I can be civil

I have never hidden the fact that I hate nature and yet every now again I seem to forget that fact for two seconds and then I end up smack dab in the middle of it. This week was one of those moments.
I promised the boys an adventure to the civil defense caves and high on the promise of a free adventure we set out. I should have turned back the second I noticed that the marker for the dirt path was shaped like a tombstone but I kept right on navigating down a trail that jiggled half of my beaver teeth loose. The trail head was marked with an identical tombstone marker and this time it did not go unnoticed by Thing two. Again I ignored this little sign and instead cheerily bundled up my posse in hats gloves and hoodies even though the air temperature read 96.

The Cave entrance

We got to the opening and you could feel the cold air rushing out and my spidey senses began screaming things like hey moron don't do this. Turns out my spidey senses must be calibrated to rude so I ignored them in the name of  not to being bullied. The first two seconds in I realized that this was a horrible plan. We couldn't find the good head lamp so we were stuck with our cheap 5 buck Walmart specials. These are fantastic if you want to light up the three inches above your head that you are incapable of seeing but unfortunately we needed much more light. It was then that I realized that there was a possibility we might stumble across the body of a beaten dead bum. I instantly tried to figure out a way to get the crap out of there but then I realized that saying hey fellas I don't want to maybe find a dead body just sound nutso so I carried on. While I was trying to keep my panic in check Thing One so rudely interrupted me to tell me he was afraid of getting eaten by a bear. It was all that I could do to not scream some of us have real fears you little punk so why don't you just shut it. I didn't do that. I calmly explained that obviously  this cave was way to cold for a bear to live in and even managed to leave out the part about however it would be the perfect temperature to hold a body in thus making time of death predictions harder to pinpoint.
By this point Thing Two realized that he was in his element on steroids- things that he had to climb in a pitch black area so he couldn't be told not to attempt life threatening moves. He kept moving faster then our tiny beam of light could keep up with and I just knew he was going to get lost. Thing One couldn't keep up with his maniac brother and blamed it on the floor conditions and asked why don't they come smooth this floor out? I good suggestion if you ask me.  Luckily for us the rocks were slick as snot so when he almost fell to his death for the third time he slowed down and slinked his little gloved hand into mine.
Now that I had Thing Two under control Thing One had decided that while the cave might be too cold for a regular bear it was most defiantly the right temperature for a polar bear so we needed to leave immediately to avoid its angelic white jaws of death. Being that I am married to a super genius he took the opportunity to show the boys that he could breath like a dragon and distracted both of them long enough to move forward further into the icy depths of the mountain.

Dragon breathing

I am not sure how long we had been in there but I was starting to have genuine sympathy for the Chilean miners who got trapped for all that time and was worried that could be my fate. I was of course not prepared for this because they had tuna fish to snack on and I had stupidly failed to bring snacks. As I was trying to avoid a panic attack Thing One so rudely interrupted me to show me some randoms thing on the ground. I am not sure if it was ice or mold. He was insistent that it was Coyote hair but he pronounced it like a dad-gum local so it rhymes with goat. It was then that I realized I was failing as a parent. I mean how did I miss this? And you guessed it it brought on a whole new wave of things that was most certainly going to eat us.

Cave of wonders mystery substance

 I was not sure how much more I could take when Jebus took mercy on my soul and we could finally  see the light of day. All of us were ready to leave and we scaled those rocks as fast as humanly possible to get the heck out of dodge.

So lets recap- nature sucks, I am raising wannies who don't know how to pronounce words, and the forest service really needs to come do some serious maintenance to that cave.  

 

Well that's a first

I don't know how it happened but somehow someway summer has ended. Oh sure the signs have been there for weeks. Things 1 and 2 are suddenly super annoying, not to me mind you, I adore my children and would never daydream about dropping them off in Mexico while screeching out my windows ADIOS SUCKERS! No they are  annoying to one another. There has been a constant low toned wailed that just tag teams between the two of them until the beatings are so severe that head trauma or sudden death is eminent and they have to find me to avoid either one. They also are the wrong color. They have gone from the albinos that belong to me, the palest human being on the planet, to a brushed bronze. The evidence is in the form of  very pronounced lines all over their bodies. Bums as white as freshly fallen snow glare down the hallway mysteriously attached to incredibly tanned torsos and legs. Its hilarious but you will just have to use your imagination, I don't want to loose my endorsement with subway over this. As a super bonus they also reek, not the normal puppet funk that they normally have. No this is like a stench that is beyond words, stench that comes from hours in the sun running feral  with other neighborhood kids. So I shouldn't have been suprised when I realized that today was the day to send them back to school but I was.

This is a year of firsts for us.
Thing one is now in middle school and no longer considered an elementary school kid. This means that for the first time my kids are at two different schools. Now They come home at different times and they don't share a principal or common peers. They no longer have one

anothers backs and won't have the same assemblies. This is the year that I have to admit that our little is big and that all too quickly he will be gone. This was also the first time I have ever been terrified to leave him. His school is huge! We only have one middle school so they merge 6 elementary locations into one massive building. I got lost twice trying to drop him off. I had no clue where I was and almost had to trade in my street cred to ask a 6th grader where the hell I was. Good thing I didn't since I later learned you can't say hell in school.
They survived though. They found their way around without the other guy, the bus brought Thing one home in one piece, and no one died.
So take that summer stench! We survived the first day of school.