The Hundred Acre Wood

I love how my husband gives me credit for crap I would never do. He whole-heartedly believes I can do just about anything and it's sweet, don't get me wrong, but so very blindly sweet. Here's what I mean:

On Sunday we wanted to see the local Rec Center that is maybe 10 minutes from our house. We set out in full force with double stroller, dog'n'leash, Gatorade bottles, and the ever awful choice of footwear for a walk: flip-flops.

SO, we're approaching this dirt path that is the shortcut to the Rec Center. I am at the helm of the double double stroller stroller. Abby's asleep in it and I'm trying to keep it that way. Grayson is precariously scaling down the cement stairs next to the dirt path but he's on hubby's watch so I can concentrate on getting Abby and I down the precipice of pain. I mean, 3 foot downhill.

I am concentrating fully on not breaking myself in three as I begin to skid down the dusty hill. The dusty hill that now starts a mini-avalanche underneath the stroller's tires. The tires of the stroller that suddenly succumb to the gravitational pull of the earth. The earth who is laughing at this whole scene wondering why in heaven's name this woman just doesn't strap on a decent pair of tennis shoes.

I grab the stroller with both hands, yell to hubby who is nonchalantly waiting at the bottom for the rest of us nonMarines to get the hell there already. (Jesus do I want to strap on an extra 20 plus double D boobs on that man sometimes and watch him be so awesome. Just five minutes...)

So hubby saves the day and the stroller (or rather, the baby inside it) and lets his ridiculously awkward wife get herself down the hill sideways as if she were on the slopes in Aspen, but less cute. Finally, I'm down the hill, Abby in stroller is down the hill, and Grayson, Sadie, and hubby have been down the hill and have now crossed the bridge. Yes, there was bridge.

Before I even get to the bridge part, I have to give detail to our surroundings. To my husband, the hunter, it's a home away from home of huge leaning trees, babbling brook, and luscious brush hiding 8,9,or 10 point creatures in her flora and her tendril fauna. To me, the suburbanite, it was Michael Myers, Freddie Kruger, and the 10 o'clock news with a little poison sumac thrown in.

So the bridge: We get to the wooden bridge with iron rails. This is where Grayson decides to stick his head through two of those rails. Of course he does. He might as well have announced he was going to be bungee jumping into Niagra Falls because it was all the same to me. We weren't up that high, in all honesty, but that wobbly bridge with even wobblier trimmings was barely doing its job and my only baby boy was leaning his sweet little body over it and into a certain fate of many scrapes and stitches. (Did I tell you about the bookshelf falling on him during our move? Oh, yea, that happened.) "Keep it going, baby." I say while swatting his tush to get his little legs motoring and away from any more ideas of leaning over antiquated engineering.

And we walk. Grayson stops to look at bird poop. And we walk. Grayson lags behind to check out something brown and lumpy. Evidently his fascination with fecal matter goes beyond dogs and birds. He decides it's probably droppings from a fox or a dinosaur (I can see his confusion) and we're off again. So this is how our 10 minute walk became a 30 minute poop finding boy scout drill and we had barely crossed the bridge.

Once we get across the bridge, Camouflage Man spots a deer and Grayson spends the next 5 minutes of our lives asking question after question about its mommy, its daddy, its baby sister, what it will eat for dinner, what it wants from the Ice Cream Man and so on. His Socratic technique is impressive and even I run out of answers.

FINALLY we punch out of the woods to reach civilization again; coming into a small neighborhood of townhomes. There, holding on to her lab/rottweiler/harry potter two headed monster mixbreed was a woman who did not convince me thoroughly that she had a REALLY good hold of this crazy thing at the end of her leash. This dog was the color of caramel but that's where the sweetness stopped. It totally wanted to dive into Sadie's throat and then perhaps take a heart and lung in a "to go" box from the furless human chewtoys in the stroller. In case you don't know my history with dogs that are mean, I was scared witless and shitless. Hubby sensed this from my fingernails skimming his white blood cells. We all faced forward and did not make eye contact with the wildebeast. Unscathed and somewhat shaken, I trembled onward.

What seemed like an hour later, we reach mecca recca center and my husband, my dear sweet honorable husband innocently goes, "So, what did you think of the shortcut?" as if I wasn't about to sit my broken spirit right onto a metal YMCA chair with my children and dog to WAIT while he jogged the path back to get the car to come pick us back up. I wasn't sure my face read this so I said, "Are you effing kidding me?" He was either toying with me or really wasn't sure and asked, "What? You don't think you could do that alone with the kids?" To which Grayson pipes in, "Yeah Mommy, you do not yike dee Hunnred Acre Wood?"

My goodness people. There are no words. Clearly, I am outnumbered here.