Actual Unretouched Photo

Fasten Your Seatbelt

2006-05-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

Fasten your seatbelt . . . you are about to be transported to my new blog. Just wait. A bit more. Really, keep waiting.

Or just go to Actual Unretouched Photo yourself. Or wait and we'll automatically take you there . . .

Really.

2006-05-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

I mean it. No new stuff here. Go here.

Blog Closed: Detour to My New Blog

2006-05-13T23:19:00.000-07:00

Now would be a great time to update your link to me on your blogroll! Head on over to the new Actual Unretouched Photo for new posts and let me know what you think of my almost-finished template.

Alert, alert!

2006-05-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

A new post is waiting for you over here on my new blog. See you there!

Update Your Link, Please?

2006-05-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

Not very many of you have updated your links to my new blog address: http://unretouchedphoto.com.

Will you, pretty please, with sugar on top?

Thanks!

Undressing in High School

2006-05-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Tacoma News Tribune ran a story in the paper recently chronicling the poor hygiene of student athletes. Apparently, kids these days prefer not to shower in the locker room where God and everybody can stare and point at their private bits while they lather, rinse and repeat.

Imagine!

I still cannot shake the horror of sixth grade and the required showers we had to take after physical education (P.E.) class. I was already mortified by the changes hormones had wrought. I disguised my womanly curves in a large blue down coat during classes. But in P.E., after stripping off our required uniforms of white shorts, white t-shirts and white tube socks, we were all expected to disrobe, scurry into the showers, make sure that the teacher saw us unclothed, dab ourselves dry with skimpy towels, pull on our clothing and run off to class.

(This was very problematic for my hairstyle--the feathered bangs went awry after contact with my sweaty forehead. How is a girl supposed to look cute when her hair is wonky? Thus is the root of my social inadequacies in sixth grade.)

I might have died of embarrassment, if embarrassment could kill. A perceptive girl quoted in the article points out that the lack of showering by student athletes "might be self-consciousness."

"I've never seen girls shower in the locker room," said Kylie Marshall, a volleyball standout at Emerald Ridge High. "It might be self-consciousness. If I were to even think about it, I'd wear a bathing suit. In society, we're not taught to be comfortable being naked in the public showers."

Marshall, who also plays on a select volleyball team, said that she and her teammates come to those practices in their gear. Sweats come off before practice and go back on after practice before heading home to shower.

"I think guys are more open and don't really care," Marshall said. "With girls, it goes back to the olden days where were brought up to be more conservative."

Um, the "olden days"? Were the "olden days" back in 1992? Where are these modest conservative girls of which she speaks? Everywhere I go, I see girls' bellybuttons, cleavage, tight t-shirts and jeans (or mini-skirts) outlining their bodies.

We see mostly naked people on network television these days and pixilated naked people on basic cable channels. Not a whole lot is left to the imagination . . . and yet, kids these days are too modest to shower?

We're told that more than half of American teenagers engage in oral s*x, and they are shy about their bodies? They aren't comfortable "being naked in the public showers"?

We hear all about MySpace, where teenagers post suggestive photographs of themselves. And yet--they refuse to shower at school?

What an odd collision of facts. Fashions have become less and less modest, leaving nothing to the imagination, really, and yet, kids refuse to shower because someone might see them? I wonder if teenagers are just more self-conscious, aware that their bodies don't measure up to the image of perfection bombarding us in the media. I suspect that's closer to the truth--it's not about modesty, it's about their own perceived imperfections.

Whatever the reason they abstain from school showers, who can blame them?

I only wish I'd been able to do the same.

Helping Out a Friend

2006-05-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I received an email plea from a friend of mine. She says this:

"We've been invited to a luncheon that will have a round robin reading of poems and short stories. The problem is that years ago Derek and I read several books of short stories by an author and now we can't remember his (her?) name. The stories were something along the lines of dark comedy or macabre...not horror..just some sick twist at the end....like the main character realizes in his rage he has run his wife off the road instead of his neighbor....

I think the author was british. I think the author was male."

Anybody have any ideas? I am stumped, so it's your turn to be brilliant and helpful.

A Mish-Mashy Hodge-Podge With No Conclusion

2006-05-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

My daughter insisted that she would sleep outside tonight, in the backyard, in her underpants, thank you very much. "Night-night, Mommy!" she waved as I opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside.

I called her bluff and when I heard the theme music for SpongeBob Squarepants, I opened the kitchen window and informed her, "Hey, SpongeBob is on!" and she scurried inside. Then, curled on the couch, she let me know that she planned to sleep downstairs, on the couch.

I do love her polite defiance. When I tell her, "Hey, go pick up those toys," she'll say, "No, thank you." After her bath (right before she went to bed in her room, as usual), she said, "I spit water right there, on the floor." I furrowed my brows in the classic Mom Disapproval Glare and she said, "I'm sorry, Mama." But the spark in her eyes and the impish grin said otherwise.

* * *

Today was a most glorious day. I had an eye appointment at Costco at 10:40 a.m., which I managed to stretch into a solitary daylong excursion. More on that in a minute, but first I must tell you about the eye doctor, or as I like to think of him, The Pocket Doctor.

From his tiny white shirt to his little shiny shoes, he was just like a real doctor, only miniaturized. His nose was tiny and perfect sculpted, like Barbie's. I had complete confidence in The Pocket Doctor and couldn't stop thinking about how handy it would be to have a replica of a doctor to just tuck into your pocket or purse.

Oh, and weirdly, my eyes are better, not worse, and so I have a lesser prescription. When we finished, I ordered the contacts, then faced the wall of glasses to pick out a new pair. (My old pair is 9 years old.)

The Costco clerk came out from behind the counter to stand next to me as I contemplated the choices. Too many choices! They were sorted into three areas: Men, Women, Contemporary. I stood in front of the Contemporary section, trying to imagine myself in these little rectangular black frames or those small oval pink ones and the clerk said, "Well, these are cute," just as I started saying, "I don't think I'm cool enough to wear any of these." She said, "Sure you are!" but that was just mercy speaking.

I scooted over and picked out a pair from the Women's section, but not before picking up, putting on, taking off, putting down the same ten pairs of glasses over and over again. I just couldn't decide. But finally, I just picked one. Good enough for the next ten years.

* * *

Last night, my husband and I went to a movie. (Can you guess what we saw?) For the first time, I bought tickets online, which was pretty terrific. No standing in line to purchase tickets . . . and a very small crowd in the concession area. We stood behind three people in a line and I immediately wanted to switch lines. I had a hunch, but my husband, Mr. I-Don't-Like-Change, said, "No, this is fine." So we waited another ten minutes, finally realizing we really should have moved to another line.

As we finally headed toward the theater, I said to my husband, "You know, this one time I saw a movie on the opening weekend and when I first got to the theater, I thought, hey, it's not even full, and then I walked into the movie and it was packed . . . kind of like this!" And we saw that the seats were full. . . and then we found two spots right on the floor, front and center. Perfect.

If I were a different sort of person, a person with a big mouth, a person unafraid of being bashed in the mouth by a stranger, I might have uttered these words:

1) ARE YOU TALKING ON YOUR PHONE DURING THE MOVIE?! SHUT UP!

and

2) GET YOUR TODDLER OUT OF THIS THEATER! THIS IS NOT A MOVIE FOR TODDLERS! HIRE A BABYSITTER, YOU MORON!!

But, I'm not that sort of person, so I just said to myself, Now I have something to blog about.

Aren't you lucky?

* * *

Oh, and finally. When I returned from my daylong adventure (Costco, Wendy's for salad, Joann Fabrics, Value Village, Trader Joe's), I returned to my driveway in time to see my neighbor holding something at arm's length with her index finger and thumb, hurrying across her yard.

She was walking back when I disembarked and I said, "What happened? Did something die?"

Then I heard the squawking. Two frantic Steller's Jays were swooping from tree to fence and back again. Apparently, the neighbor's cat had killed their baby bird and both birds had turned into John Walsh, desperate to find their missing offspring. The neighbor kept saying, "I feel terrible! I feel terrible! I feel terrible!" and scolded the cat who did not feel terrible and who was still lurking under a bush, a serial killer longing to kill again.

Did you know that Steller's Jays form monogamous long-term pairs? They were still screeching and hopping from roof to tree to fence and back again when I finished carrying in the groceries.

* * *

Tonight, while I clipped back a wicked bush (with spiky two-inch needle-like thorns) near our gate, the boys played a game in which they threw a ball over the house to one another. If they'd broken a window, I'd really have a tale to tell, but they didn't, so I don't.

The End.

Hats!

2006-05-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

I have a big head. No, really. I mean the circumference of my head is unusually large, twenty-five inches--I just measured twice--which by anyone's standards indicates that my noggin is gigantic.

I also have all this Cocker-Spaniel hair ("yes, the curl is natural, do you think I'd pay money to DO THIS TO MY HEAD?"), so all things considered, if I were a snowman, I'd fall over, head first, into a snowbank.

The huge-headedness of mine has only bothered me on the rare occasion, like when I was visiting Tahiti as a sixteen-year old and our new found Tahitian friends gifted me with a lovely straw hat to commemorate my visit. It perched awkwardly on my head until we boarded the plane and it's never touched my hair again. I hang it in my closet, a reminder of balmy breezes and Tahitian brown eyes, but I can't wear it. That hat is made for a girl with a normal head size.

Sure, perhaps I need an extra-large head to encase my super-sized brain, but that didn't offer any comfort the time I went snowmobiling in northern Michigan and the helmet crushed my eyeballs into the front of the helmet and smashed my nostrils into my upper lip, causing my breath to steam up the helmet windshield (what is that thing called?). Inside that helmet I felt like one of my kids as a toddler who snuggled his head into a flowerpot. Nice and cozy. Also, I had to undo my French-braid to lessen the bulk and when we arrived at a restaurant for a little break (thank God, my head could expand to its normal shape again), my hair looked like the "before" picture in a shampoo commercial. Oh, so pretty!

Even if I could shove my head into a hat, I wouldn't because I have eight tons of the aforementioned Cocker Spaniel hair firmly affixed to my skull. (I would look like Bozo the clown.

My hair makes me hot, causes me to swoon on a slightly warm day and is the reason that I bought a hundred hair bands last time which came on a handy key-chain-like ring. My supply on the ring has dwindled down to three, so now I dig my hands deep into whatever pockets I might be wearing in hopes that I'll fish out a hair band. Right now, as a matter of fact, I am about to push aside the 307 broken pencils in my drawer to see if a hair band is handy. (It was. Oh, sweet relief!)

One time, I remember Oprah mentioning that she has a big head, though do you think I can find any proof right now through the magic of Google? (No.) And Rosie says her head is big, too, though she is fuzzy on the details. Perhaps I'm destined for television talk-show fame, if my head is any indication. Then again, well, maybe not. I suspect there are additional qualifications, like the ability to make small talk with random strangers and the willingness to wear super-high pointy high-heels and smile at a camera.

If I ever lose my hair, I'm doomed to a life of shiny baldness because even Bartholomew Cubbins's five hundred hats doesn't include one in size Too-Too-Too-How-Can-She-Even-Balance-Herself-With-That-Bowling-Ball-Head-Large.

A Word of Advice to Katharine McPhee and Newscasters Everywhere

2006-05-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

So last night Katharine McPhee sang an entire song on American Idol while writhing on her knees. While I appreciated her blue toenail polish, I found her performance disconcerting. Why the knees? Why the floor? Why?

I wanted Katharine to stand up. Just stand.

On the other hand, the local newscasters, as well as national newscasters, have begun to stand through the entire newscast. I wish they would just sit down. Their casual standing delivery of the news forces me to change the channel because I cannot stand to watch them stand.

So, to sum up:

1) Singers should not kneel. They should stand.
2) Newscasters should not stand. They should sit.

Pass along the word. Thank you.

I Am No Mother Duck

2006-05-02T22:21:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, while driving down the road with my youngest two in the back of the 1987 Chevy Astro, I noticed a car slowing in front of me. Two women standing at a bus stop were pointing and laughing and so, I slowed, too. The car in front of me sped up and so I could clearly see the spectacle slowing traffic. A mother duck and her four ducklings waddled from the middle of the busy residential street to the edge, as I waited with my foot pressed to the brake while frantically digging in my purse for my camera.

I pulled out the camera just as the little procession reached safety.

The image of that mama duck and her babies has remained in my mind, though. Her ducklings followed, hovered close to her feathered sides, didn't run off, didn't fight with their brothers, didn't refuse to do grammar because it is so boring.

I'm nothing like that duck mom. Today, as a matter of fact, I would have thrown my letter of resignation at my boss, only, uh, I don't have a boss and I can't resign. Instead, I slammed the door and strode outside, first to the driveway where I stood by the lilacs, and then up the street a few houses where I noticed a gentle spring breeze and wondered if the neighbors were looking at the wild-haired lady in her moccasin slippers wandering the neighborhood. All the windows really did seem like eyeballs behind sunglasses, staring at me.

I didn't go far, of course, because I was keenly aware of the littler ones in my house and also cognizant of the fact that my teenagers would keep an eye on the little kids even though those very same teenagers, well, one of those teenagers, had caused me to flee into the street, question my very status of a competent mother and resolve to turn in my Homeschooling Mother Card once and for all.

I CAN'T DO THIS! I shrieked to myself, as loudly as one can shriek inside one's head on the street in the middle of the morning while worrying about neighbors calling the police to report a raving lunatic strolling the streets.

My son, The Reluctant Student, has some issues, some undiagnosed issues having to do with paying attention and retaining information and organization. I don't need a label to know that he struggles with what comes naturally and easily to me and his twin brother. He sometimes stays focused and tries, but this week he's been derailed. The picture of him as a railroad car literally off the rails, unable to move forward or backward, blocking the rest of the train from moving fills me with pity and understanding, but also frustration because we need to keep moving. Moving forward, heading toward the finish line, hurry, hurry, hurry!

When I hurry him, he resists.

I used to think that raising children was all about nurturing them properly and creating the right environment. I see now how much genetic predisposition influences and even controls behavior. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle, like a salmon swimming upstream who finally encounters an impassable dam.

So, between a difficult morning of grammar (adverbial phrases, anyone?) and my daughter who spends every waking moment either changing her clothes or interrupting me or demanding Cheetos, I really did decide I am not cut out for this mothering gig. Really. I quit. DO YOU HEAR ME? I'M NOT COMING IN TOMORROW! I QUIT!

Blink. Blink-blink. Okay, fine. In two weeks, I'm outta here, for sure. I'm going to get a job cleaning chimneys or muck-raking cow stalls or deep-sea fishing on an Alaskan fishing boat . . . something easy like that.

If I were a mother duck and my kids were those ducklings, today they totally would have been squished by a car. Tomorrow, maybe they will be all fluffy and yellow and quiet and cute. One can hope.

(My son just sent me this instant-message: "GOING TO TRUN OFF NOW MOM GOOD NIGHT I HEART U =) AND ALSO SORRY FOR TODAY." Okay. Fine. Whatever. I'm in for one more day.)

Life is Too Short

2006-05-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, my mother brought my grandmother to my house for Easter lunch. When they left, Grandma paced inch-by-inch down the sidewalk, clutching her walker, while my mom leaned on her cane and limped to the car. I walked them out and as Grandma was attempting to fold herself into the front seat while my mother stood with one hand attempting to quell the pain in her back, I quipped, "Hey! I see my future right here," and I swept my hand at the scene and said, "and I'm scared!"

They both laughed at my feeble joke, but the truth is, I wasn't joking. I bent down and lifted my grandmother's swollen foot up into the car and she winced and groaned at the pain. The hip joint has deteriorated and even that tiny movement shot searing pain up her leg and to her hip. She even said, "Oh, that hurts," which is as dramatic as she gets.

I never liked being young. I was eager to get through my teen years as quickly as possible. I didn't savor my high school years or wish that time would slow down. I could hardly stand the excruciatingly slow pace of adolescence and the walled off borders of teenage-dom. I wanted out and I wanted out yesterday.

My college years raced by, though, in a blur of longing and confusion and fretfulness. And before I knew it, I was married. My twenty-sixth birthday depressed me, but only because we had been trying to start a family and ended up caught in a maze of infertility and adoption attempts and all I wanted was to be a mother. I wanted to be a mother more than I wanted to sleep in, more than I wanted to have a career, more than I wanted chocolate chip cookies. So, when I turned twenty-six, I moped around.

But before I knew it, I was a mother (to twins!) and then, in a flash, I turned thirty. And the thirtysomething years marched on and then, what? My fortieth birthday arrived. By then, I had four children and I was trying to remember just exactly why I had been so desperate to be a mother. Okay, not really. Okay, well, not most days, only occasionally because, hello? I never get to sleep in anymore.

My dad died when he was forty-seven. So, on one hand, I am so thankful for every day of living and so aware of the alternative to aging. On the other hand, I see my mother's eyelids sagging lower and lower as if are too tired to stand up any longer. And I look at my grandmother, lingering a century on this earth, and I dread the day when my eyesight fails and darkness falls, even on a sunshiny day.

How is it fair that just as you become comfortable in your own skin, your skin gets speckled with age spots and bunches in wrinkles around your knuckles? Just when you figure out what to do with your hair, a new stripe of gray appears with a wiry texture. And even your knees betray your age with tiny purple spider veins appearing over the winter under cover of your pant legs. Aging is like receiving a package in the mail that you did not order and you cannot return.

But, oh, the alternative is to never breathe in another lilac spring day and to never watch the tulips grow taller day by day.

Life is too short. Even when you live to be a hundred, like my grandmother, life is too short to focus on the flaws, on the missing pieces, on the crooked places you wish were straight. Life is too short to not take chances, to not speak up, to not stand tall. Life is too short.

Old age will come, ready or not. In the meantime, I will sear into my memory the vision of my daughter dancing a high-step in the back yard and the faces of my boys as they carry homemade bows and arrows made of bamboo in improvised sheaths on their backs. I will appreciate my body sweating on my exercise bike and I will be mindful of the fuel I give my body. I will smile at my face in the mirror and be grateful that I can clip my own toenails. I will snip an armful of lilacs to carry into the house, even though they'll fade and die in the vase in a week and they're such a pain to clean up.

Because today, I welcome the fleeting beauty of lilacs into my home. Life is too short and soon, the lilacs will be gone. My boys will abandon the backyard for the wider world. My daughter will find better things to do than to harass the ants on a fine spring day. The neighborhood boys won't trample mud into my carpet. I'll have an uninterrupted telephone conversation and I'll think, oh, I remember when--

Act fast. Get yours now. Life is too short. Already, the tulip petals have fallen. But you can get in on the lilacs if you hurry.

A Few Bits of Business

2006-04-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

Good news. You can now use Bloglines.com to subscribe to
Actual Unretouched Photo at the new site. (My personal new site, not to be confused with the other new site, which will be announced later.)

Also, I have my reciprocal blogroll up on the new website, so if you could add that URL to your blogroll (in addition to this one), I would appreciate it.

Finally, we are no longer forbidden access to the new website.

Oh, and one last thing. The lilacs are in bloom.
And we all rejoice.

Forbidden

2006-04-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. My new website has forbidden us all to enter. I have no idea why, but my tech guy will be back in town Monday and hopefully he'll wave his magic wand and fix all my problems. Well, at least he'll fix my website problems.

If ever there were a time to swear, this would be it, but alas, I do not swear, except for Christian cursewords like "shoot" and "darn" and "gosh."

Shoot. That darn website!

A Simple Rant

2006-04-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

FileZilla and Wordpress make me want to scoop my brain out like a half a cantaloupe and fling it at the walls. Would it kill the writers of technical information to, oh, I don't know . . . assume we don't speak geek and USE PLAIN ENGLISH!!?!

That's all. Carry on.

Bummer For Her

2006-04-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

I may not have a book published yet, but at least I haven't had a book published and then pulled off the shelves because I plagiarized like her.

Farewell, Dear Tulip

2006-04-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

Oh, Tulip, I hardly knew you and now you lie trampled on the ground, broken down in the prime of your life, never to bloom again. Well, until next spring, that is.

At least I still have you, my lone back yard tulip. Be strong! I will remind the boys to watch their step while they swing their ~~bamboo sticks~~ magical swords, less they pop your head off, too.

* * *

Here are the things that irritated me so much today that I yelled like a lunatic:

1) One of my 13-year olds spilled a box of one thousand toothpicks into a kitchen drawer in his quest to get one toothpick. He left the box askew and the drawer open.

2) My daughter accidentally peed on the freshly shampooed carpet.

I may have overreacted because I've been the sole parent in charge for three solid days now, plus two days last weekend and last night I didn't go to bed until 1:00 a.m. because I am foolish. Saturday, when my husband returns, I'm out of here!

Lest I snap off someone's head, just like that poor tulip.

