Fourth Installment: Friday Facts and Fiction
Welcome again to another edition of Friday Facts and Fiction, where I address your questions by telling the truth, lying pathologically, or sometimes both. This is not altogether different than my blog entries in general, but I do address your questions in some way…. Anyway. Onward!
Kym asks many things:
… how did my pits smell?
Well, I did remember to put deodorant on this morning, but it’s been a long day…. (Truth.)
… am I nervous about my surgery?
No. (Fiction.) Yes. (Fact.) Shut up.
… what am I most nervous about?
Hospital food. (Fiction.) Want it straight up? Dying. That’s my big full-out-uncontrolled-anxiety fear, though not a very realistic one I guess. It’s something I can’t help considering when undergoing something like this… not because it would be such a tragedy to me (I mean, I wouldn’t know, right?) but because the thought of my kids growing up without me (read: being raised by the ex) terrifies me. The more realistic fear is of being alone and miserable when I get out of the hospital. Most of the time I am fine with being single. Times like this? I feel very sorry for myself. (Truth; I’m pitiful.)
… whatever happend with my thoughts about going back to school? Where do I stand with that?
Already did it. I’m a lawyer now. (Fiction, though that really would’ve come in handy during the divorce….)
Kym was privvy to my Big Plan over the winter, when I decided to go back to school to become a radiologic technologist. The program is two years of intense study, followed by licensure and then, decent money, normal hours, and high employability. It all sounded good to me. Unfortunately, the only program in my state is over an hour away, I missed the deadline for 2004 and was told I was “welcome to apply for 2005,” and due to the way my post-divorce arrangements came out, waiting another year made it virtually impossible, financially. Now there are ways I could make it work (thanks, Dad), but I’m not sure I’m willing to wait three years for my new career. I’m exploring other avenues (not that any of them have led anywhere, yet, but who knows). And to be perfectly honest, there is a very indignant, snobby portion of my brain insisting “I already have plenty of degrees!” (Fact.)
Milady Zoot asks:
… did I remember deodorant?
Yep, see above. For all the good it did me. (Fact, ambiguous though it may be.)
… how long have I ever gone without wearing deodorant?
Once, I went for, like, 11 years! (Fact!!) But after that, puberty hit, and I’ve worn it every day since. (Gotcha.) I hope you enjoyed your hippy phase, but I have always been freakishly fastidious about personal hygiene, because I just find the alternative too scary. It’s one of the reasons I could never go on Survivor. By the third day I’d be a quivering heap, sobbing for antibacterial soap.
… what’s the last item of clothing I bought?
A red leather cat suit. Meow! (Fiction; I know you’re all stunned.) Okay, just in case you didn’t think I was pitiful from my answer to Kym, above, here’s your chance. I last bought… a package of white socks. Hanes. So, who wants to come clubbing with me? (Boring Fact.)
The ever-sex-crazed (what up with that, girl??) Debby wants to know:
… have I ever had sex in a car?
Could you be more specific… like, type of car, number of partners? (You know, my Dad hasn’t commented on here in a while. This sort of thing may be why.) Okay, sorry, nope. (Fact.)
… what’s my favorite kind of cereal?
Grape Nuts. (Fiction!! God, I want to vomit just typing it. Whose bright idea was it to market dirt-flavored gravel as food???) Hmmmm. Honestly I love most cereals. I’m Seinfeldian, that way. Oddly enough, one of my favorites right now is Grape Nut Os, which taste nothing like their predecessor. (Fact.)
… favorite holiday?
Don’t even feel like coming up with an interesting lie for this one. It’s Christmas, hands down. That’s what happens when a little Jewish girl grows up and converts, I guess. (Fact.)
… what KIND of deodorant do I use?
Teen Spirit, of course! (Fiction, but I have been waiting years to tell someone that!) I am currently using Arrid Total in “cool shower” scent. I switch between that and Secret Platinum Unscented depending on what’s on sale and what coupons I have. (Fact, and now you can be just like me, right down to the armpits! Yay!)
Dear Chewie asks:
… do I wear make-up much?
