Sirens are generally not a good thing.

Around here, a siren usually means I forgot that I was heating oil on the stove while I ran to put the towels in the dryer…and check facebook…and read a few pages of Good Housekeeping. Luckily, it hasn’t ever gotten further than the smoke alarm sirens– the ones that the mostly-useless-electricians put in that just make a lot of noise, not the ones from the security company that immediately call the fire department. The fact that the immediately-call-the-fire-department ones have never gone off greatly decreases my feeling of fire-safetyishness, truth be told.

But today, the siren meant something different. Today, the siren meant that I had rolled through the stop sign on my little, backwoods, rural, middle-of-nowhere, don’t-nobody-else-stop-neither road, and that said rolling had not gone unnoticed.

Sometimes, a siren going off around here means that the kids, history buffs that they are, have re-enacted the Battle of the Alamo, using bubble wrap to mimic the sound of gunfire. I don’t know about gunfire, but our alarm system thinks bubble wrap sounds an awful lot like breaking glass. And our glass-break detector actually does immediately call the police department.

Of course, because we live in a little, backwoods, rural, middle-of-nowhere kind of place, it takes the police 30 minutes to arrive at our front door to investigate whether we have been chopped up into small, unidentifiable pieces by serial killers. There are never any police cars on patrol where we live (if you happen to be a crazed criminal, you should know that we have two vicious attack dogs and one very aggressive llama, and we are armed with awesome guns, and we are trained in the art of fujitsu. Unless fujitsu is some sort of camera, in which case we are trained in something else that will allow us to separate important parts of your body from one another using only our toes. Who needs police when you can disembowel people with your toes?).

In the entire 6 years I have lived here, I have seen no more 5 police cars. Or maybe I’ve seen one police car, but I’ve seen it 5 different times. In any event, encounters with law enforcement are sufficiently rare as to have instilled a sense of confidence in the denizens of our particular nowheresville: specifically, people don’t stop at stop signs. Some of them don’t even slow down.

Myself, I’m a stopper. Not only that, I have been known to point and wag my finger at the non-stoppers, or at least at the drive-right-through-at-35-mph-ers.  And I can do that in all my well-deserved self-righteousness, because I am a stopper.

Or so I thought….

Yesterday afternoon, any delusions I held regarding my standing as a keeper-of-the-code-as-it-applies-to-stopping-for-a-full-three-second-count-at-all-stop-signs were shattered.

See, when I woke up yesterday, I had every intention of leaving the house to take Mason to go get his bloodwork done first thing in the morning. I don’t know why it takes us 4 hours to get out of the house in the morning. So we left the house on our way to the lab at the crack of 11:20.

At about 11:35, I remembered that the road was under construction. It was the orange-and-white-striped barricades that  jogged my memory. You would think I would have remembered sooner—miles and miles sooner, as in, before-it-was-too-late-to-take-an-alternate-route sooner, especially in light of the fact that these same barricades sucked a sock up my vacuum cleaner on the way to my girls’-night-out viewing of White Christmas on the big screen with one of my besties only a few nights earlier.

Even with the diversion, we arrived at the lab-o-trauma at 11:42, a full 18 minutes before they close for lunch. Which would have been a tremendous victory, had there not been a sign declaring “We’ve Moved!” on the door.

Mason really doesn’t like being strapped into a car seat. And the only thing more injurious to his happy mood than being buckled in is having to be buckled in again after having finally enjoyed a brief taste of freedom.

Four kids back in the car, buckled, one frustrated round of, “What do you mean, you’re not buckled? What have you been doing for the last 3 minutes?”, and we’re on our way to the lab-o-trauma’s new location, which happens to be smack-dab in the middle of the construction zone we’d just detoured around. Which probably explains why I drove right by it, then had to make a rather awkward T-intersection U-turn. It might also explain why we found ourselves driving on the wrong side of the pylons, into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler. Luckily, Riley notices things like oncoming 18-wheelers that might escape the notice of someone who’s squinting out the window, mumbling “Where is it? It’s gotta be one of these buildings….”

In spite of our little unscheduled adventure, we arrived at 11:54, a full 6 minutes before they close for lunch. I’m not sure what time the other 15 people who were already in the waiting room arrived, but they did not look amused to see our rowdy party-of-five enter.

That place should really hire a second phlebotomist.

Mason doesn’t sit. Did you know that? It’s probably pretty apparent from most of my posts.

So, for the next hour-and-five-minutes, I did my best to keep the 35-pound-ferret corralled on a 2-person bench. I read magazines (Luckily, Better Homes and Gardens has lots of pictures of dogs and cats this month), I played several hundred rounds of “Kiss-me-right-here….you missed! Again?”, and sang Somewhere over the Rainbow, Fly Me To The Moon, and the ABC song…repeatedly. I let Mason practice his hairdressing skills (until he attempted to remove large sections of hair using his thumb and forefinger), and offered my body up as a giant jungle-gym. And I did it with a smile on my face, and while admonishing certain other family members to keep the peace, stop kicking each other, and get their own gum.

Finally, at 1:00, the poor-phlebotomist-who-worked-through-her-entire-lunch-hour called us back to the torture chamber. Now, Mason has an uncanny memory, but maybe the new office threw him. He recognized her as someone he liked, and he immediately turned on the charm. Even as she tied the blue-rubber band around his upper arm, he smiled and flirted. It wasn’t until the needle physically pierced his skin that the look of recognition swept across his face.  But he’s a tough one, and even as she was putting on the bandage and apologizing profusely, he was doing his best to smile at her through his tears.

By the time we stepped across the lab threshold, Mason was fully recovered. Mommy, on the other hand, could think of little other than a session with Dr. Merl Ot. And I still had Wail-Mart, SuperTorture, and KroGrrr on my to-do list.

Every once in a while, a rare glimmer of sanity peeks through the otherwise impenetrable wall of my incompetence. This was such a time. Rather than drag all four children around town to run errands, I drove 20 minutes home and dropped them off to The Hubby, armed with all the sympathy-rousing-patheticatude I could muster, then proceeded to make the 20 minute drive back to town.

It was shortly into my proceeding that I heard the siren.

Now, if you know me, you no doubt know that I can’t do things in any way that could be deemed ordinary. It’s not that I don’t, as if I’m striving for some sort of zenith (or nadir– depends on your perspective I guess…) of eccentricity. It’s that I can’t.

So it may come as no surprise to you to hear that I was pulled over not by a police car, or a sherriff, or even a county constable…but, by a Texas Wildlife Officer.

The answer to your question is, “Yes, evidently they can.”

Since it is already November twenty-somethingth and I have yet to do an “I’m thankful for” post, let me take this opportunity to say that I am thankful that the Texas Wildlife Officer let me go with a verbal warning.

I will close with a dramatic re-enactment of the incident, which may or may not offer a glimpse of why the Officer didn’t detain me to write a ticket:

Me: Hello, Officer.

Texas Wildlife Officer: Ma’am, I stopped you today because you ran that stop sign back there. And you didn’t just run it, you ran it fast. Is there any particular reason you did that, ma’am? Anything going on that would have caused you to not just run that stop sign, but to run it as fast as you did?”

Me: Well, officer, it all started because I had to take my 5-year old to get bloodwork done….

You would think that by the ripe-old-age of 42, you would have learned most everything. Not so. I find that every day offers myriad opportunities for the acquisition of new and profound knowledge.