Do Me A Favor

2006-04-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

I bought a domain name: www.unretouchedphoto.com The site is not ready quite yet for its unveiling, but will you add it to your blogroll? Or bookmark it or add it to your Favorites or consider having it tatt o o ed on your elbow so we don't lose one another? (But don't delete your link here just yet. Just add the other one, too.)

Signed,
Bossy Near Seattle

[Updated: Thanks for pointing out that my RSS feed doesn't seem to work yet. I'll fix that ASAP, hopefully today.]

Apologies

2006-04-27T00:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, you may or may not realize that if you're on my blogroll, I read your blogs as often as possible. I try to read them every day, using Bloglines.com as an indicator that unread posts are waiting for me. (If you don't use Bloglines, you should. What a time-saver!)

On Monday mornings, I try to comment on every blog I come across.

But lately, oh, these past few days, I haven't had time and I'm so behind on the life and times of you blogging-friends. But I will be catching up, gradually, as things settle down around here.

And thank you, everyone, for being so incredibly kind and generous. But I'd like to suggest that you all have your eyes checked.

Ha ha.

Unveiling

2006-04-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, as it turns out, I do have a face. And when I wear lipstick you can even see my lips. When I was twenty-eight, I remember a forty-something mom telling me how her lip-color had faded with the years. I thought that odd, but what do you know? It happened to me, too. Without lipstick, no lips.

So, you're saying to yourself, how did Mel come up with that photograph so quickly? You see, I am never ever in the family photographs for two reasons. One, I am always the photographer. Two, I am fat.

But you see, being fat has opened doors, which is ironic in so many ways. For instance, I have thought to myself, Self, you need to get yourself in shape so you can go to that writer's conference next year and kick-start your writing career! And I've thought, If only I weren't so fat, so many more opportunities would fall into my (no-longer ample) lap. And I've looked at Heather B. Armstrong's blog, "Dooce," and thought, Well, of course she's making money blogging. She's skinny.

See how irrational we ~~chubby fluffy pudgy chunky~~ fat girls can be? The internet is a wonderful thing, too, because no one has to see our outside and we can bypass those feelings of embarrassment and self-disgust and just put forward our best selves, the inner parts of us. I have been dismissed sometimes because being fat is like wearing a force field which makes you invisible to the human eye. Sometimes, this is good. Who wants to be hounded by the paparazzi, after all?

So, I'm fat. And my being fat has indirectly led me to this particular blogging job which has requested a photo.

And I have no photographs of myself. So, knowing that I'd need a photograph for my new blogging job, I decided I would spruce myself up and get myself to a photography studio as soon as possible so they could work their magic and hopefully, employ some airbrushing techniques to remove my double-chin and possibly fifty pounds. Which wouldn't be possible for days, weeks, months . . . who knows? Because, as the detail-retaining among you will remember, my husband is out of town, hanging out with his college buddies in Las Vegas. Yes, the pastor is on the loose in Vegas!

The email that came yesterday, though, asked for a picture now. Right now. As in hurry-up-send-a-picture-before-we-change-our-minds-right-now.

And there I am, wearing a shirt with gummy remains of a Triscuit smeared on my shoulder and not a drop of makeup on my pale face and no chance of leaving my house. I made a half-hearted attempt to locate an existing picture of myself, but knew deep in my heart that I don't have one I can tolerate. And using my old college picture or the one of me was a three year old simply would not do.

At lunch-time, I have a forty-five minute baby-free window because one baby leaves for a lunch break with his mom and the other hasn't yet arrived. I sprang into action. I ~~smeared on~~ carefully applied make-up, fluffed up my hair and put on a clean shirt. Baby number two arrived just as I finished glossing up my lips. I'm sure the baby's dad was shocked to see me in that condition, but what can you do? You can't always be a frumpy housewife, I guess.

I had one 13-year old keep an eye on the baby and my daughter, while I went outside with my other 13-year old. I dragged over a ladder, stood my son in front of the laurel hedge, and positioned the camera just so. Then I changed places with my son. I had him step up the ladder a few rungs so he'd be looking down on me, so I could tilt my face slightly up and thus, through the magic of posing, eliminate a chin. Hey, when you don't have special lighting and your own personal airbrusher, you get creative. (From now on, whenever I know there will be cameras, like at family reunions or holiday events, I am taking my 6-foot aluminum ladder with me, because, as it turns out, I don't look too bad if you are three feet above me and I'm looking up.)

He took about ten shots and I chose the one you see to the right as the best one.

And now you know the truth. I'm a fat blogger. I hope we can still be friends.

I'm kidding! Of course, you'll still be my friend. Because here's the best part about having a fat friend: you look thinner standing next to her.

Now, ten points to the person who comes up with an utterly delightful title for a blog chronicling the diet of a fat housewife. Okay, a hundred points.

Go!

Telephone Conversations, Interrupted

2006-04-25T23:09:00.000-07:00

My daughter is three and a half and obsessed with the telephone. If you call my house, you will have to talk to her, which I know is a very annoying requirement and one I never understood before I had children when I would telephone my friends and be forced to speak to their little hooligans. But, now I know. The child will not be denied her phone time.

Tonight, she was speaking on one of her many pretend cell phones (the pink one) and she said, "Oh, I can't come to your party." Pause. "I have babies here." Pause. "And I can't drive."

Then she asked, "Daddy, did you see the dinosaur in the forest? Did it bite you? Did it bite your head or your toes or your legs?"

Apparently, he indicated that the dinosaur bit him on the head.

And then the imaginary conversation ended.

Earlier in the day, I made a telephone call to New York, New York . . . while my daughter was busy playing on the other computer. (She's very competent and probably she'll be fluent in html before long.) I had to leave a message, though.

And, of course, later, the woman from New York returned my call and so I hurried upstairs in a desperate bid for privacy and quietness with the phone in one hand and the paperwork in the other and closed the door to my bedroom (with no lock on its door, drat!) and the bathroom. We were having a rational conversation when my daughter came stomping upstairs, talking to me, insisting on my full attention, and finally, crying, as I rushed away from her in a effort to finish my conversation.

Later, I attempted another telephone call to an East coast blogger (Barbara Curtis), because I needed some advice and reassurance and, of course, although I left my daughter safely upstairs, happily chatting with her daddy, she appeared at my elbow, whining and then sobbing while I tried to talk. Then, the other three year old woke up and he started whimpering about his runny nose and about being hungry . . . then my 8-year old walked by and motioned some unintelligible question at me . . . and finally, I had to say good-bye before my head exploded and my eyeballs popped out.

I have to say, I miss the days of long, uninterrupted telephone conversations. And I'd like to know why having a telephone pressed to my right ear reminds the children of their urgent needs and desires that only I can fulfill.

Waving Tentacles

2006-04-24T22:23:00.000-07:00

I joined Netflix and received one movie which sat in the ever-present paper pile on the kitchen counter for six weeks. Then I cancelled my account and sent it back.

I love to watch movies, but at home I am constantly distracted. For instance, just now, at 10:33 p.m., I had to step into my boys' room and scold them for horsing around and admonish them to GO TO SLEEP! If I were emotionally involved in an intricate movie plot right now and pesky kids interrupted me, the continuity of the movie would be lost and I would be annoyed.

So, I admit it to myself. I just don't like to watch movies at home. Netflix, for all its convenience, doesn't work for me. It cost me a $9.99 membership to know that for sure.

* * *

I know this post is a little sketchy, a tad bit boring, but I had a nervous break-down today contemplating my impending status as a paid Mom Blogger. My mind keeps wandering off in eight directions like an octopus out of water and consequently, all my snippets of ideas have scattered. Some things are going to change around here, which freaks me out. Any rational person is resistant to change on some level, right? Even good change?

It's kind of like I've been singing in the chorus all this time, happy to be somewhat anonymous, blending in with the other voices and now, I'm going to step forward, grab a microphone and sing a solo. And everyone will be looking at me and I'll just have to dredge up a grim smile and look over their heads at the back wall while I sing so I don't die of embarrassment and make a fool of myself.

So, the freak-out subsided and I focused my worry instead on getting a decent photograph of myself, which would be easier if I were still twenty and didn't have these circles under my eyes.

Boys (and one girl) in the Backyard

2006-04-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

Like shepherds without sheep, they wander the back yard, walking with staff-like sticks in hand, discussing important matters. I can't hear them. I would love to eavesdrop, but when I open the door, they stop and stare at me.

This afternoon, the sun shone and even my daughter scampered outside to play in the warmth--in her Carter's pajamas with the zipper and built-in feet and floral-patterned boots. She holds her own with the boys, scooting along on their skateboards and swerving to avoid swinging sticks. I sat indoors, feeling the pressure of Pacific Northwest guilt . . . for when the sun shines here, it is mandatory to go outside immediately, for you never know when the next thirty-day stretch of rain might begin.

But I stayed indoors anyway, savoring the semi-quiet.

My husband is home again, but will leave in less than forty-eight hours for a reunion, of sorts, with his best college buddies. He will have a fantastic time and I will be fine, knowing that he owes me and next spring, I'll be enjoying paybacks.

More Proof That My Kids Are Having a Happy Childhood

2006-04-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

Today, my mother and I ~~forced the children~~ delighted the children with a trip to Tacoma to watch the Daffodil Parade. Parking spot? Perfect. Transit train? Convenient. Spot on the curb? Delightful. Weather? Chilly, but sunny. Daffodils? Yellow. Fingers? Cold.

I think everyone had fun, despite the grumbling from the teenagers ("I am NOT going!" "What? We have to waste a whole Saturday?!"). My three year old insisted on wearing a cute summer outfit, shorts and sleeveless top. I said, "Hey, it might be cold. You should wear long sleeves and long pants like me. See?" and she replied, "That's okay. I'll just wear this jacket." She tucked her legs up and into her jacket, which is possible when you are a lanky three-year old.

My mother, ever resourceful, brought a can of Pringles for each child. They thought this was a very fine idea, indeed. (They did not eat all the chips, though.) My mom said, "I brought a can for everyone so there would be no fighting."

When I was a very young child, my grandmother and my mother would take us to the parade each year. My mother said today that she remembers us in strollers and under umbrellas. This year, we continue the tradition, though the kids won't understand the importance of that for many years to come when they drag their reluctant-I'd-rather-watch-television-and-dig-holes-in-the-backyard kids to the same parade.

What Boys Will Do

2006-04-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

This is the ~~hole in the ground~~ super-cool bike ramp constructed by three eager and imaginative boys. I'm guessing if I said, "Go dig a giant hole in the back yard," I would have had a mutiny, but this? One hundred percent pure fun.

On Writing and the Silent Treatment

2006-04-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote my first story, a ten-page epic in neat printing about a romance between Tom Thumb and Thumbelina. I received a Certificate of Achievement from Miss Brittingham, my third-grade teacher, for Writing Stories and I won first place.

Fast-forward a bit to my college years. While I was a fierce and loyal correspondent (the kind who writes letters, not the kind who reports from the Middle East), I didn't consider myself a Writer. But I wrote, mostly in a daily journal. And then somehow, (I can't remember how now brown cow), I joined the staff of the campus newspaper.

I was supposed to write a column about the music department, but I never actually did. Instead, I wrote essays about whatever happened to flutter through my brain. And the newspaper published them.

I wasn't very impressed with myself, though, because the newspaper was a rinky-dink operation at a rinky-dink school and big-whoop-de-doo. Then someone from the publishing department of the Assemblies of God (my denomination at the time) contacted me and asked permission to reprint one of my articles, a piece called, "Life Without Elbows." And they paid me.

I was a published writer, much to my shock.

Fast-forward a few more years. Having viewed my byline and tasted the satisfaction of publication, I longed to Be A Writer. I bought a Writer's Market. While we waited for a birth-mother to choose us, to make us parents, I puttered around at the computer and sent off queries. I went to a writer's conference in Oregon. I submitted stuff. I received rejections. I sent out more queries. And got more rejections.

Birth-mothers? Rejecting me.
Publishers? Rejecting me.
I took it personally.

I chronicled all of this in my journals, painstakingly recording in ballpoint ink my anguish and the failures and angst, the wholehearted brand of angst requiring extra time and devotion. I picked up a couple of assignments for very small publications, received checks for minuscule amounts, accumulated more rejections, both professionally and personally, kicked myself for being a failure, sobbed on the bathroom floor, and then became a mother to twin baby boys.

I still wrote, but only in letters and journals. It turned out that as a mother, I had no time to nourish my angst about writing, no idle moments to worry about whether I'd ever Be A Writer. Once or twice a year, I'd receive an assignment, send back my work and get a check for $90. Sometimes, I'd read a terrible novel and think, I could do better than that. And then I'd read something fantastic and I'd think, I could never write like that. I was equal parts optimism and despair.

Eventually, I gave away my Writer's Market. I stopped querying magazines. I set aside the whole writing thing. I had no time, no clear thoughts beyond, "Will they ever stop waking up at 5:45 a.m.?"

The years rushed by in fits and starts and then, lo and behold, my last baby stopped being a baby. I began to ask myself, Self, what should I be when I grow up? I settled on earning money, imagined having a Real Career, an identity beyond being someone's wife and someone's mother. And I hatched a plan to become a nurse.

I made my list and checked it twice. I realized it would be wise to wait another year before beginning this venture. And as weeks slipped by, I realized I didn't really want to go to school. I didn't really want to go to work. I didn't really want a boss, a schedule . . . but I wanted a handy answer to the question, "So, what do you do?" I wanted health benefits and dental insurance and a decent paycheck with my name on it.

But at what price? What would I have to give up to become Nurse Mel? Time with my young daughter and growing sons? Schooling my kids at home? Being available to help my husband during times when his schedule is erratic and demanding? The flexibility to play on sunny afternoons and to spend weekends with my family?

Just as my youngest child grows more independent, would I close the door on those long-coveted hours of solitude and blocks of time in which to write? Would I exchange my chance to write (with no guaranteed of success) for employment as a nurse with its steady paycheck?

I'm pragmatic and the silly idea of turning away from a sure thing to pursue what will most likely turn out to be an unsure thing pinches at my brain. I am sensible, low-maintenance, with an abundance of common sense. And it doesn't make any sense to pursue a far-fetched dream.

(Especially when you are me and you respond to arguments and adversity with the silent treatment. Try it. Make me mad and I'll stop speaking to you. Maybe forever. I know! It's a terrible character flaw and, being aware, I fight against it. But now I realize that when the universe argued with me through all those rejection slips, I decided to give it--the universe, writing, dreaming,the whole kit and caboodle--the silent treatment. Fine! Reject me? I'll reject you!)

I should become a nurse. Clearly. But when would I write? And could I abandon the idea of focusing on writing entirely? Should I cut loose the dream of writing like child releases a party balloon into the far blue sky?

One night, my husband and I chatted. I told him I worried about schooling and scheduling and working. He listened to me fret. And then he said, "You know, I'm a pastor. Sometimes, I think about going to school and becoming something else, but the truth is, I'm a pastor. You are a writer. You could go to school and become a nurse--and I would support you in that--but you are a writer. Even if it means we never have a new car, you should not make a decision based on the money."

He gave me permission to be what I am. And then I gave myself permission, too. I set aside the thought of going to nursing school and let myself think of pursuing writing professionally. I never mentioned it here because, really, how embarrassing is it to say, "I changed my mind. I'm abandoning my plans. I'm insane," when you were all so nice and encouraging and supportive?

And what if I fail? I suffer periods of self-doubt and eye-rolling. I comfort myself in those moments of massive anxiety with the assurance that I could still go to school--the door is ajar--starting next year, and work out the details and weave together a life that wouldn't leave too many strings dangling. Maybe. I could.

Meanwhile, I write here. Blogging has been a directional sign for me, a way to keep on the road towards writing professionally. The daily discipline of writing, the practice of choosing words, the craft of stringing them together brings me great satisfaction. I've been surprised by the joy of this medium.

Not long ago, I had a tiff with a good friend. I responded with my typical, "Fine! You are dead to me!" maturity, which was working for me, sort of. Then she emailed me and said, "Hey, what's up?" and I said nothing. The words were too big to fit into my mouth and I couldn't speak them.

She asked again. I spit out a tiny word. I might have never responded and missed out on the pleasure of a repaired friendship. The silent treatment could have been the demise of that pocket of my heart. (I am indebted to her.)

Meanwhile, an opportunity arose to blog for money. Knowing that twenty-eight million blogs exist, I snorted into my Diet Coke with Lime and closed that email. As if! Me! I've been stamped "REJECT," remember? I gave it the old silent treatment. But the suggestion spoke again. And a snippet of a voice inside my head said, "Why not you? Remember, you are a writer. You admitted it."

So I gathered my wits, wrote some samples, sent my application and waited for a response with the expectation one has playing the Lotto. One week passed. Another week. An email arrived: "We received a particularly strong batch of applications for this position and our choice was a difficult one . . . " That's right. It was not me.

(Boo, hiss, climb under the desk and weep.)

But it went on, "Your application stood out as one of the very best and we think your voice would be a great addition . . ."

SAY WHAT? From a Snoopy Certification of Achievement to this . . . and maybe more. I'm stunned. I am now a professional blogger. (The universe and I are on speaking terms again.)

Details to follow.

(This blog will remain the same. Have no fear. I'm guessing it'll be a few more weeks before I have more information.)

Four Paragraphs = Nothing

2006-04-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting here for a good three or four minutes, half-listening to "American Idol" and half-pondering what to say. I thought about writing about divorce and how my parents' divorce affected me. I considered discussing how my viewpoints about prisons has shifted over the years. I racked my brain for some amusing anecdote about my children. I scratched my head, bounced my knee, chewed the inside of my cheek and came to no conclusions.

I might have told you that my husband will be out of town this weekend and most of next week . . . and that I volunteered to babysit my 11-year old niece and 8-year old nephew for three or four days. I could have rambled on and on about how I intend to survive these days alone, with no adult backup (movies and novels and 94% fat-free popcorn, mostly).

(Oh, and there goes cute Ace, booted off American Idol. I have never voted, not once, nor do I ever plan to vote. But he is a cute boy.)

But I can't really think of anything to say.

Two for the Price of One, Lucky Me

2006-04-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

First, an admission. I'm not big on Easter baskets and I've never mentioned the mythical Easter bunny to my children, not even to blackmail them into behaving better. A couple of years ago, I forgot to give the children their chocolate Easter bunnies and over a year passed before I removed the stale chocolates and threw them in the trash. No one noticed or remarked.

This year, I prepared ahead of time. I gathered four baskets, suspended small stuffed bunnies in plush eggs from each handle, nestled paper Easter grass into the baskets and place a chocolate bunny and some lollipops in each one. Then I stashed them in the front closet, right behind the vacuum cleaner.

And that's where they remain.

They children never noticed on Sunday--which could be because the younger children had candy from the church Easter egg hunt and one of the twins was ill. Today, two days after Easter, my daughter remembered the chocolate Easter bunny one of the baby's moms gave her. First, I gave her the dismembered bunny head (she nibbled one bite) and later, handed over the whole bunny body which rests in peace on the coffee table, looking like a cadaver picked over by a vulture.

My son noticed and said, "HEY! You didn't give us our chocolate Easter bunnies!" His indignant attitude annoyed me, so I just said, "Huh." And he carried on a little, but I thought, I can't, I won't present Easter baskets now because then she will have two chocolate bunnies and really, now is a bad time. Maybe later. Plus, I won't reward his stinky behavior.

Tomorrow, maybe, I'll get out those baskets, but please, Son, don't ask me again or I'll have to leave them in the closet.

* * *

My daughter has had an uneasy relationship with nap time. When she was a year old, she boycotted nap time for four straight months. Oh, she might doze in my arms while I nursed her, but if I shifted in my chair or placed her in her crib, she screamed as if a swarm of bees flew into her diaper. She'd be awake for twelve hours and sleep for twelve hours.

Then, she napped again. And so it went for some time until she stopped napping again. I began laying down with her on my bed and she'd fall asleep, quite against her will. For a long stretch, I may have napped more than she did, but the day came when she started napping alone again.

Lately, though, she has stopped napping. Sometimes, she falls asleep inadvertently, but mostly, no naps.

I do, however, insist on a quiet time. The rest of the kids take naps and while they do, she lies on my bed and watches PBS. She's allowed to come downstairs when Clifford the Big Red Dog ends.

Today she did not want to abide by our agreement. I had to insist. She shrieked and stomped and snot ran down her darling little face, but I stood firm. In fact, I plopped her into her crib and went downstairs for two minute intervals, returning upstairs to ask, "Do you want to watch The Berenstain Bears now? And when she'd shout, "I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!" I'd say, "Do you want to stay in your crib or watch t.v.?" and when she'd scream, "I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!" again, I'd close the door and return downstairs for two minutes.

This battle of wills lasted approximately twenty minutes, when she decided she did want to watch t.v. after all.

