rusty wheels may move of their own volition

My daughter has been sighing a lot lately.

Sighing, along with eye-rolling, are her primary means of exercise.

I’ve been expecting the long, drawn out sighs, the eye rolls, and the sarcastic comments.  I had been preparing for them since that day in my OB/GYN’s office, when I first learned that I was carrying a girl, and she was, thankfully, not twins.  I was expecting this sort of behavior to surface when she was around fourteen, maybe earlier if all the talk about hormones in milk and accelerated puberty is true. I wasn’t expecting it at four.

What’s she sighing about? Oh, many things:

-Not being able to match her toenail polish to her pants. (She’s big into the madras trend and I just don’t have that many nailpolish colors.)

-Not being able to choose the theme of her new, big-girl bedroom. (She’s outgrown Disney princess and now wants a Hannah Montana, ICarly or Lady Gaga room.  I shudder to think what a Lady Gaga room would look like.  I imagine it as a cross between the backstage of an Erasure concert circa 1988, a MAC counter having a sale, and that dungeon scene from Pulp Fiction. With florescent chenille pillows.)

-Not being able to sleep over her friends’ houses. (Her friends include kids she meets in the checkout line at the grocery store, and the toothless vagrant we always see wandering around town. I told her his home is very likely under the highway overpass, but she thinks camping out there would be a great adventure, and even volunteered to bring the marshmallows.)

Chief among her many complaints is the fact that we don’t have a dog.  She’s bored with the cats, just as they’re  finally getting used to her. Link, and occasionally Zelda, will wander up to her and nudge her, looking for a scratch behind the ears or the leftover milk in her cereal bowl.  She’ll sigh at them, and will pet them rather reluctantly.

“I wish you were a dog,” she tells them.  “You’re so boring.”

Not a dog

Millie has dog-dar.  If there is a dog in Target, a bichon-frise tucked under someone’s arm or a Jack Russell sprinkling the patio-furniture display, speeding up that rustic, lived-in look, she knows.   When we go to the park, she immediately locates the nearest Pit Bull and makes a beeline for it.  She is always careful to ask the owner’s permission before patting a dog, because Joe from Blues Clues taught that this was proper dog etiquette.

She’ll tie her jump rope around her brother-his waist, not his neck-and walk him around the house, the yard, and the neighborhood.  She’ll fetch him a cookie if he’s done some especially good trick.  Her brother, patient kid he is, just loves the attention. I think he’d be a llama if she asked him.  He’s already quite good at spitting.

Also not a dog

I wouldn’t mind having a dog. Hell, I’d have a whole menagerie if we had the room for it.  I love animals. (Except for birds, but they’re tiny dinosaurs, and also evil.  You allow them into your house at your own peril.)

I had two dogs growing up. The first, Bruno, was a mutt who was already an established part of the family when I arrived.  I don’t remember much about him, only that he would jump up onto my bed during thunderstorms. He ran away one day. If I was a romantic, I’d say it was because he ran off to find my father, who left a week or so prior, but I’m a realist, and I think he probably met the business end of a mack truck.

Poor Bruno.

When I was in seventh grade, I went to the mall one day and come back with a puppy.  Sandy, a pure-bred cocker spaniel, was a pet-store/puppy mill dog, adorable, sad-eyed, but boy, he had lots of issues.   He had epilepsy. Digestive issues. And he was extraordinarily over-sexed.

Looking back, we should have gotten him fixed, but we thought we were going to breed him, and raise adorable little puppies.  Sandy never got his chance to…er…spread his pure bred genes, so he…er…took his frustrations out on other things. People’s legs. The furniture. Every stuffed animal I owned.  During my high school years, friends would come over just to toss a stuffed rabbit in Sandy’s direction.  The boys, in particular, enjoyed doing this.

Poor Sandy.

I’ve been looking at Petfinder, just doing some introductory research, trying to figure out what the best type of dog would be for our family.  I want one that’s good with kids and cats, obviously, but I don’t want one that’s too yappy or one that needs a ton of exercise. (We’re lazy.) I also don’t want a dog that can, or would want to, nestle inside a pocketbook. To me, that isn’t a dog. That’s a tamagotchi. Or a chunky bracelet that’s developed sentience.  I’d like a mutt, ideally. Some scruffy looking creature that needs a good home. Todd agrees with me, and thinks dog-walking  would be a good way for him to get his cardiologist recommended daily exercise.  He wants to name it Dexter, after his favorite fictional serial killer.

