In search of the gulf stream

ransacking the bags and playing dress-up makes the time go faster....

mouth farts are always fun...

One of the great mysteries of parenting is whether the nose picking is more disgusting because they eat it or less because they don't wipe it on their car seats. We've been in the car a lot lately as we are every summer. Tim has had it. We drove 2 hours yesterday to go check out an RV in North Jersey. It was 104 degrees, so the kids lasted 14 seconds inside the vehicle.

During the test drive I was left lingering in the immaculate McMansion of the RV owner with all 3 children who invited themselves in. I'd tried to keep them outside playing in the yard, but it was 104 out. Toby demanded some pizza from the family and then had a tantrum when I wouldn't let her walk around the house with it. The other two disappeared into a massive leather "L" shaped couch unit with embedded cup holders and went into a TV coma. I know I'm turning into my mom. I just wish it was happening quick enough for me to have asked to use the pool. The kids would have had a blast, and we had our suits. I just couldn't bring myself to ask. Susie would've had us playing Marco Polo in 14 seconds.

I thought the whole trip to Jersey in 104 degree weather to see an RV was ill-planned before I found out that Tim had gotten hit by a car on the test drive. The RV had been on blocks, so the first stop was a gas station. At the station, the owner was complaining about the wasps nest under the carriage. "I can take care of that for you!" says my princely husband. He wacked the nest off and leapt away from the 200,000 wasps angrily protesting their eviction. A passing car clipped his little, freckled ankle as he retreated. After the test, as they arrived back at the house, the RV died right before they got it in the driveway. Toby was screaming at the window, "IT'S DADA" for 20 minutes as they hemmed and hawed about getting it out of the street.

I figured out why the house was so immaculate. One of the de-cluttering tactics of the super-clean mom of 6 is to serve all meals on paper plates with styrofoam cups for beverages...no dirty dishes for Joanne! Coming from a world in which my mom re-uses straws until they have visible black mildew inside, I was horrified. I've been out of straws for months, so I've been cutting the ones I've stolen from rest stops in half. I've also resigned myself to the mildew on my swim cap, so the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Just think of the pottery she's NOT buying!

Human consumption has been on my mind. Last weekend we went to Pittsburgh for a 1 year old birthday party. Pittsburgh doesn't recycle. The party was about 60-80 people. Every person brought a massive bag of clothes and toys. There were 12 contractor bags of trash by the end of the weekend. That's a single 1 year old. Our gift was a paper bag of 15-year-old clothes from my mother-in-law's massive purge. You can't beat those vintage pink Cheryl Tiegs-Charlie's Angels shorts.


Tim didn't complain about his ankle until the day after. Why are men so crazy about their bodies? We've just entered our healthy time when everything we eat comes from Tim's bountiful garden. The bowel movement ramifications of the first beet salad gets me every summer. Tim was off early that morning to a meeting. I had to text him, "That first beet poop is always a shocker, isn't it?" His response, "AH that's what it was?? I was freaking out" So he assumed he was dying for a second and then carried on with his day-forgetting about it completely. Meanwhile I can tell when I haven't had enough arugula, and I know the exact day in my cycle when an enormous pre-menstrual zit will arrive. This month it appeared on my ass. It was a difficult few days of sitting at my potter's wheel.

Speaking of men forgetting about everything, I have a new sister in law. Brian, the widower of Tim's sister just remarried Justina. Every year there is a family memorial golf outing. It's a fundraiser for the foundation in the name of Jack McDonald, Tim's Dad. Brian has a pool, and he lives on the way to the golf course. For the past 2 years I've sent my kids to play at his house with a sitter. This year it was the plan for my 3 kids, Mikes 2, my friend, Lisa, and her daughter, Hope. My mother-in-law queried, "Have you asked Brian????" I hadn't, so I texted him, and he said, "SURE!"

I arrived with 5 children the morning of the outing, and Justina says, as I'm unloading bags from the car and storing stuff in her fridge, "What are you guys doing here????" "Ummmmm.....Brian didn't tell you?" To her credit, her only comment was, "I'm glad I stocked the freezer with ice cream!"

I was trying to butter her up as I was unloading more and more crap. The week before we'd been to the shore house. Brian and Justina are avid fishers. They stock the freezer with little dated freezer bags of striped bass and flounder. It drives my mother in law berserk, because freezer real estate is precious, so I do my part by eating as much of it as possible. I gushed to Justina, "We had fish 2 nights last week at the shore, and it was amazing, thank you!" She replied sadly, "You ate the fish?"

