May 2005 Archives

I couldn't take it anymore, so I went to the store as soon as John came home and got some strawberries.  Hole Fudes had a sale on organic ones and I got three baskets.  They'll be gone by noon tomorrow, I'm sure.  I also picked up Sophie's bday gift, so now I just need to figure out how to make that wedding cake she's expecting.  Hmmm.

On Monday we took the kids, plus Lexy's friend C who we love, to the park.  Everyone had fun climbing about, and the girls had an extended visit with a tiny little Jack Russell terrier pup.  It was so little and had such pointy ears (they aren't sure what breed the papa dog is) that Willow kept calling it cat.  Both girls hand fed it and the bigger also very cute dog with it. 

After the park we put the kids to work washing the cars.  While they finished up I made a cheese pizza, some pasta with tomato-basil sauce, broccoli, and salad.  The kids ate only the pasta and pizza, so I ate the green stuff.  (Halfway through dinner I remembered they never washed their hands.  Need some bacteria to build up that immune system, right?) 

Tonight after dinner (Willow's supper -- strawberries and pretzels) we went to the campfire at the outdoor school where John teaches.  The weather was just right (for those of us far away from the flames, anyhow) and it was fun watching all the skits and hearing the songs.  John even participated in a skit and got banana in his hair.   We came home for some quick hot chocolate which was drunk by bad-tempered children who were put straight to bed. 

And now I'm going to use the wonderful fire fox to open in tabs ALL the blogs I like to read.  And nobody is going to ask me for stuff.  HEAVEN, I tell you.

Willow is really talking these days.  She can say just about anything, although she needs an interpreter for lots of her words.   Today I felt so bad for her.  Poor thing asked to sit in her high chair and eat.  I asked her what she wanted and she said, "staw-bebes!"  Strawberries.  We don't have any, and I told her so.  I think that she thought I didn't understand her word, because she kept saying it over and over, pleading with me to understand.  Finally she asked to get down from her chair.  She walked over to the freezer, rested her forehead on it and said, (in her Tom Waits-on-helium croup voice) "mama, pockle?"  Pockle is popsicle.  I told her we were out of those, too.  She sighed, and sadly walked into the other room.  Then, she came back and said, "Mama?  Chalk-it-chips?"  I gave her extra.

So.  My mom and my littlest sister are in Paris, my brother is getting ready to go to Hawaii with his wonderful girlfriend, John's brother and also his friend M are in Toronto.  I want to go somewhere.  If we can afford it I want to rent a convertible when I turn 35 this fall and take a road trip somewhere.  Anywhere.  I just want to go.  Maybe gold rush ghost towns or something.  Know of any good Northern California road trip destinations?

Sophie is shrieking at me.  Lovely.

Last night I stayed up until 4 a.m., reading this book (The Good Wife) from cover to cover and obsessively listening to Willow breathe.  She slept in the bed with John and me because she has croup and I was really worried about her.  None of the other kids have had it before, and I didn't realize just how scary it sounds.  Especially at 2 a.m. in a child who was born seven weeks early and has iffy lungs.   I tried to keep her propped up by putting her head on my shoulder, but she kept scooting away to sleep near our feet with her body perpendicular to ours.  I was able to get some blankets and a pillow underneath her head.  Every once in a while she'd stop breathing for a few seconds, then suddenly suck in her breath.  Then sometimes she'd sit straight up and let loose this barking cough that sounded like it was filtering up through several cups of oatmeal in her throat.

Willow thinks it's really funny to shuck her diaper and run around the house yelling, "Tinky butt!"  (stinky butt)  This is what happens to any two year old with two older brothers and a truly disgusting older sister.  So Willow is running about bottomless and she decides to jump on the couch.  I go grab another diaper and when I get back, Sophie has her nose in her sister's bottom. 

Sophie tries my patience.  Really.

I told Sophie that it's not a good idea to put your fingers or your face where there could be poop because it tends to make people sick.  I told her she might get worms in her belly, just to drive the point home.  Later on, she was telling one of her "grandma" stories.  The grandma in these stories is fictional,  though she has no shortage of real grandmothers (four, counting step-parents, plus four great grandmothers).  The pretend grandmother lives in Toledo, Ohio (I think that's from a sesamieee street story, since she's never been to Ohio) and does things like catch sharks in the lake and go to space in rockets.  Okay, back to the story then.  The grandma story that she told, just to the air to try it out, went like this:  "One time, my grandma, she was licking my grandpa's butt.  Den she gets wurrms and hasta go toa hopital." 

Her preschool teachers are going to have me arrested if the photo place doesn't beat them to it.

I'm driving behind a little car driven by an older woman.  My eyes are drawn to the middle of her dashboard to some colorful something.  A stuffed animal?  What is that?  Hmmmm.  Then I see a bright yellow post-it note that says, "Nails!" 

Is that a reminder of where she's DRIVING TO?  I asked myself.  Sure enough, she turned and parked in front of the nail salon. 

I don't think she was real.  I think I was just driving behind my future self. 

Everyone is sick here, and I'm starting to feel it, too.  Colds and flus I don't mind.  I can even take barfing.  But I feel ear pain coming and I want to hide somewhere with a bottle of vicodin in one hand and whiskey in the other until it's over.  Whimper. 

Part of my horoscope in today's paper says, "Try to look on the bright side even if it hurts."

You know, it's nice to have the last child wearing diapers around here showing significant interest in the potty, but what I'm really ready for after eight and a half years is to have everyone out of the grabby hands phase.  I miss fun jewelry! 

did you see the cherries?  go back and see the cherries.  and the sushi and chocolates.  all of it.

Poor Katia!  I have enough of a problem saying the wrong thing in my native language; I'd be doing stuff like that if I were her all the time!

DSL is new to me and so I'm on the computer all the time lately in between chores and diaper changes.  It's improved my attitude a little and I'm spending less time on-line than I was before.  Yay for technology!

I just got the girls room and the living room picked up and vacuumed (hallway, too), the bathroom presentablized, and now I have to whip out those dishes in the sink and get everyone to bed in a half hour.  The girls are bathed, Lexy will shower soon, and Nate will just stink because he is in a crappy mood and I would rather smell him than fight him. 

On your marks, get set, go!

I have fallen in love with these dolls. 

I have a big calendar in the kitchen wall.  It's a desktop calendar, with one giant month at a time showing.  Above the calendar and to the left, so as not to obstruct the view of our days, hangs a ziplock baggie filled with colored markers, library receipts, and little appointment reminders on business cards.  Everyone has their own color so I can just write the appointments down accordingly and not waste space writing names. 

This month there was a green "CDM" and a red "NAT BRDGS."  This translates to a school field trip to the children's discovery museum for Lex and one to Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz for Nate.  I saw these trips coming, so I got both their class tee shirts washed and hung in the closet.  Nate wanted to get a disposable camera to bring on his trip to take pictures for a girl in his class who is out of town.  I thought that was really sweet, so I got him the camera last week.  He made a paper case for it that attached to his belt.   Things were in order and taken care of and up to date and whatnot.  All was well. 

The boys are sitting on the bottom bunk bed playing Mancala.  I love that they have grown old and up enough to play games like that without fights and whining, and that even though they do play their share of video games the classic simple games still appeal to them.  I have great memories of playing that with my brother when we were little.

Soph had her last day of preschool on Friday.  The party was fun and my boys were so well behaved I could have wept!

I'm very relaxed right now thanks to some prescription medicine.  I  got a nasty migraine today, the worst I've had since I was so ill while pregnant with Willow.  John reminded me that I had some leftover vicodin from an ear infection a few months ago, so I took one.  It worked somewhat after an hour, and I slept a little bit and felt mostly better.  Then, after I got up and started taking care of dishes and laundry, I could feel it coming back.  So I took a second pill, about three or four hours after the first.  Nothing hurts. 

I ought to go put the children to bed.  I'll leave you with a link to The BreezeHouse, cousin of the GlideHouse.  The future sometimes seems like a good destination. 

