW what happened and you know what?

Kevin was right. He DID act immaturely and he SHOULD HAVE looked before he crossed that parking lot (there were a lot of parents picking up their kids) and he SHOULD HAVE apologized to that woman in the car.

And I should have just kept my big mouth shut.

So, when Jazz finished his breakfast, I walked him into our bedroom and standing before Kevin, I told Jazz that his dad was right in scolding him. That I knew he was just having fun and that he was being propelled by that other kid, but there comes a time when you have to say, “Okay, that’s enough. Cut it out” and take control of the situation. I also told him that that was exactly how he SHOULDN’T act on this upcoming St. Louis trip with his band.

Jazz was taught a lesson, I saved face in front of Kevin and my world was upright once more.

But it was hard. It was really hard to swallow my pride, to look at the situation objectively and to admit that Kevin was indeed right. But that’s what marriage is all about — being willing to admit your mistakes, having the courage to own up to them and apologize. After all, if the situation had been reversed, I would definitely expect Kevin to back me up; I owe the man the same courtesy.

These little life lessons? Are one of the biggest reasons we’re still married today. 🙂

I think I might have inadvertently poisoned my oldest son.

Here’s the thing – Dude never has any energy. He’s worse than a limp rag and his favorite saying? “That takes too much effort.”

Yes, he’s the epitome of lazy.

Some of this, has to do with the fact that he’s a teenage boy and could care less. Some of it has to do with the fact that he’s a teenage boy and he physically requires a lot of sleep, even though he’s too stubborn to see it and often fights me on the whole sleep issue.

But some of it is because he’s lethargic. The boy sits around, all day, every day (when he’s home from school that is) and stares at his computer monitor. So OF COURSE, he’s going to be tired. Think how tired you get when you’ve been sitting around all day – like say, waiting for your flight or at the hospital waiting to hear how a surgery went. Sitting around is exhausting.

And our bodies were designed to MOVE. So I know a big part of why Dude complains about being tired all the time is simply because he DOESN’T MOVE. (I’ve since made a semi-deal with him — I won’t nag him to get out of his chair if he will take the initiative and walk on the treadmill once in a while).

However, and I haven’t told Dude this, I suspect one of the reasons he might be tired all the time is because he’s inherited my anemia. I first found out I was anemic when I was pregnant with Dude and they prescribed iron supplemants. Ever since then, I’ve taken iron (Slow Fe is good to take if iron upsets your stomach) and I can REALLY tell a difference when I haven’t taken it in a while. I’m sluggish and I just don’t have any energy at all.

So I can definitely relate to Dude’s tiredness. It sucks when you can’t even summon up the energy to move across the room, let alone clean house, cook dinner, pick up the kids, laugh with your spouse ….

I’ve given Dude some of my iron supplement in the past, but only sporadically, after all, I have no idea why he’s so tired and like I said, it could simply be because he’s a growing teenage boy and his body demands more rest right now.

But I’ve been experimenting with him, just to see if it has any effect. And Dude is so trusting of me that he doesn’t think twice whenever I give him something to take (I regularly give the kids vitamin C pills, or general vitamin pills), which is sort of scary shouldering all of that trust.

I haven’t really noticed a significant difference with the iron (again, it was a pill here and there, nothing consistent), but I have noticed a difference in his energy level whenever he drinks a protein drink right before bed at night (he mixes the protein in with his milk).

But again, we’re not consistent with anything and Dude continues to complain to me about his lack of energy (I really think a large part of his problem is his physical inactivity).

I talked to Kevin about his complaint and he looked up some natural alternatives (we’re not big doctor/drug people – if we can find a natural remedy, we’re going to take it). And he suggested that maybe he was low on vitamin B.

I swear, our cabinets look like a health food store – we have nearly every vitamin made on our shelves and that’s mainly because Kevin has been trying different combination of vitamins in an effort to help him sleep better.

(Which by the way, he’s still not sleeping through the night. He’s not waking up with headaches anymore, now he’s waking up hungry. And this is even when he eats something right before bed.)

So, I thought I’d try vitamin B on Dude. I gave him a super-complex vitamin B supplement on Saturday and Sunday he woke up with a raging headache. In fact, he had a pretty bad headache all day Sunday and all he wanted to do was sleep. I caught him, several times, sleeping throughout the day.

At first, I was really annoyed and just thought he was being lazy. Then I thought maybe he was coming down with something though he said his sinuses were fine, but his throat was dry and achy.

He took some NyQuil before bed Sunday night and woke up Monday feeling great.

“Okay,” I told myself, “his body just needed the extra rest. No big deal.”

Only, when Kevin got home from work last night complaining of a raging headache and feeling really tired (he went to bed at 8:30 last night), I began to get suspicious.

I asked Kevin if he happened to take one of those super-complex B vitamin supplements and guess what, he had.

So now I’m thinking that that had to have something to do with Dude feeling bad on Sunday. I mean, it’s just too much of a coincidence NOT to be, you know?

I haven’t told Dude my theory, I don’t want to freak him out, I’m already freaked out for the both of us, but it taught me a valuable lesson on being more careful what I give my children.

Yes I know, that title is totally cliché, but it works. Because it’s true.

If the shoe fits …

Oh look, another well-worn cliché.

Springfield received five inches of rain in less than 24 hours. To say we are saturated would be saying dogs eat their own poop. It’s pretty stinkin’ obvious (get it? Stinkin’? Hehe).

It was a challenge to pick the boys up yesterday. They have to walk along side the road until they reach the tennis courts, and then cross the street to meet me. Only when it rains, water builds up by the side of the road (think river wide) and when the cars drive past, they inevitably splash water up on the kids walking on the sidewalk.

Some do it accidentally, some do it on purpose because let’s be honest, some kids are rotten and think it’s funny to drench these poor kids trying to walk home in pouring rain.

