Life down here on earth

Silver Lining.

So we're having this really weird Gas Shortage/Localized Panic going on around here. 

I first got the word from Greg on Thursday night when he met me at football practice and said, "All the gas stations on my way home from work are out of gas. Shell has some. You should go now and fill up your tank."

The Shell station in tiny Nolensville only had premium by the time I got there.  I was third in a short line and paid $4.29 a gallon for premium, which is probably normal, except I don't normally buy premium. The next day, Greg got gouged at a gas station whose credit card reader was "broken" and who had lost all their pencils or something so they couldn't write receipts for how much you paid.   It's a good thing I listen to Greg because I live in a bubble and had no idea there was a shortage in the works. I was at a quarter tank and if I had waited I would have hit this:

On Friday, I went to the grocery store and the line at the Kroger gas station was 2 hours long. The line looped around the parking lot and then out into the road. Notice the poor guy broken down in the line. If you see a traffic jam, you know it's because some gas station just got a tanker full of gas. Everyone I know, except the friend who's turning in her lease car this week and has a tank to burn, is staying home and conserving the gas they have.

Since I'm sitting on 3/4 of a tank of gas, it's not so bad for me and the best part about this whole thing:  The pickup line at school has been super short! I have always wondered how many of those people were in my position and HAD to pick up their kids and how many were doing it for other (possibly good, probably not) reasons.  Now I know. I'm on to all those folks clogging up the line just because they've got to get to piano lessons or something.  You folks stay at home and enjoy the bus like God meant you to. You don't know what you've got till it's gone is all I'm saying. The line is 1/3 the usual size and no one is sitting in their car at the front of the line with their a/c running 2 hours before school lets out. They must be saving their car idling time for the line at the gas station. All this means I get in and out and back home in record time. Is it wrong to hope the gas shortage could continue just a little longer?

A big bang

What made me laugh this week was a fashionable woman with a huge Costco cart full of over-sized Costco-type items and two (two!) giant dog beds trying to get all her purchases into a tiny convertible Porsche.  It was pretty entertaining watching her teeter on four inch heels as she punched the fluffy dog beds into the nooks and crannies of her car.

I, on the other hand, was loading my car with giant containers of vinegar and baking soda because last weekend Jack wanted to make something he called "hand grenades" (lovely, right?) and nearly died because we were out of plain vinegar and I wouldn't let him use my bottle of rice wine vinegar to blow up Ziploc bags in the back yard.  He made me swear on a stack of The Dangerous Book for Boys that I would buy the supplies so he could do this "thing"- I don't know whether to call it a project or an experiment or what- this weekend.  Why, oh why, can we not just weave those little potholders or glue seashells on picture frames or any other normal craft activity?

I am not joking when I say that I caught him watching "How to make a smoke bomb with $2 worth of household items" on Youtube the other day, so if I can channel that desire into something along the lines of Vinegar+Baking soda= Exploding Ziploc Bags, then I figure I'm doing okay.  Although now that I type that it occurs to me that vinegar and baking soda is probably just the gateway-drug for bigger explosions. 

I guess you could call this media-okra (c'mon, that's funny!)

Our CSA box of vegetables this week included a handful of okra.  Always my favorite vegetable as a kid (duh-it's fried!), I've never EVER made it myself.  I think I may have added it to a gumbo or something, but I don't really count that. 

When I was frying this up tonight (in olive oil, not bacon grease, fortunately. Or unfortunately depending on how you want to look at it.) I couldn't help but smile. I told Greg it smelled to me like growing up. Like my childhood. Like Grandma's house. If I had known, I would have cooked some years ago.

It didn't smell like growing up to Greg, who didn't discover okra until he moved east and discovered Meat and Threes, but he enjoyed eating it. Even the kids loved it and gobbled it up (duh- it's fried!)

Did June Cleaver have a college degree?

Jack was studying for a science test. I had scanned the material he was studying and as I was folding laundry I started to quiz him on the phases of cellular mitosis. "Okay," I asked, "What happens during Anaphase?"

