Thanks, Friends

I owe what's left of my sanity to my friends. (The losing of said sanity is being blamed on the kidlets, but that kind of goes without saying.) Friends lift you up when you are feeling down. They make you laugh when you least expect it. They help you to take conversations down the oddest paths sometimes, but it always makes sense at the time. They understand you are not serious when you threaten to run away and join the circus.

I have a group of friends that waits together while we look for our kidlets to exit the school building at the end of the school day. We tease each other for running late ("Naptime ran long today, eh?"), poke each other when we see someone's child looking for them, and joke about things that we probably should take seriously.

Today's random jokes were pertaining to some sort of natural flavorings ("essence of beaver bottom"--a friend's description, not whatever it was actually called) that were found in some oddball food. At least it was not a type of food I would ingest. One of our group had found out that something was supposedly harvested somehow from the rear ends of beavers. Combine this conversation with one on "no poo," ("Quick! Add some Miralax!") which is, according to one of my friends, a type of shampoo for people with curly hair, and it makes for some fairly odd juxtapositions. Throw in random mentions of rat scrapple, what hot dogs are made of, and meat packing plants in general, and one might never want to eat or clean their hair again. But we were laughing so hard that it completely took the disgusting factor out of the equation.

It's days like today, when I am tired, cranky, overwhelmed, and seriously not in the mood to deal with anything that I can most appreciate my friends for their ability to shake me out of my funk. The next time I eat something unidentifiable in origin, I shall recall our beaver rump conversation and probably laugh my fool head right off my shoulders. Thank you, my friends.

Santa is going to skip our house for years...

Today started out innocently enough. The girls had completed whatever fighting they had spent yesterday accomplishing, and our walk to school was peaceful. Everyone was quiet, relaxed, and respectful of one another. I should have known this was the calm before the storm.

Our school district had early dismissal in order to accommodate parent/teacher conferences, so I picked Pig Jr. and Rooster up around noon. Horse had choir practice after school, so I fed the younger two kidlets lunch before heading back to school to pick up their big sister. The first thing Horse did was to open the car door on her sister's head. Given that this was the sliding door on the side of our minivan, this took a fair bit of talent to accomplish. Things went downhill from there.

If there was a fight possible, they found a way to make it happen. If there was an insult that could be thrown at one another, they made sure to hurl it. If there was a screeching, irritating noise they could make to drive one another batty, they made it as loudly as humanly possible. They even found ways to make breathing irritating to one another. Then again, since each other's very existence was abhorrent to them, I suppose the fact that they were breathing at all would annoy the heck out of their siblings.

I am seriously contemplating sending myself to my room for a time-out. That won't stop the misbehavior, but at least with a closed door between us, their hollering won't seem nearly as loud. We'll see if I can hold out until Pig comes home from work.

It's too bad we do not have the proper type of heating unit to use all the coal these kidlets are earning from Santa this year.

Lollygagging

Today was Grocery Shopping Day. This is typically followed by More Grocery Shopping Day, then Still More Grocery Shopping Day, and finally Remember the List Day. I'm a slow learner sometimes. Today, however, I can blame my shopping inadequacies on running into a friend in the cereal aisle and spending far too much time chatting. This is not a complaint. I enjoyed myself immensely, and would do it again should the opportunity arise.

Eventually, the two of us stopped gabbing long enough to go our separate ways and attempt to finish grocery shopping. As I meandered down one of the aisles, I waited for all of half a second for a couple to move to one side of the aisle as they debated whatever it was that made them pause for reflection. They apologized profusely, which led me to believe they did not see my friend and I taking up plenty of aisle space while we blathered on endlessly. I said, "No worries. I'm just lollygagging my way through the store here."

As I walked away, I heard the woman excitedly giggle to the man, "Did you hear that? She said 'lollygagging!'"

Thinking she was acting silly because lollygagging is not a word many people use these days, I called back, "Well, it is a real word!"

The lady looked over at me and said, with tears in her eyes, "I know. My mother used to say that a lot. Thank you." She sounded a bit as if she was choking, but also grateful.

I have no idea what the back story is with her mother. Regardless of the story I will never hear, I will not look at "lollygagging" quite the same way again. I'm glad I could remind that woman about her mother even as I feel badly about making a stranger cry.

After pondering this for a few hours, I asked my kidlets if there was anything they thought I said a lot that would remind them of their mother. I was expecting some inanity, such as calling someone a "goober" or making a reference to being a "gamer geek." Instead, my eldest piped up with, "Um...I want a nap?" I guess I can't argue with that one.

Fat and Festive

I started out this morning with a huge list of things that I wanted to accomplish and three kidlets who were going to do everything in their power to make sure that would not happen. Needless to say, it took all of ten minutes for me to feel like going back to bed and calling it a day.

First, we started with the zillion questions. Pig Jr. had his nebulizer treatment while all three watched Planet Earth on DVD. I planned to use this time to fold the three loads of laundry that had been sitting in laundry baskets overnight, and having to stop to answer Rooster's questions just left me frazzled. "Is that the Mommy?" "Why are they trying to eat the babies?" "Can someone tell them to go eat the big animal and leave the babies alone?" "Wait! Why are they trying to eat the Mommy now?" "Is that the North Pole where Santa lives?" "Are they trying to swim now?" "Why are they swimming instead of eating?" "Why are they eating the other animal? Why can't they just go eat some meat instead?" I think that the CIA should hire my daughter to wear down suspects so they will confess to anything just to make the endless questions cease.

Next we moved onto the game called "Do the Opposite." If I said something, they would immediately do the exact opposite. It was kind of like a weird version of Simon Says. If Mommy says to stay out of the living room because she is trying to vacuum, they must enter the living room. If Mommy asks them to pick up the tiny pieces of paper all over their bedroom floor, they must not only leave the paper there, but also find ways to increase their numbers. If Mommy says to stay away from the fake tree because it is dusty and she doesn't wish to have to nebulize the reactive airways kidlets, those kidlets must do everything in their power to try and hang out near the fake tree, preferably while playing with the dusty branches and hacking up a lung.

By noon, I was ready to put the fake tree back in its storage container, pack up all of the items I had been laboriously using to clean and decorate, and cancel Christmas this year. I got their lunches ready, forced Pig to deal with feeding them, and went outside to burn off some angry energy raking leaves.

Eventually, I re-entered the house. I stomped my still-huffy self down to the basement where Pig was working, and gave him a choice: fat and festive or cranky. He chose the former. I stomped myself back upstairs and baked some cupcakes. I plunked myself down and stuffed my face with them. Then I went off to decorate for Christmas with the help of the bribed-with-cupcakes kidlets.

I am happy to report the afternoon went much more smoothly than the morning. Even if it hadn't, there were still more cupcakes with which to drown my sorrows. The best part of this whole deal is that my loving husband was the one to okay me getting fat today, so I feel no guilt whatsoever about chowing down on junk food.

The house looks pretty, too.

A Horse is a Horse...

My girls got to meet horses today. We had gone to visit my family to celebrate Thanksgiving, and my mother had arranged for this special treat courtesy of their neighbor who works with said horses. The ironic part of the deal was that this was arranged so that Rooster could have a chance to see the horses since she had been unable to do so at one point where she had longed to do so in the past, and Rooster put up a bit of a stink about having to go. I finally convinced her to take the ride in the car and told her she could just hang out in the car once we arrived at the stable. She needed no persuasion to leap from the vehicle once we got there. I'm impressed she even let me park the car first before diving out the door.

Naturally, my sensory kidlet's first comment was about how badly the place stunk. Welcome to the farm, kiddo. She immediately lost interest in the smell as she discovered the joys of horse poop. Sadly, this enthralled her.

Rooster and Horse (my daughter, not the large animals) proceeded to meet and greet as many horses as possible at this location. The neighbor who was giving them the tour said there were either twenty-nine or thirty horses there, so this meant a lot of patting equine noses and almost getting bowled over by swinging horsey heads. Rooster, in particular, seemed to excel at standing immediately beneath any given horse's head and getting herself trapped by the much-larger animal. The one free-wandering horse was of particular interest to her, as she managed to try and put herself directly in his path a number of times. I had this image of my daughter getting trampled by a slow-moving beast. I wondered how I would explain to the ER that pulling my child backwards to get out of the way of hooves did not work when she so actively attempted to put herself under them. Thankfully, we remained untrampled during our excursion.

My baby niece was also able to meet the horses with us today. I am able to report that she seemed unfazed by the giant creatures who tried to taste her tiny hand. We presume this means the horses could smell whatever pureed foods she had ingested and thought they were yummy. My niece did excitedly kick her legs when held up closer to one of the horses, which was cute. We made sure she did not hurt the horse with her excited foot pumping. I'm not entirely sure how a horse would react to getting kicked in the head by a infant size three shoe, but I am glad we did not have to find out!

All three female kidlets seemed to enjoy themselves. After hanging out and watching the horses for a few minutes without sneezing, I risked petting those beautiful creatures myself. I might be allergic to cats and dogs, but I think I might be safe with horses. Think my long-suffering husband would agree to one of those as a pet? (He just twitched as I read him this. I'll take that as a 'no.')

