Tommy presses something small and brown into my hand. Maybe a piece of dead leaf or wet construction paper.
"Mommy, a rebuck gwoge."
"A what what?"
"A rebuck!"
"What's a rebuck?"
buzzing sounds
"A bug?"
"A rebug"
"A real bug?" (he has toy bugs)
nods "Yes. A rebug gwoge."
"A real bug broke? How?"
holds up one finger "I poke a rebug."
Not construction paper. A smooshed bug. Ick.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
wtf
Why is it that if I go around to the bathroom and laundry room trash cans and empty them all into one bag it's my job to take that bag to the trash, but if someone else empties them all into one bag and then sets it on the floor then the least I can do is take it the rest of the way to the trash? Tom left a bag of lint and tampons in front of my bathroom sink a week ago and wonders why I use his sink now.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
I wonder
There is no gay agenda and no one "promotes homosexuality" or tries to recruit anyone, but just for a second ignore that and ponder this. What if people did promote homosexuality, and try to recruit people to be gay? Why would that be bad?
Keeping in mind that you're either born gay or not, which is, you know, fact, why would people care if someone were to tilt at those particular windmills? What if I decided to promote blue eyes, and recruit people to have blue eyes? It would be ridiculous and stupid, but who would it offend? I suppose if I got popular enough, people might notice and decide that I was unfairly discriminating and treating poorly those without blue eyes. And that might hurt their feelings, to be told, however indirectly, that blue eyes are desirable over other colors. Is that the problem? Are the straight people sad because no one wants to recruit them to be straight? Are they upset that no one is starting a straight straight alliance, or holding big leather boy parades for them? Are they sad because we get Rupaul and they get Ozzie and Harriet? (After all these years, I still say we. How quaint."
Keeping in mind that you're either born gay or not, which is, you know, fact, why would people care if someone were to tilt at those particular windmills? What if I decided to promote blue eyes, and recruit people to have blue eyes? It would be ridiculous and stupid, but who would it offend? I suppose if I got popular enough, people might notice and decide that I was unfairly discriminating and treating poorly those without blue eyes. And that might hurt their feelings, to be told, however indirectly, that blue eyes are desirable over other colors. Is that the problem? Are the straight people sad because no one wants to recruit them to be straight? Are they upset that no one is starting a straight straight alliance, or holding big leather boy parades for them? Are they sad because we get Rupaul and they get Ozzie and Harriet? (After all these years, I still say we. How quaint."
Thursday, April 21, 2011
on zombies and eggs
So the Romans and Pharisees who killed Jesus are bad. We don't like them at all. No, Sir!
And Judas, who collected the bounty and turned him in was bad, and we absolutely hate him! Bad dude, evil all the way around.
But the day Jesus died is called Good Friday. What the fuck? It's my understanding that it's good because that's the day we got our salvation and all that, but then wouldn't the people who made that sacrifice possible, who actually martyred the man, be good too? If the death was good, the killers should be saints.Right?
And Judas, who collected the bounty and turned him in was bad, and we absolutely hate him! Bad dude, evil all the way around.
But the day Jesus died is called Good Friday. What the fuck? It's my understanding that it's good because that's the day we got our salvation and all that, but then wouldn't the people who made that sacrifice possible, who actually martyred the man, be good too? If the death was good, the killers should be saints.Right?
Just another Thursday
Hah! No wet sheets today but both boys seem to be on a nap strike and I got 2 emails a minute apart about detentions for Ryan for not turning in homework. Ugh.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Just another Wednesday
7:00 the alarm goes off. Ugh, Danny was sitting up in the bed for half an hour at 5:00 trying to play. I fumble for the phone and hit snooze.
7:05 the alarm goes off again. Danny stirs and latches on. If I don't want him to wake up yet, if I want a moment's peace this morning, I have to stay until he's done. I hit snooze again.
7:10 the alarm goes off. I turn it off and sneak out of bed, propping pillows around him as I go so he doesn't roll or crawl over the side, and get dressed. I take out my earplugs (Tom snores like a Jake Brake) and drop them in the nightstand drawer, making sure to close it because if I don't the cat will get in there and cleaning up cat puke and earplugs is so gross.
7:12 I pee, texting Ryan from the toilet to get up and brush her teeth, and brush my own teeth, listening for Danny the whole time. She texts me back, "Okay."
7:15 I let myself out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Ryan is coming out of her bedroom too and I whisper to her to hurry up. I shuffle into the kitchen to start my breakfast. I need coffee.
7:20 I plug in the coffee grinder and hope it doesn't wake up Tommy. I should have ground the coffee yesterday but I never think about it until the morning. I open the coffee can and see that I'm almost out. I hope I can make it a week and a half until our next shopping trip. I grind the coffee and load the machine.
7:25 Coffee maker is started, oatmeal on the stove is cooking, and I hear Tommy yelling for me. "Mommy!" Maybe he'll go back to sleep. Maybe this will be one of those mornings where both boys sleep until 8:30. "Mommy!" Maybe not. I turn off the stove and coffee pot and go to get Tommy out of bed.
7:30 "My potty." "You want to go potty? Okay, let's go." "My pants. My shirt." The Pull-Up leaked. He and the bed are soaked in cold, fragrant, urine. I strip him down and take him to the bathroom. Ryan is still in it, about to start brushing her teeth.
7:45 We all emerge from the bathroom, teeth brushed, and go to the kitchen. I turn the stove and coffee maker back on and mix Tommy's breakfast drink, the only nutrition he gets these days since he refuses to eat actual food. Ryan takes her morning pill, swipes one of my caramel calcium supplements, and lounges against the counter to leisurely drink her juice.
7:52 "Ryan, go to school. No, you cannot brush your hair. You have had over 45 minutes to throw on an outfit, brush your teeth, pee, take a pill, and brush your hair. You are now out of time. Go to school." "But Mom, I'll hurry! I promise!" "No. Today you look like a hobo at school. That's the natural consequence of running out of time and hopefully it's the lesson that will teach you to hustle a little more in the mornings."
7:55 Ryan leaves for school, hobo hair and all. But she has a brush in her purse and I can only hope she doesn't slow-walk to school to get her hair brushed.
8:00 I sip my cold coffee and use it to wash down 800 mg of Motrin. I can feel a headache coming on. I sit at my desk and open up blogger. This is a live-blog kinda day.
8:15 My coffee is gone but hasn't kicked in yet, my oatmeal is lukewarm but edible, and Tommy is sitting on the couch in a clean Pull-Up, drinking his milk. Oh crap, I forgot to strip his bed!
8:20 The bed is stripped, Tommy is jumping on it because for some reason one can not jump on a bed with sheets but one must always jump on a bed without sheets. I have to get these through the wash before nap time because while I do have more sheets, I don't have another waterproof pad to go under them.
8:30 Danny wakes up. And if he were going to fall back to sleep that dream has been ruined by the screams of "Baby crying! Mommy! Baby crying get up!" that the first fussing sounds bring. Tommy and I go to get Danny, who has wiggled out of the pillow-walls but not yet made it anywhere near the edges of the bed. I change his diaper and set him on the floor to play with his brother.
8:40 "Mommy! Potty!" We go to the potty and he pees a little. I empty the potty, let him flush the pee down the toilet and wash his hands, then drag him crying away from the sink.
8:50 I load the washer with sheets, turn it on hot (the cold water hasn't worked for a week and a half and the repair man told me yesterday that he won't fix it and thinks I should call a plumber), and then realize that my detergent is at my mother's house from when I did laundry there last weekend. Also there, a hamper, 2 loads of laundry, and a basket. I dig around and find 2 cement-like Tide Tablets I got in the mail a decade ago and hope for the best.
9:00 My oatmeal is cold and solidified. I scrape it into the garbage disposal.
9:02 "Mommy! Potty!
9:15, the washer is stuck on the rinse cycle because there's no cold water. I turn it back to 'wash' and run it without soap.
