Company Picnics

Who goes to company picnics? Employees with youngish kids that are looking for something different to do toward the end of a long boring summer. At least that's why I went.

The year was about 1991. That would have made K & K about 7 and 5 years old respectively. I had just started a new job with a company called Stryker in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I worked at their small corporate office at the time and had only been with the company a couple of months when the company picnic was announced. A day or two before the picnic was to be held I asked around the office if anyone was going or not. Out of the people I surveyed only a couple planned on attending but my boss told me that I should go because although not that many people from the office were going there were bound to be quite a few people there from the manufacturing facility which was located a short distance from the corporate office.

Being the outgoing person that I am, and looking for some way of entertaining the kids cheaply toward the end of a long boring summer, I was game.

So on the designated day K, K and I loaded ourselves up into the car looking forward to sunshine, yummy food, a few games and a little social interaction with my fellow workers and their kids. I followed the map and as we pulled into the park the kids excitedly pointed to the red and white striped tent which was peaking out above the trees. As usual, we were running a little late so when we entered the picnic there was no longer an official sign-up/registration/name tag thing going on so we just started making the rounds.

The kids gorged themselves and hotdogs, hamburgers, chips, baked beans, and different salads . . . you know, the usual company sponsored picnic fare. Then they partook of numerous activities and games; facepainting, races etc meanwhile I struck up friendly bantering with my fellow adult picnic goers, commenting on their adorable children and making small talk about the beautiful weather and fine event we were attending.

Finally, the day had worn on and it was time to wind down. K, K and I grabbed the last of the ice-cream treats that were being doled out and plopped ourselves down on a little plot of grass to enjoy our dessert.

There was a freindly family sitting next to us so I good naturedly inquired as to the the couples' affiliation with the company; which spouse worked there and in which department. It wasn't until the guy answered back and named the department he worked in which was something totally unfamiliar to me, that I glanced at his name tag and noticed that the company name on it was not Stryker at all, but some other outfit in the Kalamazoo area. At that point I glanced up and what to my wonderment and bewilderment did I behold, but a blue and white tent jutting up into the sky just beyond the next stand of trees. I guess that's where they must have been holding the Stryker picnic!!

Ha ha ha ha ha. I laughed myself all the way home. I couldn't believe we had gone to the wrong company picnic and had such a grand time. Think about it . . .. . wedding crashing, picnic crashing. In these hard times you might be able to get a lot of entertainment for free.

Trains, Planes & Automobiles

O.K., well really this post has nothing to do with trains but the story does involve a plane, an automobile, a well meaning stewardess, two hyper kids, a frazzled mom, 4 gas stations and at least six restrooms.

Now you are really curious aren't you? Here's what happened. K & K were probably around 12 and 10 years old, old enough to be let on an airplane unaccompanied by an adult. After the divorce their dad moved to Florida so when they got old enough once in a while we would arrange a trip where they could take a direct flight, in this case one from Detroit to Tampa and back so they could visit their dad.

On this particular occasion, they had spent a week in Florida. I can't remember the exact circumstances leading to this event (it may have involved malfunctioning alarm clocks or such) but for some reason, they missed their scheduled flight from Tampa back to Detroit.

Their dad had to get to work and so after speaking with the airlines customer service rep he was able to put them on stand-by for the next flight out. I usually try to stay neutral on these subjects but in this case I have to say, I question the judgement to leave a 12 and 10 year in an airport on stand-by. That said, I'll get back to the story. I think that my ex called me to inform me of what was going on since I guess I needed to know that I didn't need to be in Detroit at the original estimated time of arrival.

This was in the day before cell phones. Well, I'm sure they existed but hardly anyone had them in that era. Needless to say, my kids didn't have one so I was scrambling to find a way to communicate with them to make sure they were O.K. and to try and find out if/when and what flight they would be on.

I thought to call my parents who live about an hour away from the Tampa airport. I miraculously happened to catch my dad who even more miraculously coincidentally was on his way to the airport because he had to pick up my mom from some trip she had been on. Anyway somehow or another I was able to link my dad up with K & K and I felt some relief that an adult would be with them while they were waiting. I mean, what were they supposed to do if there had been no room on that stand-by flight??