Why, take the amazing collection of wisdom I collected today, for example:

1. When you’re kneeling on the back-seat platform of a Suburban to buckle the back seat passengers into their carseats, if you sit back on your feet you might find that your Croc flip-flops are full of evil demon stickers.
2. It is hard to pull evil demon stickers from your hindquarters by yourself.
3. When you’re sitting outside in the complete darkness, enjoying the chill air, enthralled by the music of the crickets and frogs, the sound of a bedroom window being slid shut sounds exactly like the hiss of a deadly, venomous pit viper.
4. I run fast.
5. I am suprisingly agile for a 42 year old.
6. Husbands will laugh at you while you’re recovering from thinking you were about to be attacked by a deadly, venomous pit viper.
7. Mason would like you to know that he, too, learned something new today, having picked up a new vocabulary from Mommy over dinner preparations.
8. And lastly, I also learned that my pasta strainer is much too small for an entire pot of spaghetti, which results in boiling water overflowing the sides and removing the skin from any appendages that might be, say, holding on to said strainer.

Those last two might seem to be unrelated, but if you read through them again….

It’s been a long time since I last blogged. I know this because my last post was about my near-death experience giving birth to Mason, which was in honor of his birthday…seven weeks ago….

If I hadn’t remembered that fact, my absence still would have been apparent by the fact that I couldn’t remember my username. Or my password . Okay, I admit it: I couldn’t remember my blog URL. Happy now?

And why do I even bother to check the little box that says “Remember me”? It never does.

                  Blog: Password? 
                  Me: Hi, remember me? I made you? 
                  Blog: Password?
                  Me: Blog, I am your mother.
                  Blog: Password?

My failure to compose hasn’t been for lack of chaos. There’s been lots of chaos. Abundant chaos. Chaos overflowing like 6-people’s worth of laundry out of a pitiful wicker laundry basket. The problem is that either A) I get sidetracked by more chaos on my way to document the chaos that already happened, B) I compose a pithy blogpost in my mind, somebody interrupts my train of thought by asking why I’m talking to myself, and I forget that I was even thinking, or C)…um… I’m pretty sure I had a “C” when I started this list, but I have no idea what it was….

The other major stumbling block has been the fact that my blog and I have this agreement that I won’t turn it into a forum for pointless ravings and rantings, and it will remember me if I check the box that says, “Remember me”. Only one of us is keeping our end of the bargain. But if you nice people are going to spend ten minutes of your time vicariously experiencing gross ineptitude  through my leopard-spotted reading glasses, then I feel I should at least thank you by wrapping it up into a neat little package and tie it with a bow.  If you’re going to be so kind as to hop on my train, I should get you somewhere, right? But making sense out of chaos is no easy task, and so I’ve chosen the path of avoidance.

Now, it’s probably obvious by now that I’m back on track, sitting at my computer typing, and ready to share with you a glimpse of the chaos. Obvious, yes, but also dead wrong. When I sat down, I had high hopes of telling you how the two older kids and I spent our day walking up and down one of the busiest-yet-least-interesting streets in town while my Suburban was having the a/c replaced, and how we ate Sno Cones at Bahama Bucks and the toilet is so high off the ground that our feet dangled (one of us who is not me actually had to get off the toilet by falling into a fake plant). But for the life of me, I can’t think of any way to make a freakishly-high commode relevant.

But I did get this really funny email today, courtesy of my writing buddy Helen Hanson (HelenHanson.com), to whom I owe an email regarding her generous offer for me to participate in a new blogging endeavor. See? I’m not even composing email these days. Anyway, for lack of anything better to share with you, I’m going to share half of this funny email with you. I’m saving the other half in case I’m still deep in avoidance next week.

You probably shouldn’t drink anything hot and/or fizzy while you read this, unless you enjoy having hot and/or fizzy liquid come out your nose.

A paraprosdokian (from the Greek meaning “beyond” and “expectation”) is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax . For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis.

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Some people are like Slinkies … not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.

Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “If an emergency, notify:” I put “DOCTOR”.

You know it’s been a long time since your last blog post when you can’t even remember your own blog address. Sheesh!  My life has not been devoid of the usual chaos; in fact, I think the problem is that the chaos has come so rapid-fire that I’ve already forgotten the last chaotic episode by the time the next one has hit me upside the head.  I really need to do a better job of writing things down to jog my memory, but it probably wouldn’t do any good, because I’d just lose the notebook.

So today, rather than write about yesterday’s mystery spider incident (if you remind me, I’ll tell you about it later), or give you the rundown of Mason’s latest come-to-the-garden-hose meeting,  I’m going to wax a little nostalgic. See, today is Mason’s 5th birthday. (Everybody on three: one…two…three—).  People always ask how old he is, and lately when I’ve been responding, “He turns 5 on the 3rd,”  I’ve noticed that does-not-compute look in their eyes. They think I must be confused—I mean, I’ve got an awful lot of kids with me, maybe I’ve mixed him up with one of the others. Not that farfetched, really. But it’s true. Five years old.

Mason enjoying his corn-free, Mason-safe birthday cake

Which is pretty incredible, seeing as how nobody thought the two of us were going to make it out of labor & delivery alive.

Oh—I should warn you: I’m not sure how funny this is going to be. It might not be funny at all. And another thing—if you know me in real life, you’ve probably heard this story before. If you have, feel free to skip it—you’ve heard it all, plus you’ve had the benefit of watching me make wild gestures while telling it. So you’ve had the experience already, feel free to pass this time around. Only don’t tell me—you know I’m really sensitive about these things.

So…five years ago today at this time I was hooked up to a pitocin drip, arguing with my OB about the fact that I didn’t want my water broken, because this would probably be my last time to experience labor (at which point she glared at The Hubby and made a snipping motion with her fingers, which he pretended not to see), and I was certain I could do it without having my water broken, and did she have ANY IDEA how painful it was to have somebody shove a crochet hook up your crotch when you were only dilated to 1/2cm?  To which she replied that my track record of dilating on my own was none-too-stellar, and she had a full day of appointments back at the office so she wouldn’t be able to come back and break my water later if my labor followed same pattern of my other three labors and refused to progress, and wouldn’t I rather have my water broken now than end up with a C-section later?

Now, I know my midwife & midwifery fan friends are horrified at that whole interchange. I really like my doctor, but she’s still a medical doctor: pretty traditional, willing to humor me most of the time, but still pretty enslaved to the whole inorganic medical way of doing things. I mean, she didn’t roll her eyes to my face when I said this was the time I was going to deliver without an epidural, but I’m pretty sure when she turned around to face my hubby, there was some behind-my-back eye-rollin’ going on.

I should also mention that my OB is a little wary of breaking my water. See, back with my first delivery 15 years ago (15 years ago next week, to be exact), while she was working her crochet-hook-torture on my undilated cervix, the following interchange took place:

ME (through clenched teeth): Has anyone ever kicked you in the face while you were doing that?
DR (somewhat worried): No….are you planning to?
ME (teeth still clenched):  No, but thinking about it is making me feel a little better….

She went on to warn all the nurses to watch out for me, that I’d threatened to kick her in the face. Which turned out not to be a bad thing—you’d be surprised how much more considerate a nurse can be when she’s trying to avoid a black eye….

So anyway, back to Mason’s birth. I caved and let her break my water, and the pitocin started doing it’s voodoo, and the pain began.