I survived Black Friday shopping!

I made the mistake of napping yesterday afternoon. It was lovely at the time, but it prevented me from falling asleep once the kidlets were all in bed for the evening. I suppose it was under the same principle that makes drinking coffee in the afternoon a bad idea even when you're tired and feel you need it at the time. Regardless, it meant that I was fairly bleary-eyed when I staggered out the door to begin Black Friday shopping.

I arrived at the first store about three minutes before they opened at midnight. The line stretched for what seemed to be miles out the door. In reality, once those doors opened, I was inside and actively shopping within five minutes. A lot of stores opened at midnight this year, which I suppose meant people had to pick and choose which ones to hit first. I wonder if that helped or hindered with the crowds.

This was the first year in my nine years of Black Friday shopping in which gloves, a hat, a scarf, and a hot beverage in a thermal mug were not necessities of life. There is quite a difference between waiting outside in twenty-degree weather and forty-degree weather. I much prefer the latter to the former. I did not even need to zip up my coat upon leaving the first store at 12:38AM.

My second attempted store did not go nearly as smoothly. That store had opened at either 9:00PM or 10:00PM on Thanksgiving evening, and had apparently reached it's maximum capacity at some point thereafter. The line to enter its doors still stretched along the whole front of the building. I decided that my current level of heartburn was not conducive to even attempting to enter that store.

I wound up going into one more store which was open and had no waiting lines. I did not expect to purchase anything there, but managed to surprise myself when I saw something on my list. The fact that it was even cheaper than the advertised sale price in the store with the insane line out in front made it that much sweeter. I love it when I can make purchases at stores where I would not normally expect to find particular items. It's like going into a hardware store and coming out with affordable fine China.

After a quick drive-by near another store with a crazy maxed out capacity line, I decided that sleep was more important than dealing with such lunacy.

After a nice few hours of sleep, I headed out once more to hit the mall and a couple of other stores near it. Surprisingly, at almost nine in the morning, there were plenty of parking spaces, fewer people shopping than I would typically expect to see on a weekend, and in my favorite mall store (The Lego store! Huzzah!), there were more employees than people shopping, so I was able to commandeer an employee to help me shop. After the mall, I went to the same store I could not enter at 1:00AM, and found a similar lack of shoppers. I adopted a nice, leisurely pace and soon had the bulk of my shopping finished. I think my new favorite time to hit the stores on Black Friday is after the sun comes up and all of the die-hard shoppers have returned to their beds.

After a nap this afternoon, I feel almost human again, too. I just hope I shall be able to sleep once the kidlets are in bed this evening. At least there is no midnight sale for me to attend tonight!

A Less-than Smarmy Thanksgiving

I am sure that by now, you have heard zillions of people describing all of the things for which they are thankful: family, friends, health, jobs, etc. I figure we can just skip all of the usual smarmy stuff because, quite frankly, I presume you've heard it all already. Yes, it's all true. But you've also heard it from everyone you've spoken with today and for the last few days.

So here is my less-than smarmy list of things for which I am thankful today:

11. It is not a school day and the kidlets could therefore, in theory, sleep late. In reality, they played quietly in their rooms before demanding food and attention. Either way works for their overtired parents.

10. Today's newspaper actually had all of the desired Black Friday ads included. In years past, we have had to go purchase additional papers because the one stinkin' ad we needed for the top store on our Black Friday list had been missing. The fact that the paper was delivered late is a small matter of inconvenience compared to trying to flip through newspapers in the local convenience store while searching for the one newspaper that has not been mispacked.

9. The potatoes that had been purchased two weeks ago still had a few non-rotten ones left in the bag. This is a huge deal when trying to make the typical Thanksgiving dinner and the first few potatoes that are cut up have to be thrown out upon discovering the gaping black holes in their centers.

8. I actually remembered to defrost the free frozen turkey breast that we qualified for at our grocery store. This is probably the first year I have not put a still-encased-in-ice turkey or turkey part in the oven and prayed that it would not only thaw out, but that it would also cook in time for supper.

7. My eldest is on antibiotics and should, in theory, not be contagious when we gather to celebrate Thanksgiving with my side of the family this weekend. This is, of course, assuming the rest of us are not secretly harboring strep throat without displaying symptoms yet.

6. Television is enough of a novelty that the kidlets enjoyed watching not only the parade, but the zillions of ads they were exposed to in that three hour window of time. Good thing they already mailed their letters to Santa, eh?

5. Today will be the last day I have to display hand turkeys created by everyone else in my household, including my husband. The hand turkey novelty wore off a few days ago, when I realized the front of my refrigerator looked like a poultry farm. Gobble gobble.

4. My oven did not have to be lit with a match this year. Back when we had our circa 1958 gas wall oven, I was always afraid the dang thing would explode on me when I had to light it. It's temperature gauge was a bit faulty, too. It claimed anywhere from 200 to 400 degrees as being what was meant by 325 degrees Fahrenheit, and it never chose the same temperature twice. It was like playing Russian Roulette with salmonella poisoning.

3. My kidlets are young enough to still enjoy spending a day home with Mom and Dad. Give it a few years, and I am sure I will have to bribe them to show their faces at the table on days off from school.

2. I remembered to throw on some laundry today so I will not have to go Black Friday shopping in my pajamas. This is a very real threat when I am down to my last pair of jeans, and I am not always thinking clearly enough to grab yesterday's pants in the pre-dawn hours when I leave the house to hit the stores. Ratty old PJ's are not nearly warm enough to wait in a line outside a store in the wee hours of the morning.

1. My husband played with the kidlets and let me take a nap this afternoon. As far as I am concerned, any day that involves Mommy getting to zonk out on the couch for a few hours is a good day!

So there you have it. This, plus all of the smarmy stuff, makes for a very thankful day. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Mom who?

In my nine-and-a-half years as a mother, I have experienced a number of what I would consider to be typical mom moments. Thus far, the oddest (to me) had been when a kidlet somewhere around the age of three grabbed my hand and started walking away with me because he thought I was his mother. Trust me when I say it's unnerving when you try and tell a daydreaming child (who won't release your hand) that you are not his mother and he suddenly realizes the truth in what you are saying. I guess from the knees down, all moms look alike. Thankfully, his mother was easily located and I could continue going on my merry way.

Today's experience was not nearly as upsetting to a child, but it was still unnerving to me. I had been asked to take a child home from school today. This is not the unnerving part. Her father was the one making the request, and I am used to this routine by now. On days when he works at school pickup times, he asks me to walk her home so she does not have to cross a number of busy streets alone. He is a single father, and it must be difficult to try and be in two places at once while trying to support her. I do what I can to help on those days.

Anyway, I was a bit eager to get her in her own door this afternoon, since it was an early dismissal for school and I still had to get my hungry kidlets home and make their lunches. As I propped her apartment complex's door open so she could wrestle the key out of the lock, she suddenly lunged for me. It was a sneak attack hug, which in and of itself was unexpected given that the only kidlets I hug are ones to whom I have given birth. I just stood there fairly awkwardly patting her head. After she released me, which was just as sudden as she had grabbed ahold of me, she said, "Bye, Mom!" and darted inside the building.

Wait, what? When did I suddenly become "Mom" here? This was exceptionally puzzling since this girl has not seen her own mother since she was a very small child, and probably has no memories of ever calling her "Mom."

I thought about this long and hard, mostly while trying to figure out what to tell her father, and I did feel this was something I needed to tell him. It didn't bother me, exactly. I know plenty of people who call other people's mothers "Mom" simply because they started doing that years ago for whatever reason and just kept at it. I just never assumed anyone's kid would do this to me.

Granted, any time someone within a two-mile radius calls out, "Mom!" I turn my head to see what they want from me. I think every mother must go through this at some point. It's just an automatic reflex when you are programmed to respond to a child's voice. This is especially true if you are busy or preoccupied. At those times, which occur quite often since many mothers are always busy, you just call out a "What?" without even looking up to see who is calling and whether or not they are actually your own offspring. I have also had other people's kidlets call me some variant of "mother" by accident. They typically backpedal and say, "I mean Mrs. Brawn (or Miss Murphy, depending on what they normally call me)." My experience today was the first time that a not-my-child appeared to deliberately call me "Mom."

Anyway, I let her father know what had happened, so we'll see what happens next week. I think my best bet if she does this again is to not make a big deal out of it. Kids sometimes do things purely for the shock value. If that's the case, she certainly succeeded in shocking me.

If anyone needs me, I'll be assembling Barbie toys for the foreseeable future...

Me and my bright ideas. More specifically, Pig and his bright ideas. I had gotten the idea that Rooster would be getting Barbie items for Christmas this year. To be fair, the reason this idea popped into my head might have had something to do with the fact that her letter to Santa included pretty much everything Barbie-related. I might be a slow learner, but after about the twentieth Barbie request, I had pretty much clued in to her desire for more anatomically-incorrect dolls.

