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As I was pulling Laylee’s piggy tale holders out tonight, she started whining.

“OW

OW

OW

OW

W

DOT

SLASH

OW!”

My sister Becky is about to pop. She’s at the taking-crazy-potions-to-induce-exodus point of her pregnancy and I like to do things to help keep her occupied, like play Doctor Mario online with my wii. I’m selfless like that. And also rad.

Today Laylee was watching us play and talking to Aunt Becky on the speakerphone. Suddenly she got very serious and whispered in my ear, “Can persons be ‘rad’?”

I told her that yes, people could be rad. She got so excited and ran off to grab a piece of paper. “You’re RAD Aunt Becky!” she cheered, “I will give you 2 points and a rock because you also rock.”

She then drew a picture of a rock and 2 hash marks on her pad of paper. Throughout our game she kept a tally with a running commentary about who was rad, who was more rad, who rocked and who rolled. If you rolled, you got a picture of a bottle rolling around.

I mostly was mostly the most rad and rocked the most. According to the tally, I’m far more rad than my little sister. I’ve had more years to cultivate that certain quality.

At one point we played a game where we both sucked it up big time. Disappointed, Laylee shook her head, “You guys did NOT play with radness. You are both still rad though, even though.”

Well thank goodness.

While Laylee was tallying radnesses, Magoo was practicing his potty skeelz. From the potty room, I heard him yell, “Woah! That was a weely big one! It’s like a big T-rex or somesing.” I wonder how many radness points a log that big would get. I mean, a big T-Rex? That’s pretty impressive.

At night, in the dark laundry room, I call myself Uhura as I work the controls. Because I am way not a dork who should be filed away with all the other PZ4s. At all.

While I was working out listening to New Kids on the Block (NKOTB as they’re known in the hood), I was ever so slightly tempted. Is it just me?

I’ve been trying to get Laylee to pump her own swing for just decades now. She finally did it today because I pushed her a bunch and then said she could stay at the park as long as her swing was still going and I walked away. Some skills are mastered through patient persistence, others through sheer desperation.

He got his sweetness from Daniel. His chipmunkness is all me.

You find that your purse is suddenly inexplicably filled with legos and orange crumbs.

People abruptly unveil way too personal parts of their bodies and ask you if they look red.

Your chapstick is filled with dirt.

Several times throughout the day you notice that there is ketchup on your arm again but you can never find the source.

You have a 5 minute conversation with a very small person in which they will say nothing except, “BUT MO-O-O-O-MEEEE!” in a pitiful sob.

You are filled with overwhelming pride when your daughter not only learns the words to Take a Chance on Me by ABBA, but upon mastering it begins to make up verses of her own.

I’twas, i’twas. And we consumed greatly large amounts of the fats and the sugars. Because we are patriots.

The cupcakes were made from scratch and about 80% organic, which seems somewhat ironic considering that after eating them we let the children on our street light over $300 worth of toxic chemicals on fire and then dance amidst the smoke and flames, encouraging them not to inhale. At least the farmer didn’t use fertilizer on those berries. We’re about healthy choices.

We wore big boy pants this holiday weekend and only wet ourselves once…per day. We are free from the shackles of baby diapers. Sometimes our freedom impinges on the freedom of other people or their lawns or their personal property. Let freedom ring.

Until recently, dinner conversation at our house frequently consisted of Dan and I trying to have adult conversation while the kids interrupted to ask if they could get down, eat ice cream or spill their milk all over the table. [read more at Parenting.com]

I worked out for the first time today since I overdid it trying to beat that old lady with a cane in the race and ended up flat on my back for 2 weeks from the strain. It felt great to be sweatin’ it out again, pumpin’ up the music on my MP3 player and reawakening the muscles or more realistically muscle that had been sleeping and decomposing for the past few weeks.

This past weekend Dan and I watched Darkon, a documentary about people who spend their spare time building armor, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and acting out epic battles. Although they take things WAY further than I’ve ever considered taking them, there was something appealing about the way they live out their dreams with such abandon.

I think an active fantasy life is super important and when I’m on an adrenalin high after around 36 minutes of working out, my mind starts to drift and imagine all sorts of crazy fun things. I used to exercise for the recommended 30 minutes and wondered why everyone talked about getting a “high” but once when I accidentally went overtime, I found that my high doesn’t come until minute 36 or 37. It’s NICE.

So today I was working out on the elliptical trainer next to a spastic tween boy who kept flailing his arm out to the side and whacking me with his hand. I’m in the zone. I’m sweating. THWACK! “Sorry.” I’m working back into it. I’m in the zone. I’m sweating. My eyes are closed. I can feel the fat melting off me. THWACK! “Sorry.”

I was worried that the high would never come amidst the beating I was taking but luckily the boy gave up around minute 31 and I was able to crank up the tunes and meld my mind with the sweat. And it came and as usual my imagination ran wild. When the high comes, I always imagine myself as thin, fast and gazelle like. This time however, Dan was part of my fantasy. I spent the last 10 minutes of my workout beating the cheese out of Dan at basketball in my mentals. I mopped the FLOOR with him. He grinned in shock as I pivoted around the court sinking 3-pointer after 3-pointer and dribbling through his legs and around him at light-speed.