After dinner, I took her to the local park and she frolicked for almost forty-five minutes before I told her it was time to go. She walked to the van, no complaints, then climbed in and passed her car seat and sat in her brother's seat. I pointed out that she needed to sit in her car seat. She refused.

I insisted.
She refused.
I insisted.
She refused.
I explained, then exited the van, locked the doors and walked thirty feet away where I sat on a bench for one minute exactly before returning and insisting she sit in her car seat.

She refused.
I insisted.
She refused.
I returned to the bench where I watched her pound the van windows and scream like she was being burned alive inside the van.
I waited two minutes, then returned.

At one point, I forced her into her car seat ("You may get into your seat by yourself or I will put you in your seat.") but she unbuckled her belt and stood up, sobbing wildly.

A different parent, the kind who keeps a wooden spoon in her purse, would have beat her scrawny little butt at this point, but I don't spank anymore. I was determined to outlast this thirty-two pound human being. Outwit, outsmart and outlast.

We did this for, oh, about thirty minutes, before she decided she wanted me to hold her. (To that point, all she'd said was, "I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT!") I held her, explained where she needed to sit so we could go home and she agreed.

I put her in her seat, buckled her up and sped home while she worked herself into a lathered frenzy, yelling all the way home, "I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT! MOMMY! I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT!"

When we were within sight of our house, she unbuckled and clambered out of her car seat. Fine. When I parked, she refused to leave the van, so I carried her out. She struggled to get down, so I strode into the house, telling my husband, "She's throwing a fit." She trailed after me, weeping.

I put on her pajamas.
She stopped crying.
We rocked and watched Spongebob together.
And finally, bedtime.

I hope that tomorrow she remembers that she cannot win. I am a formidable foe and I cannot be beat. I am fortified with eleven vitamins and minerals and Diet Coke with Lime. Beware.

I Found Your Missing Sock

2006-04-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

Last night, while folding laundry, I came across a sock which does not belong to anyone in my family. How can this happen? I pondered these things in my heart. I thought perhaps I had solved the age-old riddle: where do single socks go when they disappear? Perhaps they are teleported from your dryer to mine. This is not the first time a random sock has appeared in my house. [Cue ominous music.]

Teleportation. That must be it. Mystery solved.

Until this morning, when I found this. The matching sock. Which I never purchased. This pair of socks is a obviously a set of intruders, interlopers, maybe even spies. But from whence did they come?

I cannot comment further due to the ongoing investigation.

Reporting live from Washington State, this is Mel, Queen of Socks, signing out.

Viruses, French Women, Pregnant Stars, Cellulite and Diet Coke All Tied Neatly Into A Bow

2006-04-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

I think my teenage twins are faking their illness. I am a skeptic at heart, a trait which won me a few enemies on AOL message boards, but I am trying to overcome my disbelief and play along with them. I am certain that one of my twins was ill yesterday, but today he seems okay. His brother, quick to sense an opportunity to avoid doing schoolwork, cries out, "Oh my stomach hurts!" whenever I look at him cross-eyed. So, I say nothing.

Tomorrow, they take the
Washington State Assessment of Student Learning, otherwise known as the "WASL," and/or "A Big Waste of Time." Testing (even for school-at-home students, because we are affiliated with the public school and not traditional homeschoolers) will take place over the course of six days, which means I have six fewer days in which to shove the knowledge they are supposed to acquire down their throats. Oh wait. That didn't sound very educationally enlightened, did it?

Yesterday at church I heard that two of the children I babysit were home (on Easter Sunday!) throwing up. The three and a half year old boy and the almost-seventeen month old boy both caught my daughter's stomach virus. I am frustrated by this because I am so careful to wash my hands (while I sing the ABC's) and in fact, my fingers are cracked and sore from the constant washing. But all my efforts are for naught . . . the viruses transmit as if I've been splashing everyone with toilet water and teaching them all to wipe their snot on their neighbor's crackers. So, my house is empty today, courtesy of the virus that has caused working parents to stay home for a day with their sick offspring. (I only rejoice in my quiet house, not the illnesses. Really.)

I have to say that this day has been gloriously quiet, aside from my chatterbox daughter's never-ending requests for something to eat. Today she has asked for a waffle with syrup, saltine crackers ("square crackers"), granola bar, apple with no skin, Cheez-its ("orange crackers"), Cheerios, cookies, oatmeal, fish sticks, ice cream, and grapes. She hasn't eaten all these things, and, in fact, I've begun to think of her as my personal petite French woman, who eats only three bites and thus, maintains her sleek and lean thirty-two pound figure.

So, in between fetching snacks, I've worked on laundry, cleared out my bill basket, (that wicker holding tank for paperwork and bills), sent off the taxes (woo-hoo, a $40 tax return, whatever shall we do with our windfall?) and our estimated quarterly taxes (what fun to write a check directly to the government four times a year) and finished writing an actual letter to put in an actual envelope with a real live stamp.

And now, a random thought about famous people.

Katie Holmes and Angelina Jolie--I couldn't care less about their pregnancies, nor their births. Do I want to see a paparazzi-stolen photograph of their post-baby bellies all jiggly like jello and criss-crossed with road-map patterned stretch marks? Uh . . . no? Okay, well, only a little so I can compare my own baby-ravaged body and feel a kinship with them. Admit it. You do, too. (You were also excited to see the headline reading "Cellulite of the Stars," on that magazine by the check-out lane and admit it, you looked at the pictures of skinny bottoms clad in bikinis and were secretly pleased to see the tell-tale ripples of cellulite. Or perhaps I'm projecting again.)

As for newborn celebrity baby photos? I don't care. No one does. We just want to see the postpartum mother and gasp at how good she looks while hoping she looks horrible. That's the truth. All babies look the same three days after they are born (except for your beautiful baby).

The teens just came out to fix themselves a snack. Yeah, they're real sick.

(And now? A true confession. I have a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke with Lime in my refrigerator and I'm going to go drink more of it. Right now. A girl has to have a vice and that's mine.)

I Must Insist You Read This

2006-04-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

Mopsy over at Lifenut writes beautifully about dealing with pregnancy fears after miscarriage. Go. Read. Savor.

2006-04-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Here she is right before she ate a Hershey's kiss and dribbled chocolate down the front of her Easter dress, which, of course, I purchased for $15.99 last year at Marshall's on clearance and fully intended to resell on eBay to finance next year's Easter couture.

The children all looked pretty good, at least for ten minutes until the boys' shirt came untucked and the knees of the pants became muddy during the post-church service Easter egg hunt. I couldn't help being pleased with my savvy shopping skills--they were outfitted entirely in clothing purchased on clearance at Marshall's, (aka My Favorite Store) and Value Village. Every item looked new and carried an satisfactory label (Ralph Lauren, Dockers, The Gap).

After church, I finished cooking dinner and my mother surprised me by bringing my grandmother (now 100-years old and counting) as a guest. We had a lovely meal, except that one of my teenagers (I have teenagers now!) has the beginning symptoms of the virus and preferred to sleep than eat. He's headachey, lethargic and on the brink of throwing up.

And two of the little ones I watch were home on this Easter Sunday vomiting. And with uncharacteristic optimism I had thought maybe no one else would get sick.

Oh, and my daughter woke up with a stuffy nose this week. If it's not one thing, it's another.

Happy Easter!

2006-04-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

Today, we did this . . .

. . . and this.

That is all I have energy to report. Carry on and have a great Easter . . . and I hope you aren't like the woman I saw at Target at 9:30 p.m. who was trying in vain to find food color because Easter egg dye was sold out all over town.

Pow! Wow! How! Now! Mow!?

2006-04-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

My daughter is learning what letters are in her name and what letters are in mine. She has the Leapfrog refrigerator magnets which recently returned to the refrigerator following a hiatus due to a spate of annoying flinging of the alphabet around the kitchen. So, an old toy becomes new and lately, we spell our names all day.

Alas, only one copy of each letter is included in the set, so while she can spell her name, I can't really spell my name: M-O-M because there's only one M. Being resourceful, though, I simply turned the W upside down. My daughter, being not only cute, but also bright, caught me, though, and refused to let the W lie on its back like a turtle. She flipped it back to its proper position.

And that's how I became Mow. That's right, Mow, rhymes with Cow. And Pow. How Now Brown Mow? Pow! Wow! If you ask her, she will tell you that my name is spelled M-O-W.

And in other news, last night, my daughter slept all night and so did I. And today? The carpet cleaner came, I taught my boys Shakespeare and I bought thirteen balloons . . . for tomorrow is the day I become the mother of teenagers. Wow, Mow, How Now?!

Root Beer Man

2006-04-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

My left eye won't stop twitching which is a sign that I have not had enough beauty sleep. I'm all squinty and head-achey and lethargic, deaf to the pleas of my chores to "Pick me! Pick me!"

This picture shows what happens when you leave an almost-13 year old boy to do his literature assessment without direct supervision. You see the eye holes he cut out with scissors? I ought to count that as an art project and take credit somehow.

At 3:00 a.m., I was roused from a deep sleep by my husband who heard the cries of my 3-year old. She needed to use the bathroom and then, of course, have a bath, because don't we all want that extra special clean feeling after we use the toilet? She cried that her tummy hurt.

Yesterday afternoon, she was in the bath right after she asked for some medicine. She has an aversion to medicine of all kinds, so I knew she must be desperate.

I came downstairs and found some anti-nausea medicine (similar to something someone posted here the other day--the main ingredient is fructose) and brought her a teaspoon. She looked at it suspiciously and sipped a microscopic amount and announced she was done. I left the little cup on the edge of the tub, thinking maybe she'd reconsider.

Later, when I checked on her, the cup was floating in the water. I said, "Oh, did you drink it?" She said, "No. I don't like red medicine. I only like pink." And so she dumped it in the tub and bathed in it, instead.

But back to last night/this morning. She was back in bed at 3:40 a.m. Then awake at 4:30 a.m. At 5:40 a.m., when I heard her cry out again, I said to my husband, "Will you check on her?" My head was weighted to the pillow like a stone and I simply couldn't move. I think he gave her pretzels and saltines and turned on a video for her. At some point, she came into bed with us and we all slept until 7:00 a.m. when she woke up, asked for a drink, begged to get up, then said, "Just one more minute," and fell to sleep again.

I woke with a start at 8:10 a.m. and rushed to shower and get my son off to school. My older boys' school day has been haphazard because my daughter has wanted me to hold her constantly and because my head has come loose from its neck and is dangling precariously by a frayed ligament.

But tonight, my colorist will arrive and vanquish my roots and mow my boys' raggedy hair.

This probably wasn't such a great week to give up caffeine. Although Root Beer Man is cute and all, I really need Diet Coke Man to swoop in here and pour me an icy 32-ounce glass.

Meme of the Weird

2006-04-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

Because Jody asked, I am doing a "Weird Meme." Apparently, I am supposed to unveil my soul and tell you six weird things about me. And then I am supposed to trust that you will all still like me in the morning.

So, here goes:

1) I was a college sophomore before I realized that basketball had strategy and game plans. I thought it was a free-for-all, even on a professional level. I never heard the term "March Madness" until I was twenty-three.

2) I didn't have my first date and my first kiss until I was in college.

3) I've never been hospitalized, except when I was a baby and had an umbilical hernia repair. My mother had another baby by then, so she dropped me off and left me during the surgery and overnight because she had no choice. I was a year old.

4) I hate watching DVDs/videos at home. I even joined Netflix, thinking that would be convenient, but no, I haven't even watched the first movie they sent three or four weeks ago because I hate watching movies at home.

5) I read the newspaper and magazines in sequence, front to back. I fold over the page to keep my place in magazines. I never skip around.

6) I rarely listen to music at home. It's too loud here and I can't stand competing sounds.

That was surprisingly difficult to do . . . and I have decided I'm not all that weird, because I even bored myself writing that. My apologies to the blogosphere.

And because I am lame, I'm not tagging anyone . . . but feel free to tag yourself and let us know in the comments and I'll put a link to your blog right here:

Stephanie plays along at her blog, Adventures in Babywearing;

So does Kris over at Kris's Korner of the World;

And here's Robin at her blog, A Little Bit of Me.

Look! Mary at Mary on a Mission posted about her weirdness, too.

Sue at Susie's Space adds her six cents, too.

[ space reserved for links to blogs playing along ]

Nothing, Really

2006-04-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

My daughter is still not entirely well. She woke up crying at 1:30 a.m. last night and followed a trip to the toilet with a bath. A BATH at 1:30 a.m. Today was a hodge-podge of happy-happy and sad-very-very-sad.

So, this was a long day. I'm terribly behind on my blog-reading and my head aches with that lack-of-sleep pain.

But tomorrow, I'll be back and better than ever. Or at least, better than today. Or, truthfully, at least back, if not better.

(Oh, and the van? The 1987 Chevy Astro van . . . died today in an intersection while my husband was driving home from the YMCA with my son. He managed to restart it, but ack!)

What's Hiding In Your Purse?

2006-04-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

When he finally went through her purse while she showered, he found what he expected: a cell phone she'd hidden from him. And in that cell phone was the telephone number of a man and telephone numbers for a divorce lawyer or two.

Think what you will about that, but I suppose that you never really understand a marriage unless you are in the middle of it. (And maybe not even then.) From my vantage point, I see a live grenade about to explode in the living room at the feet of their three children. I cannot believe anyone would pull the pin and throw an explosive device into her own family, but it happens all the time. I wish I could stop it, stop her, warn her, but I know she'd never listen because she'd say I don't understand.

And I know that I can't possibly understand the dynamics in anyone else's marriage. Not really. Not completely.

But I do know what I hide in my purse. And I want to know what you hide in your purse.

(Reese's Pieces or chocolate. What? You expected maybe a handgun?)

Illegal Immigrants and Vomit, Unrelated

2006-04-10T22:12:00.000-07:00

The news reported that 20,000 people marched the streets of Seattle today, demanding their rights as illegal immigrants. What a great country we live in when you can be in violation of the law, yet demand your rights. From the U.S. Constitution: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the privileges and immunities we enjoy in this country are extended to its citizens. Yet, isn't it remarkable that thousands upon thousands of people who have no legal right to be here take advantage of our magnificent freedom of speech? I love this.

Well, enough of that. What follows is a discussion of bodily fluids and if you are squeamish, you may want to look away.

Last night, 10:45 p.m., cries from my daughter's room. I hurry upstairs--she's had a cold, remember, a mild one, but lately, bad dreams have plagued her. One involved a spider eating a bumblebee, which was traumatic for all concerned. I expected to pat her on the head, offer a trip to the potty and sleep tight.

Alas, it was not to be. I opened the door to find her distressed and gooky because her tummy ache had turned into a vomit-fest. I ran bathwater, stripped her crib, remade the crib, dried off the girl, dressed her in fresh pajamas, rocked her and put her to bed.

Then I repeated the process an hour later.

And an hour later.

And two hours later.

And two hours after that.

And an hour later.

After the second set of soiled sheets, I wised up and put a thick bath towel over the sheets and covered that with a king-sized flannel pillowcase, so the next time she woke up and threw up, I only had to remove the towel, not the sheets. Unfortunately, by that time, she was having involuntary diarrhea, so I still had to run bathwater and change her pajamas.

At 7:00 a.m., I telephoned parents to ask them not to bring their children. This is the second time in three years of childcare that I've had to do so, but I still felt terrible giving such late notice. I was so happy that Spring Break was over and that my sons would all be gone--either to school or homeschool P.E. at the YMCA.

So, my day (a lovely, spring day full of breezes and blue skies) was spent holding my girl as she gazed at the television, interrupting the stupor only to occasionally heave into a Rubbermaid bowl. She faked me out, though, at one point and vomited all over my shirt while proclaiming, "I AM DONE! I AM DONE!" She wasn't. We went upstairs, then, and she curled up in my bed and watched television while I showered. By the time I finished, she was asleep and so, when the boys got home from P.E., I was able to march them through adding and subtracting decimals. When she woke up, she was fairly cheerful, though not entirely well.

Demonstrating my superior abilities and endurance as a mother, I cleaned out the refrigerator during her later afternoon snooze in the recliner. And I made a healthy dinner featuring broccoli and brown rice.

At this point, I am just hoping to sleep all night long.

And I do apologize for this lengthy discourse about vomit. Turn in tomorrow for our next installment of As The Stomach Turns. Or more scintillating, uninformed political commentary. Look out, Eschaton and Instapundit, or I'll be stealing your readers and usurping your place in the Ecosystem!

I also want to talk about secret things women keep in their purses. Soon, I hope.

Update: Last night, we slept all night! This morning, the stomach ache is gone, but now she has a persistent headache.

Untitled Until I Think of a Title

2006-04-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

We have a new phone next to our king-sized bed. And so, that's why I didn't realize it was ringing at first. I murmured, "Telephone," to my husband, forgetting that I've had the telephone next to my side of the bed for years. Then I rolled over, peered at the red digital numbers of the clock and realized that a telephone call at 3:11 a.m. can only mean very bad news.

"Hello?"

"Hi, this is Robert Brittingham*. I'm looking for Dan. Is he with with Julie tonight?" The man was a member of our church, calling our house by mistake in his quest to find the location of his 18 year old son. I told him he reached us by mistake and I'm sure he was horrified (he apologized today and told me that his son showed up half an hour after the phone call, seemingly sober, in his right mind, aside from the fact that he lost track of time).

My husband didn't remember that odd interlude in the morning.

I've harbored a terrible sense of guilt these past weeks because I failed to donate candy to the Easter Egg Hunt. The event is put on by our private pool club and all the members are supposed to donate candy. I bought candy . . . but the person I thought was collecting the candy was on a cruise (!) and I didn't know who the real contact person was. Despite my insufficiency, however, the egg hunt featured eggs galore and many happy children, despite the light rain that fell and the presence of the teenage girl dressed as a frightening Easter bunny. My daughter wanted to go back into the van rather than stand within twenty feet of this ominous creature. I even called out, "Please, will you hide so we can go by?"

I took the kids home and then left as soon as possible for my weekly I'm-not-with-kids-for-four-hours-alone-time. And look! Daring Young Mom is not the only one with Superpowers. Observe, if you will, my perfect parking space:

Please note the location: Fred Meyer. There will be a quiz later.

So, after shopping a bit while waiting for my digital prints to be developed (I had a coupon for free developing), I headed for my favorite thrift store, Value Village, where I wandered, meandered and generally wasted time, although you will be happy to know that I purchased my very own copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which I have never read. *Gasp* I promise to read it next, as soon as I finish the Jane Smiley book which I am nearly halfway through and figure I'll finish sometime in the next decade. Or month.

I found new-looking Dockers and Gap khakis for my boys for Easter, dresses for my daughter (from Nordstroms, Laura Ashley, the Gap), more books (as if I needed them!), jump ropes for Vacation Bible School (we use them to ~~tie up~~ keep preschoolers in line--they all grab the rope and walk), and believe me, MUCH, MUCH MORE! I kept looking at my watch and marveling at how much time I had to myself. Glory be! Time alone, no one asking me for a snack or calling "MOM!" from the next room.

Then I got back into the van and noted the clock in the van read 3:57 p.m., while my watch declared it was 2:57 p.m. Uh, hello? Daylight Savings Time anyone? I hadn't worn that watch in a week . . . and so, I lost an hour of time in the vast black hole that is Value Village. (But I got thirty-percent off my whole order, except for those coveted orange-tag items which were half-off.)

And so then I sped to Fred Meyer to do some grocery shopping before returning home at 5:00 p.m. My superior shopping skills allowed me to finish the job by 4:50 p.m., but alas, other people were s-l-o-w-i-n-g me down, getting in line before me, insisting that their groceries be scanned and that they be allowed to pay before me. I telephoned my husband and reported my progress.

Feeling satisfied with my bargain-hunting skills and my ability to remember to buy dried apricots for the bran muffins I planned to bake, I climbed into the driver's seat, turned the key and . . . the engine died.

I snapped to attention, turned the key with determination and attention this time and the engine started. And died.

I telephoned my husband for advice. Pump the gas? Or hold it down? He advised me to hold it down (he'd had success with that technique earlier) and as I talked, I tried again and it started! And died!

I turned off the phone and tried again. For, oh, fifteen minutes. Finally, I called again and he came to pick me up. I transferred the groceries to our car while he attempted to raise the dead. Then we went home and called AAA. The lady on the phone said the tow-truck driver would be there no earlier than 7:30 p.m. and possibly as late as 8:30 p.m.

At 7:00 p.m., the tow-truck driver called, wondering where my husband was. He grabbed the car keys and hurried out the door.

At 7:03 p.m., my husband called and asked me to call AAA to make sure they'd have the tow-truck wait. I did and the AAA man said the truck had left, but it would turn around and to stay with the vehicle.

At 7:15 p.m., my husband realized he didn't have the van keys. He turned back and AAA said they'd have to cancel the call and start over. He picked up the keys and a friend of his drove him to the dead van.

