I am laundry impaired

Usually, my mother does the laundry. This is only one of many reasons I should be grateful for my life and stop bitching already. Today, however, I got a wild hair and decided I would pitch in. Everyone likes a break sometimes, right? And after a year solid of my poor mother doing every load, I thought I'd be magnanimous and do a couple loads. Plus, I love the word magnanimous.

I actually do wash the diapers usually (sometimes. occasionally.), so I did those first. Having drawn first blood against the laundry onslaught (bear w/the bizarrely exagerrated metaphors here, I'm very, very tired), I got cocky. I moved on to adult clothes. And forgot to add detergent.

Ha ha, right? As I moved my wet but not clean clothes to the dryer and realized my mistake, I had enough grace to laugh at myself. Since I'm fairly dangerous these days, mood-wise, I think self-mockery is big of me. I had already moved most of the clothes when I realized I'd forgotten the detergent, and I decided just to go ahead and dry them. It's not like WE poop in our clothes, you know? And there's certainly some detergent residue or something in the washer. And they were already in the dryer. I put in an extra fabric softener sheet, so we should be good, right?

Then I moved on to my next mistake. Having screwed up the adult clothes, I decided the babies would feel left out if I didn't screw up their clothes. I put the clothes in, then reached for the special no-real-soap-in-it baby laundry soap. It looked a little strange when I poured it out, but full speed ahead, man, I can't be bothered to pause when there's a chance I can compound a mistake! After dumping in the giant capful of liquid, I looked at the bottle. Dreft? Um, no. Liquid fabric softener. What the fuck. I swear to god, I've never used liquid fabric softener. I've never even bought liquid fabric softener. And why the hell is it in a pastel-ly girly looking dreft-like container, anyway? Stupid deceptive fabric softener people, dressing their bottles like detergent and secreting it into my basement while I sleep. Once again, I decided to just roll with the mistake - I added a capful of actual dreft for good measure and started the machine. Those are going to be some soft clothes.

Sometimes I consider that I'm missing, a bit, that sense of accomplishment that can come from an out-of-the-house job with regular feedback and performance appraisal. And then something like this happens, and I'm just grateful there isn't anyone to appraise me, after all.

The whiniest post alive

My posts seem to be tapering off. It's not that I don't have anything to say, it's that everything I have to say is whiny. Seems bad enough to inflict that on my long-suffering family, so I've been trying to avoid dumping it on the world at large. I can't tell if I'm really depressed or just hideously sleep deprived. Just when I was thinking this twin thing was manageable, my good sleeper stopped sleeping. So that makes, for those of you who, like me, are having trouble with basic math these days, two little people who don't sleep. At all, really. Parents aren't supposed to have favorites, and I don't, really, but I have a couple least favorites right now. Bet you can guess who they are!

I seem to be full of half-baked ideas. My mental dialogue (shouldn't one, in the ideal, have a mental monologue? I mean, how crazy do I want to be?) is on overdrive, skittering from one thing to another and thinking nothing through. I go from what's to lunch to what's for Christmas to an idea for a twin invention (I think this one might actually be something, can't lose it among the mental chatter) to the nagging list of things that must be done at some point to the imperative NOT to knock my kids' heads together even though they richly deserve it to the growing, desperate need for sleep. It always comes back to sleep. Without sleep, the rest of the noise is just going to have to remain noise. I'm actually losing the power of speech due to exhaustion, so energetic parenting, Christmas preparation, and tackling the to-do list will have to wait until what, 2009? when I'm a little rested.

Aren't you glad I broke silence? Are you not entertained???

I'm thankful for...other adults

I do truly lead a charmed life, a fact that is being brought home to me forcibly at the moment. I have a truckload of children, but I also have an incredibly helpful mother and a very supportive husband right here on site, as well as wonderful friends, so I almost always have assistance. At the moment, however, my mother is taking a well-deserved nap and my husband is at the store, and the four youngest children and I are engaged in a Lord of the Flies style battle for survival. I'm bigger, but they have the numbers advantage. I think I'm toast.

So, I'm thankful for the other adults in my life - thank you!

I suppose I'm really, deep down, also thankful for the children. I got the twins gussied up today for a very amateur photo shoot. See how cute they are? (Note: girly has a disgusting cold, she's not usually quite this pink or puffy).