9:16 I ignore the world and check my email (I can enlarge my penis, and David Plouffe needs my help.) and the news. A hooker in Seattle was tortured in a dungeon for hours, Charlie Sheen wants to run for President, something happened to the First Lady's plane and she had to circle before landing (this is a top story on every news feed I get) and the highway in town will be one lane for the next 6 months because they need to pave over the bumps to get on and off the 30 foot bridge they built for 9 months last year.
9:20 "Mommy! Potty!" We go to the potty and he farts twice before announcing that he's done. I drag him crying away from the sink.
9:30 Tommy tells me a story about the Staypuft Marshmallow Man fighting a robot and a superhero. The Marshmallow Man was on fire but he still broke the robot with his hand and then a superhero came in and hit him with more fire and the robot got back up and quite honestly, I don't know who won.
9:45 Tommy brings me a clean Pull-Up. I tell him he already has one and put this one on my desk.
9:47 Tommy brings me a clean Pull-Up and whispers "Mommy! Potty!" I take him to the potty and pull down his pants for him and find a 4 inch turd. I clean him up, he poops a little more, we flush it, wash his hands, leave crying. You know the drill.
9:55 Neither my coffee nor my Motrin has kicked in yet. I know that if I drink more coffee I'll only feel it in my stomach. Tommy comes out of his room yelling that Danny is chewing on a block. I tell him that's okay, that they're chewy blocks, and to let the baby have one. I receive a skeptical look in reply.
10:00 Tommy gives up on blocks and comes to climb on me. After poking me repeatedly in the kidneys with his bony knees, all while shouting "Mommy! Looka me!" in my ears, he runs off crying when I tell him that mommies aren't for climbing. As he runs away he yells "I naughty" and hits himself in the head. I shake my head and wonder how to fix that, and how much of his future sexuality will involve paying women in leather to slap him if we don't fix it. I pick up Danny and silently promise never to spank him.
10:10 "Mommy! Potty!" I tell him to go potty (I just left the door open and blocked the door with a roll of carpet to keep the baby out) and plan to meet him there. I put the baby down and get up to go help Tommy and see him waving the potty bowl in the air. I choke on a lump of panic and hurry to see the mess. The toilet is running and he tells me he flushed it, so I thank him for his help and rinse the bowl out. He washes his hands while I reassemble the potty and then I drag him crying from the sink.
10:15 I gaze longingly at Disc 1 of Dexter Season 4, which has been sitting on my desk since Monday, unopened in its Netflix envelope. I throw the sheets in the dryer.
10:20 I start to think about lunch. Tommy isn't currently eating food so part of me sees no reason to make anything, but offering him food to turn his nose up at and maybe throw on the floor is a vital part of my job description so I decide to cook something. But what?
10:25 I hear the baby crying. He's outside the bathroom and Tommy is inside keeping him out by pushing the carpet roll at him. It has rolled onto the baby's legs. I rescue the (fortunately unharmed) baby, tell Tommy in my best stern voice "We do not crush people under home decorating supplies!" and (say it with me) drag him crying from the bathroom.
10:30 I get an email from my mother asking why she got an email from cafepress telling her the shirt she designed in ready for her to order. I go to her account and see that Ryan designed a shirt. I reply to Mom's email and ask if she's called the plumber yet. I hate calling the plumber and since she's the landlord, I make her do it. I can't understand the guy because his Puerto Rican accent is thick and I always feel vaguely racist when I try, and my mother is of the generation that refuses to acknowledge race or color at all and therefor never feels racist ("It's no different than being unable to understand a thick southern accent."), so she can call him.
10:45 I take the sheets out of the dryer and make the bed. As I leave the bedroom I see Tommy's blanket on the floor. The baby blanket I crocheted for him before he was even born, that he loves and carries with him, that he sleeps with, that I didn't wash. And I'm fresh out of ten year old detergent samples. I throw it in the washer with a scoop of OxyClean and hope that'll get it clean enough to last until I can get my soap and laundry from my mother's.
11:00 Tommy asks me for crackers. I decide to be a negligent mom for one day and let him eat crackers and fruit snacks for lunch. While I'm getting the crackers out of the cupboard he sees my Calcium chews and wants them. I tell him they're medicine, not candy, and he starts crying and chanting "medicine medicine" at me. I take him by the hand and tell him "No!" firmly. He looks me in the eye without blinking for a very long time. After about 60 seconds of this I realize he's peeing his pants at me in defiance. I take him out of the kitchen, hand him his crackers and milk, and silently beg him not to dump the milk.
11:10 "Blue straw! Mommy, bluuuuuuuue straaaaaaaw!" I take him to the drawer to pick a new straw (is straw color really the battle I want to pick here?) where he reaches immediately for an orange straw, declaring it to be blue (we need to work on colors more, kid.). He pulls the old straw out of the cup, plunges the new one in, and happily goes to watch Dora and eat crackers. I look down at the old straw in my hand and shake my head. It is orange.
11:15 "Mommy! My milk!" The baby has the milk cup and is chewing on the bottom of it, while the orange and upside down straw drips milk all over. I take the cup, clean up the milk, and realize that I'm starting to feel shaky from having eaten nothing since the half bowl of oatmeal this morning.
11:20 Danny is fussing and crawling toward me. My meal will have to wait for his. I nurse him. "Mommy! Potty!" I briefly wonder if the ad guy who coined the phrase, "Calgon, take me away!" 30 years ago was adequately compensated.
11:40 I sneak into the kitchen to toast myself a bagel for lunch. Tommy hears the toaster and yells, "My eat!" I let him in and he grabs more crackers and then jabs his finger into the cream cheese on my bagel. He looks at his finger, calls it yucky, and wipes it across his shirt, as I'm reaching for him with a towel. Danny is at the gate so I bring him in too. I strap him in the high chair and open a fruit cup for him. I give Tommy one too, to keep him quiet.
11:50 Tommy has eaten all the cherries from his fruit cup and is now trying to get more out of the cupboard. "No!"
12:00 "Mommy, can I climb? Mommy let me up please." He is trying to climb onto me to get Danny's cherries. "No, Tommy. No! Mommies aren't for climbing. Get off!" He climbs up anyway, saying "Thank you, Mommy!" the whole time.
12:25 Lunch is over and we are back in the living room. I am still tired but know that more than one cup of coffee a day won't do anything but hurt my stomach. Tom calls and asks how my day is. I growl into the phone. He laughs. Tommy and Danny scream in the background and he laughs harder. I hang up on him. He's so used to it that he won't be mad.
12:30 "Mommy potty!" He pees, flushes, washes, I drag him screaming. All in all a good trip.
12:45 My neighbor calls. The dog is running loose in the back yard. I call her into the kitchen (She smells like dog poo! She smells like dog poo in my kitchen!) I hook her to a leash, throw on a coat, and walk through the muddy yard to find her chain unharmed. Now how the hell did she get out and how the hell do I keep her from doing it again? I come inside and get yelled at by Tommy for taking the doggie away.
12:55 Danny crawls up to me and bites my ankle. When I yell "Ow!" and look down, he smiles and crawls away.
1:00 Nap time! Yay yay happy dance. But wait. I never threw the blanky in the dryer, did I? Don't swear in front of the kids, Charlie. Nap time shall be after Spongebob today.
1:05 I come out of the bedroom after turning on the dryer and watch the baby spit out a glob of Play-Doh. I wonder how strict the laws are in china about tossing the term "Non-Toxic" around. I decide that Play Doh feels pretty light and probably isn't made with lead.
1:10 The baby is rubbing his eyes. He's ready for a nap but I can't put him down until the blanket is dry. I nurse him instead, and hi kicks me for it. "Mommy! Potty!" Ugh.
1:15 check email and news again for a minute. Texas is on fire. I remember all the fundies ranting that Katrina was because God hates Mardi Gras. I wonder why He set Texas aflame, then. Suddenly I hear Tommy ask, "Hey! Where Ryan go?" Really, kid? She's been gone for five and a half hours! "She's at school, honey." I glance longingly at the coffee cup still sitting on the desk. I notice it is full. No wonder I'm so tired today. It's too late for coffee now, though.
1:20 I check Tommy's Pull-Up to see if he actually peed at me before, and it's soaked. I sternly tell him that he is supposed to pee in the potty and NOT in his big boy pants. "Potty!" And we're off to the bathroom, where he pees approximately 3 drops, flushes the toilet, washes his hands, and screams as we leave.