So, he and a buddy waited in the Fred Meyer parking lot, forlorn and abandoned by AAA. At 8:30 p.m. on a lark, he turned the key and stomped on the gas and the van started. So, he cancelled the call and drove the now-resurrected van home.

This morning he drove it to church.

So let's review. We now own a van which may or may not start. And a car which will always start, but may or may not stop randomly as you drive down the road. Fun, isn't it? The element of surprise, the not-knowing?

And now, I must watch Grey's Anatomy.

(*not his actual name, obviously)

What We Did Today

2006-04-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

2006-04-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

Today, I figured out how to use an Olympus D-380 that I bought on Clearance at Target several years ago. I bought it without a manual, USB cable or software and after an initial flurry of desperate attempts (including an unhelpful response from Olympus Customer Service), I abandoned the camera.

I am unable to recreate the sequence of thoughts that led me to hook the camera to a USB cable (that came with a digital recorder), but I did. (Wait! It had to do with me fiddling around in Picasa 2, that lovely free program. Oh! And before that, I noticed my slideshow screensaver included pictures I didn't download onto my computer. And during my investigations [Google-Talk downloaded them, apparently. Huh? Did I agree to that?] I saw the "Import" button on Picasa and wondered . . . )

Anyway, here is one of the five photographs that was on the media card in the digital camera. I'm posting it here as a test. (This is my now-8 year old son who was about five when the picture was taken.)

Fit Throwing 101

2006-04-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

My three and a half year old daughter was the sort of baby that nodded "yes" before she shook her head "no." If she started to touch something off-limits, I would murmur "uh-uh" and she'd never try it again. When she was a year old, I started babysitting a baby who was six weeks younger than she was and I thought he might be the dumbest baby of all time.

He would climb onto the deck--with its dangerous railing--and I'd say, "No, no!" and move him back down.

And he'd do it again. And I'd say, "No, no!" and move him.

He'd climb up again. And I'd say, "No, no!" and move him and he'd GO RIGHT BACK.

Rinse, repeat about ten times, which felt like ten thousand times because I was used to my sweet, compliant, sensitive, bright, timid girl baby. I'd already forgotten the agony of my now-12 year old son who had pushed me every day of my life, attempting to wrest control from me and also, trying to drive me stark raving mad when he was a baby, a toddler and a preschooler. (Now he is a delight and I mean that.)

But this girl child, oh, sweet relief! She learned to chat early, she never sprinkled an entire container of baby powder all over the whole house while I was distracted in another room, she never slathered herself head to toe with mud, she never slammed toy hammers into the walls just to watch the drywall crumble. She never tried to strangle her brother, she never peed in the heating vent, she never threw dry rice all over the living room carpet.

Lately, our regimented bedtime routine has become somewhat lax. She used to have a bath and watch a particular video before bedtime. (The video would change from time to time. For weeks, she only watched "Shrek." Then, for weeks, only "Bug's Life." For awhile, it was "Max & Ruby.") But then her father introduced Pooh Bear Candyland into her life tearing a rift in the time-space continuum and messing up the routine. Her evenings have expanded to include a game or two or six of Candyland, which pushes her video-watching time later. Sometimes, it'll be 7:30 p.m. when she decides she wants a long video before bed and occasionally I just surrender and let her stay up past her bedtime of 8:00 p.m.

But! Sometimes, 8:30 p.m. turns into 8:45 p.m., and frankly, we can't have that. I hate to make her cry, though. My husband says I'm a push-over and a softy and maybe that's true. But last night, he wasn't home and I was desperate to have her in bed at 8:00 p.m. I gave her plenty of warning, those incremental warnings the experts suggest("In ten minutes, it'll be bedtime" and "Now you have five minutes") and yet, when I went to her room, she'd just turned on a Rugrats video (running time? 82 minutes). It was 8:03 p.m.

I gave her the choice. "Would you like Mommy to turn it off or would you like to turn it off?" She covered the button with her hand and began to cry.

I repeated the choice. When she did not choose, I chose for her and pushed off the button with my toe.

She turned it back on and I turned it back off. Then I said in my best Love and Logic voice, "Would you like to brush your teeth or would you like Mommy to brush your teeth?" She writhed like she was on fire and screamed. I repeated the choice again and said, "Okay, fine." and plopped her into her crib. (Yes, crib. Wanna make something of it?)

She was in the midst of the kind of tantrum you occasionally see at a retail store, the kind that causes you to fall to your knees and begin thanking God that it isn't your child frothing at the mouth and kicking, but some stranger's brat instead. I retrieved her toothbrush and said in a placid voice, "Would you like to brush your teeth in bed or in the bathroom where you can blow out candles?" (Every night, she gets to blow out the bathroom candles as a treat.) I offered the choice twice.

Her head started spinning around in circles--okay, not really, but boy, was she furious. She kept shrieking and so I said, "All right. No teeth. Good night." Then I said, "Would you like to have covers or no covers?"

She answered with weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So I turned off the light, said, "Night-night!" and closed the door. Her fury increased and she flipped on the light and from the sanctuary of my room, I could hear her voice suddenly louder, which was strange because she has never once attempted to climb out of her crib. (Scared of heights? I don't know. She hates to swing, too.)

I opened my bedroom door and saw her door opened. She'd been able to reach the doorknob from her crib. (First time she's done that.) She had one leg flung over the end of the crib and was screaming, "I WANT TO WATCH MY VIDEO!" I said, "No. Good-night," and turned off the light and closed the door again.

We did that twice. Then I said, "Child, you are NOT going to watch a video. No! Now, stop!" and she stopped. Then she said in broken sobs, "I . . . want . . . to . . . blow . . . out . . . candles!" I plucked her out of the bed, carried her to the bathroom, asked again about tooth-brushing ("NO!").

Her wracked sobs and ragged breath actually put the candles out before she could gather enough breath to blow. Then she clung to my neck and I rocked her for two minutes--okay, four minutes--while she hiccuped and shook and then I put her in bed. She fussed a bit, but when I told her to lay down, she did. I covered her up, bade her farewell and closed the door.

Don't mess with Mama. I've been through these battles before and I will not crumble. I am invincible in the face of preschooler snot and outrage.

And tonight? Daddy turned off her DVD player--while she protested--and offered her the choice of Mommy or Daddy putting her to bed. She chose me, she brushed her teeth, she blew out the candles, I deposited her in bed, I covered her up, I said good-night and closed the door.

Never let them see you sweat.

I'm Bored When They Talk

2006-04-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I thought with sudden clarity: I cannot stand pretentious people who are impressed by their own intelligence. They start to talk and I have to force my eyes not to roll up with a snap like old-fashioned window shades. I click onto a blog and find a bunch of big words strung together without any sense of rhythm or style or talent and I wonder why I keep that blog on my Bloglines list. I turn the channel and a talking head is talk-talk-talking and I just can't listen for more than a second before I fondle my remote control with desperation.

Perhaps my attention span is permanently broken by the incessant interruptions of my daily life. Maybe it's just me and my mommy brain which has shrunk to fit into this 2000 square foot house with its odd little backyard. I might be have lost my ability to understand politics and theological matters to a satisfactory degree. And I don't care.

At any rate, all the super-big-name political and religious bloggers bore me silly. (And I'm sure it's mutual.)

How to Make Egg Rolls At Home

2006-04-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a link which tells you how to make homemade egg rolls. I use the wrappers located in the produce section of the grocery store and vary the fillings, though I usually use some sort of sausage and shredded cabbage. (Some of you had asked for my recipe, but I usually just wing it, sort of combining the recipe on the back of the package with stuff I have on hand.)

And here is a blog which made me laugh today . . . and which also gave me some great ideas!

Spring Break: Day Two

2006-04-04T22:28:00.000-07:00

My husband rocks. He took my boys out for lunch, then to the church for three hours today. "A three hour tour, a three hour tour." (Sorry. I suddenly started singing the Gilligan's Island theme song.) The youth pastor at church has video games and a pool table set up, so my boys love to play there, but rarely do.

So, this afternoon, all the little ones were sleeping (except my daughter, but she was upstairs watching t.v. having a "quiet time") and I savored the silence. And later, to make up for my calmness, I lost my mind entirely and decided to make stir-fried rice and eggrolls from scratch while watching four little ones. My big boys were all outside waving swords and sticks around with the neighbor boys. The little ones were playing in the family room, stealing toys from one another and squealing at each other.

And then I looked out the window and saw branches falling from giant trees across the way. I squinted and looked closer and saw lumberjacks (can I call them lumberjacks?) perched way up the trunk of the trees, chainsawing branches off one by one as they climbed higher. I hollered for all the kids to come and see. The lumberjacks (arborists?) climbed the tree with spiked boots and ropes and when they got within ten feet of the top, they lopped the whole top off and we watched as it seemed to float down. Then they moved eight or ten feet down and lopped off another section, until they reached the ground again.

I'd never seen a giant tree removed before, so I was fascinated and, I admit, a bit distracted from my cooking extravaganza. And the kids were fussy and crabby and my daughter was bossy and then my trying-to-help-son barely burned his finger on the stove and I felt terrible, but HONESTLY, I don't want help I JUST . . . WANT . . . TO . . . COOK . . . IN . . . PEACE . . . AND . . . QUIET!!!

A-hem.

Anyway, cooking dinner before all the kids go home is always an exercise in juggling and not just ordinary three-ball juggling. No. It's like juggling flaming swords with baby chicks perched on the handles. Very delicate and someone is likely to get hurt. Or yelled at.

But the eggrolls were delicious.

A Puzzling Question for the Day

2006-04-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

When two adults are asleep at 3:11 a.m. and one of the adults wakes up and hears a child crying, why does said adult wake up the other blissfully ~~snoring~~ slumbering adult and say, "Hey, I hear crying?" causing the second adult to also wake up and therefore, become responsible for tending to child?

I'm just asking.

Spring Break: Day One

2006-04-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of Spring Break. And yet, I am not posting from a cruise ship. Alas, I've never even been on a cruise ship.

If I were on a cruise ship, I would tell you about the fabulous pools, the magnificent meals, the scintillating conversations with strangers. If I were on a cruise ship, I'd definitely have hot-pink painted toenails and a tan. If I were on a cruise ship, I'd be well-rested and my Oprah magazine would be tattered and wrinkled from being splashed poolside.

But I'm not. My magazine is unblemished. My skin is glow-in-the-dark white. My toenails are hidden in white fuzzy socks. My conversations include discussions about snack foods ("I want an apple with no skin,") and taking turns on the computer ("That's not fair! It's my turn! Wah-wah-wah!") I do have a pool in my backyard but it's actually a sandbox full of collected rainwater. The meals around here depend on my creativity and crockpot.

I could be well-rested if I had any sense and went to bed eight hours before I had to wake up. If I went to bed early, though, I'd sacrifice the nighttime silence and that is a price too high to pay. I may be sleepy tomorrow, but at least I will be sane. (One can hope.)

America's Next Top Model Cuts With Scissors

2006-04-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

My daughter wore her pajamas to church this morning. Saturday night, she'd mentioned that she intended to wear them, the Carter's footie-jammies with horizontal lavender and baby blue stripes, but I didn't really believe her. (Actual pajamas not pictured, but boy, what an outfit that is, huh?) She'd also picked out a yellow and blue dress with gauzy ruffles around the hem.

But this morning, when she woke at 8:35 a.m. (which in her uninformed brain was only 7:35 a.m., but now it's Daylight Savings Time, SURPRISE!), she told me she would wear her pajamas. And I said, "Okay." We had to leave by 8:45 a.m. . . . well, really, we should have been at church at 8:45 a.m., but let's not quibble over details. I tucked her dress, tights, shoes and sweater into my bag, just in case.

I taught Sunday School to three preschoolers and then my daughter and I headed upstairs to claim our rightful position in the second pew on the left side, right behind my boys who, judging from the greasiness of their pre-teen heads of hair, failed to use shampoo again last night during their showers. A lady behind me noted my daughter's unusual attire and said, "You're a more relaxed mom than I was!" and in the pause between that and her next statement, I wondered if I should take offense, but then she said, "Good for you!" I said, "Well, I figured, what does it matter, really?" As I said to my husband tonight, if you can't wear your pajamas to church when you are three years old, when can you?

We lasted through all the stuff that happens before the sermon begins, then headed to the fellowship hall where we could see Daddy preaching on closed-circuit television while also running around in circles (her, not me). My daughter is seemingly ravenous on Sunday mornings . . . but the truth is, she knows that the kitchen holds loot, desirable loot like cookies and brownies and sometimes, cake. This morning, she feasted on Hostess "donettes," those small chocolate covered ones. She also brought a cookie to our table, a snickerdoodlish cookie.

The cookie sat. I sat. My daughter sat. Then my daughter, wanting to shake things up and shake things out, asked if she could put pepper on the cookie.

"No," I said.
She asked again.
"No."
She said, "But I want to put pepper on the cookie."
"I said NO!"
She asked again.
I enunciated very carefully, "Look . . . at . . . me. I . . . said . . . NO."
She added a little whine to her request and asked again.
"Listen to me. The answer is NO!" I used my most stern voice, the one just short of screaming my head off, because after all, I was wearing pantyhose, sitting in the fellowship hall at church.

She paused, smiled sweetly and said, "I love your dress."

* * *

(These tiny cut-out pictures are her handiwork. They are the actual size . . . my daughter is good with scissors. I'm thinking she'll either be a hair stylist, a surgeon or, maybe she'll operate first, then style her patient's hair.)

* * *
A Note to Clarify:
She had rejected the cookie already. She merely wanted to make a huge pepper and salt mess on the table, using the cookie as an excuse. I did not want to clean up a big mess, so I told her no. I have no objection to peppering cookies under other circumstances. (What? I personally do not pepper my cookies.)

Another Virus!

2006-03-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

Shalee "infected" me with the "Indie Virus," which seems maybe a little malevolent, but was really very nice.

You see, Pearsonified has started a small, casual social experiment, it's called "The Indie Virus." Here's how Pearsonified describes this experiment:

The experiment, henceforth referred to as "The Indie Virus," has two goals:*

1) To bring exposure to lesser known blogs (especially those outside of Technorati's top 100);
2) To explore the metrics behind a viral linking campaign launched by the 'little guys' (less popular blogs).

So, Mary, from Tales From the Edge of Sanity, consider yourself contagious with "The Indie Virus". (Follow the directions by clicking on the links for Pearsonified to infect others if you dare.)

Also, Oshee, from Hallucinations has been infected with the "The Indie Virus". (She's from Arizona, but is posting about a visit to Seattle, too, at the moment. How about that?)

Finally, Sarah, from The Cleft of the Rock has also caught "The Indie Virus".

Check out these blogs and say Mel sent you. (Thanks to Shalee of Shalee's Thoughts for including me in this internet virus.)

Friday!

2006-03-31T08:46:00.000-08:00

Here's what I'd like to do today:
1) Go crazy trimming ivy and hedges in front and back yards.
2) Remove old perennial growth from fall and grin and wave at new growth.
3) Sweep off patio and gather up toys from yard.
4) Eat lunch at Taco Time.
5) Nap.
6) Read all afternoon while my maid tidies up and my chef cooks dinner. (Oh wait, I think I just lost my tentative grip on reality.)

Here's what I'll actually do today:
1) Eat oatmeal while waiting for boys to become lucid and ready to work.
2) Sit at kitchen table for two or three hours and participate in School-At-Home.
3) Make lunch for little kids.
4) Put all little ones down for naps and thank God I made it through the morning.
5) Wash, fold, put away laundry.
6) Wonder what to make for dinner.
7) Make dinner.
8) Thank God for parents who retrieve their children and for neighbor kids who go home. (Eat dinner. Clean up after dinner.)
9) Try to read 13 Ways to Look at a Novel while concentrating on keeping eyes open. Wonder if I'll ever actually read a novel again or if I am doomed to be stuck in the middle of this extra-long-super-deluxe-big book about novels forever.
10) Watch pointless television, maybe.
11) Read blogs, definitely.
12) Think about working in yard tomorrow, but realize that I'd rather leave my house in a car than stay home and work. Plan my escape.

Update: What I Actually Did
1) Finished eating oatmeal.
2) Changed baby's diaper.
3) Dragged almost-13 year old twins through an entire unit of poetry. They were not impressed (hostile, really), but we conquered it with only a minor fit-throwing. One boy wrote his own poem about gluing a cat to the table, accidentally, of course.)
4) Debated merits of pitching navel orange at Reluctant Student's fit-throwing head. Refrained from violence. Barely.
5) Laundered three loads of clothes. Swept and mopped the laundry-room floor. (You really don't want to know.)
6) Made lunch.
7) Cleaned up disgusting kitchen mess.
8) Wondered how it was possible for whole house to look like a Goodwill store, post-bomb-explosion.
9) Figured out how many lessons of each subject we need to complete per day for the last ten weeks of school. (Answer: A lot.)
10) Ate Pizza Hut pizza, delivered personally by my husband, Mr. Candyland.
10) Watched mindless television ("Deal . . . or No Deal?"), read 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel (curse you, Jane Smiley, for writing such a long and meticulous book!), and thanked God for Fridays.

Six People Danced All Night and Then Died In the Morning

2006-03-30T16:27:00.000-08:00

Actually, I have been thinking, so I take that back. I've been thinking about this rave after-party in Seattle at which party-goers were shot and killed by Kyle Huff. My sister (not the one who stole my birth pictures and hasn't spoken to me since, but the other sister who is seven years younger than me) used to go to raves in Seattle in her wild and crazy days. She'd be gone all night. Once I arrived at my mom's duplex on a Saturday morning just as one of my sister's friends was leaving. The friend's black clothing contrasted with her painted white face and stark red lips. She looked more dead than alive. My sister knew this girl only from the raves and after the dancing to thumping electronic music, they'd made their way back from Seattle on the bus and slept a little in the wee hours of the morning.

(And if they thought we didn't notice that they were behaving strangely and dangerously and using crystal meth, they were sadly mistaken. Because rave = drug use no matter what you say.)

So the reason I keep thinking about Kyle Huff shooting all those ravers after he was invited to their after-party to hang out is that he could have shot my sister. She used to go home with people she didn't know and share needles with people she didn't know and drink alcohol with people she didn't know and then lie about it. I used to toss and turn at night, praying, worrying, wondering how she'd live through the choices she was making. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't be stopped.

Two of the girls (ages 14 and 15) who were shot dead by Kyle Huff were much younger than the men who were shot. If news reports are to be believed, their parents knew they were going to a rave. They didn't know one of the girls would lose her friends and go home with strangers. That girl's dad didn't know she was missing until the next morning. But the parents knew what their kids were doing, staying out all night, partying. (I can't understand this. I know we are overprotective in many ways, but I believe strongly in boundaries for kids.)

This news story about the murders of six people plays in my head like a catchy tune stuck on repeat. Over and over and over again, shooting and dead bodies and the devastation in the rave community. (Did you know there was a rave community? I didn't.)

My sister, during those run-away days of Greyhound buses and needle tracks hidden by long sleeves, said to me once, "I just wish I was still grounded, at home in the living room." For only a short time before, she'd said to my dad, "I hate you! I wish you were dead!" And then he died when she was sixteen and she tasted the frightening freedom for which she'd yearned. And when the highs faded and the hangovers lasted longer than the fun, she changed her mind.

The consequences of the choices she made back in those days continue today, of course, even almost twenty years later. But at least she stopped before she was dead. Not all kids living more in the night-time than in the day are so lucky.

That's why I can't stop thinking about Kyle Huff and the six dead people (two of them only kids) and shots ringing out at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Untitled Due to Lack of Creativity

2006-03-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

Hi.

Do you sense that yawning chasm in my brain? Because I have been digging around in there and find that it's pretty much empty. Just echoes in the air and foil wrappers from chocolate Easter candy littering the floor.

I would like to point out that if you arrive on my doorstep around 3:00 p.m., you will find my house in a state of complete disarray. I don't bother picking up toys or straightening up the kitchen or doing much of anything between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. These are the sacred hours, the Nap Hours, the house during which I try to trick my 3 year old into staying upstairs, watching television. These are the hours in which my almost-13-year old boys disappear into their room, wandering out only to find a snack. If they speak to me, I say, "Please, do NOT talk to me!" I suppose they'll discuss my behavior with their therapist in years to come.

And from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., I am doing school-at-home with the boys while keeping an eye on my daughter, her 3-year old buddy and the 16-month old baby boy. You can imagine the utter devastation occurring moment by moment.

My daughter woke up at 4:45 a.m. She was hysterical over a bad dream she'd had. In her dream, a spider licked and licked a bee, then ate it and spit it out. Apparently, this is terrifying if you are three and a half. She insisted on watching a video, so I pushed in "Blue's Clues" and warned her not to wake me and abandoned her in her room. Because I am self-centered like that and completely delirious in the dark hours of pre-dawn.

