Life With Boys

Judah is a very absent minded person. Most of the time this can be compensated for by my constant attention to keep him out of the path of cars, off the feet of other adults and out of the way of small children who might be bowled over if he simply walks right into them

But there are some situations where I cannot help him out much. For example, the bathroom. It's a twenty-to-one shot whether he actually pees INTO the toilet as he gazes vaguely all around the room, or possibly inscribes the arc of Superman's leap across the street from building top to sidewalk in pursuit of the latest villain.

Today, on a lightening-fast trip to the toilet (leaving Jamie unattended longer than 45 consecutive seconds these days is like playing Russian Roulette), I stepped, barefooted (it's Florida, after all) into a huge puddle of pee on the bathroom floor. Pants already unzipped, I splashed right. into. it, my jeans cuffs baptized with the fragrant liquid. I screeched, frantically shaking the drops from my foot, hopped out to the kitchen for a rag and some cleaner and limped back, mom-cursing the whole way. As I bent to mop up the deluge, I realize something...


I wasn't the only one who'd stepped in it.

Gross.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaach.

So I spent the next twenty minutes hands-and-knees crawling around from one mud-pee footprint to another, *spray-wipe-blech*, all around the house.

And while I was down there, I figured I might as well try to scrub off the Sharpie marker Jamie decorated with this morning.

Monday

1) There is still an entire room in our house with no furniture in it. None. Nada. Nothing. It's completely empty. Except for a laundry basket full of dirty laundry and Judah's dress shirt, which he keeps forgetting to put away.

2) Jamie only walks when a) he feels like it, and b) no one is watching, or c) he's not supposed to touch whatever it is he's walking towards. So-- no video. Yet. I've been practicing sneaking up on him. We'll see what transpires.

3) I have admitted to myself that I do not have the money to buy nice furniture, so bullet 1 is the status quo until I get around to re-upholstering the chairs I bought for a song today at Goodwill.

4) It's supposed to be a "no media" summer-- no movies or computer games for the kids till Sept. Ask me how well we're enforcing that. On second thought, don't ask.

5) We desperately need rain.

6) J went back to school today-- two weeks of teacher training before class starts. All I can think about is how much work on the house and yards we didn't get finished and now we won't be able to get to it till Christmas break.

7) Every time I try to write a blog post, someone needs me about halfway through. Today, for example, I wrote 1-6 above, in the morning. It's now nearly 10:00 pm as I finish and post a totally random collection of bullet points, that at some point had some sort of connection to one another that I've now forgotten...

A low-post week, brought to you by...

OH. MY. GOSH. Everyone is having their babies already but ME!! WHY???? It's not FAIR!!!! *whinewhinewhine* *moanmoanmoan*

See? Aren't you glad I haven't been posting???

It feels like Monday already.

This morning, before even breakfast, the kids were already squabbling. They've been consistently getting on each other's nerves since about half-way through North Carolina.

I was feeling a little down. It's our first Sunday here and I miss my church family. We're going to visit a PCA church here, and I know there will be some familiar things-- communion, the creeds, the hymns (thank the Lord for universal symbols of the Faith). But in large part, it will be strange and new.

So I decided to make myself some grits. You know, comfort food. 'Cause everyone knows that there's nothing like grits and eggs to heal pretty much any existential angst. (Can I get an amen??)

But then I spilled the grits all over the kitchen floor. I went to vacuum it up. And let me tell you, this is a small kitchen. There simply isn't room for me, baby and a vacuum. I knocked the crisp, perfectly browned bacon on the floor. I vacuumed that up, made more grits, kept my chin up. And then I realized that we were out of butter.

At that point I had two options; a good hard cry, or a blog post. I chose the blog post, because, you know, mascara... and a new church... gotta make an impression...

Dear young man in the floral supply customer service department,

I am sure you are a very nice young man. Very nice, and also very young. But I'm mostly basing this on the sound of your voice, so perhaps I do you an injustice. However, let me just go ahead and share something with you. When your website has malfunctioned, causing me to lose an order place last Thursday for delivery Tomorrow for a wedding on Saturday; calling me "Dear" in that "calming" tone of voice is A-1 guaranteed to tick me off.

In general one should address professional women-- particularly customers, because in this economy, I doubt you can afford to lose even my small business-- as "Ma'am", or "Madam" or at the very least "Ms F." I would say that one wouldn't want to mistakenly address a young-sounding woman as "dear", just on the off chance she might turn out to be a 31-year-old professional, pregnant mother of three who is in no mood to be patronized.

Sincerely,
the woman who got a little b!!@h-y with you on the phone yesterday morning

A Cynical Parental Observation

Don't you just love how your children say "But I don't WANT to..." with all the conviction that it actually matters what they want in a given situation???

*sigh*

*twitch* *shudder* *scratch* *blink rapidly*

You all know by now that I have issues with dirt. Specifically grit and dirt on floors. Matter of fact, just saying the word "grit" makes my left eye twitch. I put up with clutter and the general disorder of daily life with children in a small house fairly philosophically. But dirt, grime and grit on my floors, food leavings on the dining room table and dust on the furniture is my kryptonite. I can't stand it. It really makes me crazy. I'm surprised my vacuum cleaner is still working, with all the mileage I've put on it in the last eight years (weddings present). For instance, today I've vacuumed the entire house twice. I also vacuumed it on Sunday afternoon. And Saturday. See? I'm telling you, it's an unhealthy obsession. Part of the family OCD issues making their appearance, I reckon.

