This is how Nate mows.
I was lying in the hammock yesterday, critiquing my husband’s weed whacking skills.

Ethan: Mom, why do they call it a weed whacker?

The thing I think I love most about my husband at this juncture in our relationship is that the man answers every single question his children have. Every single one. I’m to the point in our preschool-ness that I desperately just want to make stuff up. 72 questions in an hour, it’s easy to falter. Okay, I want to fold after 4. I can’t wait for the kid to be able to read so he can get his own smart phone and google the answers. Also, so I can text him to bring me stuff in the basement so I don’t have to yell for him for 20 minutes before he answers.

This is all happening while my children are playing Hewks the Docker (your guess is as good as mine) at a “level” with the hose. They are soaked from head-to-toe and all I keep thinking about is how we bought a HE washer so we would use less water and now my children have used enough water that we could have just provided water to a sub-Saharan village. At this rate, let’s just fill random plastic BPA-laden bottles with it. My husband senses a green rant coming on and tells the kids to knock it off.

I crawled out of the hammock to mow the lawn because, you know, my husband was weed whacking. Nothing makes you feel lazier than sitting in a hammock while someone is decapitating 2 foot high weeks that have grown up along the perimeter of the “compound.” My neighbors will be so proud. Which brings me to an aside. A neighbor posted on the ‘hood message board about a rogue grass growing in the neighborhood and her attempts to combat it. These attempts were very complex and heartfelt. I need this kind of time on my hands, people. Really.

I mowed the lawn as The Baby stood at the edge of the grass and told me where to go. It wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last.

Exhausted with my 45 minutes of work, I parked the mower under the porch, threw the keys on the table and climbed back into the hammock. I started to write this really heart-warming post on PBS Supersisters which I promptly deleted this morning and replaced with a thinly-veiled mockery of the public school system today.

My husband handed me a Mai Tai. This is where I should be grateful but instead I am critical. At this very moment I determine that I cannot ever, in fact, be an alcoholic because I just cannot abide cheap alcohol. I would rather have no Mai Tai than a Mai Tai with a non-Myer’s Dark Rum float. Or maybe I could be an alcoholic if I came into a lot of money. That’s not happening any time soon so I will stick with my high booze standards and only drink one day a week. Shockingly my husband gets defensive and tells me they were OUT of Myers and I guess I should feel bad but I don’t. I realize though, that there is a lot of cheap rum in my closet so I’m just going to go sober for a month or two until we get rid of the Caribbean crap from years past in the pantry. I’m too poor to dump it down the sink.

I hadn’t even had a sip of my drink yet and my husband yells from his spot under the porch.

D: The baby is on the mower.
K: They play on it all the time. It’s not like it can drive itself.
D: Did you leave the keys in it?
K: Of course not. Now you are just talking crazy. Are you crazy?
D: He has the keys (holding up the keys).
K: No, he doesn’t (opening an eyeball and looking at the table, where the keys used to be) Um, sorry.
D: He had the keys in the mower.
K: He did not.
D: He did.
K: Crap. Thank God for that 80 pound weight requirement for it to start.

With that, I looked to my other children and added up their weights in my head. And I realized why they all get on when they played on the mower. Yep, we have our 80+ pound requirement met, people.

And the mower keys went into the safe instead of on the table. I love it when a crisis is averted.

Derek complained the other day that we needed to take the boys for haircuts because Nate has too much hair. His is like mine. It’s ridiculously fine but there’s a boatload of it.

Did I take them on Friday? NOOOO. I went to the Museum of Natural History with 3 children to meet up with Susan but then I never found her because there were 7 million people at the Museum of Natural History. And every single one of them wanted a picture of their whiny kids (and only THEIR whiny kids) in front of the Mastodon. And they wanted the ENTIRE mastodon in the picture so that meant that they needed to stand 40 feet away. Did I mention that they did not want any of MY children in their posterity picture?

You should know that my children are going to be the Where’s Waldo of about 80 DC vacation photo albums this year because they just don’t abide by that craziness. There should just be a line like the one for the Hope Diamond where everyone gets an unobstructed flash photo where nothing is in focus but you also don’t have Nate smiling wildly at you since he is my strange child and not yours.

So we didn’t make it to the barbers until Saturday afternoon. The chick had barely taken a #2 to the back of Nate’s head when she screamed. Yes, there was a HUGE TICK stuck in his head. Tick removal is not included in haircuts at this place so I had to do it myself. He had a huge welt and then I knew for SURE he had Lyme.

