Still Dirty, Still Weird, Still Fun

Linking up with Conversion Diary again.

1. Went to the Dirty Weird Zoo yesterday. It just wouldn’t be summer without a visit to the DWZ.

When we visited last year my girls were timid about feeding the animals, and Lass just wouldn’t do it at all.

Not so this year.

We ran out of bread, but they were determined to feed grass to the cows.

Still dirty and weird. I just love that place.

2. What do you do if someone rings your doorbell at 9:30 at night, when your husband is working nights, and you know that the night before your garage door had accidentally been left open all night?

Do you assume a murderer has come for you (and politely rung your doorbell)? Turn off all the lights inside? Turn on all the lights outside? Turn on your alarm system?

Do you go to your garage door after realizing there’s no one at your front door (which you can see through) and yell, “Who is it??” “WHO IS IT?!”

Do you look around for a weapon and then grab your husband’s hunting knife and stalk around the house looking out all the windows?

No?

Yeah, me neither.

But if I did do all that stuff I would have felt kind of silly when I called my husband to double check that the garage doors were all closed when he left, and realized that my mysterious doorbell-ringer was probably one of the neighborhood kids messing around.

If I hadn’t been terrified to open my door I would have gone out there and rung those kids’ necks! I mean, if all that had actually happened, of course.

3. Okay. Obviously, #2 is an account of exactly what I did last night when my doorbell rang shortly after my husband had left for work. Since there was no one at my front door (little jerk ran away!) and I couldn’t see through the door into the garage (note to self to have peephole in new house), I was convinced that someone was lurking in my garage, waiting for me to open the door so he could murder me. I kept the hunting knife on the chair next to me for the rest of the night, even though after talking to my husband and then hearing kids getting up to some foolishness outside, I knew that our garage doors were securely closed and that said kids were responsible for my panic. Or at least for setting it in motion. I guess I can’t blame them for my craziness.

I don’t know why I automatically go into extreme-plan-to-confront-crazed-killer mode whenever there is the slightest indication of shady business going on.

Like the other day when a guy came to deliver something for my husband. I had forgotten he was coming, and he wasn’t wearing an obvious uniform. So in my mind all I saw was a strange man at my door with no business there. I quickly assessed the situation, considered how quickly I could press the panic button on my alarm panel, looked for an easily reachable weapon (a heavy vase was the closest thing I saw), thought of a few different ways I could inflict pain with my hands/knees/feet, and then cautiously opened the door a tiny crack with my foot wedged behind it to hopefully impede an attempt at forced entry. Yes. I do know this is crazy.

Or the time my husband and I were in the drive through of Starbucks after church and a girl, who was probably around 20-ish and all of maybe 110 lbs, started walking along the side of our car. She was a little close for (my) comfort so I automatically scanned to be sure the car doors were locked, looked for the best way for my husband to drive the car out of the danger lane, and thought about how I would punch her in the nose and the put my knee into her face if she tried to carjack us.

I don’t mean to come up with this stuff. I’m not at all a violent person. It just happens automatically. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up just outside Detroit in the days when carjacking became a thing. Or because I read a few too many true-crime novels in my early 20s. Or because I worked in prisons for several years. Probably it’s all those things combined, plus a hyper-protective don’t-you-even-think-you’re-going-to-mess-with-my-kids Mama-Bear instinct. Plus a little bit of insanity for good measure.

It’s what I do.

4. We got the first draft of the plans for our new house yesterday. We have a few changes to make, but I’m very happy with the initial drawings.

5. I have some serious stroller envy.

Super Friend has all the good stuff. She brought this double jogger today for both of our stroller-size littles to ride in:

I’ve never had a jogging stroller, because I have had a total of zero interest in jogging since running my last marathon in 2008. But I want it.

Super Friend is also loaning us her Super Stroller again. We used it for our trip to Disney World, and though I carried sis the whole time it is capable of carrying all three girls.

She’s letting us take it on our trip to the Iowa State Fair next week. I need to get one of these:

6. I don’t think there’s any worse feeling in the world than needing to take your child to the emergency room to assess a potentially serious health threat.

I got KFC for dinner last night, because we had to eat quickly between a doctor’s appointment and our Baptism class. As dinner was just getting started I noticed that Lass had bitten off the end of her chicken drumstick and swallowed it. The remaining end was pretty jagged looking so hubby called the ER and they told us to bring her in for X-rays. If they saw the chunk of or shards of bone in her stomach they would have to do a procedure to try to get it out.

Well, I was freaking out the whole way to the hospital, knowing they were going to see this thing in her stomach, because I knew she had swallowed it and praying that it had not yet moved into her duodenum or beyond.

We got to the hospital, got the X-rays, and found…

Nothing.

(She got that ostrich toy after her X-ray.)

Nothing was visible in her stomach or further along her digestive tract. I texted my babysitter and had her look around for the piece of bone, thinking that maybe she had just spit it out.

Nothing.

The mystery was solved when we got home. Hubby picked up another piece of chicken and chomped the end off. He proceeded to chew it right up like nothing. It was super soft and broke right up in his mouth. He had me try it with yet another drumstick. Yeah, I bit right through that bone. And then proceeded to gag and spit it right out. It was disgusting, and I have a thing about textures.

Apparently my middle child doesn’t. I’m so relieved she’s okay.

7. Today Super Friend and I are driving an hour to attend a Scholastic Warehouse Sale. With only one child (her littlest). Do I need to tell you that I’m way more excited about uninterrupted Mommy Friend time than about the book sale? No. I don’t. But the book sale should be good too.

Hoping you have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend. We’re heading to the Farm today after my Mommy date.