She woke me once to ask for a cookie. ("No, you can't have a cookie. Go back to your room.") Then at 6:00 a.m., she crawled into my bed and slept. Problem was, I had trouble falling back asleep and so this morning at 8:00 a.m., I was not ready to face the day. I'm still not really ready, but the day is moving forward anyway.

And now, my bladder pleads with me to heed its call and I hear a baby crying somewhere in the distance. (Oh wait. Too much information?)

Bye.

Husband on Strike?

2006-03-29T12:54:00.000-08:00

This husband is on strike. My only question is, "And how would that be different from not being on strike?" I bet his wife is happy he's on the roof. If I were her, I'd put the ladder away in the garage. One less person to pick up after.

(This is no way reflects on my husband, who happens to be a great husband and father. I offer this proof of his superiority to all other men: he plays Pooh-Bear Candyland every night with my daughter so I don't have to.) Sure, he wants me to iron his pants (*gasp* OH THE HORRORS OF THE PATRIARCHY!!) but honestly, everyone has to make some sacrifices and that's mine.

Stuff in the News That Bewilders Me

2006-03-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

From USA Today.com: So, President Bush "believes the best way to end the black market in labor, which has drawn an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to the USA, is to legally expand opportunities for foreigners to take jobs that Americans don't want. 'By creating a separate legal channel for those entering America to do an honest day's labor, we would dramatically reduce the number of people trying to sneak back and forth across the border,' he said Monday."

That makes sense to me. And yet:

"The House bill by Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., passed in December, would make illegal immigration a felony and increase penalties on employers. It would also expand 14 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border by 700 miles, at an estimated cost of $2.2 billion."

Eleven million illegal immigrants are here. The question is, what now? Isn't a a "guest-worker" reasonable? Am I missing something, Mr. Sensenbrenner? Are we seriously considering making their presence a felony, increasing our the load our courts and prison systems must bear? What is the penalty now for being an illegal immigrant? And how did we accumulate 11 million of them before we decided to take action?

See? I'm so confused. I need more information and yet, I'm not sure I'd have enough unbiased information to ever really understand these sorts of things.

I'm also confused about Michael Schiavo. Why would a man who claims to shun publicity and decry public interest in a so-called private matter write a book about it? Am I missing something? I have no patience for a man who began dating, having children and cohabitating with another woman while waiting for his wife to die. What ever happened to duty and faithfulness? And why put yourself back in the news just when we were starting to forget that he begged the courts to deprive his wife of nourishment (and water, too).

I wonder about Rusty Yates who is getting on with his life, while his ex-wife faces a second trial in the drownings of their five children. How does one just move on like that? Don't dead children require at least a decade of mourning? And what kind of woman marries a man with that kind of baggage? This boggles my mind.

And just when you thought a pastor's wife was a quiet little woman with a beige personality, along comes Mary Winkler with her sassy haircut, three little girls and husband shot dead in his bed. I know. We are all thinking the same thing: What was her motive? Why would she shoot her husband in the back? (Oh wait, I presume guilt. Shame on me.) Still. Why? Why? Why? Why didn't the vision of her children with a dead dad and an incarcerated mom stop her?

I don't understand a lot of things today, I guess.

Check Out This Blog: That's an Order!

2006-03-28T14:02:00.000-08:00

If you've ever caught vomit in your cupped hands, you are probably a mother. And so, you might want to check out this blog by a mother of four.

Cyn's blog is one of my new favorites. She talks about a support group she wanted to start when she had four preschoolers: MAPS--Mothers Against Preschoolers.

MISSING: Maternal Brain Cells and More

2006-03-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

ALERT!

Have you seen this shoe?

Appearance: Reebok, black, right shoe, baseball cleat, dusty, no laces.
Missing since: Fall 2005
Size: 3.5

This black Reebok baseball cleat was last seen in the vicinity of the family room and the Nintendo GameCube. Owner's mother offers a reward of $5.00. Foul play not suspected.

.............................................................................

Recovered earlier today in a frantic pre-P.E. search:

Brand new baseball glove owned by 12-year old son; located in underwear/socks drawer.

Brand new softball, necessary for P.E. at the YMCA; located under children's desk, nestled in a nest of cat fur and dust.

It's that time of year . . . when the seasons change and I suddenly have no idea where necessary accoutrement hides. I used to be the kind of person who could locate any item--no matter how obscure or tiny--in a matter of minutes. I had a brain that retained minute bits of information, little diagrams of the interiors of drawers and cupboards. I could remember.

Now, I am lucky to find my slippers. Oh, that's right. They're on my feet.

On my 8-year old's feet? Yeah, red Chuck Taylors. He may not have any traction, but he sure will be stylin'.

Mission Accomplished

2006-03-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

Even my husband (who tends to not eat pizza much) said it was the best pizza he'd had in a long time. "I've had pepperoni for so long I had forgotten what a good combo pizza was like."

Really, life is too short not to order the pizza of your choice.

Worse Than Interruptions: Pepperoni Pizza

2006-03-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

What's worse than being constantly interrupted? What's worse than never being alone in the bathroom? What's worse than constant noise when only silence will do? What's worse than chatting on the phone while peering into the eyes of a 3-year old who chants, "I want to talk! I want to talk! I want to talk!"? What's worse than reading the same sentence in a book three times, no four times--no, make that a half dozen times--because you're being paged by the girl in the bathtub? What's worse than walking into a room and forgetting what you're doing because you were sidetracked by an "urgent" matter?

I'll tell you. Pepperoni pizza.

That's right. Pepperoni pizza. Had I known during those feverish days of baby-lust that the day would come when pepperoni pizza would trump my craving for black olives and mushrooms and onions and--oh, just give me everything on it, yes, even pineapple--I might have reconsidered. All I want now is a decent pizza, one loaded up with all the things my kids refuse to eat.

But I don't order the pizza of my dreams because:

1) I don't want to spend that much money on a pizza just for myself.
2) I don't want to tempt myself to eat that much pizza myself.
3) Too many leftovers.
4) I'm ridiculous.

How many things have I sacrificed for my children? Long bubblebaths, nights of reading until the wee hours, days spent browsing in antique shops, the last cookie, watching a grown-up show at 8 p.m. downstairs in the comfortable recliner, sleeping in on Saturday mornings and sitting all through the service on Sunday . . . let me count the ways.

You see where this is leading, don't you? Papa Murphy's, of course. If I had a working vehicle and three fewer children in my house at this very moment, I would be in the car RIGHT NOW, heading for my beloved Papa Murphy's franchise, coupon clutched in my sandpapery hand. I would throw all caution to the wind--to the wind, I tell you!--and order a combination pizza for me and a pepperoni for the picky kids.

A girl can dream.

(For the record, I'd pay the price over and over again, but first, I need sustenance. And a day off and a maid.)

Update: So, I called my husband and asked if he'd go pick up pizza from Papa Murphy's for me. "Sure," he said. I told him to let me know when he'd have time and I'd call the order in.

A few minutes ago, he called me. He was so pleased with himself. He reported that he happened to speak with a friend of ours who was shopping at Costco at that very minute and he'd asked her to bring home a pizza for us. Saves him time going to the pizza place and all. Cool, right?

Guess what kind of pizza she's bringing?

Yeah.

Pepperoni.

Tomorrow? I will buy myself a combination pizza . . . or die trying!

I'm A Dwarf: Sleepy

2006-03-23T23:02:00.000-08:00

Here is fatigue. At 8:13 p.m., I put my daughter to bed. Then I curled on my bed and proceeded to fall into a deep sleep, but not so deep that I didn't hear myself snore. At least I stopped short of drooling.

Motherhood is so glamorous.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll have more to say.

Wanna Be A Television Star?

2006-03-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

I received an email from an associate producer today. (And no, it wasn't from the producers of "The Swan." Ha ha. Real funny.)

This is what it said:

"I'm currently working with The Learning Channel casting a new television series about children with behavioral, sleeping, or eating problems. The show is a hit in Great Britain and TLC is excited to adapt it for American television. I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to post our flyer, or our contact information and the kind of people we hope to hear from.

Let me tell you a little bit about our show:

An international TV first, this exciting new format takes parenting television to a totally new dimension by fusing reality TV with observational documentary to observe families solving their behavioral problems. This is not reality TV. This is reality with a purpose. Three families will be selected with toddlers and young children, each suffering from a parenting problem. They will be invited to a residence in the UK where they will learn the skills they need to turn their lives around in just six days. The house consists of a living area, a garden with a gazebo, conservatory, deck, and playground that the families will all share. Each of the families will also have their own private suite with master bedroom, children's room, and bathroom.

Our ideal families have children between the ages of 18 months and 8 years old. We would love to hear from all families: single parents, alternative lifestyle parents, teen parents, ethnic minority parents, anyone and everyone!"

The flyer says this:

CALLING ALL STRESSED OUT

PARENTS!!!

Britain's hit parenting series is coming to the States!

TLC and Outline Productions are working

on the first American season of

"The House of Tiny Terrors"

We would like to hear from all families and
single parents with children between the ages of
18 months and 8 years old who wish to take part.
Whatever your parenting dilemmas or problems ?

we may be able to help!

If you would like some more information,

contact us at:
tinyterrors@optomenusa.com

or 646.216.4348

No commitment is needed at this stage and
all calls will be treated with strict confidence.

There you go. For what it's worth. Seriously, how can you resist reality television? I'm thinking of faking a serious problem just so I can go to the UK and lounge around in the gazebo and sleep in the master suite. I wonder if I'd have to take my kids?

No, really. I'll pass, but you? Or someone you know? Feel free to pass the love along!

Thinking Interrupted Thoughts

2006-03-22T23:12:00.000-08:00

I used all my fingers and one toe (the pinky toe which turns sideways, much to my chagrin) to count the number of children in my house today. And yet, I managed a creative dinner (breakfast burritos) and kept everyone alive all day long. I had some thoughts in my head at some point today--I believe I was going to complain about my utter fatigue and about the depression that sometimes lurks in the shadows until I poke it with a stick--but that all seems a foggy dream now.

Sometimes, I'm here all day, routinely switching laundry from basket to washer to dryer to basket to folded on the back of the chair back to basket, changing diapers, fetching snacks, dragging the boys through their lessons (lately, the War of 1812 and the Monroe Doctrine), answering the phone (I need to get a cordless phone--what is this, 1974? I have to run into the kitchen to catch the phone before the fourth ring, which is clearly archaic) . . . and I feel so disconnected with what is happening in my household because my brain is churning and then--STOP--interrupted. Over and over and over again until I am positively strung out from the effort of thinking a coherent thought from beginning to end.

That has to be the worst part of motherhood--the elimination of meaningful thought. I used to have thoughts, ideas, actual beginnings, middles and ends to my daydreams. Or maybe it only seems that way. The constant interruptions drive me berserk. I did not know that becoming a mother would mean I would never have an uninterrupted thought again.

Except for short thoughts, thoughts like, "GET ME OUT OF HERE!" and "HEY, WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE COOKIES?" and "LET'S HAVE PIZZA FOR DINNER."

* * *
Blogger will not let me comment on any of my favorite reads . . . which I assume (giving you the benefit of the doubt!) is what is also happening on my blog. If you have a comment, please feel free to email me at Melodeee (at) gmail (dot) com.

Change: Not Just Under the Couch Cushions

2006-03-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

So much has happened since I've been silent. For instance, winter ended and spring sprang. And I cooked two decent meals and one half-decent meal. The sun shone and the rain returned. Change, change, change--it's not just floating in the recesses of your purse.

Rest assured, though. Some things remain the same. My desk still features a wide array of clutter: the yarn weavings the boys did for Art, my teacher's guide (Spelling), five envelopes full of developed pictures, a small pile of used tissues, and a 24-pack of Crayola colored pencils. The problem with being healthy after a week (or more) of being sick is that the to-do list backs up and stacks up. And I'm still weary and my (spring) fever will not respond to treatment (la-la-la-la, I can't hear you!).

I have to admit that I'm kind of bogged down in Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. Reading it makes me feel like I'm back in college, minus the broad back of the cute boy sitting in the front row. What's hilarious to me now is that I thought I was so busy then, so stressed out, so living-the-life-of-drama.

Ha. Someone else cooked all the meals (thanks, Cafeteria Ladies!), I only did laundry for one (and I used the same towel for a week), and I could sleep all day on Saturday if the mood struck. Real stressful. However did I manage?

Wherein I Pout and Rant and Rave and Leave Home

2006-03-19T21:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, my husband had to work. The funeral started at 2 p.m., so by noon, he was gone and I was still here. I admit that I was the tiniest bit pouty about the fact that I faced another Saturday at home with the children and the laundry and the dirty kitchen floor. He said, "You could at least have a good attitude," and you know, that's true. I could, but I didn't. I don't know . . . maybe six weeks of illness and too many weekends in a row at home have taken a toll. You think?

Anyway, then, of course, I felt remorse and shame at my petty pouty attitude. And so I gathered the children together ("Where are we going?" "I'm not telling." "Why not?" "Because you'll complain." "Oh, Mom! That means it's somewhere we'll hate!") and off we went in our 1987 Chevy Astro van.

First stop? Gas station.
Second stop? Bank.
Third stop? Wendy's drive-through.
Fourth stop? Zoo.
Fifth stop? Dairy Queen.
Sixth stop? Side of the road so I could stop screaming and start wiping up the ice cream plastered all over my daughter's fingers, dripping on the floor.
Seventh stop? Video game store.
Eighth stop? Parking lot of video game store where I completely blew a gasket and considered simply walking about from my family. Why? An entire spilled Cookie Dough Blizzard in the third row. Children clamped their mouths shut, quite wisely, so while I ranted and raved, it could have been worse. For instance, the Blizzard might have spilled on carpet rather than the plastic floor mat thingy.
Ninth stop? Back home.

My husband called a bit later to let me know the funeral had ended and that he'd be home and then I could leave if I wanted. I had been under the impression that I wouldn't get a chance to get out of the house alone, so this was a delightful surprise. I practically sprinted out the front door when he arrived home.

I poked around in my favorite local discount stores and ended my evening using my lone remaining movie gift card. I saw "Failure to Launch," the Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker movie. The reviews have been dismal, but I went anyway, figuring at the very least I'd just gaze at Matthew McConaughey, who is one fine looking man.

The question is . . . would he be as fine without that accent?

And about Sarah Jessica Parker . . . she is two months younger than me. She has a son the age of my daughter. Her hair, in its natural state, is the color my hair in its natural state. But that is all we have in common. She's somehow managing to remain young and nubile, while I have two age spots on my hands. I hate her.

The Plague has passed and all that remains are random coughs and an occasional sneeze. I am thankful to be alive.

Really Random Notes

2006-03-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

I noticed surefire, telltale signs that my children are ill.

My boys: Uncharacteristic silence, stillness, lack of noise. They don't even fight.

My daughter: Remained in one outfit (her pajamas) all day. For two days, actually.

Also, if a drug company could figure out a way to mass produce a mother's lap, they'd be rich. My daughter refuses ibuprofen and acetaminophen, but sitting in my lap seemed to soothe her pain. I am Human Pain Reliever, no danger of overdosing.

Finally, during this mornings' three hour ~~ordeal~~ math semester assessment, I had to fight the powerful urge to hurl a grapefruit at my Reluctant Student's head. He is lucky I possess so much self-control. And that I'm terrified by the thought of a women's correctional facility.

Oh Look! I Just Coughed Up My Spleen.

2006-03-16T22:52:00.000-08:00

I began to dream today. I imagined driving to Costco, alone. I saw myself leaving my three film canisters at the one-hour photo counter, shopping for an hour, and then picking up my pictures before returning home.

And my dream came true! I left home at 5:30 p.m., made a bank deposit, and drove straight to Costco. I dropped off my film and wandered up and down all the aisles at Costco, idling placing stuff in my cart: lightbulbs, swimming trunks, pot roast, printer paper, romaine lettuce, twenty-four packs of Maruchan Instant Lunch, the noodles of choice for 12-year old boys, three cans (19 oz each) of Lysol spray. I shopped and shopped and shopped, surprising myself with the sheer number of essential items I picked up. Socks, batteries, cat food, corned beef . . .

Then, at 7:22 p.m., I headed to the photo counter, eager to see my pictures. I handed the man my Costco card and then opened my wallet to retrieve my debit card.

"Um, just a second," I said to the man. "I never leave home without it!"

My initial purse-search revealed a huge wad of receipts, tissues, tickets from an arcade, coupons and no debit card.

"Ha ha! Let me look. It's here somewhere."

More frantic digging. Beads of sweat spring up on my forehead. I wonder why my fleece jacket makes me so hot.

"Well. I guess I'm going to have to look some more over there. Just, uh, put that back."

Three times, I emptied out my purse, section by section. My debit card did not magically appear. I frisked myself, checking pockets.

Then I pushed my full cart around the corner and telephoned my husband and announced, "Would you like to hear about my nightmare?" Costco does not accept credit cards. I never carry a checkbook nor cash.

He suggested my mom could bring me his debit card. I said, "No, uh, wait. The last time I left the house was . . . Saturday when I went to that movie. Will you check my black jacket?" And that's where I'd left my debit card, safely zipped into the pocket of my black jacket.

The photo guy let me leave my stuff tucked into the corner of the photo station. I drove twenty minutes home, picked up my card, drove twenty minutes back to Costco and arrived in time for the door-guy to say, "You have seven minutes." Plenty of time!

The moral of this story: Never leave your debit card in your coat pocket, even if it seems like the best solution to the hands-full-of-popcorn-and-medium-Diet-Coke-at-the-movies dilemma. And yes, I did enjoy "16 Blocks" and no, I've never done this before and yes, we are feeling better, but no, I haven't stopped coughing, but yes, my daughter is giggling again and no, not on the brink of death.

Now, excuse me while I tuck my spleen back into place.

The end.

Untitled Due to Lack of Interest

2006-03-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

When I woke up at 7:10 a.m., I thought perhaps I'd slept right through her crying. Or maybe she was dead. I jump to conclusions like that. (Do you, too?) She fell asleep in my arms last night at around 6:30 p.m. and roused a few times until finally, I put her to bed at 8 p.m. She woke up once at about 9 p.m. and while I fully expected her to wake up in the night, she did not.

She slept until 7:30 a.m.

But she woke up still complaining about her tummy ache. (No mention of ear pain.) I started to wonder when the last time was she'd . . . well, you know. Then I thought maybe she has a bowel obstruction and needed x-rays and surgery, stat! But, as the morning wore on, she padded upstairs to the bathroom and took care of business.

Later, she coughed once and winced, so her ear hurts a little, but not enough to wake her in the night.

I daresay we are going to live through the Great Plague of 2006.

* * *

Now, in other business . . . if you link to this blog and would like me to include your blog in my reciprocal blogroll, will you please email me or leave a comment? Thanks!

The Plague, Continued

2006-03-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

Did you hear me rustling around in my kitchen this morning . . . at 3:48 a.m.? Did you inhale the scent of olive oil and fresh garlic and say to yourself, My, my, that Mel is one industrious Christian woman, up before dawn to prepare Italian food! Then did you notice the pajama-clad three-year old sitting on the kitchen counter weeping?

She was weeping because her ear hurt. I'd known that since midnight, the first time she woke up, crying. I think she accepted some medicine, then. I can't remember anymore. At 3:00 a.m., I'd hurried to her room again, rocked her, put her back to bed, only to be woken at 3:48 a.m. Or had I even slept? I don't think so, because by 3:48 a.m., I had formulated a Plan of Action.

My Plan of Action included a drop or two of warm olive oil dropped in her aching ear. The garlic is dunked into the oil because of its anti-bacterial properties. I haven't had an ear infection in my house in many years, but I remembered well that the garlicky oil worked on my 8-year old when he was an infant. So, 3:48 a.m. found us in the kitchen. At 4:00 a.m., I laid her on the ground, ear up, and dropped oil into it.

She screamed, a scream worthy of Drew Barrymore.

And then she slept until 6:35 a.m. When she woke, I rocked her in her room and we both dozed until 7:48 a.m., which was horrifying because I needed to wake up my son, get him off to school, shower and be prepared to meet Baby 16-Months Old at the door. By 8:30 a.m.

My daughter's ear ached off and on throughout the day. I faked her out and put some ibuprofen in a drink for her. Then her stomach hurt the rest of the day (and still does). She went to sleep early, but woke up once already. (Her 3-year old buddy showed the first symptoms of this illness this afternoon. Am I in a horrible re-run?) I don't intend to take her to the doctor at this point. She refuses to take medicine by mouth and so a seven or ten day course of antibiotics sounds like a seven or ten day cruise through hell. Plus, studies seem to indicate that eighty percent of ear infections clear up on their own in four to seven days.

But will I survive until then? For those of you keeping score at home: Since February 10--long-lasting cold, followed by sore throat. Brief hiatus, then stomach virus. Just as the stomach virus ended, this flu/virus hit. ENOUGH! Enough. Enough!