Horse owns one of the small Barbie houses. It's some sort of fold up vacation home, and the two girls both love it. Rooster loves it so much that she included it on her list to Santa. I figured a small house might be a good thing for her to have, too. This is where Pig comes into our story. He decided he did not want the girls to have the same exact house, so he suggested I purchase the world's most gigantic Barbie house ever. Okay, fine. That wasn't exactly how he worded it. That is, however, a fairly accurate description of what happened as a result of our little Barbie-themed chat. Three Barbie-sized stories makes for a pretty darn big house, and boy was I surprised at its size when I pulled it out of its box to assemble.

Well, I am quite glad I decided to set it up far in advance of Christmas. I erroneously thought it would be mostly assembled in the box and would require the application of a few stickers or something equally simple. Instead, I was lining up columns to make sure each floor was sturdy, applying various stickers in places I never would have even considered (such as Barbie's laptop screen), and confusing myself about where a tiny knob had fallen off and needed to be repositioned, among other things. Even after working for an hour on that house, it is still nowhere near move-in condition. Poor Barbie would be quite unhappy with how her house looks. Then again, since Barbie is currently residing in a shoebox, she might just be thrilled to have some space for a change.

The sad thing here is that after all of this assembly work, I have this really strong desire to play with Barbies now. I suppose that since no dolls are included, I really should wait until Christmas to ask my daughter if I can join her in breaking in her new toys. I wonder if Santa ever has this problem.

Pre-Christmas Season Organization

I had fun today. I spent the vast majority of my time sorting through the Christmas presents I already had purchased, making lists of what we have as opposed to what we still need, and wrapping up the bulk of the items. I even sorted the wrapped goods into bags that were clearly labelled who they were for and who they were from. What I neglected to do was put tags on anything.

This might not seem like such a big omission. After all, does it matter that all of the wrapped gifts in a bag labelled "To Horse From Santa's Elves" fail to have her name on them when her name is already on the bag? Well, yes, it does. I have this tendency to forget all of the prep work that is completed, or not, and just empty bags under the tree on Christmas Eve. When three kidlets' worth of unnamed gifts suddenly get mixed together, it is a very big deal. Specifically, it would involve me having to completely or partially unwrap everything, stick name tags on the now-mangled goods, then make sure they are wrapped again. This work would probably involve very un-Christmas-like words being mumbled under my breath while I race the clock to see if it can be completed before the kidlets wake up and wonder why Santa is cussing in the living room.

For the moment, regardless of the status of name tags, I am happy to be mostly done with the sorting and wrapping. I am relieved to note that almost all of my required kidlet shopping is done already, barring a few accidental omissions. (The most notable exception is my complete lack of actually having any of the items on Horse's Christmas list. She is getting gifts, just not as she requested. A horse? Not a chance. Her own bedroom? Not until the dang house sells and we can buy a four bedroom house. A laptop? Not until Santa wins the lottery. She did request various flavors of gum, which she will be getting. I just haven't purchased them yet. She's going to be one sad little girl on Christmas morning.)

Now that I have wrapped and hidden a bunch of Christmas presents on my secret tropical island volcano lair (What? You mean you don't have one of those to help you stash presents?), I can breathe easy for a few days. At least I can until Black Friday sales kick in and I abandon my neatly written "Still need to buy" list and just splurge spontaneously. I can almost feel the shopping-based endorphins kicking in already. Ahhhhh...

Spending Money

For the record, I asked Pig what on earth I could write about that I could finish writing in less than twenty minutes so I could go crawl into bed. His response was, "Spending money? I dunno." Thank you, Pig, for coming up with a topic I could gladly blather about endlessly. That kind of negates the whole finish-in-twenty-minutes thing, but at least it gives me something about which I am an expert.

Technically, my husband had a very good reason for his response. All I have been doing these past few days is spending money. To be fair, it was not my fault the car needed some fairly major work done on it. That covered about half the money I have spent in recent history. The rest of it is a combination of groceries and Christmas presents.

Before you start scolding me for purchasing Christmas presents before Thanksgiving, let me just say that it's not my fault. I am apparently genetically predisposed to spending far too much time shopping for gifts for other people. My mother had the same gene. Either that or she taught me well. Regardless, I am happiest at this time of the year when I am able to sneak out, shop, and then sneak items into the house without the kidlets somehow discovering what I am doing.

This year, I am also feeling the reprieve of suddenly having the house off the market. This means that I do not feel the same level of stress about trying to buy and fit items in my rather small house. Pig thoughtfully suggested that I could carry a bunch of larger Christmas presents into the house through our Bilco doors, and I considered that to be a challenge to come up with oodles of larger items in order to do just that.  This also let me be fairly sneaky about shopping while the kidlets were home for the weekend. I brought most of my purchases into the basement through those open doors, then went in the kitchen door as normal while carrying one small bag. Not a child was any wiser this way.

Text messages are great for this, too. I simply sent Pig a message before I started my expensively-fixed car in the store's parking lot, told him when I should be home, and he opened the Bilco doors for me just as I pulled in the driveway. Now all I have to do is remember not to let the kidlets go down to our basement for any reason until I find a better place to stash my loot.

I also ordered a few things online over the past few days, mostly for the kidlets, and I am hoping and praying those packages arrive while they are at school and not at home. My sneaky offspring have tried looking under my bedroom door when I bring a delivered package to my room to open it up. Unfortunately, there had been carpeting down in this house when we purchased it, so there is quite a gap between the bottom of doors and our nice wood floors now. This makes peeking a little too easy for them to attempt, and forces me to make dire threats when I catch them in the act. Thankfully, the worst offender is the six-year-old who is still unable to s-p-e-l-l if she only catches words on the boxes instead of seeing any pictures.

So there's my twenty minutes of rambling about spending money. I do have one more thing to add, however. I really, really enjoyed spending half of that money. The car repairs were not fun, but the Christmas purchases were a blast. Hopefully, I can keep that happy feeling even when the credit card bills come due. If not, I'll just blame it all on the car.

Me versus Mechanics

For the past few weeks, my minivan has been making this nasty clunking sound whenever it goes over a bump in the road. My husband also said it sounded as if it was grinding something. I'll take his word for that. I only heard the horrific clunking. I thought long and hard about whether the car would make the trip to visit my family later on in the week, and decided I would rather wake up at an awful hour Saturday morning to try and have a local mechanic take a look first and see if it was just a simple fix. I was really hoping there was just some piece of metal that had wiggled loose that needed to be tightened up underneath the car.

My husband wisely volunteered me to be the one to go to the mechanic. Granted, there is sometimes the stereotype that mechanics take advantage of ignorant females and charge us for things that we really did not need to have done. He's not smart for letting me be the one to seek help. He is brilliant, however, because he got to stay under the nice, warm covers and sleep while I had to go off bright and early to describe cranky car noises to mechanics whose eyes lit up with dollar signs once they heard my description of the problem.

I was the only female on the premises. After forking over my keys and signing my life away, I plunked myself down behind the safety of a divider where I could open my book and attempt to read. After just a short while, I heard the resident males congregating around the check-in desk. They were teasing the youngest guy there and told him he needed to get a girlfriend. One of them piped up with the sage advice to "Find some girl and get her liquored up. Then do all sorts of unmentionable things to her." Those were his exact words. I am not paraphrasing. However, before the other men could chime in about what sort of "unmentionable things" should be done, I left the safety of the divider. I walked over to them and very quietly told them that I had no idea who just made that statement, but it was very bad advice. None of them made eye contact with me. One of the mechanics immediately chimed in to agree with me at how poor that advice had been. Then, as I walked back to my seat behind the divider, a deathly silence fell. I think I successfully managed to mortify them.

Note to future young men of dating age: I am the mother of two girls. Don't even think of trying to get them drunk to have your way with them. That's a surefire way of getting yourself arrested, which kind of puts a damper on a potential relationship. Heck, I would even turn my son in to the police if I heard he ever pulled such a stunt to a young lady. There is no excuse for such behavior.

Anyway, shortly thereafter, the mechanic who had piped up to agree with me came over to tell me the bad news (for me) about my car. I will give him credit for not gloating as he delivered the news that it was the rack and pinion that was causing the problem. This meant nothing to me. He then explained what a rack and pinion does. To the best of my understanding, it sucks the money out of my checkbook. This is not a happy thing to have done. (For those now wanting to google what it really does, it has something to do with the power steering. If some sort of mystery fluid leaks out, which was what was starting to happen, I would have had to hire a bodybuilder just to turn the dang steering wheel. I like my power steering and would miss it terribly should such an event occur.)

To sum up, it would take about four hours to fix, and far more money than we had wanted to spend. The mechanic nicely volunteered to drive me home and then pick me up again once the car was fixed. I suspect this had to do with the desire to get me out of their shop, both from mortification and so the other men could come up with new ways to try and get their youngest worker arrested without me interfering with their grand plan.

So that's what happened. The car now sounds a bit different, and I cannot figure out if this is merely a sound that had been there before that we simply couldn't hear over the loud clunking, or perhaps the mechanics took our their embarrassment by finding something devious to do to my car. The nasty clunking has disappeared, but for all I know, they duct-taped something back up in place, killed four hours, and then charged me an outrageous price. The mechanics clearly won in this epic battle.