"Welcome to the McDonald family, Justina!!! Maybe my kids will pick all of the nasturtiums you've planted while you're gone, and I'll have a hat trick!"

Tim and the new love of his life....not the one that died on the test drive. This is the one that died in the alley behind our house when he arrived home with it.

Unconditional Love

Jack Peter's signage continues...
He greeted two of our just-out-of-bed houseguests with this sign. We had coffee, but somehow he knew that no coffee would have really sucked for that particular couple. "Happy Malrs Day, love pleyn" was my airplane-bedecked mother's day card. Water fountains are a favorite visual motif for him. WODRFAWTN FILDWITHWODR is the title of one drawing and WOD R FAOTIN is another. BUDRFLOY, DRAGIN, DOLFIN, BRD, EGWONA, RADLSNACK narrate the menagerie flying above one of his urban landscapes. It's all fun, cute, and fascinating until you're on a car trip, and the following sticky missive gets handed up from the back,
MAMAILOVEYOUBUTOLYWENYOULOVEMEANDWENICEISYOU...

Jack Peter and Steel used to say to me as I left their room at night, "Mama, we love you even when you burp and when you fart...we love you all the time." According to the above sign, that unconditional love has been recinded. Does unconditional love exist?

We were at my mom's for the 4th of July. My mom lets the kids watch PBS kids in the morning when they wake. They get to cuddle in her bed and she gives me an extra hour of sleep. (We don't have TV, and they actually still believe that PBS kids only exists at her house) Tim has an addiction to the screen. I think Tim NEEDS it. It's the only time he unwinds. He deserves it. Jack Peter shares his dad's addiction. The phonetic writing is impressive given that nobody takes the time to help him, but his life isn't all that stressful, so I'm not at the point where I'm thinking he NEEDS it...

The first morning he woke up at Grandma Susie's at 5 am demanding to watch the TV. It got ugly. I put him in his room and told him that he couldn't come out until the "5" on the digital clock turned into a "7." 20 minutes later he came running into my room shaking and screaming, "IT'S NOT WORKING!!!!! IT'S NOT TURNING TO 7!!!! I NEED TO WATCH PBS KIDS!!!!!" I looked at him with the wisdom of 3.5 hours of sleep and said, "NO" His crazy bedhead and his desperation made me think of a Jack Peter 15 years from now wanting money for crack. I love him so much, but what would I do in that situation?????

Speaking of crack...I was loitering in Fishtown with Toby one day last month. We were returning from playgroup, and she'd demanded to get out of the stroller. I rarely have only 1 child and time on my hands, but my sananity was off that week, so I indulged Toby. She was climbing up and down the stairs of every stoop. She sat on one stoop watching a cranky line of traffic wind down the narrow Fishtown street behind a backhoe that was arduously moving at about 12 mph. I was checking my e-mail or writing a grocery list on my phone when Toby started saying repeatedly, "Uncle Johnny, backhoe."

It flummoxed me when Jack Peter said the word, "backhoe" every 17 seconds for 4 months straight. It scared the crap out of me when it was one of Steel's first 10 words. (We were in the car, and Jack Peter corrected her and said, "No, Steel, that's an EXCAVATOR") With Toby, I just assume it's normal that an 18-month-old girl is properly identifying construction equipment. The "Uncle Johnny" part was just wishful thinking; it's Uncle Pat who's at the helm of a backhoe. I continued texting, but she was right.

I looked up just in time to see Johnny's face light up through the dirty window. He stopped the backhoe (nevermind the 12 apoplectic drivers behind him) jumped out, and gave his favorite niece a big snuggle. She talked about that hug for the rest of the day. I never got to meet my father in law, the legendery Jack McDonald, but I know I got a glimpse of him at that moment. I texted Johnny's wife of 6 months to tell her the story. Their relationship is notorious for its one Achilles heel. She travels for business and is completely ruled by punctuality. He has his own clock. Those who know him, even casually, refer to "Johnny time." She texted back, "That's why I love him!" to which I responded, "Even if you were waiting for him at the house and were already an hour late for a dinner party?????" Why is it that what we love about someone can so easily turn into what we hate?

