What Happens When You're Making Other Plans

Yesterday was the start of soccer season. Our plan for the day was to walk over to the park with all three boys, hang out for all of their games, and then head home for the afternoon. That part of the plan actually went off more or less as planned, with the caveat that we probably didn't take nearly enough water or shade-producing devices to make five hours in the sun and heat bearable. And in a classic spasm of Volunteer Tourette's, I volunteered to be team mom for Son #3's team, which means that I will shortly get to start coordinating snack schedules, determining whether or not the team wants to buy a banner to display at games (I personally hate them, as they are expensive and become trash at the end of the season), etc. I'm beginning to wonder if I need an intervention.

Realizing that we had an afternoon relatively free, we invited a friend and her two children to come and hang out. (Bonus: I have had five bags of clothes for her son sitting in the hall for weeks. She was grateful to get them and I was thrilled to have another 29.4 pounds of stuff out of the house!) We sent the kids outside to play in the sprinkler and settled down at the dining room table to chat. Suddenly the kids ran in to tell us that there was a baby squirrel in the yard. We all headed out, I personally thinking that they must be confused.

Well, they weren't. Behind the swing set, on the grass, was a tiny squirrel. He seemed to be moving rather slowly for a squirrel, and looked a bit unwell to me. (My first thought, after our morning out at the park, was dehydration.) I'm a giant softy for small furry critters, and I'd like to say that I immediately sprang into swift, purposeful action. I believe I actually blurted out something along the lines of, "Holy shit! I hope this thing doesn't die on my watch." I routinely kill houseplants, and the only reason our goldfish survives my haphazard tank-cleaning schedule is because it is a rat with fins. I knew nursing a sick baby squirrel would be way beyond my pay grade. However, even if I had been able to stomach the idea of doing nothing, that wasn't an option with four kids looking on.

He did not look like a happy camper.

First I made a clumsy attempt to get him into a shoebox, which simply made him retreat under the steps to the playhouse. I went back into the house, got some leather work gloves, and fished him out. We ultimately housed him in a cat carrier (after Son #2 and my husband brought out for my inspection any number of unsuitable homes). The kids rubbernecked for a while, then moved on. After all, at least for my kids, watching mom freak out and obsess over something is a more-or-less everyday occurrence.

Offering him some water soon after capture. Thick oversized gloves + squirrel = comedy of errors.

I have to digress a moment here to talk about the internet. My husband has always been an early adopter of technology, and way back in the '90s I used to give him all kinds of crap about how the internet was simply a morass of mind-bogglingly useless information. I have been eating crow on this subject since about 2001. In this particular instance, the internet proved staggeringly useful. My husband posted a picture of the squirrel on Facebook immediately, soliciting suggestions of what to do from his friends. Within minutes they were helping him contact an experienced squirrel rescuer. I Googled information on what to do, and found a recipe for a simple rehydration formula (water with a little salt and sugar), which our furry little friend guzzled from an oral syringe when I offered it to him. We found information on squirrel development, which led us to guess that he was probably weaned or close to it, based on the fact that he had a full coat of fur and open eyes.

He wasn't wild about being picked up with gloves, but he didn't mind the grub.

We followed the advice of the web sites and tried to locate the nest he might have fallen from, but mysteriously, the part of our yard where he appeared is not near any large trees. After I posted a picture on Facebook, another friend suggested that he may have been from a nest disturbed by tree trimming, which would explain the sticky clumps of what I guessed was tree sap in his fur, though that theory also didn't point us to any likely spots since I don't think any of the neighbors have had trees trimmed recently. At any rate, we didn't have any luck finding his mom. Luckily, the squirrel rescuer said she could come get him on Sunday morning, so we only had to keep him going overnight.

I was relatively laid back (for me) about caring for him. Which meant that I only:

• Ran to the pet store and bought $9 worth of puppy formula, which the squirrel refused to drink. (From the smell of it, I didn't blame him.)
• Hovered over the cat carrier all evening, shooing away a very curious Toothless, who could sense that there was something interesting of a rodent nature inside and insisted on sniffing the carrier from all angles.
• Rummaged in the garage for something softer than the rags I had initially put in the carrier with him, eventually coming up with a couple of old hooded baby towels.
• Dosed him regularly with the rehydration formula (which he did like) and fed him a strawberry, one half at a time. (If the squirrel rescuer hadn't cautioned us not to overfeed him, I probably would have been offering him something every fifteen minutes.)
• Put the carrier in our bathroom overnight, on top of a heating pad and under a towel for warmth, on the theory that having our guest safely away from the cats behind a closed door was the best plan, even if it meant I couldn't check his breathing every half an hour all night long.
• Got up once before dawn to give him another dose of fluids.