Now, if you’ve never experienced pitocin, let me scoop you (WARNING: If you’ve never given birth, just skip this paragraph. In fact, skip the whole post. I mean, not if you’re a guy. But if you’re a female of the species and have never given birth but plan to, just go have some Starbucks, really. You don’t want to read this.): Pitocin is evil. See, God designed labor so that contractions would start out gentle and progress to the whole giving birth in pain point along the way. Pitocin pretty much starts you out at if-I-meet-Eve-in-heaven-I’m-going-to-punch-her-in-the-face-for-eating-that-stupid-apple right from the starting block. About 20 minutes into it, you’re telling the nurses that your husband’s legitimacy is dubious at best, and after an hour you’re asking if they have a divorce lawyer on staff.

And I asked for this stuff. Not only that, I assured the nurse that I was a warrior, and she didn’t need to ask permission to crank it up: just go for it. Why? I’m not really sure, except to say that three previous labors had taught me that my body takes about 8 hours of hard labor to progress to 3 cm. Now, once I hit 3cm, I’m pushing within a half hour. 3cm is the transition between school bus and NASCAR. Once I hit 3cm, you’d better call the doctor, because we are passing out the cigars.

Now, the really funny thing about my desire to be at the mercy of evil pitocin is that I had also decided that this would finally be the time that I delivered without an epidural. Stop laughing. Don’t you know I’m a superhero? But the truth is, that had always been my dream. Not only that, but having read every labor & delivery how-to book on the market with my previous three pregnancies, my search for new reading material resulted in my finding a whole category of books on the dangers of epidurals. Knowing that The Hubby is a big fan of epidurals (I’ll share that story next week, for Riley’s birthday), I read him all the risks outlined in the books. It was like talking to your dog. His head kind of tilted to one side, then the other, and I’m pretty sure he was hearing “blah-blah-blah-blah-epidural.”

But I was determined not to have an epidural.

Having given birth three times already, I was pretty familiar with pitocin-induced labor pains. Pretty soon, I started realizing that this was no ordinary pitocin-induced labor. With every contraction, my eyes were threatening to leave my face, and The Hubby started pushing that epidural like a dealer from some after school special. You know you want it…it’ll make you feel goooood.…

The nurse explained that what I was feeling was back labor—Mason was face up, so instead of his nice squishy face being all nuzzled up against my tailbone, his hard bony skull was grinding against my spine. It was somewhere around this time that I got really angry at The Hubby for talking me out of spending $400 to hire a doula to come help with my labor. “You’ve had three kids—you could BE a doula, why do you need to hire one?”  Grrrrr….

But I am nothing if not a stoic. I kept moving, trying to find a position that would offer some relief from the pain. But every time I moved, the monitor would slip, and the nurse would come in to reposition it. I knew this drill—once they get tired of your monitor slipping, they screw the internal monitor to the baby’s scalp, and then you have no choice but to lay in bed. I didn’t want that to happen, so I tried not to move around too much. Finally, the pain became too unbearable. The nurse checked and explained that he was coming out face first—meaning that instead of the little round crown of his head presenting first, he was looking straight down and was trying to get the entire length of his face from chin to forehead out through a space that just 6 hours ago wasn’t even big enough for a crochet hook.

I caved.

Now, usually when I give in and things go wrong, proving that my original position was right all along, I can take solace in the fact that there will be some gloating involved, and that I will get to sport that ha-ha-I-was-right grin for at least a few hours. Notsomuch this time. As the nurse anesthetist slid the catheter in my spine, I felt a shock all the way down to the toes on my left foot. I said, “Wow—I felt  a shock all the way down to the toes on my left foot.”

It was at this point that pretty much everything went completely, horribly wrong….

She explained that the shock was a result of her puncturing my dura—which is not a good thing. She repositioned the catheter while the L&D nurse turned white and started chewing on her nails.

I was not encouraged.

It was explained to me as follows: the nurse anesthetist had misplaced the needle, puncturing my dura. With proper placement of the needle, the medicine is contained to an area that only affects the lower half of the body. However, once the dura is punctured, the medicine leaks out and has the potential to affect the upper half of the body as well.  The upper half of your body houses some pretty vital organs—specifically, your heart and lungs. I have experienced an epidural’s effects on the legs; I was fairly certain having the same thing happen to my heart and lungs would be less than good.

The process of positioning the angle of my bed took on a bizarre significance, as the nurse anesthetist measured the effect of the angle on my heart rate and blood pressure. If the angle was too flat, the medicine would travel up to my heart and lungs (told ya’—pretty vital organs) and send me into cardio-pulmonary arrest (no pumpy, no breathy). Too steep, and my blood pressure would bottom out. Either way, death was a pretty real possibility.

So they played with the angle of the bed until they found a position that the anesthetist felt wouldn’t hasten my demise. The only problem was that the little guy who caused all this chaos in the first place was not liking it at all. The nurse had turned his monitor away from us, so we couldn’t see the reading, but while she stood in the corner whispering back and forth with the anesthetist, The Hubby and I counted the beats. They were farther than a second apart. Even in my surreal stupor, I could do that math: Mason’s heartrate had been in the 150s before. Now it was somewhere below 60 beats per minute.

They didn’t share the content of their private conversations with us. They even covered their mouths with their hands as they whispered, afraid that I’d muster the focus to read their lips, I guess. I’m sure there were bigger concerns going on, but whatever those concerns were, they weren’t telling me.

The Hubby asked the nurse to call the doctor. She checked me, and said she couldn’t call because I wasn’t anywhere near a 10 yet, then went back to whispering. We should have picked up the phone and called her ourselves, but in our defense, reality was a tenous concept in the midst of the confusion. Over the course of the next hour, he asked her two more times to call. Finally, she agreed.

Less than 10 minutes after she called, my OB entered the room calmly. She’s a calm person. She looks like someone you could have been best friends with in high-school—in fact, despite the fact that she’s my age, she doesn’t look much older than a high-schooler, and she speaks in this soft, almost-hushed southern drawl. She has been with me for each of my births, and she knows my heart.

My OB sat on the edge of my bed, held my hand, and put her face close to mine. “I know you don’t want a c-section,” she said gently. “But I’m telling you, we don’t have 5 minutes to get this baby out. We have to get him out right now. They’re prepping the OR for us, but I’m going to give you one contraction to push while they’re getting it ready, okay? You think you can push real hard and get him out for us in one contraction?”

I was shaking. The epidural hadn’t had time to get out of my system—what if I couldn’t push?

She assumed her position at the end of the bed, and informed me that I was still only at a 9, but if I promised not to kick her in the face, she’d get me to a 1o.

The next contraction came, and she said “PUSH!”

And I pushed. Count of 10, deep breath. Another count of 10, another breath. Another count of 10. I could still feel the contraction, hard and tight. She said, “I can’t believe it, but you got him into the birth canal. No C-section for you, he’ll be out on the next contraction. Take a rest.”

I shook my head no and pushed again. I started out at 9 cm, pushed for about a minute, and out came Mason. Face first, even. I think I must have broken some kind of World Pushing Record.

But I didn’t get to celebrate very long.

See, I thought once he was out, everything would be fine. I was laying back on the pillow, relief washing over me. I asked, “Where’s my husband?” and one of the nurses said he’d gone out in the hall. I thought that was odd, but maybe the relief had made him emotional, too. So I looked toward the door. It was only then that I noticed that Mason’s bassinet was surrounded by a whole crew of people. They weren’t wearing the pretty, cartoon-ish scrubs that L&D or postpartum nurses wear. And they were saying things like cyanotic, and “c’mon baby, breathe….”

Finally, a woman who introduced herself as a NICU specialist of some sort brought me my baby. She said they were taking him downstairs, and that a nurse would bring me down to see him later. I asked if I could nurse him first. She looked at me as if I were crazy and said, “No.”

And then they were gone.

