Peeing in the Woods

Today after supper, Spencer went outside and peed in the woods.

Some of you may think, "So what?" Others may roll their eyes and say, "Here she goes, talking about bodily functions again."

But bear with me.

You see, I absolutely hate it when little boys pee in the woods. I think it's crass, immodest, and downright backwards.

I'm not talking about emergencies, of course. When it comes right down to it, male "equipment" is much better suited to quick, roadside relieve than us poor females who have to undress, squat, and wipe. It isn't fair, really.

But that doesn't mean that men and boys should have the freedom to wee-wee with nature whenever the spirit moves them.

So why then, you may ask, was my three-year-old peeing in the woods?

I have no idea.

Obviously it's something he learned from his big brother, who learned it from Daddy. (No, Eric doesn't usually pee out back.) And, too, we have a seven-year-old neighbor who seems to take great pleasure in expressing himself in this manner. Of course, he at least makes a bit more private business of it. Spencer, on the other hand, stopped by the nearest tree and let loose in full view, with the abandon that only a three-year-old could display.

What's a mother to do? We've had our "don't pee in the woods" talk many times, but I'm up against the delighted squeals and giggles of two older sisters who think the whole thing is exceptionally funny.

And what little brother doesn't like an audience?

Evidently there's the danger of his taking this little habit into adulthood, though. At a recent family gathering, my cousin-in-law (is that a real word?) was inducing laughter in the crowd by telling how all his male friends pee in his backyard whenever they visit (it's a large, wooded lot).

"Of course," he went on to say, "I can't really say anything, since I get out of the car when I get home from work and pee in the driveway."

I'd like to assume that he was kidding, of course. We all know how men like to embellish their tales. But I have this vision of my son peeing in the woods as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and now I can't help but wonder...

Even after fourteen years of marriage and giving birth to two sons, I just don't understand this "guy stuff."

Can you imagine setting down your glass of iced tea to squat behind your girlfriend's garden?

Maybe it's some sort of tribal, male-bonding thing. After all, women don't pee in communal troughs the way men line up at urinals. I may be underestimating the power behind this ritual.

Even so, I don't want my son to pee in the woods.

Sometimes it's very hard to raise a little boy. Even when a father is involved, loving, and available, the majority of a boy's day is still spent with his mother. And learning to let go of a few feminine thought patterns in order to relate to a small male's masculinity can be a daunting task, indeed.

Crockpot Crackpot

This morning my crock-pot broke.

What? You didn’t know that crock-pots could break? Welcome to my world.

No, it didn’t stop working. It broke.

I had just rinsed off my boneless chuck roast and was about to flip it into the crock-pot. The roast, which was frozen solid, suddenly slipped from my hands and did a nose-dive into the pot.

CRACK.

I stood there staring in disbelief at my cracked crock-pot. The crack went clean through, so that the pot sat there in two, distinct pieces. I think I heard the roast snickering.

Fortunately I had another, older crock pot in my cabinet which I quickly dusted off and set on the counter. The older pot, though, was about half the size of my wounded one. The frozen roast stuck pertly out of the top, refusing to let the lid close properly.

Undaunted, I covered the unsealed parts with tin foil. A couple of hours later, the incorrigible roast finally schlunked down far enough so that I was able to seal the lid properly. Against all odds, my family will be feasting on pot roast this evening.

Did you ever have one of those days? One of those “we’re-off-to-a-bad-start-it’s-bound-to-get-worse” days?

Sometimes it seems like, no matter what we do, the deck is stacked against us from the beginning. We may wake up with a smile and a pleasant attitude only to be crushed half an hour later by a pull-up that exploded and leaked urine deep into a brand-new mattress…or by a husband who casually informs us that he’s invited a co-worker for dinner…or by a faucet that won’t produce any water, causing us to say, “Honey? Did you pay the water bill this month?”

Add a couple of fighting siblings or a bout of menstrual cramps to the picture, and suddenly we’re drowning in a relentless whirlpool.

You’re nodding your head in mute agreement, aren’t you?

For me, the crock pot catastrophe was particularly significant. Since becoming a Flybaby a couple of months ago, I have made a concerted effort to plan my meals more carefully each week. One of the promises I had made to myself was that once a week – every week – we would have a roast in the crock-pot. I don’t think I’ve used my crock-pot as much in the past five years as I have in the last two months.