Only when I’m awake. (Fiction.) I have never been much for make-up. I wear it–lightly–for special occasions, only, and no matter how many Mary Kay parties I go to or how many times I’m roped into someone “doing my face,” I just can’t get into smearing all that stuff everywhere. I mean, yeah, sometimes I like the way it looks, but it seems like too much trouble. (Fact.)
… do I have many people to really trust?
Trust no one. Did you learn nothing from The X-Files, woman??? (Fiction.) I trust different people for different things, you know? But I am blessed right now. I may still be lousy at asking for help, but it is always there when I need it. (Fact.)
… do I ever wear a thong?
Nah. I never wear underwear. (Fiction! Can you imagine me with my clean issues, going commando? Frightening.) I do wear thongs when necessary to eliminate panty lines. I hate them. Everyone says, if you find the right one it’s nice and comfy; as a result, I now own about 8 different thongs, none of which I like. And why is it that the less fabric panties contain, the more expensive they are? Sorry, that’s another rant for another day…. (Fact.)
And last but certainly not least, Jennifer asks:
… do I have a crush on anyone?
Someone asked this on a previous Friday (Debby?), and I said no. Then I thought about it some more and decided that was pitiful, so I am now making a more concerted effort to find men to drool over. (Fact? Fiction? Even I’m not sure, on this one.)
… how long do I take to get ready to go somewhere?
About three hours. (Fiction!) Hmmm. From shower to out-the-door, including blow-drying my hair, about 50 minutes if I’m trying to look nice. But I don’t wash my hair every day, and I don’t shave my legs every day, and I’m rarely trying to look anything other than dressed, so there’s a lot of variables involved. My skills in this area aren’t put to the test very often, ya know. (Fact.)
… what do my kids call me?
Her Royal Majesty Queen Mother. (Fiction, but maybe I’ll work on that one….) They call me Mama, although if the whining gets bad it sounds more like “Moooooooooooooooooomaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!” Also, Chickadee is at that adorable age when she thinks it’s hilarious to call me by my first name in the stern voice of a librarian who just sucked some helium, so that’s an interesting twist on things…. (Fact. How do I make her stop??)
Okay, that concludes this week’s installment. As always, thanks for playing! Please don’t let any of the information herein bother you. Discontinue use if rash occurs.
It’s Official! It’s Official!
First Official Announcement: It is now Summer. I know “they” say Summer commences on June 20th (21st??), but “they” (who are they? uppity bastards) are wrong. Summer has begun when I trip the circuit to my bedroom by running both the air conditioner and my hair dryer at the same time. This auspicious event occurs just once every year, at the start of Summer. After that, I reset the circuit, say “duhhhhhhhhh” a couple of times, and remember not to do it again. Until next Summer.
Second Official Announcement: I would lose my head if it was not attached. I was just over at Lee’s and got about halfway through his WILF list before realizing omigosh it’s Friday already!!! (This brain blip may be partially due to this morning’s power outage, but that’s stretching matters.) (Yes, Lee, I will now always think of you when I use the phrase “due to.”) So if anyone wants to leave me Fun Friday Fact and Fiction queries, g’head, and I’ll tend to them tonight. Right now I have to go smell my armpits to see if I remembered to put deodorant on this morning….
Packing Panic
(Or, “How To Make Something Really Simple Incredibly Complicated.”)
When I was married, packing the kids for a visit to the in-laws meant locating an appropriate piece of luggage and filling it with clothes and some other stuff. It might’ve taken half an hour, tops.
Now that I’m divorced, packing the kids for a visit to the ex-laws means hyperventilating and thinking about it and hyperventilating some more and weighing the options and finally, arriving at the day before the trip with nothing packed.
First Issue: Quality. If I pack their older, “play” clothes, I will be bad-mouthed as the terrible mother who doesn’t dress them properly. If I pack their newer, nicer clothes, they will come back ruined (“Well, Daddy lets us use permanent markers!”). Or not come back at all. Lord knows that Daddy may come through with rice krispie treats and chocolate milk for breakfast, but he didn’t know which clothes belonged to our children when he still lived with them. Now? Anything I pack for Chickadee stands a 50/50 chance of going home with her cousin of the same age unless I charge her with the responsibility of tracking her stuff. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that at 6 she should have to be policing her clothes.