Things have changed in dog world.  I’d hoped we’d just be able to visit a shelter, fall in love with a dog and bring him home.  Not that fast, Marmaduke.  Most shelters require you go through a lengthy screening process before they’ll even let you look at a dog.  You can browse adoptable pets online, but by the time you fill out the application form, write a mission statement, explain your thorough ten-year plan for the dog’s obedience training and education, and get sworn affidavits from the dog-owners in your life, the pooch you fell in virtual love with might already be adopted.  I swear some shelters do bait & switch marketing. They’ll post pictures of a lovable, slobbery dog but the only ones they have actually up for adoption are the foul-tempered, skittish, losers of recent dog-fights. I feel for those dogs, I do, but I don’t have time to devote to socializing a traumatized animal.

I have my hands full with the human animals in my care.  Have you seen Quin lately? Good.  He’s not ready for polite society.

So, the dog search is on hold, for now.  It would be great if we could get Millie a dog for her 5^th birthday, if only to put an end to some of the sighing. But we’re going to wait until the right dog comes along.

In the meantime, maybe we’ll get a pink, rhinestone collar for Mr. Link.  Maybe then Millie will pay attention to him.

Poor Link.

I think you're an autumn

Last week I broke down and bought one of those lunchable snack packs. Yes, I know that they are the worst possible things that you can feed a child. Artery clogging disgusting little packets of certain death, but they were on sale, and I had a coupon, so I tossed them in my cart figuring my finicky kids would probably never touch them, and I’d be the one risking my coronary health as I succumbed to late night munchies.

I woke up the next morning to find Millie sitting at the kitchen table, and the open lunchable packets thrown across the floor. She was assembling the little cubes of ham and cheese-like product into neat little sandwiches, marching them in a line across the table and into her mouth.

Oh, and this was the day after we watched Babe: Pig in the City. I might have been a bit icked by this if the ham in lunchables was in any way a by-product of a pig. I’m not sure what animal those meat cubes come from, but I’m pretty sure it’s not one you’d see on an actual farm.

Unless that farm is in hell.

“Mom,” she said, holding up a miniature cracker. “These are the best things ever!”

Thinking this may be a way to break the pancakes-waffles-PB&J-chicken nugget stalemate lunchtime has become, I bought ingredients to make my own, healthier lunchables. Real cheese. Whole wheat crackers. Low fat, low salt bologna. I used cookie cutters to cut the cheese and bologna into little shapes, and it went over spectacularly, with both kids making (and eating!) different sandwich combos.

The bologna, in particular was a big it. Soon, Millie started asking for the whole slice. Then Quin, the consummate chicken nugget man, asked for “bwoney.”

Yesterday, when I was sitting at the kitchen table, writing my Christmas cards, both kids went into the fridge for more bologna and, this time, slices of cheese to go with it. Happy they were getting their own snack, and not bugging me, I let them do it, and continued peeling labels and stamps.

It wasn’t until I went to plug in the Christmas tree that I realized my mistake. It’s a universal fact that kids won’t eat bologna rind. I sure didn’t. I remember tossing it to my dog, Sandy, who would catch it in mid-air. It was the only little bit of grace that poor dog possessed.

There were no rinds on their plates. None in the trash. None stuffed under the sofa cushions or inside Lightening McQueen’s hauler truck.

Behind the Christmas tree, on the wall, there was a work of post-modern art that would make Jackson Pollock proud. Right before he puked.

A crooked line of circle bologna and square slices of American cheese, arranged in a pattern.

Circle.

Square.

Circle.

Square with a nibbled corner.

I recognized Quin’s teeth marks on that one.

At first they had used scotch tape to hang up the slices, but realized they didn’t did it as bologna has a sticky cohesiveness of it’s own. A couple of slices had been up there for days, right over the heater, baking behind the lights of the tree. They had hardened to plastic, one actually seemed to have become part of the wall.

I had to use a scraper to get that one off.

I should be pleased they like shapes and pattern recognition and all that. Even so, I think we’ll stick to chicken nuggets for a while.

