I blinked

Four Denizens in various states of excitement, denial, and disgust were loaded up and disbursed to their various schools Tuesday morning.

I blinked, and summer vacation is over.

I blinked, and May became August.

I blinked, and my baby became a sixth grader. And my eldest a high school senior. HOW is this possible?!

…omg…in nine short months my baby is going to be a LEGAL! ADULT!

{…crawls into box, shuts flap…not happening, not happening, not happening…}

Sigh.

Time is playing a nasty trick on me these last few years. On the one hand, the individual days often feel interminable; each 24-hour period seems to take fifty hours or more to actually happen, you know?

But at the same time, the daily grind lulls me into a kind of timeless state; each day blurs into the next, simultaneously interminable and yet on the whole going by so damned fast that I am constantly feeling this way. Is it Monday, or Thursday? Wait, it’s Friday already? WAIT. How can it be AUGUST already?! What happened to July? Or JUNE, for that matter?!

Because all I did was blink, and spring became summer became almost-fall.

…all I did…was blink…

Troll level: Mom

Soooooooo…in a couple hours here, we’re celebrating Captain Adventure’s 11th birthday, omg no way how is it POSSIBLE that my BABY is ELEVEN! YEARS! OLD?!

Predictably, he has exactly one (1) thing on his wish list: Video games.

Sigh – yeah, he’s my kid all right. The two of us are hopeless gamers. Honestly, I suspect the only reason I haven’t long ago quit my job and quit mom-ing and quit just about everything else in favor of sitting on my arse surrounded by a mountain of empty Diet Pepsi containers and pizza boxes in a darkened room playing video games is because my actual job feels exactly the same to me as video games do: Digital logic puzzles, all day long, what’s not to love?!

But I digress.

NATURALLY, Captain Adventure not only having made the fact that he only wants video games for his birthday very, very, very, very, VERY clear…means I have to mess with him a little.

I set the scene a couple days ago when he was yet again making absolutely sure that his dumb-arsed mother was completely aware of his birthday-present-related video game desires.

“Wellllll, but, I’m pretty sure Grandma and Grandpa are getting you a video game,” I said in my best ‘Mom Being Reasonable, a.k.a., BORING!’ voice. “Don’t you want something else, too? Like, some clothes?”

NO. He did not want clothes. Mom: Look at my face. NO. CLOTHES. MOM. JUST, NO.

“…but you know, kiddo, sure it’s really hot right now [really hot, we have had the worst summer for dry, unrelenting heat that I can remember in a long, LONG time], but, it’s going to get cold soon. AND you’re going back to school in a couple weeks. Don’t you also need some long sleeves shirts? That actually fit and don’t have holes in them?!”

(All of his shirts end up with holes in them, because he insists on gouging pencils through them. ARGH!) (Says the woman who owns exactly zero pens that do not have teeth marks in them because her brain-is-in-idle-mode habit is putting a pen into her mouth and gnawing on it, I have no idea why…I never mean to, I just sort of become aware that I’m doing it…siiiiiiiigh…)

He looked at me with that expression that clearly says, How is this idiot able to even FUNCTION, with NO BRAINS?! And, no, he did not think a shirt was even a slightly OK birthday present. Geez, mom…

“…oh! I know! you know what else you need? Socks, dude. Socks. Your socks are all too small, and most of them are getting mighty threadbare, too…”

If looks could kill, I would be ghost writing right now. NO, MOM. NO SOCKS EITHER.

Heh. Little man, I HAVE YOU NOW…

Now, with my Captain, I can’t do things like I did to Boo Bug a few years ago, where I hid her actual present in the other room and made her suffer for a couple minutes (we still laugh about that) (those stupid knock-off Little Pony things went on to have a very happy life with a very excited four year old who still loves them madly even though she is now a sophisticated seven year old).

While he’s got an excellent sense of humor, and “gets” teasing pretty well – he’s also got a shorter fuse, and could actually get really upset if he thought for more than a few seconds that we had actually only gotten him, you know, clothes.

So! First I wrapped his present from Grandma and Grandpa separately, and I’ll have him open that one first because it is the one game he really-really-really-really-really-really-no-reallyreally wanted.

Then…

…one long-sleeved shirt wrapped around his actual presents…

…a few pairs of socks for added troll-factor…

…and now, we wait…

…mwaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha…!!

You ask a simple question…

Danger Mouse had a dentist appointment today, to get some fillings.

The husband made the mistake of sending me an email asking me how it had gone.

So, I told him how it had gone, as follows…and the moral of this story is, don’t ever ask me a simple question, as I am incapable of providing a simple – or short - answer…

OMG. Well. Therein lies a tale. And it goes like this. I got to the school at 10:35 and I was walking over to the administration office like a boss, looking around at all the other adults milling around there like, "I understand.  I'm responsible now too.  Just look at my groceries. Plus also I am totally on top of these things, because I am very mature and responsible that way." (Sadly, I’m not entirely exaggerating…I was so darned proud of myself for not still being at home at 10:50 going, “Oh…@*^&@…is that the time?!” like I usually am…)

So I get her all signed out and the secretary calls her third period PE class and goes, “Yessss, so, I’m calling for…uh…Buhhhhhh…” and I hear this perky voice on the speakerphone go, “Oh, let me guess, Danger Mouse? Yes, she said she’d be leaving during this period, she’s sitting with her things over on the benches, I’ll go let her know.”

And now I’m looking around like, “Yeah, my kid? => totally on top of it. That’s right. She even told her teacher she would be leaving right about now. This is teamwork, people. This is what we should all aspire to as parents. I am the best parent in the history of parenting.” (<= conveniently ignores the fact that laundry is still piled up all over the house, nobody has had a home-cooked dinner in approximately two years and that I have now officially lost more forms than I have successfully turned in over the course of their school careers.) 

Ten minutes later, I’m still standing there, clutching her pink excuse slip. The bell for the next period rings. Kids are milling around in vast numbers. No Danger Mouse. Where the heck IS she? I go back to the window and go, “Uh…?” and they say, rather pointedly, “She’s on her way.” Oooookayyyyyyy…I go back to waiting.

At 10:55 (!!) I called the dentist’s office and said “OMG WUT IDK WHERE MY CHILD IS BUT WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE !!!WAILING FACE!!!” And they said, “Well, just get here as fast as you can.” Then I went back over and banged my fist on the counter until the secretary decided I was annoying and checked on her current location. And she goes, “Oh. She went on to fourth period. I’m not sure why she would do that, since they did make a general announcement in PE…”

After I got done screaming and clawing at my face, I asked what that meant, ‘general announcement.’

And yeah, this meant exactly what I thought it meant: The person on the phone who told us about how she was sitting on the benches with all her things waiting to go and that she’d go let her know I was there to get her did not then, you know, walk over to her and say, “OK, kid, grab your stuff and split.”

No. She walked over to the PA system and went, “Murfle-purfle blissabloss? Pssssst tegere wah-wah sssstic...” over the craptastic speakers in the locker room, where a herd of chatting teenage girls were making themselves ready to rejoin society.

IMPORTANT NOTE: none of these chatting girls were Danger Mouse, because she, AS THIS SAME LADY HAD SAID WHEN WE CALLED, was sitting on the benches, waiting (im)patiently for her mother to arrive. Outside. Where the PA system isn’t. Not that anyone can ever understand anything said over the PA system anyway. But it is even less understandable when the announcement is being made, you know, where you AREN’T.

OTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: Banging your head repeatedly against the brick facing of the school is not advised. It causes not only a pounding headache, but the roughness of the brick tends to break the skin more than, say, a keyboard or a desk does. #ProTip.

So the secretary called into the fourth period classroom and about two minutes later here came Danger Mouse jogging across the quad – but by this time it was a good ten minutes after her appointment was supposed to start. I was already thinking, “Ehhhh, they’re totally going to tell us we have to reschedule, but, maybe, just maybe if they have a slow morning…!”

As we’re driving over, Danger Mouse informs me that she was more than a bit puzzled that I hadn’t shown up and almost went to the office between 3rd and 4th period just on general principle, but then reasoned that she should just keep doing what she was supposed to be doing and wait for instructions, which was of course the right thing to do, so I went, “Oh. Well. That was the right thing to do. Wish you had just gone to the office, though.” Which is sending her mixed messages which is the opposite of good parenting. But I figure at this point my cover is blown anyway so I might as well send mixed messages, belch loudly and blame it on the cat, maybe teach her how to light one cigarette with the end of another to save both time and matches, oh, and, how to identify the scaredy-cat kids so you can trick them into betting their lunch money on a game of mumblety-peg because they will pretty much ALWAYS chicken out before the first cast, thus giving you extra pocket change without any real danger to life or limb from the pocketknife-tossing thing. Brilliant.

We skidded into that office at 11:15 (<= which was pretty darned amazing time, actually, the Stoplight God was definitely with us) and of course they were all, “Yeahhhhhhh, we’re gonna have to reschedule, there isn’t enough time left.”

…siiiiiiiiiigh…soooo, September 5 it is…

When the chips are up(stairs)

Now, I will grant you that I have a…slightly off-beat sort of existence.

