Summer Fun

It's that time of year again! The kids are out of school and you have to find something to do with them to keep your sanity until August rolls around to save you.

Summer sports are a great way to wear them out so they go to bed and you get some adult quiet time. Family trips may also be fun. A few small things to remember:

1. Sunscreen, so your kids don't end up looking like the lobster dinner you could afford before you had kids, unless you go to Red Lobster but they have magically ruined my food every time I ate there with my parents so I quit going. How do you ruin fried catfish????? They found a way.

2. Plenty of clear fluids like Pedialyte and water so they don't get dehydrated and end up like the kid I watched bagged (bagged = hooked up to a saline IV) and carted away at a concert the other day. Seriously. Soda, fruit juice, anything with alcohol in it is a no-no and in some cases I would not give children younger than 12 Gatorade because it has a lot of sugar and salt which causes diarrhea in children and leads to severe dehydration.

3. With a little pre-treating grass stains and blood do wash out of children's clothes.

4. The pedophile in the clown suit should be shot. Watch out, sex offenders like to attract children. Don't think for a second leaving kids unsupervised with Bozo is a good idea. Behind that happy fun makeup could be a child-killing devil. It may not be just clowns. If you don't want your family ending up as a movie of the week or an episode of Law and Order watch your kids at all times or make sure they are being supervised by someone trustworthy with children. Kids only die once...

5. Scrapes heal with a little cleaning, a band-aid, and a kiss. Mental scars may take a lifetime to heal.

6. Sometimes windows do get broken by baseballs.

7. Homeowners insurance is great.

8. Medical insurance is great too cuz sometimes arms, like windows, get broken.

9. Kids + fireworks = disaster waiting to happen. Please, please, please supervise kids with small explosives because stem cell research has not gotten to a place where where we can regrow an eyeball or a finger.

10. Swimming is dangerous. It takes less than five minutes for a child's lungs to fill with water. You went in the house to take a whiz, no one's watching, come back out and little Jimmy is at the bottom of the pool but you don't see him standing by the barbecue grill and little Jimmy has gone to meet Jesus. Little Jimmy could have survived if someone else had been watching the pool while you took a whiz. Trust me, you will see it on the news several times this summer. "I just turned away for a minute and then my baby was gone..." Don't let that be you and don't trust the teenager at the public pool because they are more interested in the bikini-clad teens than your little swimmer.

Now that I have ruined any hope of a peaceful summer with paranoia enjoy!