inherited genes

An extremely exciting development in my life is that Steel has inherited my purge gene. She'll get rid of anything if she can. Her brother has trouble parting with a used kleenex or a headless plastic hammer, but she'll send every playdate away with a pile of clothes and toys.

It was a little awkward yesterday because we had Josephine over. Phine has 2 moms. She's a vegetarian. She's not allowed any Disney because of the bizarre way those films insist on killing moms off. (It is weird when you think about it. Bambi, Peter Pan, Finding Nemo....the list goes on. They took the single mom in Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs and turned her into a single dad.) Phine comes over and goes straight for the princess stuff. Her moms are hoping for an instant playgroup at our house, and she sits by herself playing with Steel's barbies, the forbidden fruit of a feminist existence. Steel was trying to pack them all up for Phine, and could not grasp the concept that Barbies are politically unacceptable in Phine's household. Tim and I are bonded by our hatred of musicals and Jack Peter is obviously headed for Broadway. I can only imagine that Phine will be on t.v. wearing a tiara, heels and a bathing suit vying for the "Miss Pennsylvania" title 10 years from now.

Apparently I was difficult to dress when I was little. Steel has also inherited that gene. She refuses to wear anything but her black candy corn pants and an orange shirt with a black cat on it. Her birthday is on Halloween, and she's a kid who loves candy, but it's still uncanny.

Steel's first "Halloween" was the August before she turned 2. We were at a massive family reunion in Canada; Tim's dad was one of 14, and most are still alive and have reproduced. Everyone camps lakeside on the grounds of a bed and breakfast owned by one of the Aunties. Apparently there was some mention of a Halloween celebration in the pre-reunion literature. All of the Canadian kids had costumes. I wrapped JP in toilet paper and told him he was a mummy. Steel was little and had just eaten a chocolate ice cream cone, so she was sticky and horrible enough to call it a costume. We went to the first tent with a posse of kids. Cousin Lawrence handed out a pile of chocolates to each kid. Steel refused to leave his tent. You guys can leave; I'm staying right here with this guy.... No one had ever handed her a pile of candy and told her to have as much as she wanted.

We also did a tai chi class at the reunion. There were about 25 of us following along. Jack Peter hopped up onto a play structure in front of the class and started shouting to everyone. My dad does that. If a flock of birds lands in front of him at the beach, he'll bellow, Thank you all for coming....I've gathered you all here for an important announcement! I guess Jack Peter got the Kinder pontificating gene.

As you can see from photos, Toby has inherited my obsession-with-underwear gene.

I seem to have inherited somebody's forgetful gene. I often forget about Toby. Last week I gave the big kids milk, and we went out somewhere, the 4 of us. Toby looked up at me and said plaintively, Toby's baba? I don't think I could have felt like a worse mom....until Sunday

Sunday, I forgot about a playdate with one of the cutest, most well-behaved kids at school. He and his dad rang and rang the bell. We were out, and I was phone-less, so they had to turn around and go back home. We rescheduled for Tuesday. His mom made sure to text me beforehand. She's a person who makes me feel like a self-absorbed disaster....She teaches yoga to old people and does social work. She started school research WAY before I had and flummoxed me with her knowledge and has since decided that none of the free options will do and is sending her kid to quaker school. She took a breastfeeding class to brush up for her second kid. Her first kid is extremely well-behaved and hates dessert. Dessert is the only thing that connects my children to good behavior.

The long-awaited playdate was a little chaotic. I picked up the date, Steel, and Jack Peter from school and brought them home to a fragile Toby. I let the big kids go down to play with the "Lightening McQueen who changes color when he goes from hot to cold," my gift to the date for standing him up. I could hear tub noises. I went down and all of the cars had been dumped into the tub. The date was naked. It was stinky. I figured it had been a while since he had taken a bath, so I let them tub. I picked up his clothes from the floor and put them in the dryer assuming that they had gotten damp from the process of putting Lightening McQueen back and forth from hot to cold water.

