Sex-Ed, Blue Balls, and Spit (not what you think)

Nothing ever goes perfectly.

We took the girls to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) today.  It’s a fantastic museum, but I didn’t take the time to read up on the exhibits before we arrived, and so was caught off guard by a collection of actual preserved human fetuses depicting the stages of development from conception to birth.  Kallan especially was fascinated, not just with the process of human development, but with the sadness that had come with all these babies not getting to turn into people.

So that was a little deeper than I had planned to have to delve at the children’s museum.

And there was that great moment when, standing in a large crowd of museum-goers, Kallan gestured to the two life-sized pictures of a naked man and a naked woman, and loudly asked, “When are you going to get to the part when you tell me how all of this goes together to make a baby?”

I guess a little bit later than I should have.

But the museum was great . . . there was an excellent chemistry room in which Maj and Kallan could see that they were going to get to do all sorts of cool experiments with only minimal adult supervision.   As we entered the chemistry lab, they made you put on plastic goggles.  I tried a couple of different pairs, but I must have a weirdly shaped skull or something, because they all seemed to be fitting tightly across my face.  Maj and Kallan were dancing with impatience, so I finally just grabbed a random green pair and figured, “How bad could it be?”

As I watched Maj and Kallan both excitedly running their experiments and figuring out what had happened and why, I couldn’t help miss home-schooling a little.  Kallan’s favorite was the demonstration of how fireworks burn with different colored flames.  She was able to dip a wire wand into a multitude of toxic chemicals and then light each chemical afire over a Bunsen burner to see the colored flames dance.  Very cool.  Science was always my favorite class to teach them at home, because the girls would get so excited about the experiments.

So I was happily standing in the background, tossing in a few words of advice here, a helpful definition or concept there.  And then Kallan slammed me back to earth.  After I had finished explaining the difference between “endothermic” and “exothermic” to her, she rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t ruin it by getting all home-schooly, Mom.”

We were in the chemistry lab for about 45 minutes, and my head had adjusted to the ill-fitting goggles so that I had forgotten about them.  How bad could it be, right?  Really Bad. When I took off the goggles, I found I had a deep red groove cutting straight across my forehead just below my hairline.  Apparently I have skin that holds a dent, because it took well over an hour for me to look normal again.  During that hour, I looked as though I had recently had some sort of experimental brain surgery done.

I tried to pull my hair into messy bangs over my face to hide the deformity, but the girls kept sweeping my hair back to loudly check on my “brain scar.”

I can’t go anywhere and just be a normal person.

Ahhhh . . . normal.  Maj has a love-hate relationship with children’s museums.  She loves the museums, but hates the fact that she has to touch stuff that other germ-ridden people have touched.  Sometimes she just can’t overcome her aversion to the closeness of other people and their messiness.  There was a whole room filled with vacuum hoses and air tunnels in which you could fashion machines that shot out or sucked up little blue rubber balls.  Maj drew the line there, and refused to enter the ball room, spending her time watching a demonstration of the normal bell-curve (and isn’t that ironic?) while her sister cavorted with the other screaming, tube-assembling, vacuum-sucking, ball-hurling children.

I can handle Maj’s germ issues on things like that.  The room of shrieking children was a little off-putting to me as well.  And I don’t really mind that she carries her hand sanitizer around with her, or that she pulls her sleeves over her hands to open doors, or that she ducks away with horrified eyes from a neighboring child who suddenly sneezes or coughs.  I have even grown accustomed to her weird sideways hugs and kisses, designed to minimize germ exchange.

But lunch today got on my nerves.  We ate in the museum cafeteria; Mark and Kallan split one sandwich/salad combo and Maj and I split another.  I gave Maj the larger of the two sandwich halves on our plate, but Maj was upset that her half of the sandwich didn’t maintain its sandwich-y integrity as well as my half had.  I offered to trade with her, but that offer was met with horror because I had already touched my half of the sandwich with my hands.  Okaaaaaay.  There was a small salad and only one plate, so I said, as I carefully poked a cherry tomato with my fork, “I will only touch the items I am eating, but we’ll share the salad without splitting it into two halves, ok?”  Not ok at all, as it turns out.  She looked at me incredulously as I chewed my tomato and then announced to the 6 tables around us, “Well, now I can’t eat the salad since you put your spit all over it!”

Which pissed me off.  So then I took my (now-used) fork and rummaged through the salad looking for another tomato.  Which set off another wail from Maj about how I had spit in her food and slobbered all over everything.

I should have just packed her a sandwich before we left the house.

Mark was doing what he generally does in these situations: pretending (despite the fact that he is sitting across the table from us) that he does not know us.  Later, he pointed out that I had been a little immature.

He knows I love it when he points these things out.

Kallan is off on her sleepover tonight, about which I am feeling a little bit weird because I don’t generally allow the girls to go on sleepovers when I have never been to the house before.  But Kallan was so excited to have been included in the birthday girl’s plans and so excited about making new friends that I felt stupid about my reluctance.  I hugged her extra hard, which made her squirm with embarrassment and then race off giggling into the house as her friend opened the door.  I had all sorts of questions planned for the hostess, but then I was so caught off guard by her physical appearance (very tight clothes, very high heels, and a tight sweater pushing up what had to be very fake boobs) that I was left sort of speechless.

Hopefully, everything goes well.  I would hate to have to explain to anyone that the reason I didn’t know about the vicious dog, R-rated movies, or planned gunplay was that I was mesmerized by tight clothing and big breasts.  Sigh.