Mason spent the next 4 days in the NICU, during which time I cried 24 hours a day.

One of the NICU nurses told me that the mothers whose babies are really sick and who knew before hand that they would be in NICU for a while are usually much stronger; it was the mothers like me whose babies just need a little extra TLC, who expected to have their babies by their side up in postpartum—those were the mothers who had a hard time coping. The other mothers, they were celebrating the fact that their babies had already overcome a huge hurdle by surviving birth, surviving their first night, their first week. They were grateful for every scrubbing in, every 30-minute visitation. Those of us who felt slapped upside the head by the whole process walked around in a funk of tears and hormones, reliving our labor, wondering what we did wrong to land our baby here.

After I was settled in on the postpartum floor–where I could watch the nurses wheeling the other mommies’ babies down the hall—a friend of mine who just happened to be a postpartum nurse on duty, who also just happened to work for my OB back when I was pregnant with Riley—came to visit me. She told me that the entire postpartum floor had been watching our monitor feed, and that when the nurse had finally called my OB, the staff back at the doctor’s office had huddled around the monitor there as well,  and had followed Mason’s heartbeat and my vital signs remotely. She said they’d talked to each other by phone. The situation had been dire, and they had watched in horror, sharing their fears at the outcome.  The very best they had hoped for is that the anesthetist would be able to keep the epidural away from my heart & lungs, and that they could get the baby out in time to save me. Hopefully.

She said that nobody expected both of us to make it out of that room alive.

And yet here we are—here HE is, my sweet Mason. He came into the world upside-down and face-first, because that was the best way to observe all the chaos he caused…

…and in 5 years, not much has changed.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOOCHIE!!! You are my unexpected journey, my undeserved blessing. I love you!!!  XOXOXOXOX

I am all about traditions.

Take Thanksgiving, for instance. I mean, is there any other holiday so steeped in tradition as Turkey Day? I have eaten the same thing every Thanksgiving since 1968. Well, maybe since 1969. I don’t think I had teeth yet that first Thanksgiving. Although I did find a doctors note in my baby book where he recommended bacon as an appropriate first food for a 4 month old. I think it was on the same page that recommended Crisco as a sunblock. Ah, the good ol’ days….

Anyway, every Thanksgiving we have the same menu. The Hubby once asked me if I got bored eating the same meal every year. Yes, because having the same meal ONE TIME A YEAR is oh-such-a-rut….

One year I got really crazy, and changed things up by making mashed sweet potatoes instead of canned. Not only that—instead of topping them with mini-marshamallows—-I made a custard topping. I know, I am a rebel.

Since moving into the Halfway-finished House, we have developed new holiday traditions. Every year, we celebrate 4th of July at Rancho de la Roca. We spread our blanket on the lawn, I take the kids canoeing, they do some bounce-house-jumping and some snow-cone-eating, and then when darkness falls we settle back and watch the fabulous fireworks show. Afterwards, we head home for another Moreno 4th of July tradition: Daddy’s Backyard Firework Extravaganzza.

It’s generally a pretty low-key event, just me and the kids on the back porch while The Hubby sets off his wares in the pasture. There was that one last year that exploded too violently, throwing itself off The Hubby’s homemade launch stand and sending giant purple fireballs at his head. But other than that one incident, it’s pretty tame.

Until now….

Back when The Hubby and I got married—which is coming up on 20 years this September—I promised I would never let him get bored. At the time, he thought that was a good thing. He has since reminded me that there is no physical, binding document to force my compliance, and has graciously agreed to let me out of the terms of that particular arrangement. Nice try….

But really, it wasn’t my fault. I mean, it wasn’t precipitated by one of my infamous ideas or anything. The story goes like this:

We got home from Rancho de la Roca a little before 10. For some reason, Mason was scared of the fireworks this year, so rather than put him through the trauma of even more loud noises and bright lights, I went ahead and put him to bed.

I came out of his room to sheer chaos. I know—you’re shocked.

I could hear the screams of the children coming from the backyard. All three older kids were down at the chicken coop in hysterics. Ethan and Ramie were outside the coop, and Riley was inside yelling—–

—if you have a teenage daughter, you are familiar with melodrama. Now imagine a teenage girl with MY genes. Oh yeah, now you’re getting the picture….

Where was I? Oh, yeah—so, Riley is in the chicken coop, and she’s screaming, “It’s got Ethel!!! A snake has Ethel!!! It’s killing her!!! She’s not moving!!! She’s dead!!!”  Meanwhile, I come to the back door and scream back, something along the lines of, “Ethan! Get your sister OUT OF THE CHICKEN COOP NOW!!!”

Now, can I just say that if you had told me 20 years ago—10 years, even—that I would ever in my life be screaming any sentence that included the words “chicken coop,” I would have thought you were crazy. Yet, there I was, screaming for Ethan to convince Riley to get the heck out of the chicken coop.

I ran down to the coop, passing a sobbing Ramie and an exhilarated Ethan on their way up to the house. That boy thrives on some chaos. Don’t know where he gets it. Riley, meanwhile, has finally come out of the coop. She’s sobbing, too, but she’s composed enough to shine the flashlight on the far side of the chicken coop to show me where, indeed, a snake has climbed up the chicken wire among the roosting hens. And Yeti, who is decidedly not a hen, but that fact was only discovered after we’d paid for him and brought him home.

Some panic ensued here for a while. I’m not clear on all the details, but there was some confused running up and down the hill between the house and the coop, some “WHERE IS YOUR FATHER?” being shouted back and forth, some “GO TELL YOUR FATHER TO BRING THE SHOVEL,” and some ear piercing wailing courtesy of the 6 year old, who was sure Ethel was that snake’s belated 4th of July chicken picnic dinner.

I do remember grabbing the flashlight from Riley, and showing The Hubby where the snake had cozied up to the sleeping chickens. I found the snake’s head, and because I like to think myself some sort of pit viper expert (mostly just because I really like saying the words, “pit viper”), determined that he was not, in fact, a venomous snake. At least, he wasn’t a Texas venomous snake. You know, you can never really be sure that someone didn’t buy one of those exotic ultra-deadly imports, get tired of supplying it with live rats, and release it into the wild. But in the heat of the moment, I was comfortable with my assessment.

Besides, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the snake that only a few weeks before had leapt out at me as I tried to determine whether itwas venomous. If you heard that story, you will remember that the hubby didn’t wait for my answer before severing the beasts head from its body.

Now, I am not a snake hater. In fact, I really like snakes. They eat nasty rodents. Nasty rodents that invade your garage and make nests in boxes of wedding keepsakes that you have no choice but to throw away because there is no amount of sanitizing that is going to take “rodent” out of a bouquet of silk flowers. I have coffee mugs that I’ve bleached, scalded, and run through the dishwasher ten times, and I still can’t bring myself to drink out of them. I save them for company.

But a snake’s gotta know his place. Me, human. Dominion over all the animals. You, snake. Crawl on your belly on the dust of the earth. And leave my chickens alone. Genesis, right?

So I have my flashlight expertly trained (it’s an art) on the snake’s head, while The Hubby deftly pins him to the chicken wire with the shovel. Now, chicken wire isn’t really the firmest of surfaces. The snake is pinned, but The Hubby can’t really do any severing, because there’s too much give. The snake isn’t really contemplating the give factor of chicken wire; he’s just looking for something to hold on to. And it just so happens that the closest thing to him is…Ethel.

Before I knew what was happening, the wily serpent had his body wound around Ethel’s body. Ramie is watching out the back door in tears. I’m still feeling mommyguiltfrom having to put the cat down last month; no way am I going to be able to face the 6 year-old and tell her the snake killed her chicken.