I went back upstairs to start dinner and give Toby a little attention until Steel screamed something about POOP ON THE FLOOR!!! I strapped Toby into her chair and sprinted back down. All 3 looked at me and said, "It's all cleaned up!" I clorox wiped things and made everyone wash hands and bums and went back upstairs to make dinner and assuage screaming Toby. I also checked my phone and read the following text from playdate's mom: FYI he can always use a reminder to go potty especially when focused on play...Yep, I'd solidified excrement onto his clothing and onto the interior of my dryer with my sophisticated hot treatment. The poor kid had done his best to clean up after himself and not tell me, and that's how I repay him????

Any doubts I'd had about the etiquette of giving gifts to both the date and his mom were disspelled. She got a bouquet of my tulips. I grew the most astonishing tulips this year. I planted them in our garden plot, and they are truly remarkable. Do they compensate for a crestfallen Sunday and a kid returned in clothes that were a little too small for him, I don't know. At least the date does not share Steel's passion for specific clothing. Meanwhile Jack Peter was a little traumatized to see the date leaving in his clothing....clothing he always complains about because they fall off, but nonetheless his clothing.

Dismembered

It sort of looks like the little bud vase they have in VW beetles...right?

Sometimes I wonder if my kids wet their beds because they know it's the only way one of us is going to launder their sheets. The filth has been getting out of hand, lately.

"Should I take off my shoes?" People always ask that when they walk into the house. "PLEASE DON'T!" is my panicked response. If people go in their socks or barefoot, they'll feel all of the dried cranberries, boogers, and mandarin orange syrup on the floor.

We knew the car was bad, but we ignored it. I thought Julie was making some sort of fun, faux flower decoration, but the above image is Fabreze-soaked paper towels crammed into the blower vents of the car, an optimistic attempt by Nanny McGyver to offset the smell. Saturday was the first nice, warm one of the spring. Tim thought it'd be a fun outing for the big kids to go get Heidi Hybrid detailed. He bought the detailing package that appeared to be all-inclusive. When Heidi was returned to him with unwashed seats, he complained. The man at the car wash said to him, "You look pretty educated...I'M NOT EDUCATED! BUT I CAN READ THAT THE $40 PACKAGE DOESN'T INCLUDE SHAMPOOING THE UPHOLSTERY." Tim replied, "It looks like your whole operation is dependent upon all the cars moving through the line....I think I'm going to park my car at the head of the line and then I'm going to take my kids out for lunch." There's only a tiny lurking little smidgeon of the piss, sour milk, coffee smell left. Those seats look almost new.

Whenever I launder kids' car seats, I wonder how many kids do you have to have before you can put a car seat back together in under a half hour. Taking the 9 random pieces of carseat upholstery out of the dryer and trying to figure out to which they belong in what formation with 3 little kids helping can really test a marriage.


love is blind...

Speaking of marriage...sadly, we've had our first gay bashing incident at our home. I was given these two roosters by 2 different gay men in San Francisco. What are the chances of that? I've always assumed that the roosters were meant to be together, and they have been for 15 years.

2 weeks ago, Tim had all 3 kids for the weekend while I made an unsuccessful attempt to flog pottery at The Philadelphia Invitational Furniture Fair. It was one of those, "everything got too quiet" moments. Tim looked up from his computer to see the living room covered with feathers. All 3 kids had been viciously plucking the tail of one of the roosters. He freaked out and made them clean up all of the feathers. When I came home, I asked them, "Why did you do that to the rooster?" They replied, "We were trying to turn him into a hen, so they could be married. Two roosters can NOT be married!!!!" What little fascists they're turning out to be.

TADA! chocolate-covered, amputee barbie! She got covered with whipped cream flowers too.