Next time, I'm volunteering my husband for this joyous task.

Fuzzy Teddy Bear

In case anyone is curious, I am a fuzzy teddy bear. I am also cuddly and fluffy. This was stated as a proven fact by my four-year-old, who clearly suffers from an inability to properly categorize the world around him.

To the best of my knowledge, I am not fuzzy. This might perhaps mean that the boy needs to go for an eye exam sometime in the near future. Given that it has only been a short while since his eyes were checked, I am assuming that is not the case. Perhaps he is walking around squinting at me, which could lead to him thinking I am fuzzy. Either that or he really likes the fleece pullovers I have been wearing ever since the house temperature dropped below seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit.

Sadly, I have to concede the "fluffy" point. I have eaten more than my fair share of cookies and cupcakes in recent history. Though I am still trying to figure out why my newly acquired flab is not keeping me any warmer this year, I will admit that it has added to my overall fluffiness. If I keep eating like this, I'll look like the Stay Puft marshmallow man.

I am confused about the cuddly aspect of my son's description. Both my son and I have sensory issues and do not rank cuddling very high on the list of things to tolerate. Perhaps Santa should gift him with a children's dictionary this year.

Finally, I am perplexed about being considered a teddy bear. There's no fur, stuffing, or sew-on button nose. My ears do stick out more than average, but they are on the sides of my head, not the top. Come to think of it, my son has never actually owned a bear-shaped teddy bear. His stuffed animals tend to be other creatures, such as cats or elephants. Heck, he is even asking for a stuffed animal dragon for Christmas this year, much to his proud, dragon-loving mother's delight. But teddy bears? Pfft.

So now that we have established that there is no way I am a fuzzy, cuddly, teddy bear (I'm still sulking over the fluffy part), I think it's fairly obvious why I am agreeing to consider myself as such. At least it's obvious to me. My son, who will not remain little for very long, sees his mommy as a fuzzy, cuddly, fluffy teddy bear for some odd reason. There is no reason to question it. There is no reason to debate the dictionary definitions behind the words. If my little boy wants to picture me this way, I will agree, and I will guard this moment carefully in my heart. My son came over to give me a hug and to share his special view of me. Even when he's all grown up and embarrassed to have said such a silly thing to his mother, I can still conjure up the image of him resting his head on my shoulder to tell me that he loves his fuzzy teddy bear mommy. What a special little guy.

Forgotten Patients

This morning, some random woman on the other end of the phone heard the intense desperation in my voice. Rooster's gastroenterologist is normally booked weeks, if not months in advance. Her digestive tract had been messed up for almost three weeks now, and I was at my wit's end. I managed to beg sufficiently until whoever answered the phone agreed to give us somebody else's cancelled appointment time today. I did not even need to start sobbing, which was an added bonus. Huzzah!

Anyway, by the time we arrived for our appointment, all three kidlets were already exhausted. Two had full or almost full days of school and the third had been exhausted by completing three days' worth of missed class and homework assignments. All three were hungry, but I assured them I had a snack packed for them to eat when we got back out to the car. I stressed to them the importance of never eating at a doctor's office so that we do not accidentally cause another person to go into anaphylactic shock. Besides, we had a 3:20PM appointment, and it was barely past 3:05PM. They normally do not eat an after school snack until 4:00PM.

Pig went and checked Rooster in for her appointment. This process took longer than normal because somebody had forgotten to print out the necessary forms with all of our information on it. At least it was their mistake and not ours. I like when somebody else is to blame for messing with the established routine.

The next hour passed slowly. It was punctuated by whines about the doctor not appearing, being hungry, and not wanting to do any of the things we brought to work on while we waited. And that was just from me. The kidlets were not much better. Rooster, in particular, had eaten lunch early and had not eaten her fill, mostly due to the very tummy issues that brought us to seek a doctor's advice. It was well after 4:00PM when Pig "volunteered" (read: I made him) to go find a nurse and ask if we could feed Rooster some water and a rice cake, which was the food on hand least likely to cause an allergic reaction in someone else if we were to drop crumbs anywhere.

Pig came back to the room just a moment or two later, with a highly apologetic doctor in tow. It turns out that the staff had informed her that we cancelled our appointment. She presumed it meant Rooster was feeling better and never bothered checking to see if anyone was waiting after we had checked in for our appointment. I am presuming this was the same reason our paperwork had not been printed out correctly upon our arrival.

We were the last people to leave the office. I am very grateful that Pig "volunteered" to go seek answers about Rooster being able to have her snack (the answer was "yes") or we might have been left alone in the building as everyone went home for the evening.

I now have a reason to bug doctors, nurses, receptionists, janitors, and anyone else wearing a name tag if it seems as if a doctor is taking a long time to get to us. It was creepy walking back out through a waiting room that had its lights off.

No, the house did not sell.

Well, tomorrow is our last day having our house on the market. We were unable to make a sell at this point in time and, quite frankly, we have no desire to have people poking around our house during the upcoming holiday season. Back in May when we first listed the house for sale, I thought for sure that I would be really upset if it did not sell. By now, however, I am just relieved that I won't have to worry about cleaning all the time.

Truth be told, I have not been overly worried about keeping the house neat these past couple of months since school started. I've had other things to keep me occupied: errands, homework, three kidlets' worth of scheduling issues, and the insane amount of germs and viruses kidlets tend to bring home from school to name a few. So what if there are smiley faces drawn into the dust on the piano? Dusting stirs up, um, dust, which makes Pig Jr.'s reactive airways worse. At least I am trying to keep the bathroom clean with all of Rooster's tummy issues. We've had a few Open Houses, so the house was cleaned before those dates. As far as I am concerned, that is good enough.

Anyway, I am looking forward to being off the hook for a neat and tidy house. I am already planning on leaving a bunch of unfolded clean laundry lying around the house in randomly distributed laundry baskets just because I can. I will probably refuse to make the beds before taking the healthy kidlets to school in the morning. Heck, I might even add stick-figure bodies to the smiley faces on the piano. If I am feeling exceptionally daring, I might even leave the breakfast dishes on the counter before taking the kidlets to school.

Yep, I'm living life on the wild side as a suburban stay-at-home mom now that the house will be off the market. Yee-haw.

'Tis the Season...

The phone rang. This, in and of itself, is not overly surprising. The phone has been ringing off the hook today. Between well-wishers, medical folks calling to help me figure out what to do with Rooster's wacky digestive tract, and our realtor, who wants us to extend our time on the market and do another Open House, there has not been a heck of a lot of time for the cordless phone to recharge itself. This time, however, there was nothing but background noise and then a distinct click after I said "Hello?" for the second time. I was not amused.

When the phone rang again a few minutes later, I was wary. I should have just let it go to voicemail.

     Me: "Hello?"
     Phone lady: "Hello, Pig!"
     Me: "Do I sound like a Pig?"
     Phone lady: "No, not at all. I'm sorry, Mrs. Brawn. I did not hear you say hello at all."
     Me: "Uh-huh."
     Phone lady: "How are you doing today?"
     Me: "Cranky. Can you tell?"
     Phone lady: "I'm doing fine, too. Thanks for asking! I'm calling to see if you would like to donate to [insert charity and explanation of what they do here]."
     Me: "Ah, no. I doubt that you are going to give my husband the necessary raise to do that."
     Phone lady: "Ha ha ha! No, actually, we do not have that in our power. But we do have these other gift amounts that I can put you down for."
     Me: "I don't think you understand. I am sure you are a worthy charity. I am sure you are worthy of receiving donations. However, if there is no more income, there is no ability for money to flow outwards."
     Phone lady: *getting quite hyper and irate-sounding* "I see. But you don't have to pay now. You can just pledge now and pay later."
     Me: "Why would I do that? Are you giving my husband a raise later?"
     Phone lady: "You have a great holiday season! Bye-bye!"

Given that this is just the start of the holiday charity call season, I'm wondering why this lady was already not paying any attention to what I was saying. It's not even Thanksgiving yet. She can't be tired of giving this spiel already. Then again, given that the woman called from "unknown number," I cannot even guarantee she was really calling from a charity, regardless of her claims that her group [insert unintelligible mumble here] provides free mammograms to those women who cannot afford them. I wondered briefly whether I should have confused her by asking whether I was being offered that service.

Ultimately though, I'm just annoyed that I apparently sound like a male to an overly perky random female caller. If there's any karmic justice in this world, which I doubt, I'm hoping I was actually speaking to a man. That would serve him right. Have a great holiday season.

Ten Bucks

There is a girl named Alice who is the same age as Horse. She lives about one block out of our way when we are returning home from school. Honestly, when we are already walking three-quarters of a mile to get home, one more block is not that big of a deal. So when her single-parent father asks if I can walk Alice home from school on days when he has to work, I try to be accommodating.

I do make exceptions for days when the kidlets or I have appointments after school or if they are sick with anything pertaining to their digestive tract. So when Alice's father sent me a text message to ask if I could walk her home today, I had to say no. Rooster was home from school today, and will be home tomorrow, due to a sudden attack of diarrhea. With Rooster, even if it is not viral, it can still hit her hard and I will have no idea whether I will be able to pick up my own kidlets, let alone someone else's.

