Tips and tots

So much to talk about today! But first...

Watch out kiddies, guess who's in the Kinderhizzzyyyy!!!!!

Oh yes. It's my first day of volunteering, and it was not nearly as horrific as I thought being around 90 five-year-olds would be. Out of the whole bunch, there was only one little shite who - after being scolded by the teacher for not listening to me - hate-scribbled his just-finished Luke Skywalker drawing. Oh, and the boy who wouldn't stop staring at my boobs. Probably a relative to the boy who - last year while volunteering - petted my boobs while talking about my Transformers shirt until I excused myself before getting arrested.

All three of my girls shyly snuck smiles at me from across the rooms, and Alison nonchalantly stated, Mom, I love you in the middle of an art project. Probably because it was the kind of "art project" (loosely speaking here... it was woodchips and some kind of cornstarch concoction smooshed onto a plate) that I would never allow indoors at home.

I think it was otherwise a smashing success. The kids all yelled goodbye when I moved to the next classrooms and one of the boys ran up and hugged me.

I had a funny moment with Alison's classmate Vanessa. "You're Alison's mom? And her two friends? You're their mom, too?" "You mean her sisters? Yep, I'm their mom." And then she flashed me her best set of thinking eyebrows and decided it wasn't worth the effort to figure out.

It was weird to be treated like a rockstar when I left. And on top of that weirdness, I bumped into another volunteer at the end of my 3-hour shift... who also happened to have triplets in Kindergarten! I had no idea there were more of us.

Turns out we're both volunteering every Wednesday morning. Even though I only met her for less than 3 minutes and she could be a serial murderer or baby snatcher, I have a feeling this could be the start of something beautiful... if she feels the mutual need to get highly intoxicated before 3PM during the week...

The rest of today's post is dedicated to Julie... it's a story about a girl and a cheese-covered salad.

Yesterday, I got lazy and didn't want to cook. So sue me. I take maybe 2 dozen nights off from cooking the whole year.

I knew that The Fieldhouse had Kids Eat Free every night Sunday through Thursday. Jackpot. I invited Stephie and her buddy Julie so we could get the kids free and I could get my Sesame Seared Tuna on an Asian Salad (delicious!!!)

Anyway, I got there ten minutes before them. Shockingly enough. (I should have lied and told them 10 minutes earlier, but live and learn.) The waitress sat us in some back room with plastic tables instead of the beautiful wood tavern tables that made up the other 99% of the restaurant. Not to mention the super classy arcade games flashing in the back corner.

I sat the girls down. Welcome to the Kiddy Room, girls.

A short while later, another family with four small children were seated at the next table. Kiddy Room, indeed.

Things were fine at this point. I ordered our drinks and appetizer. When the others showed up, they ordered their drinks and our meals.

Things went drastically downhill from there.

As Alison munched happily on a cheese-covered french fry, the waitress leaned forward over her... and tipped a tall glass of ice water all over Alison's back and lap.

I have never seen a girl look more surprised in my life.

Of course there was crying and apologies and frantic scooping of ice out of every dish and crevice. Stephie took Alison to the bathroom where she worked magic with a hand dryer.

After all that drama, it took a while to get another water to the table. Then even longer for the salads. Even though the waitress told Julie they didn't come with shredded cheese, they did. So Julie sent it back. And it took about 20 minutes and a reminder for her cheese-less salad to arrive.

The waitress was flustered and avoiding our table. And the girls and I were there for exactly 55 minutes before our food arrived.

When it finally showed up, everyone's was fine except the "salmon" that Stephie and Julie split. Julie ate a bite and commented that it was really spicy and not flaky at all... then when she got through to the middle, it was red and meaty. She spoke to the waitress but stopped mid-sentence and asked for the manager.

When the manager finally made her way over, she downplayed the whole thing and apologized for the ice water. I told her that that wasn't even the issue... Alison was fine and chomping away again. Julie held up her "salmon" and the manager took it away without an offer to replace it but only to remove it from the bill. That and the cheesy salad.

After ALL THAT, the bill came and they had removed MY tuna on salad instead. But what I noticed made me laugh... the waitress had put in the completely wrong fish order. Instead of salmon, she had order a spicy seared tuna steak for Julie.

What a freakin' mess.

Against Julie's wishes, I tipped her anyway. I've worked long enough with the public to know that sometimes all the shit hits the fan at once, and sometimes there's such a thing as having a bad day or a bad service. Through it all, the girl seemed genuinely upset and stressed out.

I like to think that after that, karma was on my side.

I took the girls to Target for a few last-minute groceries, and after standing in the canned veggie aisle for five minutes, I asked the girls to help me look for water chestnuts. It was a lost cause.

I was about to give up when a girl about my age turned her cart around and said, Are you looking for water chestnuts? Have you tried the Asian section?

I sighed and laughed... as soon as she said it, it made sense, but I wouldn't have figured that out on my own after all the drama of the evening. I thanked her a couple times and headed off with the girls in tow.

Karma? Maybe not, but I'm going to pretend it was the universe thanking me for hopefully making that girl feel better about a really bad job performance.

Funny thing... I checked the bank account and she never added the tip to my bill.

Titillating Tuesday: Clipping it, just a little bit

My sister has been calling me nearly every day: Guess how much I saved in coupons! I have to go to Walgreens to get my ten cent cans of fruit. Wanna come with? They have tampons for a quarter.

Well, gee... as exciting as that was, I had to turn it down. I haven't had a period in 15 months. Thanks, Depo! Turns out even when you come OFF the shot, it still handicaps your uterus.

Now watch me be the lady who pops a kid out on the crapper.

Anyway... Stephie is convinced I need to spend time every week clipping coupons and checking sales fliers. So I did. And oh my god it is not worth my time.

It took two days of cutting and searching and planning which things to buy at whatever stores. I saved $59 (spent $220). I would have made more money selling plasma.

---

As the unlucky - but very kind - cashier scanned and typed in my wad of coupons (I apologized four times, mostly for my sister) I finished bagging and stacking the groceries in the cart. Emma asked to sit on the new blender, which I of course obliged.

The cashier and I (and the middle-aged gentleman behind me in line) stood in silence.

Register: Beep.... scan Beep....

Emma, from the cart: Look at me. I'm up high, sitting on the box.

Alison: But did you poop on it?

Emma: Not yet!

*hysterical laughter from all three girls*

I looked up to see both the man in line and the cashier snickering and started to laugh myself. I apologized and snapped my fingers at the girls. Bodily functions are funny, apparently.

Cashier: Yes, they are.

---

Things are so different with the girls in school. Not just the big things, like eating lunch without interruption or getting them to fall asleep earlier.