My Faith in Humanity: Restored!

2006-03-14T22:44:00.000-08:00

The worst part about being sick is that you are desperate for extra rest . . . and you can't sleep soundly. At least I can't. And then my daughter has turned into Miss Early Riser and why? Why must she take a bath at 6:25 a.m.?

This afternoon, an email arrived from a local friend. She chit-chatted and mentioned that she dropped off a goody bag for me at the church. My husband brought it home when he delivered my son after school. This sweet woman from church created a gift bag full of cheer-me-up things like an Oprah magazine, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, cough drops, scrapbooking paper and ribbons, scented soaps and more. Girly stuff. She called it her RAK--her Random Act of Kindness.

I call it a blessing.

Wow.

The Virus Speaks (Incoherently)

2006-03-13T22:56:00.000-08:00

I suppose the people in my church would describe me as being standoffish, aloof. The more uncharitable would say I'm stuck-up. Or maybe this is only my own projection upon the unsuspecting and dear parishioners to whom my husband devotes his days and often nights and inevitably, his weekends. No one is ever unkind to my face and only the occasional anonymous soul offers up "constructive" criticism.

Most of it is imagined on my part, if truth be told. I hear their silent words when I dress on Sunday mornings: "Why does she wear the same three outfits over and over?" and "Does she look a little bloated to you?" and "What is with that curly permed look?" [Note: The curl is real.] The real conversations I have following the services are so shallow as to be puddles as opposed to ponds: "Oh, fine. Staying busy!" (said brightly with fake smile.)

I haven't always been this guarded. Not until I learned by trial and error. As we'd arrive at a new church, one or two women would appear on my doorstep or telephone me frequently, extending a hand of friendship or the use of their washing machine before mine was functional. I'd share bits of myself, innocuous secrets about my life, candid moments freely offered. And I learned to regret it. I learned that those who approach the new pastor's wife first are those who will end up being trouble.

Given the logistics of my life at the moment--the isolation that comes with schooling at home while tending to younger children--my connections with the outside world are limited. I am unable to leave my house between 7:15 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., so there are no gym workouts, no lunches with friends, no errands run during daylight hours, no playgroups, no park outings, no manicures, nothing. I depend on a local friend (or two) who calls periodically, the dearer friends who email regularly, my husband's intermittent phone calls throughout the day and the connections I've made through the internet. As you can imagine, each of these arteries bring a bit of life to me, a necessary adult connection and reminder that I am a person, not just a maid who insists children do math problems and keeps the laundry to a manageable mound.

You know how a person can live with a blocked artery? Or two? I guess that's kind of how I live now, during this season of life. I used to think that if I were simply more outgoing, I would draw more people to myself, but this is less about personality and more about necessary circumstances. But that doesn't really make it easier. I simply have to endure and find a way to thrive during this demanding time of life.

When I think about how women lived in prior generations, I feel like a whiny baby. Think of how easy it is, how machines and technology and electricity have made life so much easier. Only, I wonder if life isn't any easier. Chores, perhaps. Life? Not so much. The more connected I am to modern conveniences, the less connected I feel on a human level.

Or maybe that's just the mucus crazy-talking.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow I will feel better. I hope. Because a virus must end sometime, right?

p.s. I'm not aloof. I'm just shy. Just so you know.

The Sun Shines and Yet, I Shiver

2006-03-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

If you stand perfectly still in just the right spot outdoors, the sun feels warm. But move into the shadows just a bit and the chill cancels out the sun's warmth. That's spring here in the Pacific Northwest. The crocuses bloom, the green shoots of the tulips inch taller each day and the weeds grow. A week or two ago on a foggy morning, I looked out my back window to see
robins hopping along the grass, pulling worms from the ground. I glanced to the tree and counted twenty-one birds huddling in the damp branches, like Christmas ornaments evenly distributed among the branches.

And while I long for spring, I long even more for an end to the Plague which has overtaken our household. In the first part of February, I had a lingering cold for two weeks, following by a sore throat. On February 25, a stomach virus began a rampage through our family. In a family of six, an illness moves from person to person with the precision, though not the speed, of dominoes falling. It ended just in time for a flu bug (sudden onset, chills, fever, coughs/sneezing, headache) to settle in on March 4. My 8-year old was sick for an entire week and still hasn't regained his appetite nor his strength.

Last Wednesday night, my daughter became suddenly sick. She's still complaining of stomach pain and has a stuffy nose. Saturday night, the illness I had been denying (I told my husband I was NOT going to get sick, no way, no how, ha!), caught up with me and I spent much of Sunday semi-conscious, my whining daughter by my side, dozing. My twins came down with the bug, too, and have been preternaturally quiet. (The one benefit of having ill children.) Today, I am upright, but coughing my head off and working my way through the tissue box. At least the fever ended.

So, I don't even care if the seasons change. I just want everyone in my house to be healthy at the same time. For six months, bare minimum.

* * *

Now, in more important news: Tonight is "24." Last week, I settled in at 9:00 p.m. to watch the latest installment of "24," . . . and wondered how Jack got that bad guy (Henderson?) in the car. Last I knew, Henderson tried to blow up (invincible) Jack. (When will they learn, those bad guys? Jack cannot be destroyed.) It was halfway through the episode when I realized I MISSED THE FIRST HOUR, the extra hour they tacked on before the regular time of 9 p.m.

Drat and double drat. I hate it when that happens.

Cryptic and True, All at the Same Time

2006-03-11T22:18:00.000-08:00

When my husband is driving and I am the passenger, he is forever reminding me that men have superior depth perception. Especially compared to me. He heard that fact one time and our experiences in motor vehicles seem to back up this idea. I'll be stomping the imaginary brakes and clutching the arm rests while he's still accelerating, even though a parade of brake lights shine in front of us. He'll say, "Relax!" which has never made me relax, not one time, not since the first time he said it to me nineteen years ago.

The other day, I was idly chatting on the phone with my neighbor, the one whose house was hit by a falling tree a few weeks ago. She'd called to let me know her sick son wouldn't be going to school. (We carpool.) My son wasn't going either--he missed the whole week due to this flu bug--and then we wandered from topic to topic. I washed dishes while we talked and then stood and gazed out my back window.

Over my back fence is a new development of houses and on the other side of that little development is a sporadic row of trees, tall, spindly Douglas Firs with clumpy branches at the tops of long trunks. They look kind of like feather dusters and during windy days, I liked to watch them sway back and forth.

As you imagine, when we had the wind storm, those feather duster trees whipped back and forth and some of the tops snapped clean off. In recent days, I've noticed gaps in the line of trees. And then, that morning, I saw that in that particular stand of Douglas Firs, only one remained.

As I watched that morning, phone to my ear, that tree began to wiggle and then it began to fall. I hollered into my unsuspecting friend's ear, "OH MY GOSH! THAT TREE IS FALLING! IT'S GOING TO HIT THAT HOUSE!" She has no idea what I was talking about, but having been the recent victim of a falling tree herself, was appropriately panicked.

And then the tree fell, missing the house completely.

It's all about depth perception. And how mine is wacky. I always sense danger when danger is not within arm's reach. As you can imagine, this makes me jumpy and suspicious.

But "jumpy" and "suspicious" are pejorative words. I prefer to think of myself as aware and discerning. For each negative, there's a positive, right? And, if you are negative, you must admit that for every positive there's a negative. Maybe that's just me.

As I pick my way through the maze of life, occasionally bumping into dead ends and circling in cul-de-sacs going nowhere, I sometimes open a door and come face to face with a sneering, leering crowd who holds up a distorted mirror, reflecting back a warped image of myself.

And so I do what any ~~jumpy and suspicious~~ aware and discerning girl would do. I already know what I look like--I am obsessively aware of my true self and how I really am when I'm in the dark--and I refuse to play along with a fun-house mirror game in which I am psychoanalyzed by the clowns. My faults are grievous enough as it is. So, I slam the door closed, deadbolt it, build a brick wall in front it, drag a heavy chest in front of the wall and carry on.

No looping back for me. No changing my mind and turning back. No way for them to get in and no way for me to waver. And once that door is barricaded, it's like the fate of those drug tunnels that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sometimes find burrowing under the border between Mexico or Canada and the U.S. Even though the tunnels are engineering marvels, testimony to the dedication and determination of their creators, the DEA officials unapologetically fill them with concrete.

I've filled in the tunnels with concrete. I go forward. I won't look back.

The weird thing is that I thought they were closer than they really were. My depth perception fails me again.

My Grandma is One Hundred Years Old

2006-03-10T23:22:00.000-08:00

The strangest thing about writing daily in a blog like this is that most people I know in real life have no idea that I do this. It's odd because blogging is such a mainstay in my life, yet I don't talk about it to relatives or local friends.

So, to the forty relatives I saw tonight at Grandma's birthday dinner: "I write in a blog every day." Ha.

My husband had to stay home (secretly he was happy to miss a family event) with our two sick kids. I took my twins and they had a great time playing with their distant cousins. The dinner was at a church facility which was set up for youth in one room--so there was an arcade basketball game, a pool table, video games, etc.

My grandma looked tiny and fragile in her hot pink jacket and permed white hair. But I sat close to her and we had a little private conversation. Her mind is completely intact and I suppose she feels twenty-two inside, just like I do. I was happy to be the one to fill her coffee cup.

So many cameras were flashing that I asked my grandma if she felt like a movie star and she answered quite seriously, "Well, I wouldn't know." I doubt she could even name one movie star. I doubt she's ever seen a movie. She's from a different era, a time when good Christian women wouldn't dream of setting foot in a movie theater. She is aghast when my mother goes shopping on Sundays.

My grandmother raised six children in the '30s and '40s. The Great Depression affected them very little since they had so little anyway. My grandfather was a preacher and devoted to his calling and my grandmother supported him without complaint every day of their sixty-one years of marriage. (He died on their sixty-first anniversary.) My most enduring memory of them together happened when I stayed with them one week when I was about eight. I peeked out of my bedroom just in time to see them standing in the kitchen in a long embrace. I had never seen my own parents embrace.

For a child who grew up in a divorced household, this steadfast display of affection and love offered hope for my own future. My grandparents are the finest example of Christian living that I know. My grandmother, even at one hundred years of age, continues to pray for me by name every day of my life. She cannot see. She can barely walk. She lives alone in a tidy little house with a garden planted with primroses in a neighborhood sliding into disrepair. But she prays and listens to the Bible on CDs almost continuously.

I've always felt like her favorite granddaughter, though she has dozens of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. Shhhh, don't tell my cousins. Grandma loves me best.

True Confession

2006-03-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

I have a Mean Streak. I do. I know I shouldn't say that out loud, especially where people can (and probably will) use my own words as ammunition, but I say it anyway.

I.
Have.
A.
Mean.
Streak.

This explains why I laugh at "American's Funniest Videos" when someone falls down. This explains why I smirk at the baby's screams when I am a little slow getting the bottle to her imploring hands. This explains why I like to watch the first shows of "American Idol" more than the last shows. My Mean Streak.

I suppose a more theologically astute (and pretentious) person might point out that a Mean Streak is kind of like a Sin Nature. I have one. You have one, too, but you probably don't want to admit it. I don't like to admit it, either. It's best to just keep the Mean Streak hidden, to pretend it's not there.

My Mean Streak thinks terrible thoughts sometimes. My Mean Streak shines the spotlight of judgment on stupid people and judges them for their stupidity. My Mean Streak shrugs off the gentle hand of Benefit of the Doubt and would prefer to tell it like it is, according to me, of course.

I carry a mental gag in my pocket at all times, so I can shut up the Mean Streak's mouth before I do any damage. My Mean Streak is muffled. Mostly. I don't say out loud the worst of what I think.

But, oh! Some times I can hardly contain myself! I cannot understand non-thinkers. I don't get why people are not interested in reading. Why doesn't everyone want to figure out their own personality, their angst, their development? How is it that some people are not interested in understanding people?

Why are people so stupid? And why does it bother me so much? Why do people make such devastatingly stupid choices? And why should I care?

Some days, my Mean Streak won't stop squawking and on those days, it's best to just shut up. If only I had an Isolation Chamber where I could hide before my Main Streak lands a punch squarely on the face of the nearest knucklehead.

From The Infirmary

2006-03-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

Her: That's too bright for my eyes. My head hurts. I'm so sick!
Me: I know. Do you want some medicine?
Her, wailing: Noooooo!
Me: You'll feel better. Just a tiny bit? Please?
Her: No! I want to be sick! I want my head to hurt!

And that sums up the day. She woke at 12:30 a.m. and at 5:00 a.m. (Oh wait. I think I already said this.) After accepting a dose of ibuprofen at 7:00 a.m., she has refused all medication, so once the pain relief wore off around noon, she's been miserable. All she wanted was for me to hold her in the "big green chair," and if it weren't for the 9-month old who is determined to stick her fingers in the electrical sockets and her hand into the DVD player and the 15-month old who slept only one hour instead of two and the 3 and a half year old who needed snacks and the 12-year olds who needed my assistance with math, history, and science and, of course, the still-sick 8-year old, I could have held her all day.

My own head began to ache late this afternoon, but that could just be sleep deprivation talking. Even if I don't come down with this illness, I'm not sure I can leave my baby girl while she is so ill. And yet, my grandmother is turning 100! And my relatives will all be assembled from across the country. Sigh.

Now, for a completely unrelated matter. I have just started reading Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. I have long admired Jane Smiley's skill and talent as a novelist. I adored A Thousand Acres, her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, though the story was devastating. I've read nearly all her novels (but not The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton--I own it, but haven't read it yet).

The only complaint I have so far (three or four chapters in) is that the hardback book is so huge that my hands literally fall asleep while I hold it and read. The perils of reading!

I just finished Francine Rivers' Redeeming Love, another Christian "romance" novel. In this novel, as in the last Christian inspirational novel I read (A Family Forever, by Brenda Coulter), the male protagonist wooed the obstinate and clueless (stupid?) female protagonist. Perhaps the plot similarities were not all that similar, but in both books, I found myself exceedingly annoyed by the women's behavior. Are all Christian romance novels populated by women who are too dim to notice the stellar male character who offers them True Love? Or is it just that I happened to read two in a row? (I rarely read so-called Christian fiction.)

I think this is why I shy away from romance novels. I spend the whole book being frustrated and annoyed by the characters--which I know, I know--the story must have conflict and obstacles and all that, but I have little patience for all that nonsense.

I just sneezed. I hope that's not a bad sign.

What Were You Doing 35 Years Ago?

2006-03-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

Thirty-five years ago, I was in kindergarten. I remember almost nothing of that school year. I went half the year to one school, then we moved and I went half a year to another. I don't even remember my teachers' names.

Little did I know that on this very day, thirty-five years later, Gina would be born. What a great addition she is to the planet earth. Will you go and tell her happy birthday? She writes a witty and often hilarious blog.

* * *

Plague Update:

Son slept all night.

Daughter woke at 12:30 a.m. Fever subsided, but she needed to pee. I rocked her a few minutes and put her back to bed. She slept until 5:00 a.m. and insisted on getting up to watch a video. Fine. I let her and went back to bed, where she soon joined me. She never slept again and I may have lost consciousness or maybe not. It's hard to say. She began to cry about her legs hurting and her head hurting at about the time I had to get up at 6:30 a.m., so I convinced her to drink a little medicine. Boy, she hates that!

Here's what I learned from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website:

Incubation period for the flu, 1-4 days.
Spread by droplets in coughs and sneezes and also by transference (touching something with droplets on it).
Fever can last 3-4 days.
Fatigue/exhaustion can last 2-3 weeks.
Ill person is contagious a day before symptoms show and a full five days after the first symptoms.

She's licking a sucker now, sneezing and chatting with her buddy who just arrived, which is confusing to me after last night's delirious fever. I'm still diagnosing this as "flu" rather than "cold," however, because of the sudden onset and severe headache.

Oh, and it snowed last night, just a dusting.

This Calls for the Pirate Yell: ARRRRGH!

2006-03-08T22:17:00.000-08:00

My 8-year old son hasn't been to school since the nurse sent him home on Monday morning. He's hardly eaten a thing and looks noticeably thinner, but today, he perked up a bit. He laughed at cartoons and played his Nintendo DS and ate a little. I thought tomorrow he'd go back to school.

My 3-year old suddenly grew whiny this evening. She was playing Candyland with her daddy when she complained that her legs hurt. She quit the game and had her evening bath. When she came out of the bath, she was shivering and crying. My husband kept saying, "I think she's sick," and I didn't want to believe it, but by 7:00 p.m., she wanted to go to bed. She cried and said she was cold. She felt warm. I covered her up and turned off her light.

At 8:00 p.m., my son finished his bath and from our room, we heard him crying. I rushed to him and found him shivering. "I'm so cold!" he cried. I dried him off and dressed him in pajamas while he asked to go to the hospital. He described feeling weird and cold and pain in his muscles. I brought him medicine and covered him in four blankets. He looked up at me, his green eyes shining with tears and said, "Mom, if it gets any worse than this, I want an ambulance."

At 9:00 p.m., screams startled me. I hurried upstairs to find my daughter shrieking and burning hot. She'd had a bad dream (the t.v. was going up and down in her dream, how horrific!). I attempted to coerce her into swallowing one teaspoon of ibuprofen, which she promptly dribbled out of her wide-open-screaming mouth. At which point, I, Miss Florence Nightingale, hollered and scolded while she shook and cried.

Then I washed us off and carried her downstairs, where we tried again. This time, she cooperated, even though her hand trembled and tears ran down her face. We rocked for a while and then she told me she was tired and so I took her back to her room, where we rocked again. Then, to bed.

I have now been sitting anxiously, wondering if I hear a child crying somewhere. I telephoned the mother of the baby I watch to let her know we seem to have the flu. They've already been exposed, all three of the kids I watch, so I'm not sure what to do now but carry on.

Arrrrrgh! That's my hearty pirate yell, which I reserve for situations such as this which leave me with nothing to do but yell. My grandmother's 100th birthday is Friday. We're supposed to attend a huge family dinner (a reunion, really)in her honor that night. Clearly, we can't go if we are contagious with the flu, because it simply wouldn't do to have anyone ask: "And what did you give your grandmother upon the occasion of her one hundredth birthday?" because then, I'd have to say, "The flu," and how rude would that be?

Ten Ways I Annoy My Husband (Without Really Trying)

2006-03-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

1) I have purchased exactly one plunger, which may or may not be located near the toilet currently overflowing. (We have three toilets, one plunger, a 3:1 ratio, obviously not efficient.)

2) I leave wads of crumpled used tissues on my bedside table. What can I say? I have allergies.

3) At least once a month, eager for an evening snack, he pours cereal in a bowl, opens the fridge and finds . . . no milk. This is highly disappointing to him.

4) I leave shoes out, under the dresser, near the bed, wherever. I can't be bothered.

5) I insist on doing things My Way (aka The Right Way), things like loading the dishwasher and packing correctly for trips.

6) I turn down corners of the magazines he leaves in the bathroom so I can pick up where I left off.

7) Clutter.

8) I mock his heritage by using an improbably bad Southern accent.

9) I talk to him during "important" portions of shows he's trying to watch.

10) I don't get out of bed when the alarm rings. I'm a three-hits-to-the-snooze-button kind of girl.

Lights Out

2006-03-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

The school nurse called me this morning at 10:18 a.m., to inform me that my son was in her office with a temperature of 100.8, a cough, and a headache and would I please pick him up?

You'd think I'd sent him to school with the Bubonic Plague. It was a just headache treated by ibuprofen when I sent him at 9 a.m.--and he wanted to go to school! He just didn't think he could handle recess, so he ended up being sent to the office where the nurse got him.

He's still ill with what seems to be a virus, though for five minutes this afternoon I was absolutely convinced it was probably meningitis, the only question being: viral or bacterial and would he lose his limbs?

I thought tonight for a second, "I just can't do this," and then I had this whole conversation in my head about how you don't really get a choice about continuing your current direction when you are in the midst of life. Not if you have kids, anyway, and common sense. And summer will eventually arrive, right? Summer means no more school lessons and the possibility that I will catch up on my laundry.

Why do all the light bulbs burn out at the same time? I have no overhead light in my family room, no light in my laundry room and no exterior lights in two of my light fixtures. And no bulbs because I am just not that good at being a homemaker.

Last week, someone from church called exactly at 6:00 p.m. and said, "Oh, wait, did I catch you at dinnertime?" and I said, without pause, "No, but you would have if I were a better mother." She laughed, but I was not joking.

Post Academy Awards Show Blog

2006-03-05T22:06:00.000-08:00

I know. I didn't post for two whole days, which in dog years is uh, two weeks? That annoying thing keeps happening where a thought pops into my head and I think, A-ha! I must blog that! And then the thought dissolves like the bubbles in my kitchen sink just when I'm ready to wash a frying pan.

