Thursday, August 31, 2006

Penises are always funny

Well, not always always. Sometimes they're useful, or fun, or whatever. But you know what? Even then, they're pretty funny.

Lately, it seems like the level of humor around our house has regressed a bit. Lots of scatalogical and anatomical jokes and dopey laughing complete with snorts. I think the lack of sleep has diminished our capacity for more sophisticated humor. Within the past 24 hours, I have had conversations that included the following two quotes:

First conversation - "What is the thing where your dick is hard all the time?" (to save you google time, the answer is priaprism, and that ought to get me some interesting page hits).

Second conversation, from my husband upon being read the quote above - "It's called the 6 weeks after delivery." Ha!

I think instead of post-partum depression, I am entering into post-partum hysteria. Everything is cracking me up. Including Crazy Frog and his belly button and funny little penis. I'm telling you, penises are always funny.

For Heidi

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Heidi, who I already knew kicked all kinds of ass, but who just won my love and admiration anew with her thorough dismantling of a seriously misguided and arrogant right-wing commenter on our mutual friend's blog. Click HERE for the smackdown. Don't you just love her? So, it's a little challenging to come up with a post topic on the fly, but for Heidi I will do my best.

I've been getting out of the house more and getting less sleep even than usual the last few days, so I have lots of random little daily life stories and even more random half-baked thoughts, but putting together anything coherent seems daunting at best. I've started employing the voice recording features on my cell phone and digital camera to try to stop the attenuation of my brain activity, so I'll begin this most random of posts with the most recent recording. The recording is as follows:

"Goat magazines."

See how deep the thoughts go when I'm away from the computer? This note was recorded while at the Maryland State Fair today. My friend Tivoli is in town and she and I took the 3 youngest children to the fair. By the time we parked and actually made it onto the fairgrounds, we were starving (okay, I was starving), so we immediately parked ourselves on a bench and ate our picnic lunches. As we ate, Tivoli mentioned that she has a friend who buys offbeat magazines and who recently purchased, yes, a GOAT MAGAZINE. This struck me as absolutely hilarious and I wanted to share with all of you, though to be fair, my entire personality is at an angle these days like one of those old V8 commercials. There really is only so much sleep deprivation one can endure without going nutty.

For a more mutisensory experience (hmm, is reading a sense? Guess not - so really, reading and looking at pictures both use just the same one sense. Oh well, work with me), here are some pictures from the fair:





Those are some giant sheep balls





Cute, thirsty (or, as I originally typed, thursday) duckling


These piglets were just minutes old (and reminded me disturbingly of the fetal pig dissection portion of high school). Their poor mama pig was still in the process of delivering more piglets while we were there. I thought having twins was a little rough.





Doesn't this cow look a bit like a younger Mickey Rooney?

That's all I've got for now - so, Heidi, this one's for you. Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

My own human shield

I wish I could post with my mind. I have vague recollections of having absolutely brilliant ideas for posts at times not conducive to typing (read: nearly always), but when I actually sit down in front of the computer, my mind reverts to its typical blank slate state.

I must therefore resort to just telling you all about my plans for the day. I am either a hero or a glutton for punishment - I have just dressed myself and the 3 littlest kids (big boy is in kindergarten, hurray!) and am going out by myself to a singalong. Also, I stink, because I couldn't quite figure out how to take a shower without having my 3 year old draw all over the twins with markers. However! All of the kids look absolutely adorable, so I will have a human shield of cute on my outing.

The natural thing to do here would be to take and post a picture of said human shield, but this has taken forever to write already, and frankly I've lost interest. I think this blog would be more entertaining if I were capable of coherent thought or attention spans of more than a minute.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

A new spin on climate change

I look back on my career days from the perspective of my new life like looking at a film negative (what, by the way, will replace the film negative in our lexicon once a whole generation reaches adulthood without having seen a film camera?). Staying at home may not be for everyone (I used to be certain it would not be for me), but it does seem like a more natural, organic way of life than spending every weekday in a climate controlled, fluorescently lit pod of industry.

Summers here are just ghastly - way too hot and humid on the best days, unbearably stultifying and stifling on the worst. When I worked in an office every day, summer only entered my thoughts for a few minutes each morning and evening while I waited for my car's air conditioning to kick in on my commute. Now that I'm home, and trying cost-consciously to save electricity, I spend my summers sweltering and dreaming of cooler weather. To my fevered, summer-sick eyes, the start of school on Tuesday looks like a line of demarcation between the hell of summer and the promise of fall.

