Category Archives: kids

Back to School Shopping Did Not Suck

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Yesterday we started our back to school shopping.  Nope, I’m not kidding.  It has been almost ten years and I still haven’t quite made the mental calendar adjustment, especially since I grew up not going back to school after Labor Day (more specifically, the day after the Miss America parade up on the Atlantic City boardwalk, which we attended every year… “Show us your shoes!”).  In the South we usually go back to school really early – no later than mid-August, but realize that my kids have been on summer break since before Memorial Day.  I may not ready for summer to be over, yet the countdown has begun.

I had to buy a shower curtain the other day, so I bopped on in to a Walmart.  (I was able to bop because I was alone.  There is never any bopping when you have a constant parade following you around.  We are kind of like a traveling circus.)  On my way to the shower curtain department I couldn’t help but notice that the back to school supplies were already on sale.  And then I calculated that there are only four weeks left until school starts.  So I went back home and announced to the kids that they should start going through their clothes and shoes to see what fits and what doesn’t, and we would figure out what everybody needs to be ready for school.

Let me say right now that I am generally not a fan of shopping.  It’s just not my thing.  If I need something, I go get it.  Otherwise, I do not go to stores.  I do not browse.  If I ever meet the person who invented internet shopping I will make out with him or her.  My mom shops like it is her job and I grew up being dragged from store to store to store to store.  I have so many childhood memories of hiding under display racks and waiting in checkout lines.  I absolutely hated going shopping as a kid.  We went to retail stores, outlet malls, discount chains, farmer’s markets, and garage sales.  It was nothing short of torture for me.

So shopping with me as an adult is all about the efficiency.  It is certainly never an all day event, but even the simplest shopping trip with all five kids can sometimes take a little while.  We planned to go to three stores, which are conveniently located in the same shopping center.  We had looked at the weather (the forecast was cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms) and decided that yesterday was a good day to go shopping, even though it was hot and sunny when we left the house.  We bought some shoes, a bunch of clothes, and most of the school supplies on their lists.  The kids were especially well behaved the entire time (which is a critical component of successfully completing a shopping trip of this magnitude) and the weather even cooperated by clearing up (the storms had arrived in full force while Kid B was trying on some new shorts) whenever we left a store to walk down to another one or load bags into our car.  Dare I say that shopping on this day did not suck?

In the last store I was paying for our stuff and the kids were behind me off to the side near the entry display.  We had quite a haul and check out was taking a while.  As she was scanning the giant pile of clothes, the cashier asked me if all of the kids were mine.  I responded with what I thought was a very believable, “… all FIVE?  No!”  Because I have all of these residual icky feelings towards shopping I guess I figured my shopping luck had run out and they had just broken something or were swinging from the rafters or Kid E had removed his pants or something else inappropriate.  But they were actually being really quiet and still and posing amongst the mannequins.  Kid A even took a picture of them…

"Mom, lemme ask you, did I ever do anything really strange as a child?… Is there any history of insanity in the family?" - Mannequin, 1987

Now that was a fun shopping trip.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Keeping Up With the Kids – LAX Bro Slang

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

I’m going to start a new post category today called Keeping Up With the Kids. I will include all sorts of ways that my kids make me feel old (tumblr.com, anyone?) and how I am compensating for/ coping with such abominations. Let’s remember that (in my own mind) I am about nineteen to twenty-two years old, despite the fact that my body is screaming otherwise at me. I still think I am totally cool and hip and in touch with the youth of America. And I’ll also tell you that my sisters and I make fun of (note: present tense) our mom for not knowing any slang or how to upload music to her iPod or even how to turn on her cell phone. So I am continually paying attention and trying to follow what the kids are saying and doing. I’m really just trying to keep up with them so they don’t start making fun of me…

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Yesterday Kid A (asked to come), Kid E (everyone else asked that he go) and I went over to Sister B’s house (she is having her turn out-of-town at the beach… I’m so jealous) because she said we could borrow some DVDs. While I was inside I took a look in her nightstand to see if she kept anything untoward in there (she totally DOES!)… just kidding. And that’s what you get for not submitting a guest post. Thanks for letting us borrow your movies, Case. I love you!

…sorry, I got sidetracked… so we were on our way over to Sister B’s house and as we were turning into her neighborhood I watched a teenage boy pull up to the traffic light in a rusted up, old Bronco with a raised body and muddy tires and I said, “Did you see the size of that?” And Kid A said, “That’s called ‘lettuce.'” And I was all, “I thought it was a lift kit?” and she looked at me like I was drunk.