I got my revenge on Barbie. It was Lisa's birthday last weekend. Lisa and I have been best friends since she emerged from her mom 3 months after I'd done the same. Lisa and her family moved here this winter from Montana. She had such crooked movers that Tim invoked his "refuse to move the car" trick. Upon discovering that the movers weren't planning to reimburse her the $3000 they'd extorted from her. She sprinted down through the snow in her pumps and interview suit and boxed in a semi with her little Subaru. She sat in the car with her kids for an hour. The police came and she got her money back. Now that's the way to deal with crooked movers and car washers. I love my husband for that...(among other things)

Anyway, back to Barbie...Lisa's mom used to make doll cakes for her and her sisters. I had to do it. How else was I going to visually pep up a chocolate cake with chocolate icing? It hadn't occurred to me that Steel would come up the morning after I'd covered Barbie's loins with saran wrap (having already pulled out both of her legs) and gasp when I opened the fridge to get milk for her cereal. She did not want Barbie:
a. in the fridge
b. in a cake
Apparently I was supposed to have asked her. I forgot to take chocolate-covered paraplegic Barbie home that evening. Sources tell me she's had a trip through the dishwasher. Steel hasn't remembered that she's still at Lisa's house. I see Barbie's legs hiding behind the cutting boards when I'm cooking. As long as no one decides to clean back there, I won't get caught. In this house, I feel safe.

this is not a goldfish...it's a rooster eye sitting casually on a bedside table.
Barbie deserved everything she got...

Super Hero Institute of Technology

Rain blows.

Poor Toby spends her time waddling over to the front hall where the coats hang pleading, Apple Jacket! Outside! Hat on! It is especially crappy for making pottery. I move ware all around my studio in hopes of drying it faster, and I inevitably break a bunch of it. I put cup handles on too soon, and they all warp. During all of this I have to listen to too many traffic reports on NPR.

Making and breaking bad pottery was the middle of my day. Tim and I had to start the day confronting our nanny with a time-maintenance/being present discussion stemming from Toby's fall down the outside metal stairs. Julie (sanannyty) was running late the previous day and put Steel in the car first (probably because she was being the biggest pain in the ass) thinking that Toby would stay on the stairs with her brother. We all admitted to dropping the ball when it's 3 on 1. It gets hectic. Tuesday morning I asked Jack Peter to get dressed for school. He told me that he hated everyone in our family except for Toby and Steel and that he was going to dig up all of my tulips. I responded while I jammed a shirt over his head that if he touched my tulips I was going to throw away all of his toys and his markers. Toby could have been climbing onto a ceiling fan from the top of a bar stool at that moment, and I'd have had no idea.

The crappy day continued when Jack Peter did not get picked in the lottery for the Spanish Immersion Charter School we were hoping for. We can re-apply for first grade, but it will be more difficult for him. I was sad about that. I love that school. Julie sent me a text with the above picture saying that he might still get a place at the Super-Hero-Institute of Technology. (S.H.I.T)

That helped. As did filling out an application for the Performing Arts Charter School which is rumored to have a good French Program. I mentioned Jack Peter's unparalleled mimicry of Spanish-speaking Buzz Light Year. I also boasted about his annual tabletop performance at the McDonald family Thanksgiving dinner. This is the school that requires a list of 13 items to apply to the lottery. You're not allowed to visit until you've been accepted, so you're getting all of this crap together not knowing whether or not you like the place. I'm going to pop the results from my last Pap Smear into the envelope too. I hope they have a sense of humor.

