Stolen quiz, stupidly double-spaced (why can't I figure this out?)

TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer? I had to look - my husband just changed it to some weird Matrix-y city scene.

Q. How many televisions you have in your house? 1 in the living room, 1 in our room, 1 in mom's room. That's all that function, although we also have a warehouse of broken electronic crap that surely includes several obsolete televisions.

BIOLOGY
Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed? right

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body? Just children and teeth.

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted? Um, groceries? I don't know, I'm not much with the heavy lifting. The twins, I guess.

Q. Have you ever been knocked out? Not yet!

BULLSHITOLOGY
Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? No, I'm neurotic enough.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to? Kate? That's a tough one. I hate my name, I guess I should have alternatives planned. Laura? Um, Corrine? I'll have to think about it.

Q. What colour do you think looks best on you? blue, maybe

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item? yep

DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100? Sure

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000? Probably.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000? Sure, I hardly blog now!

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000? Probably

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000? I don't think so

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000? If I got to pick the person. :)

DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket? nothing

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good film? I actually do like it. I like anything that I watched with my husband that put him into hysterics - his reflected amusement is hilarious

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house? hardwood

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower? stand. That's a weird question.

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own? 1

LASTOLOGY
Q: Last person who texted you? Friend's husband, wanting to go to the gay bar with us

Q: Last person who called you? Heidi

Q: Person you hugged? Husband

FAVOURITOLOGY
Q: Number? 14

Q: Season? Spring because of flowers

Q: Colour? yellow

CURRENTOLOGY
Q: Missing someone? Yvette

Q: Mood? Lazy, happy

Q: Listening to? Backyardigans

Q: Watching? Also Backyardigans

Q: Worrying about? Sewage and dead mice in my basement. You'd worry too.

Q: Wearing? New tank top and capris. I always swore I'd never wear capris, but that was before cellulite made shorts inadvisable.

RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning? Running, can you believe it?

Q: What can you not wait to do? Finish the semester

Q: Do you smile often? all the time

Q: Are you a friendly person? usually

Mmm, sewage

You know what I don't like? My house. There are things about it that I do like, of course, but in general, it is a pain in my ass. There are holes in ceilings, broken windows, rampant weeds, hideous ancient paneling, weensy closets, and now the latest - some drain thing in the basement is full of, well, worse than crap apparently, and worse than crap is now backing up all over the basement floor. The good news is that the plumber was here really really fast. The bad news is that he is nowhere near free. Also, there is sewage IN MY HOUSE. That is definitely also bad news. Yuck.

I'm vomiting truth

That's a Tivoli quote from this evening. I'm too drunk to do justice to the evening, but too many funny things have happened not to post. First of all, the drive to the bar involved me, sadly sober, listening to no fewer than 5 backseat drivers yelling RIGHT! LEFT! even though I knew where I was going. And my mother went too. Yes, to the gay dance club. It's been a strange evening. I made Sarah cry and now Tivoli is in the fetal position and nachos are the only option. Surely this will make no sense in the morning, but such is 2:30am revelation. And now Sarah is life-coaching Tiv, and I'm trying to listen and transcribe while eating and drunk-spinning, and I love my friends and life seems good despite itself.

Happy birthday, baby

Happy birthday to my sweetheart. You're the best husband and father I can imagine and I'm lucky every day to be with you. I love you!

No twins were drowned in the writing of this post

My mother is back doing her clinical trial, and her 36-hour absence is palpable. My daughter is wearing the pjs she wore to bed Saturday night (it's Monday evening), a raincoat (her choice), and purple sparkly shoes (again, her choice). My four year old is in the same clothes he wore Saturday as well. Only because he continuously shits through his clothes is boy twin in clothes not old enough to walk by themselves. The laundry pile is starting to groan ominously. We're eating take out and leftovers whenever hunger occurs to someone, and there's no apple juice. The living room looks like Legoland in California meets Jackson Pollack, but with more dirt. My car has such unspeakably foul and ancient crusted takeout containers on the passenger side floor that I'm afraid to even tackle it.