1:25 I take the blanky out of the dryer and shake it to try and air dry the damp out of it. Thank God acrylic yarn doesn't actually absorb any water because the thing is pretty close to dry. I call Tommy to his room, "Tommy, the ghost just got out. They're flying around New York." He runs in from my bedroom to watch his movie.
1:30 "Baby coming! Baby coming!" Every once in a while Tommy pretends to be scared of Danny and treats his giggling crawl up the hallway as some sort of slow-mo horror movie chase scene. "The baby's okay, honey. Time for bed." I carry him in to bed and put a clean Pull Up on him. "Night night Mommy. Sweet Dreams." At least he's good about going to bed. I grab the cat out of the crib on my way out of the room and notice that the baby, now at the bedroom door, no longer seems at all sleepy.
1:35 "Mommy! A towel, a towel!" Normally I don't go in when he yells, because if I did he'd yell the whole nap away, but today I'm afraid of leaky Pull Ups, so I do. "A towel, a towel. Baby chew blanky." Apparently the blanky wasn't as dry as I'd thought. I tell him it's wet from the wash, retuck him, and leave.
1:45 Danny is rubbing his eyes again so I hand him a toy and take him to bed. I come back out to the living room and decide to call Tom back.
1:55 Danny is crying in bed and Tom is telling me what a hard day he has had, sitting in a terminal waiting for the truck to get fixed. Three hours of doing nothing. I can only imagine the stress!
2:00 He tells me that upon frther consideration, he agrees with me and is reversing his point in an argument from last night. I roll my eyes. He does this all the time. I make my case and back up my opinion on something and he shoots it down and puts his foot down, then reverses his position a couple days later. It's as if the mere fact that my mouth is uttering the words makes me wrong until he decides to make him mouth utter the words instead. This is how we got married, too. He proposed to me 3 days after I proposed to him, almost word for word.
2:10 The shiny red Netflix envelope catches my eye. Dexter is dismembering someone in there and I can't see it. Rita was pregnant in the last envelope I returned. I wonder if they name the baby Lily Anne like they did in the book.
2:15 I get the mail. A letter from Ryan's clinic telling me they are terminating their relationship with her because of her unpaid bill. The letter is dated April 15. On April 18 they told me I was fine to make her an appointment. I taste panic because if I can't get her in to the doctor before her meds run out, she'll be thrown full-force into SSRI withdrawl and I can't let that happen. I get off the phone with Tom and call the collection agency mentioned in the letter. They have no record of Ryan at all. I call the outside billing company they were using and leave a message for them to call me back.
2:30 I call the clinic and explain myself and they say they've never heard of any legal filings and could I fax them a paper. They give me the fax number and I hang up. I wonder who will prescribe Zoloft to a 12 year old just on her mother's word.
2:40 I call my lawyer's office and ask them to please fax the paper to the clinic. They insist the clinic should already have it since the bill is on the filing, but I convince them to fax an extra one anyway.
2:45 The lawyer's office calls back. They had originally sent the letter to the outside billing company, not the clinic, but will fax it now.
2:50 My mother calls to talk about Ryan's birthday next month. Her groupon coupon is about to expire and we need to find something right now. I go to cafepress and try to guess what my own kid likes, because it changes week to week.
3:00 Danny wakes up. I toss the letter from the clinic on top of the Netflix envelope.
3:05 Nursing Danny. I call Tom back. His original plan to be home around 6:00 has been changed by traffic. It'll be closer to 8:00 now. My day just got 2 hours longer.
3:15 Danny fell back to sleep. I lay him back down, practically jump on the cat to catch him and get him out of the room, and then go back to the living room. Ryan will be home any minute and she'll want a snack. Should I make her a bagel?
3:20 Ryan is home. She wants Cheerios, so it's best that I didn't make her a bagel. Danny is screaming again.
3:30 check facebook and email. Ooh, Asian singles in my hometown want me. I live in freaking Mayberry. The only Asian single here is the old lady in the back of the Chinese Restaurant. I make a mental note to keep an eye on her, now that I know she wants me.
3:50 Read the news. The roommate videoing bully from Rutgers tried to hide evidence. Really? Did anyone expect integrity or a moral code there in the first place? I remember what it was like to be different and bullied, I feel sad for Tyler Clementi, and I remember to hate my high school guidance counselor a little if I find the time.
4:00 Walmart calls my phone. My prescription is ready to be picked up. I wish it were here in town so I could send Ryan on her bike but Tom filled it the first time so the refills are all at Walmart, 20 miles away. I should watch Dexter while I have the chance.
4:05 Crap! I left the lunch mess out. I clean up the kitchen and wash my oatmeal pot.
4:10 My friend calls. I am speaking to an adult. She has baby ducks in her chimney. I tell her I want one and she promises, through her laughter, to save the next one for me. Psssht. She'll probably get her chimney capped with no regard to my baby duck needs. I shouldn't kid about animals. I did that once with Tom and he kidnapped a baby turtle from its flock in the New Mexico desert. Spike is still in a Rubbermaid tote in my hallway, five years later.
4:30 I wander the kitchen, peering into cupboards, looking for something to make for dinner tonight. I decide on Rice a Roni and set 2 boxes by the stove. I put beer in the fridge just in case, because it's been that kind of day.
4:45 I get off the phone. Fuck it, I'm watching Dexter. I tear open the red envelope, put the disc in the machine, and realize I have no idea where the remote is. Gaaaah! I find it under a cushion, play the dvd, skip the yucky breakfast in the opening credits (they make ham look so visceral) and watch Dexter!
4:55 Danny wakes up. I pause the dvd and go to get him.
5:00 He nurses to sleep and I decide to watch Dexter anyway. Oh my god, they made the baby a boy and named him Harrison! wtf?
5:30 I should make supper soon. Ryan has her church group at 6:30 and supper can't be late today.
5:40 I call her as loudly as I can without waking Danny and ask her to sit with him so I can make supper.
5:45 The Rice a Roni is browning when I hear Tommy calling. I turn the heat down and run to get him up. His bed is soaked again. Damn Pull Ups! If we need any after this case is done we're going back to the Easy Ups we had before. I call my mother to ask if she can bring my detergent down and drive Ryan to church group. Ryan tells me church group is at 6:15 this week. I tell her no it isn't and my homicidal expression causes her to agree that no, it really isn't.
5:50 I add the water and powder to the skillet, put a lid on it, and come to the computer. How is it I don't even have time to narrate?
5:55 Ryan asks to play outside. Danny is awake and doesn't need to be held anymore so I say yes. What I really want to do is make her help me, but Tom and I don't like to use her as nanny so she's outside until supper.
6:00 I strip Tommy's bed and put the sheets in the washer to wait for the soap.
6:03 "Mommy! Potty!"
6:05 Tom on the phone. "You know, hon. I was a bit of a bed wetter when I was little. So it might not stop too soon."
6:06 I hang up on Tom.
6:15 Dinner is done so I yell out the door at Ryan and get the boys up to the table. Tommy scoops his own dinner, so I'll have some spillage to clean up later from that. Danny grabs the bowl I'm feeding him from and pulls it to him, reaching in with the other hand to crush a fistful of rice in his lap.
6:45 Dinner is over. My mother came and got Ryan at 6:30 and brought me my laundry soap, so now I can wash the sheets. Am I going to have to wash the sheets after every night and nap? I start the washer.
6:50 "Mommy! Potty!" pee, flush, wash, scream, drag. I catch a whiff on myself; I need a shower. I'll add it to my to-do list.
6:55 Danny ate well at supper and there's yogurt he can have for a snack later. I crack a beer. Tom says he'll be home arounf 8:00 so there should only be about an hour left until I can (hopefully) have a break.
7:00 I hear a splashing sound and come into the living room. Tommy is squatting over a couch pillow, peeing. I scream and burst into tears. "Why would you do that?" I ask, sobbing, over and over. "Mommy. What happened?"