“That boy’s hair, mom. When boys – usually lacrosse players, or ‘LAX bros’ – grow their hair out long like that it is called ‘lettuce.’ And when they tie it back they use a ‘flow band.'”

That is some fresh lettuce for a football player, Tommy.

I was learning new, hip jargon and I didn’t even have to look it up on urbandictionary.com! I felt so cool, so in touch. I kept asking her the proper ways to use these new words, and I kept attempting new combinations and possible scenarios. But for some reason my brain wasn’t working right and I kept calling it “cabbage.”

So by the time we got to Sister B’s driveway and we got out of the car, Kid A had just about enough of me and our Lesson of the Day. I was still screwing up all of the words and I didn’t want her to be frustrated with me so I started to do the Cabbage Patch dance real smooth, you know? Then I took out my ponytail and I let my own giant hair down. And I asked Kid A if she had a ‘lettuce wrap’ to tame my awesome ‘flow.’ Then I got hungry for some chinese food.

Kid A just sighed and then I think she posted something about me on her tumblr.com account.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

It Was Definitely the Hair

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

The future has arrived.  I can listen to whatever song I choose, make a phone call and send a message (through the air!), all from one device that fits in the palm of my hand.  I can push a button and whatever flavor coffee I want comes out of the machine instantly (like in Judy Jetson’s kitchen!).  “Space Tourism” is an actual industry.  I can even load a photo onto my computer and the computer will identify the people in the picture.

I am sorry, but that last one freaks me out a little bit.  A computer can LOOK at a picture and IDENTIFY PEOPLE from it.  Like when your kid pulls out an old, square Fotomat photo from a dusty box, wipes it off and asks, “Who is that little boy, Mama?”  And you squint and jog your memory and say, “Um, I think that was my uncle, back when he was young and super cute, you know – before he started smoking pot all the time and living with the crazy cat lady who didn’t wear underpants to your aunt’s wedding reception.  Yeah, that was him.  Don’t do drugs.”

A bunch of different computer applications have face recognition software now… iPhoto has had it for a while and Facebook apparently has it too.  I get how it works (our souls have a fingerprint-like uniqueness and the computers have a way of recognizing those very specific and detailed nuances), but I am leery of it at the same time.  I would feel so much better – and the computers would seem so much less alive – if they were just measuring the distance between the eyes, width of the nose, depth of the eye sockets, shape of the cheekbones and the length of the jawbone.

So I was reassured and very pleasantly surprised the other day when Kid A posted her Hermione picture on her Facebook account and the computer identified her as… ME!

Now, let me give you a little background.  Kid A is the first grandchild on both sides, so all of the relatives gathered together in the hospital room when she was born.  My mom was so excited and overwhelmed to have a grandchild.  She stared down at the minutes-old new life, scanned her beautiful baby face and gushed to me with joy, “She looks just like you!”

Everyone in the room responded, “Stacy looked just like Sheepdog as a baby?”

Seriously, Kid A looked exactly like Sheepdog and nothing like the woman who just attempted ripping the rails off of the hospital bed while forcing another human out of her body.  And while Kid A’s looks have changed over the years, she has always most closely resembled her Daddy.  Yet the computer identified her not as him, nor even as herself, but as me the other day.

Why did the software recognition program identify Kid A as me, you ask?  I mean, yes, she is my kid but we really do not look alike.  We clearly have different noses, different eyes, and very different face shapes.

There’s only one logical conclusion.  It was definitely the hair.  Unmistakable, big, Jersey Girl hair.  She DOES look just like me!

Kid A (but Me, according to Facebook), 2011

Me, 1987

It All Ends Today

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

…or so says the tagline to the latest and final (sniff, sniff) movie, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (which releases today), based upon the epic book series by J. K. Rowling.  Unless, of course, we are mistaken about that because they found a way to cast a Confundus Charm over the entire world… now wouldn’t that be something?

I have always been extremely affected by books and movies and television, so it is natural that their conclusions would move me monumentally as well.  I know that they are manufactured, but they could be real – good fiction is always based in reality – and regardless, through reading about or watching them, they have allowed me to be a part of their life lessons.

