Moooooo
We have arrived; the trip was uneventful.
Today’s big news? New York has a lot of cows. And we, apparently, like to moo at them. Because that is entertaining no matter how many times we do it.
Also? I need to sign Monkey up with a child talent agency to do some commercials for… water. He asked at one point if I’d brought anything to drink, and I said, “Only water.” He responded. “Water? Water?? I love water!!”
But that may have been a result of the bovine fumes.
All my bags are packed…
… and now I’m gonna have that song stuck in my head all day long. Ugh.
Well, we’re off in a cloud of dust. I won’t promise Facts and Fiction Friday today, but I’ll post something tonight after we arrive. Perhaps a poignant moment on the interstate. Perhaps a tale of the tollbooth guy. You never can tell what wonders lay on the open road!
In my absence, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic. Let’s see. Insane college boyfriend is still mailing me multiple times daily, in spite of my having avoided all of his questions and now–last night–having flat-out stated that I wonder where all this sudden interest is coming from, and I have no time for another correspondence. So: Cultboy, still just mildly insane and nothing more, or marriage about to implode? Discuss.
Anybody seen my facial muscles?
The cavities have been filled for several hours, now, and I am still bearing a frightening resemblance to a stroke victim. I am not even going to tell you what happened when I tried to eat a cookie.
But, loving mother than I am, I marched my deformed self straight to the movie store after my dentist appointment and picked up travel movies for the kids, because I love them so and putting movies on stops them from talking for 400 straight miles.
Now I’d like to walk over and let our neighbors know we’re going to be out of town, but my speech is still a little slurred. And they’d probably think I was drunk or something. So I guess I’ll just sit here and make funny faces for a while longer.
The Packining
Packining is what happens when you simultaneously pack and panic.
Packining is what happens whenever I try to pack for a trip, but particularly when I am trying to pack for a trip that is supposed to start tomorrow morning and I haven’t done the laundry yet and I have one additional child here at Chaos Central and despite my proliferation of lists I remain convinced that I am going to forget to pack something absolutely crucial, like children’s vitamins, and then my children will die because I’m a negligent mother.
Guess what’s happening right now! Go on! Guess!
The idea is, the kids and I will head out first thing tomorrow morning in our traditional style of Embarking On The Trip To Grandma and Grandpa’s House. We have a set routine for this. We get up in the morning and pile into the car, whereupon the small ones start screaming for a video before we’ve even pulled out of the driveway. I churn out one Logical Motherly Reason after another about why we should wait to start the VCR until we’re on the highway. In the meantime, we stop at Dunkin Donuts to get me a coffee of sufficient size to ensure that I will need to make a bathroom stop before we even get out of the state. We also get adequate donut and chocolate milk supplies to make sure that the only thing keeping the children from crashing against the roof of the car is their seatbelts and the various blankets, pillows, and eleventy billion stuffed animals and books tucked in around them.
(Videos! Crap! I haven’t been to the movie store yet!)
The drive is about six and a half hours. Since the addition of the portable VCR to our artillery, the journey is quite bearable. I arrive at my parents’ all stiff and glazed over, but the children have had a marvelous trip and tumble out of the car thrilled to see their grandparents, or, maybe, crying about me turning the movie off. Rather than pay much attention to this, I generally toss out a couple of quick kisses and hugs and then stumble my way into the bathroom to stretch my legs and pee out the last of my coffee.
But before we can do that, I need to pack everything that three high-maintenance humans might require in the wilderness of a house and town much more civilized than our own. Huh. Now that I’ve said that I feel a little silly. But the packining! It does things to my brain, I tell you!
Just for example: we are going to an honest-to-goodness theatre show while we’re there. I am really more excited than I ought to be. But… what to wear? And you understand, I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about the kids. I’m going to be out in public in my hometown, and we may run into people who used to pick on me in junior high. So it is of the utmost importance that my children look as though they just stepped out of an ad for the Gap. Because that’ll show those bitches! Yeah! After all, it’s too late to change myself, but as long as I’m saving money for the kids’ therapy, I may as well utilize them to the fullest extent of dysfunctional pride.
