Those Sweet Summer Mornings

Where it takes every bit of self control that you have ever possessed to not go bat crazy.

Don't get me wrong, I love summer, but mornings like this are not what I signed up for and I am way under qualified to handle them.

As a frame of reference, I had to say the words "I just want to go to the bathroom by myself" twice before 8:30am.

We all woke up late this morning because we went to the beach for a bonfire last night. Around 7:30am I ambled out of bed because my dog Leia was doing acrobatics at the foot of my bed and licking my feet like she was mining a salt lick. Assuming she needed to go outside to relieve herself I started wandering around the house looking for a little person to blame for the dog being out of her bed but not outside relieving herself. Being a salt lick is surprisingly not my preferred wake up alarm.

I found 5 yr old Moe wandering aimlessly and when questioned he proudly announced that he had let Chewbacca, the giant puppy dog who leaves lakes around my house, outside and fed him. Rather than debate why he didn't handle any of the other animals I opened the door to let Leia out only to discover that letting Chewbacca out meant my fuzzy puppy dog was just running all around the front of our house untethered. Gritting my teeth and refusing to start the day screaming I wrangled Chewbacca inside (seriously, picture those calf roping events at the rodeo and insert into this story) and put Leia on the tether.

Phew! Now it was time to get Moe into the shower to soak off the smoke stink from the bonfire. After a brief 10 minute crying debate on could it be a bath/shower? No? Well what about a shower/bath? Does it have to be a shower? He finally went in, taking the always odoriferous Chewbacca in with him. At this point Curly had woken up and heard that Moe was taking a shower...WITH A DOG (yes those are excited capital letters)... and insisted that he should jump in and ummmm "supervise."

I allowed it. 2 minutes later Moe emerged and the wettest most ridiculous dog started racing/sliding/tumbling across my tile floors essentially mopping the upstairs with his body and hitting every wall he could possibly run into.

Phew! Showers were done. My niece who is staying with us for the summer, we'll call her Mekana, woke up and as I went to get her a towel so she could shower I discovered that the boys had turned the upstairs bathroom into a pool. As I raged and cleaned my husband tried to calmly explain how the situation made perfect sense, I did not agree.

And then I went downstairs to see why Larry was still sleeping. At this point it was after 8:30am and I have never had a child sleep that long unless you count the one time that Moe was in a coma. I don't count that.

I entered Curly's bedroom where Larry had spent the night and instantly had my nostrils assaulted. I looked around for a source of the smell and saw Larry reading on his brothers bed. There were 2 problems with this situation. 1) No one could explain the smell to me and I was getting louder and louder in my exclamations of the horror of the stink. 2) Larry is not allowed to read in bed in the mornings, he is required to do his morning chores and then the day is his to do what he wants. I go batty when the boys don't do morning chores.

I walked around the room investigating the stink and discovered a giant pile of obviously stepped in dog poo. As Larry unraveled his grand tale of how he had yes indeed stepped in a dog poo for the 3rd day in a row (the last 2 days it was outside, but still, is he blind?!?) AND decided not to tell me about it AND decided not to clean it up AND decided to get back on the bed with poo on his foot, sit in the stink and read his book. I was a little unhappy with this story.

As he got up to go clean off his poo foot and I barked orders to Curly for a mop and disinfectant as fast as he possibly could get it Larry quietly makes an aside comment almost to himself, "and ummm it feels like I have something in my hair."

I turned his head and discovered one whole side covered in unidentifiable goo. I was honestly too scared to touch it or smell it. The 20 questions began and he insisted he had no clue what it could be. My mind was reeling with thoughts of burned marshmallow from the bonfire, animal poo from falling asleep on the beach, maybe puking and then sleeping in it... I couldn't figure it out. Into the shower he went, we soaped and soaped and soaped and it changed color a little but it was not coming out.

As he gets out of the shower he mentions, "I guess it could be gum. I was chewing gum but I thought I threw it away." Rather than shake him til he turned blue I calmly explained that we were going to have to shave his head. Except his hair was wet and full of gum, so the shaving wasn't going real well. So I got the scissors and cut it out. Then I dried his head and shaved it on the 1/8" setting but he was left with polka dots where we had cut out the hair. We both examined it and decided to shave it with a real razor. I shaving creamed his head and began the process with my own ladies bic only to discover that 1/8" of dense head hair is almost impossible to shave with my ladies bic. Then we got the electric razor back out and used it without the accessories to make it as short as possible. Then we re-creamed his head and broke out a fresh ladies bic to finish the job. I nicked him like 5 times :( Don't worry though, I told him it makes him look tough.

Its now 10:30am and I have a son who looks like he's wearing a flesh colored skull cap (Maui tanned body and face, sickly white head), a son who cant go in his room because it still stinks to high heaven and needs to be bleached until I can bleach no more, and a niece and youngest son in time out because while I dealt with my drama they took apart the twins lego creations, did not eat breakfast and generally ignored morning chores. These are the things that make me go bat vrazy.

Needless to say, we are not going on our fun day trip to Lahaina to watch a movie, go to the beach, stop by the bookstore and explore the West side of the island fun that I had originally planned. Once I'm done bleaching I think I'll banish them to the backyard for the day and try to work on my memory erasing skills because I do not want to remember this.

Right now I'm off to poopfest and to convince a sad 8 year old Larry that he doesn't have to wear a hat for the rest of the summer...really the whole clown look is so in right now.