Another friend was in a relationship that I never witnessed. The relationship has flowered in a cinematic part of my brain. Helena Bonham Carter plays the female lead. She and her husband married every year in a different state. They did it 7 times. Sadly, the downs were as bad as the ups were good, and she left him for her current, serene boyfriend, one of the husband's friends. She's spent the past 4 years in bank-account-less, formal address-less anonymity fearing that her enraged ex would come seeking retribution. She's been waiting for requisite amount of time to pass for her to independently file a "no contest" divorce. The ex finally located her via facebook. He has terminal throat cancer and wanted to divorce her so that she not be saddled with his medical bills. She was so thrown by his selflessness that she was considering leaving her current life to be at his side for the last 3 months of his life. The serene boyfriend was OK with this....the only question was, "Did they have to file for divorce in the multiple states in which they were married?" In some crazy way, there's a lot of love there (or maybe just an anarchic hatred for our heathcare system that trumps the hatred of a wayward lover and friend)

Speaking of love, another bride and groom have registered for "liz kinder pottery." The groom is my friend. He and his wife registered for pottery without conferring with me. That was refreshing considering the exhaustive conversations I have with some couples, but anxiety-producing at the same time. Hoping to sort it all out, on a recent trip to Philly, I made him come to the studio to look at possibilities. "I love it ALL!" he said. Grooms are useless. I've not met the fiancee, but I had to contact her. She gave me a concise list.

Apparently it's more fun to buy ceramics from a crazy potter/blogger than it is to buy ceramics from Heath pottery. The list has been bought except for a $400 lamp. The last caller was going to order vases. I told her that the bride didn't need/want anymore stuff from me and to PLEASE get them the registry stuff from Heath pottery; It's beautiful!!!!! The woman refused, and I ended up going in with her on the lamp. Bridal registries are intense for me. I feel complicit in the success of the marriage. There's another weird part of it: I was actually worried about my vases. I didn't want them to go to a home that didn't want them. My unconditional love is for my pottery? Of course it's an extension of me, but that's still f-ing crazy.

Thank God Grandma Susie's unconditional love falls upon my brilliant and tactless daughter. Am I to expect a zinger from Steel every summer? Last summer she told a shirtless male friend, "My mom has boobs too..." (She's being generous...my lack of boobs has become so appalling that I've taken to saying to random people, "Everyone thinks my boobs are fake!" just to see their uncomfortable reaction) This summer Steel asked my mom, "You're my mama's mama, right?" My mom replied, "Yes, I am!" thinking they were going to get into a nostalgic conversation about a cherished time in my mom's life when she was raising my brother and me. Steel said, "Then why is your belly still so big????" (ie, COME ON, Grandma Susie, you've had enough time to lose the baby weight!) Susie merrily said something about too much naughty food.

the beer garden

It's starting to dawn on me that I might be the source of the chaos...

Tim and I made a spontaneous decision to pick the kids up from school and head right to the beer garden for an early dinner. It's a new Steven Starr restaurant in our neighborhood. Taking 3 kids to a restaurant is challenging enough, but on our way out of daycare, I saw John, a father of another 3, so I invited him to come. The kids were excited, although less so when they discovered that the only thing that grows in the garden is beer.

Just-5-Jack Peter was the oldest of the 6 kids. Toby immediately climbed onto a table with a pint of lemonade and fell onto the concrete floor on her head. I shoo-ed away the guy who came to clean it up because Toby happily played with the ice on the floor for the next 30 minutes. (brain damage?) On one of many trips to the potty, 4 kids had a 10-minute screaming contest. The guy coming out of the men's room was rattled, so imagine how I felt. I am proud that they recognized the superior accoustics of the all-concrete bathroom. Returning to our camp, the big kids showered the tables on our way with handfuls of gravel while I was minding one of the little ones.

For the first hour of our relaxing night out, 2 out of 3 of John's kids had stinky diapers. They were ignored until mom/Tanya came to join us. We used the window ledge onto the street as a changing table-musing that Steven Starr thinks of everything. (We only lost Jack Peter out the window during the entire evening which was a coup considering that 4 of them were performing on the ledge for most of the night) The first diaper change was uneventful except that the kid had on a cloth diaper that had to be saved. Saving a poopy diaper in a restaurant feels a little naughty, but hats off to them. I gave up cloth diapers after #2. The second disposable dirty diaper and soiled wipes were stowed under a bench during the re-dressing of the now-clean child. Some disaster happened...it goes without saying that the shitty diaper got stuck to Tanya's sandal as she sprinted from the "changing area" to save another kid from death. The flip-flop catapulted used wipes into the air like popcorn while she dragged the diaper along. Mercifully it stayed folded.