I am a person who tends to view the world in a way which evidence suggests is not the way most people do. I can become extremely worked up over things that nobody else would, and then turn right around and find something amusing that causes everyone else around me to grab the nearest paper sack and start self-medicating on CO2.

Which I recently learned is not recommended anymore, by the way. These are the sorts of things you will learn when you hang out with people like me, because we tend to collect such odd bits of information, find them fascinating, and playfully (and incessantly) trot them out whenever we think it might be useful or interesting to others.

One piece of information we seem to find extremely hard to collect is how to tell when such pieces of information might be useful or interesting, which is why we frequently trot them out randomly or at times that only add to the general stress levels of Everyone instead of the intended purpose of amusing or assisting.

But I digress.

POINT BEING, I’m not particularly surprised to find myself living in a house with green beans for curtains, or soaking my feet in strange concoctions to see if they really do improve circulation, or having to go out to the garage and shift a bunch of extremely heavy food-grade tubs looking for the one that has the wheat gluten in it.

Between being curious about if/how it would work and enjoying the experience of the odd situation, I’d be more surprised not to find myself with something weird going on at any given time.

However.

That said.

This one…rather takes the cake.

Now once you get over the stupid fish leering at you from the top shelf there, you might be asking yourself, “What kind of pathetic addict keeps a MASSIVE thing of Nestle’s chocolate chips in her bedroom closet, for heaven’s sake?!”

Ha.

That’s not a bag of chocolate chips. That’s three bags. That big container next to the bag? => The contents of two more bags of that same size.

Or, what was left of them. That’s right: The plot thickens.

So I went out to the garage a while ago for something – I forget what, but it was probably important and I will be very sorry that I got distracted by The Great Chocolate Chip Gate Scandal of 2014™ in a little while.

And as I was opening the cupboard to get whatever it was, I glanced down and saw brown things on the shelf below it and at first I thought it was cat food and was all, dammit, Tim, how many times have I told you, you can-NOT leave their food lying around like this, the MICE will come back!

Because of course I immediately not only blame my husband for such things, but lie to myself about having said anything about it to him more than maybe once. Probably while he was partly or mostly asleep, because that’s a thing I do.

But at that moment, in my mind, I have full-on discussed this with him, in some big board-room kind of place with a large oak desk and serious minions nodding and agreeing with everything I said, at least ten thousand times. Possibly THIRTY thousand.

But before I could really work up a good head of steam on being mad about the possibility of spilled cat food attracting mice, my brain registered the color.

@^*&@ hell, THAT’S MOUSE POOP! @^*&@ IT ALL, TIM, WHAT DID I TELL YOU ALL THOSE TIMES I TOLD YOU, THE @^*&@ING MICE! THEY’RE POOPING! ON MY GARAGE SHELVES!

But as I was composing the angry text he was going to receive soon, my brain – continuing its slow, grinding way toward full disclosure – pointed out that that would have to be one big mouse.

Mouse poop tends to be rather small. And elongated. And very unlike a Nestle’s chocolate chip, really.

Proof:

And then I thought to myself, …wait…

…and I opened the cupboard…

…and sure enough, there was a jaggedly torn open bag of chocolate chips, hastily shoved back into the cupboard.

I promptly hit the ceiling. This has been a repeated problem in the Den of late, and it is really starting to piss me off. I’d thought we were finally past the whole issue: For a good long while, I had to keep everything except the unsweetened chocolate disks sealed up in one of those pickle-bucket style food storage bins – and store the bin waaaaaaaaay in the back, under literally two other tubs full of things like fifty pounds of rice and twenty-five pounds of pinto beans.

But it had seemed to slow down. And the last time I’d picked up those wholesale-sized bags of chips, I’d just quietly put them where they had always gone in the cupboard.

And someone had just as quietly torn into the bag and helped themselves to handfuls of them – leaving the bag sitting open and spilling its contents out, in the garage, you know, where the husband does WOODWORKING and such…

…siiiiiiiiigh…nothing says “home cooking” like chocolate chip and wood shaving cookies, yum!

Naturally when questioned, all Denizens immediately assumed wide-eyed expressions of shocked innocence.

“Good gracious!” they declared in perfect unison. “Whoever would do such a dastardly thing?!”

(True story: The speech therapist actually cited this sort of phrase as one of Captain Adventure’s “challenges” at school. He can be a little [OK, fine, sometimes a lot] hard to understand due to his lisping/oddly-enunciated speech patterns anyway, and then he actually does use words like ‘dastardly’ or ‘preposterous,’ which are “unexpected” in day to day conversations with nine year olds because our world is a sad, sorry sort of place, and then people sort of glaze over and wander off because they can’t place what he’s trying to say.) (But I digress again.)

So I went “WUH WUH WUH! WUH! WUH WUH WUH! AAAAAARGH! RAWR! HISS! WUH! WUH WUH WUH WUH WUH WUH!!!”

And they went, “Uh-huh, oh yes, mother! Of course mother! Anything you say mother! Although we still can’t imagine who would do such a thing! We will of course obey your commands, dearest mother!” {innocent eye-batting}

Uh-huh. They think I was born yesterday or something. That I was never a kid myself. That I never did the same exact thing with The Lady My Mother: “Make appropriate noises until she gets tired of yakking, shuts up, and goes away, and I can get back to whatever I was doing before she went all nuts on me for no reason, geeeeesh…”

ANYWAY.

So I went to the closet where I keep all my larger plastic containers to find something I could put the now air-exposed chocolate chips into. And as I was digging around looking for a right-sized container…guess what I found?

Yeah.

Another torn-open bag of chocolate chips. Hastily shoved into the back of the closet, precariously balancing on the backs of a bunch of Mason jars.

“WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH?!?!?!?! WUH WUH WUH!! RAAAAAAAAAWR! WUH-WUH-WUH-WUH-WUH!!!!”

I poured the two opened bags into a big container more commonly used for cereal. And I got the unopened bag from the highest kitchen shelf where I’d hidden it behind the icky brown rice and boring unsweetened coconut. And I hauled all that chocolate upstairs, and put it into my own closet.

In order to get to it now, they have to enter the veritable lion’s den. During the day, they have to get past me as I sit here working. And any other time, well, this floor is pretty creaky up here, so anybody walking into that closet while I’m, say, in the kitchen? ==> gonna be heard.

Your move, Denizen. Your move.

(Now watch: I moved the nail polish from that shelf to a lower shelf in the bathroom where I also keep the extra soap / toilet paper / etc. for the kids, because it was bugging me to have it in the same cupboard with food. I’ve got five bucks says I’m not going to be able to find a bottle or two of it when I want it next, because one of the girls will have pirated it off. Betcha.)

The 2013 Curmudgeon Season has officially begun!

This has been floating around the Internet lately – and I think it sums up the season rather brilliantly:

I would definitely be that second one. To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder if my body somehow stores up all the Curmudgeon I possess throughout the year, and then releases it in one desperate purge triggered by the overly-early and enthusiastic start to Retailamas.

I mean, there it is…early-October…it is still 80-90 degrees outside…I’m sweating and just want to pick up some lousy thing or other I was just informed will cause World War III if it is not brought to some event or other tonight…and OHMYGAH, CHRISTMAS! JINGLE-FRICKIN-BELLS! GIVE! GIVE! GIVE TO EVERYONE! GIVE ALL THE THINGS TO ALL THE EVERYONES! If you don’t buy everyone the Things, you are a bad person! You can ONLY show gratitude and affection and prove you are NOT a soulless demon – possibly even a REPUBLICAN! - by BUYING CRAP. So, BUY THE CRAP! BUY ALL THE CRAP! 25% OFF! 50% OFF! DID I MENTION THAT YOU ARE AN IDIOT IF YOU DO NOT SNAG THIS BARGAIN?! YOU MUST BUY THE CRAP, BUY IT, I SAY!!!

Suddenly, I’m the kind of person who goes around snarling “WHAT’S SO DAMNED MERRY ABOUT IT?!” and “When the HELL did ANY of the assorted $DEITIES with fingers in the winter-solstice-ish time of year EVER say ‘go forth and buy cheap plastic crap, lest I smite thee for not being a Goode Persone©’?!”

And then there’s the way my fellow humans turn into crazed herd animals, flocking from one store to the next like starved wildebeest, stampeding and trampling everything in their path.

And taking all the parking spots.

Like, all of them.

And perversely, watching others do this, watching the commercials in which perfect domestic bliss is achieved by doting individuals presenting each other with perfect gifts (conveniently available at extreme discounts at your local StuffMart™ {annoying jingle here}), watching people at the mall in all the various stages of shopping – from giggling excitement to red-faced screaming at exhausted, sweaty clerks because they don’t have whatever-it-is in chartreuse, you don’t understand, my mother-in-law MUST have a CHARTREUSE thingee-mah-witchit, otherwise I am a BAD SON-OR-DAUGHTER-IN-LAW!…witnessing the increasing emotion and pace of the season in action…being jostled while I’m just trying to pick up a couple @^*&@ing gallons of milk, or having my ankles mauled by shopping carts piloted by semi-frantic yet astonishingly inattentive people desperately looking for this only blue and in a size that, or fending off 24/7 attacks on my psyche that are so unsubtly trying to instill that message that I must spend-spend-spend to celebrate…

Well.