Heck, this morning we had to knock on a friend's door on our walk to school so that Rooster could use her bathroom after she got hit with whatever bowled her over today. That friend took Horse to school for me, and as soon as I was able to get Rooster out of my friend's door again, I passed Pig Jr. off onto a preschool parent that I trusted so I could rush back home with my miserable daughter. If she got hit with another round of misery at pickup time, I would have to call around to see who could pick up Horse and Pig Jr. for me. Therefore, saying no to Alice's father was really my only possible answer under the circumstances.

Alice's father was surprised that I said no. I am not sure if he was confused because he is not used to figuring out logistics of pickup duty when multiple kidlets are involved, since Alice is essentially an only child. Perhaps he was confused because Alice, most of the time, is incredibly healthy and he is not used to a kidlet getting hit with multiple digestive tract woes over the course of one month's time. (Welcome to life with Rooster...) Regardless, he was perplexed.

Thankfully, Rooster's last bout of illness finished up around nine in the morning. This is just late enough that she needs to stay home tomorrow so that she is symptom free for a full twenty-four hours. I was wise enough to drive for pickup this afternoon, just in case. Alice's father saw us waiting to pick up Horse, and he came over to inquire about Rooster's health.

After Alice and her father walked away from us, Alice came running back to me. I was startled, not having expected to see her again until the next day I am asked to walk her home from school. She held out a ten-dollar bill and told me her father had forgotten to give me that for walking her home so many times. I thanked her, but told her that was unnecessary. Alice's father walked back to me and asked if I was positive. I told him I was. I did not want his money.

Honestly, if I accept money as payment for walking his daughter home, then I feel obligated to do it even when I should say no. Those times where a kidlet of mine is sick, I just want to get everyone home quickly, without having to worry about a stop on the way. If I am sick or headachy, I do not wish to have to argue with a kidlet who would rather clown around with my three than go into her empty apartment with just her babysitter neighbor for company. If I take his money, I would have an obligation where I do not wish one to exist.

Besides, it's a bit insulting to know that the time I took to walk Alice home almost every day over the past two months is only worth ten bucks.

An Autumn Afternoon Walk

I took the kidlets on an afternoon walk today. This was an act of sheer desperation. They had been trapped inside for the past few days of a four-day weekend, mostly due to a nasty congested cough that is plaguing my youngest. Poor Pig Jr. has reactive airways which tend to not handle autumn very well. My husband had brought tons of work home over his normal two-day weekend, and spent a number of hours having to hide away in the basement to get it completed. In other words, the kidlets were driving each other batty, and I did not even have the ability to pass them off to their father when I felt like pulling my hair and screaming.

Anyway, Pig Jr.'s cough has been slowly improving since he started antibiotics last week, in addition to his usual nebulizer treatments and allergy medicines. I forced them all to go through our usual glass of water, potty train, shoes and coats-on routine, then herded them out the door into the autumn air. All three were leery of going on a walk with Mommy. Clearly, I must have some ulterior motive for forcing them out of the house. (Yes, I did, actually. It was to let them burn off some energy and to hopefully tire them out so they would all actually sleep tonight, instead of allowing them to enjoy their usual routine of waking me up for no real reason at 2:00AM.)

All three kidlets left the house thinking they were going to be bored to tears.

At each corner we hit, I let them decide which of two directions to walk. Hey, with three kidlets, if they were only given two options, then we would always have a majority vote for one of them. They started running, skipping, and jumping to the next corner and cheered when their chosen direction was selected. They plucked leaves off of the sidewalks. They chased each other a bit. They scuffed through the piles of leaves that covered the sidewalks at certain houses. They held their arms up in the air and pretended they were flying in the wind. We stopped to admire all of the amazing colors of the different trees we passed, and talked about which leaf colors we enjoyed the most. They giggled, laughed, chortled, and cackled. Yes, Pig Jr. was coughing by the time we returned home, but every single kidlet had a huge smile on their face.

As we walked through our kitchen door, I said, "See? Now that wasn't so boring, was it?" Without skipping a beat, two of the kidlets told me that it had been boring and they were now tired. The third said our walk was "okay."

I'm starting to realize why my mother just stared at me incredulously sometimes.

So much for today's piano lesson...

Horse and I plodded off to her piano lesson this morning. I was still trying to catch my breath from the shopping trip from which I had just returned. (When you run out of milk, meat, and the kidlets' allergy medicine, you wind up having to go shopping whether you wanted to do so or not.) I had been quite pleased with Horse's progress at home this week. She had improved on a number of songs, and I was secretly looking forward to her basking in her pleased piano teacher's glow.

We arrived at the piano teacher's studio and took off our coats. We sat down to wait while Mrs. DePiano finished up with the student ahead of Horse. I wondered why it seemed as if the other student was just slowly plunking random keys and Mrs. DePiano's usual chatter was silenced. After sitting there for about a minute, I once more heard Mrs. DePiano talking. She was apologizing to the other student for suddenly bolting out of there, and mentioned she did not know if it was a virus or something she ate, but her stomach had just lurched.

At this point, I told Horse to put on her coat. We were out of there. I cracked open the door between the waiting area and where Mrs. DePiano was with her student. I apologized for intruding, asked if she was talking about being sick to her stomach, and said we were leaving. I could not risk bringing home another stomach bug. Poor Rooster is still not back on her regular diet after vomiting a few weeks ago. We almost had to bring her to the hospital that time, and I just could not risk her getting sick again. Horse and I then bolted. Well, I bolted while Horse tried to keep up while looking perplexed at the suddenness of our departure.

At home, I made sure we washed our hands until our skin was about to slough off of our fingers. I worried that we breathed virally-infected air. Then I made the mistake of stopping to think for a moment.

A few weeks ago, just before Rooster had gotten sick, Mrs. DePiano had emergency surgery to install a pacemaker. She had been exhausted and her heart had been skipping beats. I remembered having read (in multiple sources) that when women get heart attacks, they feel it differently than men do. In fact, nausea is one possible symptom of a heart attack. I wondered if perhaps her nausea was related to whatever heart issues she has.

I decided to call Mrs. DePiano to see if she was okay. She answered the phone and told me she had cancelled the rest of her lessons and had laid down on the couch. I asked her if she had contacted her doctor. Her response was typical for her. "No. Why should I?" I decided against telling her that the last couple of times she had any vomiting, she had been hospitalized and required emergency surgery. (Prior to the pacemaker need, she had also had other health problems that required surgery and her only symptoms had been digestive-tract related. In theory, had she put two and two together, she would have called the dang doctor. Apparently math is not her strong suit.) Instead, I told her that she had just recently had surgery on her heart and I knew that some heart problems, heart attack being the biggest concern, could cause nausea. I explained that while I hoped she was not having heart issues, it could not hurt to contact her doctor to see if everything sounded okay to him or her. She told me she had never heard of that, but she would call her doctor just in case.

Well, I am no longer sitting around worrying about potentially carrying a stomach virus home. I am now worried that I caused an elderly woman with a stomach bug to have a heart attack after telling her to call her doctor.

You mean some kidlets don't covet toys?

Someone asked me today if I had any good examples for them about the kidlets coveting anything. I wanted to laugh my fool head right off my shoulders. My kidlets were, at the time, immersed in writing their first drafts of their letters to Santa. If something even vaguely toy-related existed somewhere, they wanted it. They had to have it. They would DIE if Santa forgot it on Christmas Eve. I would not have been surprised to see their pictures in the dictionary right next to the definition of covet.

Because I was then clued in to thinking about coveting, I spent the rest of the day with my ears perked for examples on this subject matter. I was astounded at how often they completely disregarded the Tenth Commandment. If there was something to covet, they did so, and if there was something they wanted, they expressed that desire loudly and forcefully.

When I took the kidlets to see the dentist, they coveted all of the toys in the waiting room. When we moved into the exam rooms to get their teeth cleaned, they expressed jealousy over the small basket of toys in there, particularly if one of their siblings picked up a toy before they could get to it. They envied the sibling who was in the perfect position to watch the television mounted on the ceiling above the dental chair. By all rights, they should have turned completely green with envy by that point in time.

Throughout the rest of the day, the kidlets wanted to play games someone else was playing, read books someone else was reading, color a picture in a coloring book someone else was using, use the stilts upon which another kidlet was precariously perched, and breathe the air someone else was breathing. How is it possible I spend so much time with my kidlets and only just now realized how jealous they get over every single thing?

I was almost overwhelmed with wondering how I failed my children. I try to teach them how to share and take turns. I try to teach them that it is okay to not have the same exact thing as everyone else has. Even when I had them write their letters to Santa today, I told them we were doing this early so we could think about the things that people in our family wanted so we could pick out things to give each other, too. I helped my eldest sneak off to the computer and order one of the items from her sister's list to get her in the spirit of giving instead of just receiving. Clearly, I must have failed. Somehow, the green-eyed monster has taken over my kidlets' lives.