What can we destroy today?

-Wake up

-Brush Teeth

-Beat each other about the head

-Watch Blue’s Clues

-Recreate scenes from Finding Nemo in toilet with pages from Finding Nemo coloring book and Mommy’s favorite bubble bath.

-Test absorbency of new toilet paper brand by throwing entire roll in toilet.

-Paint toenails, toes, and most of calf using red dry erase marker.

-Practice writing alphabet on hardwood floor with dry erase marker.

-Beat each other about the head.

-Watch Caliou

-Make neighbor child cry.

-Gnaw on some tasty tree branches.

-Run into street and laugh at oncoming cars.

-Watch Super Why.

-Beat each other about the head.

-Terrorize postman by grabbing his hand when he tries to put mail through the slot.

-Shampoo each other’s hair with apple juice.

-Sprinkle juice on sheets, comforters and pillows to make them smell pretty.

-Decide kitty litter is actually sandbox, and a good place to hid matchbox cars.

-Bite Mommy when she tries to pull you away from kitty litter and cars.

-Pull Mommy’s favorite books from bookcase, assemble them into crude stairs, climb them to reach the dry erase marker Mommy has hidden on top of bookcase, and continue coloring fingernails and hands with dry erase marker.

-Pull stuffing from sofa pillows and toss it around living room to make it look like it’s snowing.

-Try to make snowman with pillow stuffing, using yogurt to help it stick upright.

-Make Mommy cry.

-Beat each other about the head with wet, apple juice soaked sheets pulled from laundry bin.

-Tell Mommy you don’t love her anymore, then try to give her eskimo kisses with snotty, runny nose.

-Greet Daddy when he comes home, snug in PJs and acting like perfect angels.

-Eat cookies Daddy has brought home as treat for good little children.

-Go to sleep.

Double Trouble

I was down in the cellar, doing yet another load of laundry, when I heard a faint but all too familiar cackle. I panicked, thinking I hadn’t shut the cellar door securely, and raced toward the stairs. The door was closed, and I sighed with relief when I reached the top stair and heard the cackle again. Quin was just outside the door. If I ha left it open even a crack, he would have wormed his way through and toppled down the cellar stairs.

After waiting for him to move away from the door, I reached up and tried to turn the handle. I jostled it again, with a little more force. It’s an old house, and our doors sometime stick. But the door wasn’t stuck. It was locked. The clever little bugger had turned the lock in the knob, trapping me in the cellar.

I called Millie to the door, and tried for about fifteen minutes to explain how to unlock the knob.

“Mama, I can’t do it.”

“Mama, it’s not working.”

“Mama, we need Daddy.”

She abandons me. I call for her a couple of minutes later.

“Mama, I in bed. I so tired.”

“Where’s your brother?” I yell, pushing my shoulder against the door, trying to force it open.

“I don’t know. ‘Nite Mama.”

I remember the bulkhead, covered with plastic sheeting to help minimize leaks from melting snow. I have no other option, I manage to open it, and, covered with cobwebs, I tear through the sheeting with a rusty old screwdriver and ascend into the backyard.

The front door, of course, is locked, so I try the backdoor. I usually keep that locked too, because I am a paranoid city girl and worry we’ll be robbed or raped or murdered in our beds, but Todd is much more trusting and always leaves it unlocked.

It figures that he would pick today of all days to listen to my paranoid rantings and actually lock it.

I lean against the door and hear lots of scuffling sounds, punctuated with squeals of laughter, and am certain the children have somehow set the cat on fire. I go to the garage, get a gardening spade, wrap it in a beach towel cause I’ve seen people do that in movies, and hurl it toward one of the windows in the back door.

It bounces off, and when it falls to the ground, the digging part comes apart from the handle. I grab a rake, and somehow manage to make an inch thick crack in the window. I worm my hand inside. (Finally my freakishly tiny hands have proved useful!) When I reach the knob I’m so relieved, I can’t even feel the glass scraping my arm. I unlock the door, pull my arm free an walk into the kitchen.

