Look Who's Talking

The Look Who's Talking movies may be symptomatic of our collective mental health issues, but I do sometimes look at animals or my own small children (and really, how different are animals and small children?) and imagine what is running through their heads. I don't usually use celebrity voices in my mind, though, as I'm low budget all the way.

I first noticed this propensity in myself when I lived alone. I had ample time to observe my insane ex-cat Clio and project mental dialogue onto her, like so:

Clio (walking from the living room to the kitchen): I think it's time for a snack, or maybe I could find a nice plastic bag to chew on [one of this cat's more annoying features was a plastic fixation].
Clio (walking immediately back into the living room, having already forgotten about the quest for food): HOLY SHIT, there's a living room here! And a woman! And a TV and a couch and a plant and oh my god oh my god ACK!

Whereupon, the deranged animal would leap laterally about three feet, all fur extended outward cartoon-like, and streak from the room, only to return moments later for a repeat performance.

My now-husband and I had a boss at the Company of Suck that we likened to Clio. Every day was new to this man. He'd walk into a meeting and have that same baffled look on his face, like "where did all these people come from? what am I doing here? where did this coffee in my hand come from?" I took to communicating with him exclusively in emails, so I could refer back to our discussions in writing instead of reinventing the conversational wheel every single day.

All of this leads me to my actual point, which has to do with my husband (isn't it always such a pleasant surprise to find that I do have a point?). He is very energetic and works hard both at his job and at home, for which I am very grateful. However - he is prone to unrecoverable interruptions while working, which results in him leaving little tableaus of unfinished crap all over the house, which in turn prompts me to imagine, Look Who's Talking-style, what went through his head to lead to whatever pile is currently in front of me.

For example - this morning, I walked into the downstairs bathroom, and directly into the stepladder. Each step of the ladder contained its own pile of detritus, arranged in variously precarious positions. On one step, a hammer, dangling just on the edge of balance, waiting for a bare foot to trigger its fall and then pause just in its path. Two steps up, two nearly-full and partially-open (for maximum scattering, presumably) plastic boxes, one of screws and one of nails. Scattered among and between these primary perils, random papers with still more random scrawling in my husband's handwriting. The phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" just popped into my head - at the rate I'm rambling, that may be literally true, but I'm too lazy and tired just now to take a picture, sorry.

So, here is the mental conversation I imagine my husband having that might have led to him leaving such a cluster of hazards in such a high-traffic area.

Husband (wielding a hammer, inspecting the creeping progress of the shower enclosure): This is really coming along! I think we're almost ready for the rest of the plumbing! Just think, a sink in the bathroom. Such decadence. I hope my family appreciates all this (looks out the window)...ooo, look, there's a squirrel in the yard. Shoot, that rotting pumpkin is out there (wanders toward the back door to confirm). Hope that squirrel doesn't eat it. Or a rat, I wonder if there really is a rat. I bet it was just a mouse. But the dog killed a mouse, maybe they're gone now. Oh, I bet the dog is hungry, better feed him (changes course, opens the bag of dog food. Catches sight of the thermometer in the mud room). Wow, 50 degrees in here, wonder what it is in the house? (Goes back inside, walks toward front room to check thermostat, sees the dishes on the kitchen island). I think I'll give my mother-in-law a break and do the dishes! (Opens dishwasher, puts away 3 forks and a cup). Mmm, I'm getting thirsty, wonder what we have to drink. (Opens fridge, sees that there's less than a full glass left of soda, hears the Amazing Race theme song). "Honey, pause it, I'll be right there!" (Seats self in ass print on couch, settles in for the long haul).

And so, I imagine, it followed logically that all of the tools of the bathroom work were left out like booby traps, the dog remained unfed, and the bulk of the dishes remained in the dishwasher. This is why it's so important to look at intentions, as well as actual results (god knows it necessary for anyone living with me to evaluate my contributions based at least as much on my intentions as on my actual accomplishments). I think it's actually charitable of me to attribute this monologue to my husband, rather than assuming that he's trying to kill the rest of us off with his negligence. See? I'm a nice wife.

We're so proud

My five year old (seen here when he was 3) was delightful all weekend. Really, just a joy. We had so much fun at ZooBoo, and after a great dinner, the boy voluntarily cleaned up a mess he didn't even make. So I spent extra time with him before bed, reading and talking and just enjoying his company. Just before I was ready to tuck him in, he went to the kitchen for a drink and inexplicably stopped into the downstairs bathroom-in-permanent-progress, which he usually avoids. I heard a loud thump and then a scream, and I rushed into the bathroom to find him sobbing on the floor, clutching his knees, pants around his ankles. It's so hard to comfort someone while weeping with laughter, but I did my best. I did suggest, with as straight a face as possible, that in future he pull the pants up before walking away from the toilet, and I praised him for scaring whatever vermin have been living in the basement entirely off the premises with his crash.

No, you can't have him. He's all ours.

Exhibit Y in the case against my mother's sanity

This just in from my mother, apropos of, well, nothing:

"You know the inane toilet paper pack in the downstairs bathroom?"

Oh dear, she just retrieved the toilet paper pack in question to emphasize her point, which she has just summarized as "I have never seen anything stupider on a package." It has a "roll size guide" that shows, graphically, that a single roll = 1 roll, a double roll = 2 rolls, and a triple roll = 3 rolls. Okay, I'll grant you, it's not Tolstoy, but I'm not sure I'd waste a whole lot of brain power being offended by its simplicity. I'm sure the poor cubicle dwellers at Charmin are just trying to get through each day so they can go home and numb the pain of their jobs with alcohol. Not that I'm projecting based on my own corporate experience.

And before I post again, I must get the children cleanish and dressed in costume, as we are headed for the ZooBoo today. Should be fabulous, as are all adventures in the company of six only-semi-housebroken children.