I have a hot bottom

I was sitting in my usual position like a lump on the couch this morning until I was rudely called away by one of the twins (it was hungry or something, they're so demanding). My 3 year old scooted immediately into my vacated spot and declared, "Mom, I love your hot bottom!" I guess my gigantic ass has found its purpose - as a seat-warmer for the boy.

Don't be a jerk!

The people at M&T Stadium must be my kind of parents, and they definitely have a handle on crowd control. My husband and I took the twins to a Ravens game today, courtesy of free tickets from his company. During the opening ceremonies, or whatever the hoopla before the game is called, there was a long lecture about how to behave ourselves. We were informed that disruptive people would be ejected from the game and that second offenders would lose their season tickets. Then the lecture was summed up with a giant "DON'T BE A JERK," which all of the regular attendees shouted along with the announcer. I so want to ingrain that in my kids, too.

Unfortunately, some of my fellow attendees must have been late to the game and missed the reminder. I took girl twin to the bathroom for a diaper change, and no fewer than 4 people took it upon themselves to tell me that my daughter was not dressed appropriately for the weather. For the record - it was 55 degrees out with no wind or rain, and she was wearing a long-sleeved, long-pants onesie under fleece underalls under a hooded jacket plus socks and slippers and a goddamned blanket. Frostbite was not a danger. Oh, and? NOT YOUR BUSINESS. Seriously, what is wrong with people??? I wish I had had the presence of mind to repeat the Ravens' advice and tell each of them "don't be a jerk." Jerks.

Other than the jerks, I had a wonderful time. I have only recently (read: since I started winning the football pool) become remotely interested in football, and it was a lot of fun sort of understanding the game and feeling the energy of all the insane fans. It was all the more surprising because the day didn't start so auspiciously. We spent an hour looking for parking, during which we drove by "lots" that looked to be temporarily converted industrial driveways with obvious ex-cons (not all that ex, either, from the looks of things) holding handwritten, misspelled cardboard signs advertising parking for only FORTY DOLLARS. Over half a mile from the stadium. In a neighborhood so bad it has been largely responsible for Baltimore's reputation for violence. One of the "lots" had an OPEN FLAME leaping from a rusted tin of some sort directly in front of the cars parked there. I'm guessing the "not responsible for valuables left in cars" warning is implicit here. We parked over a mile in the other direction, but for only ten dollars.

I would like to point out that I had a nearly perfect day and still managed to post almost exclusively about the two things in the whole day that pissed me off. That, my friends, is dedication to one's craft.

My emotion chip is busted

Spike TV reran the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation series while I was on bedrest and maternity leave with my eldest, and I saw every one, plus the movies. This may qualify as another odd-thing-I-love, so technically my overabundance of posts this evening are thematically linked. Anyway, one of my favorite TNG moments is when Data the android's emotion chip breaks, and his emotions go haywire. If you missed it in the movie, I could set up a webcam now and you could see my live reenactment, as I have run the gamut today and am currently laughing to the point of literal tears.

The cause of the hilarity is my five-year-old's sudden realization that getting a big fat man laden with toys down a chimney could be problematic, logistically. The conversation went something like this:

Boy: How does Santa get inside with the toys?
Me: He comes down the chimney.
Boy: Where does the chimney go?
Me: He comes out the fireplace (at this point, my mouth was already starting to twitch its impending betrayal).
Boy - runs to front room to inspect fireplace, is gone easily three full minutes, comes running back: There's no WAY Santa can get in there!

At this point, I glanced at my husband and promptly burst into gales of laughter, complete with tears. Boy proceeded to speculate that Santa may have a "pull up thing" and asked his father repeatedly to show him "where the chimney is in the fireplace."

This is almost certainly not nearly as funny to you all, but I'm still in hysterics. Kids are so dumb.

What weird things do you love?

As I was typing about my love of stationery, I noticed that boy twin's bib is embroidered and realized that I also love embroidery. What other weird things do I love? I decided to try to compile a list. I keep evaluating my mother's sanity (unasked and unwanted though my evaluation may be), so it's time to turn the lens on myself.