But luck was on their side and they made the flight. I rescheduled my trip to meet their arrival at the Detroit airport. We lived in Grand Rapids so to get to the Detroit airport is about a 2.5 hour drive in good weather.

I was very relieved when the plane landed on time and K & K appeared rushing out into the concourse. They spotted me and ran towards me at top speed. "Wow," I thought. "They must be really happy/excited to see me." But they ran right past me waving and shouting "Hi, mom" as they made a bee line to the nearest restrooms. After what seemed like eternity they each emerged from the respective restroom.

While we were waiting for their luggage they once again took off for a restroom pit stop. No sooner than we were on the highway heading home when they began to complain that they needed to go to the bathroom again.

About that time I also realized that they were bouncing off the car walls, they were super hyper, talking loud, picking at each other and behaving as obnoxious as ever in the general sense of the word.

Then the story spilled out. Because of being on stand-by they had gotten to sit in first class on the 2.5 hr flight. The well intentioned stewardess brought them snacks and then whatever they wanted to drink the entire flight. It sounded like they just had her keep bringing them refill after refill of coke the entire flight!!

Needless to say, the 2.5 hour drive back to Grand Rapids turned into about a 3 hours trip as I had to stop at a gas station about every half hour so that they could use the restroom. And each time we stopped I made them run around the gas station building 3 or 4 times to try to get them to expend all of that pent up chemically induced energy!!

But it didn't work. This story basically ends where it began with a still very frazzled mother and two still very hyper children!

Apples and firecrackers don't mix

One early spring Sunday morning (I mean it was early in spring, not that early on Sunday) I was coming home from a walk. As I got closer to my house I noticed some smoke rising behind it. I thought, wow, that's nice. My husband has picked up the trash that has collected over the winter and is burning it in the fire pit behind our house. We have a woods directly behind our house which was one of the whole reasons I wanted to buy it in the first place. I love having that little bit of wilderness in the middle of the city. So, upon arriving home I thought I would go check out his progress.

I jogged around back to give him a pat on the back for his efforts. What to my amazement . . . he wasn't back there at all. There was no fire in the fire pit. Just a huge blazing brush fire burning in our back yard. I glanced to the outside faucet but our hose had been put away in the garage for the season. Next I tore into the house to alert my husband about the ordeal. He happened to be in the shower. While he was frantically getting dressed, I got the hose out of the garage and ran to the back with it. With shaking hands and after what seemed to be an eternity I some how managed to get it hooked up to the faucet in the back. T. took over and started spraying the hose. By arcing it as much as he could he was barely able to reach the farthest part of the fire. In his haste, he hadn't bothered to put his shoes on and as he was fighting the fire he would come upon hot coals and start doing a really cool dance!

Thank goodness he was able to contain the fire and we did not have to call 911. Also, thank goodness that most of the neighbors were at church when all of this was going on and upon their return to the neighborhood hopefully they just thought someone was having a huge barbeque!

So, what do you supposed caused all of this excitement? Oh, did I forget to mention, that my son K. had been out on our deck the day before experimenting with firecrackers and apples? And throwing them into the woods and blowing them up? Yeah, just take that has a friendly child rearing hint. Apples and firecrackers don't mix.

Meet the neighbors

When I was fairly newly single, I bought a house. I remember that week distinctly. I had a final exam in a class I was taking, it was end-of-the-month in the business I was working at which was the busiest time of the month, I had some kind of a court hearing to finalize the divorce and I was scheduled to close on the new house. Somehow I made it thru all that. I closed on the house on the last day of the month of April and the day was a Wednesday.

I couldn't afford to pay one extra day of rent so I had cleaned up the apartment, loaded all of our stuff into a Uhaul with the help of a friend and moved into the "new" house . It was very late by the time we got settled in but the next stay I shooed the kids out the door to their new bus stop and I went to work as usual.

