Life in a jar

You quack me up.

2006-08-18T08:14:00.000-04:00

You know what's really funny? When people find out that I have six kids and they say something about how it's a good thing, because the kids always have somebody to play with.

Whaaaat?

Seriously...you're joking, right?

Let me clarify. I have six kids-two girls, four boys-whose ages span nearly a ten-year range. Kid one is a boy who talks about nothing but video games, South Park, military history and chicks. Kid two wears her hair spiked like Billie Joe Armstrong's, inherited our puppy's old spiked collar, plays guitar incessantly and has a Little Known Billie Joe Fact for every occasion. Kid three never wants to write about anything but sports scores and thinks we should take time off of school to watch ESPN. Kid four refuses to play outside most of the time, is on his way to being a big-time computer hacker and thinks he came from Jupiter. Kid five happens to be kid four's twin, so naturally they're automatic best buds, right? Ha. Five is outside from the time he gets up till the time he goes to bed, climbs the walls when he's inside, and is constantly building things out of old nails and scrap wood. Kid six is all about lip gloss, My little Pony and Disney Princesses, and changes dresses twelve times a day.

Yeah, if that isn't a group that just loves to play together, I dunno what is. It's a nice thought, though, the Brady Bunch or something: 'Let's all go play outside together, a friendly game of Hokeyball, and nobody will cry because she lost or scream and run inside because he spotted a wayward caterpillar.'

In reality, we have this:

"MOVE!! You're in front of the TV and I almost got killed!"

"Waaaaah! Nobody ever wants to play Dora with me!"

"Make him quit hammering! TOO LOUD TOO LOUD TOO LOUD!"

"Can you tell her to quit playing that stupid guitar? I can't hear when the cops are sneaking up on me."

"You've been playing that game all day! I need to check the baseball scores...TURN IT OFF!"

"God, can you keep your stupid ponies off my side of the bed?"

"He broke the shelf I just built!"

"Hey! You can't unplug my amp just so you can hear your stupid Barbie CD, brat!"

Ah, yes...the sounds of familial bliss...

This place is a madhouse.

2006-08-17T09:39:00.000-04:00

No, seriously. I don't mean like on TV when Perfect Sitcom Mom shakes her head with a rueful smile on her face as her teenagers declare war by placing a line of masking tape down the middle of the room and the toddler puts her entire dinner in the blender and turns it on, hysterically leaving off the lid.

'Tch. This place is a madhouse!' she'll say.

Ha.

Let me tell you about a madhouse.

The psychotic hound puppy just made the acquaintance of our three borrowed chihuahuas. (The fact that we have borrowed chihuahuas should tell you something.) They're barking their little bug-eyed heads off-well, two of them are; the other one is making this bizarre squeaking noise-while Dexter, the hound, leaps around and tries to sniff every inch of their little bodies. Sebastian freaks out and starts screaming that Dexter is going to eat the chihuahuas, so I explain that dogs get to know each other by sniffing each other, but apparently I'm not quite as observant as some members of the family, like Zoey. "Yeah, they sniff each other and they lick each other's weiners too!" she says. It's true, our little houseguests seem to be a bit on the gay side, but why did the kid have to pick today to start wearing her glasses and actually paying attention to what goes on around her?

Jeremy is wearing one of his great-grandfather's old shirts over his usual long-sleeved shirt and pants, because it despite being the middle of August, he's freezing. He's in his room emitting a high-pitched shriek, broken up by cries of "I want my pencil!"

Sebastian is out in the driveway spinning his arms and yelling unintelligible sounds at himself.

Dylan takes a break from his schoolwork to ask me if I know some obscure bit of military history. No, I tell him, but you're supposed to be doing your book.

Now Jeremy has a wooden axe that Zac built, trying to get Sebastian to give up The Pencil.

Anyway. Back to Dylan. Do I know that whatever happened whenever?

"No Dylan. I did not know that. But you're supposed to be in the kitchen working."

"Yeah but did you know that?"

"No, I didn't. Now go back and finish your math."

"Yeah I'm gonna but how could you not know that? That was like really important."

"Well, I don't know much about history, honestly. That's why you get to teach it to your siblings. Now you need to go finish working. Maybe you could write about that event later during free study time."

"Why would I want to write about that? I already know all about it. Everybody knows that. God."

"Dylan, you have to-JEREMY! PUT THE AXE DOWN!-go do your math."

"I'm gooooing, god, you never have any patience. Oh and did you know that Florida is more racist than North Carolina?"

"Dylan, GO!"

"Fine, if you don't care about a bunch of racists in your home state."

He finally goes, supposedly working on his math while informing his sister that she's a bullshitter because she wears a spiked dog collar and also doesn't care about racists in her home state. First, though, he has to stop and touch The Pencil, which Jeremy finally found, which of course sends Jeremy into a new howling fit.

Now Jess has evolved from being a bullshitter to a Bolshevist, according to Dylan.

Jess yells from the kitchen, "Hey Mom, did you know there are child labor laws?"

From Dylan: "They don't apply to chores, genius."

From a very sad Jess: "Oh...well...never mind then."

The Bolshevik conversation resumes.

I remember that I was supposed to take Jeremy to the dentist, and didn't. Oh well. I don't like those people anyway.

Random sounds:

YOU HAVE TO BE NICE TO ME!

I AM BEING NICE TO YOU, ARE YOU STUPID? DUH!

Why do the doggies do that, anyway?

So are chihuahuas real dogs or are they like a crossbreed between a rat and like a poodle or something?

Could a rat even mate with a dog?

Well yeah, look how little this one is.

Yeah but I mean could they like breed?

No!

Too bad, that would be cool.

Where's the turtle? I think the big one ate the little one.

Oh yeah, we need dog food. And crab food.

Um...who used the bathroom last? I need to know if it flushed then. Cause now, like...yeah. It kinda looks like it might overflow. I mean it might not, but yeah, it kinda looks like it will.

I'm not an omnivore. I'm not an omnivore! I AM NOT AN OMNIVORE!!

Hey...where's Mom going? Why does she have a suitcase? And what's with all the Hawaiian shirts? Mom...mommm...hey guys, now we can have mustard and Froot Loop sandwiches for lunch!

new blog

2006-08-10T10:43:00.000-04:00

I've started a blog to follow our progress in getting real diagnoses for Jeremy and Sebastian...something that makes sense and isn't the blanket ADHD diagnosis every kid in America gets. It'll also follow the ups and downs of their therapies and daily lives. You can access it through my profile...the address is www.fecundswamp.blogspot.com.

Who says you can't control the weather?

2006-07-25T14:50:00.000-04:00

To make a flood:

Plug the drain in the bathroom sink, stick your sister's toothbrush in the little overflow hole, turn the water on full blast, lock the door behind you as you run out. Contain your maniacal laughter just long enough for the floor to become thoroughly covered with water, requiring the use of every just-washed-this-morning towel in the house to clean it up.

To make snow:

Dump the entire contents of the ice bin from the freezer onto the kitchen floor. Dump the contents of the sugar canister on top of the ice. If you do this during the right time of year, right in the middle of summer, the ants that will almost immediately converge on the mess will look like a group of wee skiiers milling around on the slopes.

To make a sudden rainstorm complete with beautiful waterfall:

Turn on the shower. Open both the shower curtain and the liner as far as they will go. Stand under the water at the exact angle that will deflect the water off your body onto the sides of the tub. Watch the water pour over the side of the tub until your father runs up from the basement soaking wet and yells, 'Turn off the damn water! NOW!'

To create a heat wave:

Wake up at 2 a.m. and decide that you are freezing. Turn the heat on, and push the little temperature control button up until it won't go any higher. Go back to sleep. Be thankful when your parents wake four hours later that they are stuck to their sheets with sweat and can't get up to send you to the desert far, far away.

The best laid plans

2006-07-24T17:39:00.000-04:00

This was not the day I had in mind. Swimming lessons with clean, well-behaved children in the morning, errands after, then home to a tidy house and sweet but mischievous children who are fun, yet know their boundaries...that was the plan, oh, fifteen years ago or so.

