summer wind down

I am down to a mere two weeks left of summer vacation and I am beginning the process of mourning my life. No one around me who works all year long has any sympathy, of course, and this just re-affirms my need to learn how to play the lottery. I'm pretty convinced I would make an excellent rich person as I have zero desire to be famous, just a deep, driven need to lay around thinking soothing thoughts all day and sipping lemonade on hot days/flavored coffee on cold days. And occasionally meandering to the mailbox to pick up my latest lottery installment check. I would do various rich person philanthropies to keep my mind sharp and my ego in check, and I'd write really lengthy blog entries here off and on. I keep hearing kids today are being educated for lucrative careers that haven't even been invented yet, and I hope this is one of them: Lengthy, Haphazard Blog Writer.

Here is how my summer is wrapping up:

SWIMMING POOLS AS MICROCOSMS OF SOCIETAL PROBLEMS:

Embrace your cute geekiness.

Melissa finished up her swimming lessons last week with a bang (literally, with a bang!: a thunderstorm rolled through and they shut the whole pool down, effectively ending all swim lessons 20 minutes early). We never managed to convince her to put her whole self underwater, but after I bought her an orange swim cap with a monster on it and matching goggles, she did let Miss C dump entire buckets of pool water on top of her. She says she would be okay with me dumping water on top of her during our shampoo sessions, too, except her monster cap has to be on. Which, uh, defeats the purpose of the shampoo. This is so difficult to explain to 3 year old people who are all ego and id with very little reason.

The lifeguards at our swimming pool are both wonderfully watchful and woefully belligerent. I deeply appreciate the serious approach they take to their jobs, as swimming pools are essentially little more than deep, watery death traps. But these lifeguards also scare the holy living bejesus out of me quite frankly, and I find I walk on eggshells around them. I'm constantly seeking their approval and excessively avoiding their disapproval while at the pool, just like a dysfunctional people pleaser naturally does. And I'm passing that people pleasing dyfunction on to Melissa who has also spent her summer in awe and fear of them.

Example: When we play under or near a chair a lifeguard is sitting in, I talk very loudly about how lifeguards are our friends and helpers and we have to follow their rules. We make sure we always walk when out of the pool, stay well away from the blue rope when in the pool, don't even LOOK like we're trying to jump in the water, and never ever (EVER!) eat granola bars near the pool (the ants are also under lifeguard watch, apparently). I'm a total, shameless lifeguard butt kisser--who knew a teenager would have so much power over me at this age? I don't want them to blow their red whistle at me and use their firm tone of voice, "M'am? M'am! You can't do that here. M'am!! STOP!! If you don't stop, you'll have to leave."  (That was an actual quote, except it was directed toward a "Sir." One day, I watched a 50-something man get in a 19 year old lifeguard's face about being allowed to flip his kid high up into the air over the blue rope, very close to the cement edge...it was just a matter of one wrong flip and that kid would have been a quadriplegic forever and ever. The man was pissed off he couldn't recklessly toss his child around, and the lifeguard was pissed the man didn't want to follow pool rules. Like I said: Death Traps. Water-y, suspicious death traps. God help you if you're a kid with a crazy parent with no sense of this. I have no idea why our culture even needs them, except they're attractive to sit around and quite refreshing on a hot summer day. Pools are attractive and refreshing, let me clarify. Not crazy parents. Our culture would definitely be much better off without crazy parents.)

Lifeguarding as a career must be extremely stressful...I'm sure they're ready for fall and winter as much as teachers are ready for their summer breaks. In addition to Cement Edge Flipper Guy, this summer I've watched parents hang out on their iPhones at the pool totally not paying attention to their still-in-waterwings small children in the shallow end, I've seen parents doing very intense work (or something) on their laptops ignoring the very water-y death trap their child was playing in, and once I saw a mom (? I'm still not sure if she was a mom or not--she was playing in the kiddie section of the pool and no children were around her) in an entirely too flimsy swimsuit come absurdly close to exposing children to more than just the danger of accidental drowning that day...I mean, the swimsuit was practically falling off of her and I could SEE everything. It's the kiddie part of the swimming pool, m'am, not the set of Girls Gone Wild.