I can't really bitch about my day. I got rock star parking both picking up and dropping off the kids at school; I got to hear my first Lady Gaga song on the way, and I didn't spill coffee in my lap. I didn't have to bribe Steel with lipstick to stop crying and let me leave her at school, and when I picked them up it was my favorite: dress up, dance to 70's music, and talk on pretend cell phone time. I got to drink wine and eat a yummy dinner at Heather's with her friend, Fiona, who also has 3 kids 5 and under. There were 9 kids, and none of my kids cried or hit anyone, and they all ate their vegetables. The girls spent the play date dressing up and cleaning the bathroom with cloth wipes and then throwing them into the toilet, so Rene's day ended with a plunger, but mine is ending with the happy discovery that Tim remembered trash day is tomorrow.

parental advice

I've always found it suspect that everyone I know over 60 is on Lipitor. It's also shady that grapefruit is off-limits when taking Lipitor. Big Macs are fine, but lay off of the grapefruit. My mom somehow discovered that the price for the 100 mg. tablets is the same as the price for the 50 mg. ones. She got herself a pill cutter and has saved herself a dollar a day by hacking the big ones in half. I casually mentioned to her that dad had come to visit and refused the grapefruit I'd proudly remembered to get for his breakfast. My parents, Susie and Peter, had a horrible 5-year divorce after a 30-year marriage. She would have let him rot in hell, but she couldn't bear the thought that he was over-paying a pharmaceutical company. Breaking a year-long silence, she called to relay her pill-chopping genius. A friend's husband has just been put on Lipitor. I told her about Lipitor-halving, and she laughed at me. She's definitely not a New Englander.

Growing up, my dad didn't have too many words of wisdom for me, but two tidbits of Peter knowledge have served me well. The first was: "If you're interviewing with a woman, put your hair up. If it's a man, wear your hair down." Last week the Philadelphia Convention Center hosted the Buyers Market of American Craft. It's been the basis for my business. Buyers come from all over the country. Craftspeople show prototypes and gallery owners place orders. I leave the show with a list of pottery to make from March to October knowing full well that re-orders will carry me through the holidays and into the following year. Before I had children I had a brain that could organize the logistics of such a list. I no longer possess that brain. For the past 3 years I have not gotten a booth at the convention center. Instead, I've invited buyers to my studio to pick work from my shelves. The lure is that there will be no discrepancy between what they pick and what I send them; they can also see how pieces look together. The demographic break down of my visitors was: 2 gay men, 3 straight husbands, and 16 women. I wore my hair up. I sold a lot of pottery.

It's both anxiety-producing and extremely gratifying when gallery owners get so swept up in the glamour of my ghetto studio that they buy work I find hideous. They dig stuff out I've tried to hide and rhapsodize about it. Sometimes I'm bellowing at them about the flaws I see in the pieces. They look at each other and shrug.

The second tidbit from Peter Kinder is: NEVER tell people things are going well. When your mother and I were divorcing I was the most popular guy in town! They ate up Susie's return to her high school sweetheart. They revelled in the collapse of my business. People loved it! It was difficult picturing my dad regaling the hapless plumber with stories about the divorce, but he likes to entertain, and he had to get HIS side out there. I have to admit; I follow his advice. Obviously too much information is my modus operendi. I was telling buyers that I no longer live in the loft upstairs because of the human poo I'd find on the stoop and I'd lit scented candles to cover up the marijuana smell from the pot heads upstairs and last week dog piss was raining down into my studio in 3 different places because they had 3 pit bulls up there. People do laugh-awkwardly as they look up at the ceiling.

I also have Susie to thank for my success last week. I wrote an e-mail to buyers right before the show saying that I'd come get them downtown and taxi them to my studio and back. I wrote, "My mom is coming to mind the kids, and I'll use her car, so you won't emerge from my "taxi" smelling like sour milk with a lolly pop stuck to your bum." It worked. I also channelled Susie when I got pulled over. I was dropping one buyer off and picking up another. I was late, so I'd taken an illegal left turn off of Market Street. I have a clean driving record, and I did not have time to get a ticket, AND, I'd left my driver's license in the studio. Susie NEVER got a ticket, and she was pulled over plenty of times. Remembering my mom's license plates I pleaded with my best Susie smile, "Officer, I am SO SORRY! I'm from Massachusetts! I didn't have any idea how to get where I need to go without taking that turn. I won't do it again!" He told me it would have been a $120 ticket and 3 points on my license and that I should be more careful.