You'll put someone's eye out

I actually just said those words - "you'll put someone's eye out" - in all seriousness and with no forethought. I am officially a mother.

I was coming down the stairs with both babies, having blissfully slept in until 8 (it's the new 9, I love daylight savings), and I caught sight of my little angels just as angel #2 drew a bead on angel #4 with his plastic bow and arrow and let fly. He missed, thank goodness, but it was dangerous enough to inspire the mommyphrase above.

I stripped the oldest two boys of obvious weapons, so they moved on to rolling golf balls at each other from across the room. Sounds safe and within the rules (no throwing in the house), but #2 is rolling the ball so fast it is actually rolling UP #3 when it gets to him. I just had to tell #2, "this is not skee-ball." At least that's not one of those inane-to-children phrases like "you'll put someone's eye out."

ETA: I loathe Blogger. I've been trying to post this forever (well, like 10 minutes, but it's just a click, so technically I think 10 minutes counts as forever). Mercifully, Blogger did not eat my post - it saved it so I can view it, it just refuses to let me share it with the world. Okay, that's off my chest - back to pushing "publish post" a few hundred more times.

What the hell is wrong with people, part 2

Can you believe I went so long without a follow-up to my first installment of what the hell is wrong with people? I'm so restrained. Or, too lazy to write down all of the many times every day that someone pisses me off.

Today, I went to the mall, in a futile attempt to find something non-hideous and dramatically slimming to wear to my husband's high school reunion next week. I almost never go to the mall, and when I do I don't go on the weekend, and when I do go on the weekend, I avoid grand store openings as a rule, but today I forgot all that and found myself smack dab in the middle of the worst suburban Baltimore has to offer in terms of humanity, courtesy of the grand opening of Boscovs.

After several hours of looking at my own reflection in a variety of clothes for heavy middle-aged women and discovering over and over that the reflection in no way resembles my self-image, hours spent biting my tongue at the 4,039 inquiries about my twins (yes, they are twins, no, they are not identical, no, they are not both boys, no, my son does not have hair, how kind of you to notice), hours spent not hurting any of the people who walked directly into me or my stroller and then glared at us for taking up space, hours spent wondering whether divorce might not, in the long run, be easier and less expensive and less psychically scarring than searching for a goddamn outfit for my husband's reunion - after those hours, and still without an outfit, we finally made it back out to the car.

I fed my daughter in the front seat while Tivoli changed my son. As Tiv took my son from the back seat of the van to give him to me for his feeding, the oh-so-helpful complete fucking moron human camel-back-breaking straw pulled back into the space she had been pulling out of to roll down her window and yell at Tivoli for not covering the baby's head. Tiv was a bit taken aback and tried to laugh it off, so the idiot yelled, "NO, REALLY, you need to cover that baby's head."

First of all, it was nearly 60 out today, and the boy was wearing adequate clothing and a blanket. Secondly, had my friend not been detained on her way from the back seat to the front seat, his total time of exposure to the elements would have been less than 10 seconds. Thirdly, and I think this may be the critical point here, it's none of that woman's fucking business. I am all in favor of concerned citizens looking out for children, but this was just, well. Really fucking annoying.

And my misanthropy continues unabated, now joined by self-loathing as I face the impossibility of wearing clothes made for humans four months after bearing twins.

No new washer, but otherwise this is a great day

Tivoli's visits always inspire me to new heights of sloth. She is both competent and biddable, so I reduce myself to doing virtually nothing except directing (I am one hell of a director). Just this morning, when the appliance delivery people came and discovered that our *%&#ing new washer doesn't fit through our basement door, I waved my hand and Tivoli disassembled the doorframe and stair rail so they can attempt redelivery tomorrow. I am excellent at the hand wave. I think I was meant to be royal and was merely misdelivered myself.

Tivoli also inspires me to hysteria. When I am with her, I laugh so hard that I very nearly pee myself, but then I sit down to blog the funniness and somehow it's not as funny written out. For example - in the car, I was telling her about the new dining room table, and she said she thought I could have built one myself. I said, "thank you, I'm glad someone believed in me - after all, what's a table but a slab of wood and 2 legs." She very kindly pointed out that a table really needs a minimum of four legs, and I think that's when she began to rethink her confidence in my carpentry abilities. Whatever, I was going to get a book about designing tables anyway, not that it matters now that I already bought a new one. The point is, both of us were doubled over with laughter at this conversation, but the humor doesn't really translate.

I just got an automated phone call to confirm that I received my new phone directory. Really, this is necessary? Okay. Off to enjoy my fabulous day. Nice weather, kids in school, chicken already in the oven for chicken salad for lunch (Cole taught me the best chicken salad ever, and I make it incessantly), and girls' night out tonight. Yay, alcohol! AND, my girly is in the fabulous new diaper, so here is a belated picture to wrap up the post:

Diapers and other current events (yes, a diaper can be an event)

Hurray, Blogger is back! I wrote this last night but couldn't post forever. Imagine my frustration, not being able to publicly ramble about nothing the MINUTE I wanted to! And on with the show...

I got my ridiculously expensive, outrageously cute custom Fuzzi Bunz diaper in the mail today. I would include a picture, but a) I'm too lazy to take a pic and upload it right now and b) I can't even put it on a baby yet because our stupid washer is broken and our new really-well-warrantied washer doesn't arrive until tomorrow, so we're using disposables for now. Appliances hate me. So, take my word for it - this diaper is cute, much cuter than anything that is intended for poop control should be. It's super-duper soft, and really, really much more money than a person should spend on such a thing. But what am I going to buy, clothes for my own ass? There's not enough cloth. Anywhere. Sigh. I'll be the toga-wearing bowling trophy at my husband's high school reunion next weekend after all.

