Drain Monsters

It's a little early for Halloween books, I think...although we're already thinking hard about Halloween costumes over here, so perhaps not. Either way Phoebe grabbed a Halloween book off the shelf at the library the other day so...it's in our rotation. I think there's a Christmas book in there, too. 

She has no respect for seasons. 

Every time we go to the pool she says something about how she's "so glad it's May." It's not May (it's August), but she spent about October through April begging to go to the pool and we kept telling her that we could go "in May." So now every day that we go to the pool...is May. 

Which is different from "may can," which is her super polite way of saying "can I?" because one day at dinner I was making her correct all her "tan I have..." with "can I have" and then made a joke about how we'd finally get her to say "can" and then we'd have to break it to her that she should be saying may. 

She heard that and has started saying "may can I have..."

Anyway, to sum up, Phoebe has no respect for seasons, thinks "pool season" is synonymous with "May," and...she's terrified of drains.

This might be Rachel's fault. 

Our street doesn't have very many drains. There's one right at the bottom of the cul-de-sac (which is right in front of our house) and then there isn't another drain until the bottom of the hill(s) on either side of our road. Essentially, all the drains are at the bottoms of the hills in our neighbourhood.

On the one hand, this seems logical. 

Gravity is busy pulling water to the center of the earth, so water perpetually collects in the lowest space it can find. The bottom of a hill makes sense...

...until there's so much water that the drains can't handle it and the drains overflow and send a waterfall of water, you know, into our basement. That part is less cool and makes me think that on the other hand they could have put a few more drains along the way, to provide water more pathways to escape the pavement. 

Then we wouldn't have all the storm water from our entire street rushing toward our house at the exact same time. 

Just a thought. 

Strangely, Phoebe seems unbothered by the drain in front of our house. She'll play without fear in our cul-de-sac all day long. Our drain is fine. 

But the drains down the street?

No, thank you. 

When we go for walks she likes to be flanked by big people so she can hold hands on both sides and she prefers to walk in the exact middle of street if she can manage it because when the drains come they are symmetrically placed—so both sides of the street are off limits. 

(And I'm always like, "I'd like for us to walk on the side of the road because I'm a little more concerned about cars than drain monsters." And then she's like, "Well, I'm more toncerned about drain monsters than I am about tars." So, you see, we hit an impasse.)

She frets about those drains from the minute we leave our front door, worries about walking too close to the gutter, squeezes our hands, begs us to please not go past the drains. 

This whinging goes on for a full quarter of a mile...because that's about how far apart the drains are. 

But, of course, we have to eventually walk past the drains because...it's impossible to leave our neighbourhood without passing the drains (there are no sidewalks within our neighbourhood, by the way, so we have to walk on the road in front of the drain)...so we drag her past them and then she's free (because outside of our neighbourhood there are sidewalks that go over the drains). 

Anyway, one day several months ago (before May proper) when we—me, Miriam, Rachel, and Phoebe—were out for a walk, Rachel started telling Phoebe about...The Drain Monster.

Phoebe's no dummy—she's the sixth kid...she's skeptical.

She didn't believe a word Rachel was saying.

Well, maybe she believed a few words, but mostly she could tell Rachel was pulling her leg. 

Or was she...?

I told Rachel to knock it off and she was like, "Okay, fine."

But then...just as we were walking past the drain...Rachel unleashed a sound from her throat that could only be described as...other-worldly. 

It was a horrifying sound. 

Even Rachel was aghast at her vocal...uhhh...talents.

Phoebe was downright terrified. 

Any skepticism she held about the existence of drain monsters vanished in an instant. 

We have spent the past several months trying to convince her that Rachel made the whole thing up, but...Phoebe's belief in this drain monster will not be swayed...and she has been cultivating an entire mythology about drain monsters where none existed before.

Facts about drain monsters just pop into her head. She knows so much about them.

She even knows more about them than Rachel does...and Rachel is the one who planted this seed in her mind in the first place.

Anyway, you should just know that I have been working to undo the drain monster myth for a good six months now. Rachel has told us it's her little legacy that she's leaving behind (thanks, Rachel—always helping our household run smoothly). 

So...Phoebe pulled out a library book for me to read yesterday—The Ghosts Went Floating by Kim Norman. It's a cute little monster-themed poem to the tune of The Ants Went Marching. So I'm singing along as we turn the pages. We encounter ghosts, skeletons, vampires, witches—all of this is fine. 

Then we get to this page with ghouls who go drooling eight by eight...erupting from the sewer grate...

And Phoebe gasped, "I told you Drain Monsters were real!!!!"

...as if I had been lying to her this whole time.

Fortunately, she happens to think these drain monsters are rather cute (so thank you, Jay Fleck, for that—these cuties may be just the thing to cure her fear of drain monsters). 

She's been pretty adamant about being a drain monster for Halloween the past couple of days, so if y'all have any ideas on how to turn her into a pink chubby/hairy monster...let me know. 

I'm thinking she for sure needs a sewer plate hat to wear...

*****

Oh, also, Miriam and I took Phoebe on a walk this evening. It's been storming after dinner pretty much every day, so we didn't go directly after dinner and instead went right before bedtime. The other kids were playing outside with their friends, but Phoebe tripped and was sad and wanted to come on the walk with us...so she did. 

I carried her all the way up the hill—the most delightful little weighted vest in the whole world—and then I made her start walking because her knee was feeling better. 

We turned the corner, which allowed us to nearly another third of a mile before encountering a drain (phew) when I had to pick her up again so she could get past it. And then we walked around the block. 

When we came to the pink house with the pool, Phoebe said, "Why don't these neighbours ever use their pool?!"

"It's true that we've never seen them use it," I said. "But it's so nice and clean, which leads me to believe they must use it."

"It is nice and clean," Phoebe agreed. "And...there's no monsters!"

"Yet another perk!" I agreed. 

"There's no monsters in that pool and there's no sharks either."

"Probably not," I said. 

"Rachel told me that pools have sharks sometimes."

That Rachel—always telling stories, stirring up trouble.

"But you know what? Rachel was wrong! Pools don't have sharks because sharks only live in the ocean. So there!" Phoebe finished and stuck her tongue out at Miriam. 

"Who do you think I am?" Miriam asked. 

"Uhhh...you're Miriam."

"Then why'd you stick your tongue out at me?"

"Uhhh...betuz."

Because in Phoebe's mind Miriam is close enough to Rachel that...it counts...somehow.

It took me several months this summer to get Phoebe to swim near the pool skimmers...because they look too much like drains (and were therefore probably inhabited by monsters). She would rather drown than approach the wall by a skimmer box, which was a real problem for her after jumping off the diving board because the closest wall to swim to from the diving board...has a skimmer box. She's just about moved beyond that particular fear, however. Her swimming has progressed so much this summer May!