Also: I have to be careful about what I choose to wear around my mother. The last time we were there? There was a long and somewhat confusing exchange about my eyebrows, ending with her assuring me that I was lovely and also telling me I should probably get them professionally shaped rather than doing it on my own. Um, huh? And that was tame. So I need to pick my clothes carefully, you see.
And just because my parents have a washer and dryer doesn’t mean I can avoid packing all kinds of extras, because you just never know with kids. I mean, really. The one trip I don’t pack extras will be the one with projectile puking and state-wide blackout conditions. It’s best to be prepared.
Don’t even get me started on what would happen if I neglected to include one of the many Cherished Objects Without Which The Children Cannot Survive. That class of items is doubly fun because they cannot be packed in advance. I have to scurry around finding them all right before we leave. Good times.
Well, I’d love to chat some more, but I have to get back to running around the house like a chicken with its head cut off. Did I mention that I am also having my first ever cavities filled this afternoon? That was a tour de force of scheduling on my part, don’t you think? Then again, I’ve never experienced packining while drooling, and that may add a whole new dimension to things. Or just make everything a little damp. I’ll let you know.
Purplexed! Purplexed!!
No, I have not forgotten how to spell. I am purplexed!
As in, I am truly, madly, and very deeply in love with the rockalicious Kira, who not only sent me an entire package of goodies for my birthday but included the surest way to my heart: nailpolish! For my toes! Called “purplexed” which is a delightful play on words because it is purple! It is nailpolish geek nirvana, I tell you.
And as soon as I paint my toenails with it (which is happening any moment now, because I have priorities) I am going to tell everyone I run into that I am feeling so very purplexed and then I will titter merrily to myself while they dart away from me, frightened.
Kira, will you marry me? We can register at Target, although I’m looking through the registry choices and I don’t see the one gift we both need listed, anywhere. Hrm.
Anyway. Back to the package! In addition to being purplexed I can also be relaxed, because there’s a whole kit of yummy relaxing Bath and Body stuff. I can relax in the tub while eating the world’s most sinful molasses cookies that Kira baked her own damn self! They are so good that you are hating me just a little, right now, because I have some and you don’t. Also? Homemade jam. Homemade raspberry jam. Which I am totally planning to drip on my purplexed toes as I drool over my toast tomorrow morning.
It was all wrapped up all girly-like with pretty ribbons and doo-dads and pretty things and then packed in paper and then? Topped with plastic bugs. For the kids. Kira and I are soul-mates. You have no idea how much I wish she lived closer. (Or how much I wish she had a penis. Life is cruel this way, sometimes.)
I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy. And purplexed! Teehee!
Dial 1-800-SAVE-MIR
So once upon a time, in a land kinda far away during a time that was… ummm… a while back, I had this boyfriend in college.
We were in loooooooove. Cuz I was all grown up and knew everything, you see. I was 19! An adult! Worldly! And he was really different than all the other men I’d known in my vast experience (which wasn’t very vast or worldly). And by different, of course I mean insane. But I was in loooooooove!
We dated for a couple of years. It was Serious. I assumed we were going to marry. He was local to our university town, and so I got to know his parents pretty well, and became fairly close to his mother. She was very sweet and wonderful. Also insane. But sweet. And totally accepting of me. Kinda. There was that time she took me out to lunch to tell me about the evils of pre-marital sex and how her son and I were needing guidance, and while I tried not to choke on my iced tea I suggested that A) her son wasn’t exactly a blushing virgin before I came along and B) what we did in private really wasn’t her business. She still liked me after that. But she did tell her son I was “too forward.” (Because bringing up sex to your son’s girlfriend is okey dokey as long as she blushes and begs forgiveness, I guess.)
