Detachable Heart

When I sleep at night, I like to tuck my arm under my head as I sleep on my side.

My hand is blissfully sandwiched between my now graying hair and my squishy, too old for my own good, pillow. 

But, this can cause problems for me. 

My wrist starts to hurt. 

I just can't get into a comfortable position with my hand and arm. 

Or, in the opposite manner, I don't want my hand and/or arm under my head. 

So it juts out in front of me. 

Hanging over the edge of the bed. 

The wood bed frame starts gnawing at my ever bony wrist and, well, it just isn't comfortable. 

So I try laying on my back. 

Arms at my sides. 

Too corpse like, I think. 

What I really want to do is this...

I want to remove my arms. 

I want detachable arms. 

A snap/twist/lock trifecta would be great. 

I'll wash my face before bed, scrub my teeth when I remember, grab the book from my bedside table to read, switch on my owl reading lamp, and hunker down into my covers and pillows in my regular nighttime routine. 

When I can feel my eyes getting heavy, I'll put the book back on my table.  

I'll take my eyeglasses off and tuck them in next to my book and take my arms off. 

A quick twist and pull and voilà, my right arm is off. 

Now, here's the problem. 

You can see the dilemma, right?

If I've already taken one arm off, how am I to take the other one off?

My eldest daughter, Zoe, informed me of this idea flaw when I was bestowing to her my fabulous plan of detachable arms. 

She's always been smarter than me. 

I guess this idea of detachable arms only works IF you live with others. 

Someone who can detach and reattach one of your arms for you. 

And please, try not to drink anything before bed, because peeing in the middle of the night will be a no-go unless you want to wake someone to attach at least one of your arms. 

Zoe is more interested in detachable legs. 

As she, for some unknown reason, has trouble figuring out where to put her legs at night. 

But detachable legs are easier to deal with than detachable arms when going about it solo. 

But if there's a fire, you better twist and lock quickly!

Of course, this is all just fun and games. 

I am in no way making a mockery of people who have lost limbs. 

I find that people who are missing limbs to be some of the most courageous people on this planet. 

For instance, people who lost their limbs while watching the marathon in Boston. 

Doesn't that sound strange?

People lost their limbs, and lives, while watching a running race in Boston. 

How did that happen?

Why are things like this happening?

My heart hurts so much when I think about families, friends, children, and strangers being brutally attacked by terrorists while doing mundane things like watching a running race in Boston. 

Or watching fireworks in Nice, France. 

Families and friends laughing and oohing and aahing while gazing into the night sky as beautiful lights converge into patterns overhead are then viciously run over by a crazy person in a giant truck. 

My heart can't take much more of this. 

My heart hurts so badly for the families of those innocents who are killed and hurt by these radical terrorists. 

And my heart wonders...when will it happen again?

Will I know someone next time?

Will my own family be affected next time?

I fear, it's only a matter of time before I know a name on a list. 

Before I recognize a face in a news report. 

If only I could detach my heart, put it in a drawer, and not care about the lives lost. 

We enjoy the big city and we take our kids to Chicago and St Louis often. 

Where we are in big crowds. 

The tragedy of September 11, 2001 was really hard for me and my husband. 

We lived in Chicago at that time. 

Being in such a large city was scary, and we don't live there anymore. 

We feel safer and more protected in our little town to the south. 

But we travel. 

And terrorism has no boundaries. 

As we have seen in Boston, NYC, France, and Africa (to name just a few).

I have to force myself to not watch the news. 

I have to force myself away from the sights and sounds of the carnage and into the serenity of my farm. 

And I want to detach my heart from my body so it doesn't hurt for the mothers whose children are dead. 

Because everyone who has died from a ruthless terrorist attack was someone's child. 

Everyone. 

We've tried to instill the idea of wanderlust in our children.   

The want to experience other cultures. 

To travel around North America. 

And to travel beyond these borders. 

But the world is getting scarier every day. 

And my undetachable heart hurts for their future in it...

Supermom Sighting At The Frozen Yogurt Place

Being a mother is not for the faint of heart. 

You see things you never thought you'd see. 