Also. My children are not allowed to play in Mommy and Daddy's bedroom. I have been censured for this. I specifically remember one friend (who shall remain nameless and unashamed) who waxed eloquent over her memories of hours spent cuddled in her parent's large bed, reading and playing with dolls and other toys and romping in childish delight. Uh-uh. Nope. Not my bed. This bed (I'm sitting here in bed with my laptop as I write) is for Other Things. I will not go there at this moment, but I'm sure you can just fill in the blank. This room is my sanctuary. I love my children and accept the fact that for the next fifteen or twenty years our house will be filled with all manner of kid paraphanalia on every stackable surface. BUT! Our bedroom is for OUR stuff. No kid things allowed.

Trust me, I am going somewhere with the above two seemingly completely unrelated paragraphs.

This afternoon, while I was teaching, the children took their snack of crackers (*shudder*) and sesame sticks (*twitch*) into MY BED AND ATE IT THERE.

Also on my bed was a load of clean, but not yet folded laundry.

There were crumbs on the floor. All over the floor. There were crumbs all over the duvet. There were crumbs under the duvet on my cozy fluffy blanket. There were crumbs on the bedside table. There were crumbs ON MY PILLOW!! There were crumbs in my shoes sitting beside the bed. There were crumb-y children covered in crumbs ROLLING AROUND IN THE CLEAN LAUNDRY and making tiger and kitty noises at me when I walked in an hour later.

*hysterical laughter and tears*

Tiger and kitty noises!!!

My children are OCD

I have spent the last hour trying to get Judah to ignore the fact that his pants are too short and his sweater keeps riding up a little and GO TO SLEEEEEEP already. What am I doing wrong??

It's been a long day. Already. And it's only 2:00.

State of Emergency

(I hope Sue doesn't get mad that I've bent the rules a wee tad bit. I wrote this post as soon as I saw her announcement of this new meme and then I liked it sooo much that I just had to post it right away! But I did write it specifically for Very Funny Fridays on Navel Gazing... so that should cover me. I hope.)

Last weekend it got really cold here. Really Cold. For example, it was -5 degrees (yes, that's a minus sign) when we woke up to find (drumroll, please) that our pipes had frozen. Not burst, but frozen. Only a trickle of water came out of the most energetic faucet. J spent several hours crawling around under the house and we eventually got the water back.

But.

And herein lies the tragedy.

The shower has not recovered.

Sounds of weeping and sobs of anguish emerge from the internets to assault your ear.

It's been days since I had a shower. I've been taking regular baths, mind you, but no shower. Now, I don't know how many of you people reading this are moms, but those of you who are can agree with me on the significance of the roaring hot shower with full-on, conservation-be-damned water pressure to one's daily mood and coping abilities. Can I get an Amen? Thank you.

Now just imagine for a moment, if you will (but only a moment, I don't want any of you hyperventilating on my behalf), three days without a shower. Just baths. And I don't mean long luxurious, bubble/salts/fizzy-filled baths with books, poofy towels and soft music. I mean fill-it-up-quick-squat-in-swipe-at-legs-with-razor-(at least the parts that might show)-lather-rinse-repeat kind of bath.

*shudder*

I know. It's baaaad.

And it's made even worse when you consider my history of being raised in the middle of the God-forsaken-boondocks-back-of-nowhere in a house where hot water was a commodity traded amongst five siblings like gold, by parents for whom Water Conservation was second only to the Whole Wheat Flour in sacredity (yes, that's a word). And so baths were not even a fill-up-the-tub affair. We had one of those long rubber hoses that attach to the faucet and water trickles out of the sprayer (hah, that's a joke) thingy at the end. You just squat down in the cold, dry tub and huddle under the thin stream of lukewarm water until you can't take it any longer and call it a day. Hair washing was token, at best. I don't think I shaved past my knees more than once a week. I know, TMI. Sorry.

People of the internets, I tell you truthfully, I did not take a shower in my own house until I married my sweet, sweet J. Truth to tell, I may have married him simply to get my own bathroom with a real, live, showerhead in it. But don't tell him that. He still thinks I married him for his money.

Anyways.

My point is that with a background like that, sending me back to the dark days of no daily shower is like sending a reprieved man back to death row because of a technicality in his appeal (shut up, lawyer people, I know that's not Really Possible, I'm just making a point here). It's cruel and unusual punishment. It's practically water-boarding, only in reverse.

J says we can't afford to call a plumber since he'll probably want to rip out the whole darn thing before he'll even give us an estimate on what it will cost to fix it. I says, perfect time to remodel the bathroom, since we've been planning to do it for-like-ever. J says we don't have the money for that right now. I says, but I'm getting paid for the new semester in three short weeks. J says okay, we'll talk about once we have the money. I says, three weeks without a shower is gonna kill me dead. He laughs, pats me on the back and boots up the laptop.

Can a girl get some sympathy from her internets at least?

TGIF?

This morning it took me 45 min to eat my bowl of oatmeal. 45 min. And I don't even really like oatmeal that much.

Normally it takes me about 15 min to eat breakfast, but multiply that by a potty-training toddler, a husband rushing out the door late to work and a whiny anonymous other child who hates oatmeal as much as I do and you get a 45 min bowl of cereal. I microwaved it three times. I microwaved my coffee five times. I finally finished eating, standing up in the the kitchen, hiding out in the corner by the microwave, ignoring shouts of "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! Pooppotty???"

The kids I babysit will be here in 15 min. I haven't had a shower yet-- still in my pjs.

Anyone know where I can go to get a refund on a non-functioning Friday??

Judah head-butted me this weekend, and gave me a black eye.

It only looks like this:



But it FEELS like this: