Isn't this the time?

It took everything in me not to stop my car, roll down the window, and shriek to the mother of one of Lakeland's classmates, "Hey! Your daughter is acting like a giant BITCH!"

But I didn't.  Because I was in a preschool parking lot.  And because yelling at people while hanging out a car window is a little bit trashy. 

Oh, but I wanted to.  Because I am having conversations with my daughter that go like this:

Me:  How was your day, bug?

LL:  Mommy, Girl A and Girl B were mean to me today. On purpose.  We were all playing and then Girl A said I couldn't play with them anymore, because she and Girl B were friends first.  Then they only played with each other and not me.

Me:  Hmmm.  Well what did you do?

LL:  I went and found other friends and played with them.

Me (feigning excitement when really my voice was shaking with anger and a big wad of sadness was threatening to purge itself from my throat and splatter on the windshield):  I'm sorry that happened to you, but I'm glad that you found new friends!

Every time I pick her up, we have a similar conversation.  "Girl A and Girl B still won't play with me.  It hurts my feelings because we were friends before."
  
Okay, so this is heartbreaking, right?  And infuriating, yes?  Not just because some girl was mean to my daughter, but because girls, at the age of four, are rejecting, excluding and hurting the feelings of their female peers.  How is this happening??  And WHY?

I will not, no matter what anybody says, buy into the notion that this is just a case of "girls being girls", or that acting like a little snot is some rite of passage.  That's just bullshit.  Because I don't believe that it is inherent of female nature to be cattish and nasty.  I think it's inherent of female nature to be nurturing.  To exude strength.  Even in times of weakness.  To protect.  To love.  And to pretty much be a badass from toddlerhood to old age.

So the business of being a four old preschooler has been on my mind, and here's what I've been thinking...

Isn't this the time when differences are meaningless, if even noticed?

Isn't this the time when kids are fully delighted by each tiny similarity they find in each other?  ~Hey!  We both have on red shirts today!  Wanna play?

Isn't this the time for boundless encouragement?

Isn't this the time when scrapes and scars belong on elbows and knees, not heads and hearts?

Isn't this the time for authentic joy?

Isn't this the time when unmarred hearts are worn, adorned with neon lights and sparkly glitter, on sleeves?


Isn't this the time when expectations are irrelevant?  Nonexistent?

What I know is that nobody's daughter should have to worry about protecting her little heart from preschool friends.

What I know is that if some kid walked up and hit my daughter, I wouldn't hesitate to intervene, but that emotional taunting feels far more difficult to handle than aggression of a physical nature.

What I know is that my little girl understood just enough about what these two girls were trying to accomplish, to walk away with her feelings bruised.

What I know is that four is too young to worry about what others think.

What I know is that this is, and should be, the age of innocence.

What I know is that I shouldn't be having grown up conversations about grown up stuff with a tender-aged and light-filled girl.

What I know is that nobody needs to grow up faster.  Kids grow up so fast and with such fury; they're like a wild storm running up the coast.  I just want to surround my daughter with good and kind friends who want to hold hands with her and jump with her in the puddles when the rains ebb.

Girl A is failing.  She's failing to live up to the gifts with which she was born.  Failing to be tolerant, loving, kind, caring, thoughtful and accepting.  Somewhere along the way, she learned to go against her nurturing instincts.  She's failing to be a badass.  Which is so, so sad because being what she was born to be is so much better, and so much more fun, for her and everyone around her.  So I really just want to tell her mom that her daughter is acting like a bitch, and get this whole storm turned back in the right direction.

I'm not interested in THAT point of view.

(***see below)

I've spent a fair amount of time in ladies' locker rooms.  Enough to sort of...well...not care much about any of whatever goes on in there.  When I was younger, sure I was probably a bit curious, but I'd say that now, I'm impervious to the various states of undress. 

I don't care if you make yourself a terrycloth tent out of 12 towels and cover up everything but your elbow.

I don't care if you are completely naked and swinging your towel around your head like a helicopter. 