Yes, I am listening to Motorhead.  But it isn't what you think.  John has downloaded a bunch of cds on to the new computer (for our own cd-owning personal use only you ascap people, you.  Yeah, you, the ones who made us switch from cds to musac when I worked at an espresso bar in 1989.  I still hate you.  I'm even sticking out my tongue at you.) and they are randomly playing.  In fact, I took so long to say all that mess that now it is changed to Skyclad. 

I'm not so fond of heavy metal.   Most of it just is amusing to me; like overly-earnest poetry or something.  I do love me some Led Zepplin, though.  I miss the local rock station because they had 'get the led out' at 5 p.m. during the workweek.  And I know that they are not one and the same, but a few times when I was visiting my dad in Houston we saw the ZZ Top car on the road.  Sadly, it was long ago, in the days before digital cameras and I didn't have my big old polaroid on me.   

Lexy slammed his broken arm arm in the sliding van door today.  Hard.  I was sure that he'd broken it, AGAIN.  It seems okay now, though impressively bruised. 

Willow is talking rather well these days.  She sings along with songs that she knows and she likes to point out her siblings' possessions; "Lexy chair!  Nate packpack!  Fofie pants!"  Her only impediment, beyond the general baby pronunciation, is an inability to make an 'N' sound at the end of a word.  She can say 'N' clearly at the beginning or middle and 'Nate' was one of her early and most frequent words.  But things like man, come on, and can sound like 'mat' 'amat' and 'cat.'  She really likes TinTin, or, in her language, 'TinTit!"  Tin tit.  Now that's funny.

Sophie has two boxes she's fond of that are making me want to get the fireplace up to code.  One is an empty Paas easter egg dye kit.  Every day she clutches it to her body like the dear priceless possession that it is and we talk about which eggs on the back she will make at easter time.  This is followed by a forty five or so minute discussion about when easter will be making another appearance, followed by, "Is it easter in the morning?"  The other is a Softasilk cake flour box that I kept for reference after putting the flour in a canister.  I'm not sure how she acquired that one, but it has pictures of cakes on it and her birthday is coming.  The most prominent cake on the front is a seventy-two layered chocolate with vanilla frosting.  The smaller picture is of an even more stacked wedding cake with flowers and butterflies and unicorns and lace and fairy princesses and swans and general sugar happiness.  I have been ordered to make both cakes for her birthday. 

I foresee some level of disappointment. 

I keep meaning to record some of the pre birthday chatter, though.  The party is at the evil chuckieee cheeze establishment because she worships the creepy rat and who am I to tell her no?  I was not much older than she is now when I fell hard for Gunther Gebel-Williams, so I know where she's at.  Mostly she wants to know specifics about the thing; like is it a real mouse or someone in a suit?  She is so looking forward to dancing with him at her party, and told me that Willow said she wants to dance with chuckieee too, naked.  I told her Willow has got to wear a diaper.  (otherwise, she'd be a party-pooper!)  Some days she doesn't talk about much else.  It's; "chukeeeee  blah blah blah chucke blah blah (insert several hours here) oops! peed in my pants again!  does chuckieee ever pee in he's pants?"  The best one, though, happened when we were getting ready to nap.  Willow and Sophie and I were on the bed, and Willow was curled up next to me (not nursing) and starting to get the eye roll/deep breathing thing going when Sophie piped up with the chuckee questions.  I said to her that I NEEDED some quiet so Willow could nap and that we'd talk about chuckee in a few minutes.  "But Mom," she said, "it a mergency!  I NEED to know. . . when chuckiee cheeze is home, all by hisself, what does he call hisself?  is it just "chuckie" I mean, mom, you know, what is his nickname???"  I laughed and woke up Willow.

I'm going to go on and on and on about some things that are bugging me. 

The boys have this Juni action figure from Spy Kids.  It came with a model of the superguppy that says, among other things, "Now flushing your poop," which is why my brother bought it, I'm sure.   Lexy likes to, well, bind, I guess, Juni up in various traps.  Most popular is putting him in one of Willow's sippy cups filled with water, the lid screwed on tight.  He is frequently strung from the bunkbed bars by his ankles or tied to doorknobs.  Today I found Juni hanging from a cabinet door by some twisty ties that were fastened around his arms.  He also had a twisty tie around his mouth like a gag, and one holding his legs together.  I'd take a picture to post, but right now Juni is in a plastic cup with a non spill lid, slowly turning to ice in the freezer. Juni has also had the Hans Solo treatment in tupperware filled with water.  At least he does this stuff to Juni and not his siblings.  It is weird, though, isn't it?