Tivoli's in town! We looooooove Tivoli. Besides her undeniable charm and beauty, she is incredibly useful and energetic, and has the magic voodoo secret to making my rotten children behave. She has already put together two dining room chairs and is scoping out the still-half-finished first floor bathroom. She seems to find it less charming than just plain low-rent to have no light at all in the bathroom so that you have to leave the door open or risk wiping your kneecap or earlobe instead of your...whatever needs wiping.

In other news, my father-in-law loves me soooooo much after our recent visit that he signed a comment to my husband's blog as "fil." Apparently, I am now the child, and my husband merely an in-law. I bet after I take his money in the football pool, my stock will fall again.

We outran the plague

We're back, I'm happy to say, both from vacation and from pestilence (at least temporarily). The vacation was great, the pestilence was...well, pestilential. We are officially free of all forms of infection, all antibiotics, and all horrifying gastro-intestinal displays. Hurray!

Our trip to South Carolina was a mini time-travel back to summer. The air was balmy when it wasn't downright hot, and we soaked up the sunshine and the family time. Driving back up I-95 on our way home was like watching autumn fly by in time stop photography. We started with green palm trees and progressed through yellow leaves in North Carolina, orange leaves in Virginia, and home to technicolor trees and chilly breezes in Maryland. The kids did amazingly well in the car, minus one impressively sustained 1.5 hour screamfest by girly at the end of our trip home. All in all, it was a wonderful break from daily life.

I thought of a million posts while we were gone, but have to ease my way back in. I will close here with my two favorite recent personal accomplishments:

1) I am one of only THREE people remaining in my father-in-law's Last Man Standing football pool. This is especially impressive when you realize that I made my last pick entirely because seeing "NY Jets" made me start singing "when you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way..." from West Side Story. Sorry, Sal, but you can't compete with my psychic football powers. Might as well write me that check right now.

2) I finished knitting a wool diaper cover! The picture is still on another computer, but I'll upload it when it's available. I am currently finishing a pair of wool pants (for baby girl) of my own design. My husband is so pleased that my quickchange obsessiveness has moved from cloth diapers to knitting!

Tales from the petri dish

I love having a lot of kids - at times, I even think it would be fun to have more - but every winter, we start the round of illness sooner and end it later. Now that there are nine of us in the household going to a total of three schools, one office, and numerous germ-infested activities and stores, I think the CDC or the WHO might want to seriously consider using our house to track the vectors and life cycles of the world's illnesses. We catch everything, and it takes so long for each illness to circulate through the whole family that we've invariably gotten something new with a bang before the old thing has finally gone out with a whimper.

I'm sure you'll all remember how stoically I bore up under the infants' ear infections a couple weeks ago. Then, before the babies had quite finished their antibiotics, the 5 year old got sick, and it turned out to be strep, so he missed three days of school last week. And I really do look stoic next to him. God help his future wife, he is the whiniest sick person ever. So he's on antibiotics, and seems much better since Saturday, but now my poor mother and the three year old have both come down with some stomach plague that I'm really, really hoping I can avoid. Granted, it would kick start the weight loss I'm looking for, but I actually think I might prefer diet and exercise. I had enough vomiting while pregnant with the twins to last me a good long while.

We're supposed to visit my in-laws in South Carolina this week, so I'm crossing my everything that this is the end of this particular round of nastiness. If I weren't utterly exhausted, I would dip everything in the house in lysol, including and especially the children. Little disease-carrying vermin.

Potty Talk

My husband and I went out to dinner last night with some former coworkers from the Company That Sucked. We had a lot of fun reliving the bad old days and catching up on our lives since leaving the shroud of that godawful place. One thing I noticed as the evening progressed is that the men's stories frequently involved the men's room. My conclusion, admittedly based on just this anecdotal evidence, is that men are just overgrown boys and the potty obsession my boys exhibit at 5 and 3 never really goes away.

The potty stories included:

The multi-wiper: My husband's contribution. The other day, he went into the bathroom and there was someone in one of the stalls. As my husband did his business and washed his hands, he heard the stall occupant pull paper, pause, pull paper, pause, pull paper, pause...so many times that my husband began to count. He counted to seventeen before the man flushed and my husband fled the scene. This event caused my husband to speculate about the pain and possible blood factor involved in such excessive wiping. Ladies, I ask you - have you ever been moved to count your neighbor's wipes? Or speculate on the resultant state of their nether regions?

The lock-in: Our friend's memory. One time, he arrived at the Evil Company of Doom earlier than everyone else on the floor and had an urgent bathroom need. He knew the door handle to the men's room was broken, but he thought it was just broken from the outside, and so great was his need that he decided to risk it. On his way back out of the bathroom, he reached for the door handle and it came off in his hand, locking him into the bathroom. He heard someone get off the elevator and began pounding on the bathroom door, "in a random pattern, to distinguish [his] pounding from the construction noise next door," but the offending coworker ignored it and our friend was trapped for about 30 minutes before a more observant party released him. Again, ladies - would you a) lock yourself in a bathroom with an obviously broken handle in the first place, b) give so much thought to how you pounded for help once trapped, or c) harbor resentment for years against the person who didn't realize you were locked in?

The struggle: Another contribution by our male friend. He likened this event to the disturbing bathroom scene from Austin Powers. During a recent work bathroom visit, he heard a coworker having a difficult time in a bathroom stall. Movement of the seat was involved, as was grunting and straining. Our friend acted it out in a much more entertaining fashion than I can reproduce with the written word alone. And yet again, for my female friends - if you heard someone struggling in the bathroom, wouldn't you just leave???

An oldie but a goodie: No gathering of coworkers from the Company of Pain is complete until all of the men reenact the urinating difficulties of one of our former coworkers (not present at the gathering, naturally). This afflicted man apparently used to pee in spurts, as if his equipment were a defective sink faucet. Again, the acting out of this poor man's troubles was a lot funnier than this recap, but you get the point. The men can get apoplectic with laughter at this memory.