It’s enough to cause me to seriously consider throwing three or four pieces of leftover Halloween candy nobody wanted into random boxes I dug out of the recycling pile, wrapping them in Sunday comics plucked out of the to-be-made-into-compost-or-worm-bedding-or-something bin, pitching them under the tree and calling it a season.

Dear Family:

I love you. Truly. I do. But. Screw this whole scene. If you need me, I will be locked in my bedroom wearing headphones and watching old cartoons and stuff, and also knitting things. WITH LOVE IN EVERY STITCH, DAMMIT.

See you in the spring.

XOXO  ~ Mom

What I find peculiarly ironic about this is…I actually do really enjoy the gift-giving. I like to make the people I care about happy, and I am thrilled when that perfect thing comes to me.

Especially because usually, frankly, it doesn’t. Or, it does, but is ludicrous in some way. Like, sure, I’d love to get the husband a vintage Camaro. It would be an awesome present! And also ridiculous! And a great way to show that I am a terrible steward of our income, and probably should never be trusted with it again!

Which then puts me into this spiral where I can’t seem to find a happy medium. And I bounce back and forth between various lame, not-as-good and equally-ridiculous things until I eventually end up buying him a box of raw almonds and a copy of the 1987 tax code at the very last possible second.

Because almonds are great. Especially the raw ones. Because they’re, you know, delicious…yet healthy! And buying him healthy food is like the ultimate in ‘I love you, see how much I love you? I don’t want you to die and junk like that!’ gifts!

And ‘tax code’ is all, like, um, INTELLIGENT-Y and some junk. And I think of him as an INTELLIGENT-Y person! See? See how that…works…? it wasn’t the very last thing on the shelves or anything, gosh no, I HAD A PLAN THERE…!

{face-palm}

Last of the great romantics, especially when under pressure. <= me

The only thing I do really enjoy about the holiday season is stuff like this:

(I know! The cuteness! And this isn’t showing the whole story at all, which is that these two boys were collaborating with their games, and it was so adorable that pretty much the whole world just dropped over dead from it. That’s right. You are all ghosts now, because of the power of the Cuteness these two were putting out. Sorry.)

(This is actually more remarkable than it looks – Captain Adventure never allows another kid to sit that close to him, other than possibly a sister. But they don’t count, because they’re ‘safe’ people whereas pretty much every other kid in the whole world is terrifying and/or annoying and/or unpredictable and really on the whole let’s just not be around them, ‘mkay? But apparently, his cousin was an OK kinda guy.) 

BUT NEVER MIND ALL THAT. Because, knitting. 

This is Fia, which has been growing with painful slowness. In related news, I think I’ve decided that the next time I decide on a must-knit pattern, I should choose something in worsted weight, instead of fingering-for-pete’s-sake. Honestly. Sometimes I really do wonder what is wrong with me…but, I digress.

On BART, watching shows, a couple rows here, a couple rows there…it’s ever-so-slowly starting to look like a sweater-thing. And it is a fun knit, too – difficult enough to be interesting, not so difficult that I want to claw my own eyeballs out, or can’t work on it on the train.

The sleeves are actually already done…that was some interesting construction, actually, because they are knitted together, in the round, with steeks…I’m still not sure whether I like that method or not. I suppose I’ll know my own mind on that after I’ve finished the thing and seen how much effort was(n’t) saved by doing them that way.

I have a business trip coming up next week, all week, including a couple 5 hour flights there and back again, so I have high hopes for getting to the point where I will abandon it for months on end because ugh, finishing be able to proudly wear it give it to one of my daughters, because clearly I have still not gotten my arms around the concept that I am no longer quite as small as once I was.

Also, there will be no time for shopping. Or finding myself having to face the mall for any reason. And then it will be two weeks down, less than two weeks to go, y’all.

I may just survive the 2013 Curmudgeon season yet…

Keeping mum and WOW, that’s purple…

I feel as though it has been a loooooong time since I’ve posted anything. Possibly because it has been a long time; and an even longer time since I posted regular things.

It’s not that things are actually that boring; or even that they’re that busy. It’s more that most of the things that are going on around me that consume my attention and make me want to write posts right now fall into one of my self-imposed Forbidden Categories.

Such as…

…problems of friends and family, which are – and I hope you will forgive me for saying this – none of Da Internet’s business. (And frequently none of mine either. Not that this stops me from being a constant source of advice or from picking the situation apart from On High like I know something nobody else does about it, but, you know – that’s different.)

Or…

…me whining about Various Vicissitudes, about which little to nothing can be done in the near-term and which I will then proceed to be touchy about if – imagine the thought! – someone were to dare suggest potential courses of treatment. (I comfort myself with the thought that this proves I am still a girl. It’s NOT about the nail!!)

Then there’s also…

…too-specific things from work. Wherein Various Parties might recognize themselves and not think my words particularly kind, helpful or true. (And would undoubtedly be right, because I would be angry blogging while in grips of massive frustration and/or exhaustion.)

All it tied up with a My, But We DO Have A Case Of First World Problems™, don’t we?! ribbon.

…siiiiiiiigh…

Oh! But, there is this: So, Danger Mouse has been having some rough times in the getting decent grades department. And also, my little geek desperately wants to go to Comicon in March, right? (Yes, the one in Washington state. Not the one here in California. Because she wants to “fan girl” with her friends who live there. And I’d argue with her about it, but a) I wouldn’t win and b) says the woman who took a train all the way to Salt Lake City so she could fan-girl over a Harlot, for carp’s sake. He who liveth in a glass house…)

So I’ve been hearing about this Comicon thing for a fair while now. She doesn’t want anything for Christmas, her birthday, her next eighteen Christmas/birthdays, she just wants to go to Comicon.

With me. ONLY I will do. I must be the one to take her. Because I am the “cool” parent to bring to these sorts of things, since unlike that other parent, I know who Vic Mignogna is, and am more or less aware of at least some of the “good” currently-airing anime season, and can appreciate both the art in comics, and giggle like a fourteen year old at the fart jokes.

Plus, I tend to sort of fit in when we go to things like this. Only I’m, like, old and some junk? Which somehow apparently grants some kind of bonus status points for the kids I’m actually with, because apparently said kids are so cool that even old people will be brought into the light by it.

Or something.  

But I may be in a lot of trouble. Because while we were picking up the black hair rinse for Danger Mouse, we paused a moment at the more…flamboyant colors.

And somehow – I’m still not quite sure how exactly (although I believe it may have something to do with my completely unreasonable ban on hair dyes that are permanent/super-chemically/do-not-rinse-out-after-x-many-washes in nature) – I sort of made a contract with the devil pact with her. If she can show me the A-grades by the time Comicon 2014 rolls around in March…I will not only take her, but bump her ‘has coolest parent on the floor’ status by applying this to my hair.

Not hers.

Mine. My 40-achoo! year old head? Lusty. Lavender.

  

Yeahhhhhhhhhh.

Lusty Lavender.

{meditative pause}

That’s…going to be…I mean…I’m just envisioning…the first time I show up at the office after having applied this…

{another meditative pause}

…but shoot, in for a penny in for a pound…might be time to start shopping the steam punk and semi-goth stores on Etsy I sneak into from time to time like a married man surfing those sites, so I can pretend I might be the sort of woman who could and would pull that kind of ‘statement’ off…

(Note the “game face” on the kid. She’s not fooling around here. She wants my Boring Brown to be Lusty Lavender when we are Comicon-bound. Hoooooooooboy…)

Stopping to pet the flower

I have a severe case of under-motivation today.

A large part of it is because I was supposed to be taking a vacation day today but then stuff-n-reasons later I’m not, but while I said ‘nah, no big, nothing I can’t do later’ at the time that I un-took the day, I’m secretly more than a wee bit vexed about the whole ‘I might as well save my PTO for actual time OFF because I know what’s going to happen here, y’all are going to be calling/paging/texting me with one stupid thing or another the entire time so, fine, I will simply reschedule it’ thing.

Particularly since the #1 reason I decided not to take it…was then removed as A Thing due to someone else quitting.

Grumble-grumble-grumble.

The next biggest reason is, I have absolutely nothing in my work-life right now that I am finding particularly interesting. I KNOW. MY LIFE IS SOOOOOOOOO HARD, DEAR GAH, WHATEVER SHALL I DO, ONE WHOLE MONTH WORTH OF DEPLOY CYCLE IN WHICH I DO NOT HAVE SOMETHING FAAAASCINATING TO WORK ON.

I keep telling myself to get over it, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Instead, I’m getting more and more disgruntled about it. Probably because I know we have plenty to do in our overall queue that would be very interesting and/or exciting indeed…and yet…here I am.

Doing documentation. And, oh, let us not forget the thrilling item where I get to…insert a row into a mapping table.

Woo-frickin’-hoo, y’all.

Then there’s the fact that it is Halloween. And I haven’t gotten any of the decorations out, and it feels decidedly not Halloweenish around here right now. And I would have done all that today, but, please see rant re: not on PTO right now, above.