I realized this the other day as I shopped for school supplies for my eldest and started to feel that back-to-school excitement that I haven't had since I was in school myself. Living with and, to a degree, for my children has given me back seasons - something I didn't realize I had lost.

My husband's secret life


As anyone who has gone swimming with my family is aware, my husband is quite hirsute. So imagine my surprise last night when I discovered a 3" triangular patch of baldness in the middle of his back. Even more surprisingly, he doesn't know how it got there. Did he scratch himself while holding a razor? Did one of the boys get to him without his knowledge (although we are lax in some things, we do not let the boys play with razors, I swear). Is he having an affair and the other woman marked him as her territory by carving shapes in his body hair? The possibilities are...kind of the opposite of endless. I mean, how many ways can someone have their back shaved without their knowledge?

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

A gross injustice


It occurred to me today that what I want most in life right now (and this should give you all a peek at how very small my existence is at the moment) is sleep and food, and that I spend a huge portion of each day begging, bribing, and threatening my children to sleep and eat. It seems like we should be able to achieve some kind of accord in which they can stay up as late as they want and eat only jelly beans and ice cream while I sleep a minimum of eight straight hours a night and eat...well, jelly beans and ice cream doesn't sound so bad. Maybe we're closer to this accord than I realized.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Other people are idiots, too

Lest anyone think I'm singling out my own children for criticism and mockery, allow me to shed some virtual light on recent inanities I've encountered. Having twins has revealed to me a real lack of both education and common sense on the part of the general public. I'm sure this lack is nothing new, it's just more apparent to me now because everyone and their half-wit brother sees the babies as an open invitation to approach with stupid questions and unwelcome groping.

First, the "uneducated" category. The question I am asked most often, and I mean several times per outing, and even once by a person in the medical field, is whether or not the twins are identical. I truly just don't get this one. I understand that not everyone is a doctor, but the word IDENTICAL has a similar meaning in a non-twin context. Here, I'll look it up for everyone -


i·den·ti·cal ( P ) Pronunciation Key
(-dnt-kl)adj.
Being the same: another orator who used the senator's
identical words.
Exactly equal and alike.
Having such a close
similarity or resemblance as to be essentially equal or
interchangeable.
Biology. Of or relating to a twin or twins developed
from the same fertilized ovum and having the same genetic makeup and closely
similar appearance; monozygotic.

So, even if we use the simple "exactly equal and alike" definition and skip the more complicated "biology" definition, we can see fairly quickly that NO, my boy/girl twins, one of whom has blond hair and one of whom has brown, are not identical. Just as your car and your house are not identical, or your head and your...well, you get the point.

Next, the "common sense" category. I have been shocked at the number of people who have just come right up to my babies and grabbed (or tried to grab) their hands or feet or touch their faces or bellies. Please allow me to have a public service announcement moment and advise everyone NOT TO TOUCH BABIES YOU DON'T KNOW. You may even want to extend this warning to ALL people, and not just randomly grope anyone at all, but I'll leave some leeway on that on the premise that if you are dim enough to grab adults, they can take your education into their own hands. Hopefully in a manner emphatic enough to really drive the message home.

There, I feel better having gotten that out. I promise, I am nothing but friendly and polite to the absolute hoardes of people who approach merely to compliment my undeniably gorgeous offspring, and I do enjoy showing them off to a degree. I just worry a teeny bit more about civilization than I did already when confronted with some of the aforementioned behavior, though I tend to rationalize it by assuming that those are the same people who continue to give Bush a double-digit approval rating.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Definition of Insanity

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then raising children is literally insane. Bedtime, for example - you set up a routine and follow it religiously despite the fact that it NEVER WORKS, and you follow it and follow it and don't alter a single solitary thing and you just keep on doing the same freaking thing night after night after night and THEN (in theory), they suddenly associate the routine with sleep and poof, they go to bed like human beings instead of cats in a bag destined for the bottom of a river.

All the child-rearing books I've read emphasize consistency - consistency of routine, of discipline, of positive feedback - but isn't "be consistent" just another way of saying "do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?" Yeah, I thought so. So, child-rearing experts, you're actually PRESCRIBING INSANITY. Just so you know.