This is the reality: swimming lessons with not-too-filthy, well-behaved children, one of whom has to get in the water fully dressed in pants and long sleeves and won't remove his shoes till he reaches the water's edge. The teenaged lifeguard who is teaching the boys' group is patient and kind, and I'm sure the girl teaching Zoey's group is only pretending she doesn't notice the snarls in her hair and the dirt under her toenails. It takes forever to get to the truck afterward because Jeremy's legs are frozen and he walks stiff-legged, on his heels, the whole way to the parking lot. Back home the wet clothes are exchanged for dry after a frantic search for clean undies and then I'm off in search of a broom to replace the one somebody broke last week. If I'm lucky I'll get to use it this afternoon. I leave amid hugs and kisses and threats if the house isn't cleaned up by the time I return, and the little people are left in the care of their older siblings. Back home I am greeted by slightly less messy house and we get to work. I attempt to get Sebastian to take a new herbal remedy that might help him with his outbursts, rage and refusal to listen, and of course that turns into an all-out war; fifteen minutes of Mom versus Ten-year-old, complete with the boy screaming, running out of the house and deliberately spilling water down the front of his shirt. Jeremy can't beat one of the games on his new Batman computer and loses his mind, throwing boxes at everone and shrieking at the top of his lungs. A nasty comment gets Sebastian sent to his room where he screams and kicks the door; the noise is too much for Jeremy who loses it again, running around with his hands over his ears and crying. While my back is turned, Zoey adds her 'special ingredient'-clay-to the meat I'm cooking for dinner. It's only a tiny bit, and I don't care. I stir it in and it looks like onions. There is a ukelele with no tune, a teenager begging Can I? CanICanICanIMomComeonplease, some kind of tinny music, an argument over where to keep the Batmen, an adolescent drummer, and a needy five year old all fighting for space in my ears and my head. If I say yes to one I'm doing wrong by another. If I say no to one, I'm an evil bitch.

This was not the plan, but I'll adjust, and if you have a spare valium or seven I'll take that too.

Oops.

2006-07-19T08:12:00.000-04:00

If you have a craving for an egg salad sandwich, make sure you pay attention while the eggs are boiling.

Otherwise all the water in the pan will evaporate and then the eggs will begin exploding, shooting steaming hot ovid projectiles all over the kitchen. You will get to play 'dodge the missile eggs' while trying to slam a lid onto the pot. You will be laughed at by children who still think the height of comedy is a nice loud armpit fart. You will never get your damn sandwich.

And burned eggs stink.

Democracy at its finest

2006-07-06T20:37:00.000-04:00

ALBANY, N.Y. - The highest courts in two states dealt gay rights advocates dual setbacks Thursday, rejecting same-sex couples' bid to win marriage rights in New York and reinstating a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Georgia.

*sigh* Right...because love and commitment are bad...good thing we have people like this to make sure our country does things the right way...you know, blowing shit up...killing, hate and racial profiling, that's what we're all about. Not a bunch of homos who have the audacity to want the same rights everyone else has...

Oh and why the hell is it always 'gay rights'? What about simply 'human rights'?

I'm done now...gonna go kiss a girl and give a politician a well-deserved stroke...;)

Sigh

2006-07-01T21:46:00.000-04:00

I miss my friend Michelle...she's exactly like me only beautiful and cool...we even eat the same thing for breakfast and both have NIN-damaged boots...and it's been a shitty day and if she was here we could go outside and open a bottle of wine and lean on each other and get giggly...and she would just get it, cause she's like that...

Die, pervert

2006-07-01T07:14:00.000-04:00

A new law has been passed in South Carolina. It states that anyone convicted twice of raping a child under 11 can be executed. As a most-of-the-time flaming liberal, I should be outraged, but as the proud parent of four people under11 and two who have luckily passed that age without something like that happening to them, all I can say is Hell Yeah. I don't know why they have to wait until the second conviction. If they have irrefutable proof that this person did this horrible thing, the first time should be enough to allow them to be wiped off the face of the earth. I don't think the death penalty is a deterrent. I don't believe in 'an eye for an eye'. I believe if you do something like that to a kid-or to anybody, but especially a kid-you deserve far more than the government will ever legally be able to do to you. So if the worst we can do is make you live in fear, knowing your death is imminent, then so be it. Ideally, we'd let the perverts suffer at the hands of the victims' parents, but that will never happen.

Fathers Day

2006-06-14T17:20:00.000-04:00

My dad is a tall, wiry guy...your typical old surveyor, he looks younger than he is. He wanders around his property in what has become his uniform: Billy and the Boingers t-shirt, faded old jeans, flannel jacket and boots, and like Steve Dallas in one of his favorite comics his cigarette is always dangling from his lip. He doesn't talk much and most of what he says leans toward the cynical or sarcastic. He is a master at cooking seafood, makes a killer barbecue sauce, habitually and rhythmically flicks the pages of the books he's always reading. When we were kids, he kept a garage full of snakes, listened to Pink Floyd at top volume through his top-of-the-line headphones, tooled around in his little yellow Honda Civic. I loved riding with him, despite the black vinyl interior and no air conditioning in the South Florida heat; it had a faulty exhaust so you couldn't breathe too deeply while you were cruising, but he kept the music loud and drove fast. He called me Sugarplum and Skunkfur and bought me an iguana when I was ten. He's not into all the mushy stuff, so I'll keep this short and simple:

Happy Fathers Day, you old goat. I love you.

Hey, hey, you don't know what you're missing

2006-06-12T12:28:00.000-04:00

Cracker's coming to Bele Chere this year...it's supposed to be a free street festival; they just started charging for the headlining shows a couple years ago, but I don't care, call me a sell-out, I'm going. I'll be the one right up front in the Eurotrash Girl tank top and faded red sneakers trying to calculate the exact level of awesomeness involved in being out in the summer heat screaming along with David Lowery as he spits on his generation...ah, bliss...

In related news, the new CD, Greenland, is excellent. You can order it from www.pitchatent.com.

Check out the band at www.crackersoul.com

Soldier boy

2006-06-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

My friend's little brother is headed to Iraq in July.

As I have said before, I'm vehemently anti-war, but at the same time I respect the soldiers and want them all to be able to come home to their families where they belong.

Please, pray or light a candle or do whatever you can to wrap Eric in love and positive energy and keep him safe.

Thank you.

Remembering things lost

2006-05-31T07:54:00.000-04:00

"The death of one is a tragedy...the death of millions is just a statistic."

Memorial Day was a couple days ago. Let's see how many American soldiers our esteemed leader has killed since the start of his war.

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

And george bush isn't a terrorist? Hmmm...let's go see, shall we?

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Looks like terrorism to me.

I have a whole rant brewing right now, a tirade in my head against the entire bush administration, but I'll keep it there, in my head for now. I'm going to log off here and go hug my children and take a minute to thank the people who truly sacrificed their lives for our freedom and to pray for the people who lost everything for a bunch of lies and a crazy Texan. And hopeless as it seems, pray for an end to this War of Terrorism.

To clarify...

2006-05-29T14:04:00.000-04:00

Emmy, you should know this, it's my favorite song...here's where the title came from-my very favorite song-'Sappy', by who else but Nirvana. The last verse:

And if you fool yourself
You will make him happy
He'll keep you in a jar
Then you'll think you're happy
He'll give you breathing holes
Then you will seem happy
You'll wallow in the shit
Then you'll think you're happy now

I'm still here...

2006-05-27T20:58:00.000-04:00

Just changed the title of this dumb thing to fit it better, that's all.

Now back to your regularly scheduled whatever.

Why it's better to be pretty than smart

2006-05-27T20:30:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid I was supposed to be some sort of genius or something. Here's what that means:

In kindergarten you get to read to the class and sit out in the hall with a Big Kid doing fifth-grade work, because nobody knows what to do with you.

In first grade you get to be the youngest kid placed in the gifted program, because nobody knows what to do with you.

In fifth grade you pretend not to know how to spell 'exercise' so you can get the hell off the plywood stage set up in the mall for the regional spelling bee, and nobody knows what to do with you.

In middle school you get kicked out of the gifted program, because you refuse to behave like a Gifted Student, and nobody knows what to do with you.

In high school you give up and quit, because you're smarter than the teachers, bored and destructive, and nobody knows what to do with you.

At thirty you end up lost, because everyone knows what to do with you, but you.

Damn.

2006-05-22T17:55:00.000-04:00

How can I be so bad at something I really, really want to be good at?

I suck at this.

Moving to the country...

2006-05-19T09:33:00.000-04:00

So I guess I'm going to be selling a house that I thought was going to be It, the place I was going to Be Forever. It isn't a nice house, really, and it isn't big, but it has built-in bookshelves and a funny-shaped living room and it's old and laid out funny and full of personality and life. It has me all over it. If I was a house, I'd be this house. But I'm going to sell it. I'm buying some land from my parents and putting a house up there.

Does anyone else appreciate the irony here? That when my only two options appeared to be the boy, or the parents, I picked the boy (well, not really picked, just landed, I guess) and now I'm going back to the parents, with the boy? And I don't mind going back, I want to live more out in the country, and I get along with my parents really well now and I think it will be great for the kids to grow up there. But still...

So I'm thinking we'll get the land and build a house, right? And I'm thinking it will take years, we'll stay here and build our new house a little bit at a time, as we get the money to do each part, and then we'll move in and live in it while we finish the inside and then sell this one. I'm thinking all of us working together and if I get old I can look back and say look, this is the board that Dylan cut crooked or whatever. It would take a long time but it would be ours, a house for us.

So Jackey gets me all into this idea, I drag my lazy butt up the mountain to look at the spot Dad wants to sell, start to think, OK, this could work, and even find a plan for a cute little house with a front porch that I think would work. And then I get shot down again. It's too big, too expensive to build.