This morning our guest looked a bit perkier than he had before. He took some more fluids, gnawed a bit more strawberry, but mostly seemed interested in burrowing into the baby towel and going to sleep. We had the kids say goodbye to him before my husband took them to religious school, and I stayed home to await the squirrel rescuer. She showed up slightly before her predicted arrival time, and by 10 a.m. our house was once again squirrel-free.

Now that it's all over (from our end, anyway; the squirrel rescuer has promised to keep us posted on the squirrel's progress), I have to wonder what my kids' takeaway will be from all of this. For one thing, I'm sure that while they probably won't remember the details of their morning of soccer, they will probably remember "the day we found a baby squirrel in the yard" for a long time. I hope that they will learn from our example, and try to help sensibly when they see a problem that needs fixing (including taking smart precautions and calling in expert help when needed). Mostly, though, I'm sure that this will just confirm for them that getting things done and panicking are not necessarily mutually exclusive options. After all, their mom's a pro at it.

Sadly, the kids may have to look elsewhere for cool, calm, and collected role models.

First World Problems

Back in the days when I used to work full-time (pre-kids, roughly the Jurassic Period), we had a client who was among my favorites. An elderly gentleman, he volunteered for an organization that published one annual journal, and each year he delivered the manuscript to our offices. We were located on the second floor, up a rather daunting staircase, and it was clear that the ascent took some doing for him. He and I would exchange polite greetings, and when I asked him how he was, he would invariably drawl, in posh accents, "Oh, I routinely complain."

Of course, as I think back on it now, I don't remember him actually complaining, just making the same self-deprecating joke each time I saw him. Most of us do routinely complain; I've done plenty myself this week as our family tries to get back into the school routine. But it did hit me (right around the time I was filling out the third emergency card on the first day of school and feeling pretty sorry for myself because poor mom had more homework than any of the kids did that day), that literally every single problem I have right now is a first world problem. So lest I think a pity party for myself is appropriate, here is a debunking of a few of my so-called problems, in no particular order:

My house is too full of stuff! Okay, seriously. Yes, we have too much stuff, exacerbated by my inability to get things out of the house promptly when they have outlived their usefulness. But my family has everything they need and quite a bit of what they want. We have clothes to wear, food to eat, beds to sleep in, and plenty of forms of entertainment (books, toys, TV, video games, etc.). Even if my kids' sock drawers seem to consist of 80% mismatched socks and 20% dirt-colored socks that were formerly white, they have both socks and drawers to put them in. Enough said.

The boys' soccer schedules are nuts! Yes, I am remembering two soccer practices into the season how much I hate the narrow parking lot at the park and the crazy drivers (my fellow soccer parents) who populate it. Yes, I am remembering how much I hate the stuff management involved in dealing with cleats, shin guards, and water bottles, and how much I loathe the scent of sweat that descends on the house after a Saturday of soccer games. But we're lucky our kids get to participate in the local AYSO program, which is actually at a park close enough to walk to. So when the weather cools down from sauna temperatures I am going to explain to the boys that the irony of driving them to the park to get exercise is not the good kind of irony, and we'll spare the last shreds of my sanity the trip through the parking lot.

I hate homework more than the kids do! I have to pay Son #1 a dollar to give me project assignment sheets on the day he gets them so that he doesn't give me an aneurysm by waiting to tell me about them the night before they are due. Son #2 came home with a boatload of homework and a project on the first day of school. And Son #3 hasn't quite realized that homework is now a feature of his life, rather than a novelty his teacher tossed in his folder, so he hasn't quite grasped that he can't watch TV/play on the computer/go for a playdate before homework is done every day. But the kids go to good schools, and I have both time and (barely) sufficient brain power to make sure they are getting their work done correctly and on time. If my hair turns white in the process, well, it'll be a real conversation piece.

We have too many family commitments! Okay, I don't complain about this too much, because whenever I do, some friend or another of mine whose extended family lives in another time zone threatens to beat me about the head and shoulders with a sack full of bricks. Yes, our family holidays could do with a social secretary to manage our engagements, and I probably still couldn't draw my husband's cast-of-thousands family tree accurately if you put a gun to my head. However, there's nothing quite like having the grandparents snatch your children away from you and insist you go have a night out to make you appreciate the true pricelessness of FREE BABYSITTING!

I could go on, but you get the point. Life isn't perfect, but it's worth reminding myself that the good vastly outweighs the bad. And the as far as the bad goes...well, I wouldn't be truly happy if I didn't have something to complain about, right?