I learned about the joy of realizing your true calling from Sam Malone (“Boy, I’ll tell ya… I’m the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on Earth,” as he shuts off the lights in the bar) and the meaning of life according to Cliff Clavin (“comfortable shoes”) and Carla Tortelli (“having children”) during the final episode of Cheers.  I learned about letting true friends know that they will remain in your heart even when you follow different paths in life (the “GOODBYE” stones that Hunnicutt left for Pierce to see as he flew off in the chopper in the M*A*S*H finale).

I learned from Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that you sometimes can but you can’t always go home again, for when they returned to the Shire – free of their youthful innocence and ignorance – it was a very different place than the one they had left.  I learned that war can be necessary even though it ends childhood and tears friends and families apart, and that power will corrupt almost everyone, from The Hunger Games trilogy.

I was reminded that relationships are complicated and the “right” guy is determined by the beholder (Team Kellan!, I mean Team Sheepdog!) and that everybody comes with a list of pros and cons from the Twilight books.  And Friday Night Lights’ Coach Eric Taylor and his football motto “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose!” couldn’t show me any more simply that winning is not the true indicator for success, and that family should always come first.  The Cosby Show taught me that families should dance together often, preferably to cool jazz music.

And perhaps most importantly I learned from the conclusion of Zoey 101 that sometimes 16-year-old girls get pregnant and it is incredibly important to be a good parent to your teenager and talk to them about sex and responsibility and how bad choices can end your career before it really even begins (empathetic shiver! for both of the Spears girls).

I am smarter than all of you. Oh, and my parents are dentists.

So it is actually Thursday night and Kid A is leaving now dressed as Hermione to attend the midnight-ish viewing of the last Harry Potter film with her friends.  Kid B was so excited that she made wands for them out of actual trees for Kid A and her friends so they could use them when they dressed up for the premiere (I am telling you that these kids are B.O.R.E.D.).

Sheepdog, Kid B and I are looking forward to a Sunday afternoon IMAX showing of the movie, where I hope to be as moved as I have in the past by the creativity of those who write and make these incredible stories.  The Harry Potter books speak of unconditional love and selflessness as the ultimate weapons against evil.  I think that they are pretty good at warding off the everyday icky as well, so I’m going to stick with them.

After Sunday I will say, “Nox!” to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, so I can make room in my heart for new, even more imaginative tales and more importantly, the lessons that I can learn from them.  And so the end is actually the beginning.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

From L to R, the wands of Cho Chang, Padma Patil, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter (made by Kid B)

The Economic Upswing Starts at Home

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

My weird, yet very imaginative kids have had a lot of down time this summer.  They have read through every book, watched every movie, played every card game, exhausted every toy.  We are almost seven weeks into summer break and they have now resorted to developing elaborate new businesses.

Kid B did it first.  She told us to check our emails repeatedly, which contained print ads for her new restaurant.  Then she sent us promos with “unscripted” video reviews from Kid D and Kid E (“Come to the new… What is it called again?  Oh yeah, come eat at… wait, what is the name?  I can’t say it right.  Well, the food is yummy and you should go there!”).  Then she bugged us to no end about it.  So we finally gave in and walked into the dining room/ patronized her establishment.  She presented us with detailed, realistic menus.  We were encouraged to order meals, which she actually prepared for us (Jackpot!).  It was mostly breakfast food and it was good.  Then she presented our table with a bill.

Normally I would just play along and give her fake money (invisible, Monopoly, counterfeit… anything we had lying around).  But for whatever reason I was in a really good mood (probably because I didn’t have to make anybody breakfast), and I could appreciate all of the effort she put into making the menus, meals and promotions.  So I gave her real money to pay the bill, plus tip.  Two brand-new twenty dollar bills fresh out of the ATM, to be exact.

Kid B played it so cool.  She did not bat an eye when she saw that she was getting legitimate United States greenbacks for playing a game.  She just continues to do her waitress-y things and asked if we would like any change (as a family we have frequented a restaurant or two, so the kids know the routine), took her money and ran.

This is Kid D's drawing of me (candid) playing Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. I am just happy that I was not on the toilet when he decided to draw me.