So here's what's going to happen. We'll buy the land. We'll get a great little prefab fucking modular with no more room than we have now and I'll spend the rest of my life in somebody else's house listening to everyone complain about how it isn't big enough for all the junk we have. And if I'm ever someplace else and get homesick I can just find a middle-class neighborhood and see a house just like mine -ooo, but with green shutters, nice!-and feel right at home again.

I can't wait. Nice pristine white sheetrock walls for me to clean each and every day so I never get bored...and I can watch those big, strong men with their big strong machines putting up the walls to the the prefab hell I get to live in. Won't that be lovely. And I can shop at the Gap and oh, I can get little matching sweater sets for me and the girls and of course that silly Kurt Cobain poster I have, well, I can keep it in the shed with my worn out red sneakers and my NIN t-shirt and my thousands of books, and peek at them once in a while to remind myself that I used to be human.

What ever happened to Corey Hart?

2006-05-17T12:09:00.000-04:00

I talked to my old friend Nikki last week. I've known her since we were in kindergarten; in third grade we were mortal enemies; in fifth grade we became best friends, inseparable, as they say.

Nik and I were always opposites. She was the first one in our fifth grade class to wear a bra; I was the last...I mean the last, ever; in fifth grade I was years from needing one. Hell, I'm still years from needing one. But Nik did then, and I remember the kids teasing her, saying she stuffed. (Yes, my life really was a Judy Blume novel.) We caught ringneck snakes in our yards and took them to school in pencil boxes, tucked into nests of grass and leaves. We sat in her yard and pretended not to watch the boys across the street while we listened to her music (Starship and Prince) and mine (Motley Crue and Cyndi Lauper). She taught me everything she knew about life and sex (which I suppose, looking back, must have been second-hand info from her older friends and stepsister) and most of it left me completely grossed out. By the time we hit middle school the guys who were teasing her the year before had changed their tune, and though she had her share of crushes and boyfriends, she gave most of the boys nothing more than a cold glare, tossing her long red hair as she walked away from them. She was glamourous, I thought, in her long skirts and high heeled shoes, upswept hair and trendy glasses. I was her smaller shadow, nerdy and flat, my short hair beginning to grow out at weird, wavy angles. My legs were too long and my style-if you could call it that-was just strange. I wore bright yellow Chuck Taylors when the other girls wore pink and white Nikes; my version of the mid-80s preppy style was wearing one of my dad's button-up shirts over a pair of bright patterned tights and those nice yellow sneakers. Nikki was smart and got good grades, ran on the track team in high school. I was smart and got good pot on occasion, and ran from the teachers when I was skipping class. When I was 14 she fixed me up with a friend of her boyfriend, a scruffy surfer who I don't remember much about other than that he drove a truck and introduced me to Anthrax. He gave me a pair of expensive sunglasses that I lost or threw away or something. Not long after that I moved with my family, twelve hours away to North Carolina.

I missed the sun, the salt and orange smell of the air, the hot pavement under my bare feet. I missed the girls across the street who were like sisters to me, right down to the fights we'd have over Barbie dolls and boys. I missed the brand-new high school, all open and Spanish design with our cool football team name-the Wildcats. My school in North Carolina was old and small and all closed in, and we were called the Patriots, of all the stupid things. It was full of voices I didn't know, shaped by an accent I didn't understand. Most of all, I missed Nikki. If she had been with me on that first day, she would have held her head high and I could have gone in behind her, unnoticed. My new room wouldn't have felt so far away from everything if Nik had been there with me, if we could have laughed together about the funny things the hick kids said, if I had had someone I knew.

I only saw Nikki once after that; she and her family stopped by briefly on the way to somewhere else. I barely remember the visit. By then, I had settled in, made it through the first scary few days without her there. I had known that to the boys in Florida, Nik was Something Different, and I was surprised to find out that a small blonde nobody, if she came from someplace warm and sunny and kind of exotic-sounding, had that same Something Different in the eyes of the local trouble-making guys. So I'm sure the visit was spent mostly comparing notes, who was going out with whom, sharing pictures, and probably making vague, distant plans to Do Something When We Turned Eighteen. And then she was gone again, and that was it.

We've kept in touch sporadically over the years, and it's funny, when she calls I still recognize her voice instantly, and each time we talk it's like we just saw each other the day before. We change from busy, tired, overworked moms to just Old Friends. We are still the same, the two of us, goofy and comparing notes, and laughing over the dumb things that happen to us every day.

She says she's going to take a vacation and come visit. If she does, I'm clearing my calendar for as long as she's here and taking some much needed Ape and Nikki time. I plan on staying up late and drinking wine, bringing out the old yearbooks and the photo albums of our kids, and giggling, giggling like I haven't done in years.

Nikki, if you're reading this...hurry up, OK? I miss you.

This is freaking brilliant.

2006-05-16T16:02:00.000-04:00

Yet another example of how screwed up our government and society are. Check this out:

WASHINGTON - Seventeen years after it was withdrawn from U.S. markets, a synthetic version of the active ingredient in marijuana is going back on sale as a prescription treatment for the vomiting and nausea that often accompanies chemotherapy, its manufacturer said Tuesday.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International hopes to begin selling Cesamet in the next two to three weeks, company president Wes Wheeler said.
The Costa Mesa, Calif. company received
approval Monday to resume sales of the drug, which it bought from Eli Lilly and Co. in 2004. Valeant currently sells the drug, also called nabilone, in Canada.
Lilly originally received FDA approval for nabilone in 1985 but withdrew it from the market in 1989 for commercial reasons, Wheeler said. Valeant, since purchasing the drug, has revised its label and updated its manufacturing process, he added.
The drug will compete with Marinol, made by Belgium-based Solvay SA. Marinol, another synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana that's more commonly known as THC. It also received FDA approval in 1985.
Synthetic THC acts on the brain like the THC in smoked marijuana, but eliminates having to inhale the otherwise harmful smoke contained in the illegal drug, Valeant said.
Cesamet is a Schedule II drug, meaning it has a high potential for abuse. The 1-milligram tablets are meant to be taken twice daily before cancer patients undergo chemotherapy and up to 48 hours following treatment. Side effects include euphoria, drowsiness, vertigo and dry mouth.
The FDA last month said it does not support the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Let me just make sure I have this straight. Marijuana is less toxic than potatoes and is not addictive, it helps a myriad of ailments, and it's a natural antidepressant that doesn't cause any of the freaky side effects the pharmeceutical antidepressants do. Marijuana does not cause cancer. People are far less likely to have an automobile accident while they're high than when they're drunk. The FDA recognizes that THC is a good thing, but they will only approve a version of it that is made by a drug company, because the smoke that would normally carry it into your blood stream is harmful. And yet, despite the millions of people who are killed and made sick by cigarette smoking (including children and other people affected by the second-hand smoke), cigarettes are still perfectly legal. Alcohol is available at every corner store.

Now explain this: doctors can go on TV, in medical journals, wherever, and tout the benefits of alcohol in moderation-the same alcohol that can cause people to lose their jobs, homes, lives. But we can't have legal access to marijuana which has far more benefits than alcohol and far fewer negative side effects.

Does anyone else see how ridiculous this is?? I'm not saying cigarettes and beer should be illegal. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense and it drives me crazy, and this latest thing is just further proof that our country is run by big money and that the people in charge don't care about anything but whose pockets they can get their greedy hands into.

Rant over; you may now resume your governmentally approved activities.

He did it!!!

2006-05-14T12:48:00.000-04:00

JEREMY TIED HIS SHOES!!!!

All by himself...he decided to do it, and just sat down and taught himself. He got pretty frustrated in the process, but he kept at it and he did it! I am so proud of him...he can do anything.

My baby is AWESOME!

Happy Mothers Day

2006-05-14T11:59:00.000-04:00

To everyone who has ever tried to have a child of her own and couldn't, and gave her mama love to the children around who didn't have enough...

To everyone who had plenty of her own but spread her mama love out to include one more, and then another...

To everyone who had one she couldn't care for, and called on all her mama love to let the child go to someone else...

And to everyone who changed their ideas of mama love to take in the one who was let go...

To everyone whose mama love means green kool-aid and Snickers bars, and to those whose mama love means organic lemonade and whole-wheat crisps...

To everyone whose mama love means making sure the kids have lunch money when they get on the school bus, and to those whose mama love means scrimping and saving to pay for private school, and to those whose mama love means keeping them at home to learn...

To everyone whose mama love means getting up with the baby every time she cries, and to those whose mama love means telling her partner 'It's your turn' before rolling back over for some much needed sleep...

To everyone whose mama love means sharing the breast as long as the child needs it, and to those whose mama love means mixing formula and warming it to just the right temperature...