Second Issue: Quantity. My ex’s mother is a laundry addict. So the ex doesn’t ask for many outfits. But as near as I can tell, all laundry is washed at her house in hot water, dried on nuclear heat. Does packing more clothes mean less lost to the laundry? Or merely more items laundered at the House of Hot and ruined? I just don’t know.
Third Issue: Coordination. I know I need to just let go on some things. It should not make me want to climb out of my skin and howl at the moon to know that when I carefully fold matching articles of clothing into cute little packages, the ex can still pluck an orange striped shirt and red plaid pants and pair them up. I have to hope that with the help of the other adults around on this trip, this may not happen. Or that everyone will have the good sense to recognize that if it does, it is not my fault. But, well, everything is my fault as far as this group is concerned, so why not one more thing to obsess on, right?
Fourth Issue: Health and Safety. Theoretically, the ex has his own Epi Pens, sunhats, sunblock, vitamins, medications, etc. But if I pack mine in the suitcase, at least I know these things are making it on the trip. On the other hand, it’s his job to remember this stuff on his own, or figure it out. (After losing Monkey’s Epi Pen just once, I have to say he’s gotten better about these things.)
Fifth Issue: Lovies. Fun Daddy now has more toys at his house than we have here. But if I insist that only items from his place make the trip, there is nothing of everyday there with them. Conversely, if I let them take their “regular” lovies, they may be lost.
Sixth Issue: My babies should not be allowed to spend eight entire days away from me in a discipline-free vacuum amongst people who think I’m pond scum. But what I do or do not pack doesn’t influence that one, I guess. If not for the fact that I will spending a good portion of their absence in the hospital (preferably in a morphine haze), I might have to spend the week having a prolonged we-miss-our-kids pity party with Zoot.
Party in my pants!
Would you like to know how much five days of cream for “elevated white blood cells in the cervical mucus” costs after insurance? Of course you would!
$20.00. For five days. Though technically, I will only use it for four days, as yesterday I gave up without it.
So that’s $5.00/day. Damn. This had better be the most fantabulous thing I’ve ever put inside my… uh… well, you know. (I think I already said vagina and vaginal enough times, yesterday, to keep the frightening Google hits coming for quite some time.)
Truly, this is the most action I’ve seen in a long time. Between this and the anticipation of that twinpack of medicated douches, well, I’m all aflutter! Or is that atwitter? Afuckit.
This is my brain
Stolen from Oliquig, found here. This is apropos of nothing at all except it seemed kinda cool and I am still recuperating from yesterday’s adventure, plus I have a ton of stuff I should be doing other than blogging, today.
(Like, say, doin’ the ‘ku.)
My brain-ed-ness (I don’t even care if that’s not a word, so there) profile:
Mir, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs. Because of your “centrist” tendencies, the distinctions between various types of brain usage are somewhat blurred.
Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor, unless it requires total spontaneity and ability to improvise, your weaker traits. However, you are far from rigid or overcontrolled. You possess a degree of individuality, perceptiveness, and trust in your intuition to function at much more sophisticated levels than most.
Having given sufficient attention to detail, you can readily perceive the larger aspects and implications of a situation or of learning. You are functional and practical, but can blend abstraction and theory into your framework readily.
The equivalence of your auditory and visual learning orientation gives you two equally effective sensory input systems, each with distinctive features. You can process both unidimensionally and multidimen- sionally with equal facility. When needed, you sequence material while at other times you “intake it all” and store it for processing later.
Your natural ability to use your senses is also synthesized in your way of learning. You can be reflective in your approach, absorbing material in a non-aggressive manner, and at other times voracious in seeking out stimulation and experience.
Overall you tend to be somewhat more critical of yourself than is necessary and avoid enjoying life too much because of a sense of duty (*my note: crap, they’ve met The Toad! He ratted me out!). You feel somewhat constrained and tend to sometimes restrict your expressiveness. In any given situation, you will opt for the rational, and learning of almost any type should be easy for you. You might need certain ideas explained to you in order to fit them into your scheme of things, but you’re at least open to that!
Mir and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
(With my apologies to Judith Viorst. And my apologies to everyone who reads me, because I really have turned into quite the whiner of late.)
Ladies, do you ever have that… not-so-fresh feeling? (Guys, take this as your cue to exit now if you are squeamish.)
