TURF TOWN

4th July SPIKED Blue Hairs"

As for this Summer, Mark Magoon has been here a lot playing with Drew. It would seem as an only child Mark has discovered the rigors of brothers to be "entertaining". He also is quite intrigued with the fact that we have a thousand boys per square mile in our neighborhood. He lives in Northfield, rather rural area, with no neighbors. As you know, we have MANY neighbors, some might say to many. = ) Anyhow, he has been hanging out here, pretending he has brothers, doing "chores" with my boys (he was even added to the chore chart, poor kid, but it was his request!), and acting like a city kid playing with all of the other boys in the neighborhood.

The "city children" of pasture drive have been quite busy this Summer... all at the Eldridge household. Now, when I was a new mom I used to think how cool it would be one day to have the house that all of the kids wanted to be at. Yep, I could be the cool mom that passed out cupcakes and Popsicles while the kids played board games and action figures. Uh-huh.
IT'S NOT POSICLES OR CUPCAKES, BUT IT'S THE COOL MOM DUGOUT PLAYOFF TREATS! INSANE!!


MY MOM ROCKS!
I don't know if I'm the cool mom, but I do know the kids DON'T play board games or action figures, (action figures are kind of a joke in our house because Drew had a "man Barbie" when he was about 4 years old AND I used to casually ask him where his man Barbie was just to hear him say, "mooooooommmmm! It's an action figaw!!!!!!!!" Yes, he was surly even at 4 years old) and I DO keep stocked in Fluffernutter supplies (fluffernutter - you know this is a purely Yankee invention ... we would never DREAM of such a disgusting combination out west! Gross - but the kids love them - grosser) and occasionally hand out juice boxes and Popsicles and sometimes Valium cookies, but that's only when the WHOLE neighborhood of boys is playing INSIDE my house on a 90 degree 100% humidity day ... kidding, just kidding.

Back to the busy children of Pasture Drive. Have you heard of Turf Town? Allow me to introduce you if I have not already. Turf Town is the result of a couple of things. The planets in complete alignment, a very 8 months pregnant and miserable Cortney who didn't have the capacity to say "no", and a husband with a "dream" and the inability to finish the basement he started in the fall. So, Turf Town came into existence. Turn Town is the brain child of Jon. I have NOTHING to do with Turf Town. Turf Town is in the basement ... our absolutely enormous basement that Jon decided to frame in and sheet rock 3/4 of last Fall. This was supposed to be his "winter project" ... finishing the basement. When the final sheet of sheet rock was nailed down and it was time to tape and mud Jon lost his wind. So, there was the basement, framed, sheet rocked, open ceiling with exposed pipes, etc. from the first floor, and a cement floor. Months passed. The winter project was soon forgotten as out basement turns into somewhat of a frozen tundra in the New England winter. Nobody goes down to the basement for fear a search and rescue team and sled dogs might have to recover your frozen remains in the Spring. AND, our Shitzu is a lousy rescue dog. He's lazy.

Come spring thaw (end of February or so), Jon got re motivated to finish his basement. Now, some would argue Jon was "nesting" as I was about to "pop" with his third child. Some would argue he was taking advantage of me to finish the basement "his way". I argue the latter. One evening as I laid in bed praying that the monster that inhabited my body and found himself quite comfortable laying sideways on my sciatic nerve would just GET OUR ALREADY, Jon came into the room to make a "suggestion". "So," he began, "how about a new idea for the basement?" Alright, past that I have to say that all I remember is turf, just like a real baseball field, and home depot rolls of turf. The monster had kicked my sciatic nerve just right after the word basement and all I could see or hear was glaring pain. I think, or Jon claims, I agreed with him.

Jon soon left the house after this conversation ... only to return with the biggest roll of artificial turf I have EVER seen. He was grinning ear to ear telling me how cheap it was and how "cool" his basement would be. Of course it was cheap! It was turf for hell's sake. The kind of turf people put on their front porches in trailer parks across America! I just shook my head and he and the boys disappeared to the basement. The next day I was escorted by my two children to their Dad's newest invention ... "Turf Town". Yes, he had laid all of that damned artificial turf in the basement, with the rolls even going the opposite direction like a "real field" (or so Jon claims). The seams of the turf were carefully taped with double stick to the basement floor as to elude the onlooker that this was not real grass. Uh-huh. "The beauty of this," grinned Jon," is that the boys can beat the hell out of the basement and I don't care. I never finished the walls, so I don't care!" Holy crap. He should have just covered the walls in rubber, because he had just unknowingly created an open bay psych ward for every boy in the neighborhood between the ages of 5 and 12 to be admitted to.

Turf Town, as it is now called, is the pride of pasture drive and my private shame. My house is fairly pristine and I am a bit picky (okay, Jon says bitchy, I say picky) about how things look and where things are placed etc. But, Turf Town is off limits to me. Turf Town served as “spring training” for our boys, Jon, Mike St Onge, and his boys. No one cared about the walls, so it didn’t matter that they had a ball pitcher and real balls being hit and slung around with “pop flys” and “grounders to first”. I was busy with a NEW baby, so I didn’t really care.