To everyone whose mama love means buying sweet, matching outfits and making sure every hair is in place before they go out, and to those whose mama love means letting the child choose their own, and trying to smooth out that wild lock of hair with a handful of spit...

To everyone whose mama love has kept them up all night, holding or helping or worrying...

To everyone whose mama love has felt weak and left them doubting whether she was really good enough...

To everyone whose mama love has gotten buried in anger, and later in regret...

To everyone who has too much mama love and no one to give it to...

To everyone who has ever felt mama love...

Happy Mothers Day.

In related news

2006-05-09T08:10:00.000-04:00

I heard on the news this morning that george bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low...something like 31%. Whatever it was, it was like a point higher than Nixon's was just before he resigned.

I know, I know, hope is a dangerous thing...and this idiot is far too egocentric to ever actually do the right thing. I think he's proven that he's actually incapable of doing anything right, or good, or human.

But maybe if a bunch of us go stand outside his house and yell 'jump...jump...jump...'

Oh hell, here come the feds...anyone care to start a collection for my bail?

You must have been...high

2006-05-09T07:50:00.000-04:00

Speaking of music...

My brother brought me Tool's new CD, '10,000 Days'. There's a song on it called 'The Pot', with Maynard howling about how you must have been high. That has me grinning like a maniac, cause whenever Dylan does something dumb we ask him if he's on the pot again. (I think we picked that up from That 70s Show, where Kitty was asking Eric if he was on the pot, but I'm not sure.) Anyways...my own dorkiness aside, it's a killer CD. The nurse sounds like the same one on the Dead Kennedy's 'Plastic Surgery Disasters,' which can't be, cause that came out like 25 years ago. It sounds good through these dinky computer speakers, so I can't wait to get the kids outside and put it in the good stereo and get it cranked. (And yes, Bil, I'll turn down the bass.)

I bought the new Pearl Jam CD which is just as good as the Tool, but totally different, of course. Eddie Vedder is amazing. The only complaint I have is that it didn't come out a couple years ago, so I could have heard some of the songs live. You can't really describe a Pearl Jam album, so I'll just leave it at this: go buy it. It's one of their best, and they've never done anything that was less than incredible.

This is funny

2006-05-09T07:39:00.000-04:00

I don't listen to these guys, but my daughter likes them, and as far as I can tell they're one of the many little faux-punk bands out there following along behind Green Day. They might be good, I dunno. I guess the point here is...If I was the city of Charlotte and I read this, I'd be pissed at the idiots who live there and speak for the morality of the town.

An angry parent has written an email to Fall Out Boy's label, Island Def Jam Records, after taking her daughters to see the band last Tuesday (May 2) in Charlotte, North Carolina. The woman wrote that she was enraged by bassist Pete Wentz's "personal political testimony" onstage, complaining that "the ticket said 'all ages,' and your band was very foul-mouthed and anti-morals. Charlotte is not the demoralized city that liberal San Francisco and other cities across the North and West are...this was a concert, not some liberal homosexual rally."
The woman promised to contact national news organizations and other venues where Fall Out Boy would be playing, claiming that the band would lose "a lot of financial support" as a result. She concluded, "Your responsibility was to sing your songs. When you opened your mouth to talk, you blew it...By the way, my children will not be a part of your sick idea of family."
Wentz posted the letter at Fall Out Boy's website, along with his own response. The bassist wrote, "The only thing I said in Charlotte was, 'You can leave this show and say, ‘I think this guy is an arrogant jerk,’ or think, ‘This band is better than this one,’ because these are your opinions. The only thing we consider unacceptable is for you to engage in sexist, racist or homophobic behavior. If you do, we don't want you as a fan.'"
Wentz did offer an apology for any profanity he might have used, but did not change his stance, adding, "I encourage fans of our band to grow up to become good people and to change the world. Unfortunately, I don't believe that treating other people as inhuman is acceptable. (Our show) is not a liberal homosexual rally, but at the same time, it will never be a Ku Klux Klan rally."

(I pulled this article off Yahoo News, and I copied it in flaming lavender on purpose. ;) )

Another song about the rain

2006-05-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

When it rains, I always think of my mother.

There was the time when my friend, a girl a few years older, missed her bus stop and got off at mine. Mom didn't want her walking home alone, but she didn't want to take a strange kid off in her car either-or maybe Dad had the car or something, I forget. Anyway, Mom got out the umbrella and off we went, huddled together under there-my skinny little mama; my friend, who I remember looking kind of perpetually befuddled; my red-haired baby brother and me...walking in the rain because Mom couldn't let a child go off alone.

I remember walking in the house after school one day, seeing Billy's freckley little face peeking at me through the curtains just before I opened the door, and hearing 'The Stranger' playing on the stereo. I had red ribbons in my wet hair, and Mom untied them before toweling me off and helping me change into my Hollie Hobbie jammies.

There was a storm once, and it was a bad one. Billy and I had new sandals...flip-flops, little plastic things, his with Donald Duck on them (Billy always quacked when he wore them) and mine with Mickey Mouse. We kept them on the small vinyl space near the front door. We were sitting on the floor playing a game when it thundered and lightninged and something-elsed, all at once. I didn't know what the something-else was but the smoke detector went off right after, and then Mom was in the room, doing that thing moms do, trying to stay calm and acting like everything was really OK while making sure the kids know that you better listen now and listen good or else. She grabbed us up by our hands and said GO-TO-THE-DOOR-AND-GET-YOUR-SHOES-ON-AND-IF-I-SAY-GO-YOU-GET-OUTSIDE-AND-GO-TO-SHARON'S-QUICK-HANG-ON-TO-YOUR-BROTHER-DO-YOU-HEAR-ME? and she was off like a shot toward the laundry room. Billy was scared but still quacking, and I had his hand in a death grip, but I don't remember being scared. I think I was more excited, and impressed that my mom could move that fast and take charge like that. Up till then she'd been the sandwich-maker, the juice-pourer, the person who made clean panties magically appear in my drawer when I needed them. I'd always thought of my dad as the one who Knew What To Do, but that day my little kid mind was thinking the late-seventies version of You Go, Mom! I'm still not sure what the something-else was, but she returned a minute later, looking a little shaky, and smiled that big smile, the one I recognize now as hiding the Oh My God, That Was Scary face, and said what a big storm this is, isn't it? and Billy stopped quacking and took off his sandals, and everything was all right.

And then I was about 7 and Mom had to get her hair done. I'm not sure why I was with her that day; maybe I needed new shoes from the Bass Outlet, or maybe I had begged to go, or maybe she just decided to take me for a girls' day out. Billy wasn't there, and it was nice to have my mom all to myself. We sat in hard plastic chairs, waiting behind rain-streaked windows, and I watched the distorted headlights go by while Mom looked through a book of hairstyles. Suddenly she poked me and when I turned around she was grinning. 'Look at this,' she whispered, pointing to a picture of a very modern-looking hairdo, all stick straight with bangs angled so one of the model's eyes was completely hidden. 'Isn't that dumb?' I giggled and nodded. 'How can she see?' I wondered. Mom smiled and said 'That's exactly what I was thinking.' I remember the feeling then of being so big, so grown-up, giggling with my mom over some goofy model, and being glad that my mom wasn't dumb enough to get a haircut like that to hide her pretty face.

Fast forward ten years or so, and I'm in my bedroom holding my newborn son. It is my first night home with him, home being my bedroom in my parents' house. It doesn't look like a nursery; the walls are covered in pictures of men in spandex pants and big hair, but they are being overtaken by a different guy, one with long dirty blond hair, skinny body hidden in layers of flannel, dead eyes looking out as he holds his acoustic guitar. There is a notebook on the bed that has Kurt Cobain For President written all over the cover. CD players, at least in our little corner of the world, are still for the elite and the techno-geeks, but I have a nice dual-cassette stereo and the speakers are sufficient for blaring the Sex Pistols loud enough to drown out my parents, and I do that a lot. The Motley Crue t-shirt I wore a few days before is on top of the pile of clothes on the floor, and every pair of jeans in the pile is full of holes. It is a bedroom like that of every other suburban teenager, except for the very small, very new person in the room who will...not...stop...screaming. I'm perched on the edge of the bed trying everything...he doesn't want to nurse, he doesn't want a bottle, no rocking or walking or patting or pacifier will calm him down. He has been changed and burped, swaddled and stripped, and all he will do is howl. In the room below, I know my parents are lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he will ever stop. Finally my mother appears in the doorway, and my new mother self falls apart and I'm the baby again. 'He hates me,' I wail, still the same scared and melodramatic teenager I was before my son arrived. 'He hates me, he doesn't like me, I'm his mommy, why doesn't he like me, why can't I get him to stop crying?' By the time Mom reached me I was wailing as loud as Dylan, and she took him from me and put an arm around me and Honeyed me for a minute, and then he was downstairs with her and quiet, and I finally slept. When I woke later he was fussing softly in his crib, and when I picked him up he snuggled up to me, stuck his fist in his mouth and closed his eyes again. I'm not sure what she did with him that night but I think, looking back, that her coming up the stairs helped me more than it did him. He would have eventually cried himself to sleep, but I needed my mommy then. She never mentioned it again, and it would have been easy to do, to point out that on his first night home, I couldn't even care for my baby and she did it for me. But she never did, and I never did either, and I should have.

