Frogs Gone Wild

On Friday, we took Rags to his end of the season baseball team pool party. It was a ton of fun - 20 kids (teammates and siblings), swimming and shrieking like lunatics, eating too much sugar, watching movies pool side and each with their very own frog. Wait, what?

Turns out that frogs grow in abundance in our subdivision and my son's teammates'. As the movie was being set up (which was cool as all get-out since I'd never seen a giant inflatable movie screen), we noticed that it was so noisy we couldn't really hear the movie. Turns out that there were about 5 frogs hiding behind the outside clock. One of the parents walked over and grabbed them and went to set them free - or at least out of the way - and jokingly put one on her son's shoulder. That started a revolution.

Before long, all 15 teammates and the 5 siblings were running around with frogs. Frogs were everywhere. Hopping on the adults, on tables, on the ground, crawling up kids' backs, being fished out of the pool. It was a regular PETA nightmare.

That said, I'm happy to say that there were no frogs injured in the making of this post. 

Tapped?

I haven't written in a while because I'm kinda tapped out. I've stop-started a few posts (like the one I just deleted), had some ideas for things I wanted to babble idly about, but the world has been spinning so fast at work especially that every time I step off I want to collapse. I guess working 14 hour days will do that to you. But I shouldn't complain - could be worse.

We did take the kids on a vacation recently to a local lodge sponsored by the YMCA. It was actually very cool. More than I wanted to spend, but close and included all the stuff we wanted to do (kayaking, canoeing, swimming, horseback riding, pontooning and a few other things).

What was interesting (or maybe not) was that, despite having been to Disney World, the kids seemed to enjoy themselves a heck of a lot more at this place. But maybe that's not so surprising. There were other kids there to hang out with, the place had no televisions, so limited distractions, and more active stuff to do that didn't involve standing in a line, then looking at things.

It may also have helped that Rags kicked his dad's butt the first time he even attempted to play chess, then proceeded to repeat it over again, and then another couple of times only with checkers. Yeah, that was satisfying. 

Duty

I was at Jury Duty today. I didn't wind up being selected, though I was on a panel. Sitting through the whole process - being called, then being culled - was odd and strangely concerning. I learned that a) I really don't want to be responsible for determining someone else's fate - someone I've never met and with whose circumstances I am completely unfamiliar. Not only do I not want to do that. I don't feel I deserve to do so.

b) I'm a heck of a lot less impartial than I purport to be. It was a criminal trial and the jury selection portion involved answering a lot of questions about domestic violence, abuse and divorce, all of which are issues I've been unfortunate enough to experience firsthand.

And c) I don't think anyone else is able to be truly impartial, either. I guess some people are just more impartial than others.

This post brought to you by Captain Obvious and the number 6.