Thank God I'd let my hair down as I'd left Rittenhouse Square.

One of Steel's ceramic creations

picketing

Welcome to vomit/diahrrea/fever week. Jack Peter and I are the only two who have not succumbed. Heather, aka extreme mom, celebrated vdf week last week. She culminated it by throwing a birthday/Superbowl party for her 1 year old, Gigi. Apparently we contracted the Ermilio family vdf. The liquids and the misery are vile and tragic, but the isolation is what gets you. You can't go swimming at the Y. You can't go on play dates. You're a shit if you take them to the Please Touch Museum. We thought Toby was on the mend yesterday, so we let her have milk and food. We were rewarded by her spewing a substance ressembling watery mayonnaise all over the kitchen. It's horrible to see a 16-month-old baby explode.

This morning I gave Toby the cereal she'd requested. I sat far away in the brown chair as she ate. She made it through the bowl. Steel was sick and still asleep, so I let Jack Peter draw. Normally I force feed him breakfast like he's a goose I'm preparing for foie gras, but I knew we weren't going to get to leave the house, so why rush? I asked him to pick up the 17 pieces of Barbaras Shredded Spoonfuls that were on the floor beneath Toby's chair. He ignored me. I asked several more times. He got up and held up the above hot pink "NO" sign he'd just drawn. I'm assuming he's been inspired by the success of the Egyptian anti-Mubarak revolution.

This morning our family was to be the subject of a lifestyle article for the Philadelphia Inquirer..."The architect in the home he designed with his potter wife and 3 children..." That's why I asked JP to pick up a little. Tim was frantically vaccuuming, stowing and cleaning toothpaste handprints off of all of the bathroom mirrors. I was trying to manage the Tobinator and wondering when I was going to get to bathe. Toby spends her mornings systematically taking books off of shelves, caps off of markers, toys out of toy chests until she has to stop to take a massive poop.

The writer and photographer arrived. His name was Chip, but the writer kept calling him Skip. I finally had to ask which it was. Uncle Johnny always says, "Who am I? Skip?" whenever he feels someone hasn't offered him a beer or food to the point that when I hear the name, Skip, I automatically assume that I'm being a poor hostess. We awkwardly cleared up the Skip/Chip confusion, but it was a jerky photoshoot. Steel was sick on the couch with a fever. She's normally camera shy, but with a fever I fully expected Skip to leave here with a black eye. The writer, Diane, finally said, "Let's just photograph the 4 of you. No one knows you have 3 kids."

Diane held a fascination for my home decor style which I will henceforth call, "grandma chic" She was admiring the Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates that my Grandma Girly bought for me. I'm a December baby, so when I was in utero, Grandma was walking down the streets of New York and stopped to admire that year's Christmas plate, which incidentally has a goose on it. She bought it saying to herself, "If that baby isn't normal, I'll break this plate over my knee!" Subsequently she bought me the Christmas plate every year for my birthday. I put on a brave face when I'd see the tell-tale 8"x8"x2" box on the dining room table.

Recently my mom needed to clear them out, so here they are as well as the Norman Rockwell ones and the Audobon Woodland Series. I was told that these are "limited edition" and very valuable. I have all of the original boxes and literature. I cracked up when I went online to find that you can get them for peanuts on ebay. To Tim's chagrin I've put them up in the guestroom and the Rockwell ones were in the kids' room before operation bunkbed. I admit they're kitch, but I love them as I do Nana Kinder's watercolors and wonky antique lamps. Maybe those plates are the reason I'm a potter.