I love:
Stationery (not just the stuff itself but its quirky spelling)
Embroidery
Yarn
Batting (I didn't realize just how strong this was until I went through the attic recently and discovered no fewer than 8 bags of the stuff. I could upholster a....hey, a room. A padded room. Well, there's MY next home improvement project.)
Cloth diapers (there is a LONG post on these brewing, I warn you now - best of all, naturally, are embroidered cloth diapers)
Old timey photos
The Importance of Being Earnest, the old film version (we used to watch this and Anne of Green Gables every year at Christmas, so I think of them as Christmas movies, is that weird?)
Pottery (but I never know what to do with it once I have it)
Baskets (ditto the above)
SkeeBall

That's all I can come up with off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more. Maybe it's not a good idea to look too closely inside one's own head. Oh, hey, that's my blog name! I knew that phrase sounded familiar.

I'm going to go knit now and contemplate the possibility that my keel isn't entirely back to even just yet.

ETA: Doing taxes, paying bills, and lace! I knew I was forgetting some!

I love it when bad things happen to bad people

I only truly hate two people in the whole world. Okay, three if you count George Bush, but a) I'm not sure he's really so much a person as an evil creature whose corporeal being has been trapped in a painting in exchange for his immortal soul, and b) mercifully, I don't know him personally. So, I only truly hate two people I actually know. I can't go into details, because I don't want to unduly offend people I DO like who just have a blind spot where one or both of these two blights on humanity are concerned, but one of them has been painting him/herself into a corner in a way that makes me a real believer in karma, and new evidence of said corner-painting has just come to life. And it makes me very, very happy. Schadenfreude, thy name is - well, me.

In other news - my violent mood swings seem to be dying down a bit, and everyone in my household is still alive and speaking to me, so I should begin a public speaking tour on self-control immediately. I actually showered, dressed, and left the house today. Yay me! The tutoring thing isn't working out after all, as the company in question has decided to require teacher's certificates for tutors they pay peanuts (even by teachers' standards), and my education came to an abrupt and almost certainly permanent halt the moment I had my bachelor's degree in my hot little hands. I was never really cut out for education and all the focus it requires. Focus is not my strong suit. What the hell IS my strong suit, anyway? Oh well. So, I'm exploring other avenues. I sent in an application today for a part time job in a soon-to-be-opened stationery shop. I love stationery (which is odd, as I kind of hate writing letters), and the pay is decent, and the job starts after the holidays, so this is promising. Also, the children are not bugging me lately. I'm not sure whether to credit their actual behavior or lower standards on my part, but I'll take it.

Most of all, though, I'm just unseemingly gleeful about the bad-things-to-bad-people development. Take that!

Bite me, AdSense

I have discovered the secret to generating traffic to one's blog, and the secret is...liberally sprinkle the word (?) weffriddles throughout your entries. It's a world gone mad, especially since the mean forum moderators over at weffriddles (that's right, I said it again, come to me, weffriddles searchers) deleted all the help threads and started them from scratch. Mercifully, they did so after I lost interest (read: gave up) in the game. I am happy to report that I have helped TWO people with their weffriddles woes just today. What can I say? I'm a giver.

So, why do I hate AdSense? Because I, like so many others, dream of an income with no work. An income generated from the comfort of my couch, on my own schedule. This is the true American dream, money for nothing (and chicks for free, the voices in my head insist I add, although I am not a lesbian. Not that there's anything wrong with that.). Blogger tells me (lies, all lies) to add AdSense to my blog for fun and profit. What it does not tell me is that my husband accidentally clicked one of the ads on his own blog a year or so ago and got himself banned from AdSense. Himself...and everyone he knows. Or at least me. Because AdSense, my friends, does not know that more than one person can live in the same house. Did YOU know that more than one person can live in the same house? So many people live in this house, in fact, that I can go days without so much as seeing my husband, and I promise I was not complicit in his conspiracy to rob AdSense of $.00001, or whatever the going rate is for a click these days.

This leaves me with no alternative but to find actual gainful employment, as our property taxes conveniently coincide with Christmas. I submitted a letter of interest to an actual publishing company to write an actual book (!), but as I have zero published clips with which to convince them of my brilliance, I'm going to put just the one egg in that basket and the rest into a much more promising part time tutoring gig. Look at me, earning my keep. I've already been online, looking at all the new cloth diapers I'll be able to afford. It's a sickness, really.