Alright. I thought last night was bad. Ha. Once again, I have forgotten that if I assume there is nowhere to go but up, I merely haven’t spent enough time envisioning down.
We got off to a slow start today. Just when I thought we were all just tired, drained, and cranky… my shower was interrupted by “Mama, can you clean my undies?” Call it an aftershock, if you will. (That’s the most pleasant-sounding thing I could think of to call it.) Finally we were all up, cleansed, and clothed… and it was time to head to Daddy’s for the afternoon. (Wednesday isn’t his regular afternoon, but I had a doctor’s appointment, plus it’s his birthday.)
By the way… martyr or damn fine human? You decide: despite being the purveyor of the Toaster of Cluelessness, the ex is receiving this little slice of geekdom from his children for his birthday today. (Don’t worry; we got it on clearance at Target.)
Anyway. I dropped the kids and headed off to my appointment; number 36, I believe, in the series. I checked in. I sat in the waiting room. A nurse called me back. She asked me a battery of questions, but didn’t appear to be paying much attention to the answers. So when she’d finished her list of medication questions and reiterated, “So you’re not taking any type of medication at all?” I couldn’t stop myself from casually responding, “Nope, nothing other than cocaine.” It took her a minute. A very long, worrisome minute. Then she looked so panicked I felt sorry for her, and had to confess that I was just kidding.
I was parked in an exam room and instructed to take off my clothes and don the latest in paper fashion. I did. I sat, and sat, and sat some more. I read an entire copy of Allure. About an hour later, my doctor came in, apologizing for the delay. She recapped our last visit–and this time remembered that I’m having surgery, woohoo–and said today was just for a quick pre-op physical to make sure I was healthy enough for surgery. Okay then. She listened to my lungs and heart, felt my thyroid, did a quick breast check, and then directed me to the stirrups.
Bear in mind, at this point, I’ve had exactly one piece of toast since last night’s ill-fated Bologna Sandwich of Doom. I’m tired. I’m cranky. I’m wearing overgrown paper towels. “Again??” I blurted out, regarding the stirrups with horror. She apologized, but said they have to check for infection pre-op; so yes, again. I slid down, grumbling. She disappeared up to the elbow and I hastily (and probably loudly) reminded her again that I’d had a cyst rupture on Sunday, so please don’t press too hard. No problem, she said. And she only poked me until I wanted to scream, not until I wanted to vomit, so I suppose she was true to her word.
Eventually all foreign objects were removed from my much-beleaguered nether regions, and she left me to dress while she checked out my swab under the microscope. “Have fun!” I offered as she headed out the door. I used my wadded-up paper gown to scrape the three pounds of Artificial Slime away, then redressed. And waited. And waited. And then the doctor came back, and said “Good news. You don’t have bacterial vaginosis.” But the thing is, she didn’t look all that happy.
“Um… I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming…?” I hedged. Well, she explained, my cervical mucus was showing an elevated white blood cell count, which could indicate an infection of some kind. I very much wanted to offer my own hypothesis, which is that perhaps my cervix is just all kinds of pissed off at having been poked and prodded a gazillion times in the last month, and what with the ruptured cyst and the stomach bug, calling in a few extra warrior cells just seemed like common sense. But I didn’t. Instead I asked, “So what do we do now?” and she started to write me a prescription for some sort of vaginal cream, saying that certainly I wouldn’t mind using this cream for a few days.
“Sure!” I said. “Heck, lord knows I’m gonna need a warm-up for Sunday’s marathon of magnesium citrate, enemas, and medicated douches! A little vaginal cream will just help get me in the mood! And then I’ll be all ready for you to slice me open on Monday!” She stopped writing and looked up. I offered a weak smile. She started to laugh, and told me I’ve got “quite a sense of humor.”
What a relief. I’ll be the funny lady in the OR, having a panic attack, but with the intestines and vaginal canal clean enough to eat off of. That is so reassuring.
She gave me the prescription, went over my oh-so-fun “cleaning” regimen, again, to make sure I understood what all was required, and then sent me over to the lab for bloodwork.
I checked in. I sat in the waiting room. They called my name, and looked over my paperwork, and told me to come back on Friday, unless I wanted to wear a little plastic bracelet for five days. I did my best impression of a deer in the headlights and she explained that part of my bloodwork was to be a type and cross-check, after which I would need to wear a bracelet until surgery stating my information.
“But, if I come back on Friday, I still have to spend my whole weekend wearing a paper bracelet with all my medical info?”
“Plastic bracelet,” she corrected.
“Fine, plastic. You can’t just give me the bracelet to put on on Monday morning?”
“Oh no, I’m sorry, hospital policy states that we must attach it ourselves.”
Fine. I’ll go back Friday. And I’ll proudly go to church on Sunday in all of my O+/Allergy to E-mycin glory, I suppose.
By this time, I’ve been at the doctor’s for an hour and a half. I am still tired, and cranky, and hungry… and now, also sore from being manhandled. Most of my precious kid-free time has elapsed, but I need to go to the store. For. Prescription. Vaginal. Cream.
Alrighty. Target is out; I go there for prescriptions, normally, and the pharmacist is a nice man intimately acquainted with the children’s and my prescription needs. If I bring my prescription there, I am setting myself up for a life without Target, and that’s just wrong. Walmart will do. They’re so disorganized no one will even notice me. Besides, that way I can pick up all my other embarrassing supplies at the same time, and be done with it. So it’s off to Walmart, where I drop off my prescription and begin loading up my cart.
First: clear sodas and sports drinks. Check. Pull-Ups for the Monkey (“I wanna pee in my pants when I’m sleeping and you can’t stop me!”). Check. And then… a voice from above. A page loud enough to be heard throughout all 277 acres of the Super Walmart, calling me back to the pharmacy. Well, that can’t be good.
And it wasn’t. Sorry, we don’t have any. We can order it, and you can come back tomorrow. Oh, but that would violate the fill-the-prescription-and-not-show-my-face-in-that-store-again-for-40-days-at-a-minimum rule, so no thank you. I take my prescription back and shove it in my pocket. Fine. Well, I’m here, I’ll buy all the other stuff, at least.
I swing my cart over to Health and Beauty, trying to act casual. A bag of pads, no problem. The Pepto I’d really wished I had last night, easy peasy. A quick check to make sure no one is looking… and… magnesium citrate (“pleasing lemony flavor!” Who the hell do they think they’re kidding??). Still no one around… store brand enemas. Now it’s a party. Hooboy. Okay, all that’s left is one medicated douche.
Only, first of all, you cannot buy one douche. You can buy 2, or 4. But not just one. Apparently it is going to be such a rocking good time, I am going to want to do it again, as soon as possible! And to add insult to injury, douches come in a million varieties. Who is buying these things?? And who is in charge of naming them after air fresheners? There I stood, dumbfounded by the myriad of choices, and so stunned to find myself in this situation that I did, indeed, ever so briefly, wonder if “Country Flowers” could, in fact, be Super Special Douche Code Words for “medicated.” (They’re not.) Eventually I found the medicated ones. (FYI, medicated douches come in sad, plain, discreet packages. They are very jealous of their multi-scented cousins with windswept Harlequin Romance ladies on the front.)
Done. Hooray. I checked out without incident (although honestly, a “CAN I GET A PRICE CHECK ON AN ENEMA, PLEASE?” would not have surprised me even a little, at this point) and came home. And sat down. And have not moved, since.
I mean, look. It’s one thing to talk about this stuff here, with maybe a dozen fellow bloggers who are at ease with Too Much Information in cyberspace. This? I love. So much. In fact, I may change my site’s name from Woulda Coulda Shoulda to Douche-a-Rama With A Side of Vaginal Cream. It’s all good. But to go through a day like this? Have to get poked and prodded, read a magazine all but naked, discuss things pertaining to my vagina with a pharmacist not once, but twice? And then I’m to be expected to drive to another store so I can share the joy with another pharmacy? No. Not today. It will have to wait until tomorrow. My cervix needs to rest, dammit.
One big happy… bug
I take back any complaint I may have made–tacit or implicit–about my children’s behavior yesterday. They are angels.
Shortly after I finished writing yesterday afternoon, it started.
“Mama, my tummy hurts.”
“My tummy hurts, too, Mama.”
“I haveta go to the bathroom….”
