I struggle endlessly to discover new and awesome movies for my kids to watch.
Disney flicks are way too pricey to buy.
My daughter wants the Barbies and Ponies and my son likes the trains and cars, so they rarely agree.
The greatest challenge is finding something I will watch without constantly checking Facebook updates or playing solitaire on my phone.
Here are my top 5 current and contemporary kid flicks.
1. Frozen.
Say what you will about it, but there is something incredibly freeing about belting out ballads, especially with midget backup singers.
I love Anna’s quirkiness. She drools, looks like crap in the morning, has a severe chocolate addiction and falls for a stinky dork with a family of trolls.
2. Meet the Robinsons.
Plots centered on adoption tug at my heart strings. It gives us a glimpse of a super villain as an innocent child. The mom is a bad-ass who thwarts a brutal attack where meatballs are used as weapons.
It has a song by Rufus Wainwright that I ADORE.
3. Rango.
This can’t be a kid flick. It just can’t. Chock full of grownup metaphors.
4. Hotel Transylvania.
I hate Adam Sandler, except for in this movie.
I dig monster humor.
“Those humans are nassssty.”
And there’s this line. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXveWvxYz3A
5. Free Birds.
Owen Wilson. Amy Poehler. Woody Harrelson. George Takei. (I had you at Takei, didn’t I?)
My husband would add Fantastic Mr. Fox to this list, but a friendly reminder to fellow parents: Your kids repeat what they hear, so only watch it if you’re a-o-k with the kidlets saying, “What the cuss?” or “This is a total clustercuss!”
Parents of little ones, please add your suggestions and justifications. I am always searching for better alternatives to playing with the dollhouse.
Picture a koala bear whining perpetually. 
Or a turtle neck sweater that cries for no reason. 
Or the Incredible Hulk keeping a mom in a headlock while EXCLUSIVELY wearing skirts. 
This is my daughter. She is going through a phase (Dear God, let it be a phase) where she is beyond clingy.
She is single-handedly bringing back the choker necklace of the 90’s by BECOMING a choker.
I’m afraid I haven’t snapped any photos of her attacking me. Look how deceptively sweet she is!
She repeatedly gets down from the bench during dinner to give me a hug, despite being told repeatedly to withhold affection until after we eat.
She lies on top of me, kicking me over and over and over and then when I finally break down and yell at her she says, “I just want to give you a hug!” (Or kick the shit out of me)
She wants me to carry her, she wants to cook with me, she wants me to color WITH her. Inevitably when we color together, she gets bored and starts scribbling spastically all over whatever masterpiece I’ve created.
Sometimes I feel like instead of giving birth to a child, I actually have a parasitic twin attached to my body.
Rather than a disturbing visual representation of an underdeveloped conjoined twin (don’t google it) I am showing you Andy Garcia. He had an underdeveloped conjoined twin surgically removed from his shoulder.
I am being manhandled by a blonde troll 24/7. 
Sometimes I feel badly about how irritating I find her demands for constant attention and contact.
The other night I told her it was time to bed after we finished reading and she started to fake cry. I told her to read a book on her own and she went ape crap.
I got annoyed and told her to pull it together.
Then she said, “I can’t read a book on my own, BECAUSE I CAN’T READ THE WORDS!”
Now I’M the dick. It has to be incredibly frustrating to be just a few letter sounds away from being able to read by yourself.
That being said, I am starting to think it’s strange that my children have ZERO ability to entertain themselves. (even together)
As I have previously posted, I suck at pretend.
I harbor a secret desire to burn her dollhouse down.
I can only find so many ways to rearrange the six pieces of furniture.
My mouse family mostly just wants to chill on the couch and watch TV. 
Speaking of, my children won’t even watch television alone. They demand to have company to zone out.
I have on more than one occasion plunked my daughter down on the couch, put on a new movie and tried to sneak in a nap in the bedroom. (Door open. I am not a HORRIBLE parent.)
Within ten minutes I will hear the heavy breathing of a small being standing next to me, staring at me, waiting for me to open my eyes.
It’s like I have my own personal serial killer, who is determined to murder me with crappy kid movies.
