Meet the neighbors

Spotting a lizard on the retaining wall = fun
Spotting 5 lizards at once, all of them staring at you = creepy

It's already too late

When I hear, from the corner of the room where I'm frantically trying get a few things done while the kids watch a rare and well-deserved movie, the narrator ask who could possibly be behind the flowers changing color and the wind blowing wild, I answer absentmindedly, "God." It's such an obvious question, and what does it have to do with the movie anyway? And then it hits me: maybe the fairy movie wasn't the best pick for our family. I had wanted, for once, to pick a something that K really wanted to see, something not based on cars or fire trucks or dinosaurs that she appreciates by default, and therefore hadn't quite thought it through when she picked up the movie at the library, her eyes all aglow. On the bright side, she did indeed like the movie, and we got to have a great discussion afterward about how God might use fairies to do his work. A little theological fudging, sure, but I'm betting God understands.

So where did we pack the wand?

It's a crazy thing, packing for a move. B and I, we're of two different minds on this subject. He'd prefer to begin right away, packing little bits each day in a slow steady process. As for me, I'd rather wait until the week of our move, then throw everything in boxes at once. Frantically! With great stress! This is a theme in my life.

So B handles the packing, mostly. Which is great. Just a little disconcerting. I open the cabinet to get my pancake making bowl and find its spot empty. Or I walk into our bedroom and wonder, why does it look so small? Then I realize it's because all the pictures are off the walls. Or I'm in the middle of making dinner and turn around to discover that there's a mysteriously empty place in the corner of the counter where I once had a plant. A very crazy thing, to find your life disapparating before your eyes.

But all this means that I've very good at the apparating, and therefore while B handles the packing, I handle the unpacking. Frantically! With great stress! And I almost guarantee that one week after we move in, I'll have all the boxes empty and life as it once was--pancake bowl, pictures, and plant included.

Good thing dreams are free

I drove past an RV for sale today (and no, contrary to our recent whimsical purchase, I didn't buy it). The sign in the back read: "For sale. 14,000 actual miles." Hmm. Are there any other kinds of miles? And then it hit me. That's a person who bought an RV, pictured themselves traveling all around the continental United States, and then got 14,000 miles into it before realizing how crazy expensive RVs are to drive. But in dream mileage, I'm sure they got their money's worth.

Speaking of crazy expensive, have you seen Conan O'Brien's latest tactic to stick it to NBC? I'm not siding with anyone here. Okay, I'm siding with Conan. Dude, he waited five years and moved his whole family to the West Coast. I'd be upset too.

Thanks, Wild Thing

M: I'm all finished with my peanuts.
Me: Great!
M: But I'm still hungry. Can I have something else?
Me: Nope. It's too close to dinner. You'll have to wait until then.
M: Then I guess I'll just have to eat you up.

Excuse me while I have some ice cream

Ditto this post. But we didn't even have to endure 55F and drizzle this year. Just a few days in the sixties. Life. Is. Good.

What, you're out of virtual jeans too?

I spent a significant time before I started this post simply trying to find the last post I did about jean shopping. Because I know there was one--I remember it being especially witty, as I remember most things I write until I actually read them again. At any rate, I'm jean shopping again, much to my disgruntlement. One pair fits in the waist, but not the legs. One pair fits in the legs but has the wrong cut, one pair would fit in a smaller size (which they do not have in stock), etc. I hate jean shopping, but my beloved favorite jeans are about worn to pieces (not to mention nearly white-washed and baggy like, well, super old denim). So I'm on the hunt, again, only this time I have two children who love to come in the dressing room and give me their opinion. They're not particularly helpful ("Mom, those look perfect" "Um, I can't get them buttoned" "Oh. But you should get them anyway"), but they do make for cheerful distraction.

Speaking of distraction, I really do not need to be jean shopping right now, with holiday shopping to finish, a baby shower cake to make, gingerbread houses to construct, and a novel to rewrite*. Or maybe that's why I'm jean shopping instead.

By the by, if you do happen to find that missing jeans post, please let me know. My mind might be hiding right there with it.

*Did I mention rewrite? Oh yes, because it would be too easy to just line edit and move on. How about we chuck the whole first half and reorganize the second? Shall we change and/or eliminate characters, too? I think we shall! What fun it is to carve up something that seems to be melting away under my very keystrokes!

Consider me panicked

You know what I found when cleaning up the house today? A pen cap. But not just any pen cap. The pen cap to a black permanent marker. If my life had a soundtrack, you'd be listening to a menacing "duh-duh-DUH" right now.

Everyone's a critic

(Song fades on the radio. DJ notes that the previous selection was by the Smashing Pumpkins).

M: Smashing Pumpkins?
K: Mathing Pumpmans?
M: Yuck! That's silly.
K: Siwee!
Me: It's the name of a band, Smashing Pumpkins. They'd played the last song.
M: Huh. That's still yuck. And silly.
K: Yuck. Siwee Pumpmans.

Yes, well, it's possible you weren't their target audience.