I have to go make dinner so it's ready at the normal dinner time so my kids have a routine framework in which to grow, theoretically, into rational human beings. Wish me luck.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

My children are idiots

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt (stop laughing, I do too), especially my own children. I mean, despite myself, I do have some pride invested in their accomplishments and attributes. Doesn't every parent glow a little when someone compliments her child's beauty or kindness or wit? So it's with a heavy heart that I must now concede that my children are imbeciles. My desire for the boys to have some redeeming quality forces me to admit that their stupidity has a certain originality to it. They are specialists, if you will, in a kind of destructive idiocy that I don't believe I even aspired to as a child. The following evidence in support of my conclusion is all drawn from the past week.

Exhibit A - my almost-3-year-old, after roughly 4039 reminders NOT to throw or kick the soccer ball in the house, has officially claimed the prize of First Child to Break a Window. I'm a bit surprised, as he is the 4th of our 6 children, and frankly I was certain our athletic second child would claim the honor. Won't he be embarassed when he learns that his little brother beat him to the punch?







Exhibit B - the 5 year old and almost-3-year-old, working in tandem, beat the living shit out of a plastic toy with the pried-off legs of their toy piano during a 30 second lull in supervision. We have so hoped for the boys to start enjoying each other's company, but recent events are leading us to reconsider that wish. They do seem to lower each other's IQ.

Exhibit C (C is for Clincher) - after playing a fairly normal, serene game involving cardboard squares bearing the letters of the alphabet, the two geniuses decided to deposit said cardboard squares in the dirty diaper pail. No, wait, that's not the dumb part yet! They then reached INTO the diaper pail to retrieve the squares. Then came in, triumphant, to show us their game - AND HANDS - streaked with baby poop.







We're so proud.

Our friends have been encouraging us to get a short bus, now that the twins are here and we no longer fit the whole family into even the largest of mini-vans. Now I think the short bus would be even more appropriate. My poor dim children.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

It's 3am, I must be lonely

Those wise songwriters at Matchbox Twenty sure know their stuff. Three am is a lonely time. If you're young and free, 3am is when you realize that you've stayed out too late, had too much to drink, and that the person you found wildly attractive an hour before is not as transcendent as you thought. If you're older and more responsible, 3am is when you realize that you are NOT going to beat insomnia tonight, so you might as well get up and resign yourself to a rough(er) work day tomorrow.

If you are absolutely ancient, like me (in mind and body, if not in chronological age), and have 400 children, 3am is when your twins wake up shrieking and soaked in their own bodily fluids and it's 3 zillion degrees in their nursery and you can't move your arms to put your hair up or turn up the air conditioning or strangle yourself because you're buried in infant flesh. Or maybe that's just me. Yeah, that one's probably just me. Sigh. That makes it all the lonelier.

Things are going well overall. These babies are just the sweetest, if not the best sleepers, and I'm fortunate enough to have a LOT of help. I remember this phase from my other babies - when I feel better physically and am restless as all hell to catch up on all the stuff I haven't done in ages because of the constraints of pregnancy and new motherhood - socializing, shopping, day trips. Hell, cleaning the house. But the babies haven't gotten the memo yet that mom's ready to get back into the swing of things, and like baby birds they chirp and chirp to be fed, so often that there comes a point in each day where I just give up and accept that there will be no further non-baby-related activity in the day.

Oh! That reminds me. My husband and eldest son were doing yardwork the other day and knocked down a small tree that (they then discovered) had a bird's nest in it, with 2 baby birds in it. Fortunately, for the birds, the tree is still sort of propped in place, so they should be okay. Not so fortunately for my husband, the mother bird was on duty and was fairly pissed off that he had jeopardized her babies. She attacked him with squawks and feathers and scared a few years off his life.

That story was not especially relevant, but my mind's not working in an entirely straight line these days. Hey, I'm posting, and that's what matters, right?

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Things you never thought you'd say...


My almost-3-year-old just came into the room after using the bathroom. He showed me his damp hand and said, "it's soap." This being patently false, I responded with the following sentence:

"If it comes out of your penis, it's not soap."

Only one of many things I've said since becoming a parent that I never could have foreseen.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Capital One, how I hate you


My one month old twins have a bit of a cold. When my firstborn got his first cold, I was beside myself with worry and anguish over his suffering. I didn't sleep by choice (that level of devotion is nearly impossible for me to imagine now, sleep being more valuable than anything else I can think of), opting instead to spend every moment hovering over his wheezing little body, as if I could help him breathe through sheer force of will. Now, with my third and fourth babies - yeah, not so much. My attitude is more of a brief "aw, poor baby," followed almost immediately by an unspoken but strong sentiment of "suck it up and be quiet, kiddo." I know, they're infants, and I promise I'm taking care of them, I'm just not suffering for them like I did with my eldest.