The wailing baby is now a tall, skinny teenager, who likes to put on tank tops and raise his arms just for the thrill of seeing his mom freak out over the fuzz under there. Despite my conviction that he would be an only child, he is now the oldest of 6. I email my mother nearly every day now, and when I complain about my daughters she will tell me they're just like me, and I swear I can hear her snickering through the computer, but she never says I told you so. She never says You deserve this, for what you put me through. She just snickers over on the other side of town, and Honeys me a little more, for the millionth time in my short life, and when she does that, I know I'll be OK.

Ouch.

2006-05-08T10:44:00.000-04:00

Question:

What do you get when you cross a little boy who just started playing baseball and is, in typical little-boy fashion, fascinated with a certain piece of protective equipment...with a very playful long-legged hound puppy who happens to be teething and nips at everything within reach of his snout?

Answer:

'Mom...when the dog's in the house, I think I need to wear my cup...'

Things have never been so swell

2006-05-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

I need a vacation. Not a 12-hour trip with six mostly well-behaved but still stuck in the car, tired, bored kids, at the end of which I get to play nice and smile at a bunch of people I barely know when all I really want to do is crawl into my own bed and sleep. That's great, it's fun, but I need a vacation. I need a break. A family vacation is simply the same old thing in a different place.

And it has nothing to do with them being home rather than in school because when they were in school I spent all day, every day up there, or running to and from there, and it was harder then.

But I do this every single day. For the past 13 years I have played at being the happy little wife and some sort of patron saint of fertility, some mortal goddess Maia and the rest of the world thinks it must be so nice to be me, to just do nothing all day. Why do I need a break? I don't have a job. I don't have anything I have to do. My life is one big happy day at the park.

My life is one big happy string of days that look exactly like the day before, a house that I obviously never clean because everyone knows, if you clean a house once it stays that way forever, right? My life is one big happy thing that will never, ever be finished, nothing I do has an ending point, it is redundant and repetitive in the worst way. God, how it must suck to have to get up and go somewhere in the morning and then at some point actually be finished. To be able to see the end result of what you've done. To have someone who says hey you did a good job on that, here, here's your compensation. You finished the building, emptied your outbox, got all the burgers wrapped in their little foil squares. You're done, go home. That must totally suck, to do something that people acknowledge, to be recognized as a fellow human being rather than a set of reproductive organs and an automaton designed for endless, thankless menial tasks.

I love being the only person on earth capable of cleaning shit off the toilet seat, thanks for asking. Oh hell yeah, when I vacuumed the floor today, boy it felt great. I think it must have been a milestone, the eleven-thousandth time I've done that in my life. If I wasn't so goddamned depressed I'd be pumping my fists in the air over it, like some billionaire athlete who totally deserves to be a god, because he can wear tight pants and jump on other guys. I feel sorry for him, he never gets the joy of sitting down in pee every single day because the boys he lives with can't bother to lift the seat. What a loser; how sad his life must be.

This is rewarding. This is the highest calling a woman can have. This is something you're supposed to do every day with a prozac smile plastered on your face and tell everyone you meet Oh yes I'm blessed, I'm honored to have given up any semblance of a self I once had, so that I can be sure that the King of the Castle has clean socks every day and then leave everyone scratching their heads when you wind up on the wrong side of the prozac bottle, wearing a whole different kind of smile.

High-pitched feedback

2006-04-30T09:29:00.000-04:00

So I've created a website (you have to say that in the same way you'd say 'I've created a monster!') and I want you to check it out and tell me what you think. www.freewebs.com/inajar

Also...I'm kinda curious to know who has been reading my blog, so leave me a comment and say hi, OK? I suspect that I only have the 3 readers I know about, but who knows? Maybe I have a whole fan club out there.

Nah...not enough naked pictures on here for that.

What else could I be...

2006-04-27T13:51:00.000-04:00

You know what really gets to me?

(And if you're one of the people who does it, or has done it, don't take this the wrong way, because I know you mean it in the nicest, most complimentary way, and I appreciate it, I really do. But.)

A lot of people have expressed some kind of bizarre admiration for me, because of all the kids that I have.

Don't do that. Please.

I have a lot of kids. One of my kids has some trouble that he goes to weekly occupational therapy for. Two of them are snarky adolescents. Two of them play baseball for different leagues, and we have to do some juggling to get them both where they need to be on time. Three of them wear glasses and I'm constantly searching for them, cleaning them, straightening them out, sticking them on to little faces. One is a spoiled and precocious preschooler. I homeschool them, run endless errands, make sure they all get to where they need to be when they need to be there, and sometimes I'm lucky to find ten minutes midday to grab a Wendy's burger for lunch.

That does not make me a superhero, or even someone to look up to.

I can't say my life is easy, but who can? Really, can you? It may be fun, exciting, fulfilling, but easy? I doubt it.

Having six children does not make me someone to be admired. If I had adopted these children, taken them in and made a conscious decision to have them in my life, then you could look at me with admiration. But I had them all, gave birth to them, and not under the best of circumstances most of them, if you want the truth. They were always a part of me; I had no choice but to have them, and after that, to raise them, to love them, always to love them.

I have no choice in caring for Jeremy. Someone at his old school used to thank me for coming when I would show up again, after being called over a meltdown or tantrum or bad PE day, and it always left me baffled. Thank you for what? For taking care of my own kid? Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? He needs, they need, I give. It's like eating, or breathing, it's simply what you do.

I sometimes joke about living in my van because I'm always on the go, but I don't really, of course. I live in a nice little suburban brick house with four bedrooms and a fenced back yard. I have room for my family. We don't have much extra, but we have enough, and a little more. I have a new-ish vehicle, two of them, to load my kids into when we have to run to this place or that. We have a DVD player to keep them occupied on the long drive to the family reunion we attend every year. My freezer is full, the shelves well-stocked. If I didn't have all this, if I was really struggling and still keeping things together, then you could look at me with admiration. But not now.

I don't beat them, or lock them out in the cold, or send them to bed with only a cold wet hotdog for dinner (as my daughter told my mother several years ago, why I don't know). I'm not supposed to do those things.

If you want to admire someone, admire the woman who adopts a disabled child and devotes her life to meeting his needs. If you see a woman with children, clean but shabby in dress, trying to count out the last few cents she has for a box of cheerios, smile at her. She may have escaped something worse than povery to keep her children safe.

Admire people for their choices; don't call me Supermom. I'm just a girl who got lucky.

Me speaks English please.

2006-04-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

Last night, some dude on ESPN said 'How better can this team get?'

Aaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhh.

Yet another reason to shoot the TV.

My kingdom for a pie

2006-04-27T09:30:00.000-04:00

I went in search of a cast iron skillet yesterday. The logical place to find one, of course, is the local kitchen store, a massive building filled to the top with everything you could possibly need for cooking, serving, grilling, cleaning up, decorating...anything and everything Kitchen is in this place.

Almost.

I found the skillet, choked on the price, stuck it in the cart, and then did my usual mindless wandering, travelling the aisles, looking for things I'd forgotten I needed, or maybe didn't know I needed till I spotted it there on the shelf. I gathered necessary objects: a measuring cup to replace the one I'd ruined with the kids' bizarrely sticky and permanent Easter egg dye; a set of flexible chopping mats to replace my grody-looking cutting board; a pair of heart-shaped egg cookers; a canister of four different chocolate flavored coffee creamers. Headed to the checkout, I suddenly remembered something I really did need: a pie server. You know, one of those little triangular spatula things you use to lift a piece of pie out of the pan, so your blueberries or whatever don't run all over the place and leave you with a wad of soggy, crumbled crust. Not that I make pies often (my mom still talks about the Apple Pie Incident, which wasn't really all that funny, I mean apples are plenty sweet on their own...I thought...) but I buy them sometimes, and I make cheesecakes too. A pie server is just what I need. So off we went, my daughter and I, with a purpose.

We passed a whole wall of measuring cups, one set with its own coordinating egg separator. Speaking of egg separators, they had one shaped like a happy little chick, which is just weird if you ask me. We passed a shelf of cookie jars shaped like little squat men in karate outfits; when you lifted their heads to retrieve cookies from their wide neck holes, they sang 'Kung Fu Fighting'. Those were on clearance, I have no idea why. They had little animal-shaped creamers, quesadilla cookers and cutters, taco shell warmers, rotating weenie grills. We spotted jars of gourmet vodka sauce and my daughter, trying to be bad and rebellious, asked me to get some. I didn't have the heart to tell her the alcohol was cooked out and that there was a bottle of beer in every pot of marinara sauce I make; only gave her the disapproving look she wanted and told her to come on, sounding appropriately impatient.

