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My indoctrination of Magoo is nearly complete. At Grandma’s house he learned to do head spins.

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The other day in the car I was listening to an old Bread CD when Magoo got super excited and yelled, “HEY! MOM! Go dance!”

HEY! I went. I danced.

When a Destiny’s Child song came on the butt-shaking radio station, he got DOWN in his car seat (”˜Which song?’ you ask me. Does it really matter?). Mariah Carey was next and he would not so much as twitch to Emotions. Perhaps he is opposed to long runs that end in high notes only wee doggies can hear. Perhaps he was not a fan of Glitter. Whatever the reason, he refused even a direct command to shake it for mommy.

Me: Dance buddy.
Magoo: NO!
Me: Do you only dance to Destiny’s Child now?
Magoo: Yep.

Which saddens me greatly because as much as I like my kids listening to songs that teach them to “leave their men at home because the club is full of ballers with their pockets full grown”, and “all the mamas who profit dollas, throw your hands up at me,” I don’t currently own any of their compact discs.

And oh how I love to watch him get down.

I’m becoming obsessed with documentation, passports, social security cards, Canadian citizenship records for my kids who were both born in the U.S. The rules are changing for international travel and I just want us all to be prepared in the event we need to take an emergency flight to Hawaii or something. Do you need a passport to travel there? I know it’s like… a “state” and everything but you need a passport to travel to Canada now so it appears that nothing’s off limits. Or maybe everything is.

Strangely enough, the United States Social Security Administration website is enforcing some kind of curfew. Late last night I tried to search for the nearest office. I logged onto the site. I entered my zip code in the little box. The site came up with an error message:

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but the Social Security Office Locator is not available at this time. The service is available during the following hours (Eastern time):
Monday: 3:00 AM – 12:00 AM
Tuesday through Friday: 3:00 AM – 2:00 AM
Saturday: 3:00 AM – 11:00 PM
Sunday: 7:00 AM – 11:00 PM
Holidays: 3:00 AM – 11:00 PM

I don’t think the US government quite “gets” the internet. The internet does not need to take a potty break or a naptime. The internet is not subject to labor laws.

I can understand that the site may need periodic maintenance, but set hours? I think what they’re really doing is telling me to get my butt in bed and that stomps all over my [mumble] [mumble] amendment right to stay up late like an idiot.

We just got back from a week-long visit with family.

We talked in the car… when we weren’t eating… which wasn’t often… unless our name was Dan.

[long silence]
Me: Are shrunken heads really shrunken heads or are they just made out of coconuts?
Dan: I don’t know.
Me: I wouldn’t think you could actually shrink a head because it’s made of bones. Do cannibals shrink heads manually or by magic?

****
Laylee: Mom. Those people have all kinds of clothes in the back of their car. That probably means that wherever they’re going, they’re probably gonna spend the night, right?
Me: Yep. It sure does. Just like we did at grandma’s house!
Magoo: Truck. It’s ee truck!!
Me: Have you noticed that Magoo is way less verbal than Laylee was at his age?
Dan: Mmmmhmmm.
Me: Maybe it’s because he’s a boy.
Dan: [silence]
Me: Have you noticed that I’m way more verbal than you were at my age?

They wanted chocolate.

It was dinner time.

I said no.

They really wanted chocolate.

It was a holiday.

I said yes.

It was the 4th of July and I thought they deserved some freedom.

I did not put sandals on Magoo while he was wearing these socks. That was someone else. He has the freedom to wear sandals with socks. And I have the freedom to abstain.

Here’s to a country where we’re free in many more ways than those listed above. Although I am daily aware that this country isn’t perfect, I love it dearly and feel so grateful to live here. I’m far from perfect myself and I just hope that every day I’m getting better… and that there’s some pie left in the kitchen.

…this is the first time in my life I’ve ever been able to successfully wink my right eye.

Then again, it’s completely glued and swollen shut so winking my left eye has lost its charm.

Things are strange around here.

In ocular health news… it still kills! I’m giving the antibiotics a couple of days before going back to my neighbor’s house for things which I don’t know what they are. (If you comment on my funky eyebrows, I will FIND you.)

This morning I came down and found Belle and Sinead hanging out in the hallway. I’m so glad to have creative outlets like this. I’m also glad that besides having no god, Polly’s world also contains no metal parts.

I paid less than $3 for gas for the first time in forever… and was so excited about it that I took a picture.

Shaq has a new reality show where his image consultant has him helping obese kids lose weight. It’s getting good reviews and the premise seems promising. Here are a few quotes from the first episode that make me think it will be the best, most sensitive insightful reality show about children EV-ER:

“Of course they’re gonna tell me the truth. I’m a superstar.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything this pathetic in my entire life. It disgusts me.”

“We’re gonna have to turn up the heat on these kids.” Then he smashes a bottle… because he CARES.

My awesome new biologist neighbor has been teaching me all sorts of interesting things about gardening, healthy living and home décor. She took me on a tour of my backyard introducing me to all my botanical friends, makes the most amazing organical foods and I plan on stealing several of her decorating ideas for my house, which has an identical floor plan to hers.

She is kind, listens to Laylee talk for hours and I recently found out that she practices homeopathic medicine as a hobby. I’ve always loved the word “homeopath” because in my world that’s how you would make a contraction of the words “homicidal” and “psychopath.”