I am TIRED, people.  Tired.  Sophie has become an early bird who rises at 5 a.m.  Not a problem for her; since she takes a nap around lunchtime.  But I can't nap then, or usually ever, and am not used to getting up so so so very damn early.  I was struggling with 7:15 as it was.  I'll have to work on fixing this.  It began after she spent three nights away and was really missing me and probably didn't sleep well.  I'm cranky enough with sleep.  For example:  Sophie's birthday party is planned at a horrible evil establishment called chuk eee cheze and whenever she acts like the enormous brat she's been turning into lately (eh, I know that isn't nice, but neither is slamming me in the head with a book that I won't read at 5 a.m.) I tell her that I'm calling chuckie to tell on her.  Stellar dicipline skills, no?  I have also heard the following sentence come out of my mouth:  "Pull up your underpants!!   Chuckie Cheeze doesn't like little girls who go around showing their hiney to everyone!"  Someone, quick, intervention.  Please!

As Mother's Day got closer, I decided that this year I'd make something for my mom and for my mother-in-law.  Knitting was out, since it takes awhile and the carpal tunnel is not going away.  (I know, I'm complaining, but knitting with numb hands is not easy!)  I saw the tote bag and link to directions on Small Hands  and knew I'd found my project.  In plenty of time for Mother's Day, I went fabric shopping and got everything I needed, but I never got a chance to get anything made.  When I finally did make time, I figured I'd start with a little one, to practice, then make two big ones.   The cut fabric sat on the desk for a few days before I got any real sewing in, but tonight, while John watched the remake of Dawn of the Dead (okay, I watched a little too even though I'm not a scary movie person in general) I made a tote bag.  And broke my mom's already ailing sewing machine!!  So, Happy Mother's Day, I made a model of what I wanted to make for my mother and broke her sewing machine.  Job well done.  Grrrrr.  I don't know what happened, but the machine that formerly had no reverse but did have some tension issues, now only will go in reverse.  Here's pictures of the mini tote that I made, which I think will be for Sophie:

Any flaws may be blamed on the machine, of course. 

Here's what Sophie does to her dinner if you leave her alone with a shaker of salt:

She likes to eat salt out of the palm of her hand, preferably rock salt.  When I got mad at her about this (because it has happened before and we have discussed that salt is a condiment, not a part of the pyramid) she said, "Don't worry, it isn't the rock salt!"  I think I'll just replace her spot at the table with a salt lick.

Tonight was the elementary school's spring carnival fundraiser thing.  I passionately hate stuff like that.  It wouldn't be so bad if the girls were older, I guess, but the chasing and the losing kids and the awful music and the stuff that the girls are too little to do and the tickets.  Oh, the tickets.  Luckily, we got tickets ahead of time and didn't bring cash, so there was no begging.  Learn as you go, right.

Before we left I was trying to figure out what to wear.  It's difficult because I am vain, too heavy to fit into most of my clothes right now, and too hopeful and short of money to buy new things.  Things quickly go downhill for me when I have to go somewhere and I can't find something to put on.  It's even worse if I already feel less than par and there isn't a good outfit to bring me up a few notches.  I already admitted that I'm vain, remember?

I didn't want to go.  But the kids did.  I kept secretly hoping that they would behave so badly we could stay home as punishment, but I was signed up to work from 7-8 o'clock and I'm not really that badass.  In the end, I found an old post partum purchase, the denim skirt from Target.  I remembered that the theme of the carnival was something like, "wild west."  Damnit, I am from Texas, after all, I ought to just go with it.   I did.  I got my black cowboy boots out of the kids' dress up bin, and wore a black cardigan that my mom brought me from her friend's boutique in Plano.  It's got big buttons covered in red bandanna fabric, and a bandanna patch-pocket with kind of western trim. 

