Ballistic

I just locked my three-year-old out of the house. It's not as bad as it sounds, and it is. I can see him and hear him, because he is screaming and kicking the sliding glass door. And he's in my fenced in back yard, so fortunately, or maybe in this case UNfortunately, no one can come up and kidnap him, or stupidly offer me money for him.

He kicked me repeatedly at the grocery store, deliberately dumped a cup of Bryce's breakfast fruit cocktail juice on to the living room floor (because he thinks that's funny, and so does Bryce) during the five minutes I had to put the groceries away before leaving for the soccer game, ran away from the soccer field (where the coach was attempting to let him play, because he said he wanted to and we must give His Highness whatever the hell he wants at all times, except of course for when he's saying he wants something and then bolts half a mile away for no reason other than to make his minions jump, yet again) and refused to come to me while Bryce played soccer with no one watching, screamed in my ear for half an hour while I held him for the rest of Bryce's game, refused to stay in his bed at nap time, walked into Bryce's room while he was sleeping, banged his fists and kicked the wall during a ten-minute old-school stand-in-the-corner punishment, and the final infringement, the one that landed him locked in the back yard to keep me from breaking his neck and sauteeing him for dinner, bolted up the stairs screaming that he was going to wake Bryce up, then banged on his door maniacally.

In the three minutes it took me to write the first half of that paragraph, he moved from crying and yelling at the door to grabbing the nearest plastic toy and using that to "knock." He's back inside, staying right next to the living room door way, threatening to bolt upstairs again. This is his attempt to get me to play with him, which I refuse to do during nap time. If he doesn't take a nap, he has to find something quiet to do until Bryce wakes up. He shouldn't be rewarded with a snack or a movie or mom sitting down to play a game with him. But who the hell needs any of that, anyway, when you can just torture the household, wake up your sibling, disrespect and defy your red-faced, flashy-eyed mom with spittle in the corners of her mouth, and destroy the house? I mean, movies? Snacks? Screw that.

I'm about to lose it. I've come close to losing it at least three times. It was the back yard or call 911. I don't know how to fix this. Yes, yes, fullness and life. I know. But it really seems like fullness and life should be different from fear and desperation and guilt and failure. For instance, I don't picture Catherine running like an idiot across the soccer field to get a defiant Birdy back to watch Ben's soccer game. I don't picture her holding a kid screaming on her hip who is perfectly welcome to join in the game but simply won't because now that the opportunity is there, the desire isn't. I don't picture her, even after a day of record-breaking challenges from normally happy Birdy, losing so much a sense of reality and control that she would grab Birdy's shoulders and violently lift her eye-level and growl into her face, "I'M JUST NOT GOING TO DEAL WITH THIS DO! YOU! HEAR! ME? DO YOU?!" And I certainly don't picture her doing it two or three times in one horrific day, one five-hour time period. I don't picture Birdy, while refusing a nap and being told to find something to do quietly until her brother wakes, screaming and whining and slapping Catherine's arm while she types, because I don't picture Birdy being incapable of entertaining herself peacefully for 15 or 30 minutes. I would think if this were the case, we'd hear more about it.

That's the logic that confounds John and me. Why don't we hear more about this from other people? I don't hear anyone referring to these types of problems recurring so very regularly that if they had a blog they'd be writing about it every other post. I'm not picking out the bad highlights here. I'm talking about what goes on all the time. I'm talking about why I'm almost out of my mind. I'm talking about the fact that while I'm sitting here typing, my blood pressure is going up again, Quinn is kicking and making moaning sounds next to the sink because I've told him his options are quiet play in the living room or the back yard, and that doesn't meet his bratty little expectations of the world bowing down to him and serving him peanut butter straight from the jar, which is what he's demanding right this second. When I do hear stories like this, they are told as sharply singular negative experiences, not as typical day-to-day, hours-long struggles. I don't hear about them in the context of the parent questioning their value as a human being and questioning every life choice ever made.

And this is why it feels so lonely on the Fringe most days.

World Pools, Utinions

Me: "Time to get out."

Bryce: "Mom! I can't see! The towel is in my way and I can't see the world pool!"

Me: "Stop yelling about it. There. You're dry. Now you can see the WHIRL pool."

Bryce: "Woorl pool?"

Me: "Yeah. Actually, we're really supposed to pronounce it wHHHirl pool."

Bryce: "W-hhh-irl! W-hhh-irl. Pool."

Me: "Haha! Yeah. Something like that."

Bryce: "Well, I pronounce it WORLD POOL. That's my utinion." [pronounced you-ten-yun]

Me: "........."

Bryce: "........."

Both: "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Utinion! Ahahahaha hoooo hooo weee hahaha hahaaaaaa!!!!"

The above happened after a night like all nights at our house these days, a night where my voice was incapable of anything but a tight, sharp knife-like sound barking out commands and demands and occasionally sighing heavily, harshly, quickly. In our laughter, my words echoed in my ears as painfully as I'd imagine an icicle would feel as it stabbed into my brain: Quinn SIT DOWN! You haven't been excused! Just eat your food, stop playing with it! Bryce, I told you to stay downstairs while I'm cleaning up the kitchen. Every time you go upstairs, you run and scream. Why can't you just stay down here and talk to me? Stop whining! Suddenly you want to go play because I'm asking for your help? You never want to play when I'm asking you to! I said five minutes, five minutes is over! It's bath time! SIGH.

In my "defense" -- if such a thing is possible -- I'm tired. Very tired. I get up way too early in some insanely ironic attempt to be healthy, I fight the traffic for 20 miles, the other hundreds of thousands of obedient middle class "career people" heading off to earn their highest possible scores on the surface-important performance reviews grading whatever the latest arbitrary expectations happen to be. I meet and/or exceed expectations. Yay for me. I keep good posture, I wear professional clothes which I pack and carry gingerly from my house to my car to the gym to the locker room before donning them and sitting in my ergonomically correct chair at my large desk and my double flat screens and my recently manufactured laptop staring at spreadsheets and considering "risks" and looking for anomalies and hoping against hope I'll find one just to create some excitement in my day, knowing that such excitement would mean loss, LOSS for the company, but GAIN for me and the ever-present expectations, will she be a good employee? Will she save us from hidden problems? Will she be worth the salary and benefits and resources and time and training? And then I fight the same 20 miles again with hundreds of thousands of good civilians heading home trying to be "balanced" and spend "family time" with their kids at night, eating dinner at the table, maybe by candlelight, making attempts at discussions and showing interest in everyone's day, presumably also involving good posture and meeting or exceeding the school's or the company's or the client's expectations -- we all fight to get to OUR SPACE first. And when I get home, inevitably someone is screaming, whining, or jumping. And because of my personality, because of my quirks, because of my nature, it just sounds like a broken record, and a loud one. It is shrill, it is blood-boiling pressure, but mostly it is fatigue in physical form - and guilt incarnate. I hear their voices yelling HI MOM NO QUINN GIVE ME THAT BRYCE and I pull at the icicle but I don't have the strength and it pokes, it pierces, and I lash out with my voice.

