I sit on my couch, surrounded by sick and napping children, rain pattering on the roof, the radio playing low. I want to write a typical post, a “Day in the Life” of the RG family, but today is the day of the Orlando nightclub shooting, and the day cannot pass without comment.
In July 2012, the night before the final day of the Alabama bar exam, I wrote this post. That was the day after the Aurora movie shooting. Since then, we’ve had Isla Vista, the Charleston church, the Oregon Community College, San Bernardino, and hundreds of domestic violence annihilations, school shootings, suicides, murder-suicides, accidental shootings by toddlers and children and grown men cleaning their guns around babies or getting drunk and firing their weapon through an apartment wall. 33,000 deaths a year in this country from guns – close to (or perhaps already) surpassing deaths by motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death for Americans. We have studied motor vehicles and causes of motor vehicle accidents, created new safety standards and regulations for cars, roads, and humans in cars, disseminated public health information campaigns on safety seats, demanded recalls on defective airbags. Motor vehicle deaths have steadily decreased as a result. We can do the same with gun deaths, if only Congress would fund CDC research on the public health problem of gun violence, and be willing to consider implementing the changes they propose. Right now, it’s not happening, for reasons you all already know. But that doesn’t mean we give up, or despair. I do volunteer work with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Congress does nothing, but that doesn’t mean we are helpless. Please consider joining your local chapter and being part of this movement. We don’t have to live like this.
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The Prof is finalizing a book manuscript, and has worked long hours on both days this weekend. Saturday morning, before he headed out to work, he took the big boys for haircuts and swimming, and I took the littlest boy to shop for some birthday presents for Liam.
Liam will be six next week. We typically either do a party plus a couple dollar store presents, or we do really nice presents and a basic cake-after-dinner type of family party. Jack got the former this year (with his movie theater party) – Liam gets the latter. I bought him a small kid’s telescope and a book about stars. I also got him a few other less expensive things – an ant farm, a bubble blower for the porch, Chinese checkers, a Kidz Bop CD. As we wandered through the Toys R Us, Craig sat cooperatively in the shopping cart and narrated with enthusiasm the bounty of toys in each aisle: “Ooooh, wook! Issa dinosaur! Ooooh wook mom! Issa dragon! Ooooh wook! I see books, mom!” He’s too young to have yet learned the art of whining for me to buy everything in sight, so it was overall a pleasant shopping experience. We had said “no gifts” at Jack’s birthday party, but a couple of kids brought Toys R Us gift cards, which I totally used to buy Liam’s gifts. Parenting – I got this thing down.
We loaded up the trunk with Liam’s bounty, then drove home with Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” on repeat play. Craig knows every word, and sings along. Every time it ends, he says first “I wike dat song!” and then “Mama, Wreckit ball, pweese, dat song.” If I decline to play it upon request, he makes life quite miserable, so I bow to His Majesty’s request and have resigned myself to listening to it over and over and over again for the next few weeks, til he moves on to something else. I pulled through a McD’s to grab a drink for myself and chicken nuggets for him, and by the time we got home he was sound asleep, mouth full of half-chewed nuggets. I scooped the choking hazard out with a finger, flinging it into the garbage disposal, and then carried him (still sound asleep through the entire scooping experience) to his toddler bed. With the Littlest thus tucked up and snoozing, I turned my attentions to wrapping Liam’s gifts, and placed the last piece of tape on the last wrapping paper seam just as they arrived at the front door, a bit damp from the pool and looking handsome in their new haircuts.
The Prof left shortly thereafter for work. Craig’s nap was short, and the remainder of the afternoon entailed my three sons running up and down the house and generally making a huge mess. I moved laundry through and hand washed every dish (since our dishwasher doesn’t work), and gave up on doing anything else besides following Hurricane Craig through the house. Among other fun tasks, I had to scrape stickers off the floor, clean yogurt off the walls/beds/dressers/kids’ hair after Craig took hold of an open go-gurt and spun himself in a circle, pick up a dozen tiny pieces of a dinosaur model that Liam had left out within Craig’s clutches, and fetch Craig from the top bunk countless times (he can climb up there even when we remove the ladder, and gets himself stuck – then hangs there shouting “I tuck! I tuck! I need hep! Hep, mama!”).
After a day of basically just keeping my toddler and house from total ruin (and this while sick – I had a fever and sick head on Friday and Saturday morning), I fed the boys chicken nuggets and frozen veg, ran them through the shower, read them a story, and put them down. Then I collapsed on the couch, and texted and talked with my family until I fell asleep.
Sunday we woke to the news of Orlando, which dimmed the mood. The Prof did some work from home, and the boys watched tv. Eventually, we got it together enough to load them all into the car and head downtown to take a quick jaunt along the riverfront, a short family activity before the Prof headed back to work. He dropped us off at the waterfront and then headed off to park. The boys and I walked toward the river and spent about thirty seconds there before Liam leaned over and threw up. So much for that venture – I called the Prof and told him to circle back around, and then we headed right back home. We stopped at the small Jewish grocery in our neighborhood, and I picked up Powerade and chicken soup. Jack started complaining as well on the way home, so we unfolded the futon into a bed, and got them both set up with pillows and mugs of soup and cups of iced Powerade. (Craig, who seems fine, was given the same lest he protest at being left out.)
Liam hadn’t had breakfast and had little for dinner last night, and I think that was truly his issue. The food and drink perked him right up, and he seems fine now. Jack was likely just having sympathy tummy aches – he is also fine and is eating me out of house and home. Craig is napping. The Prof is off at work.
I’m still running slowly due to my own mild illness, but we are keeping a low profile this weekend. The Toddler Tornado will wake up soon, but until then, I’ll do a little work and rest a little and hang with my lazy boys. Lazy rainy days in the early summer in NOLA. . .