Eating Bees . . . and other perils of Motherhood

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.

Pin It

Not on the grass . . .

I'll never forget how my mom would make us dump the pool at the end of each day so that we didn't "burn the grass."  It would annoy me - I can admit that today (well, I probably made that pretty clear back then, too) and I didn't understand what the big deal was about grass.  It's GRASS!  You walk on it, you pull it, it dies, it grows back. . . .

This weekend I found myself becoming my mom (something I find happening more and more lately) as I spent 30 minutes filling the inflatable pool with water, watching the kids have a blast in it for an hour or two, and then making them dump it so we could "store the pool til next weekend." (I couldn't bear to actually say, "so we don't kill the grass.")  *As a side note: it has taken me TWO YEARS to get anything that even resembles grass to grow in the back yard!  So maybe now I'm starting to get it Mom - yes, now I'm starting to get it.

But it's been sooooo incredibly hot this week and I just wanted the kids to be able to dip in the pool for a few minutes at the end of each day, cool off, burn off some energy, have some fun.  So I had the great idea of putting the pool up on the deck (yes, I know I'm not the inventor of this idea, but it was great for me) and being able to leave it there at least for longer than a few hours at a time.

Fantastic!  Aside from the part where the pool floor is now super slippery (no soft ground underneath for friction) and the "cannonballing" and "diving" has become somewhat perilous, it's been wonderful. 

Last night I brought all our dinner out to the deck and the kids were able to eat and play and eat and play and I was able to sit back and just relax and watch them having fun - I even sprayed them a few times under the guise of "getting the wasps away".  All the giggles and smiles and love and none of the worry about killed grass.  I have to admit it was a truly wonderful experience (different from my usual harried running around trying to "get things done" in the hour and a half between coming home from work and before the kids head up to bed.)

Pool on the Porch = Ahhhhhhhhhh
(that's "ahhh" as in I am relaxed, not "ahhhh" as in I am screaming ;)

Pin It