7:10 I guzzle the rest of that beer and play Born This Way on the computer. Both boys dance and bounce and forget to be terrorists for a while.
7:15 the song is over. Now what?
7:20 the song is over again. I hope Tom is driving fast.
7:21 "Mommy! Potty!" Danny starts crying and I don't know why because they're both in the bedroom.
7:30 I play random disco songs at full volume. It seems to work.
7:40 "Mommy! My weiner!" What's wrong? "It broke!" "It didn't break; it's fine." "It's stuck!" "It's fine. You just have to pee." Seriously, though. How do you explain an erection to a 2 year old? And who wants to?
7:45 I swear to God, if Tom is late tonight I will punch him in the head.
7:50 Wow. The deafening music is working. They're relatively calm, dancing. This is good.
7:51 Gaaaah! Tommy's sheets! I run to load the dryer.
8:00 Danny is crying nonstop. I decide it's teething and dope him up with Tylenol. He's a junkie for his Nol.
8:10 Ever see a kid poop while running full speed? I have. He's off like a shot into the bathroom while I try to get to the rolling turds before Danny does.
8:20 Tom is home! Yayyyyyyy! He picked Ryan up from church group and also stopped at my mother's and got the hamper full of clothes.
8:35 Tom has fed the dog and is ready to make himself supper now.
8:40 "Daddy! Potty!" I smile. I make Tommy's bed for the second time today, but I put a doubled up quilt between the sheets, just in case.
9:00 "Daddy! Potty! Daddy,come on!"
9:05 "Daddy! Mommy! Potty!" Tom is watching people argue over abandoned L.A. storage lockers on TV. I wonder how that episode of Dexter ends. Tommy does nothing in the bathroom.
9:15 "Potty potty potty!"
9:17 Brandy bought a locker with hair in it but Dave thinks his is better, and Barry is hoping the car in his unit has an engine. Why does Tom watch this stuff when there is a homicidal forensics expert in the dvd player on pause?!
9:20 "Mommy Daddy Potty!" I tell him to just go and I'll meet him there. He yells for me a couple seconds later and I go in and he has pooped in the potty! Awesome! I high five him and let him dump it and flush it and he doesn't even cry after washing his hands.
9:25 "Potty!" Okay now when will this end? He pees.
9:30 Bedtime! Which Pull Up does he want, Rocketship or Car? Rocketship. I put it on him, and then jammy pants to hold the thing against him and hopefully stop leaks. He throws a fit because he can't see the rocketship and wants another pair on over his pants. Fine. Whatever. But then he wants them under his pants and I leave it to Tom to deal with. Finally we get him to go to bed. "Night night! Sweet dreams! Bye!"
9:40 Danny is fussy and rubbing his eyes. I nurse him to sleep, and then take him to bed. Finally. Peace. Except for the Storage Wars on the TV.
9:50 I put water on to boil for tomorrow's oatmeal and carry the bowl for the ice cream maker down to the basement freezer. I plan to make ice cream on Saturday and say a silent plea that no one else decides to make ice cream before then.
10:00 OMG there's a show on about old people arguing with traffic cops. I married a yokel in a trailer, didn't I?
10:10 "The kids are in bed. What are you writing about now?" "You." "What?! I need to read this!" So I post the blog, he looks it up. "Oh My God it's three pages long!" tee hee hee He reads it.
10:15 People are getting up in the meter maids' faces. You parked in front of a hydrant, you played the game, they ticketed you, you lost the game. That's a fair assessment of it, so why are you screaming at them? Oh frak, he's got me watching the stupid show! I stand up and change the station on him.
10:20 I read the news headlines. A war reporter was killed yesterday. I feel bad for his family, but this couldn't have been a huge surprise to them. I mean, he went into wars he didn't need to be in, and took pictures of violence. I would imagine this would fall under then "Well he died doing what he loved" category and not the "It came from out of nowhere" category. Dead lion, live sheep, that kind of thing. And Weird Al remade a Lady Gaga song. I listen to it; it's pretty good.
10:30 I post my final version of this blog, put the address up on a message board I'm on, and log off the computer for the day. I know some people will think I posted too many minor details, but I did leave things out. I mean, I did use the bathroom myself today, and I changed Danny's diaper a few times too. And while he nursed, I gazed down at Danny and hoped he'd always look at me so trustingly, and wondered what he'll be like as an adult. And Tommy drew me a picture of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man after supper and he put the fire from the proton packs on it too, and even though it looks like squiggles to everyone else I will still have that piece of construction paper when he turns 50. And I swelled with pride every time he used the potty, as though my son were the first human ever to control his own bowels. But the blog was about frustrations today, so I left out the mushy stuff. It's there, it just isn't written out today.
But for the most part, this is an average day for me, for just about any stay at home mom. And this is why we alternately laugh and cry when we hear the term "Working mother" and know that it doesn't apply to us. Not because working mothers do less necessarily, but because they get coffee breaks and adult conversation throughout the day. So I put this out as an open call to every mom who reads this (all 3 of you) to post in the comments section. And I hope that maybe someone will read it and realize that she isn't the only mom who goes crazy, or bursts into tears, or hopes that the next ear infection comes with a prescription listing drowsiness as a side effect. (Hey, I'd never drug my kids to make them sleep. But I would certainly defer to the wisdom of any doctor willing to.) It's not only the moms on the news who reach the end of their ropes. Good moms get fed up too.
7:05 the alarm goes off again. Danny stirs and latches on. If I don't want him to wake up yet, if I want a moment's peace this morning, I have to stay until he's done. I hit snooze again.
7:10 the alarm goes off. I turn it off and sneak out of bed, propping pillows around him as I go so he doesn't roll or crawl over the side, and get dressed. I take out my earplugs (Tom snores like a Jake Brake) and drop them in the nightstand drawer, making sure to close it because if I don't the cat will get in there and cleaning up cat puke and earplugs is so gross.
7:12 I pee, texting Ryan from the toilet to get up and brush her teeth, and brush my own teeth, listening for Danny the whole time. She texts me back, "Okay."
7:15 I let myself out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Ryan is coming out of her bedroom too and I whisper to her to hurry up. I shuffle into the kitchen to start my breakfast. I need coffee.
7:20 I plug in the coffee grinder and hope it doesn't wake up Tommy. I should have ground the coffee yesterday but I never think about it until the morning. I open the coffee can and see that I'm almost out. I hope I can make it a week and a half until our next shopping trip. I grind the coffee and load the machine.
7:25 Coffee maker is started, oatmeal on the stove is cooking, and I hear Tommy yelling for me. "Mommy!" Maybe he'll go back to sleep. Maybe this will be one of those mornings where both boys sleep until 8:30. "Mommy!" Maybe not. I turn off the stove and coffee pot and go to get Tommy out of bed.
7:30 "My potty." "You want to go potty? Okay, let's go." "My pants. My shirt." The Pull-Up leaked. He and the bed are soaked in cold, fragrant, urine. I strip him down and take him to the bathroom. Ryan is still in it, about to start brushing her teeth.
7:45 We all emerge from the bathroom, teeth brushed, and go to the kitchen. I turn the stove and coffee maker back on and mix Tommy's breakfast drink, the only nutrition he gets these days since he refuses to eat actual food. Ryan takes her morning pill, swipes one of my caramel calcium supplements, and lounges against the counter to leisurely drink her juice.
7:52 "Ryan, go to school. No, you cannot brush your hair. You have had over 45 minutes to throw on an outfit, brush your teeth, pee, take a pill, and brush your hair. You are now out of time. Go to school." "But Mom, I'll hurry! I promise!" "No. Today you look like a hobo at school. That's the natural consequence of running out of time and hopefully it's the lesson that will teach you to hustle a little more in the mornings."
7:55 Ryan leaves for school, hobo hair and all. But she has a brush in her purse and I can only hope she doesn't slow-walk to school to get her hair brushed.
8:00 I sip my cold coffee and use it to wash down 800 mg of Motrin. I can feel a headache coming on. I sit at my desk and open up blogger. This is a live-blog kinda day.
