Adventures In Motherhood

The security light brightened our porch as I mounted the front steps. It was now dark by 4:00pm, a typical dreary December in Portland. I spied the elusive lunchbox open on the wicker chair. I was not surprised he forgot to unpack it in the kitchen. At least it's in the vicinity of our house! It took the entire semester and a bit of mom nagging for my 14-year-old son to bring the frickin lunchbox home before winter break. Hallelujah! There is hope for this child. Holy hell! Is that a banana slug? Stepping closer I wondered how a slug had climbed inside the lunchbox with lightning speed. It's the Pacific Northwest and during the rainy season slugs are everywhere. Slugs sliming the pavement meet death by foot traffic, while slugs nestled on trees disguise themselves in the thick forest canopy. I once picked this slug from my carpeted stairs thinking it was sock lint: My husband was feeding the dogs yesterday when I spotted this little beauty sliming his slippers! ...

The past month has been anything but dull, consumed by two kids with birthdays, a new job involving travel for my husband, 5th grade science projects, band/vocal concerts, baseball games and track meets! Most days I'm treading water, barely surviving the end of school year/spring athletic schedule for our four children and bigly outnumbered. Just when I believed I had thought of everything, meticulously plotted out on our antiquated wall calendar, the low-balance lunch alert email came. My kids really despise all school lunches, with the exception of Thursday pizza, so there are worse calamities; nevertheless, I was confident I had diligently pre-loaded all of their accounts at the beginning of the school year to eliminate it from my to-do list. Dumbfounded, I activated my spy tradecraft to uncover the perpetrator weaseling away funds undetected. Busted! I caught the sneaky 7-year-old bandit with the toothless grin, who spilled the beans before I was forced to play my CIA 'lie ...