She won’t even sing without me. If I stop singing Frozen songs because I am doing something totally unimportant like trying to help her little brother poop on the potty, she starts to whisper-sing, looking uncomfortable like she just forgot her lines in the school play.
I probably shouldn’t talk considering that my mother could’ve nicknamed me “the tumor” until I was in high school. But, seriously, was I this annoying?
I’ve started calling her an Australian Sheperd. “The Aussie has considerable energy and drive, and usually needs a job to do.”
That’s my kid.
If you don’t give her a task, she’ll throw a shit-fit and possibly even piss on the rug. (Maybe not, but her temper tantrums ARE escalating.) 
She is a lovely child. Brilliant, hilarious, spirited and driven.
Now, can someone please borrow her for a couple of hours so I can have a hot date with my husband?
There are skills that make any good mother something akin to a superhero. In my estimation, stay at home moms have the hardest gig. But, working moms have it rough too. They also develop superhuman powers, often not found in everyday women.
1. The ability to apply all makeup while at stop lights on the way to work. No smudges, no crazy lady eye shadow. To the women who even tackle plucking their eyebrows behind the wheel, kudos… and I’ve been there.
2. They have learned the fastest way to get to and from work. Yeah, they’ve been late fifteen times trying different routes, but now they have it MASTERED .
3. The ability to do laundry incrementally over several days.
4. They are phenomenally low maintenance. Only 10 minutes to shower, dress and get out the door? No problem.
5. They have dismissed the iron as an extraneous appliance. Clothes that wrinkle are dedicated with love to Goodwill.
6. The secret ankle shave allows them to wear capris or long skirts unabashedly.
7. They have found a way to effectively eliminate ALL down time. Down time? What is that? Walk through the front door after a long commute home from a crappy day at work and immediately start COOKING.
8. They have bid a fond farewell to food snobbery. You simply can’t waste precious time coming up with organic, healthy, creative meals and snacks. Sometimes it’s just a banana and a smile for breakfast.
9. The ability to give off the appearance of extreme concentration during a meeting when you are actually falling asleep.
10. They can change a diaper in a single bound, at the speed of light. Casual diaper change when you’ve got somewhere you have to be in order to pay the bills? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Last night while I was sweating through my daily hour-long commute in bumper to bumper traffic, my husband calls to let me know that Huck has an outrageous ear ache.
I am immediately assessing the logistical nightmare involved. A rough night of no sleep is all but guaranteed unless we confront the offending ear head-on. (pun intended)
So, I rush home and grab a healthy snack and rush Huck to the nearest urgent care clinic. As I drive, I am doing the parental reach-around, shuttling hunks of banana to the backseat.
I’m wiping banana gunk on my seat and trying to assuage his fears by scream-singing Frozen songs.
At the doctor’s office, he holds it together while I discuss paperwork with the snippy, condescending bitch who runs the front desk.
For some reason it’s not until I am actually filling out paperwork with Huck on my lap that it sinks in that he is, INDEED, inside a doctor’s office.
He starts to cry.
It escalates.
He’s blowing snot bubbles and growling underneath the sobs.
Now begins the humiliating struggle to get him to calm down.
I bounce him on my lap, hold him and say “shhhh, it will be okay.” The people in the waiting room are giving the “Oh, poor baby, sweet mommy” looks.
Not working, so I move on to offering up games on my phone.
He starts gurgling, “I don’t want games toooo.” (Suddenly, everything he says is followed by the word “too.”)
I start showing him pictures on my phone and asking him to tell me who it is.
“I want Alma toooo!” “I want daddy toooo!” “I wanna go home toooo!”
The tension in the room is escalating, the looks far less sympathetic.
The crying/yelling is perpetual.
I offer up mandarin oranges, magazines, videos on my phone, all to no avail.
People are grumbling now, shifting awkwardly in their seats. I’m starting to appear to be a really ineffective comforter.
I take him outside and he calms down. He starts looking at cars, flags, signs… and stops crying.
I start… SWEATING.
We go back in and… he bursts into tears.
I try reasoning with him. “We have to see the doctor to get medicine so your ear won’t hurt anymore.” That seems to remind him about the pain and the yelling grows more passionate.