And you do things you never thought you'd do. 

The smells you'll endure. 

Oh boy. 

The things you'll see that will make you want to burn your eyes out of your head. 

But then you'll remember that it's now embedded in your brain, so the eye burning will only be really, really painful. 

So, you nix that idea. 

Words will come out of your mouth that you never, in your wildest dreams, thought would exit your body. 

Words like...

"NO, you may not write your name on your forehead with permanent marker before you go to school."

Or

"YES, the dog has a penis because he's a boy like dad, but we aren't going to compare them in the living room!"

Willingly catch vomit in your hands in a crowded restaurant...I've done that. 

Spray your kid with a hose when she wanders around the side of the house nude and covered in a not-so mysterious brown substance...I've done that. 

Hide your daughter's pillow because it's covered in her own hair that's coming out because she has cancer and you don't want her to be upset by seeing it...unfortunately, I've done that. 

All of these things makes you a stronger person. 

All of these things have made me a stronger mom. 

Sometimes I feel like Supermom. 

And the other day I got to use my Supermom powers to save the day. 

Well, I saved the frozen yogurt. 

Gigi would eat frozen yogurt covered in candy and whipped cream everyday if we let her. 

Now, we don't let this happen. 

But, we do seem to visit one of our local frozen yogurt shops quite often in the summer. 

We've even been known to drive over there and eat frozen yogurt for lunch or dinner. 

If you're unfamiliar with a 21st century frozen yogurt shop it's like this...

there are at least a dozen different varieties of frozen yogurt, sorbet, or gelato that you can fill all on your own into a very large cup. 

The flavors are varied and can be as simple as watermelon to as complex as sea salt caramel. 

Once your cup is filled with one or twelve different flavors (yes, some people get a little bit of every available flavor!) you move on to the toppings bar. 

Where you then fill your frozen yogurt/sorbet/gelato mix with toppings ranging from crushed cookies, cereal, and gummi bears to shredded coconut, maraschino cherries, and (at our yogurt shop) this little colored ball called a boba ball that bursts a fruity flavor in your mouth once you bite into it. 

Then you take your creation to the cashier where it's weighed and you pay a certain price for each ounce it weighs. 

Our favorite shops does a $4 or $5 Fill A Cup Day which is more economical for us because the youngest and smallest person in our group always makes the largest and heaviest cup of yogurt with toppings. 

She may be small, but never does anything small. 

Last week we were at our fav yogurt place when my Supermom powers quietly showed up. 

No one else in my family noticed my Supermom act. 

But the guy weighing the yogurt did. 

You see, Gigi had filled her cup with four flavors of frozen yogurt and, as it usually is, it was overflowing with gummy worms, boba balls, and whipped cream. 

There's a long counter in front of the toppings bar and she was suddenly entranced by the TV screen on the other side of the shop because The Disney Channel was on. 

Her arm began sliding her ginormous cup of sweetness down the counter as her eyes were locked into a green platypus named Perry who wears a fedora that was on the TV. 

I was at the scale waiting for her weigh-in when I noticed that her cup was not sliding down 
the counter as it should. 

She was sliding it at an angle because she wasn't looking and it began to slide right off of the counter.  

It was counterless for a millisecond. 

Maybe it was a ittybittysecond. 

I jumped into action and hit it with my hand to get the cup (that was about to cost me ten buckaroos) back onto the counter before it became a splatty mess on the floor. 

It all took a total of .045 seconds for me to save the day. 

Well, to save the day for the yogurt guy who would have had to clean up that mess once it hit the floor. 

Gigi looked at me with surprise. 

The yogurt guy looked at me with surprise. 

Gigi didn't really blink an eye at my save. 

She moved her yogurt to the scale, grabbed a spoon, then skipped to the neon green couch to sit with her yogurt to watch the mesmerizing show with the pointy headed kids who own the green platypus in the hat. 

The yogurt guy was still looking at the whole situation with his mouth gaping open and large dilated pupils. 

He squeaked out "wow, nice save."

I gave him a wink and said "I'm a mom."

And skipped over to the green couch...