What, you may ask, has this to do with Capital One? Well, I know I am not alone in my strong dislike of telemarketers. However much time and money has gone into anti-telemarketing legislation and credit card reform in the past few years, I want it back. But my feelings of distaste are multiplied 100-fold when the telemarketer in question interrupts the caretaking of two sick babies and will. not. listen to me. Here's the situation - Capital One has, apparently, issued me a credit card against my will. I don't know why they have done this, but I don't want it and I don't like it. Seems ominous and wrong that they can take actions that affect my credit without my knowledge or permission, but I digress. Since I did not ask for or want this credit card, I have not activated it. Capital One has responded to this lack of action on my part by launching a campaign of phone calls, sometimes as many as three a day, telling me to activate the card. I DON'T WANT TO. This is beyond their comprehension. During today's harassment, I basically begged the woman to cancel the account I did not request and stop calling me. While I took three minutes I did not have to try to impress upon her my lack of desire to enter into a relationship with her parasitic company, both twins resumed their "we don't feel good so we must nurse again even though we just ate" wails. I'm pretty sure she could hear them, as she had no trouble hearing me, but when I said, three times, that I had to go because my babies were crying, she responded with requests for such information as my social security number. Um, no. No no no. Go away, stupid Capital One woman. I finally had to hang up on her. I really don't like hanging up on people, even stupid obnoxious people, especially when I have not yet achieved my aim of ensuring that they don't call back. So, I am for now the not-so-proud possessor of a Capital One credit card of unknown credit limit and interest rate. Can I get anyone anything at the store?

Here's a shock - a twin is fussing. Maybe sucking on my Capital One card will soothe him, it's got to be good for something.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The balance of things


Some days, like today, convince me that we each are allocated our daily lot of suck, and that if one area improves (or worsens), there is a proportional decrease (or increase) of suck in another area.




A fairly average day for me lately, for comparison's sake:
Sleep - virtually none
Health - fine except for the aforementioned no sleep
Big kids' behavior - 6-7 on a scale of 1-10
Babies' cuteness - 10
Fun activity level - 2

Today's tally:
Sleep - almost literally none (it's a subtle distinction, but has an exponential impact on the total)
Health - desperately ill (this may be a slight exagerration, as I'm fairly certain it's just a cold, but I seem to have bubble-boy style immunity due to the no sleep, so it seems to be racing toward pneumonia)
Big kids' behavior - inexplicably, 9!
Babies' cuteness - 10 (some things never change)
Fun activity level - 8

So, if we review, I seem to have exchanged good physical health for good behavior and a fun outing. Doesn't seem like such a bad trade, when I put it that way. Still, in general I think the normal way of things is best for every day, as I miss breathing, and the insides of my face itch.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Parenting extemporanea

I need a brain-dump device to record the posts I write in my head while I'm up with the twins at night. I'm so eloquent in my head, and I come up with lots of great topic ideas, but the sleep deprivation prevents my memory from retaining critical information like where I put the other baby down, much less blog post ideas.

The one idea I do remember from 3am has to do, naturally, with breastfeeding (apologies to my poor father-in-law, if he hasn't already given up reading this blog due to excessive bodily function revelation). It does seem that once you have babies, everything that passes for thought revolves around what goes into the babies and what comes out. No wonder one's social life generally suffers a post-partum decline.

Right, the post. I belong to a local online mother's group, and lately there has been a lot of discussion about the furor caused by the breast on the cover of the latest
Babytalk magazine. A lot of statistics are being bandied about regarding how many Americans feel "uncomfortable" with nursing in public (always abbreviated as NIP in the discussion forum, much to my adolescent amusement). My thoughts at 3am were that I don't much care if it makes people uncomfortable. I feel fortunate to live in a time and place where I don't have to choose between nursing and leaving the house. I do wonder if those people offended by public nursing realize how frequently babies (especially newborns) eat, and how limiting it would be for mothers not to be able to go out until their babies are on a predictable, avoidable feeding schedule. If my own experience is anything to go by (and it may not be, but it's what I've got), my mental health post-partum is already a bit shaky, and leaving the house is one of the thin threads holding me together. So, easily offended Puritanical public, avert your prudish eyes, but my babies and I are leaving the damn house. As usual, I mentally follow my pronouncement with an oh-so-sophisticated foot stamp and a "so there." So there.