So I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed the snake. Of course I did. Doesn’t that sound just like the kind of idiot thing I would do? “How’d ya get those two holes in your arm, Ashley?” “Oh…see there was this snake…” So I have a hold of the snake, and he’s coiling tighter around the chicken, and I’m worrying that my pit viper identification skills far outweigh my constrictor identification skills, and it hits me that I’m not sure which way to pull the snake. I mean, there aren’t really any directional markers on a snake, no easy way to tell “front” from “back”. Wrong way, and I’ve tightened the noose.

Now, the chickens have evidently been to the Jurassic Park T-Rex school of Snake Avoidance, because during this whole time, Ethel does…not…move. None of them do. They are still as bricks. Puffy feathered bricks. Kind of like the squirrel scene in Christmas Vacation, where Diane Ladd is laying unconscious on the floor, and Chevy Chase whispers, “Mom—don’t move!”  (Yes, I just fit two completely different movie references into one paragraph. My blog, my rules to break…).

So as I’m trying to solve the Chinese rope puzzle that is the snake, I say to The Hubby, “Whatever you do, don’t let it get away.”  To which he replies—

“TOO LATE!”

Now, I ask you: does the snake go for the guy who’s been trying to separate his spine at the base of his skull? No. He goes for the crazy woman who has ahold of the rest of his body. So the snake makes a go at me, I throw him to the ground and grab a rake—which The Hubby commandeers, because evidently my rake handling skills don’t live up to my snake handling skills—and The Hubby chops his head of with the shovel. I like to think he put extra vengeance into the act; you know, like “Take THAT, you vile viper. Try to bite my wife, will you?”

I have no pictures of the snake. So I can’t disprove The Hubby’s claim that the snake was only 4 feet long, not 6. And there is no video of the event, either, so The Hubby can’t prove I said anything stronger than, “Oh my goodness.” His word against mine….

I am running away from home. Don’t try and stop me.

As far as my destination is concerned, I’m not all that picky. Some less-traveled European berg along the Normandy coast, some as-yet-undiscovered-by-tourists island where locals sit at brightly-painted cantina tables swapping stories. Or Morocco. Would I have to wear a burqha in Morocco? Just someplace where the passage of time is unimportant. Somewhere without schedules. And without laundry.

I’m not sure exactly which straw broke the proverbial camel’s back. Maybe it was the child who swore that he’d already unloaded the dishwasher, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Or maybe it was the shopping cart that rolled off the curb while I was putting groceries in the car, tipping over on its side, leaving two dozen eggs to hemorrage slowly on the blacktop…

…or the myriad cross-county trips in a vehicle with a broken air conditioner…

…or the fact that after an entire winter of complaining about the fact that the cold weather had rendered my garage-door opener  just that—an OPENER, and not a CLOSER, which meant that I had to get out of the truck, pull the release cord, jump up and grab the door and pull it down by hand (no small feat since there isn’t a handle on the outside of the door), and then upon returning home had to squeeze my fingers underneath the closed door and lift it all the way up, then fight to get it back on track so it would stay open for me to back the truck in (inhale)—after all these months, the release cord BROKE, so now the garage door opener is just a big black box o’nothin’ hanging from the ceiling…

…or the dog who managed to wrap her chain around me before bounding toward the yard, nearly severing my leg at the ankle, or the senile cat who’s taken to jumping up on the kitchen counter and drinking out of my water cup, knocking it over in the process.

Or maybe—just maybe—it was the fact that Mason not only learned to say “SHUT UP!” this week, but also how to turn doorknobs, which is oh-so-convenient since I didn’t realize when we built the house that we were going to have another child so I picked the interesting, egg-shaped doorknobs that don’t fit inside the plastic keep-your-child-from-opening-doors covers; OR the fact that I have had it UP TO HERE with packing a school lunch every morning for the 6 year-old who is neither a sandwich person nor a macaroni-&-cheese person, nor a—well, you can pretty much just fill in that blank with anything other than candy, because I have yet to find out what kind of person she is; OR the fact that the 14 year-old has tricked-out her trademark eye-roll by adding a Clint Eastwood-style upper-lip sneer; OR the 10 year-old who agreed to play with the 6 year-old on the condition that she pay him in Easter candy….

You know I could go on….

In the tumultuous years between junior high and high school, I planned to run away several times. We had a heavy, solid wood double garage door that sounded like a freight train when it opened, so I’d prop a tire underneath it before I’d go to bed, thinking I could just slide underneath unnoticed. I always changed my mind. But once I was so mad at my father that I actually snuck down to the garage with my packed duffle bag, only to find the door closed and locked, the tire propped up against the wall. That was the end of my runaway aspirations.

During a summer trip to Europe, I ditched my school group and hopped the train across Germany to visit the blond Bavarian guy I’d fallen in love with in West Berlin. There was something so liberating about being on my own at that point in my life. The next morning, my roommate called to tell me I’d better get my butt back to the hotel, because she was running out of things to tell the chaperone about where I was.

I read a short story once. I mean, I’ve read more than one short story, of course. I’m just referring to one in particular. I think it was in my Good Housekeeping magazine. My mother keeps renewing my subscription. I guess she’s hoping one day maybe it will elevate my housekeeping to the realm of “good,” or at least, “okay.” So far…notsomuch. But I really love the magazine, so I hope she doesn’t give up on me just yet.

I was going somewhere with that…Oh, yeah—short story. Got it. Anyway, it was about this woman who runs away from home. She checks into a hotel, orders room service, goes to the spa, watches whatever the heck she wants on tv without anyone complaining that Suite Life on Deck is on and it’s an episode they’ve only seen 17 times. She actually—get this—puts her dishes out in the hallway for someone else to wash when she’s through with them. And she gets to eat her own dill pickle spear without three sets of forlorn eyes begging her for it. And she can have a glass of wine at lunchtime because she’s not going to have to drive to pick anyone up from school. Her family calls to ask when she’s coming home…and she tells them she doesn’t know.

In the end, of course, she packs her bags and catches a cab to the airport, where I’m certain she must have had a few lemondrop martinis before boarding. She probably convinced herself that her family would have a renewed sense of appreciation for her when she returned, that they would start putting their own dishes in the dishwasher and feeding the dogs without having to be repeatedly reminded over the course of 3 hours.

And I’m pretty sure she was right…for a day or two.

Up until last June,  I hadn’t spent a night away from my kiddos in nearly 14 years. Hadn’t woken up to a child-free house, hadn’t gone a day without somebody calling me from across the house to come wipe at least one body part. So when one of my writing buddies asked if I was going to the Writers’ League of Texas annual Writers and Agents Conference, I couldn’t help but feel that twinge of exhilaration at the thought of going off on my own for a few days. A hotel room. Alone. No noise. Nobody calling me to come wipe anything.

So I went. And it was wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that when it came time to pack my bags on Saturday night, I was a little sad. I missed my family terribly—I called home several times a day just to hear their voices. But I could have used one more day—just one more day of quiet. I spent a few hours that last night just sitting on the bed doing nothing. It was blissful.

Back at home the next day, I was greeted by an offensive-line worthy rush at the door. There were some shouts of “MOMMY!!!” and “yea!!!” and “I missed you so much!” There were eight arms wrapped around me and a couple of sets of feet trying to climb up me. And somehow I managed to hug all four of them at the same time while dragging them to the couch for some much-needed snuggle time. It’s amazing how much you can miss somebody—a bunch of somebodies. And we haven’t even gotten to the ‘welcome home’ I got from The Hubby yet. And we’re not going to, either.

