A week after moving in, I decided to
take a little break from opening boxes, signing up for utilities, and dealing
with other new-home-ownership issues, and take the kids to our neighborhood
pool.
First, I need to explain that this
is no ordinary pool! It has a lap pool, a baby splash area, beach access kiddie
area, deep end diving board area, and two amazing slides! It is gorgeously
landscaped, and uses salt instead of chlorine. Needless to say this was a big
selling point for moving here in the first place.
A downside to this pool is that it has
a lot of bees. A few years ago it was yellow-jackets. This summer it is bees.
Anyway, we had a great break, spent
the latter half of the day splashing in the water and lounging in the sun. My
mom even brought over root beer, ice, plastic cups, and snacks for us. Felt
sort of like being in a resort.
But don't ever let your guard down
when you are a mom. By default, being a mom means you are usually doing 20
things simultaneously and have about 5% of your attention actually focused on
any one of those things at any one time. (Did you follow my math there?)
We stayed til the pool closed. The
process of corralling my children through any transition is never an easy one.
I'm sure it has something to do with the number three. You get two together,
the third has run off to find a missing floaty toy. You collect that one and
now you've got a different set of two because the first one has run off when
you weren't looking to check the lost and found for a "treasure." You
get that one back to the fold and now the middle one has gone missing
"just because."
At any rate, I spent about 20
minutes trying to coax Micky out of the pool while at the same time collecting
the various towels, toys, flip-flops, snack leavings, extra clothes, and
children. There was a tiny bit of root beer left in the bottom of my glass, so
I decided to toss it back rather than throw it out into the trashcan . . .
Mistake!
A rouge bee was waiting there, just
for the right moment when I was not looking, when I was distracted, just tossing it back, to strike.
I felt the fuzzy bulk of the bee
first, spat then looked down and the squirming yellow and black icky thing on
cement pool deck. At about the same instant I realized I'd just spat out a bee,
I began to feel the burn inside my mouth. I reach in my lower lip and pulled
out the stinger (in my memory it was about 5 inches long, but I'm sure my
memory is exaggerating) and thought "Crap! I've never been stung by a bee.
I hope I'm not allergic!" At this point, two of the aforementioned kids
seized their opportunity at my distraction and ran off in opposite directions.
I was now carrying an armload of wet
towels, shoes, toys and clothes, while at the same time holding a piece of ice
to my lip, silently praying I am NOT allergic, and mumbling loudly in my
"serious" tone for my kids to "COME. ON. NOW!" so we could
get home and I could get some antihistamine in my system. (And it also hurt
like Hell and I was starting to get really irritable.)
Finally, I managed to get all three kids and
all their gear back in the car and back to the house. While I was busy applying more ice,
taking a Benadryl, and breaking up a fight between my oldest two upstairs . . .
Micky decided to pee on the bathroom floor downstairs.
Eating a bee? It's whatever.
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