8:15 My coffee is gone but hasn't kicked in yet, my oatmeal is lukewarm but edible, and Tommy is sitting on the couch in a clean Pull-Up, drinking his milk. Oh crap, I forgot to strip his bed!
8:20 The bed is stripped, Tommy is jumping on it because for some reason one can not jump on a bed with sheets but one must always jump on a bed without sheets. I have to get these through the wash before nap time because while I do have more sheets, I don't have another waterproof pad to go under them.
8:30 Danny wakes up. And if he were going to fall back to sleep that dream has been ruined by the screams of "Baby crying! Mommy! Baby crying get up!" that the first fussing sounds bring. Tommy and I go to get Danny, who has wiggled out of the pillow-walls but not yet made it anywhere near the edges of the bed. I change his diaper and set him on the floor to play with his brother.
8:40 "Mommy! Potty!" We go to the potty and he pees a little. I empty the potty, let him flush the pee down the toilet and wash his hands, then drag him crying away from the sink.
8:50 I load the washer with sheets, turn it on hot (the cold water hasn't worked for a week and a half and the repair man told me yesterday that he won't fix it and thinks I should call a plumber), and then realize that my detergent is at my mother's house from when I did laundry there last weekend. Also there, a hamper, 2 loads of laundry, and a basket. I dig around and find 2 cement-like Tide Tablets I got in the mail a decade ago and hope for the best.
9:00 My oatmeal is cold and solidified. I scrape it into the garbage disposal.
9:02 "Mommy! Potty!
9:15, the washer is stuck on the rinse cycle because there's no cold water. I turn it back to 'wash' and run it without soap.
9:16 I ignore the world and check my email (I can enlarge my penis, and David Plouffe needs my help.) and the news. A hooker in Seattle was tortured in a dungeon for hours, Charlie Sheen wants to run for President, something happened to the First Lady's plane and she had to circle before landing (this is a top story on every news feed I get) and the highway in town will be one lane for the next 6 months because they need to pave over the bumps to get on and off the 30 foot bridge they built for 9 months last year.
9:20 "Mommy! Potty!" We go to the potty and he farts twice before announcing that he's done. I drag him crying away from the sink.
9:30 Tommy tells me a story about the Staypuft Marshmallow Man fighting a robot and a superhero. The Marshmallow Man was on fire but he still broke the robot with his hand and then a superhero came in and hit him with more fire and the robot got back up and quite honestly, I don't know who won.
9:45 Tommy brings me a clean Pull-Up. I tell him he already has one and put this one on my desk.
9:47 Tommy brings me a clean Pull-Up and whispers "Mommy! Potty!" I take him to the potty and pull down his pants for him and find a 4 inch turd. I clean him up, he poops a little more, we flush it, wash his hands, leave crying. You know the drill.
9:55 Neither my coffee nor my Motrin has kicked in yet. I know that if I drink more coffee I'll only feel it in my stomach. Tommy comes out of his room yelling that Danny is chewing on a block. I tell him that's okay, that they're chewy blocks, and to let the baby have one. I receive a skeptical look in reply.
10:00 Tommy gives up on blocks and comes to climb on me. After poking me repeatedly in the kidneys with his bony knees, all while shouting "Mommy! Looka me!" in my ears, he runs off crying when I tell him that mommies aren't for climbing. As he runs away he yells "I naughty" and hits himself in the head. I shake my head and wonder how to fix that, and how much of his future sexuality will involve paying women in leather to slap him if we don't fix it. I pick up Danny and silently promise never to spank him.
10:10 "Mommy! Potty!" I tell him to go potty (I just left the door open and blocked the door with a roll of carpet to keep the baby out) and plan to meet him there. I put the baby down and get up to go help Tommy and see him waving the potty bowl in the air. I choke on a lump of panic and hurry to see the mess. The toilet is running and he tells me he flushed it, so I thank him for his help and rinse the bowl out. He washes his hands while I reassemble the potty and then I drag him crying from the sink.
10:15 I gaze longingly at Disc 1 of Dexter Season 4, which has been sitting on my desk since Monday, unopened in its Netflix envelope. I throw the sheets in the dryer.
10:20 I start to think about lunch. Tommy isn't currently eating food so part of me sees no reason to make anything, but offering him food to turn his nose up at and maybe throw on the floor is a vital part of my job description so I decide to cook something. But what?
10:25 I hear the baby crying. He's outside the bathroom and Tommy is inside keeping him out by pushing the carpet roll at him. It has rolled onto the baby's legs. I rescue the (fortunately unharmed) baby, tell Tommy in my best stern voice "We do not crush people under home decorating supplies!" and (say it with me) drag him crying from the bathroom.
10:30 I get an email from my mother asking why she got an email from cafepress telling her the shirt she designed in ready for her to order. I go to her account and see that Ryan designed a shirt. I reply to Mom's email and ask if she's called the plumber yet. I hate calling the plumber and since she's the landlord, I make her do it. I can't understand the guy because his Puerto Rican accent is thick and I always feel vaguely racist when I try, and my mother is of the generation that refuses to acknowledge race or color at all and therefor never feels racist ("It's no different than being unable to understand a thick southern accent."), so she can call him.
10:45 I take the sheets out of the dryer and make the bed. As I leave the bedroom I see Tommy's blanket on the floor. The baby blanket I crocheted for him before he was even born, that he loves and carries with him, that he sleeps with, that I didn't wash. And I'm fresh out of ten year old detergent samples. I throw it in the washer with a scoop of OxyClean and hope that'll get it clean enough to last until I can get my soap and laundry from my mother's.
11:00 Tommy asks me for crackers. I decide to be a negligent mom for one day and let him eat crackers and fruit snacks for lunch. While I'm getting the crackers out of the cupboard he sees my Calcium chews and wants them. I tell him they're medicine, not candy, and he starts crying and chanting "medicine medicine" at me. I take him by the hand and tell him "No!" firmly. He looks me in the eye without blinking for a very long time. After about 60 seconds of this I realize he's peeing his pants at me in defiance. I take him out of the kitchen, hand him his crackers and milk, and silently beg him not to dump the milk.
11:10 "Blue straw! Mommy, bluuuuuuuue straaaaaaaw!" I take him to the drawer to pick a new straw (is straw color really the battle I want to pick here?) where he reaches immediately for an orange straw, declaring it to be blue (we need to work on colors more, kid.). He pulls the old straw out of the cup, plunges the new one in, and happily goes to watch Dora and eat crackers. I look down at the old straw in my hand and shake my head. It is orange.
11:15 "Mommy! My milk!" The baby has the milk cup and is chewing on the bottom of it, while the orange and upside down straw drips milk all over. I take the cup, clean up the milk, and realize that I'm starting to feel shaky from having eaten nothing since the half bowl of oatmeal this morning.
11:20 Danny is fussing and crawling toward me. My meal will have to wait for his. I nurse him. "Mommy! Potty!" I briefly wonder if the ad guy who coined the phrase, "Calgon, take me away!" 30 years ago was adequately compensated.
11:40 I sneak into the kitchen to toast myself a bagel for lunch. Tommy hears the toaster and yells, "My eat!" I let him in and he grabs more crackers and then jabs his finger into the cream cheese on my bagel. He looks at his finger, calls it yucky, and wipes it across his shirt, as I'm reaching for him with a towel. Danny is at the gate so I bring him in too. I strap him in the high chair and open a fruit cup for him. I give Tommy one too, to keep him quiet.
11:50 Tommy has eaten all the cherries from his fruit cup and is now trying to get more out of the cupboard. "No!"
12:00 "Mommy, can I climb? Mommy let me up please." He is trying to climb onto me to get Danny's cherries. "No, Tommy. No! Mommies aren't for climbing. Get off!" He climbs up anyway, saying "Thank you, Mommy!" the whole time.
12:25 Lunch is over and we are back in the living room. I am still tired but know that more than one cup of coffee a day won't do anything but hurt my stomach. Tom calls and asks how my day is. I growl into the phone. He laughs. Tommy and Danny scream in the background and he laughs harder. I hang up on him. He's so used to it that he won't be mad.
12:30 "Mommy potty!" He pees, flushes, washes, I drag him screaming. All in all a good trip.