Even the nasty bitch on the desk is trying to help now, offering up cartoons on TV…. anything to make him shut up.
You know what would’ve made him shut up? Not making us wait an hour and a half to see a f&*ing doctor!
When we finally make it into the room where my son will be seen, it’s another 30 minutes of spastic non-stop sobbing.
I offer him tongue depressors to play with, cotton balls, suggest he write on the crinkly, keep your bottom clean paper.
Nothing works. Everything is followed by an irritated “I don’t wanna (insert suggestion here) tooooo!”
I am rocking my little weapon of mass destruction fervently, begging him to tell me what’s wrong. He calms down enough to avoid explosion and mass casualties, but he can’t even talk he’s so beside himself.
I end up playing Frozen singalong videos on Youtube during which he intermittently ceases screaming. I have no doubt that people outside the room were yucking it up listening to me sing while my son continued to cry.
They offered him a juice box. You know what his response was.
The Doctor finally arrives, accidentally calls my son by his last name and swoops in to check his ears.
His hands are shaking violently. He says, It’s hard with a moving target.” (Yeah, my son is sitting perfectly still. He’s not the problem.) Of course I end up with the one urgent care physician in all of Tampa Bay with severe Parkinson’s.
I have to suggest to him the medication my son requires and he promises to call it in to our pharmacy right away.
That night, we call the pharmacy and it was never called in. The urgent care clinic is closed. We have no medication. I am buying beer on the way home. This was supposed to be my workout day. Can you lose lbs through severe stress and trauma?
There is a chance that suffering through the worst doctor’s visit ever had its reward in the end. Huck was so exhausted from all of that crying that he drank milk, took Motrin and some ear drops and NEARLY slept through the night.
We survived the crappy clinic and all we got was this lousy sticker.
I am 98% sure I am having a full-blown identity crisis.
I am confident in my gender preference, sexual preference and my current status as being married and a mother.
Everything else is up for grabs.
When you become a parent your priorities don’t just shift. You don’t just put your needs on the back burner. You set them on fire and watch them turn to ash and waft away in the wind.
When it comes to my self-worth, I didn’t put all my eggs in one basket. There was a basket for being a successful News Producer, a basket for looking good, a basket for being loyal and loving and a basket for maintaining my sense of humor.
I didn’t drop the basket, but I may have crashed the delivery truck.
I have always wrapped up my self-confidence in a blanket of compliments. I was a great writer. I was skinny and attractive. I was smart and witty. Quirky and fun. Deep and loyal. Cynical and acerbic.
Now, I just feel old and tired. I have been told I am a bad writer and a bad Producer.
I drag my baby weight around like a yoke around my… well, let’s be frank here… belly.
My sense of humor is more bitter than acerbic.
Fun… what is that?
I have forgotten what it feels like to feel awesome.
I know it’s hidden in there somewhere, but you can only be told you’re not good enough for so long before you start to really believe it.
You know how it would feel if someone told you that you have an ugly baby? That’s how it feels when you love something tremendously and are told you suck at it.
I never proclaimed to be a stellar writer, but it’s something I’ve done like it’s a compulsion for my entire life.
To be told that I blow at it is a REAL BLOW.
It has made me question whether I ever had any talent to begin with. Is the full extent of my skill blogging, like this is some extension of a Dear Diary? Is my writing this right now proof of that?
I would be content if I was just focusing on raising two wonderful children, being Suzy homemaker but, instead I am stretched thin like a rubber band across the gap between work and home.
I haven’t changed how much effort I put into my job, but suddenly have hit a ceiling. While I continue to pour effort into a job where I am underappreciated, my home is collecting dog fur and grime and a stranger is cleaning it up. My kids have started to know when “Linda cleaned” the house.
I am opting for canned veggies, fish sticks and mac and cheese for the kids when I want to master a real meal.
I want to have someone take a picture of me that isn’t just from the shoulders up that I don’t immediately have the urge to delete.
There is the person I was, the person I am and the person I want to be.
They are all entirely different. I would love to say I’m ready to dig deep and reach that goal, but I’ve got to get out of the hole I’m already in first.