And so, when my 3 year old contemplates his own bathroom productions and deems them "like a snake," at least I know he is right on track for manhood. And I can give up hope now that the potty talk is just a phase that will someday pass.

Unorthodox weight loss methods

The twins are over 3 months old now, so the "I just had twins" excuse is nearing its expiration date. Before I had kids, I didn't cook and rarely even shopped for groceries, and I mostly lived on frozen meals, so I wasn't drowning in temptation like I am now. This is the house of sugar and fat. The obvious solution is to stop buying fattening, sugary food, but every time I do that I end up just making a special trip (okay, making my husband make a special trip) for dessert anyway. Clearly, a less traditional approach is called for.

I have settled upon a two pronged approach. It involves style choice changes, rather than actual lifestyle choice changes, so I think it has a shot. Plus, thanks to an overdose of Project Runway, I'm all about style, at least in my head.

Prong 1, clothing - Effective immediately, I am going to wear actual clothes, rather than maternity clothes, yoga pants, or sweat pants. I need pants that do NOT have room for more - more food, or more of me. I like to call this approach the "external gastric bypass," as the constriction of real, buttoned waistbands makes eating huge quantities of crap so much less fun.

Prong 2, hair/makeup - I went to my local, crack-ho-staffed Great Clips today and had most of my hair chopped off. Now, my extra chins are on full display, and I can no longer deny their existence. I also resolve to start wearing at least a teeny bit of makeup every day like a regular grown-up - like myself, anyway, pre-hideous-twin-pregnancy - in an effort to feel just a teeny bit more attractive than the blob of gelatinous ooze I've been for most of 2006. Fake it til you make it, or some similar obnoxious rhyme-y motivational phrase.

Surely these steps will have me in fabulous shape for Keith's high school reunion in, um, 3 weeks. Right?

I'm not the only one happy to have the camera back

My 3 year old loves the camera just slightly less than he loves poor boy twin, who he has immortalized in extreme close-up in this series.


If you were a (flightless) bug, this is how the baby would look to you.



The baby's head is large, but not so large one could not fit it into the frame if one really tried.







Owen's finger gives perspective to how truly teeny the poor wee twin is.

Peekaboo!










The top of the baby's head is very spherical.








I actually really like this picture. Isn't that just the cutest, most vacant little face?

I may love my dog after all

The dog has been barking and running around and generally losing his mind for a few days now, so we suspected the presence of rodents in the house. Today, he actually caught one! Who knew he would eventually come in handy?

Mice. Are. Gross.

Gotta spend money to save money

Alternate title: At least it's not a dining room table

In my ongoing pursuit of both cost savings and creative outlet, I am following my mouse-clicking finger down a path of possible insanity. Now that the thrill of using cloth diapers has worn off a bit, I have discovered the adorable yet functional world of wool soakers, and I am going to try knitting some myself. At least I can knit without a) spending a fortune, b) cutting off anyone's limbs, or c) filling an entire room of the house with construction debris. And, these things cost over $20 each, but yarn to make one is only about $5. See? It's really a very sane alternative to furniture building. So, I have just placed an order for several skeins of yarn, and next week my loquacity may replaced with a knitting silence. I can't wait to post pictures of my vindication handiwork!

For the record, I have officially given up the dining room table dream for now, and we found a perfectly lovely, serviceable, and not-too-expensive table at Ikea, which we plan to invite into our family this weekend. Of course, the prospect of new furniture is leading me to contemplate sweeping room rearrangements, which, if pursued, may cut into my knitting time. I did tell you I needed a hobby.

Justin's turn for a day off

My five year old woke up with a fever and a sore throat, so it's his turn to lie around and be pampered. I'm really glad I was so lazy yesterday, I feel like I recharged my batteries a little, just in time for 4,398 consecutive board games. Actually, I really enjoy him when he's a little sick, is that wrong? Not that I want him to feel bad, but when he's just a little sick, he tends to be more cuddly and quiet and calm. I do tire of the board games, though.

So, another low-key day here (read: still in pajamas at noon. again.). Justin has discovered a shape puzzle game that has held his usually fleeting attention for an unprecedented length of time, and he actually sat still long enough for me to read him 27 pages of Farmer Boy. I've just turned on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in a mother-of-the-year-style preemptive strike against inevitably impending requests for Noggin inanity. The dog (well, it's not really a dog, it's a chihuahua) is spending his day in pure bliss, barking at the frightening hole in the hole of our bathroom-in-progress, confirming our suspicions that ROUSes are living within. And I'm not proud of this, but the highlight of my day so far has been receiving four cloth diaper covers to go with the great Mother-Ease diapers we received from our friend Gina. Who knew diapers could be so fun? Or that describing my decidedly uneventful day could result in so many links per paragraph?

And now, just because I'm so happy to have my camera again, here are a few pictures from our day o' sloth (like that's even a special occasion around here):




Poor sickie-poo, before the advil kicked in.







3 year old, wearing his fabulous new-to-him lego ensemble and "entertaining" boy twin (boy twin is leery of such entertainment but is toughening up nicely).









Prettiest pretty princess. I wish fat looked this good on me.





Oh, and one more thing - happy birthday, Sal!

I appear to be taking the day off

When I worked outside the home and didn't have kids, I would occasionally (well, frequently) take mental health days - days when I just didn't feel like working and so did not. After I had kids, I had to save my sick time for their illnesses, working through my own bouts with rotovirus and plague.