So maybe I don’t want to run away. I mean, these people might drive me crazy at times, but I love them. Fiercely. I’ve got a pretty sweet gig. Not a day goes by that they don’t prove once again how much God must love me to have planted me squarely in their midst. And while I realize I need some alone time now and then, for the most part, whatever I do is better when I do it with them.

But if I suddenly turn up missing, you might want to check Starbucks….

It is March. I realize that may not be a newsflash for most of you, seeing as how it’s been March for a while now. But I have to stop and think about things like what month it is. I was just wondering this morning why they don’t put a little digital calendar on vehicle dashboards. I mean, my rearview mirror tells me the temperature, which is not only useless—I mean, once I’m in my car, it’s a little late to say “oh, 34 degrees, guess I’ll be needing long sleeves and warm shoes.”—but a little mean-spirited, don’t you think? I’m already stuck in traffic and the only radio station that’s not on commercials is playing Gordon Lightfoot and I can’t reach my Santana CD because it slid down on the passenger floorboard and the baby is screaming because he wants me to hand him Curious George which wouldn’t be a problem if I was all stretchy like Mrs. Incredible and if he wanted Curious George then why the heck did he throw him in the way-back, AND you have to remind me that when I get wherever it is I’m going I’m going to be walking across the parking lot with 4 kids in 34 degrees?

But the date, now that would be helpful. Having “March 8″ displayed on my dashboard all day might allow it to sink into my subconscious—or maybe even into my conscious, although I highly doubt that—so that later on when I need to know what day it is I might just possibly be able to at least get the month right.

But I digress….

The reason that March is so significant is that The Hubby and I first met and began dating in March. At least, I think it was March. I’m fairly certain it was. It could have been February, but it would have had to be late February, because we weren’t together on Valentine’s Day. I’m almost positive it was March.

And this March marks the 24th anniversary of the date we met. Twenty-four years. Wow. That’s considerably more than half my life. Well, not considerably more. Somewhat more. A little bit more.  A smidge, really.

There’s a kind of interesting story behind how we met. And I fully intend to share it with you. Eventually. I’ve been trying to share it for days. A couple of weeks, if we’re going for accuracy here. But every time I try to sit down to the keyboard, someone throws up, or walks in with an eye full of goop that needs to be cleaned, or I go to get Mason up from his nap and realize that he’s nowhere near over his stomach virus. My absolute first priority has been working on the adoption fundraising, but I really haven’t gotten much accomplished, because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time wheedling and cajoling a certain 10 year-old moppy-headed boy to take his medicine. And once everyone settles down, there’s the growing pile of  laundry that inevitably follows any plague outbreak.

So I still hope to share the story of how The Hubby and I met before our anniversary month is over. Seriously. Eventually….

I had planned to do it yesterday. Actually, that’s not true. I had planned on spending the day with my manuscript, seeing as how last night was my writers’ guild meeting and I hadn’t picked out a scene to bring for critique. In fact, according to my word-processing program, I haven’t touched the electronic version since January 10. Whew—good thing I’d have an entire day to work on it. Then I realized that we were going to the zoo, and “going to the zoo” and “sitting at my kitchen table reviewing my manuscript” are pretty much mutually exclusive.

So, the zoo it was. Now, it is worth mentioning that not only is it Spring Break—and we home schoolers know to avoid public places during spring break—-but yesterday was 1/2 price day at the Zoo. Unfortunately, sometimes having two in public school and two in home school means that you have the worst of both worlds—especially when it comes to taking weekday field trips during the school year. And with the adoption costs looming over our heads, I am loathe to let go of any money on non-essentials, so there is no way I can justify spending $52 to go to the zoo on a full-price day. The only way I let myself talk me into going on 1/2 price day was by reminding myself that we have asked the kids to sacrifice our yearly vacation to visit grandparents and cousins and hang out on the beach—the highlight of any non-Disney year—-so that we can put that money towards saving this little child.

So I decided that if we left early enough, the crowds wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, I figured “early enough” meant “in time to arrive about the time the zoo opens.” In reality, “early enough” was probably about an hour before opening. But I didn’t know that at the time, so we’ll discuss it later, when it fits into the whole storyline.

I already had our food prepared, clothes picked out—hey, for me, that’s some monumental preparedness. Like, Boy Scout caliber preparedness. I got the kids up—–now, in retrospect, this is where things started to go wrong. The child who takes twice as long to do anything—no, three times as long—-didn’t get out of bed when we told him to. This is coincidentally the child that invariably causes some sort of chaos and discord just as everyone else is walking out the door. There is always a grimace, or a moan, or some sort of melodramatic outburst intended to elicit “Oh, gee—whatever is the matter” from the other residents of MoTopia. Either his only pair of clean jeans isn’t comfortable (since-forever-I-have-always-hated-these-jeans-I’ve-told-you-a-thousand-times-I-hate-them), or he can’t find his shoes and yes he put them back on the shoe shelf someone else must have moved them and it doesn’t matter that nobody else has a motive for moving them—–I mean which one of us would want to move his shoes KNOWING what trauma it would inflict on the entire family?—- or oops he forgot to go to the bathroom when he woke up so now we’re all going to end up sitting down and waiting for 15 minutes because for some reason this kid can’t take care of business in less than 15 minutes….you get the picture. And for the record, all of those things happened yesterday morning, plus a few more.

So, finally we got in the car—only 10 minutes behind schedule—and headed to the zoo. Now, I knew the zoo would be crowded. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Spring Break + 1/2 price admission = catastrophe.  But hey—we’d be there around the time the zoo opened. It would be all those losers that showed up an hour AFTER opening who would suffer.

Five miles from our exit, the electronic TxDOT sign over the highway declared, “Expect delays at University exit.”

Guess what exit goes to the zoo….

No, not AT the exit, by the way, but three miles BEFORE the exit, traffic slowed to a crawl, and the two right lanes froze.  And the traffic remained sloth-slow all…the…way…to…the…zoo.

I think we parked in a neighboring city. We hiked 20 minutes to the zoo entrance behind an elderly couple who were all lovey-dovey and wanted to walk side-by-side. I hope The Hubby and I are still all lovey-dovey at that age. I also hope we are cognizent enough of our surroundings to walk single file on narrow pathways. The first chance we had to veer off, we did, beating the crowd to the entrance plaza where we joined about 25,000 other people waiting to get tickets. Funny thing about 1/2 price day during spring break—-families with one or two kids, they figure the savings isn’t worth the headache and go another day. No, only families with four, five, six children—-or extended families who take bring all their aunts and uncles and cousins and grandma and grandpa—those are the families that say hey, we’re all about 1/2 price day. I know this because they were all in front of me in line.

At some point during our visit, the zoo reached capacity. Evidently, “capacity” is Latin for “good luck getting through here with a stroller, Loser.”  

But we really did have a fabulous day. The weather was perfect, and I had girded myself with major prayer on the way there. Chicken Little had a few anxiety moments when the other chickens failed to recognize the difference between situations requiring side-by-side-handholding and single-file-hand-on-the-shoulder-of-the-person-in-front-of-you. But in the end, she rose to the occasion, and I couldn’t have done it without her help. I reminded them all that today was about making family memories—-the good kind, not the kind that come from unplanned trips to the ER (are there planned trips to the ER?).  And we did a great job. We kept our cool, enjoyed each other’s company, and braved the crowds.