Which is a bit of a pattern, really. Milestones keep happening…birthdays…seasonal changes…anniversaries of various sorts…and I keep saying things like, well, OK, it is what it is here and there were Reasons and stuff…but for {next milestone}? I am SO going to have things more…TOGETHER…than this…

And then it doesn’t work out that way. Because, reasons.

So that’s another reason I’m just kind of meh about the whole concept of working on stuff I should be doing today.

But mostly? I blame Fleur.

Because, this.

Oh, I’m sorry, is my napping and not giving a @^*&@ about anything out of the corner of your eye for your ENTIRE workday BOTHERING you?? Gosh, well, no fears, I won’t go somewhere ELSE to be so relaxed, I’ll just stay RIGHT HERE so you can vicariously bask in the easy-going-ness of my life while you’re answering stupid questions about Things and doing Boring Stuff like a good little mindless minion. YOU’RE WELCOME.

She started regularly curling up in that chair last week, and has apparently decided that she really, really, REALLY likes that chair as a napping place throughout the day.

You know, saving up her energy so that she can run wildly through the house with her sister all night. Because she’s still a kitten, and just like human babies, depriving adult humans of their sleep is the prime directive for her.

So she comes in here, and she jumps up in that chair, and then she looks at me with something approaching interest…and yawns.

And curls up.

And sleeps.

And every so often, she sighs, stands up, stretches luxuriously, turns around, and looks at me again. And then falls back over in a kind of swoon.

Wow. Your life is REALLY boring, human. Really. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Think I’ll go back to sleep now.

It’s extremely distracting. Because she is so darned cute that I desperately want to stop everything else and just pet her (which would also annoy her no end because Schilling is our cuddle-bunny, while Fleur is more of a loner-chick).

And it’s annoying, because she’s parked right in the corner of my eye. I don’t even have to turn my head to see a sleeping cat.

And it makes me sleepy.

Which makes me feel even less motivated to do anything, other than write long rants about my cat being overly relaxed and pissing me off.

To which she sighs, stands up, stretches, winks at me, turns around and flops, smirking, back into Napdom.

…smirk!…

That’s it. I’m so going to pet her now. And serves you right, too, Fleur Fatale, you WICKED temptress…!

The List

The Denizens like to leave me lists of things they believe I should immediately rush out and buy for them.

Apparently not long ago, Boo Bug was listing “strawberries” as a needed item, and Eldest was going “tea! tea! tea! tea! tea!” until finally Boo wrote it in, with of course, the obligatorily snotty “happy?” after it.

To which Eldest replied…

Oh, and on the strawberries? We’re going to need to have a chat, because it wasn’t that long ago that I brought these home.

Yeahhhhhh, that was an all-day event to get those all processed and into the freezer. And then those kids went through them in about half of nothing FLAT, because, SMOOTHIES.

Meanwhile, the pureed peaches, nectarines and so forth (from the stuff in the boxes behind the boxes of strawberries)…is…well. Not exactly “untouched.” But there’s still SOME of it left!

…and I’m not quite emotionally prepared for dealing with another enormous amount of strawberries, is the thing…

ALLA-CAT-ZAM!

I appear to have crafted a Shawl of Cat Summoning +10. Because the instant I started fidgeting it around on the bed to Officially Block…

BEHOLD! LIKE MAGIC! A SINGULARITY OF CATS HAS BEEN SUMMONED!

They have now given it a thorough inspection, and report the following:

1. The edging has very nice chewability; springy, and with just the right amount of wool:detergent flavoring
2. It is delightfully soft and warm, perfect for hooking with a claw or two and dragging over oneself for a quick nap
3. When dragged along the floor, it makes for a truly rousing game of keep-away with a sibling or servant
4. This also causes the servants to make very interesting noises – kind of high and squeaky, with a pleasing note of panic
5. HOWEVER, it appears to cause the servants to behave inappropriately at times
1. FOR EXAMPLE, scooping the Royal Personage off the coveted item
2. While spitting coarse phrases such as “git yer scaly backside OFFA that!”
3. And then dumping the Royal Personage onto the floor in a most ignoble and inconvenient fashion
4. FEH!

Of course, inspections are exhausting…

…yes, so very, very exhausting…

(…sigh…this is how they get away with this crap…look at that sweet little face!!)

Perhaps we should ALL just go with “Smith”

Earlier this week, we had An Incident™ at the high school which necessitated me dropping everything and rushing over there so I could stand around for – I swear I am not making this up – going on four hours waiting to hand over my id, spell my darling child’s name, and wait for her to be summoned forth from the stadium unto my loving arms.

Yeah. It was a thousand kinds of awesome. But what made things truly awful wasn’t so much the process itself, but rather my fellow parents.

YA KNOW…one the one hand, I understand. It was hot and cold by turns out there. The process was painfully slow. And seemed like it was being done in a crazily upside-down manner. And for those who weren’t completely sure that the whole thing was a big old Nothing courtesy of teenagers being stupid, it might even have been a little frightening. (For the record, this was not me. I was so damned certain that it was just a group of teenagers being stupid that if it hadn’t been a) early in the morning, thus Eldest would have been stuck outside in the elements all frickin’ day and b) her birthday, thank you very much, I wouldn’t have come down to get her in the first place. But I digress.)

STILL. Parents. Look at my eyes, and answer me this: What the @^*&@ is wrong with you people?!

LET’S REVIEW SOME OF THE TALKING POINTS I TOOK AWAY FROM ALL THIS, SHALL WE? 

• We get that you are not happy to be dragged away from whatever you were doing to stand in lines.
• Everybody feels that way.
• So, shut up already.
• Cutting the line is way not cool
• Trying to do it repeatedly becomes exponentially uncool
• WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO PULL, JACKASS.
• SERIOUSLY, STOP IT.
• Dude. While I understand your feelings (and even privately agree with them), saying, “I tell you what, @^*&@, you try that again and I-a-gonna bust you UP” to the woman as she is being escorted to the back of the line after trying a THIRD time to cut the line…is a little much.
• Mom, please tell me you did not just call your kid on his cell phone and ask him to attempt a breakout, and then argue with him when he said it was a way bad idea, and point out that there was a hole in the fence right next to you.
• I mean, you realize that’s an automatic three day suspension, right?
• PLUS, you understand that when they go over the list and realize that he a) was here BEFORE the incident and b) WAS checked into the stadium but c) was never check OUT of it…he’s automatically a Person of Interest to the cops, right?
• You think this is inconvenient? Try explaining why your kid pulled that particular stunt, in the middle of All This.
• But please let me know before you do. I wanna sell tickets.
• When a school is in lockdown, things like pesky rules are not going to be ‘bent,’ let alone ‘broken’
• This means trying to pick up your neighbor/friend/cousin’s kid when you are not officially authorized to do so? Is not happening.
• Yes, even if you can prove you live ‘right next door’
• Yes, even if the kid “totally knows who you are”
• Yes, even if you have some female voice on the phone saying “I am his mother, and I approve this pickup.”
• Yes, even if you can produce ID with the same last name on it.
• I know there aren’t very many people named “Rodriguez” in California {pause to roll eyes}, but this still doesn’t authorize you to take a child off a school campus in the middle of a lockdown
• Or any other time, for that matter
• Also, quit arguing about whether or not you “have to” produce identification before picking up your child.
• This is nothing new or special
• You have to produce this any time you pick up your child during school hours.
• Dentist appointment? Please show me your driver’s license.
• Funeral? Driver’s license, please.
• Note: the “please” is optional
• Why on earth you think the school being lockdown means rules should be looser than otherwise is beyond me.
• Also, you’re holding up the line
• And I’m-a-gonna bust you UP for it in about two seconds
• ‘Cause my feet hurt. Really badly.
• And we won’t even get started on the back-cramps.

BUT MY PERSONAL FAVORITE OF ALL THE ATROCITIES I WITNESSES DURING MY THREE-SOME-HOURS OF LOITERING AROUND THERE, the one that had me struggling sooooooo hard not to bust out laughing right there in front of God and Everybody (which likely would have gotten me punched in the face by numerous people who saw no humor in anything by this point), was this little farce-in-three-movements.

Tired Teacher (TT): Okay, so, what is the child’s name?

Idiot Mother (IM): Sam Cardoza. (<= totally not his real name)

{TT beings flipping through New York City Phonebook Sized book of forms and such}

TT: Um…what’s the last name again?

IM: Cardoza.

TT: Erm…how do you spell that?

IM: {shouting to make it clear she thinks TT is a moron for having to ask} SEA-AY-DEE-OH-ZEE-AY.

TT: …and, he is in the tenth grade, correct? (<= also not his actual grade level)

IM: YesssssssssSSSSSSSS!!!! {tone says, “You are a moron, of course he’s in the tenth grade, what other grade would he be in?”}

Me: {thinks: aaaaaaaand, are you QUITE sure he goes to THIS school…?} snicker!