And now my crock-pot is a crackpot.

Talk about feeling defeated! Here I am – the woman who used to let the crock pot sit on the counter for three weeks before washing it, who now makes sure it’s scrubbed and put away as soon as possible; the woman who used to forget she owned a crock pot unless somebody asked to borrow it, who now feels as though she couldn’t make it through the week without one. At 8:30 in the morning I was suddenly bereft of my crock-pot!

I have good news, though – I didn’t spiral downward. It can happen so easily – one or two bad things set me off, and I’m down, down, down the drain for the rest of the day. But not today.

I had invited my neighbor over for coffee, and thirty minutes after the death of my crock pot I was sipping Starbucks and watching my friend’s eighteen-month-old drop Cheerios all over my living room. Believe me, it helped to have someone to boo-hoo over the crock-pot to. And instead of expressing deep remorse and sorrow over my loss, my friend instead asked me to give her some good crock pot recipes.

That felt good! And she didn’t laugh at the tin foil around my substitute crock-pot, either.

Which brings me to an important point. On the days when we feel like we’re spiraling downward, we need more than anything to let someone else enter our world, if only for a time. And that person probably won’t be our dear husband.

Don’t get me wrong – I am definitely of the school of thought that says, “our husbands should be our best friends.” Indeed, Eric is my best friend. But there’s something about a woman’s downward spiral that no man can really relate to. For one thing, they will probably try to “fix” things for us by downplaying the significance of what’s got us down in the first place: “Well, we can get a new crock pot at Wal-Mart this weekend,” is NOT what I needed to hear this morning. (And fortunately for Eric I didn’t hear it, since the crock-pot was murdered after he had left for work.)

No, these are the times we need the empathetic ear of another woman – preferably another woman who is at home with her children and understands the downward-spiral syndrome. The last thing we need when our worlds are exploding is to feel isolated. And isolation, unfortunately, runs rampant among at-home mothers.

But what if we’re 3000 miles away from our mothers, our sisters, and our dearest friends?

Two things. First of all, living far away from those who are dear to us is no excuse for hiding in our houses feeling sorry for ourselves. It’s vitally important to reach out to our neighbors and seek out like-minded women for new friendships. Secondly, there’s always the Internet. I have been privileged over the years to belong to several online communities from which I derived great benefit and forged some very special relationships.

Be careful, though. Spending ALL of one’s time behind a computer monitor isn’t ultimately going to dispel a feeling of isolation. In fact, it might even exacerbate it. Reading “LOL” on the screen isn’t quite the same as hearing a friend’s hearty belly-laugh.

There’s something else that is equally as important as avoiding isolation: keeping your sense of humor. If you’re like me, you may find yourself taking life much too seriously on the days when everything seems to be going wrong. Somehow, even the humor in a potentially pee-in-your-pants-funny situation – like a toddler pooping in the litter box – is lost on us. Everything in life feels completely UN-funny. And it feels as though we’ll never laugh again.

We make a large mistake, indeed, when we forget to laugh.

Being a writer makes me lucky, I guess. I can take my life’s most ridiculous and frustrating situations and craft them into something funny. It’s quite therapeutic! But you don’t have to be a writer to be able to find the humor in your daily life. Even taking the time to say, “Thirty minutes from now, I’m going to laugh about this,” can work wonders in helping us keep perspective during a “life moment.”

It’s okay to cry, too. Pretending to laugh doesn’t work. So when you feel like you’re going to implode, go ahead and have a good cry. But don’t stay in the tear zone. Let the crying cleanse you a bit – let it release a little bit of tension. But when you’re finished, be sure to find your sense of humor again. Honestly – you won’t get through the day without it. And neither will your poor children!

It may sound hackneyed to our weary ears, but “these days” really will pass quickly. Our diapered wonders will pee in the potties; our sleepless newborns will sleep through the night; our whining three-year-olds will mature into children with normal speaking voices; and the trail of Legos, Barbie clothes, and stuffed animals in our hallways will gradually fade away.

Of course, there will still be days on which unruly roasts will crack our crock-pots (unless of course this is REALLY one of those things that only happens to me). But by then we will all be so much wiser – so much more mature.

Won’t we?