Soft, white, and loved all over

One of my tasks yesterday was to make a delivery to the local Goodwill. I had gone through the old clothes and toys to make room for the impending Christmas joy. If I try to do this while the kids are around, they suddenly decide they're interested in whatever I was just about to chuck. This interest lasts only as long as I'm loading up the donation. At that point, the toy is disregarded once more (this should come as a complete "duh"to anyone with children). I figured this was the perfect time.

Everything was going fine until I loaded up the grocery cart. You know, the big red plastic grocery cart that seemed like such a perfect purchase to go with their play kitchen? The one that hardly ever actually gets played with? Yeah, it's that crapshoot all over again. So I loaded it up and got about halfway to the donation site when I started to cry. That's right, I started to cry. Over a grocery cart. That the kids don't really play with. I called B and asked him if we were sure that we were ready to give up the cart. He said yes, that the kids hardly play with it anymore. I said are you sure? With tears. Because they still like to go grocery shopping, which consists of taking all the foodstuffs from my pantry and leaving them at various spots around the house, which is just as annoying as it sounds. Don't ask my why I was defending this practice, but it seemed at that moment most important that they be able to continue grocery shopping in peace. B, being the good and wise husband that he is, insisted that we were most definitely not ready. Are you sure? I asked (yes, again). Keep it for me, he told me. He's gracious too.

The truth is, I've also been working on scrapbooking this week, and the day before I'd found a picture of K. Little K. K back when she was still toddling around. She had her bear in the cart and was wearing her cute footie pjs and looking so little and precious and happy. But especially so little. I'm not ready to give that up yet either. About this I'm very sure, except that it's one thing I'll have to give up eventually, whether I like it or not.

We get to see the kids again today, and while I have to say that sleeping in, eating whenever, and scrapbooking/cleaning/writing at will are all fantastic, I'm dying for a hug. Kids have turned me into such a marshmallow, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Just (B)e

We're on day two without kids. My parents were kind enough to take the kids up to their house while B works a couple more days before the Thanksgiving break begins. According to the kids, getting to go to their grandparents house without their parents is the most wonderful thing in the world. I try to just appreciate the opportunity for their sake and ours, although it is a little tough to hear your own kids screaming that they want to go away WITHOUT YOU!!! (Yes, that's exactly how they say it. Both of them. In unison. Ahem.)

So we know that this is a special thing that not many parents get, and we often get questions about how we use that precious time. I'd like to say that we make the most of absolutely every second, but yesterday, there was a lot of window shopping, wandering, and aimless driving. B took a nap at a time other than nap time. I turned on television and let it bad programming run its course. We played Rock Band at dinnertime and had dinner at 8:30, right before going grocery shopping. Yes, we went grocery shopping at 9pm on a Saturday night. And yet, looking back, we may not have made the most of every second, but we certainly enjoyed the unfamiliar sense of freedom, the chance to relax just the two of us--even if we're doing two independent activities. I've got three more days to get things done, and only three more days to enjoy just B. There's got to be a balance in there somewhere.

Tonight only: Every card counts twice!

You know you've sunk to a new low when, while restacking the cards for Candyland, you start thinking how you might arrange them to make the game go as quickly as possible. In my defense: it was 6:47pm after a long day and we (mostly) let the cards fall as they may.

Maybe she was looking for Oscar

Today I endured an endless tantrum. Okay, maybe ten minute, but have you ever listened to a kid scream for TEN MINUTES? It's forever. And when it's your kid, it's a tad bit longer. The source of the endless tantrum? K was dumpster diving. It started out with a little eyes-only investigation with her friend. Pick-your-battles parent that I am, I watched without letting myself get too bothered. Parks are petri dishes anyway. I told them to keep their hands out of the trash. I might as well have given them a written invitation. The next thing we knew, both girls were dumpster diving. I sighed and told them to stop, at which point K backed off obediently. Then she picked up her cup, by the straw, with her Lord-knows-what-she-just-touched hands. I groaned and told her to come over so that I could wash her cup and hands, at which point K began to scream. And scream. And scream. Scream while I washed her cup. Scream while I washed her hands. Scream on the grassy area where I put her to finish her tantrum. Talk about dedication. After ten minutes I finally walked over, asked her if she was finished, and then picked up the sobby, snotty, snuffly mess and cuddled her for the rest of the play date. Because I wanted her to wash her hands (and cup) after sticking them in the trash. The nerve.

Clearly having no understanding of the limits of my patience, she stops in her tracks on the way to the car and moans, "Me not want go home. Me want swing!" Right. Poor toddlers. The world must be such an immense spread of puzzle pieces, all getting picked up and sorted and lost and then found and more often than not lost again, in the lengthy process of putting ourselves together. Some times we seem to have blissful days with lots of connected edges.Today was full of middles.

On the plus side, I had the oddest thing to keep me distracted during her fit: a spider in my pocket pack of tissues. Really. I'm not sure how he ended up there, except that perhaps he has a cold like everyone else this time of year. It took us a long time to negotiate the getting out, just long enough to endure a two year old's wrath.