{They both shoot me a dirty look. I try to appear that I’m sneezing. I fail. I don’t really care, but I attempt to appear as though I do and return my attention to my knitting.} {well, duh, I had my knitting with me. it is the only reason the false alarm didn’t turn into a national news story about the insane woman who went all bat-poop crazy while standing in an interminable line to pick up her kid during a lockdown at a high school. Film at eleven.}

TT: So, he’s not in my book…um…lemme just…

{pow-wow ensues amongst all the desks, effectively bringing all pickup to a screeching halt as all books are being checked for one Cardoza, Sam (or Samuel, or Sammy, or Starts-With-S) }

TT: Can you write the name down for me? (Clearly, she is hoping she’s still got the wrong spelling or something)

IM: {sighs from somewhere about three feet under her toes, glares at TT, glares around at everybody else for good measure, scrawls something completely illegible on a scrap of paper and flings it at TT}

{TT’s face assumes a look of absolute despair. Nobody could possibly read this. Even a pharmacist would be all like, “Dude. Can you do that in Latin or Greek or English, instead of, what are these, hieroglyphics?” MEANWHILE, somebody with that “I Am In Charge Around Here, $DEITY Help Me” look approaches. Let’s call her IC for short}

IC: {brightly!} {ooooh, you’re good, IC, very, very good…} What seems to be the problem here? 

{explanation of the non-existent Sam Cardoza ensues. IC looks pained. She prides herself on knowing all the kids in the school, this kid is not ringing a bell. She has failed in her personal mission.}

IC: Ah, so, are you sure he’s in the tenth grade?

IM: {EXPLOSION!! already told her and KABOOM! and furthermore and KAH-POW!! and another thing WHAM-BAM-SMACK!}…and I will call his father and…his father’s name is Singh-like-the-big-shot-guy-Singh just you wait…!

{there is a silence you could cut with a knife at this point…a long, desperate silence while TT is undoubtedly controlling her urge to leap up from the table and strangle the life out of this crazy person, broken only by choking sounds coming from Yours Truly because I am about to die laughing…}

TT: {quietly, and with truly admirable professionalism} Ah, here he is…under SINGH…!!!!!!

{signing out happens while I marvel at her ability to leave it at that…I might have been shouting, “OH, SO ACTUALLY, ‘CARDOZA’ IS SPELLED ESS-AYE-ENN…?!”}

{Sassparilla Singh, a.k.a. Sam Cardoza, is summoned from the stadium, received by his now-flustered mother, rolls his eyes in classic teenager-boy fashion at her hopelessness, mutters something about ‘gawd, mom!!’ and slouches off in her irate wake}

And, as I stepped up to product my ID so I could finally rescue Eldest from the elements…I happened to glance over and catch TT’s eye.

“Fun day at work, huh?” I asked her, practically gnawing my lip off trying not to laugh.

We looked at each other for a moment, appraisingly…and then we started laughing so hard we could hardly stand.

The Denizens think I’m crazy, and disorganized, and otherwise hopeless.

Ha. At least I know that their last name is Grasselfofferphlepinocks, and that Eldest usually goes by Serdingawinginer.

(Which is, sadly, not that far off what was actually called into the stadium. They mangled it so badly that I whipped out my phone to text, ‘Um, ya, that…is supposed to be YOU, babe’ because I couldn’t imagine she would realize it otherwise.)

Some or all or none or maybe it was five…

I took The Denizens to the mall today, because I a) had been told, many times and by various people, that they were “out” of wearable clothes and/or shoes, b) was finally confident that that big check I’d eventually received was fully through the system and not still in a state where it could theoretically still bounce, and c) had apparently lost my damned mind.

We can start this little adventure at get-outta-bed-o’clock, when I announced to the female Denizens that we were going to undertake this. I should have known right then what was going to happen, because they immediately all began talking at once…about the anime store, and the book store, and every OTHER store which does not carry clothes.

Hmm. So I assumed my best Mom Expression and said, sternly, “We are going to get clothes and shoes for school. I need you to think about and/or go through what you have, and figure out what is missing.”

Uh-huh.

Eventually, we got out the door. And then we got lunch.

During the playoff game.

On the bright side, the sound of my girls hyperactively singing various anime theme songs and arguing the fine points of fighting styles (arcane and otherwise) employed by various characters went unheard thanks to the fairly constant shrieks and groans from the fan-base.

Meanwhile, I was grilling them about what, exactly, they needed.

This met with limited success.

Apparently, my girls are completely unaware of what clothes even are, and are therefore quite perplexed by questions such as “how many long-sleeved shirts do you own?” or “Do you have shoes that do not let rain-water in?”

{blank stares} “Oooooooo, well, yes, except, I can’t wear the {pants, shoes, jackets, shirts, socks, etc.} because they’re {too small, have more ‘hole’ than ‘crotch,’ no longer have soles, etc.}”

{rubs temples}

“OK, look, new rule: If you can’t wear it for any reason, that counts as not having it…”

“Oooooooo. Well, then I don’t have any pants…”

“YES YOU DO, YOU HAVE THOSE ONES YOU WOULDN’T LET ME BORROW LAST WEEK!”

“NOT-UH, THOSE AREN’T THOSE BECAUSE THEY HURT MY LEGS!”

“THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID LAST WEEK, BOO!”

“THOSE AREN’T EVEN THE SAME ONES!”

“YES. THEY. ARE!”

“NO. THEY. AREN’T!!”

“YES. THEY…”

“EVERYBODY SHADDUP RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME GAH I WILL TURN THIS VAN AROUND AND WE WILL JUST GO HOME AND YOU CAN ALL WEAR PAPER BAGS OR PENCIL BOXES!!”

THEN, we got to the mall, where we immediately went into JcPennys  Macys  Target  Old Navy  Barnes and Noble.

Where we proceeded to spend almost half of what I’d mentally set aside for clothes on things like…a Japanese dictionary for Eldest. A “read and build with Legos” book for Captain Adventure. A journal for Danger Mouse. The latest installment of Drama for Boo Bug. And a fistful of knitting/spinning/fiber-arty magazines for me.

…sigh…

This is my fault entirely. I know how I am. For me, walking past a bookstore is exactly like a recovering alcoholic walking past a bar at happy hour; or a former smoker standing outside with coworkers who are having a smoke.

That peculiarly delicious ink-and-book-paper smell is worse than crack for me. It suspends all common sense, my ability to perceive the passage of time, even my sense of purpose.

Upshot being: I should never, ever, ever say to myself, “Eh, let’s just cut through the Barnes and Noble on our way to where the clothes are.”

With most of the day now gone, but resolute, I herded my cats kids into the Mall Proper…even though by now, I was coming to the conclusion that there was simply no way any clothes and/or shoes would be purchased, since the feedback I was getting from my adorable offspring was nothing but confusion around the whole concept of dressing themselves, and that they were frankly puzzled by the whole question of “what are you lacking to clothe your nekkidness?”

By the time we left the book store, I had already rather scrapped the plan for the day…it was getting late, Captain Adventure was starting to look a bit strained by all the huff and bother (plus he had that Lego-book thing, which, you know…one really should be able to just rush right home to unwrap and get started when one finds such a treasure as that while out shopping…), and frankly I was starting to flag a bit too. (And had new knitting magazines. Not quite the level of awesome as the Lego-thing, but, pretty darned close.)

Plus I was getting a bit hoarse from hollering, “Stop yammering about {anime, Glee, ringtones, manga, art paper}, look me in the eye, and tell me: do. you. have. ANY. long-sleeved. shirts?!”

So I wasn’t entirely surprised when instead of a clothes store, we they somehow ended up browsing around the anime store going “Shriek! it’s a Hetalia poster!” and other embarrassingly geeky things.

Nor was I surprised to get home and realize that the count of new clothes was zero.

I…think…I’m just going to…hit the Internet.

It’s much quieter.

And a lot easier on my feet.

…oy…!

It was a dirty, low-down trick to pull…

…but I just couldn’t resist…

So, it was Boo Bug’s fifth eleventh birthday today. She had been asking for an iPod for her birthday. Repeatedly. It was, in fact, the only thing she had asked for – even though every time she brought it up, I snarled, “NO! TOO EXPENSIVE! TOO DELICATE! PICK SOMETHING ELSE!”

I continued doing this even after I had the Nano safely hidden under the bills in my desk drawer.

Because I am evil.

Oh, you don’t believe me. Read on.

This morning, I had to run to the drug store for the usual two things that had completely slipped my mind until, like, an hour before Everybody was supposed to arrive. (If I ever didn’t do this, I’m pretty sure the world would end.)

As I walked through the door, my eye fell on a floor-to-ceiling display of toys. You know, the kind that are a) for babies and b) really, really cheap.

Not only were they on sale, they had enormous, red-and-yellow, 400-point font stickers on front of them declaring that they were half-price and also buy two get one free.

I began to giggle to myself. OH yeah, it MUST be done...

I combed that toy section looking for the most perfectly awful thing I could think of for my Boo. Something that would horrify her, but be juuuuuuust close enough to reasonable to have her thinking that dear Gah, her mother REALLY DID buy THAT for her birthday present.