The little things.

Like being able to light candles in my house for the first time in six years.

And I did... two of them.

They were buy one get one free. I had a coupon.

---

I can't believe it's Tuesday already. Time flies when your team is getting its hind end handed to them by Da Bears.

And all I can think is Bears. Beets. Battlestar Gallactica.

Or DA Bears. DA Beets...

I miss Chris Farley.

---

Speaking of SNL, the new season started on Saturday. Between Katy Perry's cleavage and Governor Patterson making fun of himself next to his imitator, it was worth staying up "late" (did I just say that midnight was late?) to watch.

It starts a little slow, but picks up somewhere around the ad for the "Mosque at Ground Zero":

---

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Snob-nobbing with Mexicans

Okay, so call me a snob, but I think there's a definite line between dressing casual for a day and looking like a homeless person.

(I would also like to add that there is a difference between those who cannot AFFORD to bathe and those who choose not to simply because they don't care how much their bodies smell like rotten foot jelly.)

My parents took me and the girls out to Country Kitchen for breakfast this past Saturday so I wouldn't complain when they forced me into painting slavery later that day.

It's always an eye opener to get out and among The People. Country Kitchens by us are like IHOPs after 3AM. You wouldn't want to be caught alone in a dark alley with most of the other patrons.

In fact, as we drove up, I pointed at a guy walking with a guitar case down the street and into the restaurant parking lot. I said, Oh, that's sad... homeless guy. Mom asked how I knew he was homeless. I explained it's because he was walking down the street with a guitar case. I could be wrong, though...

But Mom and Dad didn't seem to notice that their favorite breakfast destination was home to more than its fair share of dirty, angry, sometimes toothless men. There my parents were - Mom, dressed up in jewelry and a cute white cotton button-up with her hair all curled and pinned back, and Dad with his collared shirt.

I asked Mom why she got so dressed up.

Because I dressed nice for going out to breakfast.

I looked around. Well, half the employees here are wearing sweat pants.

Nevertheless, the food was delicious. My parents' favorite waitress was so busy waiting on several tables of Mexican soccer players who didn't speak English that she finally came over toward the end just to apologize for not saying hello sooner.

I couldn't help but wonder what a whole team of Mexican soccer players were doing in Iowa. Maybe they were on their way to Canada or some other place that actually plays soccer? And I found myself staring. (Seriously, some of those young'uns were keeeyute. And it's ironic how people - incorrectly - try to portray all Mexicans as dirty and worthless, and those boys were the best dressed and most well-mannered at that restaurant. Suck THAT, Jan Brewer.)

About halfway through our meal, a handful of them wandered over to a hall next to our booth. They paced and whispered. I noticed they were staring at our table. A few minutes later, all but one went back to their group.

The last remaining boy wiggled a phone toward us and pointed to our girls: ¿Trillizas? Triplets? May I?

I nodded and laughed, and as he snapped a few pictures with his friend's phone, Kristin shoved a huge wad of scrambled eggs in her mouth and gave him a look like Really? At breakfast? I'm not smiling for you....

It reminded me a little of our trip to Mexico a decade ago. We were followed everywhere through a small village by a 3-legged dog and a pack of children selling handkerchiefs. (You can't make this stuff up.) Finally, I offered them money if we could just get a picture with them.

The 2-dozen children lined up with looks of annoyance on their face.

The same look that Kristin gave this poor boy.

Back in Mexico, I'd waved to them and persuaded ¡Con sonrisas, por favor! After I gave them what amounted to fifty pesos ($5) they ran off shouting and skipping.

Here in America, I just nudged my girls and scolded them to smile and quit shoving food in their faces.

While everyone in the restaurant had been staring at that table full of adorable tourists, they had been chattering about our girls. How funny was that?

I just hope those boys realize that most Americans shower at least once a day. Or week. Or ever. I'm not sure that restaurant put our best image forward.

Unless they like sweat pants.

We're gonna need a bigger sticker book

Every Friday at about one in the afternoon, I get this feeling of dread over the upcoming weekend.

And its lack of school.

My children, God love them, are loud. It's only midway through Sunday and I have a headache from the girls' excitement over their new chore charts.

I signed up to paint boards over at my parents' house yesterday... it was the most peaceful couple of hours I've had all week. My mom stayed inside and scrubbed floors and played with Barbies and brought out a bunch of toys with small parts which she then neurotically chased the kids looking for. I warn you every time, don't I?

She claims she's "teaching" them to play with things correctly. Good luck to ya!

All the while, I was outside painting, listening to my dad upstairs in the garage, trying not to cut off any more body parts in his power tools. At the end of that most perfect day, my mom made chicken soup and I whipped up a triple batch* of German dumplings to throw in. Mmmmm....

*I love dumplings. I would have put in more, but the soup started to overflow its pot.

With the roof of my mouth seared to shreds from being too impatient to cool my soup first and the kids nearly comatose with exhaustion, we drove home just after dark.

This morning, I woke up determined to start teaching the girls some chores, simply because I couldn't bear the thought of hating my weekends for the next 12 years. (And I had just heard - through a lovely little email group of same-aged multiples, all born within a few months of my kids - that some of these children are already responsible for emptying the dishwasher and folding and putting away laundry. Their kids will be mowing the lawn before my kids will be able to tie their shoes.)

The Chore Charts were born.

And due to my girls' love for anything that resembles a game and requires stickers, it's been a hit so far. You know, in the last 25 minutes. They worked together to make their bed and they got dressed and cleaned up. This is huge. My children would prefer to run around in underpants all day.

I really hope this is the start of something great... as in: me not having to spend all my time chasing half-naked kids trying to get them to finish their food and brush their teeth and instead I can spend time trying to figure out why it smells so bad under the computer desk and remedy the situation.

Then if they earn it, I figure I could cough up a few Made In China trinkets. Even though it's against my religion of not bringing any more crappy plastic toys into this house.

Me: And at the end of the week, if you have a lot of stickers, maybe we can get you a prize!

Alison: Like MORE STICKERS?!?

Me: Erm... okay, yeah! More stickers!

Does that make me evil? Mwahahahaha.... Or cheap?

I just looked. The stickers are Made In China, too.

Allowance

Mike has always had a kind of half-hearted romance with our finances... he seems to think he should care, but he just can't bring himself to pay attention to what goes on with our money. I find myself saying, We can't afford that and Not this month a lot more than I'm sure he'd like to hear and a lot more than I care to say.

For the last decade, it's been up to me to make sure someone doesn't show up at the door wanting our appliances. It only took a few years of absolute fuckups and calls from utilities companies before I learned how to manage our money.

