8 Year Olds…..

Big Daddy’s  man cave is full of estrogen.  He’s been relegated to the livingroom to watch march madness and  has to side-step tissue paper and nail polish. He’s not happy but it’s Glamour Rayz birthday, so he’s taking one for the team.  A big one. It’s a spa party sleepover. Ten 8-year-old girls had hair done,  cucumber facials, hands and feet painted, with glow-in-the-dark polish no less. Luckily, since it was a spa party, I served veggies and fruit, along with the chicken on-a-stick. We diverged slightly with m&ms and cheese doodles, but hey they’re 8.

After cake, presents, and a great deal of screaming and giggling, the posse changed into the pjs and ambushed Big Daddy’s man cave with sleeping bags, stuffed animals, and a whole lot of pink. More pink that should ever be allowed in a man cave.  Big Daddy staggered out, “You could have warned me!” “I was going to, but they’re moving too fast. It’s the sugar,” I holler as I run down stairs to contain the madness.  We settled in to watch “Ramona and Beezus.” I’m thinking this is a good movie to hold their attention, so  dim the lights and I park it on the chaise with one of the girls, hoping to catch my breath……

Then Butter Face the Wonder dog comes in and unlike Big Daddy, he isn’t happy about the raucous in the man cave and is not trying to take one for the team.  He saunters over everyone lying on the floor and lies directly on my niece. He likes her sleeping bag. She is NOT pleased. I grab his collar and try to get him to lie on his dog bed behind the Big Daddy’s man chair.  His does his doggy circling thing, but then makes a bee line for my niece.  He has to be escorted from the room. Reset.

Things were going well and then there was some wigglin’ goin’ on down in front. Then there’s more.  I look and one of the girls has slithered into the bottom of her sleeping bags head first and is waving her hand out of that little hole where the zipper starts. And then she sticks her head out of the hole and smiles.  I would have told her to settle down, but I was too busy laughing because she looked like a TOTAL nut cheesing with her head sticking out of her pink camouflage sleeping bag (Pink camo is whole ‘nother blog topic for another day, but I digress).  I get the stink eye from the Pink Ladies for disturbing the movie. Meanwhile “Camo Girl” is still flapping like a bird down. “SHHHHHHHH, quiet down in front!” Order restored. Again.

There’s a scene in the movie where Ramona is talking to her childhood friend, now teenage crush, Henry.  At which point, the girl I’m sitting on the chaise with, who is a tom boy through and through, is the chillest kid on the earth and one of my favorite kids in the world, calmly says, “Sometimes girls get shy about talking to boys when they get older.”

Surprised and amused by the statement, I say,”Oh really, ya think so?”  She replies,”Yep, but they’re easy to talk to when they’re your boyfriend.”

I chuckle. “Really?” and jokingly ask, “You have a boyfriend?”

She nonchalantly replies, “Oh yeah, I have two.”  My jaw drops,” Two???!!!” I started laughing so hard with my mouth closed so as not to disturb the movie that I was shaking.

“Michael and David.  And I’m thinking about gettin’ another one.”  I busted out laughing to the dismay of the Pink Ladies.

Trying not to totally blow my cool, I replied, “well, don’t spread yourself too thin…..”

She shrugged, “hmm, maybe.” 

I’m out.

-Sufficiently Spa’d Out at the Edge

Jersey Girl and the Marathon…

 I ran the Marine Corps marathon in 2002. I am NOT a runner. I hate running and always have. But our realtor ran it a few years prior to raise money for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in DC. Of course, she did yoga, and ran 500 miles a day, and wasn’t bigger than a minute—you’d think my internal warning system would have gone off reminding me that I had eaten steaks bigger than she and that this was not such a good idea. Alas, it did not and a signed up anyway. Through the training program, I would be better, stronger, and faster and I would bond with the people in my pace group, blah, blah, blah. I fell for the little promotional video hook, line and sinker. I was a sucker. I thought aaawwww, I could say I ran a marathon AND helping people living with AIDS. I was reserving my seat in heaven. So I go out to the meet site on the first day. Mind you, I have given birth to two children thus far, so there is some extra shit jumpin’ around that wasn’t there before. But I’m figuring I was an athlete in college and I’m not in all THAT bad shape. And I have mega-ultra spandex on, so bring it on, baby! I am, along with about 100 other people are all pumped up, ready to do our part for mankind. Go Team! We are instructed to run three miles, 1.5 out and 1.5 back in. In my usual, overly exuberant way (that’s code for not being able to pace myself), I blast out, thinking 3 miles is easy, how bad could it be? Bloody Hell!!! I get about 1/8 of a mile and get a stitch in my side and a cramp in my calf. Trying not to look like an Uber Ass, I pushed on through and FINALLY finished. I think I missed one of my kid’s birthdays it took so damn long. The following week we are assigned our pace groups. They call names for the four-minute mile group, then the five-minute mile group (Bitches). I know I am not in the fastest groups, but am sure they’re going to call my name relatively soon. Eight-minute milers are called (Whores). Ten… (I must be in the next group, okay maybe the next). I finally hear my name. 15-minute mile group????!!!! Surely there is some mistake because I KNOW I can walk backwards faster than that. My pace group gathers together for introductions….One guy has a pacemaker and went to high school with Jesus. One lady, whose running in orthopedic shoes is rubbing her varicose veins. I am soooo screwed. I “ran” with this group on Sundays for a few weeks, but then decided to change groups, otherwise I was doomed. I put “ran” in quotations, because those of us that were younger in the group never got a full run in because we were too busy administering CPR to Methusala and her posse of ancients who picked the symbols for the Rosetta Stone. So, I switched to a Saturday group. The gods had indeed smiled upon me for there were people who were born within 10 years of me, so I could hang up my defibrillator. There was another transplant from different group who left her original group because they said they didn’t cuss, to which she responded, “Well FUCK!” My kindred spirit! Fuckin’ A right!

There was another woman in our group, with whom we bonded, who oddly enough walked faster than she ran. I’m not sure how this works from a physics standpoint, but hey, she worked it out. Three Musketeers look out!

Through it all though, Jersey Girl and I really bonded and pushed each other, laughed, growled, and cussed, and then cussed some more. We talked of her upcoming nuptials, parents, my life on the edge of crazy. Only she could appreciate me showing up to her wedding in my running shoes because I was running late and thought I’d rather witness the big moment than wrestle my pumps on. She is God-Mother to my youngest child. I am the one she calls first when her son is sick. Her husband has reminded her on occasion that I am not actually a doctor to which she responds that I have four children that are alive and thriving and that I don’t charge for midnight calls. I can call her to back me off my edge of crazy so as not to end up in jail for some momentary lapse of sanity.

I laugh that we could have been on the sappy promotional video for runners that took up the gauntlet in the years following our successful completion of the 2003 Marine Corps Marathon. (My husband laughs because the 83 year-old man and the one-legged man finished before us, but we finished damn it, unlike the 4,000 runners and the dead woman who didn’t. ASS!) It was most certainly true that the bonds we would make would be for life, that we would be forever changed by the experience. Truer words were never spoken.

I still hate running. But I love my Jersey Girl.