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 directing today’s message directly to the male of the species, specifically to those who inhabit a dwelling shared with one or more females of the species.

It may have thus far escaped your notice that we women are plumbed differently than men. This difference in equipment dictates that we do not have regular occasion to lift that ring of contention known as “the toilet seat.” That’s not to say that there aren’t those among us who, at some point during our formative years, didn’t experiment just to revel in the liberation of  carrying out certain necessities of nature while standing upright. But such attempts are generally one-time occurrences, being met with varying degrees of failure  and subsequent clean-up efforts.

And coincidentally, it is the very topic of “clean-up efforts” that concerns us today. For you see, having but rare motivation to lift the seat, those of us who lack a Y chromosome are ignorant—perhaps blissfully so—of the ecosystem which from time to time lays claim to the territory below. In fact, it is generally a great shock when we do find ourselves exploring the porcelain realm of man and discover the proliferation of flora and fauna establishing their colonies like coral along the Great Barrier Reef.

While diversity of life is to be celebrated in the ocean or the rainforest, the underside of the toilet seat is a different matter entirely.

It’s called a Clorox wipe. Would it kill you to use it?

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….

I read a book last week.

Seriously–I did. Cover to cover. Including the prologuey-intro part. I had to lock myself in the bathroom to do it, but I read it.

No doubt you are asking yourself, what book could be so riveting that Ashley finally broke her longstanding record of not managing to read anything longer than SkippyJon Jones? Well, I’ll tell you, because I hate to keep you in unnecessary suspense.

The book is My Bangs Look Good…And Other Lies I Tell Myself: A Tired Supergirl’s Search for Truth, by Susanna Foth Aughtmon.

Right off the bat the title had me hooked, because there is a reason why I don’t wear bangs. Just sayin’.

Now, I have to tell you—this woman is my soul sistah. Case in point: in relating a story of an unfortunate laundry injury, Aughtmon writes, “I always knew the laundry was a tool of Satan.” OHMYGOSH—ME TOO!!! Can I get a “AMEN,” fellow soul sistahs?

Aughtmon’s writing is fresh and conversational. Her anecdotes are you’d-better-read-this-with-your-legs-crossed-if-you’ve-given-birth-more-than-once funny. But it’s not just a collection of funny stories. See, each chapter addresses a different lie the Liar (that would be Satan) uses to defeat us Tired Supergirls (oh— when you read the book, you get to be a member of the Tired Supergirl club. I mean, there’s not like a form to fill out, or an official membership card stuck between page 12 and 13 or anything like that. It’s like a secret sistahood of superness. And tiredness…).

On the subject of whether God really cares about each of us as individuals (because you know the Liar would love to have us believe that He doesn’t), Aughtmon uses the example of  her love for her own children:

“I am surrounded by three small people almost all day long…they still tend to cling to my legs or lie on me or breath very near to my face almost every day. Every once in a while I just yell out, ‘Everybody give me some room!’ This works for about 3.7 seconds, and then I am back to being swarmed. But the thing is, I would do anything for these three little people. I think about them almost all the time. I will do kung fu on anyone who tries to harm them. (I don’t even know kung fu, but I’m sure it will come to me if and when I need it.)”

 I personally like the image of Jesus breaking out the spiritual kung fu on my behalf.

One of my constant struggles is hearing God’s voice. Sometimes I think that because it took me so long to finally submit to listening to Him (okay, in the interest of truth and accountability and stuff, the whole submitting thing is still a work in progress. Don’t judge.), that my ears aren’t tuned in to Him like they should be. I am easy pray for the Liar when he says (in Susanna’s words): “Obviously, God has someone else he would rather talk to. There are certain people that he talks to, like pastors and small group leaders and Beth Moore, and then there is you. You? Not so much.”

Of course, God has given us the truth in His word. In each chapter, Susanna cites applicable scripture that speaks to the tired supergirl’s heart to confront the lies.

Many of my friends—not just my real life, hug you on the way out of church friends, but those sweet cyber-friends that I am so blessed to have met through the blog and the FB Down syndrome community—have told me, “You need to take everything you blog about and put it into a book.” I love when people say that, because it makes me feel all loved and validated and stuff. And I’d love to write a book like that, if I ever finish the novel I’m {THIS CLOSE} to finishing.

But while you’re waiting (and knowing me, it could be a long wait), you should totally check out My Bangs Look Good. Just don’t forget to cross your legs….

Seriously, go get the book. It’s available NOW at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Oh, and from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/goodbangs  And in the meantime, you can check out Susanna’s blog, Confessions of a Tired Supergirl. It’s on my blogroll, over ———-> there.

