Reality Smackdown

Nothing like getting hit upside the head with reality!

Wednesday I had another AWESOME day. I went to an old (as in known-forever, not age) friend's house for the day. I felt so good I was able to drop Jacob off at Shawn's, drive about 50 minutes to Linda's house, stay there til almost 5, and drive home! She made the most awesome lunch...AND dinner for me to take home. Plus she is making a bunch of meals for me to put in the freezer! THANK YOU LINDA! You ROCK!

Linda has such a beautiful house...so clean and NOT dusty and bright and nice decorations that aren't make of plastic or stuffed animals. She has two tiny little dogs that do not shed or even bark very much. I like the whole house, but the bathroom is AWESOME. It's painted bright teal, with white trim, and the back splash is like teal and chartreuse rectangles of glass, with white grout. It's so nice and bright and just simply lovely.

Linda was such a wonderful hostess...I just got to rest and relax and enjoy adult company. And it was so QUIET. Oh, the quiet. Peace. Quiet. {Sigh}.

Cut to pulling in my driveway:

My driveway is gravel, so of course dust is flying everywhere. Moose and Molly are barking hysterically, Moose running toward the van jumping on it, and Molly getting her chain all wrapped up on everything possible. I'm already abhorring the intrusion of this hideous barking on my peace-lulled brain. So I'm screaming at Moose through the window to get down. Thankfully, he does.

I'm wearing light khaki pants and and a nice pink shirt. Very bright and cheery.

And. Here. Comes. Blackie. It was like a bad movie in slow motion. I can see he's been in the pond, but he's muddier than I've ever seen him. Have you ever really looked at pond mud? It's black. And it stinks. Bad. It's frog crap for crying out loud!

So here's Blackie, wet, muddy, running at me like a bat out of h#!!, and I can see it happening, super slow-mo, and I yell "Noooooooooooo" and he jumps up against me. (You KNEW it was going to happen!)

I leave everything in the car and go into the house to get changed, and throw my clothes in the washer right away. I can already smell the nasty pond mud smell on me. Eeewww!!! I get changed, mumbling under my breath how I should just get back in the van and run away, back to the quiet, clean environment from whence I came.

I get my walking stick since I'm going out into the yard to find my son. I hear Doug on the tractor, so I know Jacob's not far behind. (Blackie, by the way, is howling away in his cage.) I go out the door, head toward the tractor sounds, and stop dead in my tracks as I come around the garage.

Doug is on the tractor, backing into the pond and pulling the bottom mud out and down the yard. He's apparently making the pond BIGGER. (If you will recall, he made the pond for the ducks which we no longer have. One DROWNED (how the heck does a duck drown??) and the others either ran away or got eaten. Even so, we clearly need a larger pond.)

I see Jacob, HIP DEEP walking back and forth through the muck piles that Doug has scraped out of the pond. Jacob sees me and starts running toward me. I was like, Ohhhh NO you don't! So I put my arm out and caught his head in my hand. He runs back to the mud, laughing like a little wild man, chasing and catching frogs.

I saw Doug, and just shook my head. Jacob comes up to me with a HUGE frog he just caught. I was like, um, no thanks. So he put it in his "bug cage" and wants to come in. I don't even let him up the steps into the mudroom before we get his clothes off. Shoes: black. Socks: black. Jeans: black. Smell? Repulsive! Then there's the muddy frog cage he won't release from his tight little grasp.

I get his naked butt into the tub, and let him put the frog on the hamper in the bathroom (Hey, he wanted it in the TUB with him!!) Got Jacob hosed down in the shower, then made him soak in the tub...for 3 hours. Just kidding. It was more like 15 minutes.

Doug came in rather sheepishly, apologizing over and over. I was like, hey. He's a boy. He's catching frogs. He will remember this day forever. What boy wouldn't want to grow up in a place like this where he can run and play and jump in the mud and catch frogs? Yeah. Too bad Mommy has to live there too!!!

The juxtaposition was almost more than I could bear. I couldn't have written a more perfect set-up for my return from the pristine day of visiting to the return to the middle of the sticks.
Well, at least I know my son is having a happy childhood. In the end, that's really the most important thing. Right???