12:45 My neighbor calls. The dog is running loose in the back yard. I call her into the kitchen (She smells like dog poo! She smells like dog poo in my kitchen!) I hook her to a leash, throw on a coat, and walk through the muddy yard to find her chain unharmed. Now how the hell did she get out and how the hell do I keep her from doing it again? I come inside and get yelled at by Tommy for taking the doggie away.
12:55 Danny crawls up to me and bites my ankle. When I yell "Ow!" and look down, he smiles and crawls away.
1:00 Nap time! Yay yay happy dance. But wait. I never threw the blanky in the dryer, did I? Don't swear in front of the kids, Charlie. Nap time shall be after Spongebob today.
1:05 I come out of the bedroom after turning on the dryer and watch the baby spit out a glob of Play-Doh. I wonder how strict the laws are in china about tossing the term "Non-Toxic" around. I decide that Play Doh feels pretty light and probably isn't made with lead.
1:10 The baby is rubbing his eyes. He's ready for a nap but I can't put him down until the blanket is dry. I nurse him instead, and hi kicks me for it. "Mommy! Potty!" Ugh.
1:15 check email and news again for a minute. Texas is on fire. I remember all the fundies ranting that Katrina was because God hates Mardi Gras. I wonder why He set Texas aflame, then. Suddenly I hear Tommy ask, "Hey! Where Ryan go?" Really, kid? She's been gone for five and a half hours! "She's at school, honey." I glance longingly at the coffee cup still sitting on the desk. I notice it is full. No wonder I'm so tired today. It's too late for coffee now, though.
1:20 I check Tommy's Pull-Up to see if he actually peed at me before, and it's soaked. I sternly tell him that he is supposed to pee in the potty and NOT in his big boy pants. "Potty!" And we're off to the bathroom, where he pees approximately 3 drops, flushes the toilet, washes his hands, and screams as we leave.
1:25 I take the blanky out of the dryer and shake it to try and air dry the damp out of it. Thank God acrylic yarn doesn't actually absorb any water because the thing is pretty close to dry. I call Tommy to his room, "Tommy, the ghost just got out. They're flying around New York." He runs in from my bedroom to watch his movie.
1:30 "Baby coming! Baby coming!" Every once in a while Tommy pretends to be scared of Danny and treats his giggling crawl up the hallway as some sort of slow-mo horror movie chase scene. "The baby's okay, honey. Time for bed." I carry him in to bed and put a clean Pull Up on him. "Night night Mommy. Sweet Dreams." At least he's good about going to bed. I grab the cat out of the crib on my way out of the room and notice that the baby, now at the bedroom door, no longer seems at all sleepy.
1:35 "Mommy! A towel, a towel!" Normally I don't go in when he yells, because if I did he'd yell the whole nap away, but today I'm afraid of leaky Pull Ups, so I do. "A towel, a towel. Baby chew blanky." Apparently the blanky wasn't as dry as I'd thought. I tell him it's wet from the wash, retuck him, and leave.
1:45 Danny is rubbing his eyes again so I hand him a toy and take him to bed. I come back out to the living room and decide to call Tom back.
1:55 Danny is crying in bed and Tom is telling me what a hard day he has had, sitting in a terminal waiting for the truck to get fixed. Three hours of doing nothing. I can only imagine the stress!
2:00 He tells me that upon frther consideration, he agrees with me and is reversing his point in an argument from last night. I roll my eyes. He does this all the time. I make my case and back up my opinion on something and he shoots it down and puts his foot down, then reverses his position a couple days later. It's as if the mere fact that my mouth is uttering the words makes me wrong until he decides to make him mouth utter the words instead. This is how we got married, too. He proposed to me 3 days after I proposed to him, almost word for word.
2:10 The shiny red Netflix envelope catches my eye. Dexter is dismembering someone in there and I can't see it. Rita was pregnant in the last envelope I returned. I wonder if they name the baby Lily Anne like they did in the book.
2:15 I get the mail. A letter from Ryan's clinic telling me they are terminating their relationship with her because of her unpaid bill. The letter is dated April 15. On April 18 they told me I was fine to make her an appointment. I taste panic because if I can't get her in to the doctor before her meds run out, she'll be thrown full-force into SSRI withdrawl and I can't let that happen. I get off the phone with Tom and call the collection agency mentioned in the letter. They have no record of Ryan at all. I call the outside billing company they were using and leave a message for them to call me back.
2:30 I call the clinic and explain myself and they say they've never heard of any legal filings and could I fax them a paper. They give me the fax number and I hang up. I wonder who will prescribe Zoloft to a 12 year old just on her mother's word.
2:40 I call my lawyer's office and ask them to please fax the paper to the clinic. They insist the clinic should already have it since the bill is on the filing, but I convince them to fax an extra one anyway.
2:45 The lawyer's office calls back. They had originally sent the letter to the outside billing company, not the clinic, but will fax it now.
2:50 My mother calls to talk about Ryan's birthday next month. Her groupon coupon is about to expire and we need to find something right now. I go to cafepress and try to guess what my own kid likes, because it changes week to week.
3:00 Danny wakes up. I toss the letter from the clinic on top of the Netflix envelope.
3:05 Nursing Danny. I call Tom back. His original plan to be home around 6:00 has been changed by traffic. It'll be closer to 8:00 now. My day just got 2 hours longer.
3:15 Danny fell back to sleep. I lay him back down, practically jump on the cat to catch him and get him out of the room, and then go back to the living room. Ryan will be home any minute and she'll want a snack. Should I make her a bagel?
3:20 Ryan is home. She wants Cheerios, so it's best that I didn't make her a bagel. Danny is screaming again.
3:30 check facebook and email. Ooh, Asian singles in my hometown want me. I live in freaking Mayberry. The only Asian single here is the old lady in the back of the Chinese Restaurant. I make a mental note to keep an eye on her, now that I know she wants me.
3:50 Read the news. The roommate videoing bully from Rutgers tried to hide evidence. Really? Did anyone expect integrity or a moral code there in the first place? I remember what it was like to be different and bullied, I feel sad for Tyler Clementi, and I remember to hate my high school guidance counselor a little if I find the time.
4:00 Walmart calls my phone. My prescription is ready to be picked up. I wish it were here in town so I could send Ryan on her bike but Tom filled it the first time so the refills are all at Walmart, 20 miles away. I should watch Dexter while I have the chance.
4:05 Crap! I left the lunch mess out. I clean up the kitchen and wash my oatmeal pot.
4:10 My friend calls. I am speaking to an adult. She has baby ducks in her chimney. I tell her I want one and she promises, through her laughter, to save the next one for me. Psssht. She'll probably get her chimney capped with no regard to my baby duck needs. I shouldn't kid about animals. I did that once with Tom and he kidnapped a baby turtle from its flock in the New Mexico desert. Spike is still in a Rubbermaid tote in my hallway, five years later.
4:30 I wander the kitchen, peering into cupboards, looking for something to make for dinner tonight. I decide on Rice a Roni and set 2 boxes by the stove. I put beer in the fridge just in case, because it's been that kind of day.
4:45 I get off the phone. Fuck it, I'm watching Dexter. I tear open the red envelope, put the disc in the machine, and realize I have no idea where the remote is. Gaaaah! I find it under a cushion, play the dvd, skip the yucky breakfast in the opening credits (they make ham look so visceral) and watch Dexter!
4:55 Danny wakes up. I pause the dvd and go to get him.
5:00 He nurses to sleep and I decide to watch Dexter anyway. Oh my god, they made the baby a boy and named him Harrison! wtf?
5:30 I should make supper soon. Ryan has her church group at 6:30 and supper can't be late today.
5:40 I call her as loudly as I can without waking Danny and ask her to sit with him so I can make supper.
5:45 The Rice a Roni is browning when I hear Tommy calling. I turn the heat down and run to get him up. His bed is soaked again. Damn Pull Ups! If we need any after this case is done we're going back to the Easy Ups we had before. I call my mother to ask if she can bring my detergent down and drive Ryan to church group. Ryan tells me church group is at 6:15 this week. I tell her no it isn't and my homicidal expression causes her to agree that no, it really isn't.