As if bloomers do anything anyway

You'd think, if I remembered to pack up all of our clothes and stuffed animals, the DVD player and some videos, everyone's favorite animals, necessary medicines, entertaining books, and three different kinds of snacks for a simple night away, that I would also remember the pile of clothes that we needed to put on after swim class. The one that I gathered first thing and set by the door. After all, I've been going to swim class with one of the kids for almost three years. Right. Instead, I wound up at swim class with a pair of bloomers. Not much you can do with a pair of bloomers, really.

Where's Emily Post when you need her?

If the women's restroom is closed for cleaning, and you take your daughter into the men's restroom out of "me pee now!"* desperation, should you put the toilet seat back up when you're finished?

*No, my English hasn't quite degraded that much. It's poor K, who is, yes, thinking about considering to maybe potty train. I have never met a kid who wanted so badly to put her pee pee and poo poo in the potty like all the other big kids. The actual putting of things in the potty is a little harder to come by. It reminds me of when she was crawling, the fierce desire in her nature to perfect this one act, and the perseverance and willfulness that finally got it done. I'm sure this will be the same way, eventually. Just with a whole lot more laundry.

When gum paste goes wrong

So instead of just throwing out the little people from K's birthday cake, I stuck them in a block of Styrofoam so that K could keep them in her room. They now stand on their little block right across from her bed, smiling at her when she wakes up.

Except the other day we noticed that the block had been turned around and put back in place with the people facing the wall. We'd never seen her do it, and neither kid confessed. Not that it was a big deal. It was just a little creepy to find them all facing the wall like that. And although I know that one of them must have moved them, I'd feel a lot better if they told me so.

What was even creepier was to come in last night and find them turned around again. And still no confession. We're trying to be very nonchalant about it, but I'm absolutely stricken with the willies. Something about it reminds me of the beginning to a horror movie, you know, where the unsuspecting parents notice little unusual things, and the next thing they know, the gum paste people have come to life and are stabbing them with their toothpick skeletons.

It can't really surprise you that someone who fashions little people out of gum paste would have the imagination to bring them to life via poltergeist. Let's just hope it's all in my (gum paste addled) head.

Seasonal shifts

So it's truly fall in our house: the garden has been almost completely dismantled, the kids are back in their respective preschool and swim classes, and we all have our first cold. While I'm preferring to focus on falling leaves, apple pie, and Halloween candy, they all still seem a long way away, and the cold is, well, very present. So long summer!

Fifty thousand

That's the number of baby spiders I saw tonight. Okay, that might be an exaggeration. But I'm getting a little tired of the swarming insect scenarios. During another dinner party, no less. I go to wind up the hose, watching all the time for the giant scary spider I'm sure must be hiding in the hose box. So it takes me a minute to notice the little line of bugs crawling up the spider web next to me. Except they're not bugs. They're baby spiders. Crawling out of the very handle I was turning. Thousands of them (again, exaggeration. But it seemed like thousands).

I take a step back and see the little guys everywhere, moving at a frantic pace in every direction. M was kind of enough to point out the ones that had made it halfway across the patio already. Which meant they were all over already by the time we whipped out the nasty spider spray and ushered everyone inside the house.

That's right. I caved. No eucalyptus oil this time. We sprayed every possible surface. Then we sprayed them all again. I don't care that I'll have to go out and wash all those surfaces down before we can play out there again. Because you know what came out of that very handle where its babies hatched? The one that I was turning so carelessly? A big fat black widow. A big fat black widow with all its little tiny black widow babies. Blech. I never thought I'd say this, but I want the ants back.

Zero

That's the number of times that I complained about the ants that finally invaded. Maybe it was all that preparation, or maybe it was just the lack of energy I had left by the end of what was clearly a time-vortex super long week. Instead, there were several observations about how industrious those little guys were to work their way across the whole house to find water at the kitchen sink and how sad it was that they were so pathetically thirsty.

It would have been nice, of course, if the ants hadn't chosen to gather while we had guests. I covered brilliantly with this cheerful dodge: "Why, we've never had ants here before!" As if that makes the swarm around the sink, where you're trying to wash your little girl's hands, any less disgusting. As if, really, that's any explanation whatsoever.

But we blithely ignored them until our friends left for the night (the human ones) and then ushered our uninvited ants out with eucalyptus soap and water (for the record, a very effective ant killer). Blocked up the entry point and--voila!--no more ants. Yet. But they were very industrious and probably still thirsty. But I'm getting pretty good at this blissful ignorance thing.

Three

That's the number of errant ants I've found in my kitchen. Which is just enough to know that there are more coming. They're waiting for me to make a mistake--say, leave an empty ice cream bowl on the counter, or the uneaten crust from a PB&J--and then they'll strike. Oh, I know, no matter how diligent I will be, it'll happen. I'm on a roll with mistakes lately. And then there will be a rather unpleasant post about the ant attack. But now that we're all prepared, at least it will come with an Eeyore-ish sigh instead of those muttered curses I'm still trying to avoid.