What struck me as funny (but in hindsight I really should have predicted) was how quickly many more new businesses started popping up all around our house.  Kid C started an art studio where a customer could commission a drawing or painting.  Her artwork was spectacular!  Not as original, but just as hardworking and eager, Kid D opened a business called “Pictures Without Picture Frames.”  He did not wait to be hired, but drew on spec his renditions of whatever you were doing when he happened to decide he wanted to draw you.  Even Kid E got in on the action with a toy store.  He sold toys that he didn’t happen to be playing with at the moment (“Um, no, actually that isn’t for sale.  I am playing with that.  And that one too.  No, THAT one is my favorite, so sorry but you can’t buy it either.”).  Funny enough, I got bills from each and every one of them too.

So of course I went back to the ATM and paid every single one of them with real money.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Well That’s Disgusting

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Ahhh, the Good Old Days when this was all we were concerned about

With Atlanta’s continued severe weather alerts due to temperatures peaking in the mid to high nineties (and the accompanying air quality alerts and heat advisories) continuing throughout this week, one of my only options will be to load up the kids, some towels and our diving toys and head on out to the neighborhood pool.  Oh, wait.  Nevermind.  We won’t be doing that because somebody keeps pooping in the pool.

We have probably received no less than ten notices over the past few years that the neighborhood pool is closed for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours “due to fecal contamination.”  I know… it makes me throw up a little too (but I do it in my mouth, not in a community recreational area).  It is foul and disgusting, not to mention incredibly inconvenient to the rest of the neighbors in the ‘hood when our pool gets shut down.

Don’t get me wrong… I am extremely happy that our Pool Powers That Be are following the CDC’s “Fecal Incident Response Recommendations for Pool Staff” (oh, come on – you knew that there had to be one!) in order to protect us all from recreational water illnesses that can result from ingestion by swimmers of pool water that may or may not contain Cryptosporidium, Giardia, E. coli 0157:H7, or Shigella.  Yummy!   The CDC goes on to classify different increasing levels of contamination (based upon causation by vomit, formed stool, or diarrhea) and the quantity of chlorine concentration and disinfection time necessary to successfully remove/ eradicate each (just skim it out, 3.0 ppm for 19 minutes, and blow up the pool and start over, respectively).  All this crap (pun intended) is putting a serious crimp in my summer agenda.

So the question is… What do we do about it?  Do we gently remind everyone to take young children for regular, preemptive potty breaks and to always wear their swim diapers?  Do we also remind people that anyone who has had stomach issues, a respiratory illness, or sickness of any kind (with or without diarrhea, just to be safe) should stay out of the public pool for at least a full week?  Do we go all Joe McCarthy on them and print the names of the guilty parties in the monthly newsletter, like the Police Blotter reports of the DWI incidents in the Johns Creek Herald?  Or do we ban the perps from the pool for the rest of the season?

I can tell you that none of that will serve to eliminate (pun intended) the issue.  And being familiar with lawyers, I can guarantee that somebody will no doubt cry “Discrimination!” because people have no shame.  Plus, accidents happen, especially when it comes to little kids and poop.  We will continue to receive fecal contamination notices throughout the summer and we just have to deal with it.

My suggestion in lieu of public flogging of the guilty (which I would still TOTALLY still support in the case of a-hole teenagers who think it is a funny prank to throw dog poop into our pool) we should have a “Poop in the Food/ Drinks, Not in Our Pool Party,” where we would offer specialty drinks, Baby Ruth candy bars, and sweet corn pudding.  I found this recipe on the internet, so I’m sure that with a little effort we could find many, many more.

Poop in the Pool Cocktail

2 oz chilled Blue Curacao liqueur (or blue Kool-Aid for the kiddies)
1 small Tootsie roll candy
Pour the Curacao into a shot glass and drop in a Tootsie Roll

Cheers! And I’ll see you at the pool (at least 24 – 48 hours after the next hyperchlorination, just to be safe).

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Tales from the Trip – Part Two

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. - Robert Frost (this many miles, to be exact)

Three a.m. announced itself with a crappy song on the alarm clock radio.  I did not get nearly enough sleep and I had none of the “I’m going on a family trip today!” excitement that fueled me through the drive there.  But Sister B was due to arrive that afternoon with her three kids in tow and we would be even more hard up for decent sleeping arrangements if we stayed.  So I reluctantly got out of bed, made myself some coffee, and woke up some kids (best part of the day so far… just a small payback for all of the times they have done it to me).  Kid E woke up crying.  I don’t know if he was still going from the night before or if he was starting fresh, but he was working up a mighty fine fit.  What do I do about that?  Let’s all strap ourselves in to a confined space for about fourteen hours.  But first I shall spill about half of my freshly brewed coffee on my seat.  Awesome.