My parents aren't really the "saving" type of people, and it sounds like Mike's mom had more credit cards than slots in her wallet... not exactly the kinds of homes that churn out financially-sound children.

Way back in the day, we had two cards for our one checking account. Ohmygod DISASTER.

Something you should know about Mike is that he really can be sweet and he wants to make me happy. And he thought, one year, that I would be so happy with a several-hundred-dollar leather laptop carrying case.

I might have been... if we actually owned a laptop.

Or had the money to spend.

I had a mini anxiety attack and he returned it the next day, even though my sister warned me about rejecting his present. (I think that was the last gift he bought me for about three or four years... he was gun shy.) He had no idea we were so strapped for cash and it continued that way for years.

I would look over our checking account before paying bills and realize that he was becoming personally responsible for keeping the area gas stations in the black. Then I'd have to scramble to pay for bills and groceries. And had to ignore the phone calls from the credit card companies.

Finally, we'd both had enough. He was tired of me "nagging" him to stop buying food and beer from the gas stations, and I was tired of struggling to pay bills when we were making a good living.

We burned down our money management non-system, and from the ashes rose Mike's Allowance.

Phenomenal.

I never have to worry about paying bills, and Mike doesn't have to consult me for every purchase. I just plop some money in his account every two weeks. PLOP! Pizza from the gas station! PLOP! A traveler! Wanna go golfing with your buddies? PLOP! MONEY!!!

The only problem is that his eyes get larger than his stomach, err... his bank account. His latest quest? Buying $300-worth of work clothes. Um, can I buy this girl a bra first? Seriously! I'm still using my 5-year-old nursing bra to get me through the week between loads of laundry.

So the system isn't perfect, but I'm trying to think LONG TERM here. Like: savings accounts. And: not losing the house if Mike should lose his job. You know, just the little things.

And maybe Mike can stop funding the gas stations long enough to save up a little cash for a birthday present for little ole' me....

A girl can dream!

THE SMELL

I can count on two hands the number of times we've invited people to our house over the last five years.

I'm not really a "hosty" kind of person. My sister inherited all those genes, along with the "I'm not afraid to sob at a Miley Cyrus movie" genes.

I also enjoy having some alone time. Curling up like a fetus on the couch in a dark room is a vacation. Which, if you've been following the story for any length of time, you know that before school was not possible.

But most of all... it was THE SMELL. FIVE YEARS of THE SMELL.

Ohmygod, is that the garbage??? What did you throw away in there?? You can't leave crappy diapers in there, especially in the middle of a summer heatwave.

LOOK at what I found under the couch! I think it's a half-eaten apple... or maybe some kind of jerky?

Annnnd... she peed on the couch again. Girls! Is this PEE? or JUICE? What is this? Let me smell ohmygod it's definitely pee.

I found that last sippy we were looking for... three months ago. And now it's full of what looks like cheese.

Food, poop, pee, dirt, just general disgustingness that comes with that many small people living in one home... it was all a pretty big deterrent to "hosting." No amount of steam-cleaning the couch and carpeting or staying on top of the garbage situation seemed to help.

But then they became solidly potty trained.

And we worked out a no-food-under-the-bed/couch/stairs rule.

And they went off to school.

It dawned on me the other day that my house might not smell anymore.

(But I can't be sure.)

Just like the employees at Yankee Candle get nose-deaf after a few days, I might have become nose-deaf to THE SMELL.

So I'm looking for volunteers - people who aren't afraid of lurking stink and can handle telling me the truth to my face if my house still has THE SMELL (even though it will devastate me and I might live out the rest of my life curled up in the fetal position on the smelly couch) - to come over and sniff.

SNIFF.

Anyone interested? Anyone brave enough?

I'm thinking we need to have a House Warming De-Smellifying Party.

It doesn't hurt so much through here...

I hope the girls enjoyed their first interaction with hair spray. I'm pretty sure they did, but it was hard to tell through the whining and coughing.

Of course, this must mean it's PICTURE DAY!!!

God help us all.

I'd like to throw a shout out to Jeebus or Buddha or whomever kept my kids' scissors away from their hair for the last few weeks. And also to my husband, who kept the rough-housing to a minimum yesterday once I freaked out that I didn't want any fat or bloody lips in pictures today.

I had this visual of a child hitting her face on a coffee table or chair and having a Chris Farley moment "Are you sure there's not a mark?"

Last night, we trimmed bangs, painted nails (two kids insisted on black and one red... I know, I know), and laid out their funky bought-for-picture-day outfits and Twinkle Toe shoes. It went smooth as butta.

Although I'm not sure I should celebrate yet.

I hand-fed them (Yes, HAND-FED THEM) their breakfast this morning to avoid the inevitable food accidents, and I grilled Kristin about choosing white milk over chocolate today for her snack.

I swear I know exactly what she's eaten every day because it's all over her cute mushy face. And I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the seemingly high ratio of chocolate to other food products being served in this school.

Pleaseohpleaseohplease let the girl eat only light-colored food today.

Not to mention Alison likes to "relocate" her barrettes from the side of her head to the mid hairline area. And when I asked her to show me her pretty smile last night, she puffed out her cheeks, crossed her eyes and pretended to shoot her face off.

We'll see how it goes.

Mike was (sadly) called in to work today for an outage, leaving me with an empty house on the most perfect, rainy Fall day. Gee.... what to do? What to do?

I can already hear myself snoring.

Titillating Tuesday: Bringing back the innuendo

Emma, my sweet, innocent little Emma, was in tears the other day. I'd picked them up from their half day of school, and the first words out of her mouth were: I didn't get lunch today.

Of course, I was shocked since it was almost 1 PM, but I wondered if they don't DO lunch on half days. Then started the interrogation.

Me: Alison? Did YOU eat lunch today?

Alison: Yeah, we had pizza and pineapple slices.

Me: Kristin, what about YOU? Did YOU eat lunch?

Kristin nodded.

Me: Emma, are you sure? What did you eat today?

Emma (on the verge of tears): Nothing... I had to rest. The teacher said no to lunch today.

Every way I interrogated them - I was sure there had been a mistake - came back with the same answers: Alison YES, Kristin YES, Emma NO I HAD REST TIME. So then I started getting pissed. I plotted out my letter to the teacher to figure out what had happened. Did the REST of the class get to eat and did Emma just get confused and forget? Or did the whole class sit lunch out and WHY?

That was when Alison yelled irritatedly to Emma from the back of the car: Emma, you sat with ME at lunch today and ATE PIZZA!

