I have it. [read more]
Save Me From Myself
Best Day Ever
Today I did something I should have been doing consistently for just years now. I “let” Laylee help me clean the house. This was rare and precious both because I was actually cleaning the house and because I let Laylee be a part of it.
Usually I try to plan activities to keep her busy if the cleaning bug bites me but today she asked meekly, “Mom. Could I please help you scrub the kitchen floor?”
“Um. Sure.”
“Oh THANKS! Will you please save me some of the really sticky parts.”
The really sticky parts are vast and the grid pattern makes it easy to section off the floor into sticky chunks for easy division of labor. I got out a couple of rags so we could do the job Cinderella-style. When Laylee would get up to rinse her rag she would charge me forcefully with the task of saving her sticky squares so she could do them when she got back.
And she did… beautifully. She is a natural at slave labor and she begged for more. So I let her scrub the outside of the fridge and promised that she could scour something tomorrow. She asked me to never clean without her and I made a binding promise. (Future Laylee if you’re reading this, you now know you have no one to blame but yourself.)
In her prayer at bedtime, she thanked God for the chance she had to clean the floors with me and get all the crayon out of the grout. And pieces of my soul floated heavenward and were enveloped by the laughing moon.
Magoo is obsessed with all things Cars. When we arrived at Costco tonight, he saw the pizza stand and yelled, “FOOD! CA-CHOW!” and I loved him well, even though he doesn’t yet pray with fervent thanks for the opportunity to give me spa pedicures on demand. I’ll keep working on that. Maybe by the time he’s 4…
Were you wondering how much of a dork I am? I will tell you how much of a dork I am. At the park today I saw a woman reading the August issue of Parenting Magazine and I wrestled with myself about whether or not to approach her. Periodically they reprint small blurbs from my blog and I happened to know off the top of my head that there was a picture of Laylee’s fuzz-ball hair on page 32. What’s the point in being minimally famous if you can’t tell complete strangers that you are?
So as we pushed our kids on the swings, I nonchalantly said, “My daughter’s picture is in there on page 32.” And she gave me the best response ever.
“Oh!? Is she the hair?”
Yes! Laylee “the hair” Daring. It’s her new mafia name and I couldn’t be prouder.
So Help Me I’m Ready to Toss Everything
It is hot and I want to throw things. Every possession in my house seems to be radiating heat and I feel that most of it must go, mostly the parts that belong to the children.
I am sticky and ooey and gooey and hot. I can’t sleep, I can’t stop whining, and there is no way to get as naked as I want to be and still get the grocery shopping done. This is the only time of year that I envy Magoo’s freedom to sport a dashing onesie in public.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that Seattle is no hotbed of summer boilery but since 90 degrees is considered a heat wave here, there is also no infrastructure for the cooling, no air conditioning, no swamp cooler, no bathtub full of ice to spend the day in. I do have an industrial fan which blows the hot air around in a way that almost tricks me into believing it’s only EIGHTY-five degrees in here. The only problem is that it’s so bleeping loud that I have to turn it off every few minutes so I can hear myself think.
When it’s off all I can think about is how hot I am, how hot Dan is (HOT DAN!), and how much I want to throw all of my children’s belongings away while they sleep. I’m fractious people, fractious and antsy.
This house is full of things, things that need to be put away and things that should never be put away unless “away” is in a waste receptacle or happy meal box. Then the happy meal box should be put in a waste receptacle. There are toys the kids have never played with, loud toys the kids have played with so much that my ear wack is vibrating, toys with a million small pieces spread equidistant from each other in every cranny of the estate, toys that make Laylee do things she knows she’s not allowed to, and toys that are just butt ugly. I hate butt ugly toys… and sweat.
I hate sweat, which makes me more angry at the toys. I really believe that they’re sucking the cool from the air and replacing it with not-cool. I want to pull every toy and puzzle piece out of every room, closet and kitchen cupboard, throw them into the living room until they’re waist-high, let the kids pick 3 toys each and give the rest to Good Will.
Next I’ll throw away polyester, Tupperware containers with no lids, clothes that don’t fit humans (dolls prefer to be naked anyway), my New Kids on the Block cassette tape, cables and cords not currently connected to a working electronic device, and anything green that’s too weak to defend itself. Maybe purple too, but only if it isn’t gold-trimmed.