In order to protect my kids, I drove up onto the curb alongside this road and waited for them to come out. And even though it wasn’t that long of a distance to walk and they were both using umbrellas (which is saying a lot because HELLO! Teenage boys and umbrellas – not cool. But it was truly coming down), they still got quite wet.

But whatever, it’s water, right? They won’t melt.

At any rate, it was sort of hairy picking them up because traffic was horrendous and slow moving and I was parked on the side of the street that isn’t really accomodated to allow cars to park, so I had to hold my breath each and every time someone passed me in the hopes they didn’t rip out my side mirror.

But again, whatever, that’s a small price to pay to protect my babies. Right parents?

By the time dinner rolled around, our yard was flooded and the huge drainage hole across the street was close to over flowing. Kevin and I were watching “The Mentalist” (he loves that show – me? Meh), when we heard this gurgling under the house.

Uh oh.

So, went to our pantry (because my clever husband made an entrance to the crawl space through our pantry as opposed to having to go outside and through that way), and opened up the hatch.

Water. A lot of water.

Kevin grabbed a flashlight, got down on his belly and stuck his head in the hold to see what was going on.

A pipe had come loose on the sump pump and water was spewing everywhere – think geyser spewing.

So, the man donned his swim trunks, an old t-shirt, his old lawn mowing shoes, grabbed his tools and lowered himself into the cold, murky, wet depths below. The water came up to his ankles – there was about 8 inches of standing water.

Swell.

The man, half bent over and half crawling, pushed his way over to the sump pump. He worked on tightening the clamp and putting the thing back together. In the meantime, I’m fretting and laying down 30 old towels because I know he’s going to be oozing mud when he returns.

He finishes the job and lifts himself out of the hole. After making sure he’s not tracking half of Missouri across my carpet, we turn the pump back on and head outside to see if water is indeed spewing from the exit pipe.

It’s not only spewing, it’s GUSHING! That sump pump is really awesome.

Kevin stays in his swim trunks, just to make sure everything is on the up and up and I lay down some towels on the couch so he doesn’t turn my red couch into a rust color and we resume watching “The Mentalist.”

Because I worry, I got up to check on the water gushing from the pipe progress.

Only, there’s no gushing going on.

Aargh!

I tell Kevin, we turn off the pump and he again sticks his head down into the hole to see what’s up.

The bucket that he put the sump pump in is floating on top of the water. To give you a little perspective … the sump pump works quite similar to the floating ball in a toilet. When the water reaches a certain level and the floating ball reaches a certain level, the sump pump turns on and it pumps out the water, when the water recedes and the floating ball lowers, it shuts off.

But the pump (and the brick he had put into the bucket to hold it down) wasn’t enough weight to keep the bucket down into the hole, so the pump had shut off and we still have lake Springfield under our house.

So, once again, Kevin wraps up his flashlight and drill in a plastic bag and he goes under the house to drill holes in the bucket so surrounding water would get into the bucket, it would fill and yadda yadda yadda.

Again, it worked and water gushed out.

But when it stopped (because yes, I once again checked – I told you guys I was anal about stuff like this ), it didn’t have anything to do with the sump pump, but with the fact that there are grooves worn into our dirt floor and water was trapped in those grooves and not draining toward the sump pump. So Kevin plans on going back under the house this weekend to level out those grooves so the remaining water will drain.

There’s not much water left, but enough to cause health problems if we leave it alone.

So … it was a rather unpleasant night last night (especially for Kevin!). But I thank GOD that I’m married to a man who thinks about things like this because if Kevin hadn’t put that sump pump in, we’d have woken up to about two feet of water under our house and though we have a pretty big crawl space by comparison, it’s not deep enough to hold that much water.

Have you guys seen that commercial for FEMA flood insurance? Where the people are going about their business and totally ignoring the fact that their house is filling up with water?

I had dreams about that happening to us last night. Not fun.

I’d like to write little vignettes, little moments in time, just to document my thoughts and the events of the moment. My biggest challenge, will be keeping it short.

Hence the “vignette” part.

I tend to think that I can’t possibly post anything under 1,000 words. I don’t know why I think that. Actually, I don’t think that, it just sort of works out that way. I’m long winded, I guess.

Let’s see if I can break that mindset because sometimes? Precious moments are simply that – moments.

I mentioned that we took Jazz in for an orthodontist consultation. They took x-rays and determined that the boy still has THREE baby teeth.

Three. I was shocked. I mean, the kid is 14 1/2 – is that even normal??

But no worries, the permanent teeth were clearly visible and the baby teeth were literally hanging on by a thread.

We went to Panera Bread Monday night as part of a fundraiser for the high school band. And while there, Jazz bit down a little too hard on a piece of bacon and though his tooth didn’t come out, it knocked it pretty loose.

We came home and the boy grabbed a paper towel and immediately worked it out. No fuss. No drama. The tooth popped out and there wasn’t even any blood. Which leads me to believe the sucker had been ready to come out for quite some time and Jazz simply ignored it.

He does that. He ignores his teeth. He ignores them when they get loose and he simply waits for the tooth to fall out on it’s own. Or it gets knocked into an awkward position and it hurts him to eat and he has no choice but to get the thing out because by that time, it annoys him.

Jazz is getting really good at ignoring physical discomfort. I think that’s a good thing, to a point, of course. But these past several weeks have really taught him a lot about enduring discomforts. He’s been pretty sick, a head cold, and yet, he’s still had to practice and show up for his performances. He’s had to emotionally and physically move past his aches and pains and concentrate on the task at hand.

Though it’s about killed me to see him SO tired and feeling SO bad, I think it’s been a good lesson for him to learn.

Life, unfortunately, doesn’t stop because of one loose tooth or a stuffy head.