In other news, my transmogrification from pissy, uptight, Type A working girl to competent, giving, living-my-ideals stay at home mom continues apace. My lovely friend Cole introduced me to the wonders of Whole Foods and Trader Joes yesterday, and I have been snacking on much more healthy fare ever since (minus one small incident with Moose Tracks ice cream, but I was really just emptying the last bit from the container, so it was like cleaning more than eating). AND...drumroll please...we have switched the twins to cloth diapers, now that they have actual bottoms around which to wrap the diapers - we tried cloth when they first came home but their bitty bodies were not sufficient to keep the diapers on.

Nursing twins in public, eating healthier food, and cloth diapers - I've come a long way, baby.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

A more than usually random collection of thoughts

I feel like I need to post to keep the momentum going, but I'm more than usually blank this evening. I've had a great weekend filled with actual human contact and ventures from the house, so I'm less in my own head than usual. Most of my thinking seems to be happening during the catnaps that pass for my sleep at night - most recently, I dreamed that I was sitting next to Brad Pitt at some sort of very unpolished performance. I asked him about his kids and he started sobbing that he just couldn't find a way to relate to Angelina's daughter. I comforted him and related my own step-parenting experience, encouraging him to hang in there. Wouldn't you think, if I were to dream of Brad Pitt, the dream would be a little more...exciting? Apparently even my subconscious is fat, exhausted, and libido-less.

The twins are a month old now, and I'm starting to rejoin real life. I realized this evening that my eldest son starts kindergarten in three short weeks. I feel like time has been suspended since the beginning of July - it's hard to realize that summer's almost over. Now I'm stepping up my mental anguish about what to do with my almost-3-year-old this year. Preschool or random enrichment programs or nothing but my scintillating company? Perhaps this week I will progress from mental anguish to actual research into programs. One of the things no one tells you about when you have kids is how tiring the logistics of it all can be, especially when you have more than one. Classes and lessons and school and blah blah blah - especially when they're little and have few expressed interests of their own. Doesn't it seem presumptuous to choose their activities for them? For example, I asked my #2 son (in age, not affection, I assure you) what kind of party he wants for his birthday, and he answered "I want a purple party." Well then. That's clarifying.

Hmm, all this thinking about what needs to be done reminds me - I need to dig up two fines we recently received for, respectively, "weeds on property" and "trash bag on property." Apparently the Baltimore PD is stepping in as neighborhood association for the borderline ghetto in which we reside. Nice of them. Lucrative, too, as the fines total $110 and I just paid another "weeds" fine for $60. Quite the racket they have going. We're planning on contesting the latest ones, though (seriously, a trash bag on the property? In the middle of the day? Maybe we were working on the weeds, Mister Po-po). I think since the crack dealers moved out of the rowhouse across the street the police have had altogether too much time on their hands.

Okay, that's enough randomness for one post. Off to find the fines, research preschools, and try to convince/bribe/smother the boys to sleep, as it is 10pm and they seem to be having a kegger in their room.

Friday, August 04, 2006

A very sweet day

I'm sacked out in front of the TV, wearing my husband's comfortable ancient T-shirt (really, fully half of the man's clothes are older than I am) and watching my favorite new show, Psych. I just had the best day in a long time and I feel totally happy and relaxed. I was just reflecting on the day and realized that this is what I ate:

9:30am - bowl of granola with milk
12:00pm - bowl of cookie dough (what? I don't get sleep, I can't have some joy?)
1:00pm - chalupa and hard taco at
Taco Bell
4:00pm - cookie (at least it was cooked)
7:30pm - order of jalapeno poppers
9:30pm - bowl of moose tracks ice cream
10:00pm - another (very small! really!) serving of cookie dough

Hmmm. That's a LOT of sugar. And really very little in the way of actual food. This leads me to two conclusions (I'm big on lists since the twins were born, because I think in fragments if/when I think at all):
1) There is a real correlation between my sugar intake and my mood.
2) My dear friend is a La Leche League volunteer and is almost certainly thinking, and rightly so, that this is not the ideal diet for a nursing mother. Sigh.