And I noticed Emma sliding silently out of my eye line and behind Kristin's headrest. It took all of 3 seconds and The Searing Glare of Death to get a nod out of her that she did indeed eat lunch.

Seriously. What a lying little butt nugget.

---

I had an entirely innocent conversation with a plumber yesterday. He came over to add nipples (I shit you not) to the natural gas intake since I noticed it was pulling away from the foundation.

But, I'm fluent in Innuendo as my second language...

(Opening Scene)

The young man walked up to my door. I opened it to see him smiling at me. Hi, he said. Would you like me to "light" your "water heater"?

I giggled. Thanks, but my "water heater lights itself."

It's like a bad porno. All I needed was rollerskates and low self-esteem.

---

Speaking of fixing things, I went all gimpy on my lawn with my pulled calf muscle and wrestled my way through a third of the mowing. Then the mower died.

I know what's wrong with it, but I just don't care enough to tear it apart right now. (Anyone know how to clean out the gas uptake?)

So if you need to find us, we'll be the home bringing Aztecan lawn patterns back in style.

---

I haven't had many dreams lately (with the exception of the dream last night where my mother was trying to kill me by driving our vehicle into the ditch because I was being "mean" to her - thanks, Mom) but I did have one that made me take notice.

I'd dreamed that I was holding this baby boy named Charlie.

It was weird. I kept thinking about the name Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. But I also kept thinking it didn't fit with our last name so it couldn't be our baby.

This last weekend while camping, my sister spent the night with us. Around the campfire, we were talking about my sister's decision to get a new cat to replace the "mysteriously absent" Bunkers - a whole other saga.

She said she couldn't decide between two cats. Meowsers. And Charlie.

I blurted, That's your cat! Charlie! You have to get him.

Weird, I know. But I think my sister and I are emotionally unbalanced just enough that we have some sort of Cosmic Connection.

---

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!!!

Every solution is just another job in disguise

I stood in our basement tonight for about 10 minutes before having a "Come to Jesus" moment.

We'd been talking about what type of flooring to put down there since the beginning of time, and we've gone back and forth between tile and carpeting or a combination of the two. Exciting stuff for sure, but it's the kind of crap that you dwell on when you have no life.

And then some excitement! Our basement "took on water" a few months ago. By "took on water," I mean: "had water gushing in through the windows after the window wells pulled away from the foundation and allowed the drainage tile to get clogged with mud, turning them into mini-aquariums."

The water/sludge went under our half-finished floor and made the boards swell up in a few places. Oh, it dried out... but it makes me wonder what wonderful specimen are growing where I can't see. I'm beginning to think this is a marriage rite of passage, since everyone I know has dealt with the water in the basement dilemma.

We levered and pushed the window wells back in place and screwed them in. Then we had the should-we-tear-it-all-up conversation, as well as the if-we-want-tile-we-shouldn't-have-put-OSB-down debate.

I fought Mike on that one, by the way. I said it wouldn't make a difference since it's a "floating floor." Well, I didn't think they meant LITERALLY floating...

But tonight? I'm caving in. As of this moment, I'm in the TEAR IT UP camp. In my late-night inspection, I noticed that we now have either condensation OR draining water in yet another section of our basement that has made our carpet remnant WET AS HELL.

And we just got back from tent camping through two consecutive nights of thunderstorms and you start to wonder if the rain will ever cease.

TearituptearitupMotherofJESUStearitup.

I can't deal with finishing the basement only to have to redo it a year from now due to mold.

I can find uses for all that OSB. Like finishing off the garage. Yeah! That's it! Finishing the garage... so really it's win/win... except for the sorry bastard who has to tear up all that flooring and bleach the cement.

Oh wait.

That's me.

My solace: she'll be bald at age 40

Keep in mind that my brain only works in short bursts.

I'll go through my day thinking: laundry, dishes, what's for supper, make beds, WHAT CONSTITUTES LIFE? PLANTS AND ANIMALS AND HUMANS ARE ALL "ALIVE," THE ONLY THING THAT WE HAVE IN COMMON IS OUR ATOMIC STRUCTURE WHICH CAN NEVER BE CREATED NOR ELIMINATED... WE ARE MADE OF RECYCLED MATERIALS AND WILL BE RECYCLED OURSELVES. WHAT IF THE KEY TO THE AFTERLIFE AND "GOD" IS AS SMALL AS AN ATOM???, pay the bills, clean the petrified food off the wood floor...

Well, I had one of these "moments of genius" when I was waiting in line at the dry cleaners. In front of me was an altogether decent-looking person, but she was the bleach-blondest woman I'd ever seen, with glossy fake French nails and borderline hooker makeup.

But she was wearing a SUIT. It was all so confusing.

Then it dawned on me... she was probably a REALTOR.

And the more I started to think about it, the more obvious it was that there are two categories of female realtors here: Jabba the Hut or Jenna Jameson-meets-the person who did Mimi's makeup on the Drew Carey Show.

Interesting....

I'm sure she was really impressed with me, too, since I had 3 children tagging behind me with proof of their school ice cream treat all over their shirts and was dragging a bag with a smoke-covered, betassled, forest green embroidered Poseidon art piece and a handmade afghan. Ya know, cuz I'm all about the COOL.

And what's funny? I almost give a shit that she looked at me in horror and disgust (and before you say anything, I actually looked nice yesterday).

Enjoy your fake boobs! I hope they help you float when the housing market sinks again!

Kids do the damnedest things

To finish up from yesterday, I'll explain a bit more about Alison and her art. There is a difference between her art projects and her bulk art projects.

This would be her bulk art:

Lots of pages (again... note to self: buy Alison's teacher more paper). Lots of words. And what is with the watermelon theme lately? I love how the CAT gets a last name initial.

Then there's her art:

Can you tell what that is?

It's a steam boat.

I don't know where she comes up with this stuff. Then again, we watch a lot of Mighty Machines on the weekends...

She draws these extravagant pictures - in my opinion, at least - and in record times. I bet it takes her less than 2 minutes to draw something like that boat.

Just another thing that amuses me when the girls are around.

Also - Yesterday the girls and I ran out to Mike's car to greet him (I had a child in my arms who was frantically trying to find her other shoe but was running out of time... I scooped her up and carried her out).

Mike gave them all something to carry. Emma had the 2-litre of pop which made her complain at least a dozen times to the door on how heavy it was.

On the way in, Kristin picked up some kind of twig or dead bug and Mike was enthusiastically telling her to "throw it... throw it down! just throw it." Before Kristin was willing to part with her new treasure, we heard a loud slam inside the doorway.

Emma had "just thrown" the 2-litre of pop.

We turned to see it rolling all the way through the livingroom.

Ah, kids.