I need to be able to pour my heart and soul into something and have someone say just one time, “job well done.”
Let’s make it one word. Kudos. It’s cheap, cliche and a candy bar. I’ll take it.
That being said, I am now going to rush to the store to buy ingredients to make a bunch of fancy food and still try to make it to a block party on my cul-de-sac without vomiting from anxiety.
My job might suck sometimes, but it will never be as bad as being a daycare worker.
1. I occasionally have to clean up someone else’s shit. (something they’ve done wrong)
You ALWAYS have to clean up someone else’s shit. 
2. When my kid ends up with a boo boo, my initial response is “What did you do?”
When kids end up hurt at daycare, parents come to you and demand to know, “What did you do?”
Huck’s shiner. I made the mistake of telling his pediatrician the next day that he had been “hit by a car.” (neglected to insert the word TOY before car)
3. I sometimes look forward to work as a break from the kids.
You come to work and find EVEN MORE KIDS.
4. If my kid is throwing a massive hissy fit during drop-off, I can walk out that door and head to work.
You are the one left with the hissy fit. 
5. I can take my bored kids to the beach, mall park, shopping or museum.
You have to come up with creative, safe things for a BUNCH of kids to do. 
6. I am emotionally invested in my children so I find things that they do to be quirky, cunning and clever.
You find them creepy, manipulative and irritating.
7. We can threaten our kids with “pow pow” even if we never spank them.
You have to rely on firm, clean language for discipline. 
8. I can celebrate my child’s milestones.
You get one kid potty trained and there’s another little shitter waiting in the wings.
9. I frequently deal with stupid adults.
You deal with stupid adults AND stupid kids.
10. I work in a business where it’s difficult to get promoted.
Your promotion would have to involve NOT working at a daycare anymore. 
In summary: I can’t say enough for the people who work their asses off wiping my children’s asses, teaching them, keeping them entertained and ALIVE for several hours five days of the week all year long. Bless your hearts. (but please stop charging so much)
If you can’t be stupid with your kids, you’re stupid.
Studies (that I made up in my head) show that singing, dancing and general tomfoolery with your kids makes them happy.
I used to be insecure about singing in front of my husband. I know I can sing. I did show choir in middle school, dabbled in musical theater and can kill it at karaoke.
But, I know I can’t hit the high notes and occasionally I murder a melody.
While my husband was recently out of town on business, I rediscovered the sheer joy of not giving a shit what anyone thinks about my voice.
So did my kids.
We scream-sing Itsy Bitsy Spider during double bath time. We butcher the lyrics to Let it Go from Frozen and break the sound barrier with Olaf’s In Summer.
We used to do “dance party” in the evening, playing various styles of music from Pandora. While that doesn’t keep the kids attention for very long and typically degenerates into sibling violence, it’s inspired both kids to shake it like a Polaroid picture.
My son has great rhythm like all Cuban men, so I’m told.
My daughter is spastic, but maybe she’s just into interpretive dance.
The other night, I randomly started spitting a hip hop beat and watched in delight as my daughter started to get down and she was ON BEAT. She might stink at ballet, but she’s going to blow minds with her contemporary.
My husband ridicules my “peacock” move and my “stank face” but it’s worth it to hear my kids laugh.
Even if my children don’t end up on American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance, (shows that will no doubt be long since forgotten by then) they will smile more, laugh more and feel more free.
I’m beginning to find that humor and the ability to laugh at yourself is a key component to parenting.
Call us weird, call us kooky but don’t ever call us joyless.
Why do we do it to ourselves? Suffer through hell and high water just so our children can NOT enjoy a lovely afternoon at the beach?
The drive to St. Pete Beach takes us about an hour. During that time, my daughter doesn’t stop speaking for a single second.
“Daddy, are you driving fast? Can you roll the windows down? Mommy, are we on the bridge? Mommy, is this the “up” part of the bridge? Mommy, are we off the bridge? I can’t see the water. Mommy, are we on the water? Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy… are we at the beach yet?”
I thought that was just some silly joke made viral by The Simpsons. Nope, kids ACTUALLY repeatedly ask, ‘Are we there yet?’
