Sweatstain

During the first week of March, most of our family relocated to a little town in unincorporated Citrus County, Florida. I wouldn't know that it is an unincorporated area, since the real estate agent who handled the lease didn't mention that little factoid, had it not been for a sheet of paper posted in our local supermarket stating that since we are located in an unincorporated part of the county, we can now purchase beer and wine at that store before noon (or 2 pm or whatever the arbitrary rule is here) on Sundays. We still have to go to a proper liquor store to buy anything harder than that. I don't know what those places are called and think I'm giving myself away as a "non-cracker" (seriously, I'm not trying to offend, that's just what we're called here) by using the word "proper".

Oh, how the (fill in the blank of whatever you think we are) have fallen.

There were only two posts to you, my beloved blog, in 2010. That number will hopefully be much higher in 2011 for myriad reasons (yes, Booie, I know you appreciate that wasn't phrased as "a myriad of reasons" and for that I love you).

So enough with the parentheses and general vagueness. Details are really where the devil lives, so here you go:

Living in the east San Francisco Bay Area on a single income with three kids is difficult. Building anything even close to resembling a stable financial future under those circumstances is nigh impossible unless a family can survive on air, water, no food, and without its own mode of vehicular transportation. I absolutely love and achingly miss my completely walkable community, but raising a family in the 'burbs requires at least one car in case you have to get the kids to the ER, which happened twice in the same week last August, but more on that later if anyone's interested.

Hubby and I discussed it for a good fifteen months and decided that, since we had family here in Florida, we should at least temporarily transition ourselves here to make some financial headway. After all, we're supposedly building a life and family, not just cobbling together a moment-by-moment existence and, in case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty flexible but still at heart a girl who likes to have a plan.

Anyway, about the kids, since that's really the primary focus of everything we think and do: Biscuit stayed home in California with his dad. That was the most horriblest choice I've ever had to make, but his friends are there, he has the majority of his family there and most of all his heart is there, as is a huge chunk of mine. We've been here almost five months and I'm just now getting used to the arrangement but there's also the fact that he just returned to the West coast on Tuesday after six weeks here so that's probably coloring my perception a bit. I'm sure I'll bawl my eyes out all next week.

My Beans can swim. Boy, can they swim. They have to now, because there's a pool right outside the kitchen door ( and the living, family and master bedroom doors). The house is built around the pool. Sparki little Parki-Pants, a month before her fourth birthday, can swim herself right down to the bottom of the deep end and retrieve whatever she's dropped down there, just to prove that she can do it. And, she's declared that she's going to be an Army-sniper-rock-star when she grows up. Power to her, and woe be to anyone who finds himself in her way. Pipsi is going to be a princess and just today, insisted that I introduce her as "Princess Jasmine" to the checker at Home Depot and the burger-flipper at McDonald's.

"Mommy, will you please tell them my name?" Pipsi asks me as I'm pushing them along through Home Depot, searching fruitlessly for bed risers (we have a scorpion problem here, and if you really want a dose of the howling fantods, Google Image "huntsman spider" and click through for the most ghoulish photo you can find [make sure there's something else in the photo to use for scale] and you'll see what I mean-- I literally just clobber the smaller ones with my bare hands now and smear their remains on my pants and I was a certifiable arachnophobe before we moved into this godforsaken burg).

Back in Home Depot, I sigh, thinking about the news story I'd seen on TV yesterday, about the mom whose 4- and 5-year-old children were removed from her custody and placed with CPS because Mom had left Kids in the car for 15 minutes while she ran in to WalMart WHILE IT WAS 94 DEGREES OUTSIDE!!! I'm all for convenience but I wouldn't wish that fate on the giant mosquito that just bit me THROUGH MY PANTS.

"Sweetie, if I tell them you're Princess Jasmine, they're going to think there's something wrong with me. Or they're going to judge me as overindulgent," I reply. Are those bed risers? No, they're just hardwood-floor protectors. Drat (I've really had to make a highly concentrated effort to quit potty-mouth cold-turkey, which has a LOT to do with Pipsi's "f*cking buckets!" episode and the fact that the Beans are starting preschool in 12 days :)-- please forgive my punctuation; it's been pretty much since the last blog post that I've spent this much continuous time behind a keyboard.