Those four hours til bedtime? Never longer. But knowing what I then knew? Their behavior earlier in the day? Awesome.
Also? I would like to personally apologize to anyone who was in the Shaw’s Kid Stop or my local Post Office yesterday. Cuz… ummmm… I’m just really, really sorry. I didn’t know.
So we made it through… and by bedtime they seemed… uhhh… empty. Thank God. Monkey actually cried to go to bed, and went right to sleep (he’d had the worst of it, I think… having proclaimed at one point to me “Mama, did you know that your tummy is connected to your tushie??”). Chickadee was feeling a bit better and so had to play around for a while, but even she, eventually, dropped off to sleep.
All of which left me free to begin my own journey with this particular little virus starting about half an hour before I’d intended to go to bed. Yay! One would think–with my oldest now being six–that I would have figured out by now that no illness passes me by, no matter how obsessive-compulsively I wash my hands over and over. But this is part of the amnesia that keeps us moms nurturing our young instead of running, screaming, into the night. We conveniently forget that which is horrible. And so we do things like, say, tend to two children stricken with a tummy bug for four hours, put them to bed, and then have a sandwich. A bologna sandwich. Sometimes my stupidity amazes even me.
I had a great post planned for last night, too. But given the circumstances it seemed wiser to just hang out in the bathroom and wish for the sweet kiss of death. I may pen it, later, after I run out to the store and buy up all the Immodium, Emetrol, and Pepto they have the on the shelves.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go open all the windows and spray my entire house with Lysol.
Day Two: is it September yet?
Haha! Just kidding! I am really not wishing for September already. We are having a fine time, me and my offspring. Never better. You so wish you were me. Here’s how the day has gone, so far:
5:45 AM. Monkey arrives in my bed. I open one eye, tell him that he may stay as long as he is silent and doesn’t move, and go back to sleep.
6:00 AM. I remove feet from my hair and turn on the Disney Channel. Did you know that the remote works under the blankets? Technology is wonderful.
6:45 AM. Monkey informs me that my pajamas are very pretty, and he is so hungry he could eat a hippo. Flattery will get him everywhere.
7:30 AM. I stick my head in the Chickadee’s room to ask if she might like to join us downstairs. I think she actually bared her teeth at me, but I left so quick when she started snarling, I can’t be sure.
8:30 AM. Everyone is up and fed. I sit down at the computer, the kids hit the playroom.
8:35 AM. Yahoo! mail isn’t working. Bah. And the playroom is trashed.
9:00 AM. I head up to take a shower. The family room and kitchen are trashed.
9:12 AM. I get out of the shower to piercing screams from the floor below. Still dripping, I remove the cover over the vent in my floor and shout down “What’s going on??” Instantly all screaming ceases and a twin angelic chorus answers “Nothing!”
9:20 AM. I corral the kids upstairs to dress and brush teeth.
9:21-9:59 AM. Mayhem.
10:00 AM. We leave for the supermarket. And there was much rejoicing!
10:14 AM. The kids get checked into the Kid Stop at the supermarket.
10:42 AM. I discover that Breyer’s is on special this week, 2 for $5. God is good.
10:55 AM. I attempt to check the kids out of the Kid Stop at the supermarket.
10:59 AM. I shout loudly enough to be heard in the next county, “HELLO! I bought you ICE CREAM! Which is MELTING! Get your butts out here!”
11:12 AM. We arrive home. I shoo the children into the back yard and tell them to play while I put the groceries away.
11:15 AM. Chickadee comes inside and informs me that I am a terrible mother forgot to give them sunhats. I give her the hats and send her back out.
11:17 AM. I peek outside to see Monkey sitting astride the baby swing, resplendent in Chickadee’s floppy butterfly hat. Chickadee is using Monkey’s Flaphappy octopus hat to collect caterpillars.
11:22 AM. I put the last of the groceries away, ball up the profusion of plastic bags, and sit down.
11:23 AM. The children come inside. It’s too hot. It’s too windy. There’s nothing to do. There’s too much bird poop on the swingset!
11:55 AM. Lunch. Monkey eats nothing; Chickadee clears her plate.
12:15 PM. Yahoo! mail is still being flakey. ARGH! In my frustration, I survey my surroundings… which resemble an explosion at Santa’s toy factory. I demand that this room be cleaned up right now!