What is nice about the trip in this direction is that we are on the highways pretty quickly, so the kids would be melodically lulled back to sleep.  What is decidedly not nice are the number of toll booths on those same highways that are preceded by those things in the road that sound like machine gun fire when you drive over them so that if you are by chance sleeping while driving, you will indeed wake up just before you pull up to/ crash into the toll collector’s booth.  And so will everyone else in your vehicle.  Super cool.

I have my iPod in one ear while I drive and I had loaded some excellent new music before the trip up, so I was verily entertained even whilst everyone else was sleeping (/being woken up/ falling back to sleep again).  Traffic was pretty light and the weather was remarkably clear given the hideous storm just hours prior.  We even made it to the other side of Washington, D.C. by about 7:45 a.m., where we stopped for some breakfast, refueling and a leg stretch.  I noticed a party at a long table behind ours that seemed like it had a lot of kids.  There were car seats everywhere.  After watching them while we waited (forever) for our food to come, I realized that there were actually more adults than there were kids… about one mom and dad for every 1.5 babies.  And when I got a true head count I also became aware that there was only one more kid in their party than in mine.  So I realized that I have a lot of kids.  Then I think we contracted a mild case of E. coli from the food because we have all had shooting stomach pains ever since.  Fantastic.

Back on the road we continued to roll along nicely, but with eight hours still ahead of us it seemed like the never-ending road trip.  Certainly the antics from the peanut gallery would help us pass the time…

Every single time there was a noise on the highway or from the vehicle Kid D said, “That was probably a bike falling off.  You should check.  No, really Mom – I think a bike just fell off of our car.  I heard it.”

One time during a period of relative quiet on I-85 just south of Richmond, I began to pass an oil truck.  About mid-way through there was a BANG! that made me presume that someone in the backseat was setting off fireworks.  After first asking if anyone in our car had been shot, I quickly assessed the windshields.  None were cracked, so I can only assume that it was a piece of debris or a rock that shot against our undercarriage.  Holy Crap!  Now I’m definitely awake.

Kid E was in no mood to travel.  He made it clear in the driveway prior to takeoff when he started crying something about how his pillow was “broken” and such.  His lines of the day (meaning he said them no less than a bajillion times) were, “I want to go home.”  I responded with, “That’s what I’m doing, Big Man, driving us home.”  He would then reply, “No!  I want to be home NOW!”  Don’t we all?  “Here, have a roll of Smarties.”  He was clearly buzzing high on sugar by the time we got home.

“I’m hungry,”  “I’m thirsty,” “I want to watch a different movie,” and “I’m bored,” “Where are we?” and “How much further?” were frequent fan favorites of the day.  We also had a couple of the predictable “I have to pee!” and “I have to poop!” emergencies, so we got to see more rest stops on this go around.  Rest stops have gotten a bad reputation lately with the whole foot tapping thing and the sexual predator hangout stereotype, so I had forgotten how clean they usually are.  I was pleasantly reminded each and every time we had to swing into one.  They also have a lot of pretty landscaping now too, which was also nice.

Speaking of rest stop predators, maybe they were keeping all of the police officers busy because I did not see any of either of them.  Well, that’s not totally true, as I did see a few state police cars in North Carolina, but only in the northbound lanes.  I wonder what determines where the police lie in wait to hassle people who just want to get where they are going keep the roads safe from dangerous speeders.  I’d like to know the answer to that so I can avoid those routes whenever possible.

This is how we roll (at the Equator)

Our last stop for refueling was in South Carolina at about 3:30 in the afternoon.  When I stepped out of the car I was assaulted with a chest-crushing heat.  The whole time I was filling the tank (“Jersey Girls don’t pump gas!”) I struggled just to breathe.  Welcome back to Summer in the South.  And so begins two more months of never leaving my house during the day, else I will be soaked through to my underpants in sweat within sixty seconds.  Super Sexy!

Finally, around 5 o’clock we pulled into our driveway.  Yeah!  We were finally home.  It was still an unholy kind of hot outside, but the truck needed to be unloaded so I could pull it into the garage.  As I wrestled the bikes, disassembled the bike rack, climbed atop the truck to empty and detach the cargo bag, pulled everything out of the inside of our vehicle and piled it all in our driveway (I didn’t have five kids for nothing… they were going to carry all of this crap into the house for me), I realized that it was only by a Road Trip miracle (or undetectable extension charm) that all of these things fit inside.