“Does this look like the beach?!?”
Eventually, as I felt my blood pressure rising I asked her to please discontinue the use of the word ‘Mommy’ for the rest of the trip. I told her to just start talking, no need to shout ‘Mommy’ repeatedly until I respond.
While I am explaining to her why I find it so annoying, she says… “Mommy?”
We make it to Publix where I end up getting subs from the employee who is moving in slow-motion. He’s meticulously pouring the oil and vinegar, sighing heavily as he cuts the bread, contemplating the meaning of life between each condiment.
At the beach, we spend at least 30 minutes setting up the tent for our Victorian-era pale kids. There are chairs to open, towels to put down, drinks to get out and sunscreen to apply.
My son decides that all he wants to do is kick a pink ball as far from where we’re sitting as possible.
He is walking with sandy feet over stranger’s towels.
He’s grabbing other kid’s shovels.
When I tell him to put them back, he chucks them directly into their sand castles.
Pretty much the second we hit the water, my daughter starts complaining that her belly hurts.
I ask her if she needs to use the potty and she says only “the one at home.” (an hour away)
Then she says, “It’s okay. I’m farting quietly so no one will hear.”
She keeps complaining about her tummy ache, but refuses to use the public restroom.
So, after all the work it took getting to the beach, setting up at the beach, we now have to LEAVE the beach… also no small task.
As I try to rinse the sand off Alma (with my hands because she refuses to get underneath the shower head) she starts to cry and scream that she has to go potty.
I drag her kicking and screaming into the filthy, muddy, stinking bathroom. I hold her hovering, hysterical over the scratched and sickening toilet as she has outrageous diarrhea.
She says she feels better, so we do another rinse off and start to get into the car.
She starts screaming again and says she has to go to the potty. Round two.
We stop at 7/11 for a sugar-free Slurpee. I figure I can distract her from the waves of violent stomach pain.
It works.
We head to my favorite Mexican restaurants for lunch and Huck is using my husband as a jungle gym.
Both kids are climbing chairs to see out of the window.
Alma slams her hand in the door.
They start a “who can scream the loudest?” contest in the car.
We take them to the mall park and I instantly smell kid shit. It’s even more intense than the nauseating stench of stale vomit soaked into the padding.
Of course, it’s my kid.
So, my husband takes Huck to the bathroom to change him.
Big kids are beating the living daylights out of each other, slamming into my legs and threatening to topple on top of my children, crushing them.
The highlight of the outing comes when my husband yells at them. I don’t know why, but I think he’s super hot when he’s disciplining stranger’s shitty kids.
That night, I go out and buy sake and beer but we pass out from exhaustion before we can even catch a buzz.
The next day, Alma is HORRIBLE.
She’s furious with me for not letting her wear a long-sleeved shirt because it’s (no joke) 100 degrees outside.
She’s throwing Helen Keller fits because she can’t get her Jesse doll’s hat to stay on.
Huck poops in his undies.
I end up watching The Rescuers TWICE.
There are days when I am astonished by my children’s brilliance, curiosity, humor and even good looks.
Then, there are days AND weekends when they serve as a reminder to take birth control.
I’ve been trying to determine the worst part of potty training and I am torn.
Before ever beginning potty training, I would’ve predicted it was having a child that was completely un-potty trained. It’s hard to imagine anything worse than a baby diaper blowout.
There’s the soak-through overnight diapers.
The, “Oh, crap, it’s crap and the wipes have dried out” moment.
Or, “I am driving and the foul odor of rancid diarrhea is wafting through my car but I am not in any kind of position to stop driving and even if I do, where in God’s name am I going to change the child?”
That was all pre-potty training though.
Now, I am an expert and I have narrowed down the disgusting reality of infant excretions to two top contenders:
The Partial Poo and The Surprise Plop.
My son is ready to be rocking undies solo any day now, but he still has too many accidents to confidently leave the house sans diapers.
The Surprise Plop: When Huck tells me, “I gotta go poo poo” and I get excited and start encouraging him, rushing him along to the toilet. I pull off his undies and surprise! Plop. Onto the floor drops the nug he already squeezed out.