If you’d ever seen me play basketball, you’d know why this was such a ridiculous fantasy. Generally my best contribution to any basketball team is fouling out. I use my brute strength and lack of knowledge of the finer points of the game, such as the rules, in order to shove around the other team, allowing the real players to shine. Then I get thrown out of the game before I have the chance to do any real damage to our score. It works nicely.

I really dominated him though, slaughtered him with a great and vicious slaughter and it felt OH-SO-GOOD. Maybe this stems from our real life interactions. Lately I’ve been playing a pretty mean game of Dr. Mario. Even with a handicap, Dan is woefully unskilled at this mindless Nintendo version of Tetris. I wow him with my cat-like reflexes and thumbs of steel.

But I’d like to take this to the next level with some serious physical domination, get the chance to whip out a b-ball at the next family gathering and take him by surprise as I soar through the air over his head and dunk it in a way that would make Shaq stand back on his fat feet and say, “GIRL! Where did you cultivate those fine and skillish skeelz?”

I think it’s time to look for an old basketball hoop on freecycle to hang on the back of the shed… once we build a shed.

Today Magoo marked his territory in the baked goods isle of The Family Grocer. It’s much “grosser” now than it was before.

He stood next to me as I perused the canning supplies and suddenly let out a huge, “OH. NO!”

I looked down to see a yellow puddle growing below him. Apparently he is somehow freakishly able to hold a volume of liquid greater than the apparent volume of his body. He then evacuates the liquid wherever he happens to be standing.

At least he’s starting to seem concerned about it. When he lost it in the grocery store, he kept saying, “I’m sorry Mom. I only pee in the potty now. I PROMISE! I’m sorry Mom. Can I get a present?”

To his credit, he did run to the potty several times today without being asked. Now I did promise him a Swedish fish for every time he emptied his contents into the proper receptacle. A friend told me that bribery is perfectly acceptable and no 6th grader ever still needed to be promised candy in return for doing their business on the pot.

I take comfort in that as I send him happily into a dehydration-aggravated diabetic coma. At one point he seriously went potty 4 times in a ten minute period, squeezing every last drop of liquid from his body.

Sitting here on the family room couch I’m not sure if I can actually smell pee or the scent is just permanently emblazoned on my memory.

**Update** I’m very obsessed with containers but I didn’t realize everyone else would like them as much as I do so I didn’t include a link. I got them here. I bought the 4oz size and they hold half a cup of spice each. You have to buy a minimum of 144. If you buy more, I think the price goes down. I’m planning on selling some to my next door neighbor and using the rest for Christmas gifts, filled with a spice rub people can use on meat.**

For years I’ve been looking at spice tins, craving them, caressing them and making plans for our highly organized life together. I dreamed of finding the perfect containers, opaque to keep in the freshness, wide enough for my biggest measuring spoons to scoop, uniform in size, shiny and beautiful. I would then purchase them, label them and we would ride off into the culinary sunset together, possibly even alphabetizing as we went. Ahhhhhh! Sends a tingle of joy right down my spine.

Finally I found them at the right price (if I bought a pallet) and today was the day of joy and gladness. I took all of these:

And all of these:

Pulled out my most beloved office tool.

Filled.

Labeled.

Stacked.

And marveled. My life will honestly never be the same again. Now I need to find trays the size of my spice cupboard put them in and then label the trays A-C, D-M, etc., fill them with my little tins of flava, and stack them away to be pulled out fortnightly when I whip up a delectable culinary masterpiece. Then I can refill them forever from bulk and when I’m lonely I can hold their smooth surfaces up to my cheek and smile my wistful smile of organizational contentment. Yes. Today was a good day.

**Potty update. Yesterday he had 2 accidents, and was not a bit chalant about the whole thing. He just acts so oblivious sometimes, standing with a blank look on his face and unleashing his raging liquid fury. Today there was one accident followed by some great self-awareness and emergency potty runs. I’m completely unsure about how tomorrow will go.**

The sanity is not.

We’re doing it. We’re saying goodbye to diapers and hello to stench and stains and public restrooms and plastic bags in my purse waiting to be filled with little peed-in Lightning McQueen special pants.

Magoo’s been ready but lazy for a while.

I’ve been not ready AND lazy for a while.

But I’ve decided it’s time. The weather is perfect for airing little baby man parts and whizzing on the grass. My back is just well enough to allow me to laze around asking Magoo if he’s wet or dry hundreds of times a day but not well enough to be running all over the world.

The fear of little yellow liquid surprises will keep me close to home which will be good for my back. I’m at that dangerous stage of recovery where I feel “okay” so I want to plow through everything that’s piled up while I was taking it easy. But I know my body’s not ready to go full force yet.

Full-time potty training Magoo could be just the road block I need to keep my feet planted safely at home. I should leave the house every once in a while though so I’ll have the experience of smelling the air outside our giant litter-box of a home and when I come back here I’ll know how bad it is and take steps to regulate it.

**Update — The first day of Potty Boot Camp is over and he’s had one accident and managed to spontaneously run to the potty 5 times listening only to the inner voice of his clueless little bladder. He’s doing really well! My main concern now is the uncushioned nature of his tender little nuggets in those big boy pants. I fear that he slams around this house with far too little concern for his future children.**