The Birds, the Bees and Dr.Pepper

 

Love is in the air.

I can smell it.

The cedar chipped, dry hay pellet, and wet rodent hair odor of ardent affection.

Why, you might want to ask, would I willingly become a landlord to a 2-lb, 12-week-old guinea pig with a bald spot and a serious bladder control issue? 

I’m a sucker for my ten-year-old’s dark lash-lined baby blues.

It’s important to note here, that people have told me they notice I write about my oldest daughter Liv, way more than I do about my youngest, Margot.  There is a very simple and perfectly sane reason for this.  Because Margot would kill me.  Well, not kill me, but I would most certainly never hear the end of it and we spend a lot of time together so I try and stay on her good side.  But for this one time, and one time only, she has given me permission- albeit written and signed by two witnesses and sealed with Super Glue- that I may type her name into my lap top and tell her story.  The story of how she came to love a little cutie named Dr.Pepper.

Here goes:

Margot never asks for anything. When you ask her, let’s say, what she wants for Christmas, she’ll say “nothing” because “I already have everything I need, I have all of you.”  Seriously, y’all.  She is my giver, my dish washer, my clothes folder, my bruised knee kisser.

She just gives and gives and gives without prompt or expectation of reward.

She’s an old soul.

I look up to her.

So, when she came up to me batting those big blue eyes, a fist of dollars in one hand and a flow chart in the other, asking me for a guinea pig, how could I say no?

But what I should have said no to was the guinea pig “sleep-over” the very next Friday.

Talk about a restless night.

Having four pre-teen girls over for a spend the night pales in comparison to the stress, gray hair, panic attacks, and reflux that creeps up while trying to keep two smelly rats from getting down to business, sneaking some nooky, playing chutes and ladders, mixing some Travolta with some Newton-John- you get the picture- while trying to have a glass of wine and catch up on TiVo.

See, as soon as our bald little fur ball came home, pooping and nibbling all the way, Margot promptly dubbed him Dr. Pepper, then picked up my cell and invited her friend Gloria and her guinea, Gucci, over right away for popcorn, kibble, lettuce remnants, carrot shavings, and a marathon movie showing of Eddie Murphy as Dr. Doolittle.

At first, I wasn’t really worried about Gucci.  At all. For one thing, Dr. P was only 3 months old, and from looks of it, a little wet behind the ears.  Meanwhile, Gucci was a well seasoned veteran of rodent life, a Barbara Walters of guinea pigdom, if you will, to our little own Tom Sawyer.  And let’s just say what Gucci lacked in manners and personal hygiene, she made up for in fur, fat, and lethargy -while Pepper, poor thing, was a mere hyper shrimp of a tiny thing.  It would be like Richard Simmons and Roseanne Barr were to take roll in the wood shavings; it just didn’t seem all that likely.

But what have we learned about the re-birth of jelly shoes, pasta makers, and shoulder pads?  Well, absolutely anything is possible.

Now, I don’t know about y’all but I learned about the birds and the bees at the middle school lunch table and watching after-school specials.  These days, we have doctors, nurses, and mental health professionals who start coming to school during 5^th grade PE to explain to our kids all about the birds and the bees.

Me, it doesn’t matter if they were a Harvard grad and a fellow at John-Hopkins, my kids come home and the same thing happens when I try and explain the ins and outs, the ying and the yang’s , the bow-chica-bow-wows of adulthood. They still look at me with a blank stare and say “I just don’t get it.”

So my expectations were not exactly high when I held my breath and entered the guinea pig concubine with a stick of incense and a few printed downloads from National Geographic for Kids.

“Girls,” I gasp for clean air, not finding any. “It’s really important Gucci and Dr. P keep a reasonable- I mean large, really, really large- distance between them.  Separate them with a blanket a pillow, a My Little Pony, a stick of gum.  Just whatever you do, don’t leave them alone, unsupervised…together.  You understand?

“10-4, Ms. Laura,” Gloria tells me, as she pulls Gucci out from under the covers- Dr. P nowhere to be found. “Is it okay though that we already used them to make a guinea pig tower and make  a run for the Gold at the 2013 Guinea Pig Olympics in wrestling?  I think Dr. Pepper won.”

My guess was Dr. P was already burrowed back in his pig pen liar enjoying a good cedar cigar.

I shred up my print outs into teeny tiny pieces and toss them into Gucci’s overnight travel case.   At least the newlyweds will have something to pee on.

Oh well, I tried. 

I called Rachel with the news.  Looks like we have 63 days to wait and see.  At least we both agree we are way too young to be great-grandmothers. 

Looking back, I also learned a whole heck of a lot that night.

I learned knowledge is power.  Ignorance is not always bliss and love means sometimes- well, a lot of times- having to say no.

But for now, old soul or not, I want my baby to hang on tight to these precious moments of childhood where a little, balding pint size fellow can still be a girl’s best friend.

No Pain, No Gain

I am allergic to exercise.

Much like I am to prop planes, parallel parking and potted meat.

At the mere mention of the word, I starting sweating buckets without raising my heart rate and silently, but with great purpose, start making excuses for myself.