So, I promised that I would tell you the story of how The Hubby and I met during this, the month in which I am more-or-less certain the anniversary of that event takes place. I have since realized that I have actually failed to fulfill two similar promises regarding other stories since starting this blog. This is becoming an ugly habit. So I figured I’d better actually follow through this time.

The short story is that I won him. Seriously. Would I joke about true love? I won him fair and square…in a flirting contest.

I mean, he didn’t know it was a contest. And truthfully, it didn’t start out as a contest. But it ended up that way. And he was the prize.

It was my senior year of high school, and I was working retail. I had been dating a guy from work for several months. We’ll call him…Steve. No, that’s no good because I actually dated a Steve once. Let’s call him…Sam. I never dated a Sam, at least not that I remember.

So Sam and I went out and hit it off and started dating. To me, it was that last relationship before graduating from high school and moving away to college. Sam, however, put in for a transfer to a store in the town where I was going to attend college and started talking about apartment shopping together over the summer. Luckily, my manager pulled me aside and asked me how I felt about this, and assured me that he wouldn’t let the transfer happen. Whew, close call.

Sam also asked my best friend—-we’ll call her Darby, because I’ve always liked that name and The Hubby never would agree to name one of the girl-children Darby—- to find out my ring size and help him pick out an engagement ring to give me for Christmas. Now, call me shallow, but at 17 years old I had no problem being engaged until summer and then breaking up. Darby, however, wasn’t tuned to the same station. She informed Sam that I wasn’t going to marry him, because I was going to be a doctor (she was always convinced that I was going to be a doctor), and I was going to have to devote all my time to my studies and that he would only hold me back. In essence, she broke up with him for me. Which I would have thanked her for about six months down the road, but back in December it was a little premature. Not to mention the fact that she never actually ran the whole thing by me ahead of time.

So instead of an engagement ring, Sam bought me a necklace. All I could think of when I opened the box was, “Dang, this was supposed to be a ring.” I know, shallow. I was only 17—are you telling me you wouldn’t have thought the same thing when you were seventeen?  I bought Sam one of those mitzpah charms—you know, the coins cut in half that read “The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from another.” I worked in the jewelry department, and during the busy Christmas season, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to shop.

Evidently Darby’s little lecture bothered Sam, because a few weeks after Christmas he had the nerve to break up with me because—–get this—- he said I was getting too serious about the relationship. Are you freaking kidding me?  Did he honestly think that Darby didn’t tell me about the ring? Which I threw in his face—I mean, the story about the ring, not the actual ring, since he didn’t actually end up buying a ring….

Anyway, that’s where I was at the time—about a month past the breakup with Sam. So one evening, my friend…Gigi and her friend…Lola and I decided to go out dancing. Gigi had the major hots for another guy we worked with…Manfred. Lola had a thing for …Bert. And I was still in my “men are whacked” phase after the whole Sam incident. So Gigi and Lola convinced me to swing by Manfred & Gary’s apartment (should we have some cheesy soap opera music in the background? I’m an anti-fan of blog music, but at this moment I’m really tempted…maybe I’ll just hum), only Manfred and Gary weren’t there. BUT their roommate P….Pete was there with his friend G…Gulliver.

No, that’s just wrong. I can’t write a story where I end up with a guy named Gulliver. I know—we’ll call him Mo.

Okay. So…Pete’s friend Mo…okay. I’m caught up. So Gigi, Lola, and I convinced Pete and Mo to come dancing with us. Now, here’s the thing you need to know about Gigi. Gigi was one of those girls who views every man she gets within 12 feet of as a potential husband. I had already seen her scare off a handful of potential husbands during the hey-we’re-not-even-dating stage. But she and Mo ended up sitting in the back seat, and I thought—Hmm, maybe they’ll end up liking each other. That was a good deal for me, because then I wouldn’t have to always be listening to Gigi complaining about not having a boyfriend, or watching her send yet another perfectly nice guy running for safety.

Now, when we picked the guys up, it was dark, so I didn’t get a good look at Mo. But when we stepped inside the club—well, lets just say I revised my whole try-and-fix-Gigi-up plan. Gigi and I took the traditional team walk to the ladies’ room, where she promptly exclaimed, “Oh my gosh—did you see Mo? Isn’t he GORGEOUS?” To which I replied, “Mmm-hmmm.”  Gigi took the opportunity to remind me that I had JUST gotten out of a relationship, and that it was her turn.

Turn? I wasn’t aware we were taking turns….

“Don’t you DARE flirt with him, Ashley. I mean it. He’s mine.”

Now, there’s just something about the word “dare,” isn’t there? It’s loaded. And I had no idea my flirting skills were so legendary.