Now I stay home with my kids, and the benefits plan kind of blows. As far as I know, and I'm not sure who my HR rep is to verify this, I have no sick leave. Or vacation time or medical/dental or lunch breaks or private bathroom stalls. Or pay. But today, with no prior planning, I am just sort of opting-out of responsibility, and I have to say - it feels pretty good. I'm surprisingly guilt free. I picked a good day to do it. My big boy is at school, my little boy had his 2.5 hour preschool, and the twins are too little to care that they've been in pjs all day. My mother is being a grade A enabler, running the kids to their activities and...here's the biggie...purchasing Ben and Jerry's peanut butter cup ice cream while I napped. Imagine waking up from a nap to find Ben and Jerry's in the freezer. Decadent, I tell you. I did insist on eating soup before the ice cream, in an effort to stay on the right side of the line between relaxation and depravity.

I hereby resolve to enjoy my day off and not allow guilt to seep in and steal my joy. I've been on both sides of the Mommy Wars (though I'm proud to say I've never been a combatant), and both have their perks and their prices. Days off are rare for any mother, and I'm taking mine. Come join me if you wish. Bring your own ice cream.

Memoirs

I've been reading and enjoying a lot of memoirs lately. Usually, I'm more of a fictional-novel kind of girl, so this is a departure for me (look at me, breaking out of one of my many ruts!). As I'm reading, it occurs to me that it seems to help a great deal, if you wish to write a memoir, to have had an absolutely hideous childhood/adolescence/life in general. My life has been largely hideousness-free, so I'm not sure I have enough material for a real memoir, but I do have a couple stories that may be worth telling. Here's a quick one, as quick is all I have the time or attention span for. Ugh, I hate ending sentences with a preposition, but it just sounds so goofy to say "for which I have the time or attention span."

I went to high school in Forks, Washington - it's almost literally the end of the earth. The northwesternmost town in the continental US, Forks survived on timber alone for its first sixty or so years, and was hit hard when new environmental regulations slowed legal logging to a crawl. It's beautiful, but incredibly isolated (the nearest town is 60 miles away) and tiny (there were about 2,500 residents when I lived there).

One of the local pastimes is hunting, and there are a lot of choices - elk, deer, and black bear are prevalent. I was raised by pacifist parents and am myself a strong proponent of gun control. However - a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do, and I was usually restless to the point of insanity, so when my friends and boyfriends went hunting, I often tagged along.

One August evening, my then-boyfriend and I went out with another couple during bear season. On a whim, we took my boyfriend's mother's station wagon way up into the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, still wearing swimsuits under our clothes after an afternoon swimming a local river. We hadn't been out long when we saw a bear loping across a hillside clearing. My boyfriend took aim with his grandfather's gun and brought the bear down with one shot. He and his friend climbed down from the higher road to where the bear fell to clean it, while my friend and I drove the car around to the low road for easier access.

The summer days are long in northern Washington, but the hike up the hill from the car took longer than we anticipated, and we reached the guys under a cerulean sky that seemed chillier than when we arrived. The boys were afire with blood and testosterone, and it felt like a primal celebration. Like I could squint my eyes and see the shadows of ancient man, victorious over nature and assured of survival, however temporary. Our boyfriends began to carry their prize down the hill, but my friend and I were electrified by the night and the kill and the wild boys, and we decided to continue up the hill and have them meet us with the car. We walked, then climbed upward as the slope increased, chattering gaily and carrying the rifles, and were startled near the top by a sudden cascade of pebbles that in turn released a basketball-sized boulder. The boulder crashed through the gun I carried and pinned my leg to the side of the hill, somehow without hurting me. The shock silenced us temporarily, then drove us into teenage girly giggles. Our boyfriends pulled up in the car to find us clutching each other and weeping with laughter.

My boyfriend was unthrilled to find that his grandfather's gun had been shattered in his absence, and I was unthrilled to find that he cared more about a gun than about my leg almost being pulverized by a boulder, but the sun was setting and we were all winding down from high-test giddiness, so we just got in the car with the bear and headed on down the road. About twenty minutes later, just as my boyfriend said "I think I made a wrong turn somewhere," an ominous clunk emanated from the station wagon's front end and we drifted slowly to a stop. The guys got out to look at the engine, but as it was pitch black and they had no fucking idea what they were doing anyway, that didn't get us anywhere, and the bugs drove them back into the car pretty quickly. I don't remember ever being pestered by insects the whole time I lived in Forks except for that one night. We hadn't intended to be out after dark, so we had no supplies at all - no food, water, warm clothes, or entertainment. For a couple hours, we were so desperately bored that we played "guess what time it is" every few minutes, using one boy's digital watch to judge the winner. Our families began searching for us before midnight, but as we had wandered afield of the actual road, they didn't find us until the mountains in the east were rimmed with purple and the bugs had given way to the birds.

That night seemed to last forever, but there was nothing we could do to improve our situation and so no feeling of urgency, except as the smell of the poor dead animal in the back began to permeate our bug-free pocket of air. My boyfriend later had the bear's head mounted and hung on his wall, since he had had to forego the meat after the long night with no refrigeration. And that all seemed normal to me then.

I write this from the perspective of fourteen years of city life - I moved straight from Forks to Los Angeles, and have since lived in Seattle and Baltimore. It's hard to believe now how much time I used to spend off in the woods. Off-season or over-limit, we would spotlight deer or go elk calling, things my husband had never heard of until he met me. My idea of roughing it now is to roll the window down instead of using the air conditioning in the car when the temperature hits 80, in an effort to conserve gas. It's hard to believe I was fourteen and so unconcerned in the wilderness.















Three of the children in front of the big log in downtown Forks last summer.

Things I should be doing

In no particular order:

1 - Cleaning my house. Exhibit A, a picture of the pile of dirt I swept in just the kitchen this afternoon. Truly, we are animals.

2 - Ridding myself of the lingering specter of the preschool that died. Despite the fact that we closed the school in freaking February, I am still corresponding with the IRS and the workman's comp people. Out, out, damn...um, school. Not as catchy as the original, but I need an exorcism or something to shake this thing.