You see, this guy and his mom belong to… ummmm… an extreme religious sect. I won’t say which one. That’s not necessary. But in the beginning of our relationship, when our love was fresh and new, I of course responded to any expression of this rather interesting faith-base with, “You know that’s bullshit, right? No? Well it is.” I’m sensitive, that way. After a while, I became convinced that the only way to adequately talk him out of this nonsense was to better acquaint myself with his beliefs, and somehow in there–perhaps insanity is contagious?–I lost my mind and decided to become One Of Them, myself.
My poor parents. Beside themselves, they were. But yeah, I converted. Not just to Christianity but to a very extreme and cult-like version of Christianity. I’m amazed they (my parents) still speak to me. (I’m still a Christian, but a nice, friendly middle-of-the-road Methodist, now.)
Anyway, things happened. Things like, me planning my life, while this boyfriend felt that a woman’s place in life was to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. It became clear to me that we were not the match I’d previously supposed. I broke up with him… it was messy… his mother tried to talk me out of it (because anything can be worked out, even her son’s addiction to porn I suppose). That was a fun time, yessir! Yeah, baby. Okay. I would like to go through that again as soon as possible, or maybe never. Good times.
For a while, we didn’t speak. I was still friendly with his mom. Then after a while we were able to stay in sporadic touch, friendly catching up and whatnot. That was fine. Then he married someone so completely batshit insane that it made his family look downright normal, and Batshit Crazy Woman correctly surmised that his entire family wished he had married anyone other than her, perhaps even me, and I think she forbid him to ever talk to me again.
For many blissful years, I haven’t heard from him. However, like clockwork, I receive birthday wishes from his mother every year. I think she put my birthday into her computer in 1991 and every year when the date pops up she finds herself composing her to-do list for the day. And it goes something like:
TODAY I MUST:
* call so-and-so
* do laundry
* read the bible for several hours
* curl hair
* send Mir email and attempt once more to save her soul from the flaming pits of hell
I’m touched, really, that someone is so concerned about me. I don’t mean to make light… much. Every year my effusive birthday email arrives, telling me how much she loves and misses me and how God’s plans for my life are still unfolding, etc. At some point last year, she emailed my ex because she’d lost her email addresses and his was the only one he could find. He did give her my address, but briefly (and, I gather, bitterly) filled her in on the divorce situation, and then I was treated to a mid-year missive on the sanctity of marriage and how she just knew that I could work it out if I really prayed enough.
I’d mailed her back, thanking her for her concern, telling her that I would take her suggestions under consideration but that—while I was not going to get into it—I had done what was necessary for the safety of my family. She hadn’t responded, and I’d assumed (hoped?) that I’d finally managed to get myself off her birthday list.
But no! Now, you see, my soul is in grave danger! Necessitating not just a birthday email from her, but a follow-up email from the old boyfriend to whom I haven’t spoken for 9 years or so. When I knew him in college, he’d been raised in this faith but was… hmmmm… I’m not sure how to put it. He wasn’t unreligious, but let’s say his practice was still fairly lax. It seems that years of being married to the Batshit Crazy Woman has caused a renewal of his faith, which I applaud. I mean, if you’re not smart enough to get out when it’s obvious that things are bad and getting worse, finding a way to blame it all on God just seems like good sense.
Anyway, I made the mistake of responding to his email. I didn’t say much; I was pleasant, gave a very brief update, figured we were done. How wrong I was. What came back? A long email about how his faith has grown and strengthened and he and BCW have been through very rough times, abuse even, but with God on his side they’ve found their way through and it’s not easy but blah blah blah, I don’t know, there was more, but it was hard to read while I was smacking my forehead on the desk repeatedly. Oh, but this gem did jump out at me:
“I have come to realize that if I put God first and glorify Him, everything else will fall in place. The storms of human life may rage about me, but I am untouched.”