“Look, we don’t even know if he’s” interested in either of us. I’ll make you a deal—NEITHER of us flirts, and we let him decide.”

So we struck a deal and walked back to our seats on either side of Mo. I thought he looked like he was about to turn his head my way, maybe strike up a conversation. And then Gigi grabbed his arm, and I saw the gauntlet fall to the floor at my feet.

“So, Mo, you’re from the Valley? I’m from Puerto Rico. We have palm trees in Puerto Rico. Are there palm trees in the Valley? I miss palm trees. I miss Puerto Rico. Have you ever been to Puerto Rico? You should go sometime. You could come visit my family—”

Now, somewhere around the word “so,” I realized that Gigi might just be the one person on the planet who could outtalk me. Outtalk, maybe. Outflirt? Never. So I did what any self-respecting victim of a breach in the no-flirting pact would have done….

I kicked off my shoe and started playing footsies with him under the table.

Hey, she had to come up for air sometime, and when she did, he turned to me and asked me to dance. The rest, as they say, is history.

I saw Gigi a few years back. We hadn’t seen eachother since I left to go to college. She noticed my ring–”Oh, you’re married?” I held it up high. You don’t think I’m so petty I would rub it in all those years later, do you?

Of course I would. All’s fair in love and flirting wars.

So I suppose this makes him my Trophy Husband….

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….

Cold.
My fingers, my toes
And especially my nose.

Cold.
The floor, the toilet seat,
The water when I brush my teeth.

Cold.
The air that stings my chapped, dry skin
When I get out of the car—garage door opener’s on strike again.

Cold.
The Hubby’s mood when I wedge my frosty feet
Between his warm (and famous) knees.

Cold.
I can hardly wait till Summer’s here
So I can complain to all who can hear—

—about heat….

Yes, it is still cold. And I am still whining about the fact that it is cold. What’s more, we were supposed to get more snow this week—THEY promised us snow—and we didn’t. What good is cold without snow? Good for getting out of a nice warm bed and dragging the children to school in the cold, that’s what.

I have a lovely contingent of Great White Northward friends (both the contingent and the friends are lovely, in case you were looking for clarification) who say (with what I think is just a hint of sarcasm) “You should move to Canada.”

No, I’m fairly certain I shouldn’t. Maybe I could spend summers there, when it’s…oh, say…113degrees here in North Texas. Sure, then I’d take it.

I mean, I come from Canadian ancestry, tough Kanuck stock. You’d think I’d be genetically predisposed to dealing with the cold. Makes sense to me. The fact that my father drove a race car has always allowed me to believe I’m genetically predisposed to be an awesome driver. Which I totally am. In racing, the occasional wreck is all part of the sport.

But cold, no. Didn’t get those genes. I don’t know that any of my ancestors came from anywhere particularly known for temperate weather. English, Scotch (neat, thank you), German, Swiss, French, French-Canadian… Maybe my French ancestors came from the French Riviera—it’s warm there, right?

Of course, the irony is that I don’t like hot weather, either. When I was younger, I preferrred cold weather to hot—-because, I reasoned, you can always put on more clothes or blankets, but when it’s hot—well, you can only take so much off before it’s just you and your sweat. And then you’re still hot.

But the older I get, the more cold is not just uncomfortable, but downright painful (and evidently I’m getting older by the minute if the fact that I just used the word “downright” in a sentence is any indication). My nose actually hurts. My fingers and toes get so cold that every little stub and bump is magnified a hundredfold. The base of my spine actually hurts when I walk out the door and that first shock of cold air hits me. And my back is in spasms from the constant shivering.

I have tried the “put on more clothes and blankets.” I have slept in a shirt beneath a sweater beneath a heavy winter robe, with thick fleece pajama pants, socks (two pair), and houseshoes, under a blanket (which I wrap underneath my double-socked, houseshoed feet) and a sheet and a bedspread and another heavy blanket, only to realize that the blankets are just insulating my cold feet like a koozie wrapped around an icy Shiner Bock. Not that my feet are bock; they’d be more Shiner Blonde, but I prefer Bock, so I’m stickin’ with it. And no amount of bundling and blanketing has as of yet resolved the icy nose problem.

I happened to have a brainstorm one frosty night, realizing that the rice-sock heating pads (long tube socks. Fill with plain–not instant–white rice. Tie end. Microwave 3 min. You can thank me later.) could be molded around my face, providing much needed warmth in the central area where my nose is known to reside, without actually surrounding me in a carbon-dioxide cocoon of death. But then my kids came over and said, “Cool—you found our rice socks! Thanks, Mom! You’re the best!” So now the 14 year old has my shiny blue iPod AND my rice sock….

…which I am totally about to go swipe now that I’m sure she’s sound asleep….