3 - Sending out the rest of my birth announcements, before the twins are in high school. They already barely resemble the pictures I had printed for the announcements.





I am totally postally impaired.

4 - Sorting through my 3 year old's clothes. I got a ton of really great clothes for him for fall and winter from generous friends, but I can't fit most of them in his dresser because of the backlog of too-small, weather-inappropriate crap clogging the drawers. My husband found a pair of 6 month pants in there today, no joke.

5 - Situps. I am a manatee.







I'm sure there are more, but five is a nice round number. If I don't stop now, I'll have to push on to ten, and then I'll really feel overwhelmed. Besides, I have all the sitting and ice cream-eating and Amazing Race-watching to get back to, and I don't want to fall behind on those critical tasks.

Free associating before bed

Animal Planet is running a special about Jeff Corwin. So far, the biggest shocker is that he's married. Really? He's literally singing show tunes to the animals. Married? To a woman? Okay then, whatever floats his boat. I'm just not sure he's totally found his authentic self yet, if you know what I mean. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Actually, he's pretty funny, I may have to start watching his show.

Miscellaneous updates - the rest of my day improved, after a craptastic beginning. I didn't really accomplish anything, but I rarely let that get in the way of considering a day a success. We did end up going out to breakfast, and the 5 year old and I both chilled out considerably after a healthy helping of grease. During breakfast, my husband very gently expressed his skepticism about my carpentry abilities. Like some of the commenters, he thought I should maybe start smaller than a dining room table. I'm easily swayed, so we have a date with Ikea tomorrow to look for an extension table that doesn't cost a fortune or result in me amputating something or burying the house in sawdust and curse words.

So, I still have not found my calling, but I'm feeling a little less urgent about it. In the meantime, I have a project. My step-daughter spent her afternoon moving furniture around in her room and has decided upon a "nature" theme (when asked what her previous theme was, she replied, "messy." Good to have that self-awareness, kiddo). I offered to paint nature-y murals on her walls, so I can begin obsessing over a design forthwith. Fortunately, this is something I can do while nursing, as my girl twin is the human leech and is shrieking pretty much every second she's not actively eating these days. She is sooo lucky she's cute. I got my camera back today (I had left it at a friend's house), so I can show you...
















Couldn't you just eat her up?

And now for something completely different...

My parents used to love Monty Python. I sort of see the humor, but mostly I just have flashbacks to the nightmares I had as a kid after seeing the fat guy blow up in The Meaning of Life. However, the phrase "and now for something completely different" cracks me up for some reason, and therefore I will use it now to segue oh-so-smoothly from running commentary on my own life to a different kind of offering. I've been trying to think of what I can contribute to the internet, besides my own special brand of whining, so this is it, folks, my first non-whiny, you-yourself-can-try-this-at-home entry. This time, it will be a recipe, but I have other tricks up my sleeve, maybe, if my focus doesn't waver too much.

And now, the recipe - my first real cooking invention, and I'm very proud of it. It's easy, uses just a few on-hand ingredients, goes in the crockpot (my hands-down favorite kitchen item) and it's actually very good. Try it, you'll like it!

Crockpot Chicken Chili for a Crowd
5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 1/2 16oz jars of salsa
1 can diced tomatoes (with liquid)
2 cans whole kernel corn (drained)
2 cans black beans (drained)
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Put chicken breasts in crockpot (you can put them in frozen, then you don't have to touch oogy raw chicken!). Sprinkle with all spices (chili powder, cumin, garlic power, cayenne pepper, and salt and pepper). Pour the salsa and the can of diced tomatoes (including liquid) evenly over the top of the chicken. Cook on low for 4-5 hours. Using two forks, shred the chicken in the crockpot. Add the cans of corn and black beans, stir to mix. Cook for an additional 3 hours. Serve with shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, chopped avocado, and tortilla chips. Makes 10-12 servings. Yum!

I feel like I've done a good deed now. Yay me!

Is perfection really that much to ask?

Our Saturday has not gotten off to the greatest start. Despite wretched weather and little sleep, we wrapped all the children in layers of warmth and headed out to the soccer field, having been assured by the 5 year old's coach that we would receive a phone call if the game was canceled. Of course, no one else was there, as it's pouring, and of course we did not receive a phone call. We changed teams the 2nd week, so I'm sure that's why we didn't get a call, but come on. It's that hard to add people to the phone tree?

Damn it, I just remembered that last year, when I was president of the doomed co-op preschool, we had to close school one day for heat and I forgot to call one of the new families. Damn, damn, damn. That memory just took all the wind out of my sails. Karma's a bitch. And so, believe you me, am I. At least today.

My five year old has been doing SO much better since the inception of the Kindness Jar. Really, he's like a whole new kid. Or, more accurately, he's like a whole old kid - I'm remembering how much fun we had together before the great miserable personality meltdown of 2006. Until today, naturally, when he apparently woke up and decided to be a raging asshole. I'm sorry, that may not sound maternal, but there's really no other word for it. Whining, yelling, flopping on the floor while I try to reason with him, eyes rolling in the head, annoying asshole. It is very hard to maintain my hard-earned, newfound zen mommy persona in the face of this. My husband, bless his incredible patience, is trying to keep us separated by playing "chest" with the evil little beast. In fact, he (my husband) just said, "I got checkmate in 6 moves!" Way to beat the 5 year old at chess, sweetie. Somehow, I suspect that Deep Blue is not trembling with fear.

I hate getting so grouchy, I feel crunchy inside my head and everything is irritating and my eyes turn green (no joke, I'm a freak). I could make a long list of the things that are driving me crazy at the moment, but I'll spare you all and go on a hunt for food to soothe the savage beast instead. I was thinking of going out to breakfast, since we're all dressed anyway, but upon reflection it doesn't seem that wise to be out with my children in public right now. I don't need any witnesses.

