We've had temps above 60 for several days recently. I love it. I really do. I love to sit outside and soak up the sun like the best sun worshippers out there. I love the thought that in another few weeks, that temperature will soar even higher and it will be beach time. I love planting flowers and gardening...and love it even more when the kids find the first ripe tomato of our garden and plant their tiny baby teeth into it.
I'm a summer person. Fall's my favorite...but summer is definitely a close second.
Besides the agony of putting on a bathing suit...and taking it off, and putting on a different one...and taking it off...and then finally settling on some sort of bag with a drawstring or a terry cloth smock that's cutely named a "beach cover up," I also loathe neighborhood ruckus.
By ruckus, I mean other people's kids. I appreciate the desire for children to play outside. I do. My aforementioned children love to run themselves ragged in the dog days of summer, from the first peek of daybreak to the last breath of light. But, I just don't appreciate that some parents let this "ragged running" take place unsupervised.
I had a conversation with both my parents, in the past few days, about watching the kids. We are contemplating the purchase of a new home that happens to have a creek flowing through the backyard. It's gorgeous, and the babbling of the water over the rocks creates a feeling of serenity and peace. Peace, however, may not be the right word to describe the feeling I get when I think of the kids near that creek. The feeling is anxiety, apprehension. My parents share that feeling.
However, there's this thing I do...it's called "supervising." I do it a lot. Not just from the crack of dawn till that last breath of light. Nope. I'm the mom that gets up at 3 a.m. to make sure everyone is still breathing, as they are passed out in a hard, drooly sleep, with various action figures, stuffed animals, or pacifiers nestled in next to them. I love my kids. I suppose most parents do.
I even suppose that my neighbors love their kids, too. It's just a funny way of showing it. For example, this evening, what prompts me to type this post in the first place, is the fact that my neighbors' six-year old girl is playing ball in the street with two teenage boys. I have never before seen these boys. I also don't know that I'd let my daughter play with them. Maybe they're cousins. Maybe uncles. I don't know. But, regardless, they are all in the street...the same place as the not-so-speed-limit obedient cars. They have also, eight times now, not that I'm counting, thrown their ball into my front yard. My three beastly dogs are finding themselves quite distraught over this. They can't handle it. I am growling at them to cease their barking; they simply think they're alerting me that someone has come into our yard. They're doing what they should, I'm the one supremely annoyed.
So the question is, do I say something to the parents, or do I assume that if they were actually conscientious people who caredfor their child's well being, they wouldn't allow her out there in the first place?
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