I don't care if you are flip-flopped or bare footed or walking around in wet, squishy socks.  
I don't care if you come into the sauna nude.  With no towel even to sit on.  I don't think it's particularly wise to slow roast your labia on a slab of 197 degree cedar, but that's entirely your own business. 

If you, in all your naked glory, want to sit across from me in the sauna, I don't care. 

But here's where I'm gonna go ahead and take exception.  When you pull one knee up to your chin and just sit there, like your crotch isn't waaayyyy too close to my face, and waaayyyy too exposed.  To this I say "What is wrong with you?  Did your mother not teach you about keeping your knees together and ankles crossed when you are wearing a skirt (or, you know, nothing!), or were you just not listening?"

I don't think that I, or anyone except your highly-paid gynecologist and maybe your waxologist, if you so choose to exercise that option someday in the future, should be privy to THAT point of view.

Am I wrong here?  Did I miss something in the locker room etiquette handbook? 

***Oh. My. God.  I googled ladies locker room images, and my eyeballs are burning.  BURNING.  Google, you are a perv.  No women's locker rooms look like that.  What is wrong with YOU?

Captured

Just a plastic dinosaur...

There is a small, plastic dinosaur that lives on the rim of my kitchen sink.  I love that stupid dinosaur.  Lakeland put it there one day and said it was "to keep me company while I do the dishes". 

While I am scraping plates, washing the coffee pot, rinsing out whatever needs to be rinsed out, scrubbing pans, or just standing at the sink talking, that little dinosaur looks up at me with his indents-for-eyes, shimmering green and brown skin, and one streak of red paint that was accidently splashed on him during the millionth time I cleaned preschool-size paintbrushes, and reminds me to:

Be Kind.  For no particular reason.

Notice stuff.  Especially little stuff.

Let there be a little clutter.  Everything doesn't have to be perfect.

Gift the things I have to give.  Affection doesn't need to be wrapped up in a big, fancy package.

Feel Love.

Now go forth and spread joy.  Hand out wads of your own version of trinkets.  It'll be so fun.  

Reflections from a water park

Lakeland and I went to a water park last week.  Just thought I'd share the following:

• There are 8,000 hardworking lifeguards constantly hyperventilating into their whistles, and there is not one kid in the place who could give two shits.  I'm serious.  Kids are oblivious to those chirping whistles as well as every single posted rule.  They effectively flip those lifeguards their mini middle fingers the moment before they dive into the slide upside down and face first (a highly illegal maneuver and oft broken water park rule, by my observation). 

• At least 50% of the moms I saw are replicas of my favorite U.S. Olympic beach volleyball team, Kerri Walsh and Misty May.  Bronzed.  Abs.  More abs.  Cute, round butts.  And lots of braided high ponytails with visors.  I contemplated this while leisurely chomping on an $8 cardboard bucket full of fries. 

• The wave pool.  Oh, the wave pool.  (In case you are unaware, a wave pool is a giant pool that intermittently turns into a violent tsunami before calming down to its original state.)  These pools contain a billion bodies just senselessly bouncing off one another.  They are so packed full of people in sustained motion that if you saw it from an airplane, it'd look like a giant, wildly colored beehive.  So the deal is, if you are responsible for a kid under 4 feet tall, you get delegated (by whistle) to the part of the wave pool that is two and a half feet deep.  Which is precisely the point where the waves break and absolutely crush the little kids to smithereens.  These poor, tiny people go from having the grandest time frolicking in calm, waist deep water, to half-drowning while taking severe beatings by all of the big kids that wash up with the waves.  Repeatedly.  Like...every 30 seconds.  I saw several kiddos get creamed by waves/big kids, scraping the joy right off their faces and onto the concrete bottom of the pool.  They'd pop up, bloody and screaming, reaching for the hands (perched on the shapely hips) of their professional volleyball player mothers. 

• And it's not hazardous for just the kids.  I was, at all times, poised in a defensive position...soft kneed, hands advanced, fingers splayed in anticipation of a takeout. When the waves stopped trying to murder the children, I found myself instantly relieved that my knees didn't get blown out by some errant kid flying through on a tube. 