I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be so edified, especially considering the source. I now see what a disgrace my life has become and how I’ve made baby Jesus weep. I wanted to call up my ex immediately to set things to rights, but naturally first I took off my shoes and went into the kitchen to bake something for him as an offering of my perfect wifeliness (fortified by my renewed commitment to God and Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour).
Also? He’d asked me if I was “still writing” and I’d said yes, some freelance stuff, some blogging, and he asked for the blog address. It was then that I realized what I’d unwittingly stepped into. And once I publish this entry? Well I can’t very well give him the address, now can I? One problem solved.
Sometimes, I wish for salvation. I do. Sometimes I turn heavenward and ask for a sign—anything—to show me I really am on the right path. But I’m fairly certain this is not how salvation arrives… and that it may indeed be my clue that I’m doing just fine.
Huh
Hey, I woke up today and… I don’t feel any different.
Still 33.
Thank God that’s over.
Anyway. If I’d found a glimmer of hope in the possibility of a job I wouldn’t hate, I would be waaaaay too superstitious to talk about it. Especially here. Because I wouldn’t want to jinx it, or anything. So I wouldn’t say anything but it would be on my mind constantly and I’d really be wanting to say something and not holding out for any other reason than my basic Murphy’s Law approach to life, which says that if I breathe a word, I won’t get it. Hypothetically speaking, of course. But if that happened, you know, I sure would appreciate some happy rainbows and fluffy bunnies type thoughts and good karma and all that stuff.
I’m just saying.
So blue-hoo-hoo hoo (we don’t know what to do!)
My children have a special radar that would be precocious and maybe even charming if it didn’t result in their being completely demonic. It works like this: if it is my birthday, or Christmas, or any other day on which it is really, really important to me that they behave… their heads spin the full 360 degrees while they speak in tongues and vomit pea soup.
I’m kidding. Their behavior is so repugnant it often makes me wish they were only vomiting. Because that? Could be cleaned up.
So tonight, our friends arrived, and the fun began. My friend’s daughter is Monkey’s age. Usually–as threesomes of children go–they are a suitable combination, because Chickadee gets another girl to play with but Monkey gets someone his age. And my friend’s daughter (let’s call her Boing) enjoys playing with them both. But tonight, silly, tonight was my birthday and so my children were tuned into that weird make-mama-cry vibe. They tormented Boing, they tormented each other, and they took out every. toy. in. the. house. While screaming. Shrieking, really.
Hope sprung eternal, and my friend and I ordered our pizza and chatted inbetween dispute resolutions and hoped that things would settle down. They didn’t. Well, maybe the kids were just hungry. The food arrived and thus began another session of “Dining With Primates.” Half a package of napkins and quite a lot of whining later, we excused the children from the table so that we could eat in peace. We reasoned that–fortified with nutrition–perhaps they would play together nicely. We were wrong. Interactions had reached a fever pitch when my friend suggested we call them back for cake and ice cream.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “They’re acting like hoodlums, so we are going to reward them with enough sugar to make their heads explode?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” she answered.
Well alrighty, then. So long as we’re clear.
I had made a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. The children so lamented the plainness of my plan that I’d agreed to color the frosting for them. I perused my Wilton coloring gels and settled on “sky blue.” Later tonight I will write a friendly letter to Wilton to let them know that they have misnamed this particular gel colorant. My cake is Cookie Monster blue, as independently verified by myself, my children, and Boing. Very, very blue. Vibrant blue. Blue like the big furry guy himself.
So here was this chocolate cake, with blue frosting, and a half-gallon of Bryer’s chocolate and vanilla patchwork ice cream. Normal children would be delighted. Our children? Well, I was already at my wit’s end. I was cutting cake and my friend was scooping ice cream, and all I could hear was a litany from the ungrateful beasties:
“I want cake! I want ice cream!” (Really?)
“I don’t like cake!” (This from Boing. Weird, but fair enough. But we’d already promised no less than four times to give her only ice cream.)
“I need a fork!”
“I need a spoon!”