I am too tired.

I cannot breathe out of my left nostril and my right big toe aches.

I have nothing to wear.

Now is the time I really must re-organize my spice drawer.

People will tell you, even those know- it -all’s at the Mayo Clinic, that not only is exercising good for your health but it’s also good old fashion fun.

I don’t know that engaging in pain producing procedures on purpose is a whole heck of a lot of fun.

The same can’t be said about root canals, flu shots, or accidently rubbing your eye after peeling a jalapeno pepper, can it?

There is nothing fun about pain, it just hurts.

But maybe that’s just me.

See, some of my good friends – who seem perfectly sane to me- love, and I mean LOVE, flipping gigantic tractor tires on the beach on their days off and running across the Sydney Lanier Bridge with a backpack full of 30 lb bricks after Sunday service.

I just don’t get it.  But then it hit me like 200 lb weight on a 40 lb bar.  In the name of journalistic integrity, if I am going to write about this whole exercise thing and call it a swindle then I’m going to need to walk the walk, talk the talk, and put my butt in my black yoga pants and my feet inside my barely worn sneakers.

No pain, no gain, right?  And what do they say about getting and staying motivated to hit the gym?  I really didn’t know, so I Googled it and all signs point towards talking somebody else in to experiencing the same torture treatment and high risk for injury as your about to do yourself.

With nothing to lose except pounds and properly functioning ligaments, I immediately texted Alicia (she hasn’t answered her phone since 2007) and she texted back she was game.  Plus, it’ll give of something else funny to talk about over bread, pasta and wine at Tramicis.

If we start now, in January, she reasoned, maybe we would be looking pretty darn good come swimsuit season this spring.  I have long ago given up that childish notion.  All I want to do is get rid of that second roll of fat under my arms so I look decent in a tank top and, while giving directions, one of my triceps doesn’t jiggle and wiggle to some imaginary beat.  

But then came the hard part.  What method of distributing pain and suffering should we pick since there are hundreds of ways to suffer.   Kick boxing, Pilates, circuit training, boot camps, P90X, Barre….the list is endless.  But since we were talking about this very topic last Saturday afternoon on her back porch and our friend Tygh, owner and a trainer at CrossFit Saint Simons, dropped by to say hello, we took a leap of faith and told him to sign us up.  How easy was that, we told each other?  We didn’t even have to lift a pen, phone, or finger.

Fast forward two days later.

I see stairs and I cry, y’all.

Actually, it’s not just stairs, but chairs, couches and toilet seats.   After 50 air squats and 19 burpees…..alright that was Alicia…after 25 air squats and 4 burpees, how in world can I make it back up to an upright position when I can barely sit down?

I texted Alicia the next morning and asked her how she was feeling.

“I couldn’t bend down to tie David’s shoes, and when I finally did, it took me 2 minutes to get to the floor and now my armpits hurt when I wash my hands.  You?”

“I felt ok when I woke up, then sat down to pee.  I had to call out for the girls to help me get back up.  I think their life just flashed before their eyes and are now calling around about long term elderly care insurance for me and their father as we speak.”

I almost didn’t go, if truth be told.  I woke up that first day like it was the first day of school; all butterflies and nervous energy.  I even drove past the place (it’s next to Ace Garden Center*) like I was heading to McDonalds, not a 40 by 40 foot box of agony and distress.  Maybe this is the universe telling me something?  Maybe I am to have an Egg McMuffin and side of Hot Cakes with maple syrup and go back to bed.  But then I remembered something about Alicia saying she would kill me or some such nonsense so I turned around with my Smart Water and 5 calories mint and went inside the blessed thing.

I was scared just walking in.

“Don’t be scared,” Fain, my instructor told me.

I can’t help it.  I wear my emotions on my sleeve.  And when I walked in, I thought might faint.  See, there wasn’t one fancy elliptical machine or pitcher of cucumber water in sight.  Not one mirror or soft light bulb in the place; just ropes and weights and boxes and people crab crawling back and forth across the floor.  The Floor.
Like Rocky going into the ring, this stuff was for real, y’all.

But I did it.  Sure, after 100 jump ropes, 20 lunges, 20 pull ups, and 20 leg lifts, I almost went home when Fain told us that was just the warm up.  But I stayed for the work out of the day, or WOD as they call it.  And yes, when they tallied everything up on the board my numbers were a little lackluster, but you know what? I did 21 more pushups than I would of if I had grabbed that Egg McMuffin and drove home.

And it was fun.  I have to admit it.  There is a certain amount of satisfaction in doing something, anything, that didn’t seem from the get-go to be even remotely possible.  And laughing and tripping my way through jumping rope and crab crawling on the floor with my best friend was tons of fun too, even though we are now walking funny.

Sure, today I see stairs and I cry.  But in a month’s time, I will own those stairs.  They will be mine.  It IS possible. And I will take them two by two, skipping and laughing all the way.  Even if there are only four of them.

I’ll keep you posted.

 

 

*Tygh and company and CrossFit Saint Simons will soon be moving to a bigger space next to Saint Simons Drugs.