On the wall with the baking tools, they had spatulas made of every possible material, in every color, from wee kid-sized ones to some with abnormally long handles, for people who are afraid of the stove I suppose. Or maybe they were for really tall people who don't like to bend over at all. They had mini-whisks and maxi-whisks, flat ones and the usual bulb-shaped ones and ones that oooo magically switched from flat to bulb. They had a dozen garlic presses. They had a pizza server with a serrated edge, and cake servers that ranged in size from the teeny piece you give your kid on his first birthday to longer than any cake I've ever made. Why would you need an 18-inch cake server? If you know, would you write and tell me? It's been bugging me. They had wooden and metal and plastic rolling pins, some that were hollow so you could fill them with ice water.

They did not have a pie server.

We looked. We looked and searched and looked again.

The pizza server was too big, and besides it had that sharp edge that would destroy the little foil pans most of my pies come in. The cheese server was too small, and besides who needs a cheese server anyway? I have a bit of class, I eat smoked gouda, I even have little spreaders for Christmas time, little flat pieces of metal with snowmen welded to the ends so you can feel festive while you're spreading your port wine or your smoked cheddar with bacon. But a cheese server? Come on.

I asked someone who worked there. She considered the wall o' gadgets briefly and said 'Hmmm, I don't think we have those over here. Check over in glassware.'

Glassware? I had described to this woman what I was looking for; why would it be in glassware? But OK, I learned a long time ago that there is no explaining why people do things the way they do.

Off we went to glassware. Not a pie server in sight. Silverware was close to glassware so I checked there. No pie servers. I would have asked someone but the only person I saw was the same lady who sent me over there to begin with.

Finally we left. I was bothered by many things: the pie server mystery, the giant cake server, why anyone would want an egg separator shaped like a baby chicken, why the guy behind me in line had to stand with his toes an inch and a half from my heels. I hate people like that.

And it's not like I even have a pie to serve, but I'm on a mission now, to find a pie server. If you know where I can get one, let me know, and in return I promise never to serve you a slice of pie that I've baked myself.

Broken

2006-04-26T21:21:00.000-04:00

I am his doll, his fragile little goofy girl, I need protected from everything, watched over, don't let me break.

But once something is broken, what does it matter if it breaks a little more?

And then, after

2006-04-25T15:10:00.000-04:00

My husband I got back together. He had moved out, quite coincidentally, the same night Rob killed himself.

I had never felt more alone.

He came back too soon, I wasn't ready, but I was afraid of the never that might happen if I didn't let him back, quick.

He would tell me he loved me and always would, and I would jerk away from him, tell him not to ever say that.

Don't ever say you'll always love someone. There's only one way to always. When you're alive, everything is uncertain. Everything. When you die, whatever it is is always. It becomes forever.

I will be loved forever by a dead boy. I don't want it.

I got over my whateveritwas, nervous breakdown, drinking binge, whatever. A day or two after the funeral-I was still alone-I opened the curtains, dumped what was left of the bottle from the night before, and mopped the kitchen floor. I did laundry, vacuumed the carpets, took a shower, put some lipstick on.

I cut all ties with his family, the users and hypocrites. They are nothing to me, nothing to my son, worthless, pathetic liars, all of them.

If they were drowning, I'd toss them a rope-both ends. And when they were under and didn't resurface again for a long, long time I'd laugh, and only then turn my back on them and walk away.

I stick around for the good parts, you know.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could talk about Forgiveness and Closure and Rebuilding. Wouldn't it be nice if I could say, they are who they are, who are we to judge, we don't know what's going on inside their heads.

Fuck that.

I went on but I am not the same. The only person I ever knew who really understood my head is gone. Doesn't matter that he wasn't around, the knowledge that someone out there gets you is comforting. I don't need that, obviously, but it's nice. Something you get used to, I guess.

So we got back together, me and the husband, and he is good. I think he's a little afraid of me, scared I'll go off the deep end or something, and so I'm a bit too spoiled and allowed to be a bit too bratty sometimes. That's OK with me. If you knew all the shit we've been through you'd know I deserve that. But that's not for here, that's ours. He's good now, a good provider like he always has been, puts up with my shit, does everything for me, everything he does is in my name. I'm on a pedestal, as they say, some hollow little statue looking down on the world.

It's all right.

My kids are here, they play ball, run and climb at all the local parks, eat popsicles with the sticky juice running down their fingers and staining their chins blue. I have a new little hound puppy who squirms with joy when I come home and stretches his long-legged body across mine, snoring little puppy snores against my chest. I bought a hermit crab for Sebastian's birthday, and I surprised myself by loving to watch him creep around the cage and climb his little wire grid. I'm buying the new Pearl Jam CD when it comes out, and Soul Asylum has one coming out just before my birthday, which is nice. I've heard tracks from both, and they're good.

Life is the same as it was before, only different.

Rage

2006-04-25T13:48:00.000-04:00

I'm reading Still Waters by Jennifer Lauck, a memoir that reads more like a letter from an old friend than like a book...her voice is real, her truth painful and fresh, her tone always true, never self-serving. She simply tells you what happened, the way it happened, what it felt like to be there.

I knew her brother would die.

I had a feeling he would kill himself.

I wasn't prepared for her retelling of the funeral, the emotions there, the anger she confessed to.

I felt that, two years ago. I have told people about it, tossed it casually into conversations, almost gave people the knowledge of it, but not quite. It was always kept at a distance. I felt rage through a thin veil, never allowed it to really touch me.

When my son's father-biological father, the nothing that created him-died two years ago, I lost my mind for a while.

I was angry, I was hurt, I was How could you just take from him the opportunity to ever know you? and How could you just fucking give up and not keep trying to be good enough to know him? and Oh shit, my friend, my friend is gone.

We had not been friends for a long time. By the time my son was conceived we had been reduced to off and on status; he was someone to get high with, someone to chill with, close enough to town that I could get dropped off by my parents as they took my brother to Youth Group, get high and fool around a little, and get home in time to be on to the next thing.

He was convenient.

But before that he was picnics in hilltop meadows, flower chains in my hair, rescuing turtles after the rain. He was silence in his basement, both of us moody and antisocial, fingertips touching, nothing else. He was three strips of leather, one on my wrist, one on his, one around the gearshift of his Mustang II as we travelled the backroads, bound and yet not. He was fear as he drank himself sick and quit breathing, and when everyone else left I stayed, pounding his chest, screaming at him until he threw up on my new leather jacket and god, took a breath. He was singing off-key into the phone, washing dishes at the college, asking first thing when he got home if I had called.

Later he was talking about the future, making plans I wasn't ready for, angry when I laughed at the thought of ever being married-either of us-to anyone. He was a joint passed in the dark, a bottle warm from his hand, leaning on his shoulder but not quite there. He was talking about the beautiful children we'd make, and I left him there, knowing it was nothing. He was a month later on the phone and I was pissed at his sister for telling. He was nothing I wanted and my son was mine alone. He was threats on the phone, feel sorry for me, I'll kill myself. He was a dull click and nothing as I hung up on him. He was working under the table, hiding from the child support collectors. He was telling people to have me call, he needed me, needed to talk.

But before that he was my friend.

He was always out there, this boy who had never become a man, the boy who allowed me to be able to say This sucks, but once I had flowers in my hair. Life hurts, but someone once thought I was beautiful.

And then he hung himself, his long, skinny body god I don't want to picture it, hung himself with a fucking shoestring, his piece of shit brother in the next room. He was fresh out of rehab, straight out of the shelter, living in a room in his brother's trailer, a bare mattress on the floor and bottles everywhere, drinking himself into nothing again.

I saw him that day. Earlier, he was wearing a loose pair of khaki pants-everything was always loose on him-his tattoos looking faded and tired, one nipple pierced, his cap on the floor next to him. He didn't look like anyone I knew, and he wasn't, and as he lifted the bottle I asked him Please. Please don't do this.

Earlier he had asked if he could see my son. I told him No, not for a long, long time. Fix yourself first. Show me you're OK. Fix yourself.

Please, I said. Don't do this. He smiled and said he was OK. He said he'd always loved me, you know, and always would.

Dammit, I said, you're completely fucking yourself up. You're not that old, you don't need this shit. You can be better than that. Goddammit, why don't you just fucking quit?

He smiled, said goodbye, and I closed the door on him.

That night, he quit.

I yelled and screamed when I heard. I drank too much, sat down with a bottle of cheap vodka and a bottle of cherry coke and drank it all, this one's for you, kid. Fuck you, I don't have to think about it.

My kids were someplace else. Their father cared for them. I don't remember much. I was alone, and I wanted it that way.

And then the funeral. I sobered up, bought a long black skirt and sweater and put a tie on my boy. Took him to the funeral home where every single member of that family ignored him, acted like he wasn't there, this boy who was the oldest, the first, they ignored him, every goddamn one of them.

