Leanna Kay

We recently took our dog, Maria on a huge outing. Well, we walked her across the street to my parents’ house anyway. For her that’s a huge adventure because it’s beyond her wireless dog loop and there are things to sniff and pee on in my parents’ yard that aren’t available for sniffing and peeing on at our house.

As soon as we let her off the leash in my parents’ back yard, Maria made a beeline for the bushes behind the chair where my mom was sitting. The dog got the kind of excited she usually only gets when she spots rabbit poop to roll in while she’s still wet from her bath. Only a second later, I saw it wasn’t animal excrement causing all her excitement. There was a small garter snake lurking in the bushes right behind my mom’s chair.

The minute I saw the snake, I did the only thing a rational adult woman can do in a situation like that. I screamed like a toddler girl and ran for the house with Lauren and my mom hot on my heels.

My rational mind knows a garter snake is only a danger to small bugs and not to screaming middle-aged women. But the irrational part of my mind immediately makes the following connection. Snake = venom = painful death. I’ve seen enough Westerns to know what happens after a snake bites you, and trust me, you aren’t in for a happy ending.

While I was quivering behind the safety of the glass patio door, Maria threw the snake out from the bushes and did what dogs do. Killed it and rolled around on its dead carcass. (Don’t ask me to explain it. She’s a dog!)

Lauren and I kept a careful distance while the boys went up to the snake and took turns kicking it with their shoes to make sure it was really dead. (Don’t ask me to explain it. They’re boys!)

Both Lauren and I refused to take control of the dog’s leash to walk her back home. (Did I mention the dog had rolled around on a dead snake?!) So the boys took control and we all took Maria back home where she chased the cats and took a long nap on the deck. Because that’s what dogs do.

Today during the children’s service at church, the minister was asking the kids if they’d ever made messes. My three threw up their hands and acknowledged that this had happened a time or two in their world.

The minister then asked the kids how they went about cleaning their messes. He got the usual responses. “Soap and water.” “Picking up my toys and putting them away.” “Wiping up a spill with a towel.”

Then he asked “What do you do when you have a mess that you just can’t clean up?”

“You could set it on fire,” Drew responded, clearly shoving himself to the top of the minister’s list for kids in dire need of counseling.

When he sat back down, I asked Drew to explain his response so I could judge whether I needed to hide all the matches and fireproof the house.

“Well,” he said in a most authoritative tone. “Clearly you’re not going to be concerned about the purple Kool-aid I spilled on the white living room carpet if the house is on fire.”

By Trouble, I mean the game with the pop dice. For whatever reason, as a kid I loved that pop dice. It was so much more fun than just rolling dice and moving the pieces.

Why was I playing Trouble at midnight last night? Because Lauren got up at about 11:30 with the stomach flu. She came into my room, spewing puke down the hallway, to tell me she was sick. I moved her to the bathroom which is where we sat for the next two hours. I told her stories. I rubbed her back. When that was no longer a distraction, I whipped out the Trouble game to keep her mind off the fact that every ten minutes she was leaning over the toilet.

Between bouts of dice popping and sickness, I went to work on the carpeting and cursed myself for my lack of foresight. Why in the world had I fed the girl spaghetti and meatballs followed by cherries? Bright red, carpet staining cherries?

It was Trouble. And there was no pop up dice to make this any fun.

There are two words that strike fear into a mother’s heart while simultaneously striking joy into her children’s.

Field Trip.

I recently chaperoned the boys’ field trip to Conner Prairie. Conner Prairie is an outdoor museum where actors pretend to be real residents of a town settled in the 1830s. No matter how hard you try, the pretend settlers will not break out of character. Offer them a Reeces Cup and they’ll act as if they have no idea what one is, even while their taste buds are tingling and the scent of peanut butter is drifting happily through their nostrils. Yet they pretend to be enjoying the gruel that was the favored food of the time.

Visiting Conner Prairie was a rare treat for the kids. Not just because they can taunt the actors with modern candy bars much like one messes with the poor lions at the zoo, but because it’s about a five hour round trip from school. That means there’s no time during the day to sneak in any actual school work.

For parents this equates to hours of bouncing on a school bus with no air conditioning and one hundred screaming kids who know exactly what Reeces Cups are because they had four dozen of them for breakfast. After hours of bouncing with a full bladder screaming for release, a mom can appreciate the meaning of the words “hell on Earth”.

That’s why I drove separately.

My bliss ended the moment I met the bus at Conner Prairie and got my chaperoning assignment. I always get the same handful of kids. I suppose it’s because as a criminal defense attorney, the teachers want me to get to know my future clients. Someday when the young boys have moved from pantsing their classmates to knocking off liquor stores, I’ll be able to fondly reminiscence with them about the day we brought the shopkeeper at Conner Prairie to tears by taunting him with a Milky Way.

But no matter how much the boys tried my patience, I successfully completed my chaperoning duties, returning all kids to the bus in one piece. Because if I didn’t, there would probably have been some sort of punishment awaiting. Something involving a loaded school bus filled with screaming children.