The kids 1 hour lunch break from cyber school is in full swing.  I am slapping together some PB&J’s while the kids cut loose in the back yard.  Unfortunately, our yard has slowly…as we’ve overpopulated it, become a “standing room only” kinda inner city yard over the past eight years.  Fortunately though, we have the biggest, most sprawling (only) silver maple tree in the neighborhood and it has served as the home to the most fanciful dreams come true.  Picture “Neverland”, but within a 25x50ish foot chain link fenced area…and no grass.  Just dusty earth and tree roots.  Minimal parental interruption.  Not a lot of rules.  Access to tools.  Pocket knives.  A fire ring.  Some tires.  Chris had just that weekend hung three new swings from the glorious branches of the mother tree.  As lunch time came upon us, every swing was occupied.  I enter the yard, stepping over a piece of firewood with a plank across it that was clearly used as a seesaw and then abandoned.  All swings have slowed to an appropriate PBJ interception speed.  While passing out sandwiches my eye catches site, thru some yard debris, of a fresh golden delicious apple.  On the ground.  With one bite missing from it.  I immediately begin to channel my late father…and every other parent who has ever incurred the grocery bill that a family of six can produce.  “Is this serious?  Come on guys.  Whose apple is this?  Whose perfectly good apple is this laying on the ground with one bite taken out of it and a nice amount of dirt and sawdust on it?”  Micah looks guilty.  “You know Micah, you’ll be the guy tomorrow who’s askin around about an apple and I will have to say No.  The last apple was wasted in the yard yesterday…” Were my peripheral prepped for what was about to come…maybe I would have taken a step forward, but once a mother is ranting about a interhousehold moral dilemma…its hard to get her tunnel vision to focus anywhere but the issue at hand.  Apparently, the moment Micah speechlessly fessed up, the other three children deactivated their listening ears and resumed yard life.  Iris had loaded herself onto the swing to my far right.  Naturally, two large pieces of firewood served as a heightened launch pad, to achieve more air.  As I spouted at Micah about economics and the “children in the world who don’t get to pick a piece of fresh fruit from a bowl on their kitchen counter…” I never even saw her coming.  SLAMMED!  from the back, right side with the full weight of my eight year old daughter, swinging carelessly thru the air.  The impact knocked the words right out of my mouth as I stumbled forward in shock.  We make eye contact.  Her face says, “Oh my dear God, she was really not happy and then I swung right into her and now she seems even less happy.” All I could say while looking deep into her wide, stunned eyeballs was…”Really?”  A full 3 seconds of complete and utter yard silence follows.  And then the uncontrolled laughter of a crazy woman.  I couldn’t help it.  I began to laugh so hard I had to sit down on a nearby log to stop from falling over and the tears streamed down my face.  The complete loss of the words that were coming out of my face, the blow that silenced the possessed protector of abused fruit…it was all too much I suppose.  I hadn’t laughed that hard in ages.  Once the kids realized I was not injured but was rather experiencing the kind of insane and boisterous release that a pent up stay at home mother needs to have occasionally, they all eased into a hearty laugh themselves.  Sometimes I think that life has a way of building up to a point of eruption.  Maybe that eruption leads to years of therapy or a date night with your husband or something else you deeply need.  But maybe its just gonna look like you sitting on a log in your yard crying a good happy, fed up cry while four children swing and play and throw balls past your head.    That laugh was more beneficial than my children listening contently thru any number of my righteous rants.  I hope they eventually figure out that taking a bite of an apple and throwing it down is among their worst ideas ever, but until then, I need to keep laughing.

While I was loading the dishwasher this morning, the kids were enjoying their “ease into the day” episode of Curious George.  Flynn was thumbing through the latest issue of Kids National Geographic.  He stands up from the couch and approaches me in the kitchen with a sense of urgency.  “Mom, you need to see this.”  He hands me the magazine.  I see clearly the full color photo of the concern at hand.  Bright orange and white stripes.  Shining scales.  And two heads.  Two Headed Milk Snake.  I read the paragraph.  Found in Florida.  The article states that it hatched there and the next sentence is  “Why?”  Seriously.  Like one snake with one head isnt bad enough…lets one up it.  But not a whole snake.  Lets just one up this creepy thing a single head.  The worst part of any snake.  The rest of it is just like a slippery rope, and sometimes its like a really pretty slippery rope (tolerable-ish).  But the head is where the bum out is.  Teeth, venom…weird eyes. “WHY?!”  I guess the odds are 10,000 to 1 of a two headed snake hatching.  When discovered, he was placed in captivity because the one body has two brains, making survival difficult for the poor little guy. (why we are protecting this thing I’m sure I dont understand…) Each head trying to flee in separate directions from predators.  Each head having its own bright ideas about where to find food.  I imagined there could perhaps not be a more hellish existence.  Or a more terrifying animal.  Not only is it creepy and two headed, but those two heads are essentially always at odds.  Always just a little pissed off to begin with.  Anyway, I sensed the seriousness Flynn was trying to convey.  I just said “Wow.  Thats really creepy.”  His eyes are slightly widened, “Yeh.  Very.”  He pulls the magazine back toward himself and begins to walk away.  My thoughts are still very much on the photo I just saw.  I say in his direction, “Could you imagine running into that thing outside?”  He spins around, holding his arms out in a posture of distress as he exclaims, “Yeh, and they found it in Florida! Where Grammy and Bumpa live!”  His fearful wonderment has clearly turned to pure stress.  His bed head seems a little big for his lean body as his head bobbles in an expressive nature.  I have to laugh.  With New Smyrna Beach ranked the shark attack capital of the world (thanks Shark Week) and the recent hatching of a certain doubly blessed Milk Snake, its lookin like Florida is dropping to the bottom of Flynn’s list of vacation destinations.  I know he’s at least bringing his entire knife collection this year.

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