Curiouser and curiouser

Monday's post couldn't have come at a better time.

Every day when I pick the kids up from school, there'll be some small animal running past on the sidewalk yelling Goodbye, Alison! or See you, Emma! Kristin doesn't seem to get a whole lot of action on that front, but she also doesn't seem to care. She's more interested in telling me about what chocolate item she bought - a la carte - from the lunch line after eating the healthy lunch I'd packed her.

First off, I love that they seem to be making friends, even though they all seem to be BOYS.

And now that I think about it, the girls ask that I roll down the Suburban windows as we pass the high school so they can yell and wave to the football players...

Then something funny happened the other day. I dressed the girls alike for school for the first time this year, and Emma's classmate wasn't sure which one she was once the girls were in their "pack." He settled on yelling a generic Bye Emma cuz I don't know which one she is, as he scooted past.

And yesterday, as I herded the children into the truck, Emma was being waved to and hollered at by some little boy in her class. Emma turned to wave back and yell Goodbye when Alison yelled to the boy nonchalantly: We're all triplets.

It stunned me because it was so random.

As always, I drilled them in the car: What did you do today? What did you learn? Did you sing songs? Can you sing one for me? Mouse does rhyme with house...

But yesterday, I asked Alison who was talking about her being a triplet.

My teacher was telling Noah at school. And she called me it.

Mmm, okay... but WHY was she talking to them about it? Was Noah asking?

Kristin (piping up from the back): And MY teacher says we're the triplets. She told *indistinguishable* today that we are the triplets.

Alison, cementing that she clearly does not know what it means: I think Noah can be a triplet.

I don't know what the deal is, but I'm going to talk to the teachers. I have never (in my knowledge) referred to my children as "the triplets," and I sure as hell don't want their teachers to start and cause any bad feelings with the other kids. Plus I had a little talk with Alison about how being a triplet is a really neat thing, but she shouldn't go around announcing it because people might think she's being sassy, and boy oh boy, does Alison DO sassy.

It'll be interesting to hear what the teachers have to say.

On another note, Alison also does ART.

She drew these yesterday in class. ALL of them. Note to self: buy her teacher another ream of paper.

Mike's favorite is the one where she drew her name perfectly backwards.

Then Alison came home and drew for at least 2 hours straight. My two favorites were the giant grapes with a vine and the "Loch Ness monster who's gonna blow up." I think that's dynamite strapped into his fashionable blue-and-pink-striped sweater.

She is highly amusing. I find her drawings all over the house. She put this airplane on the fridge for me.

Not to say the OTHER girls aren't fascinating, too... Emma drew and cut out a monster, then straddled him over a decorative chicken in our kitchen. Kristin prefers to scribble. I think she's a little too wound up these days. It's therapy for her.

So anyway...

I'm waiting patiently to hear back from the teachers about what days they want me to volunteer. I'm going to keep my ears open to see if the other students are initiating the questions about being a triplet or if it's adult-driven.

Either way, at least I'll be there to occasionally intervene before Kristin goes into a chocolate coma.

Titillating Tuesday: Trash talk

I made a huuuge mistake in watching my first Hoarders episode last night online.

After watching the second episode (and having to hunt down other episodes online to fulfill my need for seeing other people's filth - mostly I was fascinated that none of these people saw it as a "problem" even when their sinks no longer functioned and their kids could no longer sleep in their beds) I decided I'd do something constructive with that time and at least paint my nails while being a trash voyeur.

I went to bed* feeling the need to take out the trash.

*I was up until 1AM. I had to stop once I watched the family who couldn't regain custody of their two children because the mom refused to give up 4,000 boxes of crap in her garage. That was AFTER the crew cleaned everything off her property and boxed stuff up.

I hope that Big Gulp cup that she couldn't let go of keeps her company at night while her children live with Grandma and Grandpa...

---

Last night I was lying in bed, completely uneasy.

I wanted to run out to the garage and throw away anything that wasn't nailed down. For the record, I think that only entails bikes, lumber, tools and a grill. But still. Scrubbing the Hoarder visuals off my eyeballs...

I told Mike, I'm the OPPOSITE of a hoarder. I lack the sentimental gene. If I had my choice, I'd throw everything away or donate it.

So we compromised. I settled for chucking the half-working griddle that I'd asked Mike to take to work (several weeks ago). It felt great. Buh-bye!

---

This past Saturday, I finally dragged our old grill to the curb with a FREE sign on it. It was during our garage sale days, but nonetheless (and even though I'd written Yes, It works! on the side) we had no takers.

It was still sitting there last night at bedtime.

When I left to pick the girls up from school today, I noticed that the grill had disappeared... Yay! I thought back to this morning and realized it had been gone before I'd even woken up.

And then I remembered...

Just a few weeks ago on an early Tuesday morning, I'd seen a man in a pickup with boards around the back, stopped and inspecting the larger garbage items at a house three blocks down.

DUMPSTER DIVERS!

Would it be wrong of me to strategically place things on the curb on Monday nights that work but we no longer want and don't want to take to the dump? And now I want to know if he's needy or hoarding. I'd hate to be an enabler!

I guess I could nonchalantly ask him if he owns a cat. Or several dozen cats.

---

Tomorrow I'm going to write about how the girls have been doing in school, and yesterday's post about identity had pretty good timing from what Alison told me today.

Have a good Tuesday, everyone!

The T-word

This is for my mother.

I sure hope you at least put pigtails in their hair and make them look nice for school!

No, I prefer to smear food over their heads, and force them to wear the same socks for 2 weeks until they smell like old cheese, and... well... I don't know, I can't think of anything that lives up to her vision of how I send my kids off - that my children look like they've crawled from the gutter every morning.

This morning is pretty typical for us, minus the matchy-matchy outfits, but you'll have to forgive the breaking of at least 4 of my clothing rules since we're a little low in the Packer apparel department. (And I see they desperately need their bangs cut, which might explain why I had a nightmare about Alison giving herself a butch-'do last night.)

I know I'm a little weird about not liking identical outfits, but you have to understand that I SEE things regularly that freak me out.

Like today. I Googled "monster triplets," looking for a silly picture to use as an illustration.

Oh my hell. I have never seen so many penises in my life. And pictures of the Dahm triplets.

I worry immensely about our girls being treated like some kind of mission when they're older... the I hooked up with triplets mission. Being objectified not ONLY because they're women, but because they happen to be identical triplets. There is so much CRAP to deal with in middle school and friendships and relationships and college... add "unwittingly being used as a trophy" to the list.

Do you understand how sick that makes me feel?