Just as I was moping about my parental failures, I remembered something. I thought back to when my eldest had lost her first two teeth (one during the day and the next during the night when she was supposed to be sleeping instead of staying up to wiggle that sucker). The Tooth Fairy had gifted her with a total of ten dollars for those two teeth, and I had asked her if there was anything special she would like to purchase with her newly acquired cash. Her eyes instantly lit up once she figured out what she wished to buy. She asked if she could buy her little sister sneakers because she knew her sister wanted a new pair.

Perhaps there is hope after all.

Why do something intelligent when you can riot instead?

People, in general, are stupid. Not you, of course. Anyone reading this blog entry has to be highly intelligent. (Hey, I'll stick with that story if you do, too.) There are some times when I truly wonder how on earth our species has managed to survive as long as it has. I am presuming it has to do with pure, dumb luck.

This morning, I read an online article pertaining to a college football coach being fired. From what I could gather, this person knew about at least one instance of abuse that had occurred and even though he had not been the one to commit the crime, he was fired for not going the extra distance to fully report the incident in question. Whether this is true or not is actually irrelevant to my rant against humanity today.

Now don't get me wrong. If someone had abused my child and I found out later that someone else knew about it and did nothing, I would be livid. If I found out that person knew about others being abused before my child was victimized and the person in the know had not reported them, thus allowing the abuser access to abuse my child, I would want that person's head on a platter. As far as I am concerned, a person who says nothing and allows abuse to occur is just as guilty as the person who committed the crime. What I am saying here is that I do not have all of the facts in the aforementioned case and am therefore not passing any judgment on the fired individual. If he's guilty, I hope he's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If he truly did everything he could have to stop or report the abuse, then I hope he is cleared. Regardless, he was fired for his connection to the abuse.

What makes me question the intelligence of some humans is the reaction some people have taken over this firing. College students rioted. People actually had the gall to claim the school board was embarrassing them by firing their football coach, yet they were the fools who were throwing toilet paper, hurling rocks, and making a huge mess while disturbing the peace. Who here is behaving in the more embarrassing manner? Who is doing more to shame their school? Who should look back on their behavior and have the decency to feel mortified by their actions? How can someone who is intelligent enough to be accepted into a good college possibly think that rioting was a well-thought out, logical means to protest what they considered to be an erroneous decision?

I seriously hope they used more sense than that if they voted this past Tuesday.

The question I ask my children when they have behaved inappropriately towards someone else is this: How do you think that person felt when you just did that? Well, how do you think the victims felt when they learned people were rioting because someone who knew about the abuse was fired? Not only did those people have to live through abuse, and relive it with each retelling in the news, but they have to suffer from knowing that other people think it was just fine and dandy for someone to know about what happened and still let it continue. What happened to empathy towards our fellow human beings? How would you feel if someone had abused you somehow and everyone seemed to support those who knew and ignored your suffering? "You," in this case refers to those rioting students, not you, my intelligent reader.

When I was in high school, there was another student who did everything in his power to sexually harass me every time he saw me. He mortified me consistently in front of his friends and even in front of one of the teachers. I was forced to go to the principal about it by a well-meaning relative who thought that would grant me a reprieve from the verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse. The other student was a wrestler in a school that prized their sports stars over their other students. The principal told me he would not do anything to go after the offending student unless I could get witnesses to stand up for me. Fat chance of that when they were all his friends or his favorite gym teacher. The principal even warned me that I was not allowed to stand up for myself in any way, shape, or form because that would turn me into the aggressor and I would be suspended or expelled for such actions. That principal was guilty of the same thing this college football coach has been accused of doing: knowing and not doing anything to stop the events from transpiring. How much worse would it have been if that principal was later fired for his lack of a proper response and the students decided to riot over that? A bad situation would have become far worse, and my misery multiplied exponentially.

We have all had times in our lives when we have felt betrayed by someone who should have stood up for us. I feel it safe to assume that even those rioters have had such events occur in their lives. Perhaps the betrayal was not as severe as those acts of abuse detailed by the news report today, or perhaps it was even worse. Regardless, we should, in theory, have the ability to empathize with others who are facing similar circumstances, whether it is the type of abuse or the act of perceived betrayal from someone who neglected to come to the needed rescue. Why riot when even the guy fired admitted he should have done more? All that does is insult those people who have already been victimized.

I feel shame on behalf of my country over the behavior of those rioting students.

The dangers of blogging...

Blogging is becoming more and more popular. There are countless people who will forewarn others about the dangers of putting something out there in cyberspace. I'm not one of them. I figure you've already heard those warnings about the printed word coming back to haunt you at some ominously undetermined amount of time in the future. No siree, Bob. I am here to warn you of two specific dangers of blogging, and both involve people you know.

The first danger is that people will start conversations with, "Now, I don't want you blogging about this, but..." In other words, all the fun stories are off-limits. Now, because you respect those people, you will also respect their wishes and will do whatever you can to not randomly blather about their situations to the entire Internet. Writing "I heard something juicy today, but I am unable to share it with you" is also considered to be in bad form, as is "Nanner. Nanner. I know something you don't know!" I shall remind you that being told to not blog about something means the person is still willing to share their secrets with you, so you would be wise to not betray that confidence. This is especially true about fellow bloggers who you don't want telling the whole world about the time in fifth grade when you got up to give a violin solo in front of the whole school and promptly forgot all of the notes. (True story. I still cringe when I remember that concert even though I haven't touched a violin in decades. While I do not mind relating that story myself, I would find it in poor taste for someone else to blog about this miserable childhood memory of mine, especially as retaliation, and even moreso if they recall that time with glee.)

The second danger is actually slightly trickier. You see, while some people want their tales to be kept between the two of you, others actually get upset if you do not blather about them to the countless masses. "But why, dear friend of mine, would you not write about my horrific hangnail experience? I told you all of the gory details, repeatedly, to make sure you got it all!" "Hey, distant cousin, I was hoping you would write about the time we ate bacon together at that diner. You know the one I mean?" "Um, why don't you write about that politician that I adore that you can't stand? Then everyone can see just how wrong you are and will vote for him anyway!" Trust me when I say that not everything a blogger hears is something he or she wishes to dwell upon, let alone write about in great detail.

So between what you're not allowed to write about and what you have no desire to elaborate upon, well, there's still plenty of material out there to describe. This is where all of those other dire warnings about blogging come into play. Your future bosses will check out everything affiliated with your name, your soon-to-be-ex can and will use your blog against you in a court of law, and your children will be mortified to even show their faces in school if their friends realize Mommy once wrote about their potty-training accidents. It's hard to believe some people might actually decline to blog, isn't it? ;-)

"I'm not a big boy anymore!"

Poor Pig Jr. He's had a rough day. I kept him home from school so his doctor could check out his nasty cough and raspy breathing. The doctor pronounced it to be a case of bad allergies and gave him a flu shot over Pig Jr.'s quite vocal objections. Pig Jr. has been walking around holding his left arm stiffly ever since then, and he has been crying at the drop of a hat.

Just now, I set up the shower so he could get cleaned up for the day. As he started to disrobe, he started sobbing. He cried throughout the whole shower, saying "it takes too long" for him to clean himself. Well, he's not a baby anymore. He needs to be handling more and more of his own shower so that he can become more independent sometime before he turns thirty. As he started towel-drying himself off afterwards, he informed me, "I'm not a big boy anymore!"

My heart just about broke. My son, who so often fights for his independence, wants to be Mommy's little boy again. Granted, he's four years old. I still consider him to be little even though he usually demands recognition of having turned into a big boy. At times like this, he does not want that recognition. He wants to return to whatever felt safe, secure, and, most likely, nice and lazy for him. I can't say I blame him there, although I certainly am not likely to want to have to handle doing everything for him again. What is relatively easy to accomplish for an infant is a lot more complicated to try doing for a four-year-old.

Besides, Pig Jr. has officially passed the weight in which I will voluntarily carry him anywhere. My standard is as follows: When the kidlet's current weight surpasses the amount of weight I put on during his or her pregnancy, they lose the right to have me carry them anywhere. I do make exceptions for emergencies, but I hope to never have to deal with emergency situations. Do not fear that I would make my child hobble his way into the emergency room if he broke his leg. (Truth be told, I'd probably make his father carry him into the ER in that situation, but let's not get technical.)

In all honesty, Pig Jr. would probably willingly accept it if I started spoon-feeding him again. He would not put up a fuss if I were to give him a bath, force him to take a daily nap, or put on his shoes before heading out somewhere. However, he would object to my picking out his clothing, determining his breakfast cereal for him, or trying to use a hand-over-hand method to help him color a picture. He does love his independence in a number of things.

But boy does it break my heart when he is sobbing and not wanting to be a big boy anymore. I guess it's a good thing he changed his mind again when I pointed out babies don't get to join their older sisters in watching a movie before dinner after a long and tiring day.

Hunting Down Reflux Meds is Enough to Give a Person Heartburn

A couple of weeks ago, my gastroenterologist (GI) told me he wanted me to try a different type of medicine for my acid reflux. The old medicine worked, but not as well as my GI wished. Unfortunately, the new medicine did not work at all, and I spent a miserable few days suffering while on it.