So while the chickens were putting stuff away, I got a nice, cold shower.  Sheepdog was still on the West Coast riding in the Tour of the California Alps Death Ride 2011 (and yes, just based on the name alone I confirmed that his life insurance policy was up to date prior to letting him ride in that race) and we had been gone for close to four weeks, so our cupboards were bare.  I quickly ran out for some necessary groceries and Mexi-food for dinner.  By the time I finally sat down I was too tired to even open a bottle of wine.  Now that’s tired.

… but I would have gotten right back into the car the very next day just to go back to the beach.  Sigh.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Tales from the Trip – Part One

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

First things first… I realize that I forgot to make a Harry Potter reference in Friday’s post.  I will make up for that by doing two today.  My only excuse is that I have a horrible short-term memory.  Seriously, you could tell me something today and I might forget by tonight (unless it is good gossip).  I can re-watch movies and re-read books and I get excited about the endings because I have forgotten what they are.  I am just special that way. 

So I was all mixed up about what day it was from being on vacation and the trip back and I almost posted yesterday.  Then I remembered that there is no post on Sundays.  BAM!

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I survived packing day on Friday.  More importantly, everyone else survived the Master Packer and all the craziness that surrounds me.  My mother-in-law lovingly said I was actually more of a “Mother Packer,” which I thought was kind of sweet.  Either way… I got everything washed, gathered, packed and loaded just as a mega-storm bore down upon the eastern seaboard.

Rewind three hours.  Kid E decided to have a meltdown over nothing/ everything and no one but his Mommy could soothe him.  Unfortunately, my attention needed to be elsewhere.  So the background soundtrack for the Pack was a whiny and crying Kid E as a very sweet and helpful (although sadly ineffective) Kid B held him and tried to calm him down.  This as a news alert flashed across the television screen for a tornado warning in Atlantic County, which we get all the time in Georgia but they rarely see at the beach.  Next thing I realize, Kid D was crying inconsolably.  I went to him to see how I could shut him up calm him down and he explained through heaving chest and jagged sobs that “(he didn’t) want to die in a tornado.”   Me neither, pal.  So you gotta buck up and let mommy do her job.  I can barely do it with one kid’s screams echoing through the house, let alone two.  So, I refocus Kid D with a video game, reassure him that we will go down to the lower level of the house if a tornado does indeed come through and I plow ahead.

I had to load the truck in stages.  First, earlier in the day I attached the cargo roof bag and put all of the beach gear inside.  This had been done prior to the trip up by Sheepdog (who is at least five or even six inches taller than me – P.S. I think I am shrinking) and I had a hard time reaching the roof to put stuff in.  Sheepdog also had a helper (Kid A) and I was in the house taking care of the other kids.  I had no assistants (the girls were driving back from Hershey Park with my mom and dad), it was raining, and the boys yelled off of the deck that they “needed me for an emergency” about 14 times in a half-hour period.  But I got it done.  Check.

Then we had to load the way back of the truck with all of our stuff.  This took most of the day as I had to wash some stuff, direct the girls to pack their things, presume that Kid C would forget most of hers and compensate for that, pack all of the boys’ stuff and my own as well, plus all of the extras.  The storm started up again around dinnertime, so my dad suggested that I back the truck into the garage instead of loading it outside in a rainstorm.  I had to leave it sticking out about two feet so I would have room to attach the bike rack.  The rain kept coming and my dad started pacing in front of the truck because the crazy rain was coming down sideways (of course it was!) and all of his tools were getting wet.  He kept assuring me that it was “not a problem,” yet he was standing in front of the shelves trying to block the weather the entire time.  Then he hung up a towel.  And we still have Kid E throwing a tantrum-to-end-all-tantrums from above.  Awesome, right?  But I got it done.  And loaded.  And we didn’t have to leave anything behind (well, I almost had to leave Kid A’s guitar there – yes, she brought her guitar – but I was able to shift things around and make it all fit.  Check.