Tanya was reading our palms at the end of the evening telling us that we will definitely have a 4th. We spent hours there drinking beers as big as our heads. Misery loves company, and we were doing a good deed. I'm sure every one of those beer-drinking hipsters took extra precautions that night with their birth control.

Bieber, bacon and bullies

First cook six lb. of bacon, slice some cucumbers and put some juice boxes on ice. Give twenty 3, 4 and 5 year olds 36" inflatable light sabers. Watch a frenzied, testosterone-laced mosh pit of Star Wars-induced brawling for as long as you can handle it. To calm things down, give them a bat so they can whack away and an impenetrable Justin Bieber pinata hanging precariously from a ceiling fan. To the pinata candy, churning in their tummies, throw in a Darth Vader cake mortared together with 3 pounds of butter cream frosting dyed black. Watch clothing, tongues and teeth turn black. (Apparently you're supposed to start with chocolate icing when you're trying to make a black cake.) During all of this try to have conversations with traumatized parents while drinking 3 cases of beer and attempting to control your unbelievably aggressive 18 month old...

Now that's a PARTY!

None of this was supposed to happen in my house, but of course it rained on Jack Peter's 5th birthday. It was astonishing how smoothly it went. The only tears involved Steel and the girl with 2 moms who's not allowed to play with Barbies over some Barbie clothes. Catherine, the 3-year-old girl who Toby mercilessly assaulted didn't let it get to her. She knows what to expect of the McDonald ladies; Steel bit her when she was 6 months old. Toby, the subtle one, chose to stick out her chest and bulldoze Catherine into a wall, while looking at me and chanting, "TOBY NO PUSHING!"

Is it not pushing if arms aren't involved? Toby and Jack Peter are always looking for the loop holes. Steel is more into flagrant defiance. How do we cope with a bully? Last week, I returned from a relaxing swim at the Y to retrieve my children from the Child Watch. Miss Kim, the monitor, was shaking her head and muttering, "She's just so FAST!"

I had wondered why I saw a little Toby flash by the windows of the pool as I was swimming. She'd been banished from the child watch room for bashing an infant on the head with a xylophone 10 seconds after she'd been chastised for pushing her down.

I've been looking back at photos of Toby, and I should have seen it coming. Our Christmas card showed her true nature. She comes from a long line of tough women, but she's particularly relentless. My niece was called "FANG" at her daycare; she was a biter. It was one of those day cares that writes up incidents. Both the aggressor's and victim's parents have to sheepishly retrieve and unfold the tell-tale pink slips sticking out of their kids' cubby. The Gillian bit someone notes were such a daily occurrence that my brother made a scene when he finally received a victim notice. He whooped out loud and high-5'ed the kid who'd stood up to Gillian.

I'm sure the daycare staff weren't sad to see my brother and his posse graduate. It's in northern Florida where there are a lot of religious people. He'd picked the day care because they had assured him that the kids would not be practicing any sort of religion. One evening, Gillian started to say grace at dinner time, and Curt lost it. He stomped into the day care the next day shouting, "I WILL NOT BE HAVING MY CHILDREN BEGGING FOR THEIR FOOD! I get them their damn food, so if they want to thank someone for it, they can thank ME!!!!"

Tim and I had to clean the entire house after the party. Our threshold for stepping on wads of play dough and omelets is high, but marble cake, hummus, bacon and black butter cream were more than we could stand. As I scrubbed I had the thought, "I'm going to treat myself." I knelt down under the sink, dug around the 200 plastic bags and pulled out a brand new sponge...

Didn't a treat used to be a pedicure or a massage?

Who would pick on a ceramic angel eating a cupcake? Toby at 1 was screaming gleefully while hitting her on the head and throwing dirt at her. ( The angel is the grave marker I made for my sister in law's grave.)

in vitro?

1. Steel in Henry's shirt. It takes her 4 seconds to enter a house, disrobe, and steal an outfit from her host. 2. Jack Peter's bed head 3. Toby, always fashion forward, in black knee high boots and a froggie sleepy suit (photo credit: Jack Peter)

Nothing says "Happy Mother's Day!" like a trip to the gynecologist.