Yesterday, I called my GI's office and spoke with a nurse. She heard my tale of gastric woe and pushed a few buttons on her computer to send in a prescription to the local pharmacy. Unfortunately, it was not the pharmacy to which I asked her to send it. That pharmacist looked at me blankly when I went to pickup the apparently nonexistent prescription last night.

Today, I called my GI's office once more. I spoke with the same nurse, who was quite adamant about having sent off the prescription yesterday. When she realized her mistake, she sent off a prescription to the correct pharmacy. The problem came in when she neglected to cancel the original prescription to the wrong location. The correct pharmacy called me this afternoon to state the prescription could not be filled because it was too soon. Thankfully, the two pharmacies were able to converse and the incorrect pharmacy reversed whatever they had to reverse with the insurance company and the correct pharmacy was then able to fill the prescription. I received another phone call once that was completed and I loaded my hyper kidlets into the car and headed out to pick up the medicine.

Upon being checked out at the pharmacy, I was surprised to hear a cost of less than ten dollars, as it is usually a sixty-dollar copay that we have for that particular medicine. I asked why it cost so little, and was informed that it was the generic of the medicine I need. That's all well and good, but the generic version does not work for me. The pharmacist said she would take care of it, and walked away for a few minutes, presumably to do just that. She returned only to inform me they were out of the brand-name medicine and only had the generic. Did I care to pick it up tomorrow afternoon once they received more, or would I like to transfer the prescription to another pharmacy?

At this point, I feel like talking with a brick wall would yield better results than attempting to get the correct reflux medicine. Once more, I consider this to be a mistake by my GI's office since they are supposed to have on file that I need the brand-name medicine, not the generic. The nurse (or doctor on duty, whatever the case may be) had checked the box that allows substitutions instead of reading my chart. And here I was thinking that my acid reflux medicine was supposed to prevent heartburn, not cause it.

Another Societal Failure...

Most parents have, at one time or another, had to pick up a screaming, yelling, kicking, fighting, belligerent small child and forcibly carry them out of whatever store in which said child decided to throw a tantrum. Some parents, myself included, have had to do this on multiple occasions. There was a year where I had to carry a melting down three-year-old while pushing her younger brother in a stroller for the three-quarters of a mile walk to pick their elder sister up from school almost every day. Fun times. Did I ever mention I am glad that stage of life is over? Sure, older kidlets can still throw temper tantrums, but they tend to involve them stomping off in a huff instead of having to be forcibly removed.

Anyway, last night, a temper tantrum was in full swing at a store in Anytown, USA. This does not involve my family, but the family of one of my husband's friends. One or two details have been changed to protect their identities, but the story is as was reported to me by my husband this morning. The wife was at home and the husband had taken their two daughters out to the store. The younger daughter had knocked over a display at the store. The husband had declared they were cleaning up that mess THIS VERY INSTANT and then they were leaving the store. (I can completely relate to that level of frustration, having been there, done that.) The offending child had refused to clean up the mess that she made, and promptly threw a temper tantrum, complete with the usual kicking, yelling, and raising Cain. I'd be willing to bet this scenario sounds very familiar to just about every parent in this country.

The husband in this situation gave his tantruming daughter a swat on the behind to get her attention and went to pick her up and leave the store when she refused to calm down. His elder daughter can verify that this was all that occurred, and this is completely within the realm of what is acceptable by law in the state in which they reside. But here's what happened after this: a number of people in the store called the police on this husband. They all had witnessed the child's temper tantrum and called the police because the father dared to lay a hand on his child. He was arrested for assault on a minor. Are you stinking kidding me?

It did not matter that the older daughter told the police what had happened. It did not matter that no one said anything to the man about even potentially overreacting to his child. Heck, I'm sure the entire event had been recorded by the store or even by people nearby who had so quickly whipped out their cell phones to call for help. Why not take a look and verify that the man had not behaved inappropriately? Nope. The only thing that mattered was that multiple people called 9-1-1, so the police had to act. He was not allowed to talk with his wife while he was in police custody. His children had to watch their father being led off in handcuffs. His wife had to go pick up their children. He was released, eventually, but his wife was told a social worker would be in contact within the next twenty-four hours. He has a court date set for next week.

Now, I am livid on behalf of this husband, who I don't even know from a hole in the wall. What the heck is wrong with a society that allows some people to beat, starve, and torture their offspring to death but then arrests a man for behaving legally with regards to his own misbehaving child? And what kind of message does this send to the child who threw the temper tantrum? Hey, kid...act however you want, because if Dad tries to stop you, you can always have him arrested. Or does the child wind up having years of guilt-related issues because she feels it is her fault he got in trouble with the law? I can guarantee that those fools who called the police will not be the ones to pay for her eventual therapists.

If someone is being beaten, call the police. If someone is being tortured, call the police. If you see bruises, cuts, or other evidence of abuse, call the police. If a father swats his misbehaving child on the behind, once, and tries to remove her temper-tantrum-ing self from the store in which she is misbehaving, and this is legal in the state in which you are currently standing, keep your fool fingers off of 9-1-1. Society, you dropped the ball on this one.

How do they do it?

Rooster is not feeling well again. Eight days ago, she was sick to her stomach, and we had been under doctor's orders that if she threw up again, we had to head to the emergency room. Thankfully, that advice was unnecessary. Unfortunately, she is a repeat belly issues kid. This means that she will frequently get sick again anywhere from just a couple of days to ten days later. We have to take our time reintroducing foods again or it will push her back over the edge once more.

This past week, she had been existing on a diet of plain pasta, rice cakes, rice milk, and jell-o. We had started to add back other seemingly bland items, such as pretzels and applesauce, but only one new food a day. Some kids return to their normal diets the day after getting sick to their stomach, but that is impossible with Rooster.

After lunch today, the whole family went outside so we could rake leaves together. We had a slow start to the leaves changing colors and falling from their trees, so this was the first time raking was necessary. I took the front yard, which had more leaves but was dangerous for the kidlets because we have no front-yard fence and live on a busy street. Pig and the kidlets took the back yard, which had fewer leaves but was actually harder to rake due to the thickness of the weeds we grow in lieu of grass. (It's not intentional, I assure you. We have put down weed killer and fertilizer mixtures, tried spraying the offending creeping greens with vinegar, and have otherwise glared in the back yard's general direction. Nothing works to grow grass and kill off the weeds. At least they're green weeds.)

Shortly after starting our work, Horse came running out to the front yard. I thought perhaps Pig had sent her out to help me. At nine years of age, she is responsible enough to know to stay on the lawn and not jump in front of oncoming traffic. Nope. She instead told me that the others had to go inside because Rooster's belly felt "puffy" again. Apparently, we either added foods back too quickly or we went too slowly and she got constipated, which can also make her throw up again. It's an almost no-win guessing game situation, and Rooster is the one to pay the price.

I stayed outside to finish the raking that still needed to be completed. After all, I had handled puke-clean-up duty last Friday. I went inside every so often to check on my little girl, who was indeed in pain from a bloated belly. Pig's initial diagnosis of Rooster simply being overdramatic had rapidly changed to his concern over her welfare, and he stayed with her for a good long while as she battled with tummy cramps. I kept fleeing back outside, feeling helpless to make her feel any better.

That was when I started wondering: How do parents of terminally ill children do it? My daughter is miserable now, and might be miserable again over the next month, but will eventually be back to her normal self, and I can barely handle her feeling so sick. How do some parents deal with their children feeling horrible without knowing they will ever feel better? How do they comfort a child whose only respite from misery will be their eventual death? I can brush my daughter's hair out of her eyes, tell her I hope she feels better soon, and know that she probably will. How do parents hold back their tears and stay strong for their children when they feel there is no hope? How do they decide whether or not to tell their child about a terminal diagnosis? How do they make level-headed decisions about their child's health when they are stuck in a lose-lose situation? How on earth do they take care of themselves and any other children when faced with the day-to-day health concerns for one of their offspring? How do they cope while watching their baby suffer for what surely must seem to be an eternity?

I hope to God I never find out the answers to those questions. (And where's a drive-by Zolofting when you need it?)

Sunrise...

Normally, I tend to dread Thursday and Friday mornings. Those are the two days of the school week that Horse needs to be dropped off at school early. It's challenging to get all three kidlets up, dressed, and functioning, feed everybody, give Pig Jr. his nebulizer treatment, pack everybody up to drive Horse to school by 7:30AM, return home to finish getting the other two kidlets ready for school, then head back out the door once more. I am constantly in motion from five in the morning until I get home at a quarter to nine after getting all three of them to school at their separate times. Then it's on to more work here.

Needless to say, we rarely dilly-dally on those two mornings.

This morning, however, as we were rushing out the door for the first time, I stopped everybody so the kidlets could take a look at the beautiful sunrise. Our view of the sky from our backyard, which is where the garage and car are located, gave us the perfect spot to stare at the gorgeous purples, pinks, oranges, and reds that were just starting to appear over the horizon.