I embraced the carnival.

And, it wasn't too bad.  The kids had more fun than the adults, obviously, but I enjoyed seeing Lexy find his friends and run around with them.  I enjoyed feeding Willow a strawberry flavored sno-cone, which was medicinal since she fell on the way out the door and had a fat, bloodied lip.  Sophie got to use her tickets to play some of the games.  Nate was the best, though.  When we got there he had to pee.  Cause he was so excited, I think.  I left John with the girls at the jumphouse and took Nate to the bathroom.  It was like he was filled with helium.  He was grinning at everyone and whenever he saw a friend, he'd shout their name and wave and quiver with happiness.  He loves his friends.  He loves going out and seeing them.  It is so so cool for him to be big enough for this kind of stuff.  He had his tickets in his pocket and his new shoes on and seeing him so happy made me really grateful that I pulled my head out of my ass and showed up. 

It's not every night that we are all here for supper.  Two nights a week John works late and gets home after we are all asleep.  Every other weekend now the three big kids are at their dad's and they also go for dinner during the week one or two nights, depending.  Often, the kids will all be here but John not or the other way around.  Anyway, the other night we were all here and ate together and finished just after six.  So I said, thinking that I was suggesting something fun and useful and wonderful, "Hey, let's go for a walk!" 

"Yay!" said the kids.  "We can walk to the park!"  So, we set out for the park.  What a nightmare.  Nate was tantruming over transportation; he wanted to ride his broken bike or his broken scooter and was furious about walking.  Once we were there, it was fun, mostly.  We met another little girl, accidentally taught her the word, 'sucks' and found two little dogs to chase around and kiss.  The walk home was torture.  Horribleness times a million.  But, we went out and the kids played and I didn't do any dishes (until the next day, oy!) and Willow eventually stopped crying about leaving the slide and swings behind.  Eventually.

I take my snack day for Nate's class way too seriously.  I bought pretzels and apple slices.  I counted out forty sandwich bags and I put four apple slices in twenty of them and ten mini pretzels in the other twenty.  I got out a tupperware bowl for the broken pretzels, because I only give out whole pretzels to avoid fights.  You know they would.  The cool thing was that I confirmed my suspected super power of estimation.  I didn't count apples or pretzels, but I had just enough of each to fill the bags.  I couldn't have made twenty one bags of either.  And, when I do the laundry and I'm hanging up clothes I can almost always grab the exact number of hangars without counting.  When I was a waitress I would pick up stacks of forks or napkins or whatever, and they'd usually be what I needed. 

I'm making myself a cape.  I'll take suggestions for names.  Nice only.

Sophie was to bring to school this morning either a photo of herself with a pet or a photo/drawing of her favorite animal.  Here are the pictures she brought:

The lovely and amazingly talented Ida Perle of Paper Moon is having a sale!  I may have to start a wish list just for the occasion. 

This post about mother's day made me laugh.

And this one (dated 5/8) made me cry.

This one made me wonder how the author became such a wonderful and loving mom who stands up for her kids when her own mother set such a different example.

I'm happy that she had such a good day, and I am looking forward to reading about hers next year.

There are more, but I hear a commotion from the teething Willow and I think I ought to finish up and get her something for the discomfort. 

I broke my computer and I blame Elayne.  See, long ago I mailed a cd to her and it never arrived.  So, I put aside another one to mail to her.  That part of the story ends there, since I never followed through and mailed the damn thing.  I have to have a few things handy to berate myself for when I can't think of anything else, and I guess that was destined to be one of them.  In any event, I finally made and mailed a cd to another friend and I also made a copy for myself.   ended up with an extra copy of it because I kept messing up.  Oh well.  I was listening to the cd and I was noticing just how very depressing it is, and, you know, I figured I ought to send a copy to Elayne, too.

Here's what happened.  I put a blank cd into the cd burner.  The cd burner has a broken eject button, so to open it you must click on 'my computer' then right click on the cd drive icon and select 'eject.'  Easy enough.  There was some sort of error with the 'my computer' program, and not only did the cd not record, I couldn't figure out how to get into the system to open the drive.  So I did what any person who doesn't really know shit about computers would do: I restarted the machine.  With the blank cd in the drive.  Which the computer was determined to boot off of.  You see the problem.  Sigh.