For the record, I really HAVE been eating well, especially the last few days - incorporating protein and vegetables (not only in deep fat fried fashion) and limiting my desserts (shut up, I can hear you laughing and it hurts my feelings. I have TOO been limiting my desserts). But today just felt like a holiday somehow. I was going to write all about all the fun stuff we did and how we had a great time with friends and family, but all this thinking about food made me realize I really want something else to eat before bed. I promise it won't be sugary.

We interrupt this whine...


I know, everyone will think this is a guest blogger if the whole post isn't one big rant, but I have to brag about my excellent morning. I got up at 7:45 (unheard-of-early since the twins arrived and rendered me nearly nocturnal) and in the next 45 minutes got all four children dressed, fed, and in the car (having first rearranged car seats) to take biggest boy and his friend to camp. This may not seem like a huge accomplishment to the uninitiated, but I've achieved less in more time with just my two eldest (sort of sad, but true), and this was my first time getting out of the house entirely on my own with all four. So, TAAA-DAAA. Thank you, thank you very much.

I then returned home and the basement power went out. Instead of reverting to helpless-female type and calling my husband, I ventured into the (dank, dark, disgusting) basement and fixed it mySELF. So there, cosmic forces that have been against me this week. I am woman, hear me - well, not roar, but at least I'm not just whimpering, either. Except when I have to nurse on the right side. That still stings a bit.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

New meaning of pain


Can you believe another post? This one is necessary, though, as I must purge my memory of the most traumatic experience ever (or at least the most traumatic today). Viewer discretion advised - there will be talk of breasts, but not the kind of talk that men like my husband generally search blogs for.

I took the twins to the pediatrician, thinking they had thrush. Turns out they don't (I know, this sounds like good news, bear with me). The pediatrician is also a lactation consultant, so she asked to look at the breast that hurts, and determined that I have a clogged duct. When mashing it (ouch, but only lowercase ouch) didn't free the clog, she gave me a shot of novacaine IN MY NIPPLE (big uppercase OUCH), then CUT it a little to try to get the clot out. Then, while I was numb, she mashed and mangled it - didn't hurt at the time, but I knew it would kill once the novacaine wore off, and sure enough, it's wearing off now and I can hardly think it hurts so much. On the bright side, at least it won't linger for months like thrush can. God, though, I hurt, and I really really don't want to nurse them on this. The doctor said I should go to bed w/them and just nurse and rest until it's better, that I'm not resting enough. Well, send me a wet nurse and I'll get right on that.

Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow. And to think I was actually ENJOYING nursing this time.

Welcome to the zoo

The twins had a bad night, though not in a useful Timmy's-in-the-well (or the-fridge-is-on-the-blink) fashion this time, just to satisfy their infantile sense of humor. As a result, I'm only now at noon easing into the day. It doesn't feel worth it to even get going when you get up this late, especially when it's already over 100 outside. I was actually contemplating the pool (to the extent of shaving acres of flabby white legs in preparation), then realized my baby friends would fry like little strips of bacon in this heat. So, housebound we shall remain, except for a short (hopefully short) jaunt to the pediatrician to confirm what I suspect is rapidly becoming a 3 person bout of thrush. Because my sleep deprivation was getting lonely and needed some pain to keep it company.

Isn't it amazing how much we love our kids when they try so hard to kill us? I just went to the kitchen for a drink (sadly nonalcoholic) and came back to find girl twin sucking earnestly on the cheek of boy twin while he shrieked helplessly. So funny (to me, obviously not to boy twin). And now, my almost 3 year old is serenading the twins to the accompaniment of a broken toy guitar, naked as a jaybird (he has mastered pulling his pants DOWN to use the bathroom, but not pulling them back UP). Last night, my two big boys put on temporary tattoos and then strutted around the room, striking bodybuilder poses and growling "let's get ROCKIN'" over and over. It's a little like living in an asylum and a lot like living in a zoo - lots of bodily fluid cleanup, lots of staring at the residents and wondering what motivates their bizarre behavior.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Appliances Gone Wild

Look at me, posting twice in a week! Let's pause before proceeding to pat me on the back. While we're tooting my horn (and using the royal "we"), please note that both posts were executed while I was encumbered with not one but two little bundles of humanity. Why won't they let me put them down for a minute when it's over 100 degrees outside? Why?