12:18 PM. I am happily (?) cleaning my shower (bought cleaner at the store, finally) when a tearful Chickadee comes in to report that Monkey simply will not help her clean up. She is slaving away, in fact she has cleaned up most of it, really she is doing the work of several children, and he just won’t cooperate!
12:19 PM. A rousing rendition of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” is avoided (she was on the verge, I swear) by Monkey’s appearance and immediate reporting of Chickadee smacking him in the head.
12:20-12:25 PM. Mama Lecture #32, “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” The children roll their eyes, they get stuck that way, and they have a brief nap.
12:26-1:15 PM. I do chores and the children bicker over who will pick up what.
1:16 PM. I announce that we are going to the Post Office to mail the Mother’s Day packages. (Better late than never. Shut up.)
1:17-1:50 PM. Mayhem.
2:07 PM. We arrive at the Post Office, and I stand in line with the kids thinking “Wow, I haven’t been to this branch in a long time.”
2:08 PM. Our turn. The lady behind the counter remembers us, and nods towards Monkey and says “That isn’t the little guy whose hair used to all stick up, is it??” Wow. That means she hasn’t seen us since Monkey’s fuzzy baby hair days. She fusses over the kids while I vow to be nicer to them this afternoon.
2:13 PM. We drive through Dunkin Donuts and get an iced coffee for me and a lemonade coolatta for the kids. I give them each a straw and tell them to bend one of them so they will know whose is whose.
2:14 PM. Chickadee bends her straw.
2:15 PM. Chickadee bends Monkey’s straw.
2:16 PM. Monkey realizes he doesn’t know which straw is which, and starts to cry.
2:17 PM. Mental note: no good deed goes unpunished.
2:32 PM. Arrive home, park children on couches in family room, put on movie. Suggest they take a little quiet time. Perhaps insinuate that if they get off the couches before the movie ends they might come to great bodily harm.
4:05 PM. That’s better. Recharged, refreshed, and… only four more hours til bed. Piece o’ cake.
Deux Menage-a-Trois!
Hey, that’s all the French I know. Unless you would like me to order lunch. Which I can do. Bagette. Fromage. See? Practically bilingual, I am. (That’s counting English as a language I speak, which I’m sure some would argue….)
I did not write last night. I was busy. Because I have not yet figured out quite enough ways to fritter away my spare time, I got Yahoo! Messenger installed and found myself getting down-n-dirty with some of my fellow bloggers.
First it was a wild (if brief) romp with Mindy and Jilbur. I couldn’t keep up. This is both the fun and the curse of blogging; you meet folks you adore, then get all bummed that they live so freaking far away. But there may be a real-life meeting in the works, and if that happens, look out, Boston! I have a feeling the three of us could do some serious damage (or at least draw some very disparaging looks from passersby).
After these fair ladies had left me because they, you know, have lives, I came across Genuine. Who has a web cam, and uses it. So I got to see him shoot milk out his nose! Okay, not really, but it was pretty funny to watch him laugh in herky-jerky slow-mo webcam time. He is adorable, as are his two children whom I got to watch, puppet-like, run in for goodnight kisses, and then Mrs. G. showed up and it was all so adorable I wanted to kill myself. But the mesmerizing images of the webcam kept me right at the computer, giggling. So I talked Gen’s ear off for a while, then I did the same to Mrs. G., and eventually I felt so warm and fuzzy that I had to go sleep it off.
By the way… got a problem? Genuine will solve it for you. Maybe. Well, he’ll definitely offer. Though I’m thinking I may have offered to slay a vorpal bunny in his honor and chances are excellent that that’s never gonna happen, so we may be even. (Though, Gen? Where’s my promotion?? I thought last night was special, baybeeeee!)
Oh, did you think from the title that this was going to be a… uhhhh… action post? Shame on you. Like Kira, pretty much all I have left to me now is offhand remarks about questionable dinner foods. Alas.
How To Be A Hero
(Or, “Sometimes It Really Is That Easy.”)
Serve octopus for dinner.
(Bonus points for adding a grinning mouth. Two demerits for trying to sneak broccoli onto the plate, under a veil of cheese sauce.)