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 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….

The clothes Mason was wearing when the bus brought him home were not the clothes I put on him this morning.

That should have been my first clue that this day was not going to be the one that would break the chaos streak. The Emergency Change of Clothes only sees the light of day in the event of a wardrobe emergency (hence the catchy title). You don’t really want to see them any other time. I mean, if they were cute clothes they’d be neatly folded in the drawer (Fine–you want honesty? They’d be wadded up in the basket of clean laundry in my master bedroom floor. There. I admit it. Happy now?). The reason you designate them the Emergency Change of Clothes and stuff them into a gallon zippy bag at the bottom of the backpack is that you don’t really care if you ever see them again.

But there Mason’s were, enjoying their unanticipated day of freedom, begging the question “why?” First off the bat, I should never wonder why. The answer is never something like “he grew two inches between story time and snack, so we thought we’d see if these were a little bigger,” or “the other kids felt small and insignificant in the light of his cuteness, so we thought we’d put the ugly-clashy outfit on to make them feel better.”

We waved goodbye to Mason’s private busdriver and headed down the driveway. This is traditionally the point at which in inclement weather (which we’ve had more than our fair share of lately) I begin trying to manipulate–I mean convince–Mason into going inside. It also happens coincidentally to be the point at which regardless of the weather Mason says, “No. Lololo.” Which translates to: “No thank you, I do not wish to go inside. Conversely, I would like to sit on the porch swing, where you will sing my favorite swinging song, ‘High and Low,’ forty-three times while you hold me on your lap upside down and let the dog lick my face.”

Now, I happened to have in my pocket a chunk of fresh, homemade bread that I’d been snacking on while I was waiting for the bus. Mason loves bread. So after fourteen refrains of “High and Low” and thirty seconds of doglick, I brought it out and took a bite. Mason slid off my lap and eyed the bait–I mean, bread.

“Bledt?”

“You want a bite?”

“Mmm-hmm!”

It wasn’t a very big piece of bread–enough for two Mason-sized bites. So soon he was asking for more.

“All gone. You want to go inside and have more bread?”

“Okay. Bledt. Bye Jake.”

Brilliant—my ploy had worked! Warm, dry house–here we come! With Mason tailing me, I opened the front door and hurried to babyproof the living room—bedroom doors shut, nightlights removed from the hallway, babygates closed. I heard the front door slam shut and turned around to see….nuttin’.

I’d been duped! I threw open the front door to catch a glimpse of Mason’s jacket disappearing around the front of the house. He had a fifteen foot headstart–I could easily overtake him.

Now, I’ve told you about the evil barbed demon stickers that grow on our property. Because of these incidious weapons of the plant world, outdoor shoes are verboten on the carpet. Which means that when I dashed into the hallway to remove the nightlight and pull the bedroom doors shut, I kicked off my shoes before stepping onto the carpet. In my haste to eat away at Mason’s headstart, I didn’t take the time to put them back on.

Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except that fifteen feet was enough of a lead to land Mason onto the driveway—the caliche driveway (for those of you unfamiliar with caliche, it’s a Spanish term for “great big white rocks that cause crazybad pain when stepped on barefoot”)–before I caught up with him. I held my breath and managed three long strides in an effort to catch him with a minimum of the crazybad pain thing.

Just as I stepped back onto the friendly, smooth surface of the parking pad, the 14 year-old appeared, bearing houseshoes. It may be the thought that counts, but let me tell you–the thought doesn’t stop the bleeding.

Anyway, I wrangled him into the house–which thankfully was already babyproofed–and let him crawl into the highchair while I got him more bread, of which he would ultimately eat only two more bites. But before he got tired of the bread, I pulled out his school correspondence folder to solve the mystery of the Emergency Change of Clothes.

The note read simply: “Mason’s diaper leaked through to his pants. We also had to change his shirt, because he was playing in the toilet.”

You would think that would really freak me out. But you have to remember that this is the same child who licked the tire while I was unlocking the truck. And the same child who has licked every basket handle in SuperTorture. And WailMart.  I figure he’s tasted every germ known to the Western world and then some. The whole thing is kinda liberating in a way.

So there I sat, me and the note, which I am supposed to sign and return in his folder….

