Life Is But A Drink

Our house is surrounded by woods.  Nature, y’all.  Which explains why we have coyotes cruising the ‘hood (see here).  And why a raccoon climbed into the crawl space above my kitchen a couple of years ago (the story of which I’m now realizing I’ve never relayed on this blog and will certainly do so in the coming days because it is really quite the story).

And why we apparently now find ourselves as unexpected caretakers of a bunch of turtle eggs.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?  Meet Mama Turtle.

Do you see her there in the middle of the photo?  With the brown and  yellow shell?  We’ve concluded – without any real certainty – that she is an Eastern Box Turtle.

Mama Turtle was hanging out around our place on Saturday afternoon.  She started out in the backyard and then made her way over into our neighbors’ front yard. Only to return to our side of the property line and spend a good part of the evening exploring our front lawn.  She was a busy little bee and we had a grand old time watching her go about the surprisingly fast business of being a turtle.

At around 9:00 pm, once the sun had gone down, she started digging a hole in the corner of our front lawn by the driveway.  A big hole.  Her entire lower half fit down in that hole.  And we were like “Hey, Turtle Lady, that’s our lawn you’re digging up.  What goes?”

And that’s when it occurred to us that this little lady was probably not being destructive for the sake of it, and was instead laying her some eggs.  By the next morning, she’d covered the hole back up with dirt and was hanging out under the front wheel of our car in the driveway, monitoring her good work from afar.   Thank goodness we didn’t run her over.  That would have been some really bad karma, for sure.

And so we did some Internet reading on turtle eggs and herpetologists.  (Right, those… I did not know what a herpetologist was before we started looking up what to do about turtle eggs laid in our yard.  Now, I’m feeling a rather kindred spirit with the herpetologist community.  I may have missed my true calling…)  We are definitely feeling a great sense of responsibility now for these turtle eggs and we want to make sure that Mama Turtle does not regret choosing our front yard as the place she wanted to lay them.  I mean, I don’t want word to spread among turtle society that we aren’t a welcoming bunch.  Because we are.

The kids are very excited about the prospect of some baby turtles hatching on our property. Although from what we can tell, the babies tend to be really small and rather undetectable when they are first born so we might just miss them altogether.  Oh well.  According to my new best herpetological references, we’ve got 2-3 months before we’ll find out for sure.

So far, in this child-rearing life of ours, we’ve been lucky that my busy weeks and my husband’s busy weeks have steered clear of each other.  He’s been able to pick up the slack for me and then I’ve been able to pick up the slack for him.

But, then last week, it happened.  We both had busy weeks.

I was going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off to 18,000 meetings and events in the course of 4 days.  And he was scheduled to be in Disney World with 80 of his students.

We didn’t really know what to do.  We just knew society wouldn’t look too kindly on us leaving our two small children in the care of a couple of cats and a Labradoodle.

And then my husband suggested that he take the kids with him to Disney World.  Would it be easy to be both a dad and a chaperone?  Heck no.  Would the kids have a blast?  Heck  yea.  Was it our only choice?  Pretty much so.

So, my husband and the kids left on a bus filled with high school kids to Disney World on Wednesday night.  I barely noticed they were gone (remember headless chicken?) until Saturday morning when THIS happened:

Yes, I SLEPT IN until 9:34.  NINE.  THIRTY.  FOUR.  Now, this is momentous.  Unrivaled.  Amazingly amazing.  I can’t even begin to tell you how fabulous this was.  I think I was 23 years old the last time I slept in until 9:34.

And, damn, it felt good.

I showered and got dressed.  And because I was feeling so rested (9:34!), I took the dog on a two-hour walk.  We started walking and we just kept walking.  Usually, our walks are rushed and squeezed in between other activities.  On Saturday, I had no place to be and nothing I HAD to do.  So, we walked.