While I'm on the topic of writing (I'll have to do a whole separate post on the addictive glory that is cloth diapering), I just realized I really need to wrap this up and work instead on notes for a term paper on women's labor in Latin America and the Caribbean. Don't ask.

My mental health: questionable

I seem to be doing another round with the hormones of fury these past few days. I've battled them before (after my other children were born) and, in retrospect, sort of had my ass kicked, so I feel qualified to self-diagnose the special kind of crazy post-partumness brings. It's sneaky - I truck along, feeling more and more normal, rejoining regular life, fine...fine...fine...oh, shit, I've been run over by a giant hormone truck! And then it's too late. Though never too late for melodrama, clearly.

On the bright side, people all around me are doing stunningly well. Cole just got into nursing school (yay Cole!). Girl twin has rolled over three times in the past 24 hours (and is therefore obviously on her way to genius). Best of all (for me), my husband verbally wrestled the rat bastards at Cavalier to a defeat in which they agreed to write a letter to their assorted collections minions verifying that we do NOT, in fact, owe them money, that they, having actually sent us a flipping refund check, simply have no functioning accountant-type people on staff. Yay, husband! God, this doesn't mean I have to do something unnatural, does it?

That reminds me, I promised Cole I would post this. She and I were (naturally) discussing sex the other day. I said I'm not opposed to it on principle, it's like sky-diving - fine for other people, just not for me. Isn't my husband just the luckiest man alive???

Offer: Weffriddles assistance

I see from my friendly neighborhood statcounter that a lot of people are coming here from a Google search for Weffriddles. Now, if anyone can relate to the desperate red-eyed late night search for weffriddles help, it is I, so I hereby offer to help with levels 1-53. I'm afraid that on level(s) 54, I met my match, and the difficulty outweighed my own obsessive nature (if anyone wants to help me with 54, that is more than welcome!).

So, if you need help, just leave me a comment with the level number and your email address, and I'll get back to you (probably quickly, as I am never far from online - think that has anything to do with the lingering baby weight?). I am nothing if not a giver.

Strange things are afoot at the...dollar store

And for my 3rd post of the day...

So...I went to the dollar store just before it closed, on an emergency laundry basket run (the emergency being that now *I* am doing some laundry - when my mother was doing all of it, another laundry basket was more of a when-I-get-around-to-it shopping item). When I walked into the store, I saw some of the employees clustered around the front door chattering sort of excitedly, but I ignored them and went looking for the baskets. I shopped for a few minutes, then got in the checkout line and started eavesdropping in earnest. When I heard the clerk tell the woman in front of me that the police were on their way, I interrupted to ask her to take it from the top.

Here's the story, as told to me by the dollar store clerk/manager - shortly before I arrived, a man came into the store with a bulge under his coat and was acting odd. The manager followed him to the back of the store and asked if he needed help, and he said that he had a gun and was a police officer (at this point in the story, I asked why on earth a normal person would volunteer that he had a gun and said "I'm wearing underwear, but I didn't tell you that" - I am so amusing to myself). The manager, acting with much more presense of mind than I'd have had for sure, asked him for a badge, which he said he must have left in his car.

The manager went back to the front of the store, presumably to call the police, just as a cop car pulled through the parking lot on patrol. She asked the officer to come in and check out the weird guy, which he did, even patting him down but finding nothing. The cop left (if I were the manager, I'd be thinking 'thanks, cop! for leaving me with a psycho!'), and the weirdo filled a cart with stuff and came to the front. The manager rang up everything and gave him the total, and the guy reached for his wallet, couldn't find it, and started yelling that the cop had stolen it. He got loud and aggressive with the manager, so she called 911 and he fled.

By the time I heard this story, the manager had been waiting over 10 minutes for the police, and the guy was who knows where. Perhaps the police were busy fining errant trash bags. All I know is that I skittered back to my car with as much haste and alertness as I could muster, and that I am not going to the dollar store at night any more.

The end.

I am the best stepmother ever

According to my stepdaughter, shown here, who also said "I love you from here to the sun and back again."

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I had just given her the large super-cool homemade (not by me) dollhouse shown in the background of this picture.