(Okay. For real I was kidding about NKOTB. But dude, everything else goes.)
Slump and Whine
So my blogging slump is largely due to the week being dominated by my total lerve of So You Think You Can Dance. I so very much enjoy that show. Jeana can mock if she wants but I’m working out and when I get back in shape I will totally learn how to dance and win the whole taco on that show.
Laylee and I may audition together since she’s so good already and it may take a couple of years to lose these extra couple hundred pounds. This spare tire is throwing off my center of gravity on my pirouettes.
And I’m not only striving to out-dance Laylee. I’m also working on out-whining her…
My Days Roll By Like So Many Mint Oreos
And I ask myself, “Where did they all go?”
We’ve Taught Her Well, Just Not By Example
I got off the phone with my friend today when Laylee put her hand on my shoulder and said seriously, “Mom. I have one thing. When you were on the phone I heard you say a little bit of ‘craps’ and that’s not a good thing.”
My Body Myself
Last night I asked Dan to get my wrist brace from downstairs so I could put on my last piece of my Darth Vader evening wear and go to sleep. He said, “Dork Vader?”
Pretty much.
I’ve got my zit cream, my plastic mouth guard and my black wrist brace. Just add a helmet and a few more electronic devices (I sleep with my PDA at arm’s reach.) and I’m a Saturday Night Live caricature of the geeky evil one.
Sometimes I feel like a combination between a 14 year-old just hitting puberty and an 80-year-old woman whose body is falling apart. It’s possible that all these symptoms are related to bearing and raising children or maybe I’m just at a weird vortex between the two ages.
My skin is breaking out and breaking down. It appears that blemish and wrinkle-fighting face wash may become my new best friend. Ever since Dan and I started discussing thinking about maybe planning on possibly getting pregnant again sometime in the next few years, my cycles have gone junior high crazy. My joints hate me and I’m needing braces for all kinds of parts just to do basic things like walk, bend over to pick cheerios out of the carpet and hold Magoo upside down over the sink for a hose-off.
All signs indicate that I should be drinking more water but I’m already so sick of going to the potty. It’s such a waste of my valuable time, time I could be using to blow on Laylee’s watercolors till they dry, pretend to eat plastic food under the slide and possibly shower.
At 28 years of age, I can frequently be heard saying, “I’m OOOOOLD!” as I creak my way along. I need to lose weight for optimum health. I just need to make some fundamental changes in the way I live so that my body will learn to like me again.
At Some Point Everyone Needs to Come Clean
There is really never a good time to clean the dining room floor or change my clothes or shower. There’s always another meal-tastrophy on the way, another boogie to be wiped on my shirt or another workout to be done.
If I clean the floor after breakfast, it will be filthy again by snack time so I should wait until after snack… and after lunch… and after dinner… but the kids will probably want breakfast tomorrow (jerks!) so what’s the point?
Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on exercise, cardio every day and strength training a few times a week. When I come home from the cardio workout, the kids are often up and needing me and it’s too late to shower. So I plan to do it during naps but if I don’t get my weights in, then I don’t want to shower if I’m just gonna get sweaty again but then it’s bedtime and why shower if I’m about to get up and workout? Blech!
I do shower regularly but the timing is tricky and I always look like a Sweaty McGreasy-head. I also can’t keep a shirt clean for more than 30 minutes. I should carry a stopwatch and my internet phone around and live-blog how long it takes for my shirt to get dirty. That’s bound to land me a book deal… of some kind. (Chicken Slop for the Spastic Mother’s Dirty Shirt? — Catchy, no?)
This morning Dan told me Magoo had woken up with a crazy-bad diaper so he’d had to hose him off riot-patrol style in the shower. Magoo’s grown accustomed to this, gets in the tub, grabs onto the towel bar, yells “SPREAD” and plants his feet insanely far apart with his back to the shower-head wielder. If he’s done the crime, he will serve his time with dignity and military precision.
Me: Did you have a yucky diaper this morning?
Magoo: Yess!
Me: Did Daddy spray you in the tubby?
Magoo: Yess!
Me: Are you all clean?
Magoo: No!
Me: Do you have a clean bum?
Magoo: Yess!