Time almost seemed to stand still as the four of us ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the delightful array of colors that spread before us. Rooster asked me if I could take a picture, so I whipped out my trusty cell phone and snapped a quick shot. Naturally, all three kidlets asked if they could then see the picture. Never mind that they had the real thing to enjoy!

Two minutes later, we were on the road on the way to school. By that time, the entire sky had just filled with the most fascinatingly beautiful oranges and reds I have ever seen. No matter which way you turned your head, you could still see those majestic colors spreading from their point of origin, with the most intense colors off in the direction we had originally spied from our backyard.

I mentioned a rhyme that I had learned years ago. "Red sky at night; sailor's delight. Red sky in the morning; sailor take warning." I do not know how accurate that saying is, nor do I know it's original source. This was simply what I recall from decades ago and was now able to share with my kidlets. Rooster wondered if today's red sky meant we would be getting more snow. I told her that at forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, snow was highly unlikely. I think all three kidlets hoped I was wrong.

Five minutes after seeing this explosion of color, we were once again on our way home to complete the next stage in our harried morning routine. The sky above us had faded to a slight pink with a mostly gray cloud cover to hide the blue sky. The two younger kidlets were still talking about how beautiful the sky had been when it was all aglow. We arrived at home, hurried inside, and finished getting ready to start our day. Our routine and usual rush pushed thoughts of that superb sunrise to the far corners of our minds.

Oh, but what a splendid way to greet the dawn!

Have fun at school, or else!

It occurred to me this morning that I have, for the past few years, sent my kidlets off to school in the morning with completely different types of good-byes. Each kidlet is unique, and I have tailored their usual good-bye kiss with a comment to match who they are.

Horse, as the oldest and most well-behaved kidlet, hears variations on "Have a great day at school! I love you!" She is the one kidlet I can trust to follow the school rules, do her best work, and pay attention in class. The fact that she adores her teacher probably helps keep her focused, and she's not quite old enough to get distracted by crushes. (Just the other day, in fact, Horse informed me a boy in her class told her that he liked her. She said to me, "Mom, doesn't he know we are far too young for such nonsense?!?" I was immensely relieved that she is so level-headed at age nine. Talk to me again in a few years and I shall probably think differently.)

Rooster, my self-appointed school wanderer, hears me find different ways of saying "Have fun and stay with your class! I love you!" Just last school year, she was found by a school employee while she was wandering the halls. She was near the (unlocked on the inside, locked from the outside) front doors at the time. She also has been complaining of hating school because it's not fun, so part of the routine is to ask that she find a way to have fun. I'm thinking she's not quite following my instructions, but there's nothing I can do to fix that one.

And then there's Pig Jr. My youngest kidlet is also the one who is most likely to react physically to any and all perceived threats. Part of that is because he is young and has speech delays. Part of that is because his sisters taught him well at home. (I am not amused with all three of them over that fact.) His sensory issues also come into play when people, intentionally or accidentally, invade his personal space. The problem is that his personal space varies from day to day, so what might be fine one day is excruciatingly too close for comfort for him the next. Regardless of the reason for his behavior on any given day, his morning send-off usually consists of "I love you! Behave yourself! Use your words and not your hands!" Come to think of it, I'm not sure he even knows that "good-bye" is a possible comment to make when walking away from someone else. I sure haven't used that phrase with him, to the best of my knowledge.

I do hope all three of my kidlets have fun at school. I want them to learn a lot, too. But the last message they hear from me as they walk into the building is the demand they have a good day, a threat about them trying to escape, or a thinly-veiled warning about misbehaving. Oh, well. At least I consistently remember to tell them I love them.

Culture? What culture?

A friend of mine has been doing some wonderful work trying to connect mothers from all over this planet. She is currently celebrating the first anniversary of her blogging project, in the form of additional networking of blogs from mothers in different countries. At least, this is my understanding. It has been a crazy few days here, so I might be misunderstanding something important. She asked blogging mothers that she knows to connect to her site with their own blogs about motherhood and their culture.

At the time my friend made this request, I informed her that I doubted very highly that she would want my take on motherhood, given that I had just spent the day before cleaning up vomit from a very sick kidlet. Now that I am thinking on it further, I doubt I could come up with anything intelligent to say about my culture either.

I once saw a shirt that made perfect sense to me. It read, "Bacteria: It's the only culture some people have." I laughed my fool head off at the time, and found myself completely agreeing. Sadly, this was the first thing that came to mind upon reading my friend's blog request. It's strange, but I do not consider myself or my family to be a part of anything even remotely related to culture, unless it involves all of the germs and viruses the kidlets routinely carry home from school.

Just in case I could still scrape together a blog entry for my friend, I looked up the definition of culture. Okay, fine. It's not as if I researched it or even opened a dictionary. I opened Google, typed in "definition of culture," and read the first thing that appeared. It was as follows: "The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively." Huh. Apparently, my cultural extent is limited to the occasional completion of a crossword puzzle and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over my kidlets' drawings, paintings, and other creative productions. Using that definition, I am not sure what on earth I could possibly contribute to a discussion of motherhood and culture. I love my kidlets and could surely talk someone's ear off about why I am happy to be a mother and how blessed I am to have my three darlings in my life. I could also talk a person's ear off about how much work motherhood is, and how nothing can prepare a person for the complete and utter loss of self that sometimes occurs when in the midst of childrearing. But culture? I have no idea where to even begin on that one.

I do not consider myself to be a part of any cultural group. I am an American by birth, but the United States are so diverse and varied that there really is no one defining characteristic that screams to me that THIS is what it means to be American. My husband holds dual citizenship with Canada, thus making our American-citizen kidlets also Canadian-citizen kidlets, thanks to a law that Canada put into effect not too long ago. However, I do not consider my family to be part of a Canadian culture either. Why would we be? Two of our kidlets never even set foot out of the state in which they were born, let alone out of the country! I celebrate nothing of my heritage when it concerns my ancestors' countries of origin. I do not celebrate any particular artistic endeavors unless it comes from the minds of my offspring. I am a member of a book club, but I hardly consider it to be a newsworthy cultural event for me to decide I like books that don't require me to think. It's almost as if I am part of an anti-culture, if one is even possible.

Truth be told, this is just who I am. I love my family, feel blessed to have them in my lives, and hope to live long enough to meet my great-great-grandchildren. I am not aware of being part of any culture, although I suppose it is impossible for that to be true. We do get enough "culture" through all the school germs that I suppose we can always qualify that way. ;-)

I think I am just going to have to cheer my friend on from the sidelines. Happy Anniversary to the World Moms Blog!

Why I should have stuck with my old reflux meds...

I know this will come as a total shocker here, but I swear raising my kidlets gives me heartburn. (Gray hairs, too, but that's a story for another day...) In all seriousness, since my pregnancy days, I have purchased the largest, most obnoxious packages of Tums I can find. When I was pregnant with my reflux-kidlet, I, too, had to be medicated under doctor's orders for severe heartburn. I swear the two were related, because neither of my other kidlets have reflux and Tums were sufficient to handle the heartburn those two dished out while in-utero. Tums have worked well since their respective births, too.

A few years back, I wound up consulting a gastroenterologist (GI) as a means of dealing with a wonky digestive tract. He happened to ask me if I ever have trouble swallowing anything. My response was, "Doesn't everybody?" Apparently, the answer to my question was a resounding, "No!" I honestly thought everybody had their food stick in their throats at least once a day. He prescribed reflux medicine to see if my Tums-covered heartburn and swallowing issues were related. Thankfully, those meds, combined with some scanning/biopsy procedure to make sure my esophagus was undamaged, seemed to take care of my problem and no further testing was required.

Fast forward to the past few months. My house is on the market. We had major expenses to address in this house in order to live here while trying to sell it. The kidlets have their own health issues. My husband has his own health issues that invariably lead to me having to drive him to the emergency room every few months. I am under a lot more stress than normal. My nice, happy reflux medicine is just not quite cutting it anymore. Tums is once more my best friend. At my yearly appointment with my GI, he told me he wanted to have me try a different reflux medicine to see if that would work any better. I agreed, figuring it was worth attempting.

So for the past few days now, I have been on a different medicine. It is not working nearly as well as the other one was, but I figured I would deal with it for the three weeks until I followed up with my GI. I am a bit bummed by this, mostly because it costs a fourth of what my old medicine was. I also have far too much fun trying to pronounce Omeprazole. It always comes out as "onomatopoeia."

This morning, I went to take the new pill for the fifth day. It stuck in my throat. (Swish. Glug. Darn that onomatopoeia...) I drank a whole glass of water. It stayed stuck. I drank more water. It didn't budge. I got out a pretzel rod, ate that, and drank more water. The pill finally went down. However, I then had heartburn from drinking far too much water, a burning stomach from eating before the requisite hour of medicine was completed, felt like the inside of my throat was irritated somehow, and had the medicine work even less than it had the four days prior. Epic medicine fail.

Tomorrow, I plan on going back to my old reflux meds. I will still swallow Tums as if they were candy. At least I know I will be able to swallow the old pills and still have them work somewhat. And the next time my doctor suggests trying a different medicine, I shall blow raspberries at him. "Thhpbt!"