Lists and Syndromes

My children are suffering from a serious case of grandparents-syndrome.   I used to catch it as a child myself, so I suppose it's hereditary, common to all Adam and Eve's children.   Charlie spent the six days I was in Ohio, turning into an insufferably spoiled child.   He and Jamie both think the magic of the sun has been transferred into their veins, and the universe has deviated its orbit to now revolve around them.  I did not get the memo.




On top of that, Charlie has become a koala bear, clinging to me with feats of defiance against gravity, lest I disappear into the night again.  ... a cranky koala bear because he hasn't been sleeping or eating terribly well.  ...a adolecent, cranky, koala bear because he suddenly has an attitude like a 16 year old girl.  Last week it felt like he could barely string two sentences together, and this morning he put his hands on his hips, with a glare and said "I don't think you're a very nice person anymore.  You get me my breakfast now or I won't be friends with you."   

Flabbergasted.  This stage will have a parent-induced short life span.  

Random things I want to remember about this year thus far.

1)  We paid Jamie to potty train Charlie.
2)  Jamie gave up training wheels.
3)  Charlie beat up an eight year old.
4)  Jamie lost his first tooth. 
5)  Charlie started preschool
6)  Jamie started First Grade

Thursday night the power went out...everywhere in San Diego.  From the coast to Arizona.   It was like the zombie apocalypse without any zombies (although Jim was prepared just in case).    Normally we have plenty of food but a messy house, but the one day of the year I have no food and a spotless house...the zombie-less apocalypse happens.   We went out to grab a bite to eat and a few groceries (because we didn't know how widespread the power outage was) and even walmart was closed.  There wasn't a single gas station open in the county.  The freeway was peppered with fuel-less vehicles on the side of the road.  We came back home to our disinfected, foodless house and Jim pointed out, we could live on rabbit stew indefinitely.   Truly, between the chickens, garden and well, we could weather emergencies quite well.   Sure, we'd have to go to bed every night at dusk because locating batteries and flashlights is something of a problem area for us, but nobody can complain about being well rested and well fed. 

I didn't sleep well, but it wasn't for lack of air conditioning, but rather the war I waged against black widows.   My natural sense of eyesight is so poor, I've learned to trust my children explicitly when they say something like "snake!" or "spider!".   They're straightforward little kidlets without the tendency to "cry wolf", but one of these days the joke will be on me when I jump three feet for an invisible rattlesnake.     So when I tried to wash Charlie's hands in the middle of the night and he kept twisting his legs around me trying to avoid being put down, saying "scary spider mamma...bad spider"  I knew it was a black widow.    That's the third time this month, that Charlie has seen and avoided a black widow directly in his path.  It freaked me out so bad, I went on a black widow hunt and killed two more.   Unbelievable.   No wonder I couldn't go back to sleep. 

Just in case there are a few people left out there who haven't been scared away from ever visiting me.  I got stung by a scorpion in my kitchen while Julie was here. 

Between that and the black widows, I sort of hop, gasp and dance through my house at night.