We capped off the walk with a trip to Starbucks.  We sat outside together while I enjoyed my Grande Soy Caramel Macchiatto (yum!) and acted all leisurely-like.  And that dog o’ mine got lots of compliments.  He’s kind of a rock star when we take him out in public like that.  People are just drawn to him.  I’m convinced he has super powers of some sort.  There’s no other explanation.  I mean, he’s a dog… who slobbers and does all those other things that dogs do.

After we got back from our mega-walk, I spent far too long trying to redeem a couple of American Express reward cards that I got from work.  The little pamphlet that came with the rewards cards said that I could redeem them at Talbot’s (online or in-the-store, how convenient) and I’d recently fallen in love with this particularly magnificent dress at Talbot’s and decided that I was going to redeem these fancy cards so I could own this particularly magnificent dress.

But then the online system rejected my cards (of course).  And then I chatted on the phone with a lovely lady at the online ordering service at Talbot’s who explained to me that, despite the fact that the pamphlet said I could redeem them online, I couldn’t and I would have to go to a store.  So, I got in my car and drove to a store because, at this point, I was determined to own this particularly magnificent dress no matter what.  But then (of course) they didn’t have my size and when I asked the equally lovely saleslady if I could order it, she proceeded to put me on the red Talbot’s bat phone with, yes, the online ordering service which reiterated that I could not use my rewards cards with them.  We finally figured out that I could use my rewards cards to buy gift certificates and then I could use my gift certificates to buy the dress through the online ordering service.  Complicated much?  At the end of the day, mission accomplished.  But, it took far too long to order the stupid dress. And it also took far too long for me to tell you the story about ordering the stupid dress.  Sorry.

By the way, the Talbot’s red bat phone?  Nice idea in practice, but really lame in reality.  Loud and muffled.  It felt so 1980′s.  And not in a cool retro way.

My long walk in the morning with Eco was great, but it left me with blisters on my heels because my tennis shoes are about 8 years old.  You think I’ m kidding, but I’m not.  They’ve been basically horrific to wear over the last year or so.  No support.  And the insides are literally disintegrating and rubbing against my feet in places that they are not supposed to rub.  Hence, the blisters.  I partly blame them for my declining workout regimen.  (Excuse!)  Because who wants to work out in shoes that hurt your feet.  (Excuse!  Excuse!)  So, I hit DSW and bought myself some new tennis shoes.  (By the way, I’m not generally a big fan of neon, but I have to admit I dig a neon tennis shoe.)

On the way home from DSW, I stopped at the nursery and bought about 18 million flowers.  And then I worked in the yard and planted all 18 million of them.  This photo isn’t of any of the 18 million flowers I planted, but of the tree in our front yard that has bloomed.  It is so pretty and smells so good, so I snapped a photo of it for posterity.  It’s times like these when I wish I had scratch-and-sniff photos on this here blog.

After my work in the yard, I sat on the back deck and drank a little bottle of something pink and alcoholic and played on my iPad. Without interruption.  For an hour.  Did you catch that?  An hour?  Ahhhhh…. I know.  I get giddy just talking about it.

Then, it was dinner time.  I got takeout from the teriyaki place up the street which I love, but for which no one else in my family seems to share my enthusiasm.  And, then I watched a silly romantic comedy on HBO On Demand and painted my nails an outrageous mint green color (Mint Candy Apple from Essie) because it seemed like the thing to do while you watched a silly romantic comedy by yourself on a Saturday night.

And then, well, I went to bed.

I woke up on Sunday morning seriously anxious for my hubby and kids to come home.  Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoyed my day in my parallel kid-less universe, but – at the end of the day – it was mildly lonely and not nearly as rewarding as those crazy Saturdays spent running around to gymnastics and Tae Kwon Do and piano lessons.  Seriously.

This morning, as the kids and I bundled up into our winter coats AGAIN, we decided to do a little dance to usher in the Spring.  Because we are so over winter and coats and gloves and hats.  We want warm and short-sleeved shirts and sandles.

And, as we were leaving the house, I took note of the tops of the little tulips trying to make their way out of the ground.

It seems like we’re not the only ones eager for Spring.  Bring it on.