I put a call in to my brother, the generous, kind brother who gave me this very computer just last week.  He came over after being called into work to deal with three, THREE, YIKES! different sorts of viruses and worms that had hit the office that morning.   He fixed everything!  Yay!  So, now I can try again tomorrow to make a cd for Elayne.  Remind me to mail it.  In fact, Elayne, email me your address. 

It always gets late too fast.  I have lots to do after the kids are in bed.  I don't need daylight savings time; I need fourteen hour long nights!

If you say "diarrhea of the mouth," or "verbal diarrhea," DON'T.  You're making me nauseated.  Thanks.

So, the mountain lion issue.  People near here keep seeing big cats in the yard and calling 911.  Then the police come, tell everyone to stay indoors, decide it's too dangerous to tranquilize the animal and kill it.  Please.  Figure this out.  If everyone is inside, how long does it take, really, for the sedative to take effect?  And as I pointed out to a friend who is really worried about all this, these animals have always been nearby.  The local school even has a cougar for a mascot.   Until some kid gets eaten, that is.  (You know, I'm so karma-phobic I may start having to worry about my own children just for saying that.)

This is unreal.  I picked up the SF Bay Guardian and on the inside cover was an ad from these people, begging for assistance in bringing what they're doing to animals at UCSF to light.  It is beyond horrible.  How is it legal for this to happen, when a person who doesn't take proper care of their pets can be prosecuted?  Stuff like that makes me want to join PETA and go blow up laboratories where this happens.  It would be more humane to fire bomb the poor animals than let them be at the whim of some deeply troubled psychopathic "doctor."   

Yesterday the acupuncturist noticed that Willow had a cold.  She recommended some herbs to help with congestion.  Sure!  Great!  She brought them to us in little bags.  Inside one of the bags were these really cute little yellow cylindrical tins with orange writing, all in Chinese.  I am immediately wondering if I can open them without damaging them too much, because they are so adorable and there must be some crafty thing that can be done with them.  On the lid was a picture of a monkey.  Perfect!  We love monkeys!  Willow likes to climb on my lap when I am sitting on the couch and shout, "MONKEY!"  So I say, "Look, Willow, monkey!"  To which the acupuncturist says, "Oh, that's right, you're vegetarian.  Hmmm.  This has MONKEY PADS (emphasis mine) in it," while rubbing the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other. 

You know, I don't know what sort of look I gave her.  I was wondering if she meant something like hair or fingernails, you know, something you don't have to kill the monkey to get, and I was wondering how I felt about this cold Willow has and if I wanted her to eat dried monkey shavings to get better, when the acupuncturist said, "Or maybe it's gall bladder."

Oh. No.

Is that legal??  That sounds like cannibalism to me.  I had visions of 28 Days Later and Willow turning into a zombie, or that movie with the monkeys and Brad Bitt and crazy viruses.  We took a vegetarian version that came in a less adorable package, so I didn't get the little yellow tins.  But when we got home there I saw there was a prop 65 warning on it.  Needless to say, we will just deal with the snot.

People EAT monkey parts?  That is wrong.  Even if I weren't (mostly) vegetarian!  I give Willow cod liver oil, and she eats eggs, but we have to draw the line at monkeys.  Ewwwwwww.

The big kids are gone for the weekend and I am unmotivated.  I did get the girls' room mostly cleaned up, made some mix cds (Eve is thinking OH MY GOD! FINALLY!!!), made the baked ziti (so good I could cry) and the tortilla soup (also very very good).  But, I should have been a whirlwind of activity and I was not.  I didn't even get dressed today.  I just put photos on Flickr so my far-away family could see photos of the kids.  I think that when I finally get time where I don't have to do a million things at once, I get into slacker mode and get stuck there.  Oh well.  The next two weeks will be very very busy, so I won't have an opportunity to feel lazy again for some time. 

Time to go check on Willow and heat up some left over baked ziti for John for when he gets home.  I had ice cream for dinner.  Bad bad bad.