On a lighter note
I feel a bit of levity is in order today. Something to remind myself that even though I feel bad, things aren't always going to be bad. So a few fun memories are on the menu for today.
1) There really are grass police in military housing who measure the height of your lawn weekly during growing season to make sure that you dare not allow it to be longer than 2 and 1/4 inches long, that you do not have weed growth in your lawn, and during the winter to make sure you dare not leave a flake of snow on your driveway and the sidewalk in front of your house. Anyway, these all powerful weilders of the citation (3 strikes and you lose your house on base) can be quite the pain in the ass. For example, one year in Minot, North Dakota, we had a massive blizzard followed by four days straight of -75 or colder temperatures. The snow plows drove through during the blizzard, pushing all of the street snow onto the end of our driveway and it had now frozen into a solid block of ice.
Now, because we are required to remove the snow ourselves and my ex husband was deployed, it was up to me to remove the snow. After many hours of shoveling and chipping away at the ice, I managed to clear the driveway. However, I had not finished the sidewalk, which was covered by several feet of ice. So, I get what makes sense to clear this ice away: an ice pick.
Just as I begin to hammer away at this hulking slab of nasty ice, guess who decided to walk up behind me with his pad of yellow citations? If you guessed it was one of the grass police, then give yourself a cookie. He called out to me and I turned around, my face red from the bitter cold and exhertion, my ice pick high over my shoulder (I had just started swinging, I needed some momentum), obviously angry.
"Ma'am," he said, his voice shaking a bit. "Residents have 1 day to clear their driveways and sidewalks or they will be issued a...."
He must have seen something a in my face that told him not to continue with what he was saying because he never did tell me what I should get or anything else, really. Instead, he mumbled "sorry." Then he slunk away. I never received another citation for as long as I lived in that houses I guess sometimes, women can be pretty terrifying.
2) I doubt my daughter will appreciate me sharing this but here goes. When my little girl was barely 3 years old, she had a friend (who would later become her sister hut that isn't the type of story we are going for here). I stepped outside for a moment to get a package from UPS. That's how it always starts, these parenting horror stories, I was only gone a moment! Well, in the short space of time I spent outdoors gathering up the packages delivered that day, my lovely daughter and her friend decided it was time to scale the baby gates into the kitchen, then climb on top of the counter to reach the refrigerator, where these two mischievous children had somehow seen me put the hot pink Manic Panic hair dye.
The two trouble makers left the kitchen, bounty of hair dye in hand and ran back to play in my daughter's room where they were supposed to have been the whole time. I checked on the kids before returning to my classwork, nothing seemed out of place at that point, the girls were playing happily with some dolls. I didn't know at this point that the girls had the hair dye because they hid it. You mightI think 3 years old is way too young to understand to use that type of deception. You might even think that a 3 year old doesn't know to hide their action ahead of time to carry out their devious plot. On both counts you would be wrong.
I returned to my homework for a little while when I noticed the one thing that makes parents wake up in a cold sweat. It was silent.
When you have two toddlers in a house together, you expect certain sounds will occur. Silence is not one of those things.
I went to check on the girls.
As I entered the hallway, I noticed little red handprints and foot prints going down the hall into my daughter's room. It seriously looked like the scene from a horror film and I was terrified. I walked up to the open door, the once white baby gate in front of it now covered in hot pink hand prints. In the middle of the room are the girls. The older girl, my daughter's friend, was busy rubbing in an entire bottles worth of pink hair dye onto my daughter's blond hair. Hair dye was EVERYWHERE. My lovely daughter had so much pink hair dye on her hair that it was running down her face in a way that made it look like she had been scalped. The dye is smeared all over the floor, the walls, the door, my daughter's friend had even smeared some on her own hair (even though it was too dark to show the color).
After I got over my shock, I managed to get the room and the girls cleaned up but for weeks I got funny glances from strangers because "I" dyed my young child's hair.
1) There really are grass police in military housing who measure the height of your lawn weekly during growing season to make sure that you dare not allow it to be longer than 2 and 1/4 inches long, that you do not have weed growth in your lawn, and during the winter to make sure you dare not leave a flake of snow on your driveway and the sidewalk in front of your house. Anyway, these all powerful weilders of the citation (3 strikes and you lose your house on base) can be quite the pain in the ass. For example, one year in Minot, North Dakota, we had a massive blizzard followed by four days straight of -75 or colder temperatures. The snow plows drove through during the blizzard, pushing all of the street snow onto the end of our driveway and it had now frozen into a solid block of ice.
Now, because we are required to remove the snow ourselves and my ex husband was deployed, it was up to me to remove the snow. After many hours of shoveling and chipping away at the ice, I managed to clear the driveway. However, I had not finished the sidewalk, which was covered by several feet of ice. So, I get what makes sense to clear this ice away: an ice pick.
Just as I begin to hammer away at this hulking slab of nasty ice, guess who decided to walk up behind me with his pad of yellow citations? If you guessed it was one of the grass police, then give yourself a cookie. He called out to me and I turned around, my face red from the bitter cold and exhertion, my ice pick high over my shoulder (I had just started swinging, I needed some momentum), obviously angry.
"Ma'am," he said, his voice shaking a bit. "Residents have 1 day to clear their driveways and sidewalks or they will be issued a...."
He must have seen something a in my face that told him not to continue with what he was saying because he never did tell me what I should get or anything else, really. Instead, he mumbled "sorry." Then he slunk away. I never received another citation for as long as I lived in that houses I guess sometimes, women can be pretty terrifying.
2) I doubt my daughter will appreciate me sharing this but here goes. When my little girl was barely 3 years old, she had a friend (who would later become her sister hut that isn't the type of story we are going for here). I stepped outside for a moment to get a package from UPS. That's how it always starts, these parenting horror stories, I was only gone a moment! Well, in the short space of time I spent outdoors gathering up the packages delivered that day, my lovely daughter and her friend decided it was time to scale the baby gates into the kitchen, then climb on top of the counter to reach the refrigerator, where these two mischievous children had somehow seen me put the hot pink Manic Panic hair dye.
The two trouble makers left the kitchen, bounty of hair dye in hand and ran back to play in my daughter's room where they were supposed to have been the whole time. I checked on the kids before returning to my classwork, nothing seemed out of place at that point, the girls were playing happily with some dolls. I didn't know at this point that the girls had the hair dye because they hid it. You mightI think 3 years old is way too young to understand to use that type of deception. You might even think that a 3 year old doesn't know to hide their action ahead of time to carry out their devious plot. On both counts you would be wrong.
I returned to my homework for a little while when I noticed the one thing that makes parents wake up in a cold sweat. It was silent.
When you have two toddlers in a house together, you expect certain sounds will occur. Silence is not one of those things.
I went to check on the girls.
As I entered the hallway, I noticed little red handprints and foot prints going down the hall into my daughter's room. It seriously looked like the scene from a horror film and I was terrified. I walked up to the open door, the once white baby gate in front of it now covered in hot pink hand prints. In the middle of the room are the girls. The older girl, my daughter's friend, was busy rubbing in an entire bottles worth of pink hair dye onto my daughter's blond hair. Hair dye was EVERYWHERE. My lovely daughter had so much pink hair dye on her hair that it was running down her face in a way that made it look like she had been scalped. The dye is smeared all over the floor, the walls, the door, my daughter's friend had even smeared some on her own hair (even though it was too dark to show the color).
After I got over my shock, I managed to get the room and the girls cleaned up but for weeks I got funny glances from strangers because "I" dyed my young child's hair.
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