I know I'm turning into my mom. I hear it in my voice when I shout at my kids. But now I'm grappling with the reality that I'm also becoming my grandmother. Grandma Girlie was fabulously shameless. She'd ask me to pick out a dessert to take home from an all-you-can-eat buffet. A waiter would come over and dutifully wrap it up for us. She was a tiny woman, but she carried these massive purse/baskets. They had hinged wooden tops that would slam as stuff went in or out. In it she could put the black forest cake I'd selected as well as the sugar packets and creamers she'd taken from the table. She remarried a well-to-do journalist in her 70's. They were so cute and romantic. With him she became a member of exclusive clubs and had a glamorous, sable-decked, Florida life. She still nicked stuff from restaurants. The Biltmore Hotel to which they belonged had these distinctive yellow, pink and turquoise mints in a crystal punch bowl. Grandma Girlie always had a jar of them in her kitchen. I, too, am becoming a mint hoarder. I just discovered that if you microwave vanilla ice cream to soften it and stir in crushed up mints or old candy canes, you will have peppermint stick ice cream. Pregnant or not, peppermint stick ice cream is my holy grail, and it's only a seasonal thing in Philadelphia. I think of Grandma Girlie every time I thank a hostess and grab a mint for each of my kids and then a handful for my purse.

Heather, the source of the vdf disease, called today to see if we are still friends. I told her I was just about to stick pins in the eyes of the voo doo doll I'd made of her. She had just taken 2 girls on a Sam's Club shopping trip. Big box shopping with children should be an olympic event. She'd had to open cookies, fruit and a roast chicken to make it through. When she went to pay, she didn't have the right credit card, so she was on her way to another grocery store to re do the entire shopping trip. I told her I'd send voo doo doll to a spa with stinky snatch barbie.

faucets on my mind

It's only Thursday, and we've achieved another bed wetting hat trick. Kids are human leaky faucets. Some people are "food insecure." I'm sleep-insecure. I hunch my shoulders all night long in fear of being awakened. When I unfold in the morning, I can't turn my head to the left; or I can't pour from a gallon of milk because my wrist is tweaked from making a fist all night long. What would be the sleep version of going to McDonald's? Whatever it is, I'm going to start doing it.

It started last Friday when we went to the trouble to get a sitter to attend a fabulous gay dinner party. We were drunk and torturing guests with videos of our kids within 2 hours of our arrival. I was drinking Jim Beam like water.

It didn't help that I went to the studio after the party to turn on a kiln and spent an hour there admiring the new work I'd just unloaded. At that moment I was the Michael Phelps of potters. I have a new vase shape that I love. It is a long-sought-after response to Howard's request for a vase that would "make those cheap grocery store bouquets look good." A while ago, I was trimming a deep bowl, and it flew off of the wheel. It smushed gracefully into a cool shape, and I've perfected it now. So, Howard, when you get your Trader Joe's bouquet, throw away the vile greenery, thin out and cut down those trashy mums and daisies, fan them out in an elliptical vase, artfully place the almost-wilted lily, rose and/or Gerbera daisy, and they look pretty great. You might even get laid when you've gone to the trouble to get flowers and make dinner. I went to bed at 2 and was awakened by Toby at 5. Andrew, my fabulous, gay dinner host...texted me to see how I was faring the next morning...Hung like a horse was my obvious response.

A great segue to mentioning our previous Saturday's family outing to go to Sports Authority to get Tim an athletic cup. It's exciting to be married to someone who has to wear an athletic cup. I told him he had to get in shape after the last miscarriage, so he's started a kickboxing class, Muay Thai, that involves a lot of jumping rope and push ups. Who knows where the athletic cup comes in. I don't know where I get off telling him he has to get in shape. The kids and I were at the YMCA on Monday getting dressed after swim class. The locker room is about 43 degrees, so I dress them first while they sing loud songs about their butts and their collective penis-unless they're distracted by the need to tell a 250 lb woman that she has a big butt. I've resorted to putting them on top of the lockers to keep them from fooling around while I dress. Monday they sat on their perch, unable to move, arguing over whether my butt was jiggling while I put on my lotion. Steel said it definitely was while Jack Peter vehemently denied it.