Those bikes did not stand a chance against my mad mexican wrestling skills

Finally I was putting the bike rack onto the trailer hitch.  But I couldn’t find the stupid effing cotter pin (it wasn’t actually an “effing” cotter pin until it started hiding from me, so once I found it in the glove box – smart planning on my part, right?  that’s how I compensate for the whole short-term memory loss thing –  the cotter pin and I became friends again).  I made my dad go upstairs because he was just stressing me out.  I wrestled (literally – at one point I was straddled on the bumper doing some Lucha libre moves in order to get the three bikes onto the rack).  But I got them on, strapped them in, and this job was done.  Check.

I was a sweaty mess.  My dad directed me as I backed the truck up so that he could shut the garage door for the night.  It fit by mere millimeters.  Good thing because I didn’t really want to leave the roof bag and the bikes out in a tornado and I don’t know if I could have watched while my dad nailed a tarp to the garage opening.  And trust me, this was surely his next step.

So I went in to diffuse Kid E’s meltdown (yes, he was still actively having one – he is quite tenacious), shower and go to bed.  I set the alarm for 3 a.m. and crashed.  Hard.

**************************************************************************************************

I will continue with part two of this story in tomorrow’s post.  And, yes, I realize that I only included one Harry Potter reference today.  I got to writing and I forgot about it.  And I wasn’t about to rework the whole story.  Lesson of the Day:  If you drink too much in college you will forget stuff when you are old.

Look Out! I’m Packing

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

No, not a gun, which – let’s face it – should in fact scare the bejesus out of everyone who knows me.  There are certainly some days that I could be the poster child for road rage.  I wouldn’t shoot people, mind you, but I would sure as a Swiss watch shoot some tires that belong to the idiots, the texters and the people who can’t be bothered to thank me with a simple wave.  What has happened to manners on the road, people?  No, I am actually packing up to go back home to Atlanta.  But you should still be a little scared of me right now.

Much more apropos that this picture represent peace than that stupid Mercedes sign inside of a circle

You see, I am a Master Packer.  If there were a class in packing, I would have slept through every one then just showed up for the final gotten an A plus.  I would have a Ph.D. in Stowage.  Opportunus Plures res in vegrandis tractus.  I can pack so much into such little space that I often amaze myself.  And I don’t even need those SpaceBag things (while I must admit that they are quite amazing).  My mind just sees a big game of Tetris and I can turn things and flip them and make them fit into other things and then into whatever space I’m working with.  Or I’ll just throw it out/ not bring it with me.

But talent like this does not come without a price.  In the hours leading up to a Big Pack I can become distracted and sullen and moody.  My mind is working so hard to plan and calculate the puzzle that will soon lie before me that I have no time for common social mores, like feeding my hungry children (“Am I wearing a sign that says, ‘Carl’s Slave?'”) or not growling at people just because they have the nerve to speak to me.

I am busy doing laundry, finding duffel bags (they pack much better than inflexible suitcases), tracking lost items, planning for eventualities and random possibilities (do you think Mary Poppins’ bag got packed all by itself?), and re-assembling bike and roof racks.  And then I have to check the DVR to see if the season premiere of Flipping Out recorded yet (priorities!).  I love me some Jeff Lewis.  He always makes me feel better because at least I’m not as crazy as he is.  Plus, it was fantastically funny when he taught that 3-year-old girl to say her favorite drink was chardonnay.  Then I have to pack.  Dun dun dun.

Fortunately for those directly involved in the process, today is cloudy and not at all a good beach day.  Before this weather actually presented itself I had some crazy scheme planned that involved a final day on the beach followed by last-minute loads and loads of laundry and cleaning (and subsequent drying!) of beach gear prior to a late night packing session.  Right, because there is nothing less stressful than a Big Pack on a deadline. (guess what… I got that from my daddy too – heh, heh).

So today will be mildly taxing, but soon enough we will be on the road again.  I am hoping for a drive day that is free of incidents, whining (by me or the kids) and speeding tickets.  A girl can dream, can’t she?  And when we finally get back to Georgia I will open a big bottle of wine.  I am beginning to notice a trend here.

Wish me luck for tomorrow… (I really mean it, because that drive is going to be L-O-N-G)

Sheepdog’s Dream Come True

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

My husband is not a complicated man.  He needs water (often), food (oftener), and sex (oftenest).  But even more than the desire to quell the hormones that frequently control every cell in his body (“But I have the DSB!  This poison is going to kill me!”), he wishes for a friend who shares his passion for cycling.

