Single Mom Slice Of Life: Leaping Lizards! My Very Own Reptile Dysfunction.. : Good Enough Mother

Single Mom Slice Of Life:
Leaping Lizards! My Very Own Reptile Dysfunction..

I could say that for the last two months, my life without the boys has been perfection. I mean, think about it, for 300 days of the year, I am the single parent to two teenage boys. Surely, without them, my life as just a single person, instead of a single parent, would be… restful. Yeah. Not so much. Let me explain two days of my life as a single parent person.

I warn you, don’t expect an episode of Sex and the City. So every year, there is this giant man-eating lizard that camps out on my screen door. (Told ya.) For about two weeks straight, it just sits there, guarding the entrance to my home, laughing at the fact that I’m forced to enter and exit my home through the garage, though it is possible it’s the neighbors that are laughing at me.

I should have known something was up when the lizard didn’t show up this year. Instead, as I was leaving the front bathroom a few nights back, I looked down and found a lizard on the floor at my feet. It was huge; easily this thing was the size of a quarter. It scurried, I jumped, and I might have screamed. I briefly considered jumping on the counter, but the fact that I’m too short to do so ruined what would have been a masterful escape plan.

So, I ran. I ran fast, or as fast as I could for the two feet down the hallway before I tripped over the dog who mistook my fleeing for my life for playtime, and fell flat on my face in the living room. I took a deep breath, got up, brushed myself off, and shoved a towel under the crack of the bathroom door. I then left for the store after realizing that I had just barricaded the last roll of toilet paper into what will now and forever be known as the forbidden bathroom.

I returned home to find the towel on the opposite end of the hallway. Thanks to one very amorous dog, we will now and forever consider that towel Max’s forbidden towel. Oh, yeah. I can’t make this stuff up.

So needless to say, the lizard invasion of my home had continued, and this year the lizards were ahead by one. They had after all, made it past the front door into the house itself. I let it go. Like the mature, responsible 39-year-old that I am – I slept on the couch. I could lie and say I just fell asleep there, but in reality, the couch is further away from the bathroom and hallway than my bed is.

Fast forward two nights. I was in my own bathroom, removing my contact lenses, minding my own business, completely resigned to sharing my home with the quarter-sized lizard overlord that had successfully overtaken my home. Or rather, I thought I was resigned to it, until I looked down, and found the very same fire-breathing lizard crawling up my leg.

I won’t lie. There was some crying. I kicked… both legs… even though the lizard was only on one of them. I screamed. I would have cursed, but I was too busy crying and screaming. Where were my dogs you ask? Well, while one was busy licking himself, another was scooting on her butt in circles, while still the third cried because he was on his back, pawing at a pillow and crying because he couldn’t get it off of him. And you thought I was sad? Please. Needless to say, yet another night was spent on the couch.

Have you ever had an ant crawl on your arm, then for the rest of the day, swear you still feel ants everywhere? Imagine that with a lizard. My laptop cord, the dog’s tail, a thread on the edge of my dress… I have freaked out and jumped more times than I’m prepared to admit. I’m not entirely certain I shouldn’t have a keeper.

So you see, it’s not always the kids that make my life as a single mom hectic, chaotic, or neurotic. Sometimes the crazy that is my life, has nothing at all to do with the boys. They just help act as witnesses to the insanity.

What summertime critters get you going? Am I the only one sleeping on the couch or has some little creature got you jumping at dress string, too?