Babysitting

I have a confession to make that may make me seem like an awful, petty person:
I'm not crazy about babysitting. Sometimes, I even feel a little resentful. I think back to raising my three kids four hours away from the closest family.
But then I remember what it felt like to be a young mother at the end of my rope.
And, whether I'm there to play or to babysit, I always enjoy my great nieces.
In the midst of a stressful week (I think I'll be able to write about the stresses next week, and you won't believe how mafia-esque they are), I had agreed to babysit from 9-2 on Thursday. Then I had a mammogram. Then I had to go teach.
So, deep breath, and I got to their house at 9 with a coffee in hand.
For the morning, it was just me and Regan, who is 21 months old now. She has these big brown eyes and eyelashes so long that she had oatmeal stuck in them when I arrived. It was just me and her for the morning while her big sister went to pre-school.
Regan loves to play in the water, so I set her in the bath for about 45 minutes.

She played happily until an itsy bitsy spider came out the water spout. Then she screamed.
I took a tissue and squished the spider then threw him in the trashcan.
Regan was still hesitant.
"Spider take a nap?" she asked.
I agreed that the spider was definitely taking a nap.
We had to walk to pick up 4-year-old Caroline at preschool and I noticed that the preschool was near a chocolate shop.
Regan and I went to the chocolate shop.

Little kids aren't sophisticated enough to enjoy chocolates, so I got the girls suckers called PushPops, which made a sticky mess, but that's what indulgent aunts are for. I got myself a salted caramel chocolate.

When Regan went down for a nap, Caroline and I made no-bake cookies. Their whole family is gluten free, so I made sure we used gluten free oatmeal. Caroline made sure to get every bit of chocolate out of the bowl afterward.

In spite of my hesitation at the beginning of the day, I enjoyed spending that one-on-one time with the girls.

Nature at Your Door

Sometimes my husband and I get sentimental about the years we lived in Florida. We met down here as young reporters for The Tampa Tribune then married and moved north to raise our family. We'll wax nostalgic about gathering at beach hang outs and driving in my convertible or the charming houses in old St. Pete.
But nothing takes the curb off those fantasies like a visit to Florida in August. A morning run alone is enough to remind me why I never ran in Florida. The thermometer may say 70, but the sheer humidity turns a run into more of a swim.

Sandhill Cranes stalk the neighborhood yards.

After a run, I jump into the pool at Mom and Dad's house to cool off. I float on a raft talking to Mom while she sits at the side. I see her eyes move toward the end of the raft and when I turn my head, a little black frog jumps from the raft into the water.
"You were just going to let him jump on me and not tell me," I accuse her.
Along with frogs and fire ants, daytime dragon flies buzz past floating on the waves of heat. Fist-sized spiders build webs both inside and out.
Birds as big as me stalk through backyards and refuse to leave golf holes.
The day we took Spencer over to school in St. Petersburg, Mom had a run-in with a wasp nest inside the rolled up hose. The wasp sting swelled her hand and her entire arm.
Mom's stories alone should have reminded me that nature is just too close in Florida.
Last week, she told me about finding a snake in her garage after she had pulled her golf cart in. She's had snakes in the garage before and she was determined not to let this one hide somewhere. So she took a blunt-nosed shovel, a spade and dug it into the snake in the corner of the garage. But she wasn't strong enough to cut through it. Instead, she had to steadily increase the pressure of the spade as the snake wriggled trying to get free. Mom estimates the time at about 10 minutes before her spade finally hit the concrete of the garage floor.

Huge spiders build webs inside and out.

She pulled the dead snake out into the driveway for my dad to see when he got home from golfing. When he came home, she learned that the snake, which she figured for a non-poisonous water snake from the nearby lake, was actually a cottonmouth, also known as a water moccasin. Poisonous.
Later that same week, Mom told me about a trip to the emergency room because of another run-in with nature. This time, it was a beetle. On the golf course, she saw a beetle flying straight at her. She turned her head quickly and the bug flew straight into her ear. Instead of retreating though, the bug decided to persevere to the other side. It dug in. The pain became so great that Mom abandoned her golf game and called Dad to meet her at home. They went to the doctor, who sent them to the emergency room, who sent them to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. As the bug dug into Mom's ear, blood spurted out covering her outer ear and the collar of her shirt.
The doctor said the bug was about dead by the time he finally squirted some antiseptic in there and extracted it.
So wasps, snakes, beetles, spiders, sand-hill cranes ("They will peck your eyes out," my mom warned when Earl scoffed at the big birds.), and we haven't even got to alligators, and someone here in Central Florida had a black bear in their front yard the other day.
If the heat isn't enough to remind me why I don't live in Florida, the wildlife is. I miss my parents and now my son in college who stay in Florida throughout the year, but I'll take Ohio with its tamer outdoor creatures.