so what do you do?

A cousin of mine posted this link yesterday - "A Better Way to Introduce Your Friends" from Storyline. I really liked it. It got me thinking. I don't believe I've ever introduced anyone as "Sam the Banker" or anything, but in the drowning discomfort of small talk, the "So, what do you do?" question is one of the first on deck. And honestly, I don't even really care. Maybe some people do. But I usually don't hang out with those people. For me, it's just something to say. Conversational protocol. But I love the point made here, that even inadvertently reducing folks to their job title can be a little disheartening.

I feel really blessed because I have this group of BAMF friends (and friends-in-law) with myriad impressive careers, but honestly, I basically have no f*cking clue what they do. I don't know. Maybe this stems from the fact that I met most of them in college when we were degenerates and couldn't get our asses out of bed before 2pm on the weekends to make the pancake breakfast at the dining hall. I didn't meet them at a corporate mixer, I met them peeing in a thorny rosebush, or passed out in a bathtub. Or maybe I'm just a bad friend. But for whatever reason, we just don't talk about it. I have one friend who does some sort of fancy finance thingy. I think I've asked her to explain it at least five times but I still haven't the slightest idea what it is she actually does. However, I could wax poetic on her party planning skills and singular ability to create a satisfying meal solely from appetizers or things you can buy at 7/11. There's a genius yoga guru, a few lawyers, some nurses and doctors (one whose excels at pulling babies out of vaginas, one who travels to various disease- and poverty-stricken third world countries and saves lives, one who published an article about emergency-cock-ring-removal in a medical journal), some Hollywood types, a farmer, a candy flavor maker, a musician, a social worker, a therapist-in-training, a personal trainer, a teacher (who educates children somewhere between the ages of 2 and 18, on one of those school-type subjects), some bio engineers who help invent shit (maybe?).

All I know is we could open up our own commune and have all of our basic health and human services covered. Which is something I think halfway seriously about doing all the time.

What I really know is who to call when I need straight talk, a pep talk, therapy, fashion advice, costume ideas, a differential diagnosis, gossip, a running partner, a backrub, a pedicure, a lazy morning, a nap, a hike, an adventure, a last minute getaway, a surprise party, a delicious home-cooked meal, a take-out smorgasbord, late night drunchies, a place to crash, new music, someone who will get crazy with a hot glue gun, someone who can convince me to do a beer bong (no easy task), someone who's down for whatever, someone who can get shit done, someone who's happy doing absolutely nothing, someone who has known me as long as I've known myself, someone who will always, always, love me, no matter what, and always, always, love my kids (and my dog), no matter what. Isn't this all that really matters, anyway?

In case you're wondering, my special skills are family photographer and historian, and maker of oreo pops and mini cupcakes. I can also volunteer a well-stocked liquor cabinet and my husband's excellent bartending skills.

On a somewhat related note, another cousin (I have many) posted this random-ass video, and I have no idea what compelled me to watch it (Tyler Perry's Madea is not normally in my wheelhouse), but I'm glad I did (thanks F!) because it's so true! Think of the people you meet as parts of a tree - the leaves, the branches, and the roots. And thank you, THANK YOU, to my roots - you are greater, deeper and stronger than any girl deserves!


Madea - Let em' Go from Joshua Davis on Vimeo.

broken bikes & black eyes

"I don't feel nearly as bad about running over our son's bike with my car after you kicked our daughter in the eye."

I think that about sums up our family camping trip last week.

It was good fun, actually. I mean. You know. Considering the fact we had 7 kids 4-and-under in tow.

not a terrible view

We camped right on the beach and we were with our favorite friends and all the minis loved each other and played and played and flew kites and spent hours in the sun and sand and sea. Happy campers, literally.

little people, big kite.

One of my best friends Claire and I were pregnant with our first babies at the same time, lived a mile apart, and spent a lot of time together the first year of the kids' lives. The kiddos, Jack and Millie, were sweet little baby-BFFs. They later moved away, but we still manage to get the pipsqueaks together a couple times a year. One of DM's cousins has a PhD in child-something-or-other. She seems very wise. Recently she was talking about how children "imprint" on each other at a very young age, so even if they don't see each other often, they have these innate memories of one another.

And i feel like that must be true of these two because they get along like gangbusters when they see each other. Then there's Colby chasing after them like, "Hey guythz, wait up! Can i play too?" Poor nugget. Sadly, Jack was relegated to Millie's second fiddle when my friend DP's daughter "Button" joined the kid crew. Sorry, son. Best familiarize yourself with this feeling now. Let's revisit the issue in about ten years and talk about a little tactic called "playing hard to get" vs. "sobbing inconsolably because she doesn't want to sit next to you."

