Mom Fail Confessions & a Shootout

I don’t want to say it’s been a super hard day, but I did just have to send a text that said something like, “Hey – just got your voicemail and I’m sorry but this isn’t Bonnie from Granbury from Match.com. I hope you find love her.” I have no idea how old the guy is or what he looks like, but I do have his name and number. Any single ladies want to give him a hollerrrr?

Mom Fail: Slide Edition

Last week I got into a less than ideal situation where Beckett climbed to the highest part of the playground, a section I didn’t think he could actually get to, and tried to slide down the big slide by himself. He was teetering on the edge of the slide, I was panicky and waiting for him to slide down far enough for me to catch him, and a little girl at the top was yelling, “HE’S GOING TO FALL!!!” to which I’m yelling back in my head, “I know, kid! Now shut your mouth and keep him from sliding down.”

But he did fall, which I knew would happen since he tried to slide down the slide while standing, so all I could do was catch him a foot down the slide.

I felt terrible letting him even get that high and I felt like a moron since he was screaming and every mom there knew it could have been easily prevented. He wasn’t actually hurt, just scared, which is always better but no less embarrassing.

The best part of the scene? That same little girl getting off the playground, walking over and tapping me on the shoulder to proclaim, loudly enough for everyone to hear over the sobs of my child, “I TOLD you he was going to fall!!!”

Little punk kid.

The Shootout

Once upon a time in elementary school, my brother and I were playing outside our house when we saw a ton of emergency vehicles turn onto the next street. Being a child spy (just ask to see my spy kit and credentials, I’ll be happy to show you), I wanted to know what was going on so we grabbed our bikes and rode over. I’m not really sure how we found out the details, but as we were watching the police put up crime tape we overheard someone say something about a shooting and a shooter on the loose. {insert frantic bike ride back home to hide under the couch} Come to find out, a teenage boy had shot his mom and his sister, kidnapped his brother, stole a car, and fled…all one street over in our quiet elderly neighborhood. And we were at the scene.

Fast forward to yesterday.

I’m walking out the door to go to Walmart and I hear a helicopter. Beckett is kinda into those things now, so I look to see where it is so we can talk about it. I spot the thing and I start saying, “Hey B – look at the helicopter! See it flying! Wooooowww!! Fun!!! Man, it’s flying really low, huh? Whoa, like really low. Why is that so low? And it’s getting lower. Is that thing LANDING?! Holy crap, B, I think that thing just landed on our street.”

Beckett obviously had a blast.

What does one do if a helicopter possibly just landed on your street? Get your neighbor, strap the kids in the stroller, and go check things out.

It didn’t actually land on our street, but it did land in the empty field behind the shopping center at the end of our street. We saw that it was a Careflite helicopter, so we thought there was probably just a bad wreck or something.

As we were standing there I got a text and read, “Hey girl – are you ok?? There was a shooting at the store right by your house and the gunman is on the loose!” as I’m standing about .1 mile from the back of the said store. My imagination automatically has me in a hostage situation where I beg the gunman to let me leave Beckett strapped in his stroller on someone’s doorstep with a cryptic note giving them contact information for Taylor and details about my abductor before he gags me and stuffs me in his windowless van. (Did I mention we’ve been watching a whole lot of Burn Notice recently?)

As it turns out, the suspect wasn’t really on the loose…he was actually the one we watched get loaded into the Careflite helicopter. But still. My investigative work could use some variety. I seem to have a tendency to go for situations involving fleeing gunmen.