5:50 I add the water and powder to the skillet, put a lid on it, and come to the computer. How is it I don't even have time to narrate?
5:55 Ryan asks to play outside. Danny is awake and doesn't need to be held anymore so I say yes. What I really want to do is make her help me, but Tom and I don't like to use her as nanny so she's outside until supper.
6:00 I strip Tommy's bed and put the sheets in the washer to wait for the soap.
6:03 "Mommy! Potty!"
6:05 Tom on the phone. "You know, hon. I was a bit of a bed wetter when I was little. So it might not stop too soon."
6:06 I hang up on Tom.
6:15 Dinner is done so I yell out the door at Ryan and get the boys up to the table. Tommy scoops his own dinner, so I'll have some spillage to clean up later from that. Danny grabs the bowl I'm feeding him from and pulls it to him, reaching in with the other hand to crush a fistful of rice in his lap.
6:45 Dinner is over. My mother came and got Ryan at 6:30 and brought me my laundry soap, so now I can wash the sheets. Am I going to have to wash the sheets after every night and nap? I start the washer.
6:50 "Mommy! Potty!" pee, flush, wash, scream, drag. I catch a whiff on myself; I need a shower. I'll add it to my to-do list.
6:55 Danny ate well at supper and there's yogurt he can have for a snack later. I crack a beer. Tom says he'll be home arounf 8:00 so there should only be about an hour left until I can (hopefully) have a break.
7:00 I hear a splashing sound and come into the living room. Tommy is squatting over a couch pillow, peeing. I scream and burst into tears. "Why would you do that?" I ask, sobbing, over and over. "Mommy. What happened?"
7:10 I guzzle the rest of that beer and play Born This Way on the computer. Both boys dance and bounce and forget to be terrorists for a while.
7:15 the song is over. Now what?
7:20 the song is over again. I hope Tom is driving fast.
7:21 "Mommy! Potty!" Danny starts crying and I don't know why because they're both in the bedroom.
7:30 I play random disco songs at full volume. It seems to work.
7:40 "Mommy! My weiner!" What's wrong? "It broke!" "It didn't break; it's fine." "It's stuck!" "It's fine. You just have to pee." Seriously, though. How do you explain an erection to a 2 year old? And who wants to?
7:45 I swear to God, if Tom is late tonight I will punch him in the head.
7:50 Wow. The deafening music is working. They're relatively calm, dancing. This is good.
7:51 Gaaaah! Tommy's sheets! I run to load the dryer.
8:00 Danny is crying nonstop. I decide it's teething and dope him up with Tylenol. He's a junkie for his Nol.
8:10 Ever see a kid poop while running full speed? I have. He's off like a shot into the bathroom while I try to get to the rolling turds before Danny does.
8:20 Tom is home! Yayyyyyyy! He picked Ryan up from church group and also stopped at my mother's and got the hamper full of clothes.
8:35 Tom has fed the dog and is ready to make himself supper now.
8:40 "Daddy! Potty!" I smile. I make Tommy's bed for the second time today, but I put a doubled up quilt between the sheets, just in case.
9:00 "Daddy! Potty! Daddy,come on!"
9:05 "Daddy! Mommy! Potty!" Tom is watching people argue over abandoned L.A. storage lockers on TV. I wonder how that episode of Dexter ends. Tommy does nothing in the bathroom.
9:15 "Potty potty potty!"
9:17 Brandy bought a locker with hair in it but Dave thinks his is better, and Barry is hoping the car in his unit has an engine. Why does Tom watch this stuff when there is a homicidal forensics expert in the dvd player on pause?!
9:20 "Mommy Daddy Potty!" I tell him to just go and I'll meet him there. He yells for me a couple seconds later and I go in and he has pooped in the potty! Awesome! I high five him and let him dump it and flush it and he doesn't even cry after washing his hands.
9:25 "Potty!" Okay now when will this end? He pees.
9:30 Bedtime! Which Pull Up does he want, Rocketship or Car? Rocketship. I put it on him, and then jammy pants to hold the thing against him and hopefully stop leaks. He throws a fit because he can't see the rocketship and wants another pair on over his pants. Fine. Whatever. But then he wants them under his pants and I leave it to Tom to deal with. Finally we get him to go to bed. "Night night! Sweet dreams! Bye!"
9:40 Danny is fussy and rubbing his eyes. I nurse him to sleep, and then take him to bed. Finally. Peace. Except for the Storage Wars on the TV.
9:50 I put water on to boil for tomorrow's oatmeal and carry the bowl for the ice cream maker down to the basement freezer. I plan to make ice cream on Saturday and say a silent plea that no one else decides to make ice cream before then.
10:00 OMG there's a show on about old people arguing with traffic cops. I married a yokel in a trailer, didn't I?
10:10 "The kids are in bed. What are you writing about now?" "You." "What?! I need to read this!" So I post the blog, he looks it up. "Oh My God it's three pages long!" tee hee hee He reads it.
10:15 People are getting up in the meter maids' faces. You parked in front of a hydrant, you played the game, they ticketed you, you lost the game. That's a fair assessment of it, so why are you screaming at them? Oh frak, he's got me watching the stupid show! I stand up and change the station on him.
10:20 I read the news headlines. A war reporter was killed yesterday. I feel bad for his family, but this couldn't have been a huge surprise to them. I mean, he went into wars he didn't need to be in, and took pictures of violence. I would imagine this would fall under then "Well he died doing what he loved" category and not the "It came from out of nowhere" category. Dead lion, live sheep, that kind of thing. And Weird Al remade a Lady Gaga song. I listen to it; it's pretty good.
10:30 I post my final version of this blog, put the address up on a message board I'm on, and log off the computer for the day. I know some people will think I posted too many minor details, but I did leave things out. I mean, I did use the bathroom myself today, and I changed Danny's diaper a few times too. And while he nursed, I gazed down at Danny and hoped he'd always look at me so trustingly, and wondered what he'll be like as an adult. And Tommy drew me a picture of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man after supper and he put the fire from the proton packs on it too, and even though it looks like squiggles to everyone else I will still have that piece of construction paper when he turns 50. And I swelled with pride every time he used the potty, as though my son were the first human ever to control his own bowels. But the blog was about frustrations today, so I left out the mushy stuff. It's there, it just isn't written out today.
But for the most part, this is an average day for me, for just about any stay at home mom. And this is why we alternately laugh and cry when we hear the term "Working mother" and know that it doesn't apply to us. Not because working mothers do less necessarily, but because they get coffee breaks and adult conversation throughout the day. So I put this out as an open call to every mom who reads this (all 3 of you) to post in the comments section. And I hope that maybe someone will read it and realize that she isn't the only mom who goes crazy, or bursts into tears, or hopes that the next ear infection comes with a prescription listing drowsiness as a side effect. (Hey, I'd never drug my kids to make them sleep. But I would certainly defer to the wisdom of any doctor willing to.) It's not only the moms on the news who reach the end of their ropes. Good moms get fed up too.
Friday, April 08, 2011
My secret
I have a secret, one I rarely tell people and avoid talking about. I am anti-abortion. People just tend to assume that if you're a liberal woman, you aren't, so I nod and let them assume that, but I secretly don't approve of abortion.
Politically, as a matter of what legislation I favor, I'm pro-choice. But when people say things like "My body, my choice", I shake my head. And when when they say it's not a person yet, it's a woman's right to decide when to have a baby, women denied abortions are forced to become incubators, I hum to drown them out. Because I really am anti-abortion.
I believe that the reproductive systems of two homo sapiens are incapable of producing anything but another homo sapien, and that therefore any embryo or fetus is a person. I believe sperm and eggs are potential people, but the creatures they combine to produce are people.
I believe that a fetus is not a body part. A parasite, perhaps, but not a tumor or organ, or other body part of the mother. For that reason, I do not believe it's merely a matter of allowing women to do what they want to their own bodies. But even if it were, a transgendered person has to jump through a thousand loopholes just to remove an unwanted penis, which is inarguably one person doing what they want, surgically, to their own body. So it's easier when there's an argument to be made that it could end another life than when there isn't?