They cried. Played some church music, nothing he'd ever listen to in his life, talked about how happy he was, how they didn't understand, cried and wailed about this boy who never became a man that they never gave a shit about.

Never tried to help him, never told him he was worth more than a bottle of cheap wine, let him go, let him think he couldn't be anything else.

You don't understand. You don't want to understand. You don't want to look at yourself and see that you killed him, don't want to take any responsibility for this boy that was yours, the boy you treated like a god, treated like he could do no wrong. He could, and he did, and he knew it, and when nobody called him on it, he knew you didn't give a shit.

Fuck you. I know my wrongs. You lost someone you didn't know, someone you made up, your perfect son, brother, nephew, when the real boy sat alone and dying, invisible.

I lost my friend, so fuck you. I lost somebody I knew, someone who had been gone a long time, but was real. I lost my past, my youth, the pretty girl I was, the fucking yellow flowers in my hair, they're dead now. I lost someone real, you lost nothing because you are nothing. You're shit.

Fuck you.

One for the ladies

2006-04-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

I am not a man-basher. Hell, I love men. I have four boys, and they're going to grow up to be great men. I've had some awesome guy friends, and I've had guys who were the scum of the earth but were lots of fun to be around, and the fact is, most of them serve some purpose or another, just depends on what you're looking for at the time. And I have to say I've managed to hook up with one of the better ones out there. On like a permanent basis even.

That being said...

Why, why, why do they think they know everything? Why do they think you want to hear about it...whatever it is...a thousand times? Why do they do this:

Argue argue argue for point A, while you argue for point B, then, upon finding out that point B was in fact the correct point, insist that you were the one in favor of point A to begin with.

Did that make sense? Of course not! It makes even less sense when it's actually happening to you.

Is it completely incomprehensible that I might actually know something? Be right about something on occasion? Be capable of doing something right? Not the His Way Right, but the My Way Which Is Different But Still Right, Right?

And why is it that when I get tired of hearing about all the wrong wrong wrongs and blow my top, he gets all condescending and patronizing and pats me on the head and says Silly doll, you do lots of things right, you're a smart girl as if I'm some three-year-old prodigy having a tantrum because I can't get Beethoven's Fifth pitched just right on my nose harp. Or something equally ridiculous.

What is it that makes you so fucking superior? I know I'm not much but what ever gave you the impression that you were so far above me? And even if you were up there, looking down, 20 feet above sea level isn't enough to keep your ass from getting washed away either.

Remember this...if a penis was really an essential part of a woman's life, we'd all have been born with one.

Life is sweet

2006-03-17T08:33:00.000-05:00

I can go see a killer concert at night, and 12 hours later be handed a fistful of wildflowers by a blue-eyed princess who thinks I'm the bestest mommy in the oooonaverse, and somehow it all manages to fit together perfectly. I'm not sure how I got this lucky, but I hope it lasts.

You get me closer...

2006-03-17T08:09:00.000-05:00

It was like seeing god, live and in person...30 feet away, lit up purple from behind, smoke seeming to pour from his body and wrap around the audience, Trent Reznor was there in front of us. The bass shook me and tried to make me sick, the lights chased each other, red, blue, then blinding white and he emerged again with his microphone like an extension of his arm you could feel him, taste the vibe in the air. Saul Williams opening was beautiful, coarse and dark and the asshole next to us was screaming We Want Trent but Trent could wait for this, and when he left we wanted more, and then the purple lights and he was there before us like a massive apparition...too real to be true, un-fucking-believable, Nine Inch Nails is playing for us and it ended too soon, and we drove home in silence. The mountains glowed purple and there was nothing to be said.

Pencapchew

2006-03-07T13:31:00.000-05:00

My sweetie just called from work...asked me, like he always does, what I'm doing. Nothing, I tell him. There's nothing to do.

Really? He says. Must be nice.

Yeah, it is, I guess. I just finished off all the bonbons, my pedicure is nearly dry, the maid is about done in the kitchen and the chauffer hasn't arrived yet to take me to the place where I sit and watch other people do my grocery shopping.

Ha. I wish.

*****

Darling 12-year-old has been even more charming than usual today. Which is my covert way of saying if she opens that snarky little mouth one more time I'm filling her pockets with candy, hanging her by her toes from the patio roof and letting her brothers use her as a pinata.

Besides the snarky mouth, we had the Soup Drama earlier. I bought a bunch of soup the other day, because the Batman and Dora and all that stuff the kids like was on sale, and Jess picked out a can of vegetable and a can of tomato, which was the low-sodium, healthier stuff supposedly. I asked her if she didn't want a can of the regular, because the other stuff might taste different. No, no, it's fine. Ooooo-kay. Then I ask her if she can still get two meals out of a can of soup, and she says yeah, cause they usually have fruit or something with it too. OK, so are you sure 2 cans will be enough, or do you want to get another? It's fiiiine, mother, it's enough, OK?

Fast forward to today. Charming daughter asks what's for lunch. Batman chicken noodle soup, I say.

Well-uh-what am I supposed to eat then?

How about the soup you got the other day?

Chuh-it's gone.

The vegetable too? (We only had soup for lunch one day this week)

Yeeee-ah, I ate it the other day, cause the tomato was disgusting.

You ate the whole can?

Well, yeah, of course.

Make yourself a sandwich then.

So I fix the little kids Batman, Dyl heats a can of his beef/veggie, and I call them to come eat. Jess hauls herself off the chair with this tremendous effort, heaves this great and tortured sigh, and asks:

Well, what am I supposed to eat?

Aaaaaaaaaaaagh...

*****

Over the weekend I bought some stuff to fix up an old bike for the little ones to ride. I got one training wheel halfway on-only took an hour-before giving up, letting loose with some words that would have my mother slapping me in the head before she passed out, and heading to Walmart (AKA Hell) to buy 3 new bikes for the little ones. I was in Walmart on a Saturday. Like right after lunch on Saturday. When every single person in western NC with an IQ under 80 was in there, sweatpants crooked around their doughy middles, stringy perms wilting from the sweat generated by the thrill of seeing-Looka thur, Cleetus, they got onea them dang autymatic floor sweepers!-the lastest As Seen On TV Piece Of Shit. They stand there in their stained Nascar t-shirts (he drove his car into a wall, people, what did you expect would happen?) and block the aisles and when they finally move you can feel the lecherous eyes of the menfolk following you as you try to get to the bicycle aisle while producing as little hip-shake as possible. I truly hate that store but the sad fact remains, I am fairly poor, and they have good prices on bicycles. So basically, I sold my soul to Walmart so my kids could be happy. A noble cause, I must say.

*****

In totally unrelated news, I'm headed to the NIN concert with my brother, his fiance (that still looks funny, and sounds funnier) and a couple of their friends in a week and 2 days. It'll be weird to be doing something like that without the sweetie but oh, do I need it. Nothing like a screaming Trent Reznor to draw your tension out and leave it lying on the floor under someone's boot.

Fair warning

2006-02-16T15:12:00.000-05:00

If I hear one more person say "winningest", "baddest", or "went missing", I will pop the idiot's head off, like a ripe little grape with a weak stem.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Hitchin' a ride

2006-02-10T14:53:00.000-05:00

What a day...too tired and busy to go into much detail, but Jeremy had to have a tooth pulled yesterday; he's OK, but the anesthetic made him groggy and tired and...well, weird. It seemed to take forever to wear off, and he's almost back to himself today, but the only thing worse than seeing him wild and out of control is seeing him dazed and afraid. The dentist was very understanding about Jeremy's pain issues and wrote a 'just in case' prescription, which was nice, and not something she really had to do.

Sebastian is having one of his terror days. I never call Jackey at work to tell him about the kids acting up, but I had to this morning. Did it help? Not really, he acted even worse after the phone call. I took all his sports cards away, and J told him when his new Superbowl shirt gets here he can't have it until his behavior greatly improves. He sees a therapist but I'm not convinced she really understands how he is-she addresses his clinginess but not his awful behavior-and besides, I got a notice today that we'd already used up his allotted insurance benefits (for mental health, I guess) for the year. Frankly, I'm beginning to think that the whole therapy thing, for him, may be counterproductive. He's been tested and assessed for LD, ADHD and all kinds of other stuff, and nothing shows up. After dealing with Jeremy's issues it's becoming more clear that Sebastian's motives for his behavior are purely to get attention and to try to get away with things. I think maybe seeing a therapist gives him one more thing to say 'poor me' about, something else in his catalog of reasons he shouldn't have to behave.

I started another huge project, rearranging the two rooms J and I use for sleeping and storage (to call it a bedroom would be giving it way too much credit) and of course halfway through I realized there was a reason it was the way I had it...so here it is nearly time to start dinner and I'm sitting here taking a break I can't afford to take because I can't physically move anything else at the moment.