I may need a hobby

I've been home with my kids now part-time for two years and full-time for a year and a half, and I've enjoyed it so much more than I ever would have thought. I absolutely loathed my job, which made my decision to quit a lot easier, but I was still nervous about spending all of my time devoted to home and family. One of the biggest surprises has been how busy I am, just keeping the trains running reasonably on schedule.

Most changes have been for the better. I think I'm a better mother now that I'm less stressed and have a less externally driven schedule (of course, I also have twice as many children now, so my time is a bit divided even without a job). My house is usually cleaner and better organized than it used to be. I've learned to cook, and been shocked to discover that I love it. Unfortunately, I've also learned that I love eating what I cook, which has lead to some serious weight gain - one of the less positive changes in the past two years.

But, as usual, I digress. My girl twin is making a concerted effort to change the tone of this post by driving me batshit with her incessant fussing. This is either a 3-month growth spurt or the emergence of a very unpleasant facet of her personality. My point (I swear I had one) is that I'm a very content stay-at-home mother most of the time. I don't miss my old job - in fact, the further I get from my old job, the more I realize how awful it was and how unhappy I was. It was an environment much like that on The Office, only without the redeeming humor.

So, I don't want to go back there (ever, no no no), and I don't see myself working full time anywhere for at least a few more years, but lately I've been spending evenings looking things up. I pick a topic and google it for an evening, imagining possibilities, and then, a night or two later, I move on to another topic. Some are areas of study - continuing education, tax prep classes, cooking school, law school, economics masters programs. Some are current events - I'm sure you're all getting tired of where that leads me.

Most recently, I've been reading about woodworking. Yes, woodworking. I missed out on shop class in school because I was in the choir (stop laughing, everyone who's ever heard me do karaoke). I'm dreaming of a fabulous extension dining room table. Our immediate family is huge (9 people), and we host most of our extended family gatherings, and our current table only seats 6. See how the rationalization begins? I've seen a couple tables I like online, but they're pretty expensive, and wouldn't it just be too cool to make my own table?

Clearly, I need to find something to broaden my horizons a bit. What should it be? A part time job? An enrichment class? An actual writing project? A dining room table?

Angry update to the post I JUST made

I just showed my husband the post I just made, and he asked who Dennis Hastert is. AND HE WAS WATCHING THE NEWS WITH ME. I told him that he (my husband, well and Dennis Hastert too) is what's wrong with this country, and that I bet he knows Anna Nicole Smith's baby's name (and, of course, he did - Danielynn, wtf).

So, in case anyone else out there is living under my husband's rock with him, Dennis Hastert is the Speaker of the House. You know, the House of Representatives. AKA the jackasses who have been systematically stripping us of our rights while voters stay home on election night to watch Project Runway reruns. Don't get me wrong, I love Project Runway (although I find Heidi Klum to be disturbingly animatronic), but get a Tivo and vote first, THEN watch PR. Please.

Dear God. Who is Dennis Hastert, indeed.

Peer pressure, blogging style

I've known about Technorati for a long time but never visited until today. On my visit, I discovered that I am ranked....wait for it...

586,843

Yes, my friends, you are in the presence of greatness. I clearly have a hotline to the people. The weight of the world is suddenly on my shoulders as I ponder the moral obligation I have to use this power wisely.

Or, you know, I suck and am all alone in the world. So now I'm torn - do I cry into my soup (or, tonight's dinner, peanut butter chicken, yum yum), do my damnedest (that can't possibly be spelled correctly, but I can't slow down to look it up now) to improve my ranking, or accept that I am one small, unoriginal voice in a sea of same?

It would be easier to incorporate this knowledge, this feeling of being small and pointless, if I really understood why I blog anyway. I started, as I start most things, because everyone else is doing it, and I'm nothing if not a follower. Baa. But now it's a habit and a stress reliever. I think of things I want to blog about while I'm out and about, sort of the way I think "I can't wait to tell Keith that!" when something happens while my husband's at work. Sadly, I usually forget whatever it is before I blog (or tell my husband, for that matter). Hmm, I don't even really remember what I'm saying now, and I'm in mid-post.

Moving on. Dennis Hastert is on the news and looks like a heart attack waiting to happen. That would be sad, now, wouldn't it? Sigh. I'm a bad, bad person, wishing ill on evil people. I should rise above it and turn the other cheek and love my enemies and embrace some other cliches. Not likely to happen, though. Okay, how about instead of wishing physical harm on anyone, I instead hope that all these sex scandals will turn people against the Republicans at the polls next month. It does seem that people care more about politicians' peccadillos than their power abuses, which makes me wonder about the wisdom of governing "by the people," but whatever gets these assholes out, right?

Warning: I'm afraid I may be subject to increasingly frequent political outbursts between now and the election, but I'll try to pipe down afterwards and concentrate on things like Christmas and kittens. I like kittens.

Free time! (?)

My 5 year old is in full-day kindergarten and the 3 year old is in preschool two days a week for 2.5 hours. I had/have delusions that I would use this blessedly nearly-child-free time to accomplish great things, like cleaning and grocery shopping (my dreams are small, but they are mine). Sadly, and perhaps predictably, it's been a month since the new schedule started, and I am currently sitting on my couch, in pjs, eating "fun size" candy bars (whee! they're fun! it says so on the package!), updating my home information on Zillow (I love Zillow!) and watching House on Tivo (I love House!). Amazing how I can enjoy myself so much despite having to acknowledge that I am the human slug.