Anyway, I still haven't found what I'm looking for as Bono would say (in Home Depot--Surprise Surprise!!! as Gomer Pyle would say) so i amble inconspicuously toward the service counter. Well, I'm as inconspicuous as possible as a professionally highlighted ( In a recession? SHAME ON ME! SHAME! SHAME!!!) pushing two super-blond, singing preschoolers in a bright-orange, steer-from-the-rear kid-friendly Home Depot cart, carrying an authentic designer handbag in the not-so-swanky Crystal River, FL Home Depot. I ask the guy behind the counter whether that store carries bed risers and am met with a laugh and a decisive "NO". Cordial conversation ensues in which he imparts a story to a coworker (whom I think he's trying to impress for reproductive reasons) about how the last people who asked about bed risers ended up buying his own personal set of said item (EWWW!!!!!!) and then he says maybe I can use some four-by-fours to accomplish what the bed risers were designed to do.

I briefly imagine how Hubby will react when I come home with bits of four-by-four and a can of Krylon and tell him excitedly about Home Depot Guy's plan to cut the wood into little bits, paint it to match the carpet, then use those little woodies to get that bed up off the floor to make sure we ain't got no bugs under thar and the image that momentarily runs through my mind is the Hindenburg in its final moments.

I thank him for the time and thought he put into his solution but tell him that I just don't think my husband will go for it and politely excuse myself. He recommends I try a furniture store (Badcock. Seriously, that's the name of the store. Girlfriends don't let girlfriends use Badcock, fyi). I have, through this adventure, found some caps for the bed legs should I decide to go casterless and need to pay for them on my way out.

And as I roll my Beans, steering from the rear (backward in so many ways), toward the checkout line, I start thinking (yep, this is the part you've been waiting for and yep, I'm SO back). I think about all we've given up to move to this place : time with my first-born child (his band practices, his Junior Prom, Senior Ball-- I'm gonna well-up), my mom and dad, my grandma, all our countless friends and community ties, the neighborhood like Cheers where everybody knew our names and our barista who prepped our drinks the moment he saw us walk through the door. And I think about how quickly time passes and how briefly the magic of a childhood exists-- the finite breaths before a mother bids a tearful goodbye to her son. And I thought of the frustration I felt when the electricity company's customer service manager explained to me, before our move, that demanding a $475 deposit was a reasonable amount to authorize service to a new client because "Florida's such a transigent state that we need to ask for this because people use our service then move without ever paying for anything", and how I wanted to correct her, "you mean that the population of Florida is so transigent that..." but knowing that she'd neither understand nor care-- I thought about everything that had brought my daughters and me to this place at this moment in time.

The Beans and I arrive at the checkout counter and I pull out my debit card to pay the $1.13 tab since I rarely carry cash. Pipsi's eyes keep moving expectantly between me and the cashier, waiting for her majestic moment.

"Wow, aren't you cute! Are You Mommy's little helpers?"

"Oh, please," I say, a note of great importance in my voice, sounding, to myself like an absolute freak, "Allow me to introduce Princess Jasmine," I announce, lightly touching Pipsi's curly blonde hair, just above her beaming face, "And her sister, ParkiPants."

"Perky Pants? Oh! We must be potty training! Congratulations!" says the checker. Thank God I had only one item. I shudder to think where this conversation would have gone had it been any longer.

"Yes, thank you so much!" said I.

"No, that's Prince Ali," says Pipsi, correcting me in regard to her sister's title.

"Bye, bye, Princess and Perky Pants!" says the checker.

"Bye!" Shouts Parki as she waves at her new friend.

"Mom, Parki is Prince Ali, not ParkiPants!" Pipsi chastises me as we scoot out the exit toward the van(parked next to a cart-return area because I rock.

"Oh, Jasmine, I'm sorry. She must have not heard me correctly," I apologize. I want to tell her that gender-bending isn't really en vogue here.

"I'll be more careful next time," I promise.

"Mommy, can I please have some FedEx?" Parki asks. FedEx is Beanish for 7-Up or Sprite. I really don't know why.

"Sure, since you were so good in there. Princess Jasmine, would you like some too?" I ask Her Highness

"No, but I would like some lemonade," and I think that if nothing else, living in the South will surely teach them some awesome manners.

We load up into the faithful Starship Margaret and set off on our next voyage.

Remind me, next time to tell you about our new barista's comment...

P.S.
Quit posting Chinese comments related to adult websites. It's really gross and if you do it again I'm going to contact Google and make bad things happen. Bad things that people won't even want to watch on the internet, even if they're on Tosh.0