The Partial Poo: When Huck tells me, “I gotta go poo poo” and I get all excited until I realize his face is already red, eyes watering because he has since started to push it out.
This means I will attempt to get him to finish on the pot and end up using toilet paper to try and wipe off the poop that has already squished all over his little, white tush.
That never works, so he will have to hobble awkwardly back to the bedroom where I can snag the wipes and effectively give him what all parents know as the “wipes bath.”
Not to mention that while we’re doing all of this “training” we’re also cramming both kids full of chocolate as bribes.
So, it’s like poop and chocolate, poop and chocolate. It’s enough to make you turn lent into a yearlong event to give up sweets.
The best part about potty training? We’re not there yet.
I still despise that every time my daughter has to go to the bathroom we have to be involved in the wiping process. Lord knows if we didn’t get the job done, she sure as hell wouldn’t.
So, the best part of potty training? Probably comes at around the same time they get their driver’s licenses.
By then, there will be a whole host of new complaints about a lack of cleanliness.
All Corsa vacations are preceded by a moderate disaster.
One time we had to rush our French Bulldog to the emergency vet for a costly, time-consuming overnight visit that resulted in a diagnosis of “bad gas.”
Another night before leaving on a trip, my husband’s car stopped working.
Stomach bugs, pink eye, even a massive “bomb” dropping onto the hood of my car from the monkey puzzle tree in front of our old bungalow. It never fails.
This time, I take the dogs to get their vaccines so they will be up to date for a week at “camp” and the vet notices my Boston Terrier has a hematoma on his ear that will need to be drained.
Tack on 300 more bucks to what was already a hefty bill and my last day before vacation will be spent rushing him to and from the vet. (not to mention he will be wearing the cone of shame while being humped by strange dogs. Double shame.)
That night I also get ridiculously sick. So sick I call in to work at 3am. Yet, my boss text messages me at 6 in the morning and basically begs me to come in anyway.
I do.
I am miserable.
I haven’t washed my hair.
I can’t speak.
I end up leaving early to go to an after-hours clinic for a Z-pack.
While in recovery, I somehow develop a massive swollen gum in the space where my 4th wisdom tooth would’ve been… if I had one there. (but, I don’t) Now, I am kicking off my vacation with wicked jaw pain.
We’re on Cuban time, so my husband and I race around packing and dressing the kids (no small feat) (they have small feet) but then have to sit around wasting time for hours until the rest of the clan is ready to go.
Even then, we must depart in a group.
We’re going in separate cars, but it’s the soldier’s creed. No man left behind.
Anna Maria Island is beautiful and quaint, the vacation house ideal.
There’s a lagoon-like pool with a sometimes operable waterfall and a minimal amount of beach sand collected on the bottom.
We are two blocks from the beach.
This should be a great vacation, except for my aching jaw, endless stream of snot and the sensation I have plummeted instantaneously into the 1950’s.
I end up trapped in a bedroom with two insane children hopped up on VACATION, jumping around the bed we’re all expected to share while my husband is downstairs watching the World Cup.
Maybe it was the fear that this was going to become the anticipated routine.
Maybe it was the burgeoning revelation that the entire trip was secretly orchestrated to coincide with the World Cup in order to torture me.
Maybe it was all I could do to keep myself from racing through the home with a burning bra, but I stormed downstairs and demanded the keys to the car to go for a drive.
The next morning after being pummeled all night long by bony elbows and knees, awoken by the sound of my son grinding his teeth in his sleep and the pain in my whole face… I’m still ready to tackle my pre-women’s suffrage duties and help cook breakfast for the house of 12. (My family, my in-laws, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, her two kids, his two kids and one teenage friend of her son)
I remember that they cook their scrambled eggs with oil while I opt for butter or butter spray so they’ll probably find mine bland and inedible. I decide to go for the bacon and start to get the pan when my mother-in-law says, “You need to put it in the microwave first.”
I mentally throw my hands up and avoid cooking bacon for the rest of the trip.
The next day at the beach, Mother Nature valiantly came to my rescue.
I am obsessed with sharks. Terrified of them, adore them, secretly hope and dread for encounters with them.