Okay, I got the twins in the tub and relocated the laundry heap down a floor. I am sitting outside the bathroom, where my rotten daughter is deliberately and with malice aforethought throwing water onto the floor and yelling NO when I tell her to stop. Defiant pig. I have a classmate babysitting in the morning, and more classmates coming for a study group in the afternoon, so I have to put a veneer of clean on this pit of disorderliness. But first, I have to listen to the 6 year old read his homework, which always feels like doing penance for some unremembered but obviously very serious sin.

What a glorious day

I should give up the doctor idea and become a meteorologist. At least here in Baltimore, they get to wear hilariously ridiculous clothes and just make shit up for a living. Today, for example, was supposed to be rainy and wretched, and it is just beautiful. Not that I'm complaining. It just seems like a good gig, where no one cares that you're wrong all the time.

I spent most of my afternoon at the library at my college. Anyone who knows me well knows that libraries and I do not, as a rule, get along, but I needed a book on integrals (god help me) and the library is part of the college and not a larger library system, so I'm not yet banned from it. The library itself seemed to be on to me and my poor borrowing habits, though, and it took me a ludicrously long time to:

a) find the building itself
b) find the front door (really, how hard is that?)
c) goggle at the warehouse-sized room full of 4000 computers and about 17 books
d) use one of said 4000 computers to find a suitable-looking book
e) go up and down the elevator, hitting several floors more than once, in search of "Stacks," which is where the computer directed me but which is not, anywhere near an elevator, labeled
f) find a book that looked both useful and not hideously painful to read (like this post! ha!)
g) stand in a line longer than the one at Target this morning (who are these dorky undergrads, clogging the college library on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon?).
h) actually study, a little. Anyone have any questions about friction? No?

Wow, that was boring. Boring to live, boring to write, boring to read. But I'm committed to the blog entry now, despite my crazy 4 year old yelling "SIMON FOOTBALL" in the background on a permanent loop, so I'll keep plodding on.

Despite my battle with the library, it's been a good day - I got to go to Target (whee, I love Target) and get a curling iron, among other things (although I think I should have gotten a smaller one, now that I've played with this one), and the guys did yard work while I studied (it's really for the best that I not be around while the boy uses the riding mower, it makes my heart stop). I finished my friend's vampire book, which was hilarious, and I think we're going to the movies tonight, like real live popular culture consumers. My poor girly just fell and bit through her top lip, complete with way too much blood and no small degree of hyperventilation by me, but she seems okay and my own blood pressure should return to normal any time now. I can handle strangers' blood (and even my own, actually), but not my kids'.

Oh, and I had a caramel macchiato and cookie dough for dinner. Life is lovely.

Drunken ramble

Depending on who you talk to and your frame of mind, alcohol is supposed to either relax you or depress/enrage you. I think it takes a special kind of moodiness to have both reactions in one evening. I was trying to be tidy and clean up leftover beer from this weekend's birthday celebration for my husband (FORTY, can you believe it!), so I had a couple (3?) Coronas and was feeling jus' fahn, until the boy. Always the goddamned boy. Lost his fucking backpack. How do you lose a BACKPACK. He used it 25 minutes ago, it's large, the house isn't that big a mess. And it's not just the losing it, it's the atrocious magnified mosquito whine he emits when feeling guilty/angry/frustrated. Of course someone else took it, we all covet the backpack. It couldn't possibly be his complete inability to follow through with one goddamned task or find his ass with both hands and a map.

Whew, I feel better now. As I'm sure you all do. Now is bedtime, that most wonderful time of the day, and my mother is coming back tomorrow from her leisurely retreat being a lab rat for a clinical trial. I already appreciated her, honestly, but now I REALLY do. And now it is spring, almost in earnest, and the green grass always reminds me of when I was pregnant to bursting with this same wretched child, and the season seemed to move so much faster than my own arrested progress toward motherhood. Every time I left the house, I would gape childlike at the tree buds and burgeoning flora, much to my now-husband's amusement. Thinking back to that time and right after, when I held that bewildering new person in my arms, I resolve again to be more patient. I think it would help to lose my hearing.