I was madly cycling down 2nd street late for my annual gynecological appointment as my friend, Heather, was breezing down 2nd street in her Lexus to pick up her son from Catholic school. She took the opportunity to heckle me for 6 blocks. "Off the bike seat and onto a speculum! Nothing like showing up for your pelvic exam late and sweaty!!!"

I was on time. I should have gone to check out Catholic school with Heather as an escort; I waited for 50 minutes. I inevitably get asked if an intern can practice on me. I always say yes; it's not the best policy. The intern went for one of the specula, and the doctor said, "No, get the other one; when they've had a few children things inside are a little more...collapsed; you need that one, OOPS...try not to fold her labia in the metal; it might pinch."

Might? Collapsed?

Just because I'm lying here with my legs spread doesn't mean I can't HEAR you.

The doctor told me that perhaps the time has come for me to get more aggressive about pregnancy. Bewildered in my peach cover-up, I stared, wondering if Tim had contacted her about his "sex every day till positive test" plan. She proceeded to tell me that I should get in vitro fertilization because I can shoot myself up with something 6 times a day that will cause me to go into egg-producing hyper-drive, then they'll extract and fertilize the eggs, test them for chromosomal diseases (because clearly that's what's been my problem) and then pick the best 2 fertilized eggs to implant into my artificially-readied uterus.

My response of: "You know I already have 3 children." did not show the enthusiasm she was anticipating, so she countered, "If you want to do it, you need to do it now because you turn 42 this year, and we won't be able to use your eggs anymore. No one does in vitro with 42-year-old eggs!!!" I shakily replied that I'd discuss it with my husband but that my gut was telling me that we'd probably just stick to the old-fashioned way. "Why spend $10,000 when you can spend $10 on a bottle of wine?" was my friend, Karen's question.

After taking another look at my "collapsed" self, the doctor asked me if I have trouble with "involuntary urination." I said, "Once, when I was bent over the sink washing my face, my son made me laugh, and I sneezed at the same time. I peed a little, but I don't think I need Depends just yet." Was this a new tack in her in vitro plans? Making me feel like I'm 80 did lower my confidence in my fertility.

She gave me a sheet of paper with a number to call and a passcode to get my pelvic exam results. "Call in 3 weeks; don't assume that no news is good news." What? I hurriedly put a reminder in my cell phone.

I was then berated for a second time in 30 minutes for not having had a mammogram. I explained (again) that I've been either pregnant or breast-feeding since I turned 40. The doctor proceeded to make a big deal about my making a mammogram appointment and then canceling it if I turn out to be pregnant this month.
"I'll just go and write your mammogram prescription; you can get dressed."
"Aren't you going to check my breasts?"
"Oh right....I get off my schedule when I have an intern...there's really no point in breast self-exams. They've found that only a professional exam or a mammogram really works."

I guess all of those little things hanging on shower heads telling one how to examine ones breasts have been for naught.

Finally, I was dressing and wondering about this "don't ask...don't tell" policy on lab results. I went to her for the mammogram prescription and said, "I need to get this straight. You're waiting for people to call to tell them they have an STD? Don't you know there are a whole bunch of teenagers coming to you to get put on birth control pills, specifically to have unsafe sex. You're expecting them to remember to call you in 3 weeks to tell them they have chlamydia????"

"Well, no, we call if something is abnormal..."

"So the "No news isn't good news isn't the case?"
"I'm just saying, don't assume that no news is good news; you need to call to get your results."

"Are you telling me that your "no news isn't good news" policy is based on human error?"

"I'm just saying call for your results."
"ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THERE IS A HIGH LEVEL OF INCOMPETENCY HERE?????"
"I'm just telling you that NO NEWS IS NOT NECESSARILY GOOD NEWS!!!"

At least the nurse's assistant, Shane, slid me a free pregnancy test. I felt like I was looking a gift horse in the mouth when I told her you can get them online for less than a dollar. (testsforless.com) She brightened when I added, "It's one of my favorite wedding gifts: 10 pregnancy tests fanned out in the shape of a flower..."

I really wish I'd asked the doctor, "Lady, do you get a trip to Bermuda if you sell 50 people on in vitro fertilization?" or perhaps, "Is immaculate conception still on the table?"

hmmm....

Was that whole story created to protect the reputations of both Mary and Joseph? Have Christians been worshipping a slut?

Maybe Catholic school isn't an option for our kids.

I've written a country song about my desire to have another kid. My thought was to make tim play guitar and make it sound really good, but honestly, who's got the time?

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...