Millie, having decided a nap was not in the cards, had vaulted the “child-proof” kitchen gate, pulled a chair over to the counter, and grabbed the brand new bag of jelly beans she had insisted I buy at the grocery store just last night. She had torn a hole in the middle of the bag, and a jelly bean trail led back to the gate. She was sitting on one side, looking quite pleased with herself, and Quin was standing on the other, looking very much like one of those puffer fishes ready to blow, his cheeks crammed full of jelly beans.

Telling it like it is since 2005

I was at the changing table, cleaning up a particularly nasty poop of Quin’s, when Millie walks over, grabs the edge of the table and peers over at her brother.

“Baby,” she says, her face stern and serious. “Stop grabbin your junk.”

Free to a good home

This morning, over breakfast (Rice krispies & bananas):

TYO: Num Num, Hi Momeeeeee

ME: Mommy? Where’d that come from? I thought I was Muma

TYO:No, mommeeeeeeeee

ME: Do Ty and Sam call Auntie Sue Mommy?

TYO: Yes, Auntie Soup is mommee too

ME: Ok, you can call me Mommy if you want to.

TYO: Whas gonna work?

ME: TeamWORK! What’s gonna work?

TYO: TEAM WOK! Animal trouble some where. This…is…Seweous. (Pause. Fills spoon full of Rice Krispies, opens mouth, spills milk down the front of her overalls.) Hi Jen.

ME: What?

TYO: Hi Jen. Hi Jenny. Jenny Jenny Jen.

ME: Ok, yes, that’s my name. You can call me that is you want to, but I’d rather you call me mommy or muma.

TYO: Why?

ME: It makes me feel more special.

TYO: Why?

ME:Because I like being your muma.

TYO: OK muma. (Pauses. Tries the cereal thing again. Fails.) Daddy is Todd?

ME: Yes.

TYO: Todd Todd. Why?

Me: Daddy’s name is Todd, like my name is Jenny and your name is Millie and baby’s name is Quin. Everybody has a name.

TYO: And everybody poops.

ME: Yes, everybody poops.

TYO: Millie poop, baby poop, daddy poop, Ming Ming poop, kitty poop, zelda poop…poop, poop, poop!

The Pottery Barn Kids catalog came today. It always makes me feel inept. Inept as a homemaker. Inept as a mom. Inept as a human being. I drool a bit looking at the kid’s rooms, but really, is anyone really that organized? Really?

I also just wiped up a spill with my sock.

I so do not deserve to get the Pottery Barn Kids Catalog.

Prompts-Catch Up
I’ve missed quite a few of these.

You volunteer at a pioneer/colonial village. What’s the role you play there and why?

I’d probably be the harried looking pioneer mother, with a brood full of little girls in pinafores and boys in dirty overalls clinging to my legs. Modern suburban women would look at my tired, weary face and wonder how on earth I survived without portable DVD players, Boppy pillows and Online Grocery ordering. The tour guide will be quick to tell the visitors that I die of exhaustion at the quite elderly age of 23.
Did you have a hideout or clubhouse as kid? If you did, describe it. If you didn’t, describe what would have been your ideal one. If you did but you just didn’t like yours all that much, feel free to make up one as well.

I think I’ve told the story of my refrigerator box house before. It was wonderful. Fridge boxes were a hot commodity in my neighborhood. I It wasn’t our fridge, I remember that much, but because I was the youngest kid in the neighborhood, the older kids agreed to let me have it. I asked around the neighborhood until I’d found carpet and wallpaper remnants, fabric for curtains, etc. I even made a mailbox. I was big into Little Ponies at the time, and had about a dozen. I made doors and mailboxes for each pony too. Unfortunately, I left the fridge box out in the rain one too many a time, and it disintegrated. I have pictures though. One day, I’ll upload them.

Write a few lines of dialogue between two people who know each other very well. The first person has just baked or cooked something the second person is tasting. The second person finds that the dish tastes terrible:

“Whazzat?”

“It’s chicken honey. You like chicken.”

“No chicken. Want pop!”

“No popsicles until after you eat your lunch.”

“Want RED pop.”

“After lunch.”

“Blue pop?”

“You can have a pop, any color that you want, after you eat lunch.”

“O-tay….yuck. Yucky poop po.”

“It’s not Yucky Poo Poo. It’s chicken. You love chicken. Ok, it’s not chicken nuggets, it’s leftover chicken from Muma and Daddy’s dinner. It’s got sauce and mushrooms on it. It’s very yummy. Rachael ray says so.”