But sometimes one of my sons musters more strength with their puny undeveloped 35-pound bodies than I can with all the core-strengthening personal training I waste money on each week, and they melt the icicle effortlessly, using words like "world pool" or "utinion" or "abdivate" or, in Quinn's case, "poopy poop head" and even my tired, frustrated, tortured soul quirkiness can't hold up to it.

But the thing is, I need more melted icicles. I need them to melt before I pass them on like some sort of dysfunctional frozen torches to my sons. They shouldn't be responsible for melting them. I shouldn't be hearing myself as if I'm a separate party altogether, I shouldn't be watching myself like a pathetic character on a low-budget after school special fighting my guilt and alienating my children slowly, gradually, day by day. It feels criminal that my three-year-old would look at my face with genuine concern and slight fear after I remind him to keep his shoes off of the couch (which is already a trash heap anyway, why does it matter?) and ask, "are you happy, mom?" When I find myself with my entire family crouching around a tiny burrow full of squirming, furry baby rabbits or moles (we still don't know which) in our back yard and the first words out of my mouth, "you're too close, Bryce, GET BACK" ruin the moment and lead to my usually laid-back husband saying, "do you think you could be a little more h-a-r-s-h?" as my formerly passionately-interested-in-nature five-year-old slumps back into the house, alone, something is dead wrong.

I know this. I feel it. But I don't have the solution. When Bryce marched confidently back into the back yard in his rain boots to continue admiring the rabbit-mole-babies, he plopped down in front of me, unfazed, happy, excitedly watching the four newborn sniffing creatures with complete innocence. Maybe when the icicles melt, they truly evaporate. But I don't know. I truly don't. I don't know how to abdivate the appropriate utinion in this case. Maybe I should ask Bryce.

Some New Twists

Yesterday I was talking to John on the phone while he was in the car with Quinn, and he started using his long-winded, random vocabulary style of talking that we have to use to keep the kids from knowing we’re referring to them (mainly with Quinn, because Bryce is old enough that he always figures it out anyway).

John: So have you ever noticed how…Child Number Two…manages to, without your knowledge, acquire items from the white box-like appliance in the room where we prepare our meals?

Me: What? He goes to the dishwasher?

John: No, the bigger white appliance.

Me: The refrigerator? He’s getting into the refrigerator when you’re not around?!

John: Yes, and I’m trying to modulate my voice so as not to bring further attention to this re-telling.

Turns out Quinn opens the refrigerator door, stands on the bottom shelf, and rummages around until he finds whatever delectable treat seems like a good snack at 10:00 a.m. Yesterday, John walked through the living room and noticed Quinn suspiciously positioned on his side in our chair with the flap-style cushions, the upper flap strangely bowing out. It was a Tupperware dish of cold macaroni and cheese. The kid sneaks macaroni and cheese. Cold, out of the refrigerator. And snacks on it. While hiding it from us.

Whatever. At least it keeps him quiet for more than 15 seconds.

************************************

Last night as I was drying Bryce off after his bath, he said, “Mom, I’ll give you ten dollars if you make it Christmas time.”

“I can’t make time go faster, Bryce.”

“Yes you can! Just go to the computer, click three buttons and tell it to abdivate to Christmas, and you’ll be done!”

Wow. I never knew the internet was so very powerful. I can simply abdivate to Christmas. What else can I do? Can I abdivate world peace?

************************************

Speaking of world peace, I’m having a lively discussion with someone over at Freezio’s place about U.S. foreign policy. It’s made me think that I should stop dominating Freezio’s comment box and use my own space to state my opinions or thoughts. I’m struggling with whether or not I want to do that; as I’ve said before, I (usually) tend to shy away from political debate because I don’t feel that I take enough time to be as educated as I should be on all the issues. I don’t want to put myself in a position where I can’t address a claim or answer a question because I don’t have reams of political history at my finger tips. I’m still considering how and if I’m going to address this here. I know I have a lot to say; I’m just not sure I have the energy for an argument over it, especially not from someone like Arwen’s new best friend, who repeatedly combs through her archives to find more to criticize about past posts, political or not.

If I do this, the issues I address will be broad and will expose me for the non-conforming pacifist I am. That whole pacifist part of the phrase non-conforming pacifist means, people, that I don't want to be attacked on my own website; I won't be attacking anyone and would appreciate the same respect. I'm all for discussion, challenge, debate, and supporting one's claims. I'm not for name-calling, assumptions, or stereotyping based on one paragraph read on a blog or in a comment box. Now that I think about it, if I do this, I may include this disclaimer at the top as a reminder each time. Because I'm an anal commie tree-hugger that way. Oops!

Going Native

John left for an appointment in the middle of dinner tonight, claiming from the front door, "sorry to abandon you...but I'm really not. Hahahaha! Oh, just kidding. Hahahaha! Ahem." As soon as the door closed behind him, Bryce and Quinn leapt from their chairs and grabbed some nearby kitchen twine to bind me to my chair and sacrifice me to the fire gods of chaos. The hot pokers of Not Eating Dinner soon gave way to those of Yelling, Spitting Food, and Hopping On One Foot Around Hungry Victim While Complaining.

We were having baked potatoes and assorted leftovers and fresh vegetables. You can see why the kids would take this opportunity to torture me. Where are the chicken nuggets and french fries, slave? What are these "vegetables" of which you speak? We shall tie you up and sacrifice you. Perhaps your absent spouse will learn a lesson from your untimely demise.