So I do everything I can to make the girls feel like individuals, and to encourage others to do the same. The word "triplet" does NOT make me feel special (and I know there are some people who use it to identify us, which is absolutely fine in moderation, but there are others who say it like they're doing us some kind of favor).

When friends and strangers alike only know you as "the triplets," how do you think that makes them feel? Weird? Like they don't have names? Because my girls have NO IDEA what a "triplet" is... I'm not joking. They know they ARE one, but they don't know why. They just know it makes people act strangely around us.

I recently had a revelation about the unique struggles the girls will go through their entire lives.

I took the girls over to the neighbor's house to play, and everyone referred to them as "the triplets" or "the girls" (a note: I prefer the latter but neither one is going to make me homicidal... I know there are friends reading this going "Oh sh*t! Whoops" and please don't; it's not something that I thought about until we had the girls).

Soon started the guessing games of who-is-who.

While it was kind of funny to see the men try to figure the girls' names out, it dawned on me that NONE of the other children in the neighborhood deal with that particular problem. Everyone knows who they are. If one of them is walking down the street, I'll say "Hi, C!" or "Hey S, are you liking school this year?" But our girls will always just be "one of the triplets." Isn't that just weird to think about - not just abstractly, but actually being anonymous to friends and some family???

It's hard to put into words... I realize how difficult it is to tell them apart. But it doesn't change the fact that my children are nameless to people we've known for years. It's not laziness at all. I don't want people to get that impression. Most of these people seem to feel terrible that they don't know their names, and it makes me feel bad all around. I want this to be easy, damnit!

I'm seriously considering buying nametags, not to be a smartass, but to put them on the girls' backs so people can CHEAT. And even better than asking me for their names, ask the girls, Are you Emma? They love that. Because if you're wrong, they think you're just screwing with them and laugh, No, I'm KRISTIN!

Now does it make sense why I push to separate the girls in school? Could you imagine having to start every day with "I'm so-and-so, Mrs. O"? God, I cringe at the thought.

I want our girls to feel important and like they belong here, not like some kind of interchangeable oddity or cosmic joke.

All of this ties together, believe it or not...

In the back of my mind I worry about what this will do to their self esteem. I don't want our girls to be so fed up with their "tripletness" or whatever you call it, that they decide one day to cash in on it and drop trou for a paycheck. I want our girls to be individuals and I want to raise at least ONE child who might say Hey, I'm not really comfortable with this! before becoming the next Dahm triplets.

I don't want them to think that being "triplets" is WHO THEY ARE.

Hopefully it just takes time... or different haircuts... or tattoos on their heads. We'll get this figured out eventually.

I hope.

It's times like this I'm glad I have a "strippers and midgets" keyword

This is what we do on weekends now.

My children make nests of blankets on the couch and floor and rocking chair and laze around until 2PM. As someone who thinks mornings are clearly a work of the Devil, I can't say I have any complaints.

I'm still in recovery mode from this week.

Yesterday, I took my mom's and sister's new crocks to my parents' house (bought for $50 a couple houses away during our city garage sales and they are old - one from the 1800s and the other from the late 1700s! wow I'm a dork that I'm excited about that). Since this was only a delivery mission, I was dressed up in heeled sandals and a frou-frou shirt. Obviously, I would end up climbing through their hedges for three hours, trimming with power tools and carting away branches to my dad's truck.

I was finding branch debris in and on body parts all day and night.

Oh, and we found out when Mom came back with their dog that our puppy (14 years young) might have an aggressive cancerous tumor on her back leg. Yay , cancer! Way to go on attaching yourself to yet ANOTHER victim in our family! Now go fuck yourself.

I spent the next several hours in the basement of my neighbor's house, watching ISU get systematically dismantled by Iowa.

And of course there were other shenanigans. Like when I found a miniature wrestler doll that looked more like a Chippendales dancer. See if you can find him in this picture....

He hung out in my cleavage the rest of the night, of course!

Here's about half of us. Thanks to Cami who actually remembers - unlike some people - to bring her camera to parties. Then again, maybe that's not such a good thing.

Hey, she said 'Everybody DO something,' which to ME means 'something pervy.' So yeah. Class act, I am! I'm gonna stick to playing with my stripper dolls instead of posing in pictures...

Because of the 3-day headache that ended Friday night, I had to play it nice... I spent the night drinking straight Lemonade. Daredevil, I know!

And then I woke up this morning feeling like death.

I don't know what happened, but either I have the world's worst case of allergies or I am the only one in my family to catch the world's worst head cold. Either way, it's pretty clear that my immune system SUCKS.

I want to make myself a couch nest and watch Scholastic videos all day.

But alas... it's football season and I am dragging the kids and my sorry ass to my parents' to watch the Packers play the Eagles.

I just hope there aren't any more hedges left to trim.

But what I really needed was some tranquilizers

Did you know Alan Thicke has a child with Diabetes?

Well you would... if you watched a little television between the hours of 2 and 5 AM. He's trying to replace Diabetes Pimp Master Flex himself - Wilford Brimley - by sheer volume of ads. (Also annoying? Those new ActivOn commercials. Okay, who are we kidding? Every ActivOn commercial is annoying.)

I would like to say that while the commercials are aweful, early morning TV has by far the best programming. I just watched a house get sucked up by a tornado on Storm Stories and then watched Judge Alex on a special "Vicious Vixens" episode. I feel a little trashy right now. Can you hear the dueling banjos?

So why am I up this early?

I fell asleep last night at 9PM. That's right. I fell asleep before my children. Which is why when I woke up just before 3AM, I found them asleep on the couch with the TV blaring and wearing their new Halloween masks (thank you, Target dollar bin).

All thanks to this wonderful headache.

I knew one was coming yesterday. And then when I was at the grocery store this afternoon, the lighting made my eyes hurt. That's when you know you're in trouble.

When I got home, I bargained with Mike that if he picked the kids up from school, I'd cook him this new dish that I'd never seen nor tasted before - Singapore Mei Fun, which I prefer to pronounce in my most obnoxiously fake Southern accent - to take to work. All the while I stirred and chopped, I could feel my brain swelling in my skull.

If you have cluster headaches, you know what I'm talking about. It's enough to make you want to drill a hole in your temple with a screwdriver to let the ouchie out. Demons, repent!!!

I vaguely remember Mike snarfing the food and commenting how it was good but needed more curry while I sat in the livingroom chugging my caffeinated Crystal Light and swallowing the aspirin he was kind enough to fetch for me. Thin and reduce... thin and reduce... thin the blood and reduce the swelling... that's my headache mantra.

The worst part?