I believe that it is very simplistic and short-sided to make it a woman's right when it involves another person. If a pair of conjoined twins exists where one depends on the other for some vital function, does the one capable of living independently have the right to kill the other? No, being physically dependent does not equal being un-alive.
I believe that a woman has a right to choose when to become an incubator, and that choice (like the choice to become a father or not) happens pre-implantation. Birth control, condoms, (or better yet, both), and even the morning after pill, all exist to make it possible to avoid both pregnancy and abortion.
But I believe that I could, under extreme circumstances, seek an abortion. If I were raped, or if I had a reasonable fear that there would be something terribly wrong with the baby, or if some other horrible, drastic, tragic thing happened, I might want to go terminate a pregnancy. It would be ending a life. It would be killing a person (remember, I think fetuses are people, and they don't survive abortions). It would be doing what was best for me, not for anyone else. In fact, it would very much be doing something very bad for someone else (the fetus). It would be selfish. But I believe that I could make that selfish choice, if I felt I had no other option. And as long as I could see myself doing it then I don't believe it's right to declare that no one else should be able to. But I thin they should be honest enough to say that it is a killing (not murder, perhaps, but somewhere up the ladder from killing a bug, which people freely admit is killing), that it is selfish, and that it is drastic. I don't believe it is a right, but I believe I should be allowed to do it if I so choose. There are lots of things I want to be allowed to do that I never plan to do and do not consider a right. Learning to fly, taxidermy, clown college. Not necessarily human rights, but things I don't want to be banned from doing. This is just a little more serious than those.
Politically, as a matter of what legislation I favor, I'm pro-choice. But when people say things like "My body, my choice", I shake my head. And when when they say it's not a person yet, it's a woman's right to decide when to have a baby, women denied abortions are forced to become incubators, I hum to drown them out. Because I really am anti-abortion.
I believe that the reproductive systems of two homo sapiens are incapable of producing anything but another homo sapien, and that therefore any embryo or fetus is a person. I believe sperm and eggs are potential people, but the creatures they combine to produce are people.
I believe that a fetus is not a body part. A parasite, perhaps, but not a tumor or organ, or other body part of the mother. For that reason, I do not believe it's merely a matter of allowing women to do what they want to their own bodies. But even if it were, a transgendered person has to jump through a thousand loopholes just to remove an unwanted penis, which is inarguably one person doing what they want, surgically, to their own body. So it's easier when there's an argument to be made that it could end another life than when there isn't?
I believe that it is very simplistic and short-sided to make it a woman's right when it involves another person. If a pair of conjoined twins exists where one depends on the other for some vital function, does the one capable of living independently have the right to kill the other? No, being physically dependent does not equal being un-alive.
I believe that a woman has a right to choose when to become an incubator, and that choice (like the choice to become a father or not) happens pre-implantation. Birth control, condoms, (or better yet, both), and even the morning after pill, all exist to make it possible to avoid both pregnancy and abortion.
But I believe that I could, under extreme circumstances, seek an abortion. If I were raped, or if I had a reasonable fear that there would be something terribly wrong with the baby, or if some other horrible, drastic, tragic thing happened, I might want to go terminate a pregnancy. It would be ending a life. It would be killing a person (remember, I think fetuses are people, and they don't survive abortions). It would be doing what was best for me, not for anyone else. In fact, it would very much be doing something very bad for someone else (the fetus). It would be selfish. But I believe that I could make that selfish choice, if I felt I had no other option. And as long as I could see myself doing it then I don't believe it's right to declare that no one else should be able to. But I thin they should be honest enough to say that it is a killing (not murder, perhaps, but somewhere up the ladder from killing a bug, which people freely admit is killing), that it is selfish, and that it is drastic. I don't believe it is a right, but I believe I should be allowed to do it if I so choose. There are lots of things I want to be allowed to do that I never plan to do and do not consider a right. Learning to fly, taxidermy, clown college. Not necessarily human rights, but things I don't want to be banned from doing. This is just a little more serious than those.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Small comforts
I want to surround myself with things I love, one tiny item at a time. I have a purse that I love, and now I can stop searching for a purse, for a while. I have a coffee mug that I use every day. And a pot in which to cook my oatmeal every morning. And a tote bag to bring with me on days out. And an old lady cardigan sweater I wear when I get chilled. I like these little familiar comforts. I plan to eventually have everything around me just so and perfect. And when that happens, I can die.
If my kids bury me in a new outfit, an outfit that is not just so and perfect, I will haunt them.
If my kids bury me in a new outfit, an outfit that is not just so and perfect, I will haunt them.
first complex sentence
Danny! Dis nake, it issid your nake!
(Danny! This snake, it isn't your snake.)
(Danny! This snake, it isn't your snake.)
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Potty Training
I have dreaded it for over a year now, and put it off because of it. But finally, we decided to just do it, because it has to be done. And after washing urine out of 20 pairs of tiny jockey shorts emblazoned with cartoon characters in 2 days, he got it. I finally stopped putting the underwear on him at all, but he got it. He crapped his shorts, I dumped it in the potty chair, made him look at it, and the next time he pooped he sat on the potty to do it. He stretched his first morning's pee into 4 sessions, collected 4 candies for it, but ever since all of his pee has been in the potty, without prompting. For 2 days now I have occasionally heard, "Mommy! Chocket!" and been shown a potty in need of cleaning, and handed over the chocolate accordingly. Another few days of this and I might let the kid wear clothes. A week after that, maybe he can leave the house. And after a couple weeks of waking up dry (he is not doing that now), he can sleep in underwear. And then, God-willing, he will be potty trained. I am so very proud of him. He is so good with human waste.
I pee pure vitamin D now
So, my old lady calcium supplements (I went with vaguely caramel flavored chews rather than suppository sized pills) have 50% of my daily value of calcium, and 125% of my daily value of vitamin D, and instructions to take twice a day. So my question is, why do I need 250% of my daily value of vitamin D, or is it really impossible to make vaguely caramel flavored chews with any less vitamin D than these? I could be a photophobic albino and these pills would keep me swimming in vitamin D.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
aging
I bought a pair of reading glasses yesterday, to help me with small print. I'm old. I also bought calcium supplements, to try and stop my shoulders from sloping any further.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Shame
I once read that shame serves no useful purpose. That guilt can keep a person from repeating a mistake, but shame does nothing but make you miserable. But, since I've been married, I've learned that that's not true. Shame, self-hatred, they are the get out of jail free cards of marriage.
I am fat. Not obese, but bigger than I really need to be. And, to tell the truth, I'm okay with that. I'd like to tighten my abs a little so I don't look pregnant, but I could be a size 14 forever and have no problem with that. But I have to hate it. I have to be ashamed of it and make myself miserable trying to change it. Because then, I at least know there's a problem. If I hate myself for my size and shape, it can be said "Well, she got up around 140, but at least she knew there was a problem. At least she knew it was bad." Because, somehow, to accept and like myself at this size would be to let myself go. And there's nothing worse than having let yourself go. Women get divorced for having let themselves go. Men leave over that shit. So, you see, self-hatred serves a purpose. Shame has a reason for being. It shows that we still want to impress. Being willing to spend the rest of one's life in a futile struggle against inevitability shows that we care. It shows that at least we haven't let ourselves go.
I am fat. Not obese, but bigger than I really need to be. And, to tell the truth, I'm okay with that. I'd like to tighten my abs a little so I don't look pregnant, but I could be a size 14 forever and have no problem with that. But I have to hate it. I have to be ashamed of it and make myself miserable trying to change it. Because then, I at least know there's a problem. If I hate myself for my size and shape, it can be said "Well, she got up around 140, but at least she knew there was a problem. At least she knew it was bad." Because, somehow, to accept and like myself at this size would be to let myself go. And there's nothing worse than having let yourself go. Women get divorced for having let themselves go. Men leave over that shit. So, you see, self-hatred serves a purpose. Shame has a reason for being. It shows that we still want to impress. Being willing to spend the rest of one's life in a futile struggle against inevitability shows that we care. It shows that at least we haven't let ourselves go.
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