Oh, the long dog days of summer are upon us and that spring-like temps have been forgotten. I'm ready to wrap-up August, in all it's hazy, hot, and humid glory, and just throw it away. This month seems endless right now and I'd really like for it to just be over. Bring on Fall already!
If I seem a little dreary, it's because I'm hot, tired and just a tad cranky. I'm so ready for school to begin and to get these children out of my hair for just a little while. It seems as if all the children in our neighborhood have magically evaporated and my kids have nobody to hang out with. So that leaves me as the 24 hour entertainment director. Which, as I've told them countless times, I am not. We haven't hit the pool much lately because honestly, I hate humidity and I don't want to be out in it. I do have a valid excuse though; the humidity causes my headaches, so I like to retreat into the A.C. So they hang in the house, watch TV, fight, play board games, fight, and occasionally do the summer reading I'm forcing them to do and then fight some more. I bought them some math books, too. Yeah, I'm that much fun!
Another major reason for my crankiness is because my husband has been detailed out for a special work program to the lovely confines of Roswell, New Mexico for two months. TWO WHOLE MONTHS! I realize that this is nothing compared to what military families experience, and believe me, this echoes in my mind constantly. But two months is a loonnngg time. With four kids. In the summer.
It's no picnic for him either. Roswell is a pit. The pit of despair. Forgive me readers in Roswell, wait I have no readers from Roswell, so yeah, it's a pit. There is nothing there---nothing. Even the aliens have up and left. HE HAS NO CELL PHONE SERVICE! If that's not bad enough, the phones in his "mobile command unit," a $5 million mobile outfit paid for by you the tax payers, don't work. It's making communication very difficult since we can't just call each other during the day. We have to wait until he's back in his hotel room and call out using an expensive calling card. Oy.
On the day he left, I took the kids to one of our favorite play places. It's a 3 story play land in a church community center and it's a great place to go when you can't think of anything to do (*see above.) And it's free-- The best kind of entertainment. It's also mass mayhem and chaos. Three stories of play land goodness holds tons of little kids-screaming, frenzied, hyped up toddlers through tweens running amok. Somehow in the midst of all this activity, Jill wound up on the bottom of a five kid pile up on the twisty tunnel slide. I heard her screaming from my table where I was trying to read my book in peace and went running to her. It's amazing how mom's can pick out their kids screams among all the screaming in the play land. When I found her, her arm was hanging kind of oddly and she was inconsolable. So we quickly packed up and I assessed the situation. After she didn't move her arm for over an hour and wouldn't allow me to move it, I decided it was time to head off to the ER. We were seen pretty quickly, which was nice since that was one frightening waiting room. After x-rays, it was determined that nothing was broken, but she has a bone contusion on her elbow. She was bandaged up and sent on her way. It took a couple of days, but her elbow is all better now and she's not in anymore pain. Hopefully that will be the worst we have to face for awhile.
I'm really not as miserable as this post sounds. I'm just having one of those days, complete with a raging toddler tantrum that lasted a good 30 minutes, and it will pass. I'll return to happier posts soon :-)