He has been a lover of the biking since he was a young boy growing up in West Virginia.  Legend (or the stories that Sheepdog and his mom tell me) has it that he built his first bike ramp, Evel Knievel-style, when he was just three years old.  Many years and multiple emergency room visits later, he has established a zeal for the two-wheeled vehicles that rivals Voldemort’s compulsion to kill Harry (side note: in honor of the eighth and final Harry Potter film’s release on July 15th, I plan to put at least one reference to the books and or movies into each post from now until next Friday – you’re welcome).

Over the years he has read, watched, wanted to be, tried, studied, followed, traveled to watch a stage of, or participated in the following: VeloNews, Cycling magazine, Bicycling magazine, Bike magazine, any and every book on cyclists or cycling, countless shows on OLN and Versus, live bike race streams on the internet, a bike messenger, a bike commuter, a bike mechanic, a bike salesman, taking apart and putting back together his own bike – both out of curiosity and necessity, daredevil stunts on bikes not limited to BMX-style tricks with pegs at indoor/ outdoor ramp parks, mountain biking, mountain bike racing (both in good weather and in the unholy desert heat and/or the pouring rain and/or the freezing snow), road cycling – solo, road cycling – club, triathalons, track cycling, criterium, time trials, the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Tour of California, the Tour of Georgia, the 24 Hours of Canaan, the Six Gap Century, the Tour of the California Alps – Death Ride, and the Leadville 100 – just to name a few.

No, cycling is certainly not just a hobby for him.  It is a part of his heart and soul.  If he is not on the internet looking at pictures of starlets in bikinis or their up-skirt shots, then he is surely looking at the newest in bike technology – frames, gears, suspensions, drivetrains, forks… whatever.   Either that, or he is on craigslist or eBay to see which of those is for sale, “just out of curiosity” (trust me, I’ve had to enforce a budget).

I sill believe you, buddy

And as a human being it stands to reason that Sheepdog just wants to find camaraderie and share his excitement with other cycling enthusiasts.  I’ve tried to fill that role.  I really did.  I have watched countless stages of the Tour (I love Phil Liggett but I’d happily push Bob Roll off of the Col du Granon), I have attended countless races (or “Hippie-Freak-Love-Ins” as I also refer to them), and even tried riding myself (it hurts my butt and I tend to break the bikes – I once broke a derailleur just by pedaling).  “Trying” now consists mostly of me defending Lance (getting harder and harder every time 60 Minutes gets involved) and making fun of the costumes that the cyclists wear (really, there is nothing less flattering than a pair of bike shorts, except maybe biking bibs).

So it is a good thing that Sheepdog has all of these kids.  He is hoping against all hope that at least one of them will share his fanaticism for biking.  But so far, he is 0 for 3.  People-pleaser Kid A really tried to get into it (she even contributed to buying her own mountain bike that they found together on craigslist), but it just didn’t stick.  Kid B doesn’t like to try anything new, so she didn’t even fake an attempt.  Kid C says she will surely ride with him, but she has yet to hop in the saddle.

If you are keeping count, that just leaves the two boys.  As it happens, Kid D – even at six-years-old – often butts heads with his father.  Sheepdog has been trying unsuccessfully to get him to take off the training wheels for years.  Sheepdog’s seemingly casual pleas of, “Wanna go for a bike ride?” are often met with disinterested grunts from Kid D, “…um, nah.”  I keep seeing his heart getting crushed a little bit more with every negative response.  Until the other day.

One of the greatest things about my parents’ house here in New Jersey is the isolation of the very flat street out front.  Nobody else lives and therefore drives back here, so the kids have been able to ride their bikes undisturbed for countless hours.  That has led to a peak in Kid D’s bike riding confidence and a request out of the blue to remove his training wheels.

Sheepdog was remarkably calm and reserved (I presume because he has had his heart broken thrice already) as he got his tools.  He casually handed the bike – sans supports – back to Kid D, showed him how to set up the pedals for maximum push-off power, and gave him the go ahead signal to take off.  Kid D took to riding a bike like a Kardashian to professional ball players, and even the classically pragmatic Sheepdog couldn’t help but whoop and cheer aloud.

In twenty years I have never seen my husband smile the way he does when Kid D now asks him, “Hey, daddy – wanna go for a bike ride?”

Except for the other day when he asked, “Hey daddy – you wanna watch the Tour?”

Wish me luck for tomorrow…