I had to think fast. I felt my blood pressure rising with every new torture device, and I knew the end for me was near. "Hey, guys!" I cried in an attempt to cover my fear and desperation with cheer, "Uh.... let's see, let me think, what was I going to say? Oh yeah. Quinn, I need some help cleaning up the kitchen!" The "need some help" phrase caught the powerful creature's attention - I could tell by the way he cocked his head to one side like a puppy - and I knew I was in. "Yeah, yeah! I totally need YOU to be the one to take the plates over to the dishwasher!" His eyes lit up. I'd kept that gem in my back pocket for just this type of emergency - the Quinn creature loved the dishwasher more than life itself, and sought out reasons to send the large plastic door slamming back into the closed position, and now this foolish prisoner was offering to let him oversee this incredible display of modern technology?! Sublime. Just what he'd been waiting for.

In the meantime, Bryce the overlord was becoming confused by this new turn of events. Wait a minute. Quinn gets to load the dishwasher? I don't think so! This is my operation, and if anyone here is going to benefit from the hostage's desperate plea for life, it's going to be ME.

They untied me, removed the hot pokers from my side, and turned their attention to the joy of loading the dishwasher. They were so impressed with my dishwasher possession that they were just in the process of lifting me to a throne of couch cushions and folded laundry when I made the mistake of mentioning bath time. Then, as if awaking from hypnosis, the commitment returned to their eyes and they began their sacrificial chant anew. It mostly sounded like wails and shrieks, but it worked, because I think my brain bled out in a thick ooze, leaving only the part that reminded me of my biological imperative not to destroy my own genetic material.

Weekend Summary: Kick the Habit

Last week we took the kids to the dentist and learned exactly what we'd be dreading, that Quinn's pacifier is the devil. I believe the dentist's speech included phrases like, "major dental work" and "definitely start saving for braces" and "let's cut our losses and hope for some regression before his adult teeth come in." I sat and listened in horror, and John reacted to the news by saying, "Pacifier? What pacifier? What makes you think Quinn uses a pacifier? Just because he has a distinctly pacifier-shaped overbite? Total coincidence." Friday night, we decided to take the plunge. Years ago, I remember my sister-in-law telling me that the night she took her kids' pacifiers away, her house resembled a de-tox clinic, with desperate junkies hallucinating and climbing the walls. I blew her off, assumed she was exaggerating, and even laughed at her obviously poor parenting skills: "well, what parent lets their THREE-YEAR-OLD keep using a pacifier, anyway!?" Friday night, my know-it-all haughtiness ate me alive, and spit me out onto a bed of raging hot coals. First, Quinn was defiant, No I want my paci. Then he was sad, But I miss my paci! Then he was confused, Can you help me find my paci? I've looked everywhere! Then he was psychotic, aaaaaaaaaaaa PACI aaaaaaaaaaaaaa PACI aaaaaaaaaa. By 11:30 p.m., we had put him back in his bed at least 10 times, and had stupidly thought he was asleep at least four times. At 2:30 a.m., there was a severe thunderstorm that started right over our house, judging by the deafening vibrations that brought Quinn out of his already fitful sleep to the top of the stairs, shrieking and expressing his hatred for us, the Takers Of The Paci and the Bringers Of The Thunder.

The next morning was Bryce's first soccer game. In our Paci-Lacking, sleep-deprived state, we failed to explain the situation to Quinn, who naturally assumed that he AND Bryce would be playing soccer. It only took a few seconds on the field for him to figure out he was getting screwed, but he wasn't going for it, sleep deprivation or not. He grabbed a free soccer ball and took off across the field, his non-standard issue, sans soccer ball shirt flapping in the breeze behind him, him cackling like a maniac in his rebellion. After several empty threats and jaw-clenching, fatigue-ridden growls and sighs, we convinced him to stay outside the white chalk lines, but he wasn't happy about it.

By the end of the game, we found out that we should have just let Quinn play with Bryce's team. They were more interested in running to the sidelines for water than actually kicking the ball. When there was kicking involved, it typically fell on one kid's shoulders while the rest of them ran in whatever direction felt the most interesting.

Soccer is fun! Have you seen all this WATER?

See ya, suckas!

More chaos. I think I'll run THIS way!

I don't need to create a witty caption here, because what the kid in the middle was truly saying was, "Okay, here's the plan. When they come our way, we're going to GET THE BALL." Brilliant.

On Sunday, while John was at a wedding, I attempted to write this post during "nap time." Instead, I spent two hours going in and out of Quinn's room and concentrating on my breathing to keep from going medieval on his little "Ha! I didn't stay in my bed AGAIN! I'll show YOU who's in control here" ass. I gave up and took the kids to Office Depot to buy happiness in the form of a more organized unpaid bill pile / kitchen junk drawer. I bribed the kids with new stickers, but I made the mistake of letting them have the new stickers before we were safely back within the confines of my car, which resulted in Quinn announcing at the top of his lungs "YOU'RE NOT NICE, LADY!" the first time we passed a stranger in the stationery aisle.

We stopped at the praying hands landmark near our house on the way home. The kids have only ever seen it from the car, even though we live close enough that we could take them there and let them run around the massive sculpture several times a week. While they were standing, staring awestruck at the huge bronze thumbs, a group of a dozen nuns came up to us, literally out of nowhere. They floated by right as I was admonishing Quinn for sliding head first down a plaque commemorating the donors of the praying hands. Quinn caught sight of their black and white robes, clutched his ziplock baggie full of Cheerio's closer to his body, and grabbed my hand in nervousness. Then, unpredictable as ever, he called out to one of them, "YOU LOOK SILLY! HAHA!"

John just walked in as I was typing this and said, "are you done with that?" and I said, "I was just talking about the nun part. Do you remember if I told you anything happened after that?" and he said, "Your head exploded?"

And that pretty much sums it up.

Random Friday Photo

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Bryce's school. To kickoff the yearlong celebration, they held an outdoor concert followed by a homing pigeon release. Students in the upper grades were each given a pigeon, and they released them in waves. It was fun to watch, and the picture above speaks to me in so many ways as I think about our own children as we raise, then eventually release them.

Feel the pain and know you're alive.

Right now, I hurt. My torture sessions are twice a week, and the trainer "makes" me come to the gym several other times a week for some extra special self-inflicted, machine-assisted misery. I keep doing it, though. In fact, I pay money for it. And I think I actually look forward to it. How sick that makes me, I don't know. How much that suggests my entire understanding of myself and my life is changing, I don't know either. The physical pain and the gym is just one soft bud on one small branch of something that has been pushing up from within for a long time, maybe forever. This bud hurts; other buds hurt more, but they're beautiful and they're growing into something, I think.