By 4oclock, we had seen everything we wanted to see. We’d even splurged an extra $8 to ride the train to save our tired feet from the 10 minute walk across the zoo. Of course, we had to stand in line on those tired feet for 45 minutes waiting to board the train. But Mason loves trains, and was completely blissfully happy for the entire 3 minute ride.

The 20 minute walk back to the car was infinitely more tortuous now that our feet hurt and our bodies were done with walking.  When you have four children, it is inevitable that you are going to hear the words, ”I can’t walk any further! I’m going to sit down RIGHT HERE. I MEAN it!  I (sniff) can’t (snuff) go on (sob).”

And for the record, Riley reminded me that since I’m the only one with a driver’s license, that really wasn’t an option….

I was little, maybe 4 or 5. It was a black bat—the old fashioned plastic kind, with the vinyl adhesive eyes that you peeled off & stuck on yourself.

It was the coolest kite in the world.

And technically, it was mine. I mean, if you’re talking ownership, as in, ‘Daddy, will you buy me a kite?’ ‘Sure sweetie. Which one do you want?” So maybe in a court of law  I would have been declared legal custodian of said kite. But from a practical standpoint, if you define ownership by who’s holding the string, notsomuch….

“Is it my turn yet, Daddy?”

“Just let me get it a little higher for you.”

“Now?”

“Not yet.”

He emptied the first spool of cotton kite string, then tied on another.

“Now?”

“Just a little higher.”

It was just a black speck in the blue expanse. I worried that it would hit a plane. I worried that it would get too close to the sun and melt like the wax on Icharus’ wings, or worse—-that it would burst into flames, the fire traveling down all 600 feet of string, instantly incinerating my father (what—you thought my overactive imagination was a recent phenomenon?). He told me to not to worry. But I did. Sure enough, the string began to slacken and fall lifelessly to the ground, and I watched in despair as the coolest kite in the world disappeared. And I never even got a turn.

I cried.

He drove me around the neighborhood for a little while. Every crumpled black trash bag crouched by a chain-link fence elicited a cry of “There it is!” But it wasn’t. I know now that he knew then that we weren’t going to find it. It was one of those parental exercises intended to placate childhood grief and assuage parental guilt.

I bought Ramie a kite yesterday. It was a reward for letting me administer eye-drops. Actually, she lobbied for Great Wolf Lodge, but I’m saving that particular bargaining chip in case I ever need to bribe her into getting an enema. No, I told her, the appropriate incentive for eye drops is a small toy, $5 max.

Ramie has unfortunately inherited my inability to make a quick decision. She is ruled by a drive to make the perfect decision instead of settling for a perfectly good decision, which often leads to no decision, which is usually even worse than a mediocre decision. She agonized over the array of choices: bubbles, a giant magnifying glass, toy spice jars for her play kitchen. After much tortured deliberation, she chose a pink and purple kite, emblazoned with that ambassadress of unrealistic body-image expectations, Barbie herself. 

“Can I hold the string, Mommy?”

“Not yet, sweetie. Let me get it up in the air first.”

“Now?”

“Not yet, honey. Let’s get it up in the air, and then you can hold it.”

“But Mom, you’re having all the fun.”

“Ramie, I’m doing the hard part so that you can hold it once it’s up.”

“But I want to do that part.”

As parents, we have all kinds of opportunities to live vicariously through our children, many of them destructive. But this—–well, this was the best and most blessed of opportunities. Here before me lay the opportunity to get this right, to see in my daughter’s eyes the unbridled joy and victory that I had wanted a share in that day at the park with my father.

I handed her the spool, explained lift and slack, explained that if she got it high enough, it would catch a current that would keep it flying even when we didn’t feel any more wind on the ground. I showed her how to pull on the string if it started to dive. “And,” I told her, “if it crashes, we’ll just try again.”

But it didn’t crash. Turns out my little Mei-mei has some mad kite-flying skills. She’s got the instincts, that one does. Launched it on her first try, and flew it for a solid hour. I watched her run from the back yard around to the front of the house, the quintessential picture of childhood ecstasy.

“It’s pretty high, isn’t it Mom?”

“Yes, baby. It’s really high.”

“I’m actually kind of good at this.”

“Yes, baby. You’re really good at this.”

At her request, I ran into the house to fetch big brother & big sister to come see. Truth be told, I had to fight the urge to run up and down the street knocking on doors, calling “Come look what Ramie did—ALL BY HERSELF!!!”  If we lived in the suburbs and it weren’t so far between houses, I might have done it.

My dad and I had lots of fun when I was a kid. But I think there were probably many times when he used my childhood as an opportunity to relive the childhood he didn’t have. When my father was only 4 years old, his mother was hospitalized. He never saw her again. The fragile string that tethered her frail body to this world broke, and she flew away.

His older sister was shipped off to live with the maternal grandparents, and my dad’s paternal grandmother and aunt moved in to help care for him and his twin sister. His father worked two jobs. He didn’t have the luxury of hanging out and flying a kite with his son.

“Mom, my arm’s tired. And I’m hot. And thirsty. How do we get it down?”

“Would you like me to get it down for you?”

As I wound the kite string, bringing Barbie’s ginormous head back down to earth, I didn’t mourn for the 4year old girl who never got to fly her own kite. Instead, I mourned for the father who never got to watch his 4 year old daughter fly her own kite.

We can spend our time and energy lamenting the mistakes our parents made. We can analyze our various neuroses and shortcomings and trace them back to the dysfunctions of our upbringing. Or we can embrace them, learn from them. We can choose to shrug our shoulders and say, “It was what it was,” and move on.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t go get a kite of my own….

I haven’t posted in a while. Rest assured, it’s not because the chaos took a vacation. No—inherent in chaos theory as it applies to my life is an inverse relationship between the intensity of the chaos and my ability to document it.

The plague has descended upon MoTopia. Two weeks ago, it was Mason’s respiratory infection that landed him on antibiotics and steroids.

Last week, again it was Mason’s turn, with a stomach virus that manifested itself in the southern hemisphere. It hit on a Monday night and lasted for the next 4 days.

Wednesday, he woke up with his left eye cemented shut.

Thursday, right eye.

Friday, I thought all was well and sent him to school.

Saturday, still seemed fine, so we went to a birthday party at the Home of the Big Gray Rat. I am convinced that the entire place is an experiment in juvenile germ breeding, ChuckE’s own twisted plot of rodent revenge.

Saturday evening—Ri has two friends over to spend the night.

Saturday night—Ethan complains of a sore throat, which we attribute to the fact that he played Raging Ape for 45 minutes. If you’re not familiar with this particular family attraction, here’s the 411: a fiberglass gorilla, and two metal rods that vibrate to simulate some sort of scientific shock torture experiment device. The object is to hold on to the poles for as long as possible, despite the fact that you can feel your dental work beginning to work itself loose.

It amazes me that the same 10 year old boy who can’t down 2tsps. of bubble-gum flavored Motrin without 45 minutes of screaming, wailing, and thrashing can manage to overcome his aversion to discomfort and actually endure this torture device on the expert level. Maybe I should start spitting tickets out of my mouth when I need him to take his medicine….

Sunday morning: I am still thinking all is well. Mason is a little quieter than usual, but he’s probably still exhausted from running around ChuckECheese for 4 hours, right? My friend comes over to pick up her girls from the sleepover. She’s a baby person. She loves Mason. She needs very little encouragement to pick Mason up and hold him, which he takes full advantage of. Mason expresses his heartfelt gratitude by sharing his highest expression of esteem, a lovely raspberry blown right into her face. I comment that I heard recently that cold germs are not spread by spitting, because they are not found in saliva.