CAT TALES:

Last time, I wrote about fearing my cat Tasha was about to kick the bucket. I've now come to the conclusion my cat Tasha is actually working on her 9 lives. Being an indoor cat, she's never really had many opportunities to utilize these. Now that things are winding down for her at 18 (human) years old, I think she's decided to cash in finally. My feeling is that she's on Life #5 or 6, judging by the vertebrae sticking through her skin. The very day after I wrote that blog, she started hanging out with us more downstairs. C thinks she's just cold downstairs; apparently he enjoys working in a sauna and chooses to keep the air off while he's up there. Old cats and their old bones really love sauna-like atmospheres. So do masochistic husbands trying to save on electric bills.

I'm still nervous we'll come home to a house of dead cat smell, though. Or a cat who's taken up a nervous cigarette habit or has gotten into the liquor cabinet when we return. Ha! Just messing with you--we don't have cigarettes or liquor in our house. (Just a drawer full of knives...good thing cats don't have opposable thumbs.)

FEAR AND LOATHING IN CHILDHOOD:

My child is afraid. Deathly afeared. Afraid of what? Most everything. Things she is not afraid of: cookies, cupcakes, birthday cake, candy, spaghetti, presents, parties, pizza, ice cream, pajamas, cartoons, a handful of school friends, and Tasha. But everything else in the world? Melissa is deeply skittish.

The one I'm saddest about her fear of dogs. I love dogs. Dogs are to people as water is to ocean. The only reason I do not currently have a dog is due to having adopted a neurotic, dog-fearing cat ages ago and now she's so old I just can't subject her to the indignity of having to share her last bit of happiness and peace on earth with a slobbery, rowdy canine. Were it not for Tasha, I might have 10 dogs right now.  I could potentially be the Crazy Dog Lady across the street at some point.

I think I know where the dog fear started: on a summer trip two years ago, we stopped by an aunt's house for a family reunion/picnic and someone brought their very boisterous, overly friendly, and very large black dog. It towered over 1 year old Little Miss M, and I could see how jarring this might be to someone who'd never been exposed and up close to boisterous, overly friendly, and large animals with mouthfuls of teeth wanting to leap on top of small humans and slurp their faces all up. A dog's idea of Love Expression is actually not that different than a 1 year old's (ironically), but the execution is much more intense. Ever since then, she's been terrified of even small, harmless dogs like the two miniature weiner dogs next door, Lily and Lucy. She claims she doesn't like dogs sniffing at her, except that's what dogs do--it's all they have to navigate their way through this big, wide place. I've tried to explain this to Melissa, and we always end up in a long argument that eventually devolves into her having a tantrum about how dogs CAN talk with words just like people do.

Melissa's future dog, but with Sparkles.

So clearly we need a dog (after Ms. Tasha goes on to the Great Beyond). Here's the real bizarre-o part: Melissa loves the IDEA of dogs and talks about her deep love of them all the time; she thinks they're cute and awesome and really really wants one in our house. Swears up and down all the time SHE'S not scared, SHE loves dogs. But get her around an actual dog, and she's suddenly climbing you like a freaked out cat climbs a tree. She talks a lot about wanting a small, pink dog she would like to name Sparkle. I'm okay with a small dog named Sparkle; I'm not sure about the pink--I'm afraid PETA would come after me. Also, Sparkle would be forbidden to sniff Melissa "with her sniffy pink nose" (that's a direct Melissa quote from a recent conversation about Sparkle the little pink dog).

The Melissa fear that makes me both wring my hands and giggle with empathy all at once is her absurd fear of the dark. I mean, it's so dysfunctionally sad: even in direct daylight, if there's a shadow in the house, Melissa will shoot past it and/or cling to you like someone is about to leap out of it with a chainsaw aimed at her head. I say this causes both wringing of my hands and giggling with empathy because, during the day, I'm all: Seriously? Are you for real? It's just a SHADOW, silly goose. But at night, I'm all: Dude, seriously, yeah. There could totally be a Texas Chainsaw Massacre man in there. RUUUUUNNNN!!!!