And we have a snowstorm or a winter storm or whatever they call it coming in tomorrow, the kids' rainforest/valentine's day party is supposed to be on Sunday, and Sunday was also supposed to be Jeremy's day to hang out with my dad. The weather could kill both those plans, so I'll be stuck inside with several pissed off kids all weekend. And forget the plans, it's supposed to snow.

I hate snow.

If you're headed south and see me with my thumb stuck out, pick me up, will ya? I'm going all the way to the bottom, and I'll ride with you as far as you'll take me.

Huh.

2006-01-26T11:17:00.000-05:00

From our local Freecycle board:

'Taken: Toddler. (mattress not included)'

They could have at least let the poor kid keep his bed when they gave him away.

***

Saw this in the Madison County phone book a while back. (Note, this is the Madison county book, OK?)

'Maddison County Literacy Council'

That makes me wish I new how to reed, mabey I'll go there and lern.

***

A local daycare center:

Kids Kountry Klubhouse

I bet if you leave your kids there, they'll lern to reed too.

Boogers are not a body part.

2006-01-26T11:11:00.000-05:00

Zac knows all his body parts. From the top down :

Haiw
Fowehead
Eyebwows
Eyeballs (hee hee hee)
Eyelashes
Nose (hee hee)
BOOGERS! (hahahahahahahahahahahaha)

I wondered why he felt compelled to point out all his parts, something he's known for the last five years or so.

Why am I doing this again?

Road rage

2005-12-02T16:47:00.001-05:00

The sun hangs deceptively bright over the parking lot, close enough that I could reach out and touch it, blinding me to the colors of the other cars in the lot. It has no right to shine like that, to light the day as if its warmth would touch me when I unfolded myself from my seat. It's nice in here, warm and loud; Maynard screams and begs, "Would you die for me?" Not today, though if I could I would reach and hold the sun and let it burn me into nothing.

About to brave the wind and chill I stop and watch a car, fancy, too much for this small store. Someone in a hurry home to their perfect family, packed full of Prozac, smiling at the husband we all know has slept with the shrink and will again. An old man is making his way across the lot, maneuvering, barely, a cart weighing more than he does. The woman, rich lady, Prozac queen, executes a facetious pause as if she were kind enough to wait him out, then creeps up on his heels, hurrying him along. I want to pull her out of the car, ask her what makes her life so much more worth getting back to than his? Inside he will fill the cart with things like bananas and bran flakes, a single loaf of bread and a bag of candy in case he sees his grandchild this weekend. He will push the cart slowly, pausing to touch the things his wife used to use: Pond's cold cream, a special shampoo; at the bananas he will choose a bunch of six, hesitate, and replace it with a smaller one, more fitting to a man alone.

I wait in the car till he comes out, time my exit so he may give me the gift of his cart. My half-gallon of organic milk and overpriced canister of q-tips are easy to check out and I am back in my car, waiting, when she returns to her car. I drive in front of her, slow, making her want her pathetic life to come that much sooner. At the light I wait...wait...I am an old man, cautious and slow, and she wants to kill me for that. I smile in the rearview knowing.

O Christmas Tree...

2005-11-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

So off we went to the tree farm yesterday. Nice little place, way out in the country, with a few trees scattered around on the hill. We found a perfect tree for my mother-in-law (thought we'd suprise her with a real one...I've no idea where she'll put it though) and a nice big slightly scruffy one for us. Dylan cut them both down and off we went. Got mother-in-law's tree set up in a bucket outside her house and headed home with ours. I told myself at the farm that the trees look much smaller outside than they do in the house. So this thing is-hang on, let me measure-8 feet from from the floor to the top of the star, and a good 6 feet wide. Not a bad fit for our living room...if we could get it to stand up.

I hate that damn Martha Stewart and her cheap, tin foil tree stand.

We wedged wooden blocks between the trunk and the stand. We tied a string to the trunk and screwed it to the wall. Finally we stapled a few limbs to the wall behind the tree and lo and behold-nobody touch it!-the tree was standing.

Time to decorate. I get out the hundred year old lights and plug them in; half are either burned out or missing. And didn't we have the little clear ones on last year too? Where did they go? Nobody knows. So off I go to buy more. Back home, I realize there's no way I'm going the whole way around the tree with the lights. For one thing, the needles are sharper than any real sewing needle I've ever come across, and for another, there's the whole staple thing to contend with. So I go back and forth, back and forth, with the groovy little colored sugary lights and again with the tiny clear ones. It actually looks good, and the red from my bloodied fingertips adds a nice festive touch.

Then the merry part kicks in. The kids dig through the box, searching for their First Christmas ornaments and treasures they've made in school. There's Jeremy in kindergarten, before he decided to grow his blonde curls into long dreadlocks, his picture glued to a block of wood and decorated with glitter. Zac did the same project in his class; his grin tells you he can't wait for you to saw through the yards of tape and tissue in which he'll wrap this priceless gift. There's the ornament Jackey bought me for our first Christmas, tarnished and bent but still the most beautiful one on the tree; the brass girl engraved with my name, a gift from my Grandma Fox when I was no older than my Zoey, who hung it this year; foam and glue creations, pipe cleaners and beads, little wooden bells my mother gave me 13 years ago, they're all here. Gold stars and silver mice, handed down from our grandmothers, share branches with brand-new snowmen and an icicle angel under a banner reading 'peace'.

Southern Living won't be at my door any time soon, begging to photograph my beautiful tree. It looks as if it went a few years without being pruned and shaped. There are a few bare spots near the bottom. There are no silver ribbons artfully draped, nothing made of glass, skillfully blown and turned, not a theme of 'Winter Wonderland' or 'Country Christmas' or 'City Lights'. Many of the ornaments are on the very edges of the branches, carefully placed at eye level of the decorator. There are seven ornaments on this limb, and none to be found anywhere on the next. But it sparkles and shines, its colors are magical, and there is plenty of room beneath for Santa to leave his loot. It may not be Martha Stewart-perfect, but I dare her to come in here and tell just one of these kids that it isn't the best tree ever. And I'd have to agree with the kids on this one.

Now if you'll just hand me that staple gun, I think it's starting to lean a little...

I'm putting speed bumps in the living room.

2005-11-14T07:17:00.000-05:00

You'd think, with one kid fresh out of a cast and the other still up to his elbow in plaster, the rugrats would slow down a bit. Not my guys. Mr. Broken growth plate-Weekly x-rays only pauses long enough to giggle at me when I tell him to slow down before he gets hurt. He's shooting around the house bouncing off the doorframes as he rockets through...I guess it just isn't as much fun to run outside, where there aren't all those fun obstacles to dodge.

Apparently I'm either retarded, crazy, or most likely, both. I know this because I'm the proud owner of 2 adolescents. Dylan asks if he and Jess can go ride their bikes. Not now, because it's the time of day when a lot of people are heading to work. Granted, we live in a dinky little town, but to get to where they like to ride, the kids have to cross the main road that connects us to the interstate, and I'm not up for another drive to the hospital, especially this early. Not a minute later, Jess comes and asks the same exact question, with Dylan right beside her. Naturally, she gets the same answer, which gets me two pairs of rolling eyes and a pair of "Gawd"s. I remind Dylan that I just answered that question for him. "No you didn't," he says. Hm. Must have been that other lanky, sullen kid who lives here.

My oldest kids have clones, and for some reason, I always ask the clones to do things like chores. So of course when I go back an hour later and ask my real child why the trash hasn't been taken out, the poor dear is hopelessly confused and swears I never asked her to do it. I'm not sure whether it's the real Jess or her clone who is complaining because she has to go get the ball that she kicked over the fence. It's not like it's her ball, she just kicked it. Must be the clone...

I made coffee cake this morning. Nice, housewifey, mommy thing to do, right? I didn't regret it until Jeremy asked for another piece, "Cause I already licked it, anyway." Ooooo-kay, you can have that piece. Here comes the wicked Jeremy grin..."Well, can I have them all? Cause I licked them all." If you think he's joking, you don't know my Jeremy.

Here goes nothing

2005-11-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

So this is a blog, huh? 'Blog' is kind of a stupid word, sounds like the noise this guy I knew made after he drank too much whiskey. But anyway, here I am, making one. Here's where you can come to read about all the chaos and craziness that go along with raising 6 kids-including 2 with ADHD, one with DSI, one with Tourette's, 2 with broken arms, 2 hormonal adolescents, one with who-knows-what going on that makes him extremely emotional and oversensitive, and a self-described spoiled beast. After you read about it, you laugh and thank whatever gods you believe in that it isn't you.

You get to read about some of the stupid, goofy things I do on a regular basis too, hence the title of this blog. Do I have to call it a blog? I think I'll call it a journal instead. It sounds nicer and besides I bet it makes you feel like you're privy to some top-secret personal info, doesn't it?

Keep your eyes on this spot-I'll be back after we get Broken Arm Number Two x-rayed this afternoon.

Have a freaky day-