Finally, I found it: A set of My Little Pony knockoffs, with horrifically cheap little brushes and other accoutrements and grins on their horse-faces that were all like, “HI! WE ARE SO HAPPY IT IS RIDICULOUS HOW HAPPY WE ARE! WE ARE GOING TO BE CHEERFUL LIKE THIS, LIKE, FOREVER! BECAUSE HAPPINESS IS OUR THING! GROUP HUG!!!!!” – because, of course, your average fifth grader is all about the fake My Little Pony with enormous plastic grins.

And I left that damned ‘half off / buy three get one free’ sticker on the front of the box.

Also, I got the kind of poofy-princess gift bag your average five year girly-girl type old would die for, and the fairy-castle tissue paper.

And a super-sized Kit-Kat bar. And a super-frilly blue ribbon. Which I stuck more-than-a-bit off-center onto the candy bar before dropping it into the wadded up tissue on top of the ponies in the bag.

And then…I waited. Like a malevolent spider tending the web. I watched her open her friend’s present. I watched her pull out the new pajamas from Grandma (who also had gotten her an iTunes card, which I’d hidden in the office with the Nano).

And then…then…she picked up the bag. An eyebrow raised over the Princessy Princess of All-Star Pinkity-Pink Princess (now with more princess!) bag, but she made no comment.

She pulled out the candy bar, and looked at me suspiciously.

I attempted to look innocent while inwardly choking half to death on laughter.

She pulled out the Plastic Ponies.

There was a long pause.

“Oh. These are…really cute…” she said politely, surreptitiously peering into the bag. Empty. She made a couple more passes at acting like she liked the stupid things, before zinging me with a typical example of Boo Bug humor.

“Oh. And they were on sale,” she observed, drily, tapping the ENORMOUS sticker.

“Ooooooooooh, no! Did I forget to take the stupid sticker off?!” I shrieked.

“Ya, I think you did,” she smiled serenely. Zzzzzzzzzzzing!!

Now, the really awesome thing is: She actually bought it. For the, like, thirty seconds that I let her suffer before bringing out her real present, she actually thought that her poor, obviously-not-altogether-with-it mother had really bought her a $6.99 $3.50 set of cheap plastic not-my-little-ponies, complete with unusable brush and three-pronged comb.

MWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! HAHAHAHA!  HA!! HAHAHAHA!!!!!! {gasp-sputter}.

Oh, yeah. Giving the Denizens things to tell their therapists about in years to come…it is my mission in life…

I’m rather proud of her, though. I suspect in that moment when she was looking at this thing and thinking that this had to be in the top ten worst birthdays of all time, she was half-ready to ask for a divorce from this whole family. And when I was eleven, I’m not sure I would have handled that sort of disappointment so handily; at best, I would have pulled an immediate and thorough disappearing act.

But she handled it so beautifully, with grace and good-nature and by the way a side-helping of teasing me right back.

Heh.

Yeah. I like the woman she is growing to be. Sweet and spicy. Kind and (a little) sarcastic.

Loving but don’t mistake her for an emotional boot-scraper.

That’s my girl.

Happy birthday, kiddo. Hope you enjoy being able to listen to your music, without arguing with your sisters (or your parents, for that matter) about whether it is cool or lame or too loud or too soft or theirs or yours or anybody else’s.

When Dies The Viking Fly

The other evening, Captain Adventure erupted into my bedroom in a state of extreme agitation. He was so distraught that he lost almost all ability to speak – he was shrieking, hitting himself on the head, and stomping in an agitated circle, caught in a deadly trap of desperately wanting and needing my help, but unable to communicate well enough to get anything more than a startled but otherwise blank stare from me.

When he’d settled down enough to use words again, he informed me (still at a high-pitched shriek) that there was a @^*&@ing fly, it was a stupid, STUPID, @^*&@ing fly!

{blink-blink}

…a…what…fly…?

Now, what I was hearing was the Great Grand-Daddy Bad Word – the F-dash-dash-dash, not-fudge, ohmygah, here it is, my own occasional potty-mouth outbursts coming home to roost at last…!

But at the same time, well, there was just something…I just wasn’t sure that was what I was actually hearing. Himself remains rather difficult to understand at times, and when he’s upset like that even I have a hard time figuring out what he’s trying to say.

So I kept asking, “The what fly?!” and he kept saying @^*&ing and I’d say “The WHAT fly?!?!” and he would look at me as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and yell it again.

You can imagine how irritating it was for him that I was so fixed on the word you said before you said fly. This is not the point, Woman. The point is, something about a fly. Focus, dammit, focus!

About four repetitions in, he started making a curious hand gesture as he said the word: He would put his hands to either side of his head and swoop upward.

About the third time he did it, it clicked. Horns. Hat with horns. Viking.

I KNOW, RIGHT?! I too had never realized how much the word ‘Viking’ can sound like that other word until that very moment, when I started to say to myself, Geesh, ‘Viking’ doesn’t sound anything like…oh…wait…you know? it kinda DOES sound like it a little, doesn’t it…and then I repeated it to myself about fifty times until the two were practically indistinguishable from each other and then I said to myself, “Um, Self? Can we move on now, because, seriously? You’ve been fixated on this for an awfully long time here…”

(Random Trivia Moment: Did you know that Vikings did not wear horned helmets into battle [or anywhere else, for that matter]? They wore plain old helmets like anybody else with a lick of common sense [can you imagine how often you’d be at the repair shop if you wore something with sticky-outy bits all over the place, let alone into melee combat?!]. BUT, it would appear that some big shot wore one at some point to some big event and somebody [probably a Roman, because Lord, they recorded everything they ever saw] wrote about it and thus it was that somehow, we collectively decided that all Vikings wore helmets with horns, and that’s how you knew they were Vikings, DUH.)

“There’s a Viking fly?” I asked.

“YES! A STUPID, STUPID VIKING FLY!!!!!” he screamed.

Much confusion later, it turned out that there was a fly on his window. He had smacked said fly into Fly Valhalla, but, the mortal remains had fallen onto his bed…and disappeared.

And the thought of spending the night cuddled up with a dead fly did not appeal to His Bossiness (picky, picky, picky). So he wanted me to come find the fly, and dispose of it.

Which I did by the simple expedient of changing his sheets, because they needed it anyway and I wasn’t too keen on the idea of trying to find a dead fly among dark blue sheets.

And I chuckled to myself the whole time. Viking fly. Heh.

Now mind you, I’m pretty sure what he meant was the other word, and definitely the sentiment was the other word, and that we simply got a free pass thanks to his own speech-and-language issues; somebody says ‘^&@^*ing,’ apparently he hears Viking.

For now.

(dramatic music begins to play in the background…eventually, we all know the boy WILL pick up Bad Words and begin to ‘season’ his sentences with them, and we will be faced with trying to instill Socially Acceptable Language Rules on him and he will be all like ‘la la la I’m autistic and I don’t understand what the problem is, it doesn’t bother ME that I put the word ‘@^*&@’ in front of every.thing.else.I.say….)

The Artiste is IN

Captain Adventure and I are bach-in it this weekend. That’s right. It’s just me-n-mah-boy, for three whole days. His father and sisters piled into Homer the Odyssey yesterday and headed off for the uncharted wilderness of the Los Angeles area for the family 4^th of July party.

I couldn’t go this time – between Female Troubles (yeah, still…I think I may be approaching the point where I start proposing we just yank the whole blasted works out of there and be done with it), work-related deadlines and an epic amount of laundry (don’t laugh – one of the girls had scabies, and I’m so freaked out by Such Things that I won’t be able to sleep at night until I have washed ALL the things), I just wasn’t able to take five whole days away from Everything.

Which The Captain feels is possibly the second or third most awesome thing that has ever happened to him in his entire almost-eight-years of life.

I was a little worried last night, as he was revisiting the question of where exactly daddy and the sisters were right now. Would they be home later? Would they be home in the morning? Where did they go, again? And then, just as I was starting to think, Aw, crap, he thinks he’s been ditched!, he grabbed hold of my neck and yelled, “Good! Cause then it just you and me, just dat!”

Sometimes, I think The Captain wishes he was the only child of a single parent. Just a hunch.

Also, I had to keep sending him back to his own bed, because he was totally trying to take over daddy’s spot while he was away. Possession is 9/10^th of the law, dude…you left it unattended, I moved into it, ANY QUESTIONS?!

So this morning, he had a list of things he felt would be a good use of our time. Important things. Like marshmallows, cereal, and bendy wax sticks. Oh. And some of the fusible bead trays, so he could build cool things for me to obediently iron upon demand.

The young artiste, he has NEEDS, y’all.

So after some breakfast cocoa and a morning chat about video games, we went off to WalMart together. He chattered all the way there…and then promptly went into shut-down as we were walking up to the store.

…so…much…stuff…!!!

He maintained a death-grip on my hand the entire time. The most I could get from him was a whispered “yes” or “no” when I would show him various products – or a wordless pointing as I started to toss the coveted and seldom-purchased marshmallows into the cart. How about the pastel ones, because the only thing better than marshmallows-at-all would be PASTEL marshmallows, which is, like, ULTRA awesome and stuff…

But WalMart…they had neither the fusible-bead things, nor the bendy wax sticks. Sadness. And. Woe.