So, my appliances are conspiring against me. Technically, only the refrigerator has rebelled so far, but the washer sounds wonky and I assume it's only a matter of time before a full-scale revolt is underway. When I got up with the twins at 2am last night, I heard a strange sound downstairs but thought it was the dishwasher (which had better NOT be part of the conspiracy, as it is brand-freaking-new). As I headed back to bed at 3 (the twins are slooooow eaters at night), I heard that the noise was continuing, so I ventured downstairs to investigate. I stepped into the kitchen and into an inch of running water. Not a pleasant surprise. I panicked my way around the room, shutting off the fan and the dishwasher and turning on lights until I finally figured out that the source of the flood was the stupid refrigerator. I already have a grudge against this refrigerator, which brings me to the following tangent:

TANGENT (might as well label them, as they are inevitable): In our 6 year relationship, my husband and I have made many purchasing decisions together. During last night's refrigerator fiasco, I quickly reviewed our purchases mentally and came up with the following list, in severity order, of the stupidest:
1) Chevy Venture van
2) Stupid dog
3) This damned refrigerator:










Okay, so back to the flood. I ran upstairs (no small feat, considering that I weigh a metric ton and have been virtually immobile for the past nine months) and got my husband. Together, we discovered that not only was the kitchen flooded (and the water still flowing freely from the fridge), but the water was POURING into the basement from access holes under the kitchen island and in a waterfall down the basement stairs. Standing water filled the basement and was soaking everything from the cat's litter box to the extra twin stroller. I then flew upstairs again and woke up my mother, because being a 30 year old mother of four has in no way altered my knee-jerk I-want-my-mother response to crisis.

Fortunately (I guess this is fortunate), our basement has a history of usually rain-related flooding, so we recently got both a shop vac and a dehumidifier. My poor husband spent over an hour in the basement working with both (once he got the water turned off), while my mother sopped up the kitchen with towels and moved items in the basement out of the path of the deluge and I twittered about uselessly.

Amazingly, nothing seems to be permanently damaged, and for once I have reason to be glad the babies are up half the night - I hate to think how bad it might have gotten if we'd slept through several more hours of the downpour. I guess this is the cosmic reaction to me commenting about leading a fairly dull life lately, so let me clarify for the record that I was merely commenting, not complaining. I need no further trials or tribulations to brighten my life. Thank you for your attention, cosmic forces. Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Snapshot of my living room on a hot day

Allow me to be original and begin my post with a complaint about the ungodly heat. Yes, I'm aware that I haven't posted in, um, 10 months or so (or is it 9? the heat inhibits arithmetic), but I am currently not only housebound but couchbound by a combination of insane heat, human flesh in the form of two newborns, and ennui. I could elaborate on the arrival of the newborns (who weren't even conceived yet last time I posted), but since it would be awfully self-serving to imagine anyone reads this that isn't explicitly directed to it by me, I'll just assume you all know that I recently had twins and have therefore not slept or thought coherently in 27 days now.

Since I also have not really left the house in 27 days, except for food (actually, I haven't much left it since posting in October, thanks to a healthy but still fairly hideous twin pregnancy), I don't have loads of exciting recent adventures to recount. Oh, except for the twins' launch itself, I guess, but I don't feel like writing that up right now. So, to make this reinaugural post slightly longer than one sad paragraph, I will describe my immediate surroundings:

I am, as I have been for months now, on the smaller of the two couches in the living room. If ever I am kidnapped or (more likely, given my not-kidnapper-friendly girth, moodiness, and general lack of hygiene since the twins came) run away from home, my husband can direct the police to my couch so they can make an assprint to match me with when they track me down. I have one twin lying on my arm, as he only wants to sleep or exist at all in constant human contact. The other twin is sprawled out next to me, against my leg - she's more accommodating and will accept this being-held substitute long enough for me to type this. Both are in diapers only, and I am in the same maternity-shirt-and-husband's-shorts fashion statement I wore to bed last night (see what I mean about kidnappers not being likely to target me?). The living room is fairly disheveled - covered in a thick layer of disorganized, mostly broken or at least missing-parts toys - but best of all is my eldest son. He is on the floor at my feet, tethered to my right ankle by a bungee cord that he put around his own neck and licking Sprite out of a plastic cup and barking. Like a dog. Very convincingly, actually. This is his creative-yet-disturbing way of getting attention from a mother in the final stages of terminal sleep deprivation. My other son has escaped with my mother to the grocery store, which I usually hate but which sounds enticing now that I think of its air conditioned atmosphere. We have a window a/c unit in the living room, but it is woefully inadequate to 100 degree, 60% humidity days like today.

Twins are stirring, so this is it for now. Any bets on how long it will be until I post again?