The kids' constant singing is challenging sometimes. Toby is already humming "Red River Valley" on her own. All of the "My butt" "My penis" or "I farted" songs become manageable when I hear the following song. It was written by Chris, the head of our daycare. My kids are hanging out all day with people who write Madonna songs about plumbing. How could my life be any better?

To be sung to Madonna's "Like a Virgin"

I put the pipes together

with an elbow joint or two

a pipe for hot and a pipe for cold

That's just what I do....

You need a bath

I've got a tub

you need water

well I've got the pipes, and I'll hook them up

I'll hook them up

All shiny and new

Like a plumber

Plumbing for the very first time

Like a plu uh uh uh mer

Got your faucets on my mind

Friday Night Lights...

I am not worried that playing with the Toy Story 3 Workout Barbie will give my daughters a poor body image. I am worried they will think they should work out in blue Lamé and heels. I call this Barbie "Stinky Snatch Barbie," so my girls will understand that trampy-looking synthetics and exercise are not a good match.

The latest news, reported by my nanny this evening, is that Workout Barbie's head falls off if you don't push it all the way down on her neck. She ends up looking like a long-legged dwarf, but it stays on. This is now an important piece of information. If S.S. Barbie comes to the Y and her head doesn't come home, all hell might break loose.

The minutia is endless. Obviously I need to remember which kid eats what. JP loves olives and capers but hates red sauce. Steel hates sweet potatoes. Toby doesn't like avocado. The whereabouts of the sippy cups drives me mad, but there are other sippy-cup related facts: the Lightening McQueen sippy cup with the faded picture on it is the "dirty baba" and can only be given to Toby because she's too little to care. The yellow sippy cup is the only other one that doesn't leak, but the stopper comes off if they shake it hard enough which they all do intentionally.

Important clothes facts: you have to stretch out the arms on Steel's favorite sleepy suit to get her in it, and same for Jack Peter's favorite turtleneck to get his head in it. Tim doesn't know any of these facts, and he survives. He ignores them as they are wailing, "NOT THE DIRTY BABA!!!!" and he puts them in whatever clothes are handy chuckling through the protestations. I could probably do the same, but maybe I enjoy the games. Does keeping track of it all keep me from getting bored?

The only time it all gets to be mentally too much is when I'm pregnant. When people buy pottery I give them funny cards. The favorite is: "You're probably thinking this card is going to say that this piece of pottery was made by the loving hands of some underprivileged person...I hate to disappoint you, but it was made by an over-educated girl in Philly who is going to blow the money on some over-priced moisturizer." Another one says, "I'm pregnant. I'm also a potter. I'm not complaining, but pottery is mindless. It gives me a lot of time to think about how much I love Swedish fish." I've been pregnant 6 times in the past 4 years, so it's often true.

Pottery also gives me a lot of time to think the following: Is it a boy or a girl? Wait, what was that? (gas) Is something going wrong? What happens if it's not normal? When do I do the testing for that? What will we name it if it's a girl? When will we put him/her in daycare? Where will him/her sleep? God, wouldn't it suck if I had a colicky baby? There are more thoughts like this, and they go in a rotation. I come home to the sippy cup/Barbie thoughts, and by the time the kids go to sleep I am desperate for some escapism.

This is why Tim and I watched 3-4 episodes of "Friday Night Lights" every night for the past month. We could watch it instantly on Netflix, so there was no stopping us. It was like crack.

Sadly I lost the baby. Physically it was the easiest of my 3 miscarriages. It also happened on the day we were attempting to process the death of Ian, the 11-month-old baby of a friend of ours, who inexplicably stopped breathing. In the face of that, losing the beginnings of our 4th child didn't seem so bad.

Needing to watch "Friday Night Lights" is a poor excuse for not blogging. But how good would the musings of a hormonal lady consumed by her own bodily functions and Barbie's feminine hygiene be? It's best I spent the past month trying to decide whether I prefer Matt Sorensen or Tim Riggins.