I knew if I didn't get the girls' new TV up and running, I would have to "deal" with them on top of the pain. I only say "deal" because they are freakin' loud. Noise, light, movement, talking/scolding children... all these things do not go well with these headaches. They cause me to growl in some kind of possessed tone GET AWAY FROM ME GRRRRAWRRRRRRRR I WILL BITE OFF YOUR HEADS.

So I put a leather bit in my mouth and hooked up the five gazillion wires required to attach our 5-year-old DVD player with our 11-year-old television (before they ever heard of audio/video inputs) via a $20-something connector box that oh-by-the-way-has-to-be-plugged-in-and-we-only-have-two-outlet-spots-but-we-can-make-this-cord-reach.

In went the movie.

I don't remember the next few hours. I think I used packaging tape to repair a broken foam pirate sword at some point and made Kristin cry just by looking at her (to be fair, she was probably crying because I walked in while she was jumping on their "pirate treasure box"... or because I had fire coming out my eyeballs).

So sleep probably wasn't a bad idea.

Except now I'm awake again, headache intact, and I'll be starting off the morning 4 hours ahead of schedule.

Yay for me.

I'm hoping Mr. Brimley moves on to selling tranquilizers... now that I might buy.

Sleep is so exhausting

Well that was fun.

Emma had a breakdown late this evening for 45 minutes: I *gasp* miss *sob* Daaa-aaa-aaaddy!!! *continue hyperventilating*

She took a 10-minute break while I got her father on the phone at work to talk her off the ledge, and then whimpered for an hour while watching a Scholastic DVD as a HUGE compromise to let them stay up late on a school night. Mainly because I had stuff to do, but I begrudgingly set it aside to snuggle and watch Click Clack Moo.

When it was time to go back to bed, the tears started rolling again. I miss hiiiimmmm... I want Daaaaadddy.

Sorry, Peanut. Not much I can do about that. We sent you kisses, Mikey, and you'd better remember your promise to snuggle and be the one to wake them up in the morning!

And the day started with such promise. (heavy on the sarcasm)

First, I realized we had maybe a half cup of Cheerios. And only 2 eggs. And almost no fruit. All that glorious food to split between 3 children. Thankfully, the kids weren't hungry and ate maybe HALF the Cheerios.

Then I came home and thought, Hey! I'm doing pretty well for staying up cleaning until 3AM and only getting three hours of sleep and having no caffeine and snoooooooooooooooooooore............. I fell asleep next to Mike.

And then when I heard Mike's voice in my head giving the imaginary okay for the nap: Come to peace with it. This is happening, no less than three phone calls came within 2 minutes.

So I went out to the livingroom. I thought, Well, that was a nice little nap and boy it's warm in the sun here on the couch snooooooooooooooooore.............. I was asleep again.

By the time I had woken up, I hadn't cleaned anything. Eaten anything. Watched anything. Crafted anything. HTMLed anything. And it was already an hour to school end.

I did the only logical thing - I cleaned the girls' room so when they came home I could shut them in it and go back to sleep.

Okay, maybe not. But I did clean it.

I did the "mommy thing" and read to them and played with them. Then I unleashed them out in the yard while I finished mowing the lawn that I had quit after getting 9/10 of the yard done.

By the way, at what point is it considered the NEXT lawn mowing instead of a continuation of the previous one? Two days? THREE? Maybe it makes a difference if you leave the lawn mower right where you stopped? Because I did. Right. In the middle. Of our farking lawn. Classy!

Culminating with Emma's breakdown tonight.

I don't know about any of you, but I'm wiped out and could use some slee... snoooooooooooooore.............

Titillating Tuesday: Just call me Chris Hansen

I'm ready for tomorrow to start.

After four solid days with my kids (they didn't have school both yesterday and today), I'm wondering how I did this every single day for five-and-a-half YEARS.

They aren't mean, or horrible, or sassy... they're just LOUD and NEEEEEDY. And I forgot how much I hate the word "snack."

I will say, however, that I love how the teachers have been napping them every late morning. My girls haven't had a consistent nap since age 3.

And as I type, they are sawing logs..............

---

Yesterday, Stephie and I discussed that if we were Chinese ladies working in a sweatshop for 10 cents an hour, we would have been fired. We craft too damned slowly.

It took me all night and all morning yesterday to make the World's Most Valuable tooth fairy pillow.

I sewed every stitch of that bitch by hand.

You wanna know how they make and export stuff so cheaply from China? I'll give you a hint.

Here in America, that pillow cost me only 67 cents in materials. But if you add in the 500 hours of embroidering man-labor, it just depends how much you pay the laborers. I'm thinking my laborer (ME) deserves at least $8/hour. You do the math.

Honey, would you like a tooth fairy pillow, or a Ferrari?

---

Speaking of my sister, she's moved back into her own house.

Now that she's there, she spoke with her former tenant and the neighbors and discovered that a peeping Tom is prowling in the area. They've seen him peeking through windows and standing on porches, and the cops are working to arrest him.

I told Stephie to set up one of those motion-sensor hunting cameras in her yard to catch a glimpse of him and maybe turn him in to the police.

She's been hemming and hawing, and knowing my sister like I do, she likes to imagine these sorts of things away and if she had a picture of him, that would make him real.

So instead, she calls me this morning and I'm joking around and riding her ass about hooking up the camera when she says, I woke up this morning and my back door was open. Not just open, wide open.

Oh my hell. She's gonna give me an anxiety attack. I'm gonna camp out in her yard with a 6-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonades and a rifle... catch me a predator.

Does anyone have the number for Dateline?

---

It's going to be a short week, but just like for all you workin' folks, this short week is gonna be a busy one. Mowing lawns, and painting stuff for my parents, and laundry, and cleaning out the basement, and organizing my office, and figuring out which child this Scholastic book order belongs to after my impatient children emptied their envelopes into one big pile...

It makes me wonder how people get anything done with real jobs.

Who needs a real job anyway?

---

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Football

I've often wondered how long it would take for the neighbors to burn my house down give me a good razzing if I hung a Wisconsin Badgers or Packers flag outside my house.

Most of my neighbors are - obviously - Iowa Hawkeye fans. I've never really been a huge fan of college football in general, specifically Iowa, but I won't let that stop me from watching the game and pretending to care when they score points.

Wow, is this about to make me feel old.

I used to drive down to the Iowa City bars to drink when I was 16. (Shocking.)

The bars would allow anyone into them as long as you had a college ID. Well, guess what? I went to college a few hours every week at the beginning of my Junior year of high school. Jackpot! College ID.

All it took at that point was some skeezy old guy or desperate college kid to buy us beer or shots.