“Is not chick-can Muma. Is mess.”
1. At your 20th high school reunion, your teen nemesis throws her martini
on you and accuses you of making a fortune from making fun of her in your
books. What do you do?

See, this is why I stopped writing my YA. I was terrified of this exact scenario. Still, if it were to happen, I would remind my nemesis (nemesi?) that I’m sorry she/he was personally offended by what was obviously a work of convoluted fiction, and perhaps, if he/she is so quick to anger, he/she might want to seek some psychiatric help.

2. Millie pulls a Michelle Tanner and comes home with a miniature donkey.
You decide to keep it and rent it out to birthday parties. You need a
costume for yourself and the donkey and a theme for the business. What
are they?

I would call the Donkey Horace, because I’ve always wanted a Donkey named Horace. Our schtick would be that I am a poor peasant from the Middle Ages, off on a pilgrimage, because it would be all, like, educational and stuff for the kids. I’d show up for the party ripe with my own filth, crawling with fleas and missing several teeth. I would bathe Horace with the garden house, shovel fistfuls of cake into my mouth with my grubby hands, and pick fleas off my clothing for goody bag gifts. I would also beg for alms, and remind the partygoers that they are all hell-bound heathens, destined to burn for all of eternity.

3. An eccentric friend of the family leaves you her haunted Irish castle.
Of course she has a clause that you can’t truly own the castle until
you’ve spent the night there. Who do you choose to spend the night with
you – Hermione, Scooby Doo, or Don Knotts?

Oh, Don Knotts of course. Hermione would annoy the crap out of me, and with Scooby Doo on board, you know the Harlem Globetrotters can’t be far behind, and I don’t want any basketball dribbling on my priceless haunted Irish floors. Plus Don is certain to draw the ghosts ire, and they’ll exhaust themselves trying to lure him into a series of hilarious bobby traps, and they’ll forgot all about little old me.

Top Ten reasons I should be happy that I’m once again pregnant and will have to deal with morning sickness, swollen ankles and sleepless nights all for the wonderful opportunity to have two kids under two, both in diapers at the same time:

• Patron with Infant parking spots at grocery stores
• Stretchy maternity clothes means no reason to continue summer diet
• Strawberry milk
• Hubby is forced to clean the kitty litter
• Good excuse to get out of family functions
• Strawberry ice cream
• Sleepless nights are good time to sort through husbands sock drawer and pair mismatched socks
• Family of Four discount coupon packs at local amusement parks means we save $
• Big belly will counterbalance weight of big baby when I’m forced to pick her up every 5 seconds

And the #1 reason-Chocolate covered Oreos

In my ideal, Technicolor tinted dream world, I would shop in an open air market for fresh organically grown vegetables, meat and gourmet cheese to prepare in a unique four course meal that is tasty and filling despite being low in Transaturated fat, sodium and complex carbohydrates.

In reality, I’m going to defrost a pound of ground chuck in the microwave to use with a stale box of hamburger helper.

In the aforementioned la-la land, I would spend several hours playing challenging, developmentally stimulating games with the baby, helping awaken sections of her infant brain specially pliable to dead languages, Pythagorean theorems and color coordination. And I would have perfectly groomed eyebrows.

Instead, I will plop her into her exersaucer, hoping a baby Einstein DVD will distract her while I make said hamburger helper, do laundry, make out bills, and hopefully, pluck my eyebrows.

In the world I wish were true, I would have enough time to paint my toenails, revise a chapter, write a critique or pen elegant and sincere thank you letters to my family in Ireland.

I’ll most likely go home, clean up some cat vomit, wash a few thousand dishes, saturate myself while bathing the baby, code work invoices and burn my tongue on some frizzled piece of ground beef left simmering on the stove for too long.

Dear daughter,

I promise to buy you a pony on your 8th birthday if you’ll do me a big favor and come a little bit early. If you come tomorrow, I will glue a horn on it’s head and you’ll have your very own pseudo-unicorn. All the other little girls in the neighborhood will go mad with jealousy. Yes, you’re not due for another 24 days, but today is the fourth day in a row over 90 degrees and it’s terribly uncomfortable lugging around your considerable bulk. Plus, the whole kicking me several times in the spleen and leaning on my bladder so that I have to run to the bathroom every 20 minutes? It’s not very fun for me. Especially when I’m in the checkout line at Target.