I was on the phone with my dad the other night. The poor guy calls us because he thinks maybe now, on this night, we will have become nice, normal people who can talk on the phone without any violent finger snapping at wild creatures running in blurry circles and screaming bloody murder, but alas, each time he is escorted back into reality by my tense, terse voice and the mayhem of crashing pans and stomping shoes in the background. Between Quinn's age-related challenges and the evening mental ward behavior we can't seem to curb no matter what we do, I was at the end of my rope when he called: "It's ALWAYS like this, you hear that in the background? It NEVER stops. It doesn't matter WHAT we do. They act like they want attention, but they GET attention, they get PLENTY of focused attention and structure and positive reinforcement and consistent discipline and all that CRAP! I have no idea what's WRONG with them. It's constant chaos around here. I can't stand it."

At first, he tried sympathizing with me, telling me he didn't understand why those crazy kids were pushing our buttons in such direct, blatant ways these days, saying it was probably a phase, we probably just needed to keep doing what we're doing and get through it. That just fueled my fire: "It's not a phase, they're just LIKE this anymore! We can't even leave them alone, they're like toddlers! If we leave them in a room for five minutes, they end up destroying something, fighting, or both. John just called me over and said that while I was talking to you about this and he was in his office (which is right next door to the bathroom), Quinn emptied the tube of toothpaste onto the bathroom counter, just because! I mean, COME ON! And I'm sure I don't even want to know how many boxes of crap Bryce has emptied all over his room in the past five minutes!"

He listened to my rant, which went on and on for long enough that when I was finished, the kids weren't yelling or stomping or smearing toothpaste on counter tops anymore. He said, "I know when you're dealing with all of that, it feels chaotic and it feels like it lasts forever and there's no end in sight. But from my perspective, I don't hear chaos. I hear fullness and life." I was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at Quinn in his too-small pajamas and wet hair from the bath John had just given him, he was walking down two steps per stair and using the wall for balance. He got to the bottom step and wrapped his arms all the way around one of my legs, kissed it, and looked up at me.

I, in my haggardness and frustration and desperation and perceived failure, hurt. This new bud is exactly that, isn't it? Fullness and life. Catherine Newman said recently, "I know it's boring to say it, so obvious that it's almost silly, but the lesson of death is that we die — which is the same as saying that we're living now."

The ever-forming buds and the creaking, stretching branches, always pressing outward against me, stretch and push me in new ways, bring me to breathless, doubled-over sobs of make it stop, and then someone reminds me of this monumentally important truth that, oh yeah, I don't want it to stop.

Screenplay Forthcoming

When I describe our lives with terms like "chaos" and "madness" and "ear-shattering insanity" I'm sure it seems like an excessive use of hyperbole, or that I'm prone to exaggeration or over-analysis. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this possibility, but I've found since I started writing about our experiences regularly, I actually remain more objective, more patient, and more likely to seek out the humor in any given situation, whether it's one kid suffocating the other under a previously innocent down comforter, or both kids tearing through the house screaming at the top of their unnaturally strong lungs. Knowing I may write about any given experience has made me slower to yell and turn magenta with rage, quicker to step back and ask myself if my goal is to have quiet kids or kids who have some concept of balance (side note: right now, I have neither - we're working on it). I still regularly fail, even with that added objectivity and patience, and what I'd like to posit here is a theory that those failures occur not because I'm any more impatient or frustrated than the average parent, but that my kids are, in fact, RAVING MAD LUNATICS.

Point in fact: With our new dinner routine, John and I intended to place more focused and specific attention on the kids at a difficult time of day, to be proactive and not reactive with them so as to prevent the nightly dinnertime strife that was exhausting us and teaching the kids that family time just really sucks. The new routine has helped - a lot, actually. At dinner, there are fewer instances of me slapping my palm painfully on the surface of the table as I repeat my difficult-to-follow instructions for the 12th, 16th, or 25th time, instructions like "stay in your seat" or "stop turning off the dining room light" or "leave your sticky noodles on your plate, not in the middle of the table or in your hair," and more instances of the kids - get this - EATING and using volume levels that don't require those special spongy ear plugs they make you wear inside factories.

The thing is, as soon as they're done eating, all of that success flies out the window with a violent shatter as they literally run around the house screaming while John and I sit there, broken people that we are, our heads in our respective hands, sobbing and begging for swift, decapitating mercy. Last night, despite my "calm but stern" reminders that they could run and yell OUTSIDE, but not inside, ScreamFest 2006 continued in a blur around the table and migrated up the stairs in a deafening hallway takeover. At my wits' end, I just looked at John: "You know when you see those kids on TV shows screaming and running and waving their hands around? People think that's a funny exaggeration. BUT OUR KIDS REALLY DO THAT. ALL THE TIME. So if I write a screenplay about our lives, do you think the proceeds would cover my mental health bills? Because otherwise, we need better insurance."

To the woman who opened my shower door this morning:

I know we all have a lot going on in our heads, and 6:30 a.m. is a time of day when our brain function may be particularly compromised, especially after an hour of sweating on the treadmill. I'll give you that.

And I can imagine that, with said compromised brain function, when you realized you'd left your 79-cent fake orange loofah on top of the shampoo container in the shower stall, it seemed a lot more traumatic and horrible than it actually was. I mean, it must have seemed traumatic and horrible since you made the conscious decision to forego any social or cultural conditioning your 40 plus years have bestowed upon you and barge into the shower stall I was using, the one where the water was running and the large, heavy door was closed, to rescue your precious loofah and say in a voice smacking of entitlement and snobbery words that did not match your haughty tone, "Oh, sorry. I left this in here."

I can definitely give you the benefit of the doubt, even with that underlying territorial "I own the world" tone of voice you were sporting, and chalk your act of blatant rudeness and disrespect up to the temporary insanity one may occasionally experience on little sleep, no food, and running on the leftover adrenaline from a difficult workout.