Now that the weather is warm and school is out, Turf Town has become "fight club" for the boys on Pasture Drive. The boys (imagine Fleming boys, my boys, Chaz, sometimes Mark Magoon, etc.) all go to Turf Town (aka Fight Club) and I hear clambering, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, bangs, thuds, and karate, "kee-ahs!" I don't question. They stay down there for HOURS. The only reason I knew it was becoming a fight club is because one day Donna asked me if I had a car seat in the basement. Uh-yeah, I had one down there for Caden to "grow into". Unbeknown st to Mark and Drew, as they sat in the back of Donna's van one day talking about Turf Town, she was listening. The conversation went something like this, "yeah, Turf Town is AWESOME ... yeah, sometimes it gets rough ... yeah, like when someone takes that stool and wacks you in the head with it ... or the car seat, yeah, the car seat really hurts when someone uses that as a weapon!" I stand by my original mantra, boys are dumber than the family dog ... and we have a really dumb family dog.

When I heard that Turf Town was fight club, I decided to try and steer the boys creative energies another direction. SOOOO, since Jon didn’t care about the walls, (and I had given up, let’s be candid here) I told the boys that they should take their crayons and markers and write on the walls. I suggested perhaps making a Red Sox or Patriots logo, etc. Uh-huh. Remember that part about boys being dumb? The whole “fight club” gang immediately latched to the idea of writing all over the walls and they were down in Turf Town for a few hours. I was so pleased with myself that I didn’t hear any battles, crying, or mystery bangs. After a few hours I quietly went downstairs to see the masterpiece the little darlings had created … boys are dumb. On the wall was not a logo or anything else productive … oh no, there were sentences, phrases, misspelled and grammatically incorrect at that?! I looked around and they sort of stared wide eyed at me to catch my reaction. I took a silent breath of relief and noted that there were no “naughty words” on the walls. Thank the Maker for small favors there. I walked around Turf Town … silently. Then I read aloud one of the statements on the wall, “Bradyn spoons with his stuffed Pandna … hmmm, I don’t think Bradyn spoons with his stuffed Panda when he stuffed shark is so much easier to spoon with AND if you are going to write on the walls AT LEAST spell the words correct! Who spells Panda, “p-a-n-d-n-a”? Geez!” The boys started grinning and I went to the next statement on the wall … “Mark likes to kiss modles.” What the hell is a modle? Then I realized the spelling error and said, “again, boys, who wrote this? HOW do we spell MODEL? We do not spell it “m-o-d-l-e”!” There were a few, “Yankees suck!” here and there (remember, I had the Fleming boys at my house), and a few more mentions of Bradyn and his spooning activities with his stuffed animals, but other than that, ridiculous.

I told them to clean up the crayons and markers … they were done for the day. The NEXT day I thought of another GENIUS plan to entertain them in turf town that did NOT involve writing on the walls, or beating each other. Jon and I had some boxes in the basement from our move (2 years ago, remember, Jon moves slow). Jon had broken them down, and they were just sitting there. I told the boys, “hey, how about you BUILD something with all of those boxes down there?” HOW could they screw that up? They were VERY excited and spent HOURS down there in “construction”. I went down a few hours later to see they had not created a single anything, but rather Turf Town had now become shanty town with boxes EVERYWHERE and little created hamster like tunnels for the boys to crawl into. Bradyn had the family size bag of potato chips in his “tunnel”. He said he needed “snaaaaaaacks!” Whatever, it was harmless.

Caden aka "The Godfather", and Drew discuss business!
The next day the boys headed straight to turf town, aka fight club aka shanty town. I was feeding Caden his bottle and rocking him in the front room. Mark Magoon came upstairs from Turf Town and asked, “can we use the monopoly money?” What?! I looked at him. He was carrying some sort of wild west cowboys and Indians cap gun in his hand. “What do you need monopoly money for?” Remember, boys are dumb … “well, see, Garret is the manager of the apartment building and Griffin is the store owner since they built most of it with the boxes and my job is to get them to pay their rent every month or I shoot them.” WHAT?!?! I tried to remain calm, “so,” I said, “you’re like the Mafia?” “Uh, yeah, can we use the monopoly money?” I just shook my head and gave up. “Yep, you can use the monopoly money, just remember to put it back when you are done AND always keep 2 ledgers for your money records … one for the police to find and one real one with all the money you laundered.” “What?” “Never mind … oh, and Caden is the Godfather.” Mark smiled, rubbed Caden’s head, and said, “so, you come to me for this favor?” The rest of the afternoon was spent with the boys intermittently coming upstairs and dropping monopoly bills next to Caden’s head and saying, “here’s your cut.”
"So ... You Ask This Favor of Me, Eh?"

This was yesterday. I think they are still playing Mafia today, not sure. Caden hasn’t had any monopoly money thrown at his head yet, so who knows. ELLIE ... AHHH, SO CUTE!
PLEASE send Ellie so I can have a tea party and make little sandwiches and invite all of Bradyn’s stuffed animals. The dog isn’t cooperating... he spills the tea everywhere.