"Hey, how do you know this stuff?"

"I know you think you're smart, but where do you think you get those smarts from?"

I should know better than to ask a stupid question. He didn't even hesitate, "Dad."

"What? Dad?!" I cried, flabbergasted.

He backpedaled.  "I don't mean I get ALL my smarts from Dad. Just MOST of them." He was not being sarcastic in the least. He means everything he says very literally. I knew he believed it to be true and was trying not to hurt my feelings.

I gave him an out. "Okay, I know you mean that you and Dad are both strong in math, but I'm good at things, too.  Different things. Do you know what I'm good at?"

Again without hesitation, "Housework?"

I was shocked like Mr. Darcy after Elizabeth Bennett's rejection, "So this is your opinion of me?" I started to argue with him and then reconsidered. Why did I need to justify my intelligence to a 10-year-old?  This is what you get for sacrificing a career to follow your husband around the country.  Dad is the smart one and Mom does the laundry. Great.

I retreated to my position of power, "Just go upstairs and brush your teeth and get in bed!"

Realizing that the whole conversation was funny, I related the story to Greg the next day when he returned from an out-of-town trip (probably conferring with a brain-trust or whatever it is "smart" people do when we dunces are at home drooling in our oatmeal.) 

Greg thought it was funny for a completely different reason. "Wait," he laughed, "Jack thinks you're good at housework?"

Can't handle the heat

Jack's football team has a Dad this year filling the spot of Team Mom.  He's really into it and on top of things.  He eschewed the title of Team Mom and declared himself "Director of Field Operations."  I first assumed it was a little tongue in cheek, but I'm really not sure anymore.  We get a lot of charts made in Excel. Some of them are even laminated. I love that he gives us an update at the beginning of every week letting us know when and where practices are because you wouldn't think it, but there's often a lot of confusion surrounding those. 

He also sends out encouraging emails before the upcoming Saturday game and then encouraging emails after the game saying what a great job we did. Last Thursday his email gave us the weather forecast for Saturday (which wasn't all that bad) and encouraged us to start hydrating our sons Friday after school and also not to let them play too hard Friday night so they could conserve their energy for Saturday.

Right. They're all nine and ten years old. First of all, they've got more energy than all of us parents combined. Secondly, yeah, whatever, it's only football.

So, imagine my shock on Saturday when Jack pulled himself out of the game- which never happens!- at the end of the first quarter because he was OVERHEATED.  That's what I get for not taking the game preparation seriously enough.  Lucky for Jack, we live in one of those suburbs where all the kids are smothered with parental attention within an inch of their lives and by the time Jack had his helmet off he was inundated with Gatorade and ice down his back and one of those frozen neck-wrap things and "Stand up, honey, so you can get some air." Okay, I'm exaggerating. The coach didn't call him honey, but the rest is totally true.    

Later in the game, I looked over at the other team's sideline where there were only coaches and wondered to Greg where all their other players were.  I suspected they had them stashed in the shade somewhere. But Greg said they didn't have any other players. No substitutes. They were just sucking it up in the humidity playing offense and defense without any hovering parents asking if they'd like a cold compress. It's a little embarrassing, actually. We had a similar game last year where it was super-hot and really dusty and the parents of our team were crowding around the players bench with their golf umbrellas to provide shade.  The other team, whose dusty home field was in the shadow of the local landfill, had only one extra player and zero golf umbrellas.  If I were on those other teams, I would for sure be calling us sissies behind our backs.

 

At this Saturday's game, Jack eventually went back in and played hard, but most of the other kids on the team took a turn on the sideline trying not to throw up from the heat.

That's him in the middle there. I couldn't tell you what position he's playing, but I'm always happy when all the bodies clear out for a second so I can get a picture of him.  Usually I have to wait until he's sitting still.

See that concerned, thoughtful expression on his face? That's so completely Jack. He's probably thinking, "I should have started hydrating Friday after school, then I wouldn't have had to sit out any plays. Also, I probably wouldn't have missed that block in the third quarter." I am not even joking.