So we went next door to Michaels. Where I found the fusible bead things on sale no less in about three seconds. But the bendy wax sticks…couldn’t find them.

We searched high and low, and with increasing desperation. When an autistic kid has decided that this and ONLY this will do? Not being able to find whatever-it-is becomes a big deal. I had to transfer his hand to my belt, because he was griping way too hard as aisle after aisle did not have them, and his anxiety began to mount.

Finally, tucked away in the Crayola aisle, waaaaaaay up at the top in unfamiliar packaging…bendy sticks.

Whew. Disaster averted. Captain Adventure was so happy, he started flapping his hands and skipping to the register, and even forgot that he was freaked out and overwhelmed and started chattering again. I’m going to make a GUY with really long LEGS and hey! How come they have YELLOW [inevitably pronounced LEL-LO, which I find so cute it half KILLS me to correct him] on the picture on the box, but there’s no LEL-LO stah-WINGS in the box? Huh? How come? Huh? HOW COME?!

And then we came home and he made a guy with really long legs and said I had to take a picture quick because his legs were going to fall off because they were toooooooooo LONG!

So I did.

(Note the very serious expression. He is an artiste, people. And arte, it is serious!)

And, they did. Pretty much immediately. So he made smaller people with normal legs out of the fallen-off legs and said it was a family of wax-string people.

And then he decided it was time for fusible beads. I foresee a LOT of ironing in my immediate future…

We don’t get a whole lot of one-on-one time with any of the Denizens, really; normally, my home office is like the customer service desk at Target, a constant string of people asking for things, returning things, registering complaints and suggestions, coming and going day and night.

Sometimes, I can’t remember which kid was just in here bellyaching about what thing, and then I’ll be yelling at the wrong kid to quite harping on that! and whaddya mean, mommy, I only brought it up this one time!

…oh…that wasn’t you five minutes ago…well, anyway, QUIT HARPING ON IT, I KNOW YOU WANT GRANOLA BARS!

It’s always neat to get some of this kind of time, with only one voice to listen to, only one other set of needs to cater to, only one other person to focus on for a while.

…except…well, it is kind of quiet around here today…little bit creepy, almost…I think I’ll go see what the hamsters are up to, see if they want to start running around in their little balls on the tile floor, that might liven things up a bit around here…

And what have we learned today…?

Last night as I was settling into an evening plan that featured a shower, knitting and something martial arts-y on Netflix, someone came upstairs and said the husband wanted me out in front of the house.

For something that wasn’t good.

I was expecting something like a broken tool in the garage, or a fallen-over fence part, or even a stolen lawnmower.

I was not expecting that one of the Denizens had thrown a toy gemstone toward the neighbor’s lawn, instead pitching it into the back window of another neighbor’s Explorer – shattering it in a glorious shower of safety glass nuggets.

Holy Crap, Child!

(And right here I have to own up to a peculiarly bizarre form of pride, because one of my first coherent thoughts upon witnessing this and hefting the Implement of Destruction in my hand, was Wow…I had no idea she had that good an arm on her! Not bad, kiddo! – and then I was all, No! No, Tama! BAD THINKING! You are supposed to be all angry and saddened and SERIOUS right now, not thinking that maybe what this kid needs most is to do time on a baseball time to learn how to AIM a little better…!)

(I am dying to get the girls into some form of sports. They don’t “do” sports. They do chess club and book club and art club, but nothing that involves running / kicking / throwing / sweating. This is called “being exactly like their father at that age.” Whereas I was one of those kids who had to have the {volley, base, basket, foot} ball pried out of her claw-like hands at night and be dragged home kicking and screaming the whole way about how unfair it all was. STUPID DINNER, WHO NEEDS IT, I WAS GONNA WIN!!!)

So I put on Serious Face and made Serious Noises. And I felt bad for Danger Mouse, because she’s crying and embarrassed as all @*^&@, and has that look that clearly says, “Why won’t the earth just open up and swallow me right now?!”

I finally sent her into the house to have a little witness-free panic attack while we grownups stood around and talked about kids today and how they all do that and making arrangement with the neighbors to take ownership of their out of pocket costs for replacing it, and so on and so on.

These neighbors, by the way, are a “no kids” household. Which was part of the reason the kids were all terrified about having broken out one of their windows. We have told them approximately 32 million times to stay the heck away from that house. Right now, there is a (guesstimate) 30-foot boat (not theirs, but parked right there nonetheless because of course it is!), an equally enormous RV, two Corvettes, the Explorer, a vintage VW bug and a very new Civic hybrid in and around that driveway.

It’s just not a good place for a pack of children to be getting all wild and crazy, you know?

They are not “kid people,” either. They’re nice folks and don’t have any active dislike for children, but they’re also not people who are like, um, well, me.

I dote and fawn and forgive just about anything kids get into, really. They’re going to be messy and noisy and obnoxious, they break things and eat stuff you were saving for something else. It’s sometimes really hard for me to act like The Mom©, too; I mean, how do I look them in the eye and be all, “That was wrong, girls, very wrong indeed…!” about something I did about eight thousand times myself at their ages?

They’re more of the “I guess we’ll just have to tolerate this for a while, until they all grow up and leave” variety. And we try to keep the kids from frolicking around their stuff, but at the same time…kids are like cats that way.

Have you ever noticed that if there is one person in an entire crowd of people who has a dislike for cats that borders on a phobia, and there is a cat anywhere in the vicinity, the varmint will hone in on that one person and begin making all kinds of love at them?

Kids do that with people who don’t really like kids, too. My youngsters had to be watched like hawks whenever they had sidewalk chalk, because the little Rembrandts would migrate themselves to the one driveway in the court that was acid-washed annually to keep it in like-new gray glory (whereas the rest of us go with the mottled “interesting patterns created by allowing crap to Just Sit on your driveway, like, FOREVER, instead of sweeping it regularly strategically allowing certain natural elements to imprint random dyes into the concrete over time” look).

Sigh.

Well…it’s probably going to be a rather pricy way to learn a lesson about thinking about what is going to happen before the object has left your hand – which is, frankly, not one of Danger Mouse’s stronger points. She will still do the darnedest things, only realizing it was a terrible idea after the goats are running around downtown eating the petunias and pooping on the sidewalks.

And I think an excellent way to reinforce that lesson would be to sign her up for a season of baseball. If you wanna be throwing things, here’s a few pointers, honey…

Almost had to happen

Man oh man.

SEE, this is why we don't generally have state of the art *anything*, or artwork, or allow people to park precious whatnots with us.

This evening, Captain Adventure wheedled some cookies from me and settled in to watch TV with his sisters.

He set down his bag of cookies.

And Eldest picked them up.

Here is what I heard from the other room, where I was slicing up peaches and arranging the slices on the dehydrator racks:

"Heyyyyyyyyyy! Gimmie it those back at me!" shouted the Captain.

"They aren't YOURS you know, they're for Everyone!" replied the teen, followed swiftly by the sound of stuff hitting the floor, and this further gem from the big sister: "Hey, don't you hit ME, they AREN'T. ALL. YOURS!!!!!!"

There were then three squeals as I was rinsing peach juice off my hands and reaching for a towel...and then Danger Mouse ran into the kitchen, wide-eyed and said, "Captain is throwing things...he just threw the tape dispenser at the TV!"

For one wild moment, I thought *maybe* it was, you know, one of those light little disposable ones...

...no...heavy, sand-bottomed office-style...

...and yeah, the big, expensive flat screen is now useless, shattered, pathetically flashing as it tries to figure put what HAPPENED to it...

...aw, crap-apples...!

Sometimes, it seems to me that "good" parenting must perforce be defined very, VERY simply: I did not KILL any of my Denizens today.

I am an effin' GODDESS of maternal awesome, yo.

Math and guns

The husband, laughing so hard he could barely talk, just asked me to come watch our Eldest’s little speech on the ‘farewell to Mr. H’s class’ DVD – the end of year compilation of all the adorable children from sixth grade. (This was from last year, mind you.)

So I stood there and watched my darling child tell the camera, in her earnest and slightly nerdy way, the following:

“Yeah, OK, so…math? It’s kind of boring and stuff? But? You can totally use it to make, like, bows. And guns. And stuff like that. Yeah. That’s what my mom says, anyway.” {smile!}

{head-desk}

And now I know why alllllll the teachers at her school tend to kind of…look.at.me., all funny like that…

(Funny thing being, our actual conversation on the topic was more like, “Well, shoot, honey, think about a bow and arrow…now, you can use math to figure out how many pounds of pressure per square inch your arrow exerts on the target and how many feet it travels per second, and then you can experiment with different bows and start making note of what changes cause which effects, if a shorter bow with a bigger arch makes it go faster or hit harder, and then you can incorporate those findings into the next bow you build, see? And you can get better at hitting the target in the first place if you can get a basic understanding of geometry, how shapes work, and the physics of movement blah blah blah, mom keeps going LONG after the pre-teen’s attention span has officially ended, blah blah blah…)

(Except that she obviously retained the key words ‘bow’ and ‘gun’ and ‘math’ and then threw them all together in her ‘bye, Mr. Teacher, it’s been so awesome being your class and by the way I’m totally going to build myself a gun using the math you taught me, buh-bye!! {smile!}” speech.)