I'm on a roll with the children. Yesterday, I asked the 5 year old, also shown here, what he would wish for if he could have anything at all. His answer? "I don't need anything but you to be happy." I actually teared up.

More recent pictures, since I finally remembered to upload them:

Girl twin, aka the prettiest pretty princess, age 4 months:











Boy twin, sporting his fancy diaper and tattooed stomach:















3 year old, aspiring soccer star:














The 7 year old seems to have avoided the camera this round, I'll be sure to target him for next time. Back later with a story of my evening's adventure to the dollar store - it was more eventful than I had anticipated.

Who, exactly, is ANTI-health

Here's some more insight into my own singular screwiness (or maybe I'm not alone in this after all) - one of my small but profound joys is opening a new tube of toothpaste. I prolong the excitement for as long as possible, squeezing out the last smidge of old toothpaste so I can feel like I really earned the new tube. Okay, this sounds even nuttier written out, so I'm going to move on.

This morning was a new toothpaste morning. Not only did I get to open a new tube, but it was even a new kind of toothpaste, since I buy what's on sale and refuse to get brand loyal about something we spit out. Today's variety? Crest Pro-Health.

As I brushed (and I must say, there's something gritty in this paste that makes your teeth feel dentist fresh), I mulled over the name and the subtext of calling one's product or politics "pro" anything. It has always annoyed me that the anti-abortion faction calls themselves "pro-life." Rendering the rest of us, I suppose, anti-life. I don't know about the rest of you choicers, but I rarely go about like godzilla, wiping out cities and civilizations (though god knows, it sounds appealing some days, specifically when I am stuck behind someone going TWENTY-FIVE on the freeway, but I digress). I am not anti-life, I am anti-you-not-minding-your-own-business. So there.

A-HA! you thought this was about toothpaste, but it has morphed into still more politics. Even I'm surprised this time, I really did think I was writing about toothpaste. I appear to be still in the getting-to-know-you phase with myself. How troubling.

Wow, this is a boring post

What did I find to write about before the election? I'm just sure I'm capable of other thoughts than politics and other emotions than jubilation, but it's hard to remember what, exactly. Things in my own life carry on as normal, hardly note-worthy - two kids on antibiotics, one twin not sleeping, far too much sugar being consumed by me. We went out of town for my husband's reunion and I wore the shirt my fabulous friend Cole got me and it was just right, and we had a lot of fun. I didn't think someone else's reunion could be all that entertaining, but I met another wife who was a complete riot and just glommed onto her all night. This week, we went out to dinner with another couple, then the next night had a friend over for dinner, and tonight I'm meeting friends for drinks with no children. It's been a year now since I got pregnant with the twins, and I'd nearly forgotten the ordinary pleasures and irritations of regular life.

I've started two other posts, but both have fizzled before launch. I don't seem to have much focus. I'm happy but vague, and obviously not incredibly interesting. I have to post something, though, or I'll get in a rut, and I don't want to deprive you all of this level of excitement.

Did I say I was done blogging about politics?

Whoops, my bad.

I was up until 1 watching returns, then got up from 4-5 with a variety of urine-soaked children (when it pees, it pours) and watched the returns again. I'm so hopeful about the senate I could wet myself and make it a pee trifecta. They just called Montana for the Democrats and Virginia's just waiting on a recount. Yay!

AND, Rumsfield resigned, and Bush's rambling inarticulate press conference had undertones of intentions to cooperate with the new legislature. I'd better check the calendar, I had no IDEA it was my birthday.

One more rant, before the election is over

I wish I'd found this article sooner, although who knows what good it would have done me. It's long, it's slanted, it's written colloquially, but it's still worth reading. It gives a lot of information about how badly Congress has been failing to fulfill its obligations these past six years, and a lot of reasons why it has gone well beyond business as usual. I don't see how anyone really looking at the evidence here (overlook the tone if you can and just look at the verifiable facts contained within) can say that both political parties are the same. This particular batch of Republicans is unique, and not in a good way.

One brief excerpt, although I really do encourage everyone to read the whole thing:

[The ranking minority member of the Government Reform Committee has produced a] lengthy document detailing all of the wrongdoing by the Bush administration that should have been investigated -- and would have been, in any other era. The litany of fishy behavior left uninvestigated in the Bush years includes the manipulation of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees, the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA status, the award of Halliburton contracts, the White House response to Katrina, secret NSA wiretaps, Dick Cheney's energy task force, the withholding of Medicare cost estimates, the administration's politicization of science, contract abuses at Homeland Security and lobbyist influence at the EPA.