Seriously, think about it. Your room is all ready. Your daddy, whom I’m starting to think is a bit unhinged, has spent the last several days refinishing your changing table, sweating profusely while painting it a lovely shade of lilac. He’s lost several pounds in water weight. The cats have taken to sleeping in your newly assembled crib, and despite my constant shooing, they’re starting to get rather wily about sneaking in to your room and sometime look so damn cute and comfy, I don’t want to move them. If you don’t come soon, you might have to trade your crib for Link’s beat up bean-bag cat bed, and I must warn you, it smells a bit like grilled turkey Fancy Feast.

According to all the books I’ve read, you’re fully baked and perfectly capable of entering the world. Perhaps you’re just scared-well, life is a bit terrifying and there are some really horrid things going on in DC and the Middle East, but the world itself isn’t so bad. There’s ice cream at least, and aforementioned cats. Perhaps you’re staying put to spite me, and that my dear, is not a good way to begin a parent-child relationship. If you come out soon, I’ll consider letting you get that body piercing when you’re 15, but only if you promise not to show it off to your grandparents at Christmas.

Thanks for listening,

Your mom

A Baby Story should be removed from the basic cable airwaves. Or an explicit warning should air before each cringe-worthy program. I’ve started Tivoing it. Big mistake. I couldn’t sleep last night after watching the graphic labor endured by Suzie Earthmother, who squeezed her twins out over three days of excruciating labor with nothing but screams to comfort her. I have nothing but respect for people who can do this. I’ve never been able to handle pain, so, two weeks before my due date I’m going to write EPIDURAL on my belly with a permanent marker. Just in case I’m incapable of speaking when labor day finally arrives.

A woman I work with wonders why I didn’t schedule a c-section. She did, and raves about the experience.

“General anesthesia,” she said. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

I’m not a big fan of elective surgery. If a 14-inch railroad spike were lodged in my duodenum, I’d only want it removed if it were interfering with basic life functions.

I feel asleep on the couch last night while watching TV. When I was dozing, my husband wrote “PROPERTY OF TODD” on my arm in permanent marker. We’re out of soap, and the raspberry body wash I used this morning wasn’t caustic enough to remove all the marker. I got dressed in the dark and put on shirt with a 3/4 length sleeves. I’m sitting here at my desk with the word ODD clearly written across my forearm.

I could blame the pregnancy hormones, but I AM normally this dumb.

Memorable quotes from my evening with Terry Pratchett:

Quote of the night: “Everything I needed to know I learned at my public library. School just taught me how to spit.”

From my hubby after hearing Terry talk about how much money he has made from writing Discworld: “That’s it- you’re never watching TV again until you write a book, preferably one that can be sequelized and merchanized.”

On collaborating with Neil Gaiman: “Neil’s fans tend to be very thin, gothic girls and chubby guys, whereas mine tend to be very thin guys and chubby girls.”

From my hubby: “You do realize we’re the only two people in this room who have sex regularly?”

Me: “Yes, but only with each other, so that isn’t all that impressive.”

It was a decent crowd for a Tuesday night at the BPL-about 60 or so. We waited about an hour to have our books signed. Terry commented on my first edition “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents” and signed it, With Lots of Cheese, Terry Pratchett.

What a lovely man. Very sincere, very appreciative of his fans, very down to earth-I just wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home with me.

It was nice to skip work and spend the day hanging out at the BPL. It reminded me of my teenage years when I used to skip school to hang out at the BPL. Hubby had never been there- the little country boy-so I gave him the grand tour. The BPL is like my church. If only there were a wall of votive candles lined up along the back wall, it would truly be perfect. I’d pay five cents and light a candle and offer up a prayer to the literary gods and ask them to bring me bountiful word count blessings.

I even took hubby up to the stacks, to my favorite dark and dusty make-out place, but it had been converted into a foreign language section and there was a homeless guy fast asleep on the floor, a yellowing Metro newspaper covering his face.

(Sigh) Nothing is ever as romantic as we remember it being in our bygone youth.