I am, after all, in the dairy business myself these days

I love me some Dairy Queen. I love the fluffy nutritionlessness of it all. I love that there are like 4 things there that I love almost equally, which sets up a delicious (get it?) tension for me at the order counter (one of my quirks is that I have one thing that I get at each of most eateries, and I rarely vary it). I love that I have really strong childhood memories of going to DQ with my parents and little sister before my parents got divorced, although one time we were eating outside and did witness a fairly horrific accident involving an unhelmeted motorcyclist and a car.

My husband is very patient with me, and he just said yes with a resigned air when I suggested going to DQ tonight after soccer practice as a treat "for the kids." I mean, they do like ice cream, so it's not a total lie, right? It almost would have been worth going even if I didn't have ice cream myself, just for the 30 times my 3 year old hugged me and said, "thank you for the ice cream, Mommy." He's usually not very physically demonstrative. Of course, I did have ice cream, so that was, you know, the icing on the cake. Or the whipped topping on the large hot fudge sundae with peanuts. Yum, yum.

I was totally born with the wrong genes. Thinness is wasted on the non-Dairy Queen worshipers. Doesn't that word look like it needs two Ps? Hate words that look wrong. I also hate Vincent D'Onofrio - House is on hiatus and we're reduced to watching whichever train wreck of a Law and Order variety features this moron. But I love Dairy Queen more than I hate weird words and bad actors. And so ends tonight's one-note song.

Woohoo, 100 posts!

That wasn't going to be this post's title, but I'm easily distracted. 100 posts! That's sort of like actually writing, right?

This will be random and short. We're all on the mend, and I'm starting to sleep a bit, but not enough yet to be coherent or creative, and certainly not both at once. I was thinking about posting earlier, but realized that all of the topics I could think of involved sleep (specifically, the lack of said priceless precious item), poop (and the absolutely fascinating yet revolting effect of antibiotics on same), and children's whininess (really, that one just speaks for itself). I decided to spare you all my thoughts on those topics, aren't you grateful?

I was moved to post by my new favorite TV show, Studio 60 (what, I should try reading or something, to start a thoughtful discourse?). I love Aaron Sorkin. Of course, I'm going to get this line wrong because it's been like 10 minutes since I heard it, and I'm too lazy to rewind the Tivo - ah, screw it, I rewound it after all. Matthew Perry's character was writing political humor and, when criticized for only mocking the Republicans, he said "I'd be happy to take shots at Democrats, too, if only one of them would say or do something." Yes! Seriously, I love Aaron Sorkin. I want to be him.

My focus is divided, as the show is still on and I'm using the part of my brain not paying attention to the show to squirm mentally about the emails I just sent to loved ones pimping overpriced crap for my son's school fundraiser. I love the school and it really does need the money, but I hate fundraisers. I hate being accosted for them and I hate accosting others. Does saying I hate it let me off the hook for doing it anyway? I'm such a pimp.

Lastly, I'm in a Last Man Standing football pool thing, which is ludicrous, as I know almost literally nothing about football. My pick for this week is the Philadelphia Eagles, one of my favorite teams just by virtue of my in-laws' long and passionate of love of them. They're cutting it a little close at the moment, with a teensy little 1-point lead. Oooh, I think I helped them with my mind - as I typed that, they got a touchdown. Sometimes I scare myself. E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES! My children all learned that cheer as soon as they learned to talk. Go Eagles!

Apropos of nothing...

Everyone else in my house is sleeping, and god knows I should be, too. However, just as I was heading to bed, a discussion thread on Fark caught my eye, and I've just spent the past hour trying to unravel the details behind it, getting angrier by the minute, mouth literally hanging open and red eyes half-closed in exhaustion and futile rage.

Before I even go into what I've been reading, I have to say how frustrated I am that this is not headline news everywhere. People need to know what this administration is doing. It's like we have corruption fatigue - maybe Bush and his people have figured out that by piling corruption on corruption and never pausing or apologizing, the public focus will never remain on any one abomination long enough to force resolution.

Okay, so here's what I understand. This week, as the legislative session wrapped up, the House passed a resolution that had buried in it a provision protecting any personnel involved in torturing detainees from prosecution, retroactively to September 11, 2001. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the detainees are covered by the Geneva convention, the adminstration is concerned, because under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva convention are war crimes. The administration is preempting legal action, eliminating the need for pardons later, by waving its hand Obi Wan Kenobi-like and saying "these aren't the torturers you're looking for." Here's a link to the bill - the relevant portion begins on page 81, with "protection of personnel."

This is bigger than a what the hell is wrong with people post, this is more despair than annoyance. I want to hire a skywriter and a television station and a bullhorn and a Broadway stage and any other venue I can think of that people actually look at and shout "open your eyes!" Our freedoms have been being chipped away under the guise of protecting us for the past 4 years, and now the people responsible are throwing a blanket of protection over themselves before the mid-term elections, just in case they lose their monopoly.

I used to be more specific in my political views. I used to care a lot about issues like the death penalty, and taxation, and abortion rights. Right now, all I want is a return to democracy. I'd be happy with a Republican leadership that at least acted in what they believed to be the interests of the country, rather than in a constant struggle to acquire and conserve their own power. Democracy is supposed to be the government working for the people, not against them. Our leaders should feel constrained by their obligations to the citizenry, rather than private citizens feeling powerless and even frightened in the face of a governing body that can and does write its own rules to suit its chosen behavior.

I wish I were rich. Hell, I'd settle for articulate. I wish I could think of a way to rein these people in without hurting what I think is still the best, most viable form of government for our country. I am horrified by the current Republican leadership and disdainful of the weak Democrats who have let them twist the Constitution for four years. I guess my most specific wish at this point is that every single representative who voted for this atrocity would be voted out in November. Our leaders - Republicans and Democrats alike - need a reminder that ours is a government of checks and balances.

So ends the late-night political ramble. I need to stop reading political news right before bed. I so do not need George Bush in my dreams.