By that Friday eve I was happy to be "home" and excited to really start getting settled in. It was about 5:45pm and I was talking on the phone to a girl that I worked with, trying to make some social plans for the following weekend.

When all of a sudden, my daughter K. blew into the house all out of breath trying desparately to get my attention. (yeah, yeah, hold on a minute . . . . let me just finish talking to my freind.) But really I could see panick in her face so I told my friend I had to go and hung up the phone. "Mom, mom, the back yard is on fire" yelled K.

OMG, I had not owned the house for more than 2 days and it was about to go up in smoke. I looked out into the back yard and all along the fence a fire was blazing. I commanded K. to go over to the neighbor's house to see if they had a hose. We had one, but where it was and how long it would take me to find it and hook it up is something I didn't have time to deal with. Then with hands shaking, I dialed 911 to tell them my back yard was on fire. I could barely remember my new address but somehow related it to the dispatcher.

My first thought was that the night before I had been mowing the grass and had spilled gasoline right outside the shed door. Although I had no idea if a day later the gasoline would still make that more dangerous, I was praying that the fire wouldn't reach that spot to find out.

I ran outside to see what was going on. K. had done her duty and the nice next door neighbor man who we hadn't even met yet, had his hose hooked up and was arcing the water stream from his back yard into the edge of ours. With the very highest arc ever, it was just barely hitting the fire. Then, within minutes I could hear fire engines roaring up the street and the fire-fighters came to save the day and they successfully put the fire out in a matter of minutes.

By this time a huge crowd had gathered to watch all the drama unfolding. As the fire was being contained by those brave fire-men, I looked at all of the strangers and started waving to them. "Hello, we're your new neighbors. This is K. and this is K." "Hello, hello, so nice to meet you."

Ha, what an introduction. And that is the infamous way we made our presence known in our new neighborhood.

P.S. - We did find out what had happened to cause the fire. Some boys were bike riding by our fence. Our yard was located right next to an access sidewalk to a park. The boys innocently threw a firecracker over the fence and the sparks caught the dried leaves on fire.

Spice it up

One day I came home from work and noticed that my son's hair looked a little strange. I zoomed in on it and looked closely. What to my amazement . . . it looked singed!

I asked him, "K. what the heck happened to your hair? It looks like you burnt it." Sheepishly he admited that while I was at work, he was bored and so he turned on the gas burner and was experimenting by sprinkling different spices into the flame. Apparently one had sparked a little more than he had anticipated and caught his hair on fire.

My gosh, fire is so dangerous. Can you imagine if he hadn't been able to put it out? This is a mother's worse nightmare. I'm guessing he was about 11 yrs. old at the time . . definitely old enough to know better. I tell you, it was hard. I mean he was really too old to have a babysitter, yet based on this incident too young to be left alone.

Easter in November

One cold Friday night in the month of November K. and K. had gone over to their dad's for the night. It had been a long week at work and I was looking forward to the weekend and some relaxation but at the same time I really needed to get into my son's room and clean it while he wasn't around. That way I could bring a garbage bag in and do some serious purging without him witnessing the act when things he hadn't noticed or touched in six months would suddenly become his favorites.

So I compromised with myself, poured myself a glass of Zinfandel, put some music on and went at the task. I had been dreading it so much because it was so long over due, but the wine and the music kicked in and curiously enough I was having a grand old time tackling that shambles of a room.

I was a good 3/4ths of a trash bag into the room when I came across a blue and yellow plastic Easter egg. My kids loooovvved hunting Easter eggs and candy on Easter morning and I always made a practice of counting the Easter eggs and items that I hid so I wouldn't come across any unwanted surprises later on. So, without even thinking, just sort of instintively, I just popped the blue and yellow Easter egg open, expecting to find some eight month old Easter candy in it.

Gaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggg me with a spoon. Baaarfff. Pungent rotten egg sulfur smell permeated the air. I bolted out of the room like there was no tomorrow. For the last eight months an actual hard boiled egg had been decomposing within that innocent looking air tight plastic egg.

And that my friends, is hopefully the last time I will celebrate Easter in November.

