super kids

I do not volunteer for the PTA, I do not involve myself in most of the extracurricular crap that most parents go in for but I do volunteer every year for superkids day(aka field day). I love it. I always volunteer for the younger grades because there is something about those sweaty little K-3rd graders that makes me smile.

Last year I got stuck manning the hockey station. I had to separate the little boys who were determined to whack each other to death with hockey sticks. I had to give them structure and by the end of the day, I found that not only had I enjoyed myself, my face hurt from laughing.

This year however, I went in hoping that I would get something different. I love little boys and all their energy but I was not letting those bitch moms stick me with the so called crappy job again. So I strode up to the sign in tent, and was immediately asked if I knew how to hula hoop. I said yes of course( a little tentatively I might add) but then luckily she looked up, saw the paint staining my fingers and asked if I knew how to paint faces. I nodded eagerly and she signed me up. I got over to the face painting station and found a couple of sour faced moms already gearing themselves up for an afternoon of annoying requests that they did not feel competent enough to draw. I told them that I thought I could probably draw anything so they give me a piece of paper and told me to give them some designs.

I drew, butterflies, skull and cross bones, fish, unicorns etc.
At this point, I was sitting in the shade but of course one of the moms had brought her 4 yr old daughter with her and could not be bothered to sit in the sun so asked me to move. I was then stuck in the sun, my face already beginning to sweat. I thought, "oh shit, this is gonna be lovely..."

Moments later, the kids came rushing out onto the playground, most of the girls heading straight for the fingerpainting tent. I immediately had a line of girls in front of me. All of them requested the obvious. Butterflies, unicorns etc. I did about 20 of these until a little boy made it to the front of the line. He asked me for a dragon. I have never drawn a dragon but I gave it my best shot. Apparently he liked it because all of his friends immediately lined up behind the remaining girls. Twenty minutes later, I had a line snaking around the side of the tent, made up of mostly boys and the other mothers kept calling out that they could take somebody because there was no line at their station. I heard one of the boys call out, "but SHE does cool ones!" I cannot express the silly pride I felt at that.

By the end of the day, I had painted about 20 dragons(my signature piece), 5 unicorns, 10 skull and cross bones, a sea turtle, what seemed like a billion tigers and flowers AND my favorites, a nacho with cheese(special request) and an amtrak train(another special request, he asked specifically for an amtrak train). I also drew about a handful of cartoon characters fished out from pockets(picachus?) and backpacks. Oh and I also made about 20 kids into kitty cats(we were told not to do the whole face but I just couldn't resist the little hispanic boy who wanted to BE a cat, obviously, starting a trend), complete with a black nose(this made me smile from the sheer cuteness everytime, there is not a kid alive that does not look adorable with a black nose and whiskers), whiskers and little black ears above their eyebrows. My other piece de resistance.

All in all, I had a great morning, got a tan and made a bunch of kids happy.

Oh and if I thought I could avoid the boys, I obviously need to think again. Most of my customers were boys because of course, I draw a mean dragon and a fierce tiger. go figure. My butterflies were only so-so...

swings and runaway trains

We all know that breakups are difficult. Especially in the beginning but even in the later days, post break-up. I thought that the most difficulty would come when I attempted to date. I was wrong. Well sort of.

The difficulty comes from the little things. The everyday things…like when driving down the street and spotting a tree swing in some rich person’s wide expanse of a lawn, I am reminded of a night when I was happy in the company of a man I was intimate with.

A night when we walked back to his house from the local redneck bar, weaving drunkenly, laughing uproariously as we entertained our imaginations with stories about ridiculous things. We philosophized about houses with faces, eyes and mustaches, titling the grouping of these fanciful houses, “mustache row” and “mustache alley,” while laughing so hard that our back and forth weaving grew more intense. With the onset of the giggles, the stories shifted to that of my current and very horrifying situation(getting my picture printed in ‘the slammer’), and we romanticized a situation where we just weaved and stumbled our way into the bushes only to have my face recognized later by some avid reader of the slammer. These memories actually make me smile now that I write but the initial memory that brought this trip down memory lane to the forefront was that damned swing. For some reason I was immediately overwhelmed by the memory of stumbling into somebody’s yard(still laughing) and jumping onto their picturesque swing, the branches creaking under my drunken and probably quite leaden weight as he moved in behind me to push. The swinging didn’t last long for fear of being caught but something about this memory just…sends a wave of sadness through me. It happens like this from time to time and there seems to be nothing I can do to stop it. I try to banish it from my mind, using visualization techniques where I put him on a train to somewhere far away but of course, that stupid train still manages to chug on back into town. I know that eventually these things will become less painful, dating will feel more normal and that when a new man puts his arms around me, I won’t find myself feeling the ghost of a body that seems to be missing. I will get comfortable with the weight of this new man as he cuddles me in my sleep and maybe I will even be able to learn how to love somebody new.

I am just learning it may be a little too soon because I have already had to untwine those new and unfamiliar arms from around my waist, murmuring that, “I am just not sure, not ready…” and then the unspoken thought, “bear with me?” Sigh. I can only hope that these once happy and now sad memories will begin to feel more neutral, like just another piece of my emotional history. Then (hopefully), I may finally be able to create new, happier memories that have no need for fading…have no need for boarding that ridiculous runaway train.