This is not to say that I believe there are no good Republicans - I think there are. Unfortunately, I believe that the good ones have been just as marginalized by this administration and this Congress as the Democrats and Independents (and the American people, for that matter). I am writing this as a form of virtual nail-biting while I wait for election results, hoping that a lot of good conservative Americans looked at the facts of the past six years and voted against party and in favor of democracy.

I promise, I will try very hard to stop now, and return to stories about my children and the special brand of idiot that I encounter every time I leave the house (I think I emit a special idiot-attracting phermone). Thank you all for your patience (especially you, Meg!).

Please Vote!

I have a bunch of life-update posts in my head - my weekend (good), boy baby's health (better), the joy of taking 4 children to a 2 hour doctor appointment (predictably, none). I have new thoughts about my personal lack of life-direction and on parenting and on knitting (okay, that last one is slightly less deep, yet infintely more entertaining to me). However, it is the night before election, and all I'm really feeling is a fervent fearful hope.

I've been making some get-out-the-vote type calls for MoveOn.org. It's nice to feel like maybe I'm helping a little, and it's interesting to discover regional differences. In Ohio, they listen before they hang up on you. In Pennsylvania, they curse at you before they hang up on you. In Florida, they are 95, named Bessie, and talk your ear off until you're ready to hang up on them. I don't know that I really affected anyone I spoke with in any way, but one thing that encouraged me is that everyone I spoke with said they were planning to vote.

The US typically has abysmal voter turnout. If everyone voted, and the consensus was that people I loathe are the best ones to run the country, I would at least have the comfort of knowing the bastards were duly elected by the actual people. In 2002, only 39.7 of eligible voters even bothered (according to these guys), which means all the egregious abuses of power in the past 4 years weren't even really sanctioned by most of us. So, while I would love to say "vote for change!" or even "vote for anyone who will not just do whatever Bush wants!" I will instead simply say "vote." Please, please vote.

This midterm election is one of the most important in my lifetime. Traditionally, the whole checks and balances thing between governmental branches works pretty well, because a) the sitting President's party usually takes a hit during midterms and b) the Executive branch usually opts to observe existing laws. This is a different day and age on both counts - the Republicans have had control of Congress through both Bush administrations, and the Bush adminstration has, as a result, become really bold in its disregard for the law. For the government to function as it's designed, we really need to have a better leash on the Executive, and tomorrow's our chance.

There are two schools of thought about how to vote (if not more - this is likely a gross oversimplification). One school votes for the candidate whose platform they support most, even if that candidate is an unelectable dark horse. The other votes not so much for one candidate as against another. As is my Piscean way, I ride the fence, usually following school B but wishing for two votes so I could devote one to the poor underdogs who I would love to see in office. This year, I'll be sticking mostly with Plan B, so great is my hope for change and fear/loathing of the status quo.

I have been trying to write this for over an hour, through interruptions that only small children can imagine and through the fog of my own beleagured brain. I wish once more for eloquence and a bigger podium. I wish, above all, that I had valium or at least some hard liquor to get me through the next 24 hours. Despite myself, I have allowed hope to creep in, and I fear the letdown I'll feel if I wake up Wednesday to the prospect of two more years of unchecked dictatorial Presidential rule.

Anatomy of a breakdown

I've been trying to hold it together, honestly. I strive for an extra level of self-awareness to compensate for the wacky post partum and breastfeeding hormones that are trying to kill me. I try to compensate when I feel like clubbing baby animals or hiding in the closet or driving into walls, and so far, all animals, closets, and cars are accounted for, so I can't be doing too badly, right?

Just this week, I have had to deal with several sick children, court for stupid environmental fines, and my 5 year old hating school. Yes, I know, there are many worse things happening to many (most) people in the world, but through the lens of my looming post partum nuttiness, this has all felt really overwhelming. But! Until today, I've been carrying on, however gracelessly. Now I believe I have met my Waterloo in the form of my own fat.

