I’ve noted before that scrapbooking is as foreign and terrifying to me as nuclear physics. Because of this “completely rational” fear, my hope has always been that this blog will serve my daughters as a record of the joys and challenges of parenting and happenings in the life of their family. I’ve refrained from posting about things like the tragic Sandy Hook event because…well…honestly, I didn’t have the strength to do so. It was all I had in me to keep driving to work that morning. I assumed history would retell the public events for my children to study if they chose. Although I am a person who is clearly more comfortable putting her emotions in print rather than in verbal form, writing about that day was, for me, unfathomable.

After yesterday’s events in Boston, though, I noticed a parenting issue that seems to be happening more and more frequently, so perhaps I see a connection to what I write about for my girls.

All parents find themselves frequently in the “skipping record” form of communication that is parenting. Examples in my house include…

“Yes, you have to shower/bathe/brush your teeth EVERY SINGLE DAY. Hygiene happens to be a daily activity”

“Yes, you have to wear underwear!”

“No, you can’t have 5 more minutes!”

“Stop feeding the dog with the spoon…that you’re still using to eat.”

Every parent would have their own variation but most repeated comments wouldn’t bring about dread, just the frustration that comes from feeling like no one is listening.

Yesterday though, as I picked the older girls from school, the new phrase that I noticed I’m saying with greater repeatability was indeed coupled with dread…

“Girls, something happened and we need to talk about it because you’re going to hear about it at school and I want you to have the facts.”

What is most difficult for me is the question that always follows and the one that I never,ever have an answer for…

“Why would someone do that?!”

And I have to say…

“I just.don’t.know.”

Any child will tell you this is the statement that causes the anxiety to raise because parents are supposed to know everything. Parents are supposed to reassure, comfort and make sense of the confusing. I don’t know about you but I’m unable to make sense of any of these insane events.

Avery usually falls silent…going inside her own head to search for logical explanations and comfort. Laney is much more vocal in her method of seeking comfort. She will launch into a diatribe of possibilities..,peppering any person listening with possible thoughts- watching their reactions in hopes of seeing a spark of confirmation…no matter how absurd her ramblings. She will finally ask the question which encompasses the source of her inquisition…

“but we’re totally safe here, right??”

This forces me to do the one thing I try so hard to avoid as a parent.

I lie.

“yes, baby girl, we’re totally safe here.”

But the fact is…I don’t know that we are. Even if middle America contains fewer chances for mass casualties based solely on our reduced numbers, I notice the “casualty” of the raised stress levels we all live with. A crash of restaurant dishes no longer brings a quick startle followed by Greek-wedding-inspired hollers of “Opa!!” People jump, grab loved ones, clutch their chests. We live in a heightened state of awareness even if we’re not conscious of it. Sporting events are no longer just fun days out for family memories…they are prime targets.

I’m an optimist by nature…although you might not read that in this blog post. I’m not a person who thinks “it’s all going to hell in a hand basket.” That being said, I do mourn the loss of carefree outings that I think are a thing of the past. I may be wrong, but I don’t think my children will continue to grow in a society that I did…One where if you were at an event and heard blasts ring through the air, your first reaction was to gasp, turn and squeal with delight…

“Where are the FIREWORKS?!?!”

Personally, I’m longing for fireworks.

My goal of one post per month was shattered as I flew right past February with nary a word typed here. What have we been up to? Let’s see, going back to January…what comes to mind? Oh yes we came down with the BUBONIC PLAGUE…otherwise known as the flu, but as I lay moaning on the couch don’t think I didn’t google Bubonic Plague and if it weren’t for the “bleeding from the eye sockets” symptom that was listed I would have surely contacted the CDC. That lovely little bug whipped through our house and managed to stay for 3 weeks before it left for good. Every single member of our house got it except Avery. The reason this factoid is so interesting is that Avery is the ONLY one of us who didn’t get the Flu shot. The day we went to get them she suddenly had a “umm..I need to think about it, research it, get my mind around it, avoid it at all costs” meltdown and promised to return to do it after these things happened. When we returned they were out of flu shots. Obviously her fears were warranted as her immunity was just fine. As I’m prone to Conspiracy Theories you can imagine that by the time the month was over I was certain the government was trying to kill us and had probably injected us with tracking devices rather than a vaccine. I’m still suspicious.

Next, we moved to Antarctica. Oh wait! No we didn’t, but we did have THREE, count them THREE, MAJOR snowstorms this year. The most recent hitting AFTER the first day of spring. I left Nebraska for a reason. It’s warmer here and rarely snows more than a few inches at a time. Someone call Al Gore…global warming took a backseat to the 2013 Snopocalypse.

Between the first two snowstorms we were bombarded with an alarm sounding like the neighborhood tornado siren had been installed in our basement. Jason quickly (because he is my brilliant and capable Handy Manny) determined that it was the alarm that sounds when your septic grinder gets clogged. In layman’s terms, the grinder that disintegrates “all human waste” and pumps it to the sewer system was broken which leaves your home at risk of said waste backing up into your residence. When I blankly stared at Jason when he was trying to describe this to me he put it even simpler…”We’re about to fill our basement with a whole lotta shit.” Ohhhh….I got it now. Loud and Clear. Frantic calls to area plumbers left us with quite a few…”We’ll fit you in next week…in about 10 days…whenever we can get there…I’m not sure how to fix that…” and I started demanding that all humans in our house stop having bowel movements. This, of course, causes EVERYONE to immediately grab their tushes and exclaim that they REALLY HAVE TO GO NOW! I was planning a girls trip to Texas the next weekend and Jason suddenly realized this meant that he could be trapped, in a house with 3 little women and no.running.water. Panic crept over his face. I have said before that I believe my husband can fix anything but even he had to admit that plumbing was out of his range. The other man in my life that I count on to fix anything my husband can’t fix is my father in law. Unfortunately, he was still basking in the sun of his 3 month snow bird getaway, many many miles away from my malfunctioning plumbing. Jason, not to be deterred, got online, read the owners manual of the system, figured out the part he needed and called all over the country until he found it. Then after many, many phone calls found a company who could put it in and bribed asked with a promised incentive, one of their employees who worked 2 hours away if he would come on a Saturday morning and fix it for us. And he DID! Every time we flushed a toilet for the next week we all giggled with glee at this little pleasure that we so often take for granted.

In conclusion, to sum up my missing month you could say that it was filled with Flu and Feces. Here’s to a healthy and warm spring. 🙂