K: Do I call the ped?
D: Do you want to call the ped?
K: What are you, a shrink? I’m asking for your opinion.
D: I don’t know.
K: Eh, I’ll wait until Monday. Why bother them on a Saturday?

But then he took a nose dive off of the lawn mower into the concrete and I thought that maybe we could get a two-fer at the ER. But the huge knot on his skull went down to a mere bump after 70 minutes and we decided to blow the whole thing off. No vomiting? Check. No zoning out? Well, it’s Nate we are talking about here. It depends. Let’s just say no more zoning out than usual.

So now he has no concussion but he probably has Lyme. I can’t win here, people.

I have a deathly fear of ticks. Seriously. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get Lyme disease like that girl I knew back in Jersey. She had that lingering malaise for like two years and was shocked when the doctor diagnosed her with Lyme. She rode horses 5 hours every day. I’m pretty sure she was the only one who was surprised. Although she is also the girl that picked up a demon while playing with a oui*a board one day in high school and her story was it stuck around for two years. I’m not saying that keeping yourself open to a bad spirit having at it makes you more susceptible to ticks. I’m just saying.

I do not come from people who are well-acquainted with the tick. My husband’s people? They fear nothing. Out come the tweezers and Bactine and everything’s good. When I called my husband to tell him I was pulling ticks off a certain child’s private regions, he sighed. I wanted to dial 911. Somehow I think there could be a middle road somewhere.

Like the first time I ever had a tick burrow his nasty head into my body. Rewind 5 years ago when I had the baby strapped on my back as I was trying on pants in the Nordstrom Rack dressing room. I was already feeling awesome about being 6 sizes bigger than I was pre-pregnancy. I looked up to see a black spot on my throat. I tried to swat it off and it stayed. I called my FIL and left a message with his secretary. I used the words “EMERGENCY” and “TICK” and “ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER.” My phone rang 2 minutes later in the dressing room.

FIL: I was in surgery. What’s up?
K: You left surgery? That doesn’t seem right. I mean, this is an very important emergency because I HAVE A TICK BURROWED IN MY NECK AND I MIGHT HAVE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER AND DIE IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE DIDN’T THAT GUY JUST DIE LAST WEEK OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER but now I feel a little bad for the guy who is still cut open in the trauma OR.
FIL: I was mostly done anyway. And I’m pretty sure you don’t have Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever since you live in Virginia, Kristen.
K: It could have gotten on a plane in Denver. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.
FIL: That’s true. But I’m guessing it’s either a deer tick or a dog tick.
K: Will I die?
FIL: No.
K: I’m really sorry you left surgery. I feel bad for that guy now.
FIL: It’s fine.

What is the purpose of marrying into a veritable medical dictionary if you can’t make a panicked call once in a while? But I didn’t let it go. I called my husband. When in doubt, keep going until you get the response you want.

K: I called your father. He left surgery to call me back.
D: I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually leave surgery to call you back about a tick.
K: Whatever.
D: I’ll be home in 3 hours. I’ll look at it then. Just take it out and put it in a baggie.
K: I think I have Lyme disease.
D: It takes a little longer than that to get Lyme.
K: Remember that girl from Jersey?
D: It’s really not that big a deal. Just save it in a bag until I get home.

I didn’t. I went to urgent care. Oh, don’t look at me. You never forget your first tick bite if you are a grown adult. And I had post partum depression. And I’m stupid. It was a dog tick. But it explains the path to emotional scarring that will forever haunt me. I cannot stand ticks.

This week alone? 5 ticks on a variety of family members. FIVE. I’m over it. I’m thinking about making the kids wear cat collars or hosing my husband down on the back porch. My tick removal skills are forever in QUESTION (”stop squeezing, you’re shoving tick guts into my leg,” “oh no I’m NOT”) and I have authorized bags of that toxic tick repellent be spread so thick it looks like a tick repellant sand beach out back but to no avail.

I’m not saying I’m rational. I’m just saying.

K: I cannot believe you believe that.
Him: I do.
K: You believe that they were alive on the island?
Him: This show has never had a coherent story line anyway. I’m not saying my theory is a good one. I’m just saying it’s easier to believe than your version. And it’s the producer’s story.
K: Seriously? It’s easier to believe that 40-something people survived a plane crash from 30,000 feet, only to be chased around a mystical island by a puff of smoke that wants to kill them all and is an evil twin but the good twin kinda sorta looks after them, as does some guy who drank some wine and now cannot be killed and who was part of a community that lived on the island 30 years ago that was trying to harness electromagnetic energy in some bizarre experiment. So everyone stays alive until they die at different random times and then they go to this ALTERNATE time zone where they are all back as if the plane landed and time has never passed and then they go to heaven? That’s easier to believe than that they died in the crash, there were different layers of purgatory, a la Dante’s Inferno ,and you needed to progress for one to the next (everyone gets off the island) before you could go to heaven?
Him: Well, when you put it that way, your version might sound a little more believable.
K: You think?