However, when I (now fully clothed) came out to the sinks to dry my hair, and you came over with a sheepish (yet oddly still haughty) grin on your face, you confirmed for me that you do, in fact, have some social couth. And because I know that, I can't let go of the fact that when you said, "Huh, I guess I should have waited until you got out!" and I said, "Yes, you should have. Or, I don't know - maybe you could have just knocked!" you turned away from me and mumbled, "well, I just reached in and got it quickly" as if I had forfeited my chance for an apology from the owner of the universe herself. First of all, you didn't just "reach in and get it quickly." The doors are large and heavy (side note: they are large and heavy to provide this thing called "privacy" - you apparently haven't heard of it), and for you to get what you needed, the door had to be opened halfway, and let's not forget that to "get it quickly" you had to REACH INTO MY SHOWER. Regardless of your lame justification, last time I checked, O Mighty One, two things: 1.) I didn't have to ask your permission before picking a shower stall, and 2.) typically in this HUMAN community, when one apologizes, one does not turn away and make a sarcastic / justifying / nonchalant comment to the person receiving the apology.

Oh yeah, and also this: BITE ME.

Dreamland

Last night I had a glass of wine and some dark chocolate right before bed. Also, yesterday I perused stuff on my cat during a break at work. Note to self: maybe don't combine these types of activities on a day you'll be needing to rouse yourself at 5:00 a.m. the next morning to drag yourself to the gym and meet your archenemy trainer.

I dreamt that I walked sleepily out of my bedroom into the living room where the television was turned on to a new show featuring a group of people with whom I was very familiar in the dream, but now have no idea who they represent in my subconscious (and while I actually learned how to do old school dream analysis in college, I simply don't have the time or inclination). More importantly, there was some unknown worker in a jumpsuit style uniform standing in front of my television, watching. He looked at me when I came in like he expected some response - alarm or confusion - but I was so engrossed in the show that I just gave him a slight nod and he left the room after a minute or two. Everything was moving in slow motion, but mainly my brain, and after he left, I realized two things: 1.) I really should have been alarmed or confused when I saw him in my living room, and 2.) he had apparently just vandalized my house by spray painting Stuff! in black all over the walls and ceiling, and for good measure, also my arm.

The next part of the dream was fuzzy. Somehow, in the unexplained dream way, I learned through an assumed but now unremembered conversation with John that he was surprising me and had entered us into some competition for a reality show that I loved (side note: only in my dreams would I ever be hooked on any reality show), called Stuff In Your House! and we actually wanted these people to vandalize our home because of the hilarity that would ensue on the nationally-broadcast show in several weeks. Besides, it would be fine: part of the show included their return to restore our home to its original condition. In the dream, I was very relieved, but the 3rd party portion of me that was watching myself have this dream was thinking, HUH?!?

I woke from this nonsense to John saying, "it's 2:45! See? I told you they've been getting up at this time! What is the DEAL?" and shuffling up the stairs to put Quinn back in his bed. I fell back to sleep and dreamt two horrible bug-related dreams that I'd rather not record for fear that they'll become recurring. We all know I have a bug phobia, let's just leave it at that. Besides, it was a short dream because I woke again to the sound of Quinn's music over Bryce's monitor, of which I knew the hated meaning even in my foggy state: Quinn was up again, and had opened his door and walked at minimum into Bryce's room, and more likely was on his way down to ours, and would momentarily be standing in our doorway, paci in mouth, blankie in hand, staring at us with that half-creepy half-pitiful stare that I've only ever witnessed from my kids in the middle of the night.

I started to get out of bed, but when I looked down, I saw a kid curled up on the floor, sound asleep. I was confused and half-asleep, and I am admitting openly that I actually didn't know which kid it was. (In my defense, his head was covered with a blanket.) Since I was hearing Quinn's music and hadn't heard a peep from Bryce, I used the strongest powers of deduction I could muster and assumed it was Quinn. I bent over to pick him up, lifted the blanket from his head, and the hair color was all wrong. I actually jumped back a little. (In my defense... I have no defense. I am a freak.) This meant BOTH kids were up at 3:00 a.m., and had been wandering around the house, the house that in my sleep-imprisoned brain I was still unsure whether or not a Stuff In Your House! employee had recently vandalized. I lifted Bryce's sleeping, lanky body and carried him up the stairs to his bed (hello, recently-performed lunges and burning, burning thighs). Then, since I knew Quinn was wandering around somewhere, I went on a stumbly search, and found him, standing on a stool in the dark bathroom and creepily staring at himself in the mirror. He said he wanted water and was holding the cup, but he was just standing there, in the dark. I got him a drink and put him back to bed, but the whole thing was a little too eerily preternatural, which meant that when I was finally able to fall back asleep, it was only for long enough to dream that the Stuff In Your House! people screwed us and never repaired what they'd destroyed, so John had to improvise and did so by painting murals everywhere, using broken plates coming out of the wall to create some sort of crazy 3-D effect.

***Updated to add that after John read this post, he e-mailed me with this:

Random Friday Photo

Trying Something New

Over the past year, our dinner routine (or lack thereof, maybe), has degenerated to such a level of mayhem that we can no longer even attempt to answer the phone or operate any noise-making electronics that would normally be used for entertainment purposes during dinner preparation. Yes, this has been our solution. If we just pretend that truck-horn volume telephone ring isn't piercing the thick cloud of tension and chaos FOUR, FIVE, SIX times in a row because Hannah's friends refuse to leave messages on the answering machine and opt to call back ad infinitum, we'll be able to concentrate more of our harried attention onto the kids and our oh-so-complicated meal preparation, usually involving one of two things: opening steamy plastic, noodle-filled packages from the local Thai place or throwing some frozen veggie burgers onto the skillet. If we refuse to turn on the television or radio and talk in soft voices between all of the hypocritically loud shrieks of STOP RUNNING! and I TOLD YOU IF YOU FOUGHT OVER THAT TOY I WAS GOING TO THROW IT AWAY, NOW BRING IT TO ME, HEY! COME BACK HERE! then maybe our sheer desire and need for the kids to be in our presence without demanding, directly or indirectly, that we stop what we're doing every three seconds to deal with their wild behavior will just seep right out of our migraine-ridden heads and into theirs. I imagine this transition to happen instantly, but in slow motion, where John and I are in the kitchen with wild, desperate eyes and clenched jaws, the kids are in the living room throwing things at each other and jumping from one piece of furniture to another, and then suddenly the earth stops spinning long enough for all of the intentions John and I have for dinner to be even mildly peaceful and enjoyable to drip like molasses from our now-relaxed heads, down our still statue arms until it combines into one blob-form and seeps over to the kids and up through their feet, which will be frozen in the air since they are always, always at least an inch or two off the ground. Then, after that gradual moment is over and the earth spins again, the kids land with a soft, quiet thud, John and I stir sauce and gather plates for the table, and the kids find a book or ask if they can put out the butter.