Is there any wonder the new Iowa City laws banning underage kids are working to keep the peace? The young scoundrels are staying in Cedar Rapids where they're from.

Over the next several years of hanging out in just about every bar in the Iowa City ped mall, I encountered more than my share of bravado from rough-and-tough college guys.

And here's where we gain relevance this week... a lot of that annoying push and shove, let's go kick some random guy's ass crap came from the Iowa City football players.

In fact, I would have to say I had NEVER seen a bar fight that hadn't involved a gigantic football player taking out his 'roid rage on some unsuspecting, probably not even local, kid.

That's part of the reason I never really caught "the Iowa bug."

Hell, I'm a Packer fan, but I wouldn't kick anyone's ass over it. (Note: I married a Cowboy fan, for godssakes. And while there have been times I've wanted to smack Mike in the head, it was never about football.)

So as we approach football season once again, please be a good fan. And don't act a fool over something so silly.

After all, it's just college football. Real football doesn't start for another eight days.

Bring my Packer torch and pitchfork... time to hunt us some Bears fans.

Bus of Death

In the beginning of this school year, we had to decide if I'd be driving the girls ten minutes twice a day, or if I would be dropping them off three minutes away and letting them ride the bus.

I figured I'd start driving them and occasionally ask them when or if they'd like to switch to the bus.

Last week, Mike was driving the Suburban when - heading toward us on the two lane road between towns - a school bus hit the dirt shoulder and swerved back onto the asphalt. Doing 60 mph. And then proceeded to overcorrect again and again, sending the bus veering back and forth and kicking up dust.

I told Mike, Slow down... he's coming right for us! If he tips....

So Mike hit the brakes and we watched in horror, waiting for the bus to tip and skid. Luckily, he gained control and drove off. But my arms were cold, and Mike commented that that would be a horrible first use of his EMT skills outside of work. Can you imagine??? A bus FULL of middle schoolers.

And this week I noticed a set of double skid marks on a sharp curve on the same road, belonging to a BUS.

My decision was made for me.

Not only that, but I knew my kids would be the ones who forget stuff in the bus.

As soon as I got out of the truck yesterday, Kristin ran up to me: I ate school lunch today. She was mortified.

After trudging up and down halls, from room to room, talking to every teacher I knew while wearing a super attractive set of house cleaning clothes with no makeup on, guess where I found her lunch bag. Just take a freakin' guess...

In the truck. She'd never taken it with her this morning. Fine with me since, once home, I rewarded myself with leftover shrimp stir fry over orzo courtesy of Kristin's lunch bag. Thanks, Kristin! Hope you enjoyed your breaded meat product with a side of canned veggies!

In other news, packing lunches has turned out to be quite the adventure. (Understatement of the CENTURY.) Carne Guisada on tortillas and pork chops with a side of seasoned and grilled baby red potatoes don't translate well to a school lunch.

Not only THAT, but the Kindergarteners have TWENTY MINUTES to eat between "subjects." Because God forbid they have to cut back the time they use for singing about the alphabet and math and how 1 duck plus 1 cow equals 2 animals or a really fancy dinner platter.

I asked Alison if she'd like to try peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sometime. She looked at me like I was crazy. With crackers?

Ugh.

And earlier this week, I sent the kids to school with COOKIES. I thought for sure that would be the only thing gone when I did the after school inspection. Nope. All three, still intact. (I ate those, too. Damn! These kids are making me fat!)

Is it possible I have failed my children by spoiling them with home-cooked meals?

Other than that, school has been FANTASTIC. There hasn't been a single day they've woken up and haven't wanted to go. Ha! Maybe I'm just so mean they can't wait to leave.

Look how upset I am about that prospect!

...aaaaaand, I'm over it.

The kids are learning so much, too. Last night, Kristin explained to me how meth labs use milk jugs to process pseudoephedrine.

I asked the girls if they wanted me or Mike to come to school sometime.

Alison: Yes! I would love it! Oh, but you can't. You're too big. And Daddy is OLD.

Well, then.

Guess who's gonna be taking the Bus of Death to school if they're not careful...

Shaving to the knee

(You will be relieved to know there are no pictures to accompany today's post.)

Mike and I rarely argue, and when we do, it's usually for fun or over something ridiculous.

Yesterday's battle du jour?

Mike: Twenty-five minutes is a "quickie."

Me: There is nothing "quick" about 25 minutes... unless you're talking about a 5-mile run.

The referee? Google. Mike walked back into the room 20 minutes later: That article had a lot of useful information!

*Shudder*

What I've found especially amusing over the last few weeks is how many friends of mine have been talking about the first-day-of-school quickie.

For those of you without children or with very young kids, after never being alone in the house with your husband for 5 or 6 loooong years, people tend to get a little frisky once the kids are off to school. At least that's what I've been hearing. From no less than EIGHT PEOPLE.

Things are getting so crazy, I'm even contemplating shaving above the knee. Ooh la la, I know!

And my friend Malea got frantic (hey, baby!) when I told her I needed to wax my face. She rattled off a few dates that she'd be available for an arm waxing, and told me to "stock up" on wax. I'm gonna need more wax!

(Okay, just one picture.)

So now that I have sufficiently scared off my parents from reading any further, I have a confession.

I told Mike last night that I've felt guilty about being so anti-more-children-in-our-house, knowing that he's wanted another baby, and knowing that my entire family secretly wants us to have another one. So... I told him that he has a decision to make.

Yes, I did the unthinkable. I offered up the uterus.

*Waiting for thunder clap of doom*

He asked a few questions, like Then would it be another 6 years before you get a job (seriously) and Do YOU want another one?

To which I replied: I wouldn't HATE another baby, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get one on my own. I don't want you to come after me in 3, 4, 6 years and start talking about another kid. And I don't want our kids to be so far apart they don't "grow up" together like you and your brother. So get back to me soon because this offer won't last long.

We shall see what happens, I guess.

Tired

Like father,

like daughters.

The girls were so scared of the thunderstorms and wind gusts last night (it damn near blasted our front door wide open) that they decided to sleep on the couch. Looks comfy, right?

Mike - on the other hand - was napping after his golf outing this morning.

Poor babies.

It's been a rough couple days for us all. Everyone is exhausted, and the girls have finally hit their wall for waking up early.

I spent nearly every waking hour over the last 2 days working on my jewelry site. I'm completely overhauling it and changing the codes, columns, pictures, payment options... everything. I hope to get it back up and running within a day.

Mike gave me a hard time yesterday, saying it's "just" one thing, and then it'll be "just" another project, and "just" one more. It never ends with me.

He's right. I am always busy. Is it possible I'm psychologically damaged and need to be busy?

Don't answer that...