“How come I don’t have any yet?”
“Why aren’t we lighting candles and singing happy birthday?”
To this last, I replied that I wasn’t really in a candle and singing kind of mood because I’d been too busy trying to keep them all from killing each other. My grumpiness had reached a zenith. I didn’t feel like cake; I didn’t feel like celebrating. I felt like putting my children to bed and enjoying some silence. Hmph.
Eventually everyone was seated with dessert and for a few blissful seconds, the only sounds were of eating. Ahhh. Then Monkey turned to me and–holding out his empty cup–demanded, “Hey, where’s my drink??”
“In your stomach…?” I ventured.
Perhaps it was one of those “you had to be there” sorts of moments. The tension had been building, and somehow this was the dam break. My friend and I looked at one another and dissolved into hysterics. The children regarded us with curiosity, then puzzlement… and then shrugged and returned to their dessert. We were still giggling and snorting a bit when my friend nudged me and pointed at Monkey. Together we watched as he methodically shoved handfuls of cake into his mouth. His hands were blue. His mouth was blue. His teeth were blue. And his hands worked in perfect concert, right, left, right, left, delivering a steady stream of cake crumbs into his chewing mouth.
We lost it all over again. We laughed so hard, tears squirted out our eyes and ran down our cheeks. Through it all, Monkey’s pace never flagged. He was unbothered by our laughter. When I managed to squeak out, “MONKEY! FORK!” he just smiled a peaceful blue smile my way and replied “No thank you.”
Finally I had to turn away from Monkey or risk peeing in my pants. Whereupon I was just in time to behold Chickadee balancing her whole slab of cake on her fork and attempting to enclose the entire top of it in her mouth. This provoked fresh howls from my friend as I tried to stop laughing long enough to shout, “CHICKADEE! BITES!” Chickadee dropped the cake in surprise, grumping back, “I was taking bites.”
“Um, Mommy?” said Boing to my friend as we were still trying to catch our breaths, “I don’t like cake. Monkey and Chickadee has blue teeth!”
It was about then that I suggested “Revenge of the Frosting” would be an excellent title for a horror film.
Thus draws to a close my Very Blue Birthday. Thanks to all who left me birthday wishes! If any of you would like a slice of cake, come on over!
They say it’s my birthday
(NA NA NA NA NA NA)
Kira has threatened me with bodily harm if I do not share that today is my birthday. So hey! Guess what! Today! is! my! birthday!
I am not so much a fan of the whole birthday thing. There is no traumatic birthday-related drama in my past, or anything. Maybe it goes back to the unfairness of how us summer birthday kids never got to bring cupcakes to school. I don’t know. It’s not a big deal. Birthdays just tend to make me a wee bit melancholy.
So, I got up this morning and opened my presents from the kids. My ex struggled as a gift-giver even when we still liked each other; now that we’ve split things have not improved. (Remember the toaster?) The children gave me a locket in which I can put their pictures. I’ll have to do it, of course, because it did not occur to the ex to actually put pictures in there. I’m having flashbacks to the year he and Chickadeee gave me the stepping-stone kit. Anyway, I could find some teensy weensy pictures of my kids, I guess. Except the necklace? Is a piece of junk. I fully expect it to break the next time I pick it up. Their other gift was the 5th Harry Potter book, which I did actually want (although the ex took the previous four, so now I own just the one).
Then the kids helped me to rip open a box from my mother. It contained–among other things–a gorgeous pair of earrings. It’s hard to be glum when your earlobes are sparkly. That’s a fact. La la la!
We will be heading home to be spoiled by my dad and stepmom this weekend. (I could say that’s my favorite part of my birthday, but then, inevitably, someone would be offended; so let’s just say I’m looking forward to it whole bunches.)
Now, I am trying to eat breakfast and the kids want to know when are we baking caaaaaaaaaaaaaake??? So I guess in a little bit, here, we’ll be baking me a cake. Monkey magnaminously offered up the rocketship pan I used for his last birthday cake. Hee.