“Dear Mrs. B, You are probably looking for the note about why Mason had to wear his Emergency Change of Clothes. It is tucked safely away in his keepsake box, where it will wait until such time that I need an instant source of embarrassment. Thank you for loving my son despite his superability to disappear out from under your nose in an instant, despite the fact that he is 4 and not yet potty trained, and despite his nasty spitting habit. I am so thankful that you are his teacher, and that you have yet resorted to duct tape as a means of containment. I will continue to pray for your sanity each morning when I drop him off, as I’m sure you do for mine when you send him home. Yours truly, Mason’s Mommy.”

Once upon a time, I considered writing self-help books. Only problem was that I’ve never really been good enough at anything, and I’m fairly certain you have to have mastered the topic in question before you can credibly impart your wisdom to others.

But in the midst of this chaos and ineptitude that I live with on a daily basis, I do occasionally find isolated gems of wisdom that—while they don’t completely elevate me to the status of “ept”—make me at least feel like I have something to offer to make the world a little better place.

1.  Quit teaching your kids to “cover their cough/sneeze with their hand.” I know, it’s what they told us to do when we were kids. But when you think about it, spraying your bodily fluids into your hand is even more germalicious than just spraying them into the air. I mean, a kid (or a grown-up) sneezes or coughs into their hand, and then proceeds to touch doorknobs and shared markers and desktops and waterfountain buttons and faucet handles, not to mention other kids. Eeewww. 

Solution: Cough into the crook of your elbow. You hardly ever see people going around grabbing stuff with the crook of their elbow, right? 

2.  While we’re on the topic of germs, next time you’re in the produce section, watch a mom as she picks out apples. Chances are she won’t just grab five apples and drop them into her bag. No, she’ll carefully consider each one, turning them to inspect for bruises or holes, and in the process she’s bound to touch nearly every apple in the bin before selecting her five.

You know where her hands have been? I have seen mothers (guilty whistling) change diapers in their car before they head into the grocery store. Most moms are also obsessive about the cleanliness of the various orifices in their children’s heads, and will attend to such hygeine before taking their little darlings into a public venue. And I’m going to tell you something else: when it comes to anti-bacterial hand gel, we all see it as something that protects US from other peoples germs, so the liklihood that someone is going to squirt on some sanitizer BEFORE going into the store is about 0.0004%.

I’m not trying to dissuade you from eating produce. But when you think about all the people who’ve touched it (not to mention the people who actually picked it—they don’t have restrooms with hot running water and soap out in the middle of the orchards), doesn’t it make sense to scrub it with a little soap and water BEFORE you eat it?

3.  “Neil Diamond” and “Barry Manilow” should never be mentioned in the same sentence, unless the connecting words are “…rocks way harder than….” And that really doesn’t make sense, given that Barry Manilow doesn’t rock at all. If you doubt the veracity of my statement (the part about Neil Diamond, not the part about Barry Manilow. I mean, the fact that Barry Manilow doesn’t rock isn’t exactly up for debate, right?), then you obviously haven’t dipped your toes any further into the greatness that is Neil Diamond than “Sweet Caroline” and “Forever in Bluejeans.”  So before you mock me, go old school. Do a YouTube search on Solitary Man; Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show; Cherry Cherry; You Got To Me; Kentucky Woman; Thank The Lord For the Nighttime; Holly Holy. Until then, it’s really not up for debate.

4.  DRIVERS: Pedestrians have the right of way. Especially pedestrians crossing parking lots with three children in tow and one more on their hip. You are in a climate controlled vehicle listening to your choice of tunes on your CD player. They are walking in the heat and humidity or the cold or the rain or the wind, listening to the sounds of children who have already begun the begging even before they’ve crossed the threshold. Yield.

5.  PEDESTRIANS: When crossing a parking lot in front of a waiting car, would it kill you to walk STRAIGHT across the lane instead of DIAGONALLY? I mean, we all remember that the hypoteneuse of a triangle is longer than the base, right? And while I’m on the subject—I’m not saying you should actually run, but if you slow down on purpose just because you know I have to wait for you…well, I guess there’s not really anything I can do short of running you down. But lets just say that if while your ambling across the road in front of me a grackle poops on your head, I’m going to laugh at you and not even feel bad about it. So there.