Sunday afternoon: Mason is yawning and clingy, too tired to eat, so I take him to his room to put him down for a nap. As we sit cuddled up in the rocking chair, he begins to cough. Not a throaty, respiratory cough. No, it’s more of a deep, gagging kind of—

I jump out of the chair and run to the bathroom sink. I’m a little too late, and I realize it’s been quite a while since I’ve been covered in vomit. To tell the truth, I could have gone another 2 or 3 years.

Mason throws up a couple of times over the next hour. I call my friend to say, “guess what?” I figure I need to give her a heads up, because even though cold germs are not spread by saliva, I’m pretty sure that every other germ under the sun—including and probably especially the kind that make you throw up—are.

Mason and I snuggle in The Hubby’s recliner, the one I never liked and didn’t want to buy and he never sits in because he prefers the couch. But at this particular moment, it’s pretty comfy. We doze on and off over the next couple of hours.

Sunday evening— Ethan can’t swallow. His throat hurts. I shine a flashlight down his throat, because The Hubby says looking down throats with flashlights isn’t his department. I don’t see anything that makes me suspect strep. A little red, a little swollen, no Carlsbad-Caverns-worthy stalactites or anything. But he assures me that the absence of crusty white formations at the back of his throat is no indication of an absence of pain. He assures me of this not so much in words, but more in kind of a “OOOOwwwwwOOOOowwww….I hate my life… OOOOwwwwOOOOwwww” kind of way. 

At some point, as I’m making dinner for a bunch of people who are too sick to eat, I look over and realize that Mason-the-perpetual-motion-machine has been lying on the recliner completely motionless for a while now. Panicked, I rush across the room to make sure he’s conscious. When he sees me, the corner of his mouth barely pulls back into the faintest hint of what wants to be a smile. I pick him up, and we settle onto the couch with Riley, who feels shivery and weak, Ramie, who feels nauseous, and Ethan, who feels shivery and weak and nauseous and swears that he is going to rip his throat out with his bare fingernails.

He’s a trifle dramatic, that one….

I pour him a shot of Motrin and try my best to ignore him as he rather vociferously proclaims that he absolutely canNOT take the Motrin, that he HATES the Motrin, and that I just don’t understand the fact that the Motrin is so absolutely disgusting that if he tries to drink it, he will throw up.

I tell him to submit his flesh to his spirit and drink the medicine.

What do you know…he was right.

As I’m yelling, “Get outside—open the door and throw up outside!!!” I hear the cessation of footsteps that tells me he is frozen in place, and that no amount of yelling is going to unfreeze him. I keep yelling anyway, even as I hear the telltale “SPLAT” on the stained concrete floor. Meanwhile, the little lethargic bundle that is Mason is still snuggled up on my lap, so I can’t get up to look. Not to worry, though. I have Ramie. “Look!” she announces, “Ethan’s vomit made a heart!”

…to be continued. If, that is, I make it through the rest of the week….

I am sick… 

and…. Well, you know the rest. If you don’t, then you need to go buy Bill Cosby’s Himself.  My all-time favorite stand-up routine. I’m talking about laugh-until-you-can’t-breathe funny. Doubled-over-in-tears funny. Seriously, if you’ve never seen it, consider yourself comedically deprived. If you have seen it, feel free to post your favorite lines in the comments. 

Image from Amazon.com

But seriously, I am really sick. Major chest congestion, relentless cough. Those of you who’ve birthed a few babies no doubt understand how terrifying the term “relentless cough” is. For the same reason that I no longer jump rope, I live in fear of being caught off guard by a surprise coughing fit before I have a chance to cross my legs. Those of you who have as yet not offered up your bladder as a prenatal trampoline or had a part of your body referred to as a “canal” are laughing at me. Go ahead. Your time will come. And when it does, maybe I’ll be old enough to have finally surrendered to the joy that is Depends, and you won’t be laughing anymore—not because you feel sorry for me, but because then you’ll realize that laughing is right up there with sudden coughing. Not so funny anymore, is it?  

Where was I? Oh, yeah–I was right here, in my fuzzy pink leopard robe, with my unwashed hair (washed my face, though—huge sense of accomplishment) and my Halls throat lozenge.  

In addition to being sick, I am (here it comes…) tired. Oh-so-very-tired. Exhausted, really. Comatose, bordering on lifeless corpse. Yesterday afternoon about 5pm, I was smiling to myself because any minute He of The Cute Knees was going to walk through the door and deliver me. Being the wonderful man that he is, he would surely send me to my room (which is where I wanted to go in the first place… Some of you get that. The rest of you seriously need to watch the DVD…) and tend to the children. Then the phone rang. My bliss-bubble didn’t burst right away, because The Hubby offered to run by the grocery store on his way home. He always calls from the grocery store to find out what I need.

Sometime between my giddy “Hello?” and The Hubby’s heavy sigh, all that changed. Something that was supposed to work wasn’t working, and whatever was supposed to fix it wasn’t fixing, and the remedy for a non-fixing fix is for Mr. Fix-it to find a feasible fix to fix the faux-fix. Which translates into “all-nighter.” So I handled the witching hour—I mean, the evening family time—on my own: dinner, dishes, refereeing, 15 minutes of WWF-worthy wrestling that we call “the diaper change”, and bedtime.When I finally got all the kids in bed, I was exhausted.

I slathered on a dollop of Vicks vapo-rub, popped a coconut Dum-dum in my mouth to ward off the cough (thinking that I could safely fall asleep, on account of while I could feasibly swallow a cough drop in my sleep and wake up dead, I don’t think I could actually swallow an entire lollipop, stick and all), bundled up in my robe and multiple blankets, cursed the fact that I’ve never followed through on my plan to fashion a nosewarmer out of a Breathe-right strip and Polartec fleece, and collapsed into bed. 

About 2am—I know it was 2am only because later, Riley asked The Daddy what time he finally got home, and he said “2am”—The Hubby finally made it home. I didn’t hear him come in. I didn’t realize he was home until he tried to take the lollipop out of my mouth. 

Evidently I screamed. 

 Turns out he wasn’t so sure about the whole not-being-able-to-choke-to-death-on-a-lollipop-on-account-of-it-having-a-stick-attached thing. He has evidently learned not to underestimate my ability to achieve the impossible.

It was sweet, really—The Hubby caring for me, worrying for my safety, making sure I don’t wake up dead.But somehow all I can think about is how totally and completely unsexy I must have looked, wrapped up in my pink fuzzy leopard robe, lollipop in my mouth—do you think it’s possible to fall asleep with a lollipop in your mouth and NOT drool? yeah, me neither. And by the way, I’m sure my mouth was probably wide open, seeing as how I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Which means that in all likelihood I was making some sort of sleep-type noises that if they were to come from The Hubby would be called ‘snoring,’ but which were totally not snoring because I’m a lady, and ladies totally do not snore—even when they can’t breathe through their nose. Oh, and don’t forget the icing-on-the-proverbial-cake, the fact that I reek of eau d’ Vicks Vapo rub.

Oh yeah, he wanted me….  

The really frustrating thing is that I have a laundry list (oh crap—do you have any idea how much laundry is piling up while I’m throwing my little pity party? And you can’t donate dirty clothes and then just start over with new ones. I know–I asked someone once, and they said you definitely can’t do that) of ‘to-do’s  for the adoption, none of which are becoming ‘done’s. There’s nothing funny in this paragraph. I just had to rant for a second. 

Sick and tired; tired always followed sick. I am both.

 And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Bill Cosby DVD to go watch. With my legs crossed….