(Speaking of thought bubbles, twice today at church, I scolded my 12-year old son who was holding a piece of paper up above his head. You can imagine how distracting it would be to sit behind a boy with a paper sign hovering over his head. When I peered closely, I saw he'd drawn thought bubbles and a profound thought: "Mooo!")

[I have to say: I told you so! Only, I probably forgot to actually tell you so, but I did predict that "Crash" would win for Best Picture (and it did) and that Reese Witherspoon would win for Best Actress (and she did) and that Philip Seymour Hoffman would win for Best Actor (and he did). I rock.

Oh, and how about Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell's presentation for Best Achievement in Make-up? That presentation was rivalled only by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin.]

Okay. Back to the post. Oh, first I have to say that the best way to watch The Academy Award show is to video tape it (unless you are lucky and have TiVo, in which case I loathe you because my jealousy has no rational outlet). If you tape it, you can fast-forward through the speeches, the montages, the tributes and just watch the presentations and the monologue. (Oh, and how funny was that opening?!)

What I wouldn't give for a coherent, creative thought about now. Um . . . so . . . today was church but we had no lights in the sanctuary because last night, when some of the guys were at the church doing something or another, they smelled smoke. Smoke emanated from the breaker box when all the lights were on. So, no lights today. And the sanctuary smelled like smoke. My husband was a little stressed out about this, but I gave him some clever lines to use like this: (wait until the middle of the sermon and then pause and say) "Is it just me or am I ON FIRE today?" Or maybe point out Big Al, one of his close friends and say, "I don't know about you, but Big Al is SMOKIN'!" Or even, "Repent, for even now, I smell the burning fires of hell!"

Oh wait. Was that sacrilegious? Okay, let's move on.

I drove our new "old" van, the one nearly as old as my marriage yesterday. The interior is quite lovely, though the exterior shows minor lumps and bumps and flaking paint if you look closely. Kind of like me, I guess. Maybe that's why I like it so well. (But we didn't name it. We don't name cars. Do you? Maybe we could name it "Daisy," and then I could say, "Hey, I'm Driving Miss Daisy!" (Did you get that Oscar reference? Huh? Didja? See? I have a theme in this here blog.) I drove from going-out-of-business craft store to consignment store to thrift store to discount store to second craft store to Bed Bath & Beyond before finally drifting home.

The weather had been exquisite all day and I wanted to just pick up the kids and hurry them down to the beach, but first, we needed dinner. And then the sun slipped below the horizon and then my husband said, "Tomorrow," and I agreed. But today ("tomorrow") it rained and this afternoon, my 8-year old son cradled his head in pain and cried. Another illness?! (After his bath tonight, he declared this, "The WORST BIRTHDAY WEEK EVER!" I distracted him with a tale of a boy I once knew who was so sick on Halloween he couldn't go trick-or-treating. Because really, what is more soothing that comparing yourself to someone worse off than you?)

My grandmother turns one hundred years old on Friday. And you know what that means, don't you? That's right! A mini-family reunion. She had six children and five of them are still alive. I have dozens of first cousins and we've all done our part to procreate. (Well, most of us have, anyway.) We'll gather from around the country for a catered dinner in her honor and I will obsess all week about dressing to slim and about whether to call my colorist for emergency highlights and debating the merits of robbing a bank to hire a plastic surgeon to remove this double chin.

And I console myself this way: I say to myself, "Self, probably Grandma will live at least another six months and by then, you can be to your perfect size, just in time for The Relatives to see you again!" And then I remind myself that I am not fifteen and the world does not revolve around me and that people will not be noticing my appearance as much as I notice my appearance. That's what I've learned in the past twenty-five years.

It would help if I weren't related to the skinniest cousins imaginable--seriously, my cousin is tiny and wears a loose size 2 and my cousin, her brother, is Ichabod Crane-ish, and his wife, a girl who lived on my wing in college, is also slim and has never appeared in public without her perfectly applied lipstick and her oh-so-cool Southern composure.

But I can write. See how I comfort myself?

In other news . . . hello March? The daffodils around town are blooming. My crocuses are a happy little enclave of pure white, gold and purple, merrily coloring the drab flowerbed. They are tucked right behind the basketball hoop and seem hopelessly misplaced, but the basketball hoop was a recent addition, haphazardly introduced to the backyard by two men with no thoughts of Feng Shui or aesthetics of beautiful English gardens full of perennials. (As if!)

This is the time of year that I wish I'd planted more daffodils and I am full of regret. That is some kind of metaphor for life, isn't it? You just have to plan ahead and be patient . . . and actually put the bulbs in the ground instead of just dream.

With that thought, I will wrap this up. But first, one final thought. About George Clooney.

Dear George, (May I call you "George"?)

I want to hate you. You are a cad. You are everything a thinking young woman should despise--your cocky attitude, your inability to commit, your failure to demonstrate your competence at marriage. You own a pig, for goodness' sake, a pet pig! Your politics are liberal, you have that smirk, your belief in yourself bordering on narcissistic, and yet . . . I can't help but think you are the Epitome of a Movie Star and tomorrow I'm going to buy a poster of you and put it on my bedroom wall. I don't think my Republican husband will mind at all.

Oh, and congratulations on winning Best Supporting Actor.

Hugs and Kisses,
Mel

Open Letter to Swiffer

2006-03-02T23:29:00.000-08:00

Dear Swiffer:

I want to love you, Swiffer. I do. I like your convenience. I like your fresh, fake scent. I like the disposable nature of your cleaning pads.

But Swiffer, we do not see eye to eye. Why, you ask? Well, because, Swiffer, you are too short.

I'm taller than the average American woman, true. I stand five feet, seven inches tall, while the average American woman is only five feet, four inches tall. When I use you, Swiffer, I must bend at an awkward angle, an angle that screams, "CALL THE CHIROPRACTOR!" I don't have the heart to tell my lower back that I don't have a chiropractor.

What I need is a longer Swiffer, a sturdier Swiffer, a Swiffer who can rise to the occasion. Please. I want to love you! I want to devote myself to you! But you make it difficult.

So, please, grow up a little. Grow a spine. Grow taller. Get some hair on your chest. (Oh, wait, I'm drifting off topic now.) I'm just saying that if you want me to cherish you, you have to do your part.

(I won't even mention how sexist it is that Swiffer is completely aimed at a woman consumer. An average American man at five feet, nine inches tall would cry out from back pain like a baby girl if he attempted to vigorously scrub the kitchen floor with your woefully inadequate too-short handle.)

Please, please answer my pleas. My back begs you. Don't make me go back to an old-fashioned mop.

~~Love and kisses~~Sincerely,
Mel

Integrating the Sacred and the Secular

2006-03-02T00:25:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, my mother ordered us to turn the channel when Donnie Osmond sang "And I'm a little bit rock'n'roll!" For rock and roll music was sin. So was dancing, even square-dancing, drinking alcohol, swearing, smoking, mini-skirts, hip-huggers and shopping on Sundays.

As I grew up and attended Bible College, life seemed to be neatly divided into two categories: Sacred and Secular. Christian music? Good. Secular music? Bad. Christian books? Good. Secular books? Bad. Dancing in the Spirit? Good. Dancing at a bar? Bad.

My four years at Bible College (where women were required to wear dresses to class, even on snowy days) brought out the cynic in me. I heard enough rambling sermons to last me a lifetime and I saw enough hypocrisy to turn my heart to stone. I'm lucky I escaped with my faith intact, because I definitely needed it later when I traveled the rocky paths of infertility, cancer, death, loss, heartbreak--in other words, Real Life.

The idea that life should be lined up in separate categories crumbled, bit by bit, until finally, I came to understand that I would live my life without a division between the sacred and the secular. Good music is good music, whether or not it includes the lyrics "Jesus died on the cross," or not. Fantastic art is simply fantastic art. A walk through a still forest, glimpsing trilliums in bloom is as sacred as a moment in a stained-glass church.

Just tonight, I came across a book by Steve Turner called Imagine: A Vision For Christians in the Arts, which discusses this very idea. I can't wait to read it, if the sample first page on Amazon and the comments are good indications of the quality of the rest of the book.

So, when I see a particular well-known blogger announcing that she is partitioning her blog into two separate blogs, one for Christians and one for non-Christians, I just shake my head. Maybe that's because I don't write for Christians. I don't even write for non-Christians. I just write for people. I'm not a Christian blogger and this isn't a Christian blog. I'm a blogger who is a Christian. I don't divide my life--or my blog--into partitions. (I even avoided associating myself with Christian bloggers when I began this blog for fear that I would be boxed in by other people's expectations. I just wanted to write. I didn't want to write a Pastor's Wife's Blog.)

Hey, I'm no apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher, but I do know this: Taking care of my kids is my spiritual worship. Writing well is my spiritual worship. Singing "Great is Thy Faithfulness" in church is my spiritual worship. So is washing the laundry and walking on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Whatever I do, if I do it well and with acknowledgement of the Creator, that is worship.

My integration of the sacred and secular is incomplete, because I am in progress, learning as I go. Each believer certainly has to find his or her own way, embracing some things and rejecting others. But building walls around our lives, pulling up the drawbridges and digging moats can't be what Jesus intended for us to do. He came to bring us life, not fear and judgment. (And furthermore, when anyone assumes I'm not bright enough to be able to distinguish the differences between sects, cults and even different denominations, that annoys me. I wonder if it annoys Jesus, too?)

Well, while I'm at it, writing this atypical post which has nothing to do with grocery shopping (I purchased twenty bags full of groceries at 10:45 p.m. tonight!) or laundry (currently backed up), I will also comment on this post at Internet Monk. He talks about another blogger, this guy who announced he would no longer call himself a "Christian, an idea he bandied about here.

I just have one word for that guy: SEMANTICS! Quit fussing about how the label "Christian" might taint your testimony or make you look and go feed the hungry, visit a prisoner, share with the poor, listen to a lonely widow, serve someone who doesn't deserve it and then get back to me. I'm guessing that by then you might be too tired and too peaceful to worry about what someone might think if you accept the descriptive label "Christian."

(If I continue to roll my eyes that far back in my head, they might stay that way, so if you see a 41-year old woman at Albertsons with only the bloodshot whites of her eyes showing, say hello. That would be me.)

It Was Tuesday Just a Second Ago

2006-03-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

Pretend it's not actually 12:05 a.m. That way I can talk about what happened five years ago today and we can all agree that I mean Tuesday, February 28.

Do you know what happened five years ago today? Anyone? Anyone?

That's right! The Nisqually Earthquake, magnitude 6.8 on the Richter scale shook our house and caused me to run upstairs to my son, instead of crawling under a sturdy piece of furniture as I suppose I should have. My son, then barely three years old, had been playing "Yoshi" on Nintendo 64 and frankly, couldn't have cared less about the shaking of our house. I felt like I was in a snowglobe and not in a good way.

But nothing broke and that crack in the ceiling? We ignore it. Perhaps it was there before, right? Normal house settling and all.

Also, today is Fat Tuesday (as well call it in Seattle) or Mardi Gras. Last hurrah before Lent and everything. I did not grow up around the Lenten traditions and the first time I saw ash smudged on foreheads when I was a new bride living in New Haven, Connecticut, I eyed people curiously. Growing up in a Pentecostal tradition means you lack liturgical observances. Sure, people would hoop and holler in church and once, I saw a group of people trying to cast a demon out of a girl who was simply having an epileptic seizure, but no one ever mentioned Lent. Or Ash Wednedsay. (Or Fat Tuesday, of course, because everyone knows that drinking alcohol is a sin if you are a Pentecostal Christian, at least it was in the old days.)

So I enter the season of Lent without any preparation or plans. I regret that, too. I wish my life were more measured and solemn and observant. And I wish I got out of the house alone more often and I wish I had more Diet Coke with Lime and I wish it were not so late. I wish I were not so distracted and I wish I hadn't waited until the last minute to do my little writing assignment because I missed watching the last half of "American Idol." I wish I knew what to make for dinner tomorrow and I wish the taxes were already done.

And just because I want to make a note of it, I have to tell you that my husband and I were laughing over the fact that four cars sit in our driveway tonight. The one that drives the best doesn't even belong to us and it has over 250,000 miles on it. That says something, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. It says "L-O-S-E-R-S."

[But at least we don't have a baby rat in our house. Read this and laugh!]

Public Service Announcement and More!

2006-02-28T15:59:00.000-08:00

You should be thankful that I just deleted my original paragraph. I'll just leave you with this link which details everything you might want to know about noroviruses. Did you know you are considered contagious from the moment you show signs of illness to at least three days later? And some people are still contagious two weeks later. (But my twins show no signs of illness. Yet.)

How did I get to be forty-one without knowing all that? Study carefully, Young Grasshopper. You may need this information sooner than you think.

So, my deadline still looms. I have three great ideas, but no actual words strung together like pearls or even like popcorn strands, the kind you hang on your tree at Christmas. I did send back a cheery email: "I'll have everything to you by midnight!"

I've just made my daughter cry because she won't stop asking me to blow up spit-slimed balloons. Pardon me while I go tend to the angst of a 3-year old.

Okay. I'm back. I am never going to earn my Mother of the Year tiara at this rate.

See you when I finish my assignment. Or when I get back from Tahiti, whichever comes first.

Photo courtesy webcam.

In Commemoration of Our Long Marriage

2006-02-27T23:23:00.000-08:00

Utterly ridiculous, that's what this is. It's 11:22 p.m. and I'm wrapped in a somewhat hideous purple bathrobe that my in-laws sent one Christmas (what? now we send sleepwear to people we never even visit?) and the old navy blue velour Lands End pajamas I bought the year my son was born (1998) and I have work to do, actual important work with deadlines and everything and what am I doing? What? I'll tell you!

I'm procrastinating and reading your blogs and listening to the local late-night news and occasionally hollering to my almost-teen boys, "BE QUIET! GO TO SLEEP!" My husband woke up early with the stomach virus I suffered through on Friday and now he's exhausted from the rigors of trudging to the bathroom ten thousand times today. I said with barely restrained glee, "And now, do you feel sorry for me?!" because last Friday when I had the same virus, my daughter never left my side and for half the day, I was babysitting the 15-month old. Never mind the fact that my boys were entirely on their own and that my now-8-year old invited two friends over to play in the backyard without even telling me or the fact that I was up and at a birthday party the next morning by 10 a.m. Never mind that because having the stomach virus is not a time for healthy competition. Sick competition, perhaps.

For the record, he does feel sorry for me. And then he said, "Yes, I was neglecting you while visiting the dying in the hospital." Which is entirely true and spotlights the life we lead. The dying in the hospital trump a stomach virus at home, unless of course, the roiling stomach belongs to the pastor, in which case, the youth pastor will have to do (as he did today when a church woman called for a pastor today--she was having an MRI on her head to see if she had a stroke). (And, wouldn't you know it, a different woman, the one my husband has been visiting frequently the past weeks--she died last night at 1 a.m. And he couldn't go and do his pastor-thing and sit with the family today. It's such a tough time and he normally makes a point of being with the grieving family.)

Before my 8-year old left for school, I looked into his green-gray eyes and said, "Now, listen. If you get a stomach ache and if you have diarrhea, tell your teacher and I'll come get you." I wrote his teacher a note to inform her that we have a stomach virus here which is highly contagious and that if he showed signs, I'd come pick him up.

At 9:30 a.m., the call from his teacher came. My husband threw off the covers of his sick bed and came downstairs to sit with my daughter and the toddler while I drove three minutes away to the school. My son looked fine and I confess I didn't believe he was sick. I confined him to his room, relegated him to playing the old Nintendo 64 system and for a long time, every time I checked, he seemed bored, but healthy. He insisted he'd had diarrhea and I gave him a little speech about being truthful, yada, yada, yada.

At 3:00 p.m., he threw up all over his bedroom carpet.
At 3:01 p.m., the doorbell rang.
At 3:02 p.m., the telephone rang.
At 3:03 p.m., the nice church couple who rang the doorbell sat at my kitchen table while I pretended not to be mortified by 1) my messy kitchen counter; 2) the toys scattered all over the family room; 3) the stacks of laundry, folded, but still; 4) my unmade-up face and humidity-induced crazy hair; and 5) my daughter's nutty outfit (sundress and too-short wildly unmatched purple stretch pants).

And with great hilarity, I must tell you that we are replacing our van (aka, "The Deathtrap," the 1991 Chevy Astro van which was given to us a couple of years back) with another van, a pretty, powder-blue Chevy Astro van which was manufactured the very same year we were married. That's right! Bonus points for those of you who shouted out the correct answer. Nineteen eighty-seven!! Yes, people, that means our "new" van is four years older than our "old" van and; not only that, but it's guaranteed not to break down within a twenty-mile radius.

No, really. We are so grateful for this donation to our sad, pitiful cause. Our old van quit running and the brakes were deemed unsafe by our mechanic friend. Our regular car, the 1993 Mercury Sable randomly stops running, despite the assurances by the mechanic (twice, now) that they've fixed it. (The last time, it cost $300.) So, driving that car very far feels unsafe.

Hopefully, next year, we'll buy an actual vehicle manufactured in this century. Or decade, even.

So, they signed over the van. I cleaned up the vomit as best as I could. The telephone call was for my husband--his aunt died. As I knelt over the vomitous carpet, the toddler woke from his nap, screaming his little blond head off.

I did scurry around this afternoon, then, fueled by my mortification. Of course, now that it's tidy, no one will stop by. That's always how it works around here.

I expect my twins to be clutching their bellies and pushing their way to the toilet tomorrow. In a way, that would be great because then I could work on my work, the work with deadlines. Because, otherwise, it will interfere with "American Idol" and honestly, a girl has to have her priorities.

I said to my husband tonight, "Don't you just love our life?" as I thought about the vomit and the old vans and the singing preschooler in the tub who wouldn't stop calling out, "MOMMY! MOMMY!"

He said in a very serious voice, "Yes. I do, actually."

The next time I came into the room (putting away laundry), he said, "Seriously, think of all the things we've been through. We've been poor. We were infertile. The unemployment. Your dad's death. Our families' divorces."

Getting into the spirit of things, I said, "Don't forget your cancer!"

His point, though, was not to dwell on the difficult stretches of our life together, but to remember that our pain helps us help others. Our pain has made us stronger. Our marriage has endured--and now we have a concrete reminder of just how long we've been together. What cracks me up is that the reminder isn't a giant sparkly anniversary diamond ring, but has flaky powder-blue paint and is parked in the driveway.

A Note Before Sleep

2006-02-25T22:47:00.000-08:00

I knew she was feeling better when she appeared in the kitchen wearing her powder-blue pajama shirt with the pink flowers, the navy blue striped with red swimsuit bottom from The Gap, and a red homemade knit cap with matching scarf wrapped around her neck and tossed jauntily over her shoulders.

She woke up last night, though, at 11:45 p.m., needing to use the bathroom. Then she woke up at 6:00 a.m., again needing to use the bathroom. I put her back to bed again, and she slept another hour, then had a bath and watched a video for awhile before crawling into bed with me and her daddy. We were all sleeping at 8:30 a.m., when my son, The Birthday Boy, quietly opened the door and asked if he should get dressed.

Since my daughter seemed better, my husband thought I should go to the birthday party and so I hurried to get the boys and myself ready to leave by 9:40 a.m. We had to stop to buy film and a gift bag, but managed to arrive on time. The party was "the best party I ever had!" according to The Birthday Boy.

I napped with my daughter this afternoon while the boys played and my husband ran errands. Though the symptoms of the virus subsided, both of us were so tired that we slept an hour and a half. (She's napped already earlier.) So far, no one else shows signs of the stomach virus. Time will tell. (One commenter suggested it sounds like the "Norwalk Virus." It sure does!)

Tomorrow is my son's actual birthday which means that eight years ago tonight, I was awake, timing contractions, having no idea that the smart thing would be to sleep because I still had twenty-four hours to go before delivery!

What were you doing eight years ago?

Get Out the Disinfectant!

2006-02-24T21:53:00.000-08:00

Warning: Don't read this if you have a queasy stomach or a big bowl of split-pea soup by your keyboard.

I cancelled school today. I met baby boy's mom at the door at lunch and asked her to please not bring him back after lunch. I did two emergency loads of laundry. I lolled around in my pajamas, startling my daughter by jumping up and darting to the bathroom every ten minutes for, oh, about six hours.

And that's really all you need to know about that. Except that, just as I was putting dishes in the dishwasher, thinking I felt a bit better (at 4:30 p.m.), my poor curly-headed daughter did three things:

1) Whined that her stomach hurt;
2) Coughed;
3) Vomited all over the couch cushion, leaving herself in a puddle of puke.

Tomorrow morning is my son's 8th birthday party at an arcade/laser tag place. He's having a 2-in-1 party with his best friend who has the exact same birthday. My husband will have to go while I stay home with the ill child. I figure soon my husband will be clutching his stomach, felled by the same virus.