Anyway, within the parameters of family vacations, it was pretty perfect.

a beautiful mess

Though we did spend a night at the motel 6 in Lompoc, CA, which I hope was a once in a lifetime experience. *Shudder.* Colby did barf on the winding drive there. Apparently she shares her mother's propensity for motion sickness. I did expose my latent heteronormativity by asking Claire to pick up a coloring book with "boy stuff" for Jack (i.e., super heroes and ninjas versus the puppies and princesses we had on hand). DM did run over and destroy Jack's bike with the car. And I did kick Colby in the eye. (She was roasting a marshmallow and leaned too far forward in her cheapo camp chair and tipped toward the fire pit. She was out of arm's reach so I threw up my foot to stop her from falling into the flames... aaaaand, kicked her in the "eyebowl." She had a shiner and everything ;-/)

There were ruthless seagulls and fearless bees to contend with. And a bunch of brazen raccoons ransacked our camp the first night. They got into the coolers and broke/ate/tossed four dozen eggs all over the place so, not only did we not have anything for breakfast, we essentially got egged by rodents of unusual size. They destroyed a box of graham crackers, too, so at one point Claire resorted to making s'mores with tortilla chips. Coming soon to a Pinterest board near you ;) She tried to liken it to salted caramel but I wasn't buying it. And of course it wouldn't be a real family vacation without a sick kid. Colby was a total snot faucet the whole time, poor bug. I'm not sure a kleenex was used once. "Roughing it." Oh! And I got so much grief for my headlamp! You people don't know what you're missing!

BETTER than sliced bread. y'all are crazy. it is an incomparable tool for eating pizza in the dark, and other essential activities.

In spite of all that, though, the kids were on cloud nine. I remember one of the first times we took Jack camping, and after one day he was like, "Can we go home now?" But this time they both decided they want to live in a tent forEVAH! It was so cute. And though I've never been an advocate of the family bed, it is sorta fun to wake up all together in this cozy little cocoon. (I actually wish I'd taken a pic of our crooked cocoon. It was a sad, lopsided little thing, listing dangerously to the left, probably from the gale force winds that nearly blew us off the cliff into the ocean last time we went camping.) We even had themed dinners! And of course there's nothing like drinking beers around the fire with friends (once the kids are asleep and the threat of toasted children is no longer imminent). It can't be beat.

Oh YEAH. Also the part where we taught the littles how to play beer pong. RELAX. They didn't drink the beer or anything. They were just our ping pong proxies. I swear I read about it in Parenting Magazine or something. Teaches valuable skills like teamwork and hand-eye coordination. Anyway. Jack was a natural. Pretty sure we created a monster the second he sunk that first ball. His eyes fairly gleamed in triumph. We didn't think much of it at the time, but the next day we got onto the topic of "things you can do when you're 16," like drive a car (because DM also let him "drive" the car down to the camp store - permagrin!) DP asked, "what else are you going to do when you're 16?" and J says, "DRINK BEER!" Aaaaaand, we just created an alcoholic. Wonderful. Can't wait to hear how this gets translated to his teachers. Up until now we had duped the kids into calling anything alcoholic "gwown up dwink." I felt much safer cloaked in that gauzy ambiguity. Oh well!

Anyway, the point is, (mostly) good times were had by all. But. Holy shit, man. The amount of crap we brought? Unreal. I don't even know how we fit it in our car. My parents, who could hike for ten days with nothing but what they could carry on their backs, would be appalled. Seriously. I felt like I was preparing for The End of Days. And of course, we wouldn't want to venture to the end of days without our iPads. (Again, the shame! My mom and stepdad are rolling over in their graves. Even a year ago we SWORE this was something we'd never-ever do: camping and i-anything. But really by now we should know better than to say "I never.")

provisions for a normal human to survive for 4 months,
or my family to camp for 4 days 

precious cargo! it feels like we're forgetting something though.. 

And then there was the great glow stick fiasco of 2014. One night we handed out glow sticks for the kids. Jack and Colby both got green ones, and we fashioned them into necklaces with twine. But THEN. Jack noticed that Button had a PURPLE glow stick, with a soft black lanyard. OH, the injustice. THE HORROR. Well. Button's dad, JP, overheard the ruckus and assumed that it was Colby, not Jack, who was squealing like a stuck pig over a purple glow stick. So he managed to wangle a coveted purple stick out of thin air, and gave it to Colby. Oh dear lord. You can probably imagine where things went from there. Or maybe you can't, because your children are not psycho-beastie-babies. ANYWAY. Jack starts LOSING HIS EVER LOVING MIND because Colby got a purple glow stick and he didn't. Then he tries to snatch it from her, which of course sets Colby off. Talk about end of days. World War Z erupts and I promptly fireman-carried both children to bed. Colby finally decided to be the bigger person and trade her purple for his green, but naturally, that was TOTALLY insufficient, because jack wanted a purple glow stick with a BLACK necklace, not a scwatchy, twine necklace. "Everything is terrible. What is the point of going on??? HOW CAN I BE EXPECTED TO LIVE LIKE THIS?!?" (< I'm paraphrasing.)

Poor JP felt bad for exacerbating the histrionics but I assured him he could not possibly have anticipated the depths of my children's despair over WHAT COLOR GLOW STICK they received. I mean, come the f*ck on. After I finally got the crazies to sleep I was commiserating with my friends over the fire. Are we just raising complete and total terrors? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. But everyone made me feel a tiny bit better, reminding me that they're just kids. (Though I feel like this is the same argument people use with extremely large puppies - oh, they're little, it's fine, and then suddenly you have a 300 pound dog leaving Everest-sized piles of poop on your bed and using your head as a tiny pillow.) Claire said "Your kids are kind, which is the most important thing, right?" ("Kind" with the caveat that they occasionally torture their parents, each other, and unsuspecting State Park patrons.) Or maybe that's just what delusional, overindulgent parents of spoiled little bratwursts tell themselves. But then JW reiterated my favorite parenting mantra: compared to the vast spectrum of shitty parents, we are most likely at the high end, e.g., only very slightly shitty. And then I felt pretty okay.

good thing they're so cute.