The other night, I discovered the Bio channel's lovely "My Scary Ghost Story." I don't know if that's actually its title, but that's the title I'm giving it because about every 20 seconds through every entire episode I was all "Nooooooo!!! Don't ask the spirits THAT question! That's inviting them to start acting like poltergeists!! What is WRONG with you?!" and "What?! What?!?! Scary spirits can attach to you AND follow you home?! Holy --what entity must I contact to object to THIS ridiculous ghost world policy?!" and "What was that creaking sound in my kitchen? I feel like someone is watching me. Is that an icy patch that just wafted over me or the air conditioning? Don't look in the corner don't look in the corner don't look in the corner--I think someone's standing there!"

PAST LIFE REGRESSION RESEARCH:

The good news: I've read a lot of books this summer. That's good. At least my mind has been active. The bad news: I've become obsessed (please don't ask why, I'm totally floored myself) with Revolutionary Era stories. I'm not interested in romances; I'm interested in stories about strong women and what life was like in the mid-18th century. I may be experiencing past life regression issues. No, seriously: I've spent intense hours on zillow.com researching all the homes built prior to 1800 for sale in the state of Massachusetts (preferably Cape Cod area) I could move my family into so we could all pretend we're Revolutionary War era colonists. I'm not sure whether I'd be a Loyalist or a Patriot, but I still feel I would be very good at this lifestyle, and would like to try spinning flax at some point.

Anyway, if you, too, like mid-18th century setting stories that do not contain phrases like "He kissed her. Without permission, and without warning, he took what he wanted. She fought at first but then gave in as his tongue flicked..." Ew. Horrors, no, no. Just stories about potentially real people who could have actually lived (and maybe also you'd like to read some detailed paragraphs describing how to spin flax),  I highly recommend anything by Sally Gunning. I would like to write Ms. Gunning and demand she immediately get started on a new story...except by the time she's finished I may be life regressing in the mid-16th century as a Japanese samurai warrior princess.

SUMMER WIND DOWN:

So that's how I've been spending my summer. Swimming, researching mid-18th century recipes for tart pies, sucking up to teenage lifeguards, arguing about what powers dogs do and don't have, convincing myself that it actually makes much more sense to only own 2 homespun dresses and using night jars would really be no big deal, and freaking myself out on the Bio Channel's amazing amount of ghost story shows. That, and I've wasted more time pinning crap I have no time to make to various pinterest boards instead of actually making actual things. I mean, I could have made a whole 18th century shift and apron from homespun calico by now, for God's sake. I think I may have a fear of creating--I like the IDEA of it, but get me around a craft store and I start running away, freaked out like a poltergeist is after me.

Melissa on the other hand, has been far more productive (when not running away from ants, bees, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, and teeny gnats--more things she's terrified of): swimming, playing a little beginning soccer, enjoying summer mini-camps at school...so far, she's been to Ancient Greece, learned about the Summer Olympics, gone on several different types of Journeys of Imagination, and been an Outdoor Explorer. As a side hobby. she's become a gifted photographer. Medium of choice? Stolen moments with my phone's camera.

I submit the following as evidence I am raising a soon-to-be-famous (phone camera) photojournalist:

Melissa's self foot portrait

Oh, wait! I forgot to mention I've also been watching History Channel shows about shark wrestling Great White Sharks in Australia and South Africa which led me to do some YouTube researching about things like "bull sharks in the Florida Panhandle." I hope the Florida beach people are okay with me bringing these sharp, authentic 18th century whaling weapons I bought off the internet from a belligerent, teenage Cape Cod lifeguard, as I think they'll be so handy in fighting off Floridian bull sharks which I hear tell are a real problem. I hope Florida doesn't have poltergeists--I don't have weapons for those.