An Interview on Day 2,555 of J's Life

J is seven years old today.   Here's our birthday interview.  Sorry about the scritchy morning voice and for snapping at the dog.  She was noisily licking her hindquarters and it annoyed me.  My patience is low when I haven't had coffee.
No apologies for J though.  He's perfectly seven today.

IMG 1968 from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.

Water Park Phobia

Well, we are smack in the middle of summer. For many people that means fun in the sun all day, every day.  For me, it means it's time to deal with my phobia.

I've had lots of experiences with other people's phobias.  I know how irrational they are.  I have a friend who is afraid of birds.  Every time I went to the beach with her, I got a full report every two minutes on the location of the nearest seagull stalking us.  9, for about two years of elementary school, was afraid of the wind.  My niece is deathly afraid of dogs, and I......

I am afraid of the water park.

It's not the slides.  I have no problem with the slides.  It's the water I'm afraid of.  More specifically, it's the idea of community water.

I can deal.

I can NOT deal. 

Everyone with all their sweat and hair and bodily fluids sharing water space makes me gag.  Furthermore, while I know that I'm supposedly the one with the irrational phobia, what I really don't understand is why everyone else is okay with sharing community water.  I can not describe the horror I feel when I see people sliding on their bellies along the floor of the wave pool, mouth open, eyes open, just swimming along.  There are unidentifiable floaties down there, people! I see them all the time.  Little brown things that sure, maybe, yeah could be a leaf..... but it could be something else infinitely more disgusting too.  Why are you all okay with that?

And why doesn't it freak people out that at any given time, there are at least 10 different people PEEING in that water?  I mean, ya'll are swimming and sliding around in water, some of which a short time ago, used to be inside someone else's body.  Their urinary tract, to be exact.  People are basically swimming in multiple urinary tracts.  Disgusting.

Also, the baby lagoon.  I can't figure it out.  Parents who'll run to wash off a pacifier within nano seconds of it touching a floor are okay with wading around in the baby lagoon with their toddlers! WHY?   I've had years of experience with the swim diapers, and trust me, they are not a guarantee against Code Brown.  Code Brown will occur, people.  It will and it does.  Get out of the water.

Finally, there's one last thing that bears mentioning here-the innertubes.  I know I said that it's the water I'm afraid of and it is, I swear it is, but the innertubes.....  they're all warm and squishy and they make those farting sounds when you get on them and sometimes they have other people's wet hair stuck on their sides.  Plus, you have to stick your butt down in the hole to float and sometimes your butt hits a warm spot.  (Lazy River, I'm looking at you.)

So if you see a mom walking on her tip toes in the shallowest section of the wave pool, it's me.  I'm minimizing the amount of skin to pool contact.

The lady laying like a plank across her inner tube in the Lazy River?  That's me too, actively avoiding warm spots while minimizing skin-to-public-pool-float contact.  It's one of my best moves.

And the nut job doing the deep breathing exercises while standing at the bottom of the kiddie slide to catch her child?  Yep, that's me.  Notice how I have the art of catching down to a science- lips sealed, head adverted to avoid the inevitable splash, a controlled rush to the side where the child is quickly deposited, and finally, a nimble jump out of the water that-if one is observing carefully enough- conveys just the slightest bit of panic.

I may look crazy, but know that in my head, you all are the crazy ones for being okay with swimming in a cesspit.

Thus is the rationale of the water park phobia.

Wedding Story

Do you guys remember that show on TLC called "The Wedding Story"?  It was on back in the Nineties when I was in college.  Man, I used to love that show.  Every episode highlighted an engaged couple who told the story of how they met, their courtship, and their proposal.  The last ten minutes was nothing but footage from their wedding and it always left me feeling like I had big old hearts dancing in my eyes.

Ah, memories.

Wait!  Do you remember the theme song?

And when the spark of youth someday surrenders 

I will have your hand to see me through

The years may come and go....

But there's one thing I know. 

Love is all there is when I'm with you.  

Corny as hell and I LOVED it with all my twenty something little heart.  I scheduled my classes around that show.

I was dumb.

Anyway.  Ten years ago today I was getting married.  My wedding was nothing like the couples' weddings on The Wedding Story.  Those weddings usually had a ton of pomp and circumstance. We, Matt and I,  were very untraditional.

For instance, we saw each other the morning of the wedding.  And look how itty bitty 9 was!  I could have put him in my pocket.

 

No fancy hair and makeup professionals came to doll me up.  My mother in law did my hair and I did my own makeup. 

I had trouble zipping up my dress. (A little math with a gestation calendar and my wedding date, and voila, the mystery of the stuck zipper is solved.)

 I had a fight with the florist.  The Wedding Story would have edited that out for sure, but maybe it would have been good fodder for Bridezillas.  I'll spare you the details, but you can rest assured that I've learned to live with the fact that somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas there is a random wedding florist who thinks I'm the world's biggest bitch.

C'est la vie.

Once at the Nevada Beach parking lot, waiting for the minister to show, I spotted my beloved all dressed up and ready to exchange vows with me.  He was standing next to his truck and I walked up to him, ready to receive any compliments that I, in all my wedding finery, may have inspired in his heart or soul.

Instead, he said "Hey babe!  Can you pass me that camera bag?"

And I will never let him live that down.  It's a permanent part of our wedding story.  Matt swears that he did compliment me, and he did- after I asked him to.  And that is how I usually have to get compliments from Matt.  When I really need them, I ask for them.  That's okay.  He does the dishes and helps bathe the kids, so I decided that it's something I can live with.

For now.

"Oh. Hey.  Pass me the camera bag."

So then it was time to start the ceremony.  We all stood under the shade of a big Juniper Pine tree and the minister began.

And do you know, it wasn't until recently when I was looking through pictures that I realized that Matt married me with his sunglasses on his head? 

You can see them if you look real close. 

I always thought that in this picture I was looking at him adoringly while we exchanged vows, but now I wonder if maybe I wasn't just looking at his sunglasses? 

That's okay.  The whole time we were exchanging vows, my nose was running.  I sniffled my way through the whole thing and tried to keep my head tilted back because I didn't have a Kleenex. 

Oh well.  

We sealed the deal anyway.

Later, at the restaurant we thanked our guests for coming.  I always laugh at this picture because it seems like for this shot only, every ounce of Hungarian Gypsy DNA in Matt's blood showed up.  

My tall, dark and handsome gypsy.  All he needs is a hoop earring.

And then the faux pas of all wedding faux pas happened.  

We cut the cake and the knife handle broke off with the blade inside the cake! 

There we are, knife handle in hand wondering what to do now.  Oops. 

(But doesn't my cleavage look fabulous? Hi girls! Miss you.)

Anyway, I figured that was some seriously bad wedding juju.  I knew we were headed for trouble.  Especially when the next day, the piece of cake we were supposed to take home to freeze for the next year got knocked over and spilled onto parking lot asphalt.  Double juju.  

You know what though?  Ten years, and I'm still waiting for that bad juju to catch up.  So far, we've been doing okay.  Life hasn't given us anything that's felt too unbearable. And when that day comes, when life does hand over a pile of crap for us to wade though, it's going to take more than some silly superstitious wedding juju to break down what we've built over the last ten years.  

But I'm going to keep my fingers crossed just in case.