Failure as a parent

How do you define succes as a parent? How do you define failure? In general I think parents these days are way too hard on themselves when judging their own parenting skills. Hey, there is no manual and even if there is, it is a one size fits all which we know does not apply to our circumstances.

My defining moment as a failure of a parent came to me like this. I was single parenting at the time, working a full time demanding job and trying doubly hard in the corporate world to make up for that time when I had the luxury of being a stay at home mom. My ex had moved to a far away state and I had absolutely no family in the area to offer assistance. So I was in the thick of it. Me, myself and I. My life basically revolved around the kids and I would not have had it any other way. I rarely dated (I would have but only if there had been interesting prospects and none presented themselvs very often) and my social life with other friends was really very minimal simply because there wasn't time.

But the kids were a little older now; about 8 and 10. I have always enjoyed the academic world. My degree was in Russian Studies and Spanish. I was working in the business world and had never taken a single business class. My employer offered a tuition reimbursement program and the kids were becoming fairly independent. Why not? I thought I could afford one night a week away from them to take a masters level class and it could double as some socialization with other adults as well.

On Sundays I usually tried to have the house in order so we could start another week off on a good organized foot. My classes usually ended up being on a Tuesday or Wednesday night and usually by the time I got home from my class the house had already begun to look like a war zone. I tried hard to anticipate needs and throw dinner into the crock pot on the night I would be gone to school or at least make sure that there was lunch meat available for sandwiches and milk that wasn't sour but I wasn't always successful .

About my 3rd semester into the program, I diligently called home during the class break, as was my routine, to check on the kids. "Moooommmm" my son whined. "Can you stop at McDonalds on your way from school and bring us some real food?"

That's when I knew without a doubt that I had failed as a parent. My son thought McDonalds was real food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back seat discipline

When K&K were about 4 and 6 years old we were living in a fairly rural location in mid-Michigan. The setting was very pretty, on a lake, but boy it was really inconvenient. There was a burg about 7 miles away but the closest real town was about 20 miles away.

Due to that fact, running errands of any substance required a lot of forethought. First you had to time it just right leaving after lunch so the bellies were full but arriving back home in time to throw something in the oven quick for dinner. Otherwise you spent an arm and a leg at fast food places. You lined up as many errands as possible to make sure you were using your gas and time as efficiently as you could.

One day I think I had tried to fit in just one too many stops and both kids had just gotten darn right ornery. In general they were good travelers but I must have pushed them just a little beyond their capacity that day. They started bickering with each other and whining and basically being little brats and would not let up. My usual tactics to get them to quit were not working. I was fed up. Hey, they weren't the only ones sick of being in the car and hungry to boot. I was too. After several times reprimanding them and reminding them of the good behavior I expected, the bickering continued. That's when I lost it with them.

I started raising my voice angrily, not quite yelling , but almost. They continued on. They were both in booster seats buckled in the back. Keeping my eye on the dirt road that I was on, I stuck my hand in between the front seats, reaching back and started to swat at their legs. I smacked one of them, but they got wise and dodged my groping hand. I was swatting uncontrollably. They started giggling at my vain attempts. Oooh boy, that really raised my ire. My voice continued to raise as I hurdled empty threats at them. By this time, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was yelling. The louder I yelled, the madder I got and the more I swatted and the harder my foot was pressing on the accelerator.

Just then in a quick glance to the rear view mirror I spotted it . . .flashing lights . . .yes, my angry foot had us going 55 mph in a 40 mph zone. In retrospect it would have been much more cost effective to have just given in for once and stopped at Micky Ds.

Mother's Day

Every day is children's day but Mother's Day only rolls around once a year.

I love my kids dearly. They are very special to my heart. I'm sure there are many other mother's around the world who could report similar stories.

This is the typical Mother's Day story about being served breakfast in bed.

One Mother's Day I had just gotten out of bed when my kids ushered me back to the bed and instructed me to wait there. I obediently went back to the bed where my brain began to churn through all of the things I should be doing; throw the load of wash in, do the dirty dishes from the night before, fold a load of wash, scrub the bathtub and toilet etc. etc. and in the mean time yearning for my morning cup of coffee. You can only imagine how hard it was to stay in the bed wide awake waiting.