The very first time I am watching my mother-in-law wade in the water with my daughter on her hip, I spot something unusual a couple of yards behind them. It looked like something pointy and dark sticking up out of the water.
Then there were two.
Then three.
They were moving.
I walked toward abuela Corsa and made a hand motion for her to come toward me.
I could see clearly now there were at least two, possibly three sharks in the water.
I didn’t want to be “that guy” that shouts “SHARK!” and terrifies everyone at the beach. But, then again my mother-in-law is embracing my precious cargo and this scenario is like an unimaginable nightmare.
I remain calm even as my mother-in-law continues to demand to know why I am telling her to come to shore.
Other people see them too, so I have confirmation. These were not dolphins. I know what dolphins are. In fact, we saw some of those later in the day. Completely different swimming behavior.
The same day, we also watched a manatee lumbering along in the shallows.
Late afternoon, the summer storms roll in and I am watching them from our balcony. Billowing, fast-moving, dark clouds. Swirling, hinting at circulation. Palm trees whipping around like witches on broomsticks.
NO FILTER
God bless you Mother Nature, you have shaken me from my stress-induced stupor.
The days that followed were filled with moments of joy, stress, hilarity and a healthy dose of awkward.
Perfect example of the latter: One of the said extraneous children along for the trip is about 9 years old.
He’s soft-spoken to the point of being irritating and even more bizarre than I was as a child.
He’s also a bit sneaky.
He and his sister appear to have some kind of arrangement that allows them to cheat and win at card games, hide each others’ crimes and possibly bury bodies in the backyard unnoticed.
At one point, my mother-in-law shouted that she saved me a piece of cheesecake.
Within a matter of seconds, I watched the boy grab the last piece and stick it inside an orange Dixie Cup so nobody would know he did it.
The night before I watched him go for some cheesecake in the freezer and when he saw me watching him, he rushed to open the freezer and put it back but his chicken-like arms were too weak to open the door.
He squeaked out a strange animalistic cry of frustration, like someone squeezed a rabbit REALLY hard.
To add insult to injury, a short while after he purloined MY piece of cheesecake, he shit it back out in the bathroom ATTACHED to our bedroom.
He is a Junior, so they call him “Tito.”
He shall henceforth be known as Cheesecake Tito to me.
Here’s another good one: In the afternoon, my husband was on the beach mercilessly teasing my sister-in-law and mother-in-law because they have decided they believe mermaids exist. Their scientific proof was viewed on a television show.
That night we’re playing Apples to Apples with the whole family with the exception of my sister-in-law’s boyfriend. He’s apparently holding some kind of grudge because he lost a game years ago to me over the definition of “The Big Bang Theory.”
So, while we’re playing we hear the sound of harmonious singing pouring from the open door to his room. It was like the bewitching melodies belted out by sirens, the ones who lure sailors to their deaths. The mermaids!
So, my husband says “He’s in there, unfurling his mermaid tail.”
I don’t know why, but this made me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants.
I am a chortler. Maybe the occasional guffaw slips out. I NEVER laugh that hard.
I was crying, I was speaking in tongues, I was HAVING FUN.
Then there was the moment we were waiting for the trolley near a church and the truly Cuban members of the family decided to pose for a picture.
We ended up in Downtown Anna Maria Island, which for the record, does not exist. We were meandering down neighborhood streets looking like lost Okies drenched in sweat.
But, there were magical moments.
I watched my daughter discover the joy of being slammed by waves, overcoming her perpetual fear of the ocean.
I saw my son kick around a soccer ball with the big boys until sweat was dripping off his little melon head.
I saw sharks, I laughed until I cried and I drank more beer than seems humanly possible.
Yes, I was impaled nightly by little kid limbs. I spent much time trapped in bed watching PBS kid shows on the lousy cable while everyone else screamed about the World Cup downstairs.
I got a sun rash and gained five pounds. (my weird tooth issue resolved itself after days of gargling salt water)
But, it’s still the best vacation we’ve had with the kids since they were born. Good enough that my poor son is still grieving.
Huck is pouting under that blanket.
I am too.
Living The American Scream 