I was coming home from the doctor the other day where I’d gone for help clearing up my randomly swollen eye and my neighbor told me to come over so we could come up with a natural remedy.

I tried the antibiotic drops for one day and found no change. So the next day I walked next door to Dr. Nat for some advice. She looked up my symptoms in a big fat book, packaged up some remedies and materials in a ziplock, wrote down instructions and sent me home with the strict advice not to use any chamomile, tobacco, alcohol, or mint while doing the treatment, not even toothpaste. (No whiskey-flavored Colgate. Check.) I was also not to touch the herbs with my hands or with metal utensils.

I followed all her instructions exactly and the sty was gone in less than 24 hours so I broke down, pulled out Old Bessy and whipped up some minty fresh breath. When I woke up this morning the sty was back but in the OTHER eye! I am being smitten by the Homeopathic Gods Against Oral Hygeine. Have you ever heard of the HGAOH? They’re big players in the Tarter Wars. They’re for it.

So now I’m left to choose whether to continue to look like a cyborg or knock Dan out with my halitosis.

Mine screams “THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT PUNK!”

I claim the land. They reclaim it. I install patio lights (or Dan installs them but the blog’s about me and they were my idea so I’ll say I install them) and the kids sprinkle tiny sand mounds on the solar panels of each one.

Sometimes they run into the patio lights with their tractors and trikes until they lean over to one side.

One by one the rocks along our pathway are changing colors. I think they’re evolving to blend in with the surrounding plastic play equipment, buckets and general hookie-loo lying around.

This gnome makes me happy because it reminds me of Magoo, just not quite as fast or loud. Sometimes when I’m counting off to make sure all 2 of my children are accounted for, my tally gets messed up by his presence amidst the ivy.

The other day I was sitting on the lawn when Laylee came up behind me and said, “Mom look!” I made the mistake of looking. I turned my head to find her holding a severed rotting bird head by the beak just inches from my face.

I screamed. She laughed. Magoo became fascinated with the rest of the birdy’s remainders and all of its buggy friends.

In most yards, a dead rotting bird head would be considered a bad thing. Around here, it’s a barrel of maggoty good times.

Sometimes I’m glad that my sister and good friend are willing to drive for eleventy billion hours to come visit me this whole week.

Sometimes I’m glad to have grownup ladies with me everywhere I go for a few days. It allows me some wiggle room on the whole “mature responsible mom” thing. These grownups sometimes wash my dishes, feed my kids and play games with me. I’d like to hire a grownup to live here full time and take care of us all. Grownup ladies are definitely worth having around.

Sometimes I’m glad that I don’t always have 6 kids under 5 living in my house. I can handle it for a week but SHEESH if I had a couple of sets of triplets I’d be a goner.

Sometimes I’m glad that in our culture, we can use “quotes” to make any statement “true”. Take these pitas for example.

Sometimes I’m glad that the kids go to the zoo just to ride on plastic horses who’ve been shish-kabobbed and bedazzled but then see real horses from the car window on the way home.

Mostly I’m glad that although Magoo’s nocturnal eyesight* is freakishly good, he doesn’t know enough about the miracle of life to ask questions. Strange things are happening in Seattle between an armadillo and a small white monkey. What will that baby look like, I wonder?

*It really is amazingly good. I think he could see the animals better in the dark than the light of day. Don’t worry. I frequently cook with garlic, carry a can of Coors with me at all times, and all of my stakes are made of wood.

This is what’s become of my kitchen counters. Is it sick that this sight fills me with glee? Don’t answer that. I have a kid, a real kid. No baby girls here no more.

Sure she still has a few mispronunciations. She says “baft-yobe” for “bathrobe” or “yobe” for short. She also does funny things with singular and plural. Recently she pulled an “ear-wack” out of her ear. There was only one and we all know “wax” is plural. Our friend Mr Burns is known to Laylee as “The Burn” because we say “The Burns” when we’re talking about the whole family.

Today The Burn went frolicking with Laylee in the fountains outside Megacorp. We had just stopped in to check the progress on the recently reinstalled grassy knoll around the undulating sculpture and to score some chocolate milk.

Laylee asked me if we could drive to the place where the sky and clouds come down and stick to the ground. I started to tell her there was no such place and explain how the horizon always keeps moving no matter how much closer you get to it. Then I stopped and told her I’d never been there and maybe we could go sometime together. I then decided to make my fortune writing greeting cards.

She said that next time we’re on an airplane we could ask “the man” if he would open the window. Then we could scoop up some of the clouds and put them on our laps. When I asked her what we would do with the clouds, she told me she would shove them in her bug house to make a soft bed for her snails.

In Old Navy, she started dancing spontaneously and looks well on her way to becoming quite a fine breaker:

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Today I told Jeana the reason I’m having trouble feeling the urge to blog lately and she said, “I could not be more surprised if you told me the reason you were in a slump was because you were spending so much time reading Kevin Federline’s blog.” Personally I find it interesting that Jeana knows about his blog and I would prefer that she referred to him more respectfully as K-Fed next time she decides she would like to “git” all up in my grill about him.

Later on I narrated the entire Nutcracker from memory so Laylee would know which character to dance like. I made soup for dinner, scored some free dining chairs, fed a snail, convinced Magoo that he prefers edamame to pizza, saved my Riverside Shakespeare from certain death, and asked a sales associate whether this was a “dress” or a skirt for members of the WNBA. Who knew they liked to shop at Old Navy?

My life is full.