• I swear, it's places like this where adult sensibility and reason fly right off the handle.  Water parks, theme parks, carnivals, zoos, funerals, airports...these are the places where parents go and Absolutely. Lose. Their. Shit.  I saw this dad, who I bet isn't a total disaster on most days, but on this day...he was a nightmare.  He had three boys with him, young teens maybe.  I didn't see what led him to throw his hands in the air and begin a tirade that would have made the father from "A Christmas Story" proud, but the dude had zero qualms about using seriously inappropriate language at a decibel level that couldn't be ignored.  Additionally, I saw several women who, while waiting (bare-footed in standing sludge) in a stagnant line at the concessions, tired children slung across their bodies, rip apart concession staff and/or equally uncomfortable and frustrated women.  I think the only thing that brought these people back to reality from basic survival mode was the warble of a dozen whistles.  So, as it turned out, all those lifeguards weren't wasting their breath.

Fish out of water...

We have a fish.  Her name is Not Norma.  She is the successor of our two previous fish (who "got dead", according to Lakeland), Norman and Not Norman.

Last time I cleaned her tank, Not Norma almost got dead too.

It was all so innocent when it began.  Catching her in a glass had never before presented an issue.  I mean, her tank is only a gallon and a half.  It's not like trying to catch a fish in an ocean with a sandbucket.

However, on this particular day, Not Norma was juking me like a professional athlete.  I chased her around and around, plunging the glass into her tank over and over.  I finally got tired of the cat and mouse chase, and that's when shit got real.

I got as agressive as one can get with a jelly jar in hand, and I aimed for the majority of her sleek, blue body.  And I caught her!  Well, most of her...

Maybe I clipped off part of her tail as I squished her frantic body between the glass and her tank.  I'm quite sure she doesn't need that whole billowy, beautiful tail just to float around in a gallon of water.

Once I got most of Not Norma safely into the glass, I cleaned and refilled her tank.  Well, actually I overfilled the tank.  There was not enough room to add both Not Norma and the water in which she was floating.

So I figured I'd just dump most of the glass full of water down the sink, being, you know, careful to keep her contained.  It would have all worked out perfectly, had she not propelled herself right out of the glass.  The next thing I knew, her little body was halfway down the drain.  Poor Not Norma's shocked little face, the only visible part of her, was looking up at me, fish lips opening and closing, silently demanding me to save her.

I had no choice but to grab her by her face with my thumb and pointer, lifting her from certain doom, and depositing her into a sparkly clean tank.

She zoomed around for a second, then swam (through her trajectory was a bit off, as she navigated the waters with her newly lopsided fins) to the side, and once there, stared me down with the meanest glare a fish can muster.

Lakeland watched this whole scene with equal parts delight and horror.  Then declared, "Mommy, I'm pretty sure Not Norma is pissed at you".

You try it.

I was browsing the internet this morning, and ran across an article titled "9 Tips to Look Slimmer in a Bathing Suit."  Not normally something I would click on, but for some reason, on this morning, reading a bunch of horse-shit seemed more appealing than another 10 minutes of coloring Hello Kitty books with Sharpies. 

I would add a link to the article if I could find it again, but I can't.  When I Googled* "9 Tips to Look Slimmer...", I got 90 zillion helpful cues on how to look skinny.  In a bathing suit.  In pictures.  Naked.  In a dress.  For a date.  During the holidays.  At work.  While vacationing. 

It's so easy, too!  Please don't worry about diet and exercise...it's all so much less complicated than that.  Really.  It's as simple as throwing your hair in a ponytail.

All you have to do is jut out your chin, open your eyes really wide, roll your shoulders back, but forward (yep, you heard me), stand up straight, wear heels, wear a solid color, and put your hair in a ponytail. Yes, girls.  A ponytail.  The key to looking thinner is all wrapped up in a hair-tie. 

Here are my results...obviously, I look natural and thin in the photo.  Not weird at all.  There is no way I'm about to kill someone's kittens. 

 

* I didn't actually "Google" it.  Seth switched our search engine to something called "DuckDuckGo", which he says doesn't track us the way Google searches do.  I think he's full of shit.