Janelle Evans

I was informed by my nine-year-old son this week summer is for fun only. What an idea! No chores, no work, just play, play, play all day long.

I liked it. I mean who needs clean clothes, or even food—because I consider shopping a chore, pumpkin. Suddenly, he didn’t like where this was going. Then he tells me mommies aren’t included in this fun only rule—just kids.

“Too bad kids don’t get to make up the rules—just mommies.” I flash him my biggest smile. “Now keep stacking those bricks. In this house we play after the work is done.”

If that makes me a meaner, then I’m a meaner. It’s not that I don’t like to have fun, but work is something none of us can ever completely escape. Sure, it can be put off until later, but then the list of things-to-do is just looming all day. I say, “Get it over with.” The worry-free fun you’ll get afterwards is worth it, though my nine-year-old son still doesn’t believe me.

The number of embarrassing moments in my lifetime ticked up one more this week. While out for a walk with my husband my foot slipped off the sidewalk. You’d think I’d only stumble, but no, that was asking way too much of my feet. They froze, acting like a couple of newbies who’d just barely learned to hold me up. I toppled, according to my husband, a full body seizure that looked like I’d been shot. The seizure had to be my hopeless attempts to get my feet into motion, because I seemed to have all the time in the world. I guess my mind decided I needed to savor every second before the epic belly-flop skid on cement. I ripped up the side of my hand and even nicked my nose, but that wasn’t the worst part. There had to be a car driving past to witness the whole thing. I mean it was the only way to make this doozy of a moment better—to have a man roll down his window and ask, “Is she okay?”

Oh why couldn’t the earth open up and swallow this spaz whole?

The home I moved into doesn’t have traditional window coverings at the moment. We’re rocking shower curtains for the time being. I’m sure our neighbors are wondering what knuckleheads have moved in next door, but casing each window takes time, especially since we’re doing it ourselves.

Living in a fish bowl does have its advantages. My husband has no need to set the alarm each morning. Sunrises happen at 5:30am around here, and the sunlight just loves cresting over the mountain peaks and beaming right into our bedroom windows.                 Okay, so he does not love that, but he should. It’s nice to know your chances of sleeping in and being late for that new job you took is impossible.

All teasing aside, it really isn’t that terrible. The unimpeded views of the sunsets and rises from my bare windows are breathtaking, and the ability to look out at any given moment helps me feel less trapped in a box as I reorganize the chaos around me. If only they were one way windows and no one could look in, leaving them bare might have been a possibility, but I’m not big on uninvited spectators.

As a child we are corrected every day. Growing up I sure thought that’s all my parents were for—to tell me no, don’t, stop… You get the drift. But as a child, we can’t ignore those corrections—not unless we want to find ourselves in bigger trouble.

The constant corrections lessen as we grow older, then bam, suddenly you’re the adult giving out the corrections. Oh, we dole them out left and right, but now what happens when someone tries to correct us? Nine times out of ten I’m betting we don’t take it so well. Yet, we really should step back and consider the source before we bite their head off for correcting us.

Trying to convince people they need to change is an exhausting process. Trust me. I do it all the time, cajoling my children into stretching themselves to reach the best possible person they can be. Nobody would waste that kind of energy on someone they didn’t care about. Remember that the next time someone is trying to correct you. If love is the motivation behind the correction, we should respond in kind. No matter how adult we think we are.

Whether we like it or not, life is full of changes. And yet, there is another force at play in our lives. I call it the “small world affect.”  It’s when a person through one of those constant changes we experience leaves our sphere of contact, only to return weeks, months, maybe even years later down the road of life. I’ve had this happen so many times in my life I’m no longer surprised when does. In fact, it gave me great comfort as I left Wyoming for the last time this past weekend. I may have moved to another state, hundreds of miles away from those friends I’d come to love and appreciate, but I’ll see them again. I don’t when or how—I can’t see much past the next couple of weeks of unpacking—but whether sought out or by accident, I bump into people from my past all the time. So this isn’t goodbye Wyoming, rather a very firm “I’ll see you around.”

When my children were younger it took very little effort to beat them in competitions. In fact, I almost had to lie down and stop trying for them to win.  Oh, how the tides have turned.

Over the weekend, we spend some time down at the new laser tag place in town. Of course I had to rib my children in the hours leading up.

“Crush them,” I said. “I’d take ‘em down.” I promised.

I had them so keyed up by the time we got there my kids had decided this was going to be an epic fight of them vs us (the old guys/parents).

Me and my husband rolled our eyes and waltz to our bunker. With our superior experience we both thought we’d steamroll right over these monkeys.

NOT!

The little buggers moved far quicker than I could anymore. I crouched to hide, they found me every time. They crouched to hide, I missed their hiding spot and they shot me.  Fine, I pushed for speed, but my efforts to chase one down got me shot in the back multiple times. Dead. Dead. Dead—so many times I stopped counting. My husband didn’t fare much better. By the time the siren sounded, we had lost—and it wasn’t even close!

Now I can’t speak for my husband, but I had been trying, which is what I think bothers me the most. I always knew one day my children would surpass me just as I caught then surpassed my parents, but seriously? I thought I’d be way older when that happened—like ninety.