Tonight we will have friends over for a gala celebration event. There will be pizza. And cake. Woot. Our children will run around like small maniacs while my friend tries to convince me that this year will be marvelous… or at least, much better in comparison to the crappy year I’ve just had. Or maybe we’ll just resort to the old “when child X is this age I’ll be age Y” sort of thing. You never can tell, with us. We’re wild.
Here’s to 33. May it be… less sucky.
Pasta Kiddiano
No, a bomb did not explode in my kitchen. We had spaghetti for dinner.
I happen to love spaghetti and meatballs. Six years of being a parent has not yet taught me how ill-advised it is to serve this meal to those under the age of ten. Or maybe it has, and I just don’t care, because occasionally we’re going to eat what I like, so there.
My refrigerator and pantry are chock-full of kiddie convenience foods. Why no one has yet revolutionized the spaghetti dinner for children is, quite frankly, a mystery. This is a market begging to be cornered. And let’s be clear; I am not talking Spaghettios, here. I’m talking the whole meal, that a family (read: even adults) can enjoy together. I would relish my meal much more if I didn’t have to watch my children eat theirs, orangutan-style, while I try to eat.
If any of you work for Kraft, listen up! A new line of products could be hitting the shelves, synergistically revolutionizing the traditional spaghetti dinner. Behold: The Pasta KiddianoTM Line!
Pasteurized Processed Crustless French Bread SlicesTM. Do your kids like bread? Of course they do! Do they love the crust? Heck no! Does the crust make a huge mess all over your table while they attempt to eat every molecule of squishy white bready goodness without ingesting any crust? Oh yeah. So here’s your solution. Not only do you get your french bread yumminess in a low-mess version (crust sold separately for discriminating adults), but every slice is exactly the same size. No more bickering over who got the bigger piece!
Pasteurized Processed Bread-Sized Butter SlicesTM. To go with your bread, of course. Again, equal amounts of food per slice, to minimize bickering. Quickly and easily cover the entire surface of the bread with a uniform coat of butter, without spreading! It’s genius!
Spaghetti Roll-UpsTM. Intended for children too young to properly twirl pasta on a fork, this pasta was fashioned after the already popular Fruit Roll-Up concept. (Edited to add: upon further reflection, I realize these are more like Fruit-by-the-Foot. But I prefer the Roll-Up name so it stays. Sue me.) Each Roll-Up cooks to al dente perfection in your boiling water without uncurling. When placed gently upon your child’s plate, he can simply peel off the start of the super-long strand and suck up an entire dinner’s worth of pasta without the troublesome use of hands or silverware.
Shakey Cheese Sleeve SinglesTM. Everyone knows that a standard canister of parmesan cheese ends up with a gigantic parmesan hairball in the center, necessitating heroic measures such as slamming the container on the table repeatedly to free it. And there is really no way to measure the amount of cheese dispensed on each shake, resulting in that tiresome bickering over who got more cheese. Let’s not even get into what happens when the shorted child decides to shake out “just a little bit more.” These Singles come in a small, easy-to-open package which peels back to reveal a soft, round sleeve of parmesan cheese. This ring shape slips easily over the end of the Spaghetti Roll-UpsTM, smoothly dispensing an even dusting of cheese as the pasta is consumed.
Slurp-Ad Tube SaladTM. Love the tidiness of Go-Gurt Yogurt tubes? Then you’ll love this. Green salad is finely chopped and mixed in the no-mess tube with a healthy dollop of ranch dressing. Each tube contains an entire serving of vegetables! This one is especially good for children who tend to just lick the salad dressing and leave the leafies. The perfectly blended tube distribution ensures that even the pickiest eater is consuming actual greens!
Chocolate Chip MeatballsTM. Yeah, that’s disgusting. But it’s the only way they’re gonna eat them, so why not?
Okay, the meatball one need some work. But the rest? Gold, baby.