E: MOM!!! Can I paint today at church?

I swore. Because really. If you don’t believe in a God of forgiveness, then isn’t that whole church thing wasting your time? Derek gave me that “do you really have to swear in the church parking lot” and I gave him a “WHAT THE HELL?” look.

Nate had some painting thing and he was supposed to bring a dad-sized t-shirt to cover up his clothes. I looked down at the paint-stained polo shirt he was wearing and thought that maybe we should just let it go. But shockingly, we have rule followers in our house. If Nate is supposed to wear an old t-shirt, far be it from his parents to bring him down in the highly competitive preschool strata.

I began to rummage through the back of the van, looking for something. Anything. Mommy Needs a Cocktail in pepto pink? A little much, even for the forgiving church. I found one of these…

I apologized to the teacher for spreading our libertarian leanings to the other 3 year olds. Or not.

When I first typed those words, I accidentally typed “Monday.”  I think we can all agree that is a blog post in and of itself.

I have a very funny relationship with money.  There were days that I had lots and days that I have had less than none.  Most of the days are somewhere in between on the spectrum.  It happens to everyone.  The way my relationship with money manifests itself is how I react when I lose money.  In the past when I have rolled in the cash and then some person stole $80 out of my cash box, I was pissed off for 10 minutes and then I told myself that that person obviously needed the money more than I did.  Felon.

These days are significantly tighter.  It doesn’t mean I’m better at keeping track of my money.  It just means that I’m noticeably appreciative when I find that $10 in a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in years.

I came back from a show the other day and my kids tossed my bag in the car. I shoved everything back in and never thought about it again.  The next day I had to take a box to FedEx.  I really didn’t have to go to FedEx.  It’s just that I missed my Post Office closing at 5 and then went to one of those ones that stays open late but apparently only to entertain you and not to actually have your stuff shipped out late.  Seriously, Postal Service.  If the truck left at 5, your being open until 7 is useless to me.

I had to take three crazy children into FedEx to send something overnight and FedEx is not conducive to three bulls in a china shop.  I’m filling out the form because heaven forbid I HAVE ONE AT HOME and wishing to go back to our parent’s day when you could lock your children in the car at 7 at night on the curb in front of FedEx and go into FedEx alone and the biggest worry you would have is that someone mistakenly bites someone else’s finger off when they discover the pack of gum under the front seat and the race is on to eat it all, without removing the paper.

I grabbed Nate’s hand, switched the baby to another hip and threw the entire contents of my bag onto the ground.

E:  Mom.  What’s wrong?
K:  Ethan, I can’t find the change I just got from the girl at FedEx (frantically looking around).
E:  It’s okay, Mom.
K:  Not really.  I was going to buy you Chick-Fil-A with that change (and gas).
E:  It’s okay, Mom.  I can give you money.

My children are very generous with their money.  “Their” money being the change they find in random places like MY WALLET.  But it’s nice to know your kids will always offer to give you back your money when you need it.  I threw everything back into the bag and sat Nate against the front wheel of the van, threatening him with death if he moved.  I began to retrace my steps the 30 feet back to FedEx.  I got to the curb and saw the crumbled bills strewn across the road.  I picked them back up and ran back to the van. The Baby tried to grab them out of my hand as I ran.

E:  Mom.  I said I would give you a dollar for dinner.
K:  Thanks, Eat.
E:  I have money, Mom.  Do you need it?
K: Where do you have money?
E:  In my drawer back here (pointing to his seat in the van).  Let me give you a dollar, Mom.  I can buy my chicken sandwich.  I can buy yours too.
K:  A chicken sandwich costs more than a dollar, Eat, but thanks so much.
E:  Mom, you were worried.  I think you need it.

With that he pressed a dollar into my hand.  Except it was a $20.

K:  WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?
E:  I found it on the floor (pointing to the place between the seats where they had trashed my bag from the SHOW the day before).  You know how you say that when you find money in our clothes in the laundry, you get to keep it.  I FOUND it.
K:  Do you have more?

With that he pulled out 4 more 20s.  I am not lying.  My kid was sitting on $100 in the back of the van. 

I offered him a quarter for the $100 and he took it. It’s nice to realize your kids are going to be as good about money as you are.