You might want to disinfect your keyboard now, lest you get what I had.

Awake Too Late

2006-02-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

This reentry week has been difficult in many ways. The transition from the roar of the ocean to the roar of children arguing has made me squint and yell. I've been ignoring the increasing soreness in my throat. I can't seem to keep the dishes all washed and the kitchen clean for even thirty minutes at a time.

Tonight, I am up too late, watching Olympic figure skating and cringing when Sasha Cohen fell on a couple of her jumps. She won the silver, but still. How devastating.

My daughter has been wearing old swimsuits for the past three days. She's even wearing one to bed at night and switching into different ones throughout the day. I cannot understand this. Yesterday, she played in the backyard in this crazy outfit--a swimsuit and sneakers--no jacket, no coat, no hat in the nippy February air.

Oh! Tonight, my son told me he was a fun boy. I said, "Are you one hundred percent fun?" and he said, "No. Seventy-five percent." Yesterday, when I begged him not to grow up (his 8th birthday is Sunday), he said, "Mom, it's the law of physics!"

So it goes. The kids keep growing up and I can't stand to lose them and I can't wait to push them out the door.

In Lieu of Three Thousand Words

2006-02-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

I took each of the following photographs at Long Beach, Washington, last weekend, using my trusty pocket Olympus (because I haven't figured out the intricacies of the Canon Rebel someone gave me).

Weekend Update

2006-02-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

If I wait until I have a leisurely moment to write, I will never write again. So, I'm going to begin this, even though my daughter is whining because "Max & Ruby" ended and she wants to make cherry juice, just like Ruby, and my sons are making noodles for lunch and the dryer buzzer sounded long ago and in fifteen minutes the 15-month old baby will return from his lunch with his mommy.

* * *

So, now it's 2:30 p.m. The boys finally finished their history assessments (on the Constitution) and math problems (Probability and Statistics, which they don't get "get"). My daughter is upstairs "napping," which mainly consists of watching PBS instead of sleeping and the 15-month old sleeps soundly, despite the boy noise coming through up the heating vents.

Last Friday, a huge, unexpected windstorm blew through our area. I was about to drag myself out of bed at 7:45 a.m. when the electricity shut off at 7:40 a.m. I drowsily thought I ought to get dressed, just in case a tree fell on our house (I'm often an alarmist), but first, I called my husband to see if he had power at the church. He did not. (As it turned out, some 50,000 customers were without power, some for days.) I joked, "I am going to be so mad if a tree falls on our house and ruins my trip!"

A few minutes later, after I dressed and ambled downstairs, I heard a noise outside, a noise besides the howling wind. I peeked out an upstairs window and saw a firetruck with lights flashing near the cul-de-sac, so I put on a jacket and went out to see what happened.

My next door neighbor was huddled with the middle-of-the-cul-de-sac neighbor (and friend) and her 7-year old and 5-year old. She clutched the leash to her dog in her free hand. The children had only socks on. I said, "Do you want to come to my house?" and they did, leaving behind their van with one door open and a large tree covering it. We put the dog in our fenced backyard because their fence was demolished.

This is what happened. First, a big tree uprooted and fell onto another neighbor's house, actually sheering off a corner of the house and narrowly missing the home's occupants who were in their car in the driveway. After that, my friend rushed her children out to their van so they could leave their home. She worried that another tree might fall on their house. (We have a lot of trees in our neighborhood, giant, stately Douglas Firs.) She put the kids in the van and as she stood in the driveway, about to climb in, she heard a terrifying sound and looked up to see an enormous tree falling toward the van. She didn't know what to do. The kids were in the van. So, she got in, too.

The roof of the two-story house broke the fall of the tree and literally broke the tree, too, so only half the tree landed on the van, smashing the roof a little and breaking the back window. The repair will take six weeks.

So, I spent my Friday morning with my neighbor while her kids played with mine in our powerless house. Her husband eventually arrived and they made calls and before we knew it, guys with chainsaws were cutting up the fallen trees. The roof of the house was caved in a little, but all things considered, the damage is minor. You can still see into the bedroom of the other house through the lopped off corner. The neighbors departed about noon, I guess, and the power finally came on at 1:45 p.m., so I was able to shower. At that point, the temperature had dipped to sixty degrees in the house.

By 5:00 p.m., my friends arrived to pick me up. By 6:00 p.m., we were eating in the bar of a local restaurant, sharing appetizers and eating big salads. By 9:30 p.m., we'd arrived at the ocean cottage. By 10:30 p.m., our Hostess with the Mostess had figured out how to get the gas fireplace burning . . . she followed all the steps, yet the flame stayed small until her dad told her (via cell phone held in the driveway where she found a tenuous connection) to smack the thermostat on the wall. Of course! Forget logic and following directions and just give the thing a whack!

When we crawled into our individual beds around midnight, the sheets were so cold--and stayed cold even an hour later (I had to read before sleeping, of course). So I went to sleep huddled shivering and woke to warmth and sunshine.

I have a little anxiety--performance anxiety, you might say--and feel a little self-conscious about describing the weekend because my friend (The Hostess) raved about my blog to the other three women. And now they have the address, so "hi!" to them. Welcome to unvarnished world of Actual Unretouched Photo.

Let me just say that my worst fear came true and they were all beautiful and thin and sported lovely manicured fingernails and cute haircuts and jeans much smaller than I've ever worn in my life. None of this is fair, of course, but I did get more scrapbooking pages done because I do simpler layouts and they all had to be extravagantly creative and use embellishments and computer-generated fonts and digitized photos.

I walked on the shore a couple of times, soaking in the sunshine and trying to hypnotize the sun into setting slower and taking pictures which I can only hope capture a fraction of the beauty of the vast ocean. We went to "town," where we bought more scrapbooking supplies and tacky souvenirs from a shop overflowing with kitschy junk I wouldn't pay a dime for at a garage sale. (Well, maybe a dime.) We viewed the lighthouse up close, photographed it, posed by the chain-link fence (me thinking, if I stand behind her a little and turn sideways, I will look almost as narrow as these tall, thin women--I'll let you know if that worked out for me).

We watched a terrible movie (Must Love Dogs.) "I saw that," I said. "Was it good?" they said. "Uh, not really. But it should be. But it's terrible. You'll see." Afterwards: "I can't believe I watched that whole movie! It was awful!" (I only watched half of it and wandered back downstairs to scrapbook some more.)

We ate, we laughed, we talked (someone stop me, please--at least I didn't tell the decapitated hamster story), we snipped, cropped, stuck pictures in scrapbooks, we read, we slept, we gazed at the ocean. I searched in vain for an unbroken sand dollar--I have such a fixation with them. Saturday night, I saw a bicyclist riding near the waves at low tide with a horse tethered to one hand and a dog leashed to the other. I hope that silhouette turns out.

Three nights, four days, two complete scrapbooks (almost). Good times. Our hostess encouraged us to make the best of our re-entry into the real world so our husbands would be inclined to send us away again for a long weekend.

What a glorious weekend!

And now the baby is crying, my son's due home from school, my fingers are cold and I have to go.

Well, Blow Me Down!

2006-02-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

I had my day completely planned, but strong winds blew my plans away! The trees fell on my neighbor's homes (no joke) but not mine. Still, the weather disrupted everything today.

I'll be gone for a few days, heading to Long Beach, Washington, again, with five other moms. My children have made it possible for me to not miss them one bit by being loud and messy and particularly annoying during the seven hours in which we had no electricity. Good times.

Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Be good. And if you can't be good, be careful.

Where's the Baby?

2006-02-16T22:21:00.000-08:00

No babies were harmed in the making of this photograph. (This is my daughter when she was younger and more willing to pose as ET for a photograph. Okay, okay. I admit it. She couldn't get away from me and I tortured her a la Anne Geddes. But how cute is that picture?)

Girl Gone Wild!

2006-02-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

While I sat here at my desk, my daughter crawled beneath it on a hunting expedition. She pulled up a plastic dolly she usually plays with in the bath, a Barbie from McDonald's, a perfectly sharpened Ticonderoga pencil (the only brand worth buying), a piece of a wooden zucchini from the velcro set, a plastic hairbrush, my NIV Bible, a calendar, an old photograph, foil wrappers from Hershey's kisses (how'd that get there?) and more. I really had no idea a hidden treasure trove existed under there.

My daughter started using the phrase "okey-dokey" yesterday. When I ask her or tell her something now, she sings, "Okey-dokey!" sometimes adding the rhyming "pokey" or "smokey." I've been using this phrase with my kids for years and years and years and this is the first time anyone has caught on and played along.

Finally, I just remembered something from a few hours ago. My kids received Valentine cards from their out-of-town relatives. I had the boys immediately write thank-you notes because otherwise, it would never get done. I had my 3-year old daughter draw a picture of herself on her card. She scrawled a circle, added some eyes, eyeballs, legs, arms, a mess of hair and then finally, a "vul-va."

I hope her grandparents don't ask what "that" is. I'm not sure they've ever used that word out loud.

Another Commercial Interruption

2006-02-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

I love to read and I read a wide variety of subject matter, including the backs of cereal boxes and "Reader's Digest" every month. But I hardly ever read romance novels and even more rarely, would I even think of picking up an "inspirational romance." I mean, does anything shout "HORRIBLE WRITING! TRITE PLOT! FLIMSY CHARACTERS!" any more than the back of an "inspirational romance" novel?

So, I probably wouldn't have picked up this novel by Brenda Coulter based on the banner across the front of the book which says, "HEARTWARMING INSPIRATIONAL ROMANCE," and yet, when I read on her website that she was offering free books to bloggers willing to review them, I jumped right on that bandwagon. And Brenda Coulter sent me one of her books, autographed and everything. (How I love books!)

I'll let you check out the description of the plot on Amazon, but let me just say that I was shocked, stunned, taken off guard by how much I enjoyed reading this book! Brenda Coulter is a fine writer who weaves a terrific tale of love, romantic and otherwise. I actually sniffled my way through the last couple of chapters.

And remember, I don't even read romance novels or (true confession) "Christian" fiction. But I can recommend this book to you if you 1) like romance novels (without the gratuitous, uh, scenes, if you know what I mean) ; 2) like good writing or 3) feel like supporting a new writer. (You can read Brenda Coulter's blog, "No Rules. Just Write." here. Oh and here's an interesting fact. She started writing her first inspirational romance novel the same afternoon she finished reading one for the first time. A Family Forever is her second novel, available from Steeple Hill Love Inspired in stores after February 28. Or, more easily, you can just order it from Amazon.)

I will keep my eyes open for Brenda Coulter's new book and recommend her to my friends who are particularly fond of this genre.

Thanks, Brenda Coulter, for the free book and the chance to review it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0373873581

A Commerical Interruption

2006-02-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

Quite a long time ago, I heard about a new CD put out by Sovereign Grace Ministries. " Sovereign Grace Ministries is a church-planting ministry with a family of 65 churches in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Bolivia, Ethiopia, and the U.K. [Their] primary purpose is to establish and nurture local churches to God's glory. Indeed, [their] greatest desire is that the members of these churches ? both corporately and as individuals ? would bring glory and honor to God in their public and private lives." (That's from their website.)

Anyway, this new CD is called "Awesome God." This is the first CD of worship music they have put out specifically for children. The twelve songs "express God's characteristics and nature in words that kids understand."

I agreed to review this CD in exchange for a free copy of it. I'm not sure what I expected, but I have to say that I was surprised by the excellent quality of the recordings. The vocals (mostly by children) are beautifully done and the lyrics are easy to understand. Many of the songs are upbeat and all of the words are in keeping with a theologically reformed viewpoint. This music is a terrific way for kids to learn about "God's greatness," (as it says on the back of the CD case) and it's gorgeously done, too.

I will be passing along this CD to our church's children's choir director so all the children in our church can benefit. I heartily recommend this CD to you, too, if you are looking for Christian music for your kids.

You can hear clips of the songs here.

(Oh, and my 12-year old son gave this music "thumbs-up.")

Elastic Post, Fully Expanded

2006-02-15T17:06:00.000-08:00

I ~~will be back later to expand~~ am back! Here are the topics:

1) Valentine's Day, what really happened;
My husband spend Valentine's Day with another woman. Gasp! But he did come home during the day to deliver flowers, chocolate, and a teddy bear (which was immediately confiscated by my daughter, even though he brought her one, too). I said, "Uh, I have a card around here somewhere." But his visit was unexpected and I didn't have the card signed until today. I told you. I'm no romantic! I did stick up a bunch of Valentine window-clings, though, which my daughter said were, "Pretty! So pretty!"

My daughter and I baked pink, heart-shaped cookies and then the children and I ate a heart-shaped pepperoni pizza. My husband finally dragged in after 8:00 p.m. Oh, and that other woman? She's in the hospital, very near to the end of her life on this earth. My heart goes out to the whole family. They've been very good friends to us and we hate this sad and painful good-bye.

2) Runny noses, and who has them;
My nose is past the runny stage, but currently my daughter's nose is red, raw and runny, and so are the noses of the two babies in my care. You needed to know that, didn't you?

3) Living in a shoe, with children;
I've been trying to stick close to home in the evenings, in anticipation of my upcoming weekend away. And the past two weekends have been very busy, running to and fro and back to again. I haven't had a decent break away for a long time. In the story of the old woman who lives in a shoe, I would be currently starring as the shoe insert, down-trodden, stinky, and sick of children climbing all over me. Really, the thing that can get to you when you work at home and live with a bunch of kids of varying ages is the sheer isolation (from adults with brains)and the house-induced monotony. At least, it gets to me.

4) Sleep, and why I'm not getting enough, sleep, that is.
As mentioned in #2, my daughter has a runny nose. The past two nights, she's screamed out my name around midnight, rousing me from sleep. Yesterday morning, at 4:44 a.m., she sobbed hysterically for me. This morning, it was 5:25 a.m., and she was determined to stay awake and watch a DVD. Fine. Watch a DVD. See if I care. I'm going back to bed. That's what I said. (There goes that Mother of the Year Award.) By about 6:00 a.m., she crawled into bed with us and we dozed until 7:00 a.m., at which point I moaned to my husband, "If it were possible to die from exhaustion, I'd be dead right now."

~~But for now, the dryer is buzzing, my eye is twitching and my house still contains four children who do not belong to me.~~ It's now 10:45 p.m. and I've just returned from the grocery store where I purchased fixings for the Sunday night meal at the ocean cottage. (Each of us are responsible for one meal during the Girls' Weekend.) I drove a cute Kia Spectra because our car is in the shop for the second time in as many weeks. It spontaneously quit running again. Last time, the mechanic declared ("I do declare!") that he couldn't find anything wrong.

Stupid car. So I have a dead 1991 Chevy Astro van in my driveway and a broken car in the shop and a rental car in my driveway. It's a veritable junkyard around here. All I need is a mean dog with yellow teeth.

Happy VD

2006-02-14T14:50:00.000-08:00

I uncovered this in my storage-room clean-up last weekend, and so, while I type, my daughter is behind me, pressing buttons, switching from one Mozart tune to the next.

Meanwhile, one of my sons watches Cartoon Network while his twin plays on the other computer. My third son is at school for another thirty-minutes. And the two babies are sleeping. In the distance, the clothes dryer squeaks with every revolution.

My daughter keeps asking, "Can I watch the glue dry?" This morning, we cut out a red construction paper heart and wrote a message for daddy in glitter glue. She climbs onto the table to watch the glue dry from time to time. I think we'll make heart-shaped sugar cookies soon.

I declared today an official sick day so we didn't do any school work. My daughter woke up screaming at 4:44 a.m. She sobbed, "I am so sick!" but went back to sleep after a trip to the bathroom and a few minutes of rocking. I, however, struggled to fall back to sleep as I am suffering from cold symptoms myself.

And the two babies have snotty noses and I knew everyone would want attention and rocking. So, no school. The boys made their own Valentine hearts while I rocked with my daughter and one of the babies.

I must note that we have blue skies and sunshine today. Also, the purple crocuses and one yellow crocus are blooming. How I love the reliable surprise of spring bulbs. Oh! And while I stood at the kitchen sink, a raccoon waddled across my small back yard in plain view.

I remembered another Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day, 1996, my twin boys had chicken pox. The worst symptoms had passed, but on that day, they were pockmarked and spotted and horrific. I tried to find a picture that wasn't already fastened into a scrapbook, but I was unsuccessful. I did, however, find a lot of unorganized photos which made my head sort of explode. I intend to spend my evening sorting and organizing pictures and wondering why I wasn't thankful for being young when I was young.

Incidentally, I have always had a warm spot in my heart for Roseanne,yes, that Roseanne, mostly because my dad thought she was funny (way back in the stand-up days, before her show). And she was funny. I remember the line about why men think women can find things because, "Like, they think the uterus is a tracking device." But this "Rockin' With Roseanne" DVD made for children scares me. All that based on some clips I saw while she was making the talk-show rounds.

You know me. I like to share the judgmentalism whenever I can. It's Valentine's Day, after all.

Fashion Advice You Must Heed

2006-02-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

Nordstrom sells them.

Target sells them.

My mother used to wear them.

But I will not. Ever. Never ever. No gauchos. No culottes, even if you spell it "c-o-u-l-o-t-t-e-s."

Some fashion trends must be resisted, rejected, refused. Join me. Please.

Because if you don't, you realize what we'll have to wear next, don't you?

High-waisted jeans. Then pretty soon, we'll all be wearing leg-warmers and ripped sweatshirts and headbands, and not in a cute-Reese-Witherspoon way, and really, do you want to go there?

Sequential Saturday

2006-02-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

Do you have one? A place where you stash your giant roasting pan, a folder full of papers from third grade and the playpen, even though you only use it for visitors and loan it out at Christmas to that lady for her grandchild? Do you keep slides from thirty years ago and clay handprints from your kids' kindergarten class? And craft books for that day you imagine will come when you wake up bright and early with a determination to refinish and decoupage furniture? Do you run across two birdhouses from a couple of summers ago waiting for paint and rolls of Christmas wrapping paper lolling around with a music stand from those months when your son took up the flute?

Or is it just me?

We have no garage, which is fine, I suppose, considering the garage was converted into a large room which now serves as a bedroom for the twins. (We moved into this three-bedroom house with three kids, thinking we weren't having any more.) The room is large enough for a computer desk and computer which the kids use for school and play, a piano, a second desk, and a huge shelving unit which houses the Nintendo and random boy belongings. Both the laundry room and the storage room branch off from the boys' room, so their space is almost a common area in our house, not a private spot.

It was not my goal, as such, to clean out the storage room today, but when I peered into the future, I hoped I might get to it eventually. After all, every time I walk into that room to find a hammer or to stash a pile of stuff, I'd cringe. Last week, I cleaned up the upstairs rooms and once a week or so, I return the boys' room to a habitable state, but the storage room fits into the category, "Out of Sight: Out of Mind." And it drives me out of my mind when I flick on the lightswitch and stub my toe on an old printer the boys carted home from somewhere.

The boys had to go to a writing workshop today (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.!) and my husband went to a brunch and my 7-year old went to his buddy's house, so my daughter and I were home alone. I worked and she appeared from time to time to beg me for a toy or a snack. I uncovered a few forgotten toys and she uncovered a bin full of Play-Doh toys (which she emptied in the family room, which is typical, isn't it--I'm cleaning up one mess while a child makes an equal and opposite mess in another room).

The storage room clean-up was actually not the destination on my sequential chore road. My goal was beyond the storage room clean-up, but first, I had to clean up the kitchen. Then I had to get the laundry underway. Then I had to sweep and clean my boys' room. Then, finally, I could tidy up the storage room. And when the storage room was clean, I could look for my photographs from the years 2002, 2003 and 2004. For you see, on Friday night, I'll be heading to the ocean for a Girls Scrapbooking Weekend. Six of us (I think) will be spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at the beach. I intend to get my scrapbooks up to date. I had been keeping up until my daughter was born and since then, my pictures sit abandoned in their envelopes rather than festively displayed in scrapbooks.

The only thing standing between me and a weekend of bliss and acid-free, lignin-free scrapbooking paper (and stickers!) is the upcoming week in which no crisis will be permitted to occur and no emergencies will be allowed to require the presence of my husband, because next weekend, he will be me, minus the compulsion to clean, and I will be me, minus four kids and a husband.

Squinting in the Sun

2006-02-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

The sun shines today in Western Washington. Glory be!

(Picture is of North Cascades - Newhalem, WA-- courtesy of webcam located here.)

(By the way, my statcounter at the very bottom of this page indicates that I'm reaching the magic 100,000 mark--I took a picture of it at 99,273. If you happen to be my 100,000th visitor, save a picture of the statcounter and let me know.)Update: You have to scroll way, way, way down to see the actual statcounter. Sorry about the confusion!