After twin B's doctor appointment this morning (more on that later if I ever tire of whining about my own sorry self), I ran out to Target to make one last attempt to find an outfit for my husband's reunion. My friend Cole already found a lovely shirt, but I'm apparently looking for an outfit with magical properties that will transform me into my own mental self-image, which seems to be stuck around age 23 and size 8.

So, I went shopping. I tried on much and liked little. I found a suitably non-hideous skirt, but by then my three year old had tired of the fitting room, so I grabbed a shirt off the rack without trying it on. I came home and tried everything on, and it all fits and feels good, and doesn't even look terrible in the mirror. But. Then. I couldn't convince #4 to take my picture, and I don't remember how to do the time-delay self-portrait thing, so I put the camera on video and then hustled to get in front of it, then back to turn it off. And oh my god, the horror. Not only do I look like a badly upholstered piece of furniture, but I positively WADDLE.

I'm going to change #3's name to Gilbert and just eat fried chicken until my heart gives out. And I don't even like fried chicken. Halloween candy, on the other hand...

Okay, now that that embarassing outpouring of self-pity is behind me, an update on the aforementioned challenges of the week.

Environmental fine hearing - This was surprisingly entertaining. The hearing itself was so-so - I got the fines reduced but not eliminated, but at least the judge and cop were pleasant. The entertainment came in the form of the other people waiting for hearings. While we waited, we compared notes on our fines. One woman explained what she had learned from a city employee, that ignorance of the law does not excuse breaking the law. Logical enough, right? Another woman, who was already quite animated by this point in the discussion, did not appreciate being thusly enlightened. Her response (and imagine, if you will, a rather large woman, encased in chenille and velvet, with 3" long green fingernails, a cluster of hairs erupting from a mole next to her mouth, and gold lipstick), accompanied by wild gesticulation, was "you ain't gonna call ME ignorant, okay, just because, okay, I didn't KNOW, okay, what the law was."

Okay.

I had to actually turn my head away and do the fake cough thing to keep from bursting into gales of laughter or replying that the only time you may call me ignorant is when I don't know something. I wish I could have recorded the whole exchange, it was absolutely hilarious.

Plague - We are all (minus my husband, who daily flees the house like the coward breadwinner he is, and therefore gets regular doses of germ-free air) suffering to some degree from a cold. I haven't bothered mentioning it, because a) I've been in too much of a funk to post much, and b) after the strep and rotavirus of 2 weeks ago, a cold barely merits my attention. Until today, when #6 woke up gasping for breath, coughing hoarsely, and wheezing. We went through this with #4 when he was little, so it's a little less alarming than it would otherwise be, but generally speaking, I like my children breathing, so it's still a bit nerve-wracking. I took him to the doctor, but the tricky part of this kind of thing is that it always gets worse in the evening, after the doctor is gone, so we may end up in the ER. Never a good time.

So, things here sort of low-grade suck, and tomorrow we're off to Delaware for the reunion, if #6 is well enough and I'm not either naked or in an asylum (or naked at an asylum). I know you'll miss me and my rays of sunshine!

Walking in the shoes of an addict

Not that I didn't believe in addiction before, but I have now encountered a force more powerful and compelling than blogging, eating well, paying attention to my children, obsessing about election fraud, even sleeping. If you value your sanity and your free time, do NOT click this link:


http://www.weffriddles.com

Curses to you, developers of weffriddles and enablers Megan and Keith. Curses.


In other news - if I can tear myself away from the internet-crack that is weffriddles, I have to go to court in the morning to contest our most recent batch of environmental fines. I'm pretty nervous about it, as I'm guessing that shouting "the cops aren't a homeowner's association, how about they stop harassing me and work on fighting actual crime" will not get me off the hook for the fines.

And in case I wasn't bitter enough about the Baltimore PD, today when I picked up my son from school, there was a police car in the usual pile-up of double-parked assholes in front of the school. I thought, "Oh, good! The cops are finally doing something about this street being totally blocked twice a day for 30 minutes!" But no, as it turns out, the cop was himself picking up a child, and the police car was just sitting there like the others, hazards on, blocking traffic, while he did so. Must be nice to be above the law!

Back to the riddles...

ETA: Lest you think this time has been totally wasted, I'm up to level 43. I fucking rock.