True to your expectations, about a half hour later my two children appeared back at my bedside to serve me breakfast in bed. It looked delicious!! Two burnt pieces of toast accompanied by a side of very scrambled eggs. The eggs looked totally wierd, they were in pieces, like in teensy eensy little balled up balls.

Come to find out, the kids didn't think they were cooking properly and not really knowing how in the world to prepare scrambled eggs, my son had the bright idea of adding more oil to the pan!!! So, if you ever want to know how to make scrambled eggs ball up into little bally balls, just add oil!!

Mmmmmm. Delicious Max! That was certainly one of the best Mother's Days ever. Always remember, it's the thought that counts.

Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere and a disappearing act like you wouldn't believe.

Kyle was about 2.5 years old. Kelsey was about 7 months old. We were living in Doylestown, PA at the time and Kyle was enrolled in a Montessori school. This meant a good 25 minute drive to get her there. The road we had to take was nicknamed the "Road to Nowhere." I guess that was because the Dept. of Transportation ran out of $$ and they never finished the road, therefore it just ended someplace and didn't go on.

Anyway, the point of this blog is a recollection I have about dropping Kyle off at the school one day and driving back home. Poor Kelsey, throughout his life he spent a good portion of his time being dragged from one place to another due to the involvement of his sister's activities. Anyway, he just downright hated his car seat. So after dropping Kyle off and heading back home, all of a sudden I realized it was very very very too too quiet in the back seat. I knew immediately that something was up. I glanced in the rear view mirror to catch of glimpse of the baby in the car seat. Much to my amazement when there were no merry eyes looking back at me. Nothing. Nobody. My mind went crazy for a minute "Where's the baby? Did I leave him at the school? WTF???" So in a semi-panic state, I instictively pulled the car off to the side of that super curvy, hilly damn road to nowhere. I jumped out and opened the back door. What do you think?

There, contentedly sitting on the floor of the car, staring innocently up at me, was the most adorable brown eyed escape artist you could ever imagine. Not content for long though as I hoisted him back into the carseat and secured the straps even tighter. Not happy for the rest of the 20 screaming minutes back home!

Callate, cuchara, cuidado

I sent Kyle to Chile one summer, I think it was inbetween her 8th and 9th grades. She was about 14. I wanted her to learn Spanish and experience another culture and she was open to it. About half way through the summer, Kelsey and I went to visit her for about a week. If I have the year correct, that would have made Kelsey about 12 years old.

At that time Kelsey only knew a few words of Spanish. His vocabulary consisted of "Gracias, gracias, gracias" said frequently and in response to any circumstance that warranted it or not. In the limited time he was in Chile he charmed many people with his smile and his delivery of those words of thanks.

He knew about three other words in Spanish, those being callate, cuchara and cuidado. So we were in the living room of the family that Kyle stayed with on the weekends, playing cards if I remember correctly. There was a little boy about 4 years old that we were playing with. He was a little rambuncious and suddenly tripped. Kelsey, being the bilingual traveler that he was and now thinking in Spanish and wanting to tell the little boy to be careful yelled out, "cuchara"!

Oh well, I guess thats better than yelling out cuchillo.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

One weekend the t.v. was on. I was in the same room as my son, Kelsey, who was watching it. I'm sure I was doing something else, like a crossword puzzle or something because I hardly ever just sit and watch t.v. Anyway, one of those ads came on with one of those strange, intriuging women, that look pretty yet somehow very cheap. The ad was encouraging people to call the 1-800 number to get their fortune read by one of these hot, sexy phychics. All of a sudden Kelsey declared "Mom, when I grow up, I want to be a side kick"!!!

I can't really remember how old he was at the time, maybe 7 or 8. What great aspirations! And now a toast . . may we all grow up to be side kicks!

How fast is fast?

One day when my son, Kelsey, was about 4 or 5 year old, he said "Look at me mom. I can run as fast as a cheetoh." Needless to say that conjured up quite the visual!