(Once again…{head-desk!}…)

Ain't no stupid on this kid

Yeah. Mommy grabs her keys and has a list?

Invite yourself along.

There is probably ice cream at that store...act cute, maybe a "spontaneous" hug, use some good, clear words and badda-bing, badda-boom...ice cream.

No stupid on this kid. He KNOWS how to play the game...

Newly Rediscovered: Pre-Sliced Bread is COOL!

OK, first of all: Is everybody sitting down? You’re not, like, standing on a bus reading this on your Android-whozit-thingee?

I’ll give you a second to get settled in a safe position.

Ready?

I bought bread last week. At Target. I KNOW! The apocalypse (which I just spelled in a CRAZY weird way, what the HECK was THAT?!) (seriously, like, I went with apocolapse…and I have no idea why because yeah, I know it isn’t spelled that way…), it may be here…

That’s the first time in…wow. You know? I really don’t know how long it has been since I last bought bread in a store like that. I’ve bought Boudin sourdough (because of course I have), and I’ve bought the occasional box or bag of bagels or croissants, but when it comes to “sandwich and toast” bread…I think I might not be exaggerating when I say it has been years.

My homemade bread spoils me; it costs me a hair over a dollar to make two one-pound loaves, you know? And since I’m a compulsive spreadsheet addict, I know this. Furthermore, a loaf of bread will vanish in less than one meal around here; so, I’m not looking at one loaf of bread, I’m looking at two or even three.

And we’ll still be out of it in what seems like mere moments.

BUT. I was tired and still not feeling too great and had too much to do, so I bought this bread at Target. Plain old bread-bread. Normal bread, like everybody has.

Fast forward to later that day, when Danger Mouse comes tripping in and says, “Can I make a sandwich?”

We said, sure, knock yourself out, kid.

She climbs up to get the bread, dumps it out of the bag, regards the jumbled up slices with great surprise and then chirps out, “Oh, WOW! It’s already sliced! That’s cooooooooool!!”

This just in: Sliced bread? Is coooooooooool.

t’was the toy shopping before Christmas…

In honor of the impending holiday celebrating unbridled greed, gluttony, family dysfunction, mounting debts and other psychoses this most tender and sacred of seasons, I went shopping for Denizen Christmas presents last week.

I had a list! I’d checked it twice! (Actually, I’d been checking it compulsively for two weeks. It wasn’t so much a ‘list’ as a ‘solid block of ink written in a Top Secret Code not even I could understand anymore.’) I knew exactly where I was going, and in what order!

So! I saddled up and headed out and I came home four hours later with a minivan so heavily loaded it was practically popping a wheelie from all the weight in the back-back-back.

That’s right. Fully loaded.

…with fifty pounds of flour! Fifty pounds of sugar! Twenty-five pounds of brown sugar! Shampoo! All kinds of canned goods that were on sale! Plus a few household items (like a silicon oven mitt to help me with that pesky ‘pouring boiling hot water out of boiling hot Mason jars while canning’ thing) I’ve been circling for a while, purchased with 40% off coupons, THAT’S RIGHT!.

…but…uh…not a single…you know…Christmas present.

Not.
Even.
One.

{face-desk}

SEE, this is why I should not ever, under any circumstances, be the one who does the frivolous shopping. I should just go to the bank, take out all the cash I have hoarded up for this most spendy festive time of the year, and just hand alllllllllll that cash to the husband, saying, “Go. Shop. Buy. Whatever.” And then I should retreat to my knitting chair and refuse to look up until it’s all over, and the receipts have been shredded or burned, and the children are all lying around the house in a state of advanced post-excitement lethargy.

Turn me loose on basic necessities, and I am all over it. I can fill up a pantry in nothing flat. I can whip through re-outfitting the kids with new jeans and shirts and whatnot like it was nothing. I can pounce on things like carpet shampooers and nail guns.

But ask me to go blow perfectly good money on useless crap spread holiday joy and cheer by sprinkling my loved ones with completely unnecessary fun and exciting crap-crap-CRAP! toys that will undoubtedly be left allll over the floor so that I’m constantly tripping or treading on them OHMYGAH, would it KILL you people to pick up your blasted Lego’s once in a danged while?!, and, well, obviously?

I have some issues.

Although it’s actually kind of layered issue thing. On the one hand, yeah, I don’t like spending what always seems like insane amounts of money on plastic things that go “beep!” for a couple days before ending up in a landfill somewhere because somebody left it on the hall floor and then I stepped on it.

But then, for added Crazy Points, I also don’t like to cheap out on these things. I’m not going to buy each kid four Dollar Tree toys and pretend it’s the most awesome Christmas EVER!

Merry Christmas, guys! That’s right! I sprang for four whole presents, for each of you! Imported presents! All the way from China! FANCY!!!!!

…just don’t put them anywhere near your mouth, and we’ll have ourselves a rare old fun-time with these bad boys…

And I do want to shower them with stuff at Christmas. I don’t do it the rest of the year. Shoot, half the time they get nothing-or-close-to-it for their birthday, for Pete’s sake. So when we come to Christmas, well, I would like to actually get them stuff they want, stuff that is cool, stuff that makes them go, “AWESOME!!!!”

…except that it always seems to be, you know…pricy. (Go figure.)

And then I end up in this endless cycle: “I’m not paying forty bucks for that! What’s this, hey, it’s cheaper! Oh. Ugh. Lame. Geesh, I can smell the lead paint from here. Back to this thing. This is cool. It’s COOL. It is boss and wicked and whatever other word means ‘groovy’ these days. But…forty bucks. Really? Forty bucks? For one toy?”

And then I’ll stand there like one of Those People in the supermarket, who will spend hours squinting at the nutritional information on the box of Ding-Dongs. And you just desperately want to slap the box out of their hands and yell, “BAD! They are bad for you! If you’re worried about nutrition in any way, shape or form, BAD! BAD! BAD! Step away from the Ding-Dongs! Here! Bag of apples! Box of oranges! Now, git!”

So there I’ll be. In Costco or WalMart or Michael’s or Some Other Place With Toys. With a box in my hands. Staring at it. Like, maybe, if I look long enough, and hard enough, I will find actual real gold nuggets in it…which would totally explain the price tag.

I put it down. I pick it up. I put it in the cart. I circle the store a few times. I put it back again. Circle the store again. Pick it up. Stare at the box as if any second, my x-ray vision will kick in.

This can go on for hours, until eventually I’ll drop it back on the shelf in disgust and slink off with my hands in my pockets, muttering to myself.

Add in the fact that Denizens are still young enough to do That Thing kids do, where the thing they just got done telling you was THE thing, the thing that they cannot exist another hour without, the Most Awesomest Thing That Ever Was™, IT, the thing that will cause them to actually DIE of sheer joy…wait, what? That old thing?

Yeah. So five minutes ago. Nobody wants one of those old bags of “pfffffft!” any more! No! It’s now all about this things which is just so “eeeeeeeee!” and “Ohmygah-ohmygah-ohmygah!” and {swoon!!!!!!}.

{FACE-DESK}

Well…about all I can say is, thank Dog for Amazon. And two day shipping. I think this is the second year that just about everything kid-related has come from Amazon, and I have to say: It’s pretty cool. The stuff arrives in plain brown boxes, and it’s really obvious if someone tries to peek.

But on the downside, the kids have cottoned on to the fact that sometimes, the boxes that usually contain cat litter, books about how to field dress an elk and other such fascinating things might contain presents.

Which led to the scene earlier today, when there was a ring of the bell and four little voices began shrieking, “It’s the UPS guy! It’s the UPS guy!!!!”, and eight little feet went pounding down the stairs and hallways and the poor man was swarmed by this horde of psychotic children in the grips of a pre-Christmas feeding frenzy.

…and he was delivering a carpet shampooer…

Me? Excited. Because my carpets are gross. They don’t look gross and I’m sure that comparatively speaking, they aren’t really that bad…but lately we’ve had a lot of carpet-related disasters around here and I’ve been forced to use my ‘Little Green Machine’ to get them up.

Nothing will call a “dirt” issue to your attention like seeing black water in the tank after you’ve cleaned an itty-bitty section of carpet you wouldn’t have said looked all that bad. And then COIT quoted me something like $27MM to do the shampooing for me and I was all, “Really?!” and they were all, “Uh, yeah.” And I was all, “REALLY?!” And they were all, “Look, lady, you want the carpets cleaned, or no?”

And I was all, REALLY-REALLY?! except they had already hung up on me so I didn’t bother saying it out loud.

So, I’ve been sitting around waiting for a deal to come up…and finally, it did. I got myself an All-Terrain Steam Vac (the ‘all terrain’ part basically meaning that it can do the carpets and the tile / Pergo) for about half price and sat around looking smug about it for, like, two days.

And then I laughed myself sick at my poor, disappointed kids, who were so sure it was going to be something good, but then it was just stupid vacuum…

…especially because they were so disappointed that they wandered off before Mr. UPS toddled back up to the door with the two large boxes full of games and dolls and so forth and so on, mwa-hahahahaha…