These are my fantasies. Such is my life. Other people fantasize about winning the lottery or meeting someone famous; I fantasize about getting through dinner without ever once wanting to yank my hair out by the roots or sell my children on the black market.

Since we've never ONCE achieved even one single part of that goal with our current pretend-we're-peaceful-and-maybe-we'll-become-peaceful tactics, we finally decided to try something new this week, something more practical. For one thing, because John is home with the kids during the afternoon, he had been attempting to start dinner before I got home. Of course, because of the late afternoon boredom / fatigue / mischief that sets in with our kids around 4:00 p.m. every day, by the time I would get home at 5:30, he'd already be in the throes of dealing with some completely ridiculous behavior, and dinner would still be a long way off. Or worse, he'd call me on my way home with a desperate Mayday! sound in his voice, and I'd end up picking dinner up on my way - it would be THAT BAD at home. We both had it stuck in our heads for months that it "just made sense" for him to start dinner. Clearly that was wrong, because hello! Dinnertime at our house: not making sense!

Now John keeps the kids occupied until I get home, and I start dinner while Bryce sits at the kitchen table and does his 15 minutes of homework or tells me about his day. Quinn usually wanders around, still slightly wild, but much more tolerable than what we were seeing before, since Bryce is occupied and not feeding off of Quinn's delirium. John will come in and out, here helping with dinner, there taking the kids outside to throw a ball or distract them from the idea that they need to destroy the inside of the house, specifically the kitchen and dining room, at that exact moment.

Not exactly molasses-dripping peaceful, but we're approaching sanity. (For now.)

Blue Shorts

Last spring, a mysterious pair of shorts came home in Quinn's backpack. This is a rare occurrence, but it's not the first time it's happened, and I suspect the longer my kids are in school, the more potential there is for mysterious objects to migrate to our home. I am usually obsessive about setting aside whatever the foreign object is, putting it into an old grocery sack or container, and putting it next to the front door or the kids' bags to make sure one of us remembers to return it to its place of origin like responsible, organized, conscientious citizens.

I'm finding, though, as my spoken intent to simplify our lives continues not to translate into actual physical actions that reflect that intent, when foreign objects enter the realm of the Fringe now, it's as if their fates are sealed: they've gone into a black hole, never to see the light of day or the fluorescent bulbs of the Mom's Day Out pre-school program, as the case may be. I refuse to accept the fact that our lives are indeed so out of control these days that we can't even manage to return a pair of old, pilly blue cotton spare shorts to our son's pre-school, where one of us has to go (usually John, but sometimes me) for drop-offs or pick-ups six times over the course of a week. My refusal to accept this absurdity has resulted in my moving these size 3T elastic-waisted shorts from the banister next to the front door, to the railing at the top of the stairs, to the top of Bryce's dresser, to the top of Quinn's dresser, BACK to the banister next to the front door, in subsequent identical cycles dozens of mind-numbing times over the past four months.

This weekend, John had one short assignment on Friday evening, and then we had Saturday and Sunday open. It was the last weekend with two non-scheduled days in a row that we'll have from now until Thanksgiving. And yet even with all that "extra" time, it was a constant scramble and attempt to catch up. Sadly, despite the mad dashes we made all weekend, very basic activities still didn't end up taking place. The laundry, grocery shopping, vacuuming, lawn mowing, and classmate birthday party attendance took up more time than we'd anticipated, and so the kitchen floor is still dirty, the bathroom still hasn't been cleaned, the mound of Bryce's new toys and games (recently acquired birthday gifts), while stacked and somewhat organized at the bottom of the stairs, still hasn't been taken up and put away in the varying assigned closet spaces that have meanwhile filled with things the kids have thrown there in their own five- and three-year-old attempts to clean up when I ask them to physically make them. The stray blue shorts, currently in the Bryce's Dresser Top phase of their black hole cycle, continue to beg and plead with me, continue to remind me with their homeless presence of everything I intend to do, but just can't seem to.

I think maybe I need to give myself permission to throw the damned things in the garbage.

Random Friday Photo - Saturday Edition

A small junk/antique store in Gail, Texas. I stopped to check it out, and let the kids stretch their legs during our drive home over the Fourth of July weekend. It was closed, but looking through the windows, I saw copious amounts of treasures I knew I would touch and handle, but never buy even if it were open.

Humiliation has a new face, and it looks just like mine.

I made reference in this post to the painful fact that John and I have joined a gym. In case anyone has ever wondered, let me clarify: John and I are not Gym People. We are like the opposite of Gym People. We are more like Chair People, really. But we're also sick of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed all the time, and of walking from room to room of our chaotic house and having our eyes glaze over in fatigue and incapacitation: even if we start to make this place more presentable and organized, we'll never maintain it, so let's just go back to our respective chairs and plan on addressing all of these piles "tomorrow," when we'll surely feel less stressed. It seems illogical to bring more physical demands into any mix involving exhaustion, but there was a time when we regularly exercised and ate mindfully, and I don't remember feeling fatigued and overwhelmed despite the fact that we had just as many stress-inducers in our lives (well, okay, maybe a few less, now that I think about it). We both know enough about health that we don't have to be convinced that exercise and diet are critical: we just have to make ourselves DO IT, and that's where our weakness as Chair People comes in and screws everything up for us.

Our new gym is big on personal trainers; John and I each have one. John had his first session earlier this week, when I was still recovering from Operation Don't Kill Your Kids Because of Desitin and thus avoiding any activity more strenuous than lifting something about the size, shape, and weight of, say, a bottle of wine. Or four. He called me at work after his session telling me how his trainer almost killed him, or some such nonsense.

Me: *Yawn.* Oh, so it was a hard workout?
John: Are you hearing me? Medicine ball. Over my head. While balancing on an unstable apparatus.
Me: You know, I have to go - I need to run by the vending machine before my meeting.
John: Heh heh. Just wait. JUST. YOU. WAIT.
Me: Should I get chips or candy? I just don't know!

