Hodge Podge

I feel compelled to write something here just because this space exists as an open tablet, and because we originally started this site as a way to record things about our life. But lately it's hard to find a lot of time to write about our life, considering how much time we're spending on the acutal living part. And that's not to say that the living is all grand and amazing or even stressful and demanding - just time consuming, all of it. Even the parts where we're sitting around staring at each other in a little bit of irritation and a lot of fatigue are too time-consuming for me to stop and sit down at the computer to try to record it. We'd rather sling mud at one another and dredge up old arguments, because that's a lot healthier, and it sets a much better example for our kids, who we're obviously hoping will grow up and make some lucky therapists very, very rich. Vacations tend to take their toll on us, whether we stay in town or trek across the country in a moving prison cell with our own miniature wardens sitting behind us dictating our every move. All that togetherness combined with the Chaos Extravaganza that is Bryce and Quinn on Vacation...well, it's a challenge. Let's just leave it at that.

I took a week off of work and rather than spend that time lounging on the couch and watching Christmas movies all day, we thought running the family ragged would be a good idea. As always, by the time John's birthday rolled around on the day before New Year's Eve, I was shivering and groaning in pain with every step, my body hosting some biological version of a show called, HEY STUPID! I TOLD YOU TO SLOW DOWN. It was a traveling show; John hosted the next night, and there was a bonus performance at 2:00 a.m. on New Year's Day courtesy of Bryce. Hello, 2007. Are you done sucking the life out of us now? Thanks.

On the bright side, thanks to the new furniture, the kids are now sharing a bedroom. Why I consider this a bright side, I don't know, except for the fact that the months of anxiety leading up to the act of putting the two little plotting terrorists together are finally over, and now we're left to deal only with the actual reality of the situation rather than the horrors our own minds were concocting. To be honest, they aren't staying up any later or causing any more nightly chaos than they were before, which is why we decided to go ahead and take the plunge to combining their rooms in the first place. That doesn't mean things aren't chaotic and the kids aren't getting out of bed six dozen times after the fourth or fifth good night kiss - just that it's no worse than it was before.

During all of the running around and subsequent death bed avoidance, we learned that Quinn is a puzzle master. You put a puzzle in front of that kid, he'll put it together. He has anger management issues as we all know, so he still grunts and pounds on the table in frustration if a piece doesn't click into place within .067 seconds of his initial try, but other than that, a puzzle buys us at least five minutes of relative peace. I'll have to tell the SuperCuts people about that. They'll be interested, because when I took Quinn there the other day for a hair cut, he sat peacefully on the waiting bench while they all avoided eye contact with me, then when one of them reluctantly called his name, he unleashed his special powers and shattered their crooked mirrors and melted their cheap scissors and caused mild panic in the tri-county area. Today he went to school with shaggy hair. I dare someone to mention it to either of us.