And it’s true. The rest of him is never clean. It is in fact the opposite of clean. And the clean bum is a fleeting and ironic triumph. Why is he only clean in places no one can see? Dirt and slime billow around him in a Pig-Pen-esque cloud and besmudge everything in a 30 yard blast radius. What was that? You’ve never seen slime billow? You should get out more. Probably with a 2-year-old.
Just Take a Plate of Cookies
Note to self: When meeting the new people next door, say something innocuous like, “Welcome” or “Cute kid you got there.”
Do not compliment them in detail on their bold new kitchen décor… in their kitchen you cannot see from the front door… in their house that you’ve never set foot in.
When speaking to a stranger you hope to become friends with, it’s never a good idea to begin a sentence with the words, “Not that I was looking in your windows, but when I was looking in your windows I noticed…”
Awkward.
911 — If You Dial It, They Will Come
This post originally appeared on The Parenting Post on August 13, 2006.
I offer this wisdom up to ye of the Internet as a warning and a safeguard against wasted tax dollars and, even more importantly, total personal humiliation.
If something embarrassing happens to me, I have the ability to step back and say, “Hey. It’s not so bad. At least I’ll have something to blog about tomorrow.” When the following story happened several months ago, I was unable to say that. I swore I would never blog this, but time heals all wounds, so here goes:
As Laylee was heading out of the bathroom following her nightly tubby time, I turned off the light and shut the door behind her. As usual, I did not shut my mouth. I was blabbering on and on to Dan about some scintillating detail of my day and he was paying attention, not a bit.
Me: Blah blah and then I said, “If she’s gonna wear green lederhosen to MY playgroup, then she’s just gonna have to handle the — ”
Dan: Laylee!
Me: I know. She’s right there. Anyway —
Dan: Her fingers!
Me: What about them?
You see, Dan was too concerned about the fact that I had slammed Laylee’s fingers in the door hinge and was holding it closed to care about my excessively diverting story. Laylee was too busy administering the silent scream to actually make a noise out loud.
I looked down at her beet-red face. I looked at the door. Something started to register. Uh, I should probably do something. What was it? Ah yes, open the doooooor.
When we pulled her fingers from the hinge, one little knuckle was smooshed flat. The silent scream suddenly became less silent and Dan and I did something we’ve never done before. We both came unglued simultaneously. Not good.
In our angst, we decided to dial 9-1-1. Yeees! They’re EMTs, the knowers of all knowledge. They can tell us whether to take her in to the ER or not…if they can hear us. The silent scream was becoming less and less silent by the minute.
So I did the honors. William Shatner and his crazily beshadowed Rescue 9-1-1 eyebrows had taught me exactly what to do.
EMT: 9-1-1. Can I get your address please?
Me: 555 Daring Cross Road, Small Town Seattle
EMT: What’s your emergency?
Me: Well, I’m not sure it’s an emergency. We wanted to call and ask you. My daughter slammed her fingers in the door and one of them looks kind of smooshed.
EMT: A unit has been deployed.
Me: NO. Seriously? Oh, my gosh. Please call them back. We were just calling to ask your advice.
EMT: The unit is on their way.
Me: For real. It’s not that bad. Please don’t send a unit.
EMT: You called 9-1-1. We need to deploy.
Me: Please don’t let them turn their sirens on.
EMT: Have a good night.
Oh, crap! A few minutes went by, during which Dan got Laylee calmed down and her miraculous spongey kid finger started to re-inflate. It was beginning to look slightly pink and a little swollen and Dan was holding it over her head while she whimpered softly.
BAM! CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP. They knocked once and marched right in like it was an emergency or something, two EMTs and a firewoman.
After assessing the situation with coy smiles back and forth, one suggested that he guessed he could make a splint. He’d just need to go out to “the rig” and get some tongue depressors.
Yes, he really said “the rig.”
I told him not to trouble with said “rig” because I had popsicle sticks in the craft drawer he could use. A splint was made. They were delightful visitors and Laylee had the grandest time meeting all of them and thus putting off her bedtime.
As they left, I asked if they needed our insurance information and the largish man in the gigantic boots and plastic yellow pants winked and said, “No charge.”
Moral of the story — if you squish your kid’s finger, toe or other minor appendage, no blood is showing, and their heart is still beating in their chest, call the nurse’s hotline at your pediatrician, but leave Bill Shatner and his posse alone. They have serious work to do and they WILL deploy a rig on you.