Last night was my first session. Not only was it my first session, it was the first time I'd exerted myself in about six days. In addition to being an ardent Chair Person, or maybe because of that sad fact, I am EXTREMELY uncoordinated. I never dance or do anything that would look remotely graceful because I always feel like my limbs are flailing about, almost out of my control. No, scratch that: definitely out of my control. What evil puppet master controls my clumsy movements? Whoever it is got together with my trainer and had a great laugh last night, I'll tell you that.

Trainer: We're going to start with flexibility, put your hand on this ball palm out and stretch your back.
Me: Like this?
Trainer: Palm OUT.
Me: Like this?
Trainer (physically moving my hand): Palm OUT. There, like that. No! Keep it RIGHT there.
Me: Oh, palm OUT. Why didn't you say so?

And that was just the pre-workout stretch. Next came the hard parts. There were pieces of equipment that looked more like torture devices, and there were pieces of equipment that looked simple and inviting, like big, squishy balls and really fun wobble boards. A "wobble board" must be fun, right?

Trainer: Just stand there and balance.
Me (feet on board): Okay! Balance!
Me (board slams to the right): Whoah.
Me (board slams to the left): Uh.
Me (board slams to the right): So, how?
Trainer: Just stand with your feet evenly positioned and try to balance your body on the board.
Me (furrowing brow, sweating, board slamming back and forth wildly): That's what I'm trying to - crap! - do.
Trainer: Now do squats while you're trying to balance.
Me (glaring at him, bending knees, arms out in front, board still slamming around under me): Whoah, it's shaking even more.
Trainer (laughing): That happens to everyone, keep going.
Me (board shaking so hard my face is jiggling): I-i-iiiiitttt-tt-tt ddd-ddd-d-ddddooesssss-s-s?

Each exercise became more and more of a humiliation extravaganza, the pinnacle of which involved a simple request for me to jump rope. Breathless, my face bright, BRIGHT red with effort that probably wouldn't have elicited a single drop of sweat from my trainer, my glasses fogging up, my limp, dirty hair hanging in my eyes, I said shakily when he handed me the rope, "Heh. It's been a long time." He looked concerned by now, like he was wondering if this next step was really a wise one. "We're going to do 75 jumps," he said. I swung the rope over my head and discovered that it was actually a three pound cable, which landed - THUMP! - in front of my feet, which were apparently refusing to move off of the floor after the balancing, jumping, and running I'd already done. I tried again halfheartedly, and this time made it over, then swung the rope around for my second jump - but no, just another THUMP! at my feet. I started again, this time utilizing the "skip jump" to really dig that humiliation knife in as deep as it could possibly go. There's just nothing quite like skip-jumproping and tripping every five jumps (literally) in a bright room with lots of mirrors - unless, of course, you add being watched by dozens of muscular, well-postured, clean-cut people who can jump rope the grown-up way with both feet coming off the ground even if they aren't concentrating, which, believe me, I WAS.

Trainer: Both feet off the ground, Kristen.
Me: *GASP. GASP. GASP. THUMP!* SIGH. Okay. *GASP. GASP. GASP. THUMP!*
Trainer (looking at clock): Tell you what. I'll let you do one foot at a time. Just don't stop anymore.
Me: Blink. Blink blink.

Poor guy thought I was stopping on purpose! Bless his innocent heart, thinking I was just lazy and tired, and not understanding that I am actually, in addition to being lazy and tired, just INCAPABLE of jumping rope. That innocence might be an endearing quality to me if I didn't want to kill him. Unfortunately, I think he's going to kill me first. If not through physical pain and humiliation, then through good old-fashioned homicide. "Don't worry," he told me as we moved to the final balancing exercise, "you're doing fine. I've seen a lot worse, believe me." Oh, goodie. Now I feel so much better. And not at all like a lumpy, uncoordinated puppet.

Compression

Quinn loves to look at photo albums. Before John went digital 18 months ago, we had stacks of pictures piled up in closets and on counters, gathering dust waiting to be lovingly placed into scrapbooks and albums with captions, dates, and labels to tell future generations exactly how old Bryce was when he cut his first tooth, or how long it was from the time Quinn finally sat unassisted to the day he decided commando crawling was no longer the best mode of physical movement.

Alas, I am a crappy wife and mother. All of the prints that are actually in albums were placed there hurriedly by John, most of them over two years ago, before Quinn was old enough to be capable of successfully destroying something of value if left unsupervised for an activity such as photo album upkeep. The rest of the prints, including pictures of birthdays, milestones, and vacations are still sitting in dusty stacks in my closet. And this doesn't even begin to touch on the THOUSANDS of digital files we haven't even bothered to have printed yet. Behold my crappiness.

Despite his mother's shortcomings in family history preservation, Quinn could spend hours looking at one of the four complete photo albums we actually have. (FOUR. The crappiness, behold it.) They are out of order, there are no labels or captions, and some of them have bent or torn pages from ardent toddler viewing excitement, but one of his favorite activities is to lug one of the heavy bound albums from the low shelf in my closet, hoist it onto our bed like he's a mountain climber throwing his pack up over the peak, and climb up with a satisfied grunt to look at pictures from two years ago. The only reason he can tell which kid is him and which is Bryce is because he's memorized them. If he comes across a picture of Bryce as a two- or three-year-old that he's never studied very intently, he assumes it's a picture of himself: "There's me!" I always blush and roll my eyes at my crappiness and say, "Uh, no, that's Bryce. See, there you are. You're the one with...um...no teeth...sitting in the...er... high chair." Then I go wallow in my shame. (But I don't actually take any steps to remedy the situation - hence, the mounds of dusty pictures still un-albumed. I flaunt the crappiness!)

There are jillions of pictures of me as a child that my mom or dad lovingly labeled, dated, and pasted into dozens and dozens of now worn and yellowed albums. In almost every album, there is at least one picture of me looking at photo albums. Quinn apparently inherited this gene from me. And since I am usually in my room when he's on his photo viewing kicks, I almost always get sucked in, too.

Even with the limited number of albums, I'm always amazed at how I've already forgotten certain pictures, certain moments. Quinn will turn the page and I'll look down and see Bryce as an intensely curious 19-month-old eyeing his infant brother swaddled in a receiving blanket and I'll think, oh yeah! I remember that exact moment. I had BABIES. Who is this galumping kid next to me? He'll turn another page and I'll see two-year-old Bryce rolling his Little People bus gently over a completely relaxed and happy baby Quinn's stomach and knees, and I'll know I would have forgotten the day I took that picture if it weren't in this album. Then I always feel a little sad. Sad that I've forgotten, sad that I don't have a picture to remind me of every moment I wanted to capture but couldn't, sad that I haven't treasured those moments enough to have set aside the time to document them more thoroughly, sad that those days are over, as difficult as they sometimes were - because now we have new, different difficulties, sad that in three years I'll be looking at pictures (digital, most likely) of these times, right now, in the same melancholy way, sad that I'll never be satisfied. Then Quinn turns the page again, points a pudgy finger at a picture of Bryce, one that he loves, that he's asked me about many times before, and says, "there's baby Bryce, mom!" and beams up at me with all the exuberance of his adoration of these times. I don't have a picture of this, so I write it down. Crappiness be damned.

Shell Shock

We tempted fate one too many times, and paid dearly for it this weekend. Even with an adult to child ratio of 1:1, chaos reigned supreme.

When we stopped to eat dinner along the way to my aunt's house, Bryce had a... bowel situation that I feel he described well enough not to require any extra details from me: "That poop shot out of my bottom like a meteor!" Unfortunately, this... bowel situation required more resources than we had at our disposal, so my mom called my aunt to evaluate the base camp supplies: "Do you have any Desitin? Can you get some? Kristen says to get the 'creamy' kind." The rest of our dinner included Quinn's unnaturally loud and involuntary burps and Bryce's seemingly delirious (and still unexplained) blurting of the phrase, "It's 9:00, Sid!" in random and unpredictable intervals. If that level of humiliation isn't indicative of a weekend that will live in infamy, I don't know what is. And yet, I was cluelessly optimistic, even as I walked out with my burping, limping, apparently hallucinating children and refused to make eye contact with the civilized IHOP customers undoubtedly wondering what mental institution we'd all recently escaped from.

The cousins were thrilled to see each other. Unfortunately, after minutes and minutes of the children hugging and blinking doe-eyed at each other's loveliness, we victims adults were all left wondering, what do we do with them now? As the weekend was ending and my mom and I were running down the list of Lessons Learned (thank you, corporate america, for one of my favorite ironic phrases), she pointed out that with kids aged three to five years, "a little bit goes a long way." What she meant by this, in her kind and happy way was, "we should have kept those monsters away from each other for a little longer." For every peaceful, cooperative moment involving no major catastrophes, interruptions, screaming, stampeding, or injury, there were 10 involving at least one of those. And as is always the case with small children and family gatherings, there was one toy that was the envy of the children, one toy that required constant monitoring, timing, and hiding to prevent an all-out war: The Spinning Thing, one of those battery-operated plastic contraptions with plastic and gel arms that light up when you press the trigger and whirl around at speeds unimaginable to three-, four-, and five-year-olds. I hate the god-forsaken Spinning Thing. The Spinning Thing must die. The Spinning Thing is the spawn of Satan. DAMN YOU, Spinning Thing! DAMN! YOU! Every major fight was over The Spinning Thing. The adults' entire weekend was spent discussing The Spinning Thing in tense, tight voices: Whose turn is it for the Spinning Thing? Did he really hit her with The Spinning Thing? Why are they always running when they have The Spinning Thing? Why doesn't The Spinning Thing have a real name? When are those batteries going to give out anyway? Oh my holy god in heaven who invented the damned Spinning Thing?! I HATE IT, GIVE IT TO ME NOW I'M GOING TO DESTROY IT IN FRONT OF ALL OF YOU, DIE SPINNING THING, DDDDIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!

Okay, so maybe that was just me. Anyway, it was horrifying. And still, there is more.

The Spinning Thing isn't even what is going down in the Hall of Horror and Shame. Remember the tube of Desitin we sent my aunt to buy for us on that fated night as we approached her house with the other two elements still needed to create the perfect storm for Labor Day 2006? The tube I left on my aunt's dresser, next to her bed, where I put Quinn for a nap and left him unsupervised in my stupid belief that he would sleep because I have some crazy assumption that as a human three-year-old, at some point he'll have to sleep? Did he:

a.) get up 50 times and walk into the hallway until someone noticed him and put him back in bed
b.) scream and laugh like a lunatic and refuse to sleep despite his obvious delirium
c.) quietly smear the full tube of Desitin Creamy onto my aunt's brand new, recently installed bedroom carpet
d.) all of the above

Did I:

a.) not know about this until Quinn woke from his nap hours after maturely and responsibly cleaning up the mess
b.) find him and breathe a sigh of relief just before any greasy staining material touched the new carpet
c.) catch him mid-Desitin smear, remain calm, and clean up before anyone was aware of the near-disaster
d.) none of the above; rather, walk in, scream in horror, make everyone in the house think I'd found Quinn dead, then watch them all proceed not to care about the carpet in their intense relief over his well-being and lack of bloody stumps in the room

For those of you who are new around here, the answer was D in both cases. I'll be billed for the carpet cleaning AND the hospital bills for the multiple heart attacks I caused.

They're deceptively cute when they're plotting. It's 9:00, Sid!

Random Friday Photo(s) - The Dresser Mansion

I am shooting a wedding at the Dresser Mansion this weekend and wanted to drive by to make sure I knew the exact location. I took a few pictures of the outside. After getting home, I did a little research on the building.

The Dressers had buckets and buckets of cash. And Mrs. Dresser was kind of a social snob. One day while Mr. Dresser was earning another bucket of cash, Mrs. Dresser hires an architect (the same guy that designed the original Waldorf Astoria in NYC) to create the ultimate party house. Then she books a trip to Europe to gather furniture, rugs, paintings, and accessories for her new abode. Being the henpecked go-along guy he was, Mr. Dresser goes along with the plan. Construction on the house started in 1919.

While in Europe, they talk King George V. into allowing them to use the trees in his private forest for the woodwork (I wonder how many buckets of cash it took to bribe their way into seeing the King). The trees are cut down, and finished by Italian craftsmen (I have this picture in my head of Gepeto stealing one of the trees to carve Pinocchio).

When the Dressers arrive back home a year later, they move all their stuff in and throw a wild ass party to show off their new house. She was the talk of the town until they went bust over a bad business deal and the economy tanked. I can't find any information on what happened to the Dressers after that, but somehow the house survived and is currently owned and being cared for by a local guy who rents it out for weddings and parties.

I'm looking forward to seeing the inside. Here are some of the outside shots.