6. The word “with” is a preposition. It begs for an object. Please, be kind to poor neglected “with” and give it the object it so rightly deserves.  Should I explain? Okay: “Do you want to come with?” My head nearly exploded just typing that. Junior year of high school, my English class dared Mrs. J to say “ain’t” after learning that she had never uttered that simple, maligned syllable. Ever the good sport, she did–and in the process had a complete conniption fit. I thought someone was going to have to get the nurse. Now I know how she felt. It’s just wrong–”with…..me? them? the nice police officer?”  Some rules are just set in stone….

There you have it, 6 principles that could drastically improve life on this planet. Or at least challenge me to find new things to complain about….

Okay, I’m going to come right out and cop to the fact that I really don’t know what the word “zen” means. I think I have some vague concept, but my grasp is tenuous at best. I just really wanted to use it as a post title.

I’ve been wallowing in self-pity the last couple of days. I have officially cleared the first hurdle to being an actual novelist: my first rejection letter. Actually, it was an e-mail, one of what I’ve been told are the scores–possibly even hundreds–that await every novelist. And it would probably be more accurate to call it the second hurdle, because I’m fairly certain the first hurdle was actually writing the novel.

While I’ve been wallowing, a big ol’ Texas sized brisket has been sitting in the bottom of my fridge, waiting to fullfill its destiny of becoming a mouth-watering thing of beauty on a dinner platter. I just haven’t been in the mood. I’m in a “fix yourself a bowl of cereal and call it dinner, kids” kind of mood.  I’ve made grilled cheese sandwiches twice this week–only the second time I added ham and pretended it was a whole different thing. I haven’t had the energy to think about the brisket.

For one thing, if you do a brisket right, it’s a little time consuming. First, you have to rub it all down with your own special uber-secret recipe brisket rub. If you’re out of uber-secret brisket rub, first you have to concoct more, THEN rub it down. Then you have to sear it all over. If it’s a whole brisket—which this one is—you really need to cut it in half or even thirds first. Or second—after concocting and prior to rubbing. See, I told you it’s complicated.

And the only pan I own that’s big enough to sear a whole brisket–even one that’s cut up into several pieces–has these big handles that come up on each side, and at least once during the brisket-searing process, I will forget about those hot, metal handles and the whole exercise will suddenly become a forearm-searing process, after which my children will go around calling me “Emo” for several days.

Then there’s the matter of the gravy. That’s right, you heard me. Gravy. Don’t get me wrong–I love me some bbq sauce. But for my brisket, I use the drippings—savory sweet chipotle drippings—and whip up a batch of sweet chipotle brisket gravy. My family would look at me like I’d served unfrosted cake if I gave them brisket without gravy. But it is, like the brisket itself, a labor of love: one which involves the same pan and more forearm searing.

But it’s not just the time commitment. There’s also the matter of the spirit of the brisket. To me, brisket is a celebration. It can be as mundane as celebrating that we’ve survived another week without a trip to the ER, but there’s gotta be some celebrating. I don’t feel like celebrating right this minute.

One of my wallowing rituals–which is a direct result of the fact that evidently Fall released a sneak preview, which has been playing all over North Texas since Saturday— has become sitting on the front porch swing with my mug o’tea several times a day to reflect. It’s one of the veryfine things about living in the country–lots of quiet, punctuated only by crickets and birds.

But this morning when I sat down—-which I did only after thouroughly checking the swing for black widows, which is one of the notveryfine things about living in the country—-there was a whole lot of something going on at the neighbors. Lots of cars–I’d say close to twenty. That many cars at 8:30am is never a good thing.

Turns out, the grandfather is really sick. Really, really sick. As in might-not-make-it sick. Mesothelioma. He has surgery scheduled in a couple of weeks. The doctors hope that it will give him a few more months to a year, but there’s a big chance he won’t survive the surgery.

Dang.

Not only that, but these kids just lost their other grandfather a few weeks ago.

Dang again.

Amazing how our troubles shrink like shadows when exposed to the light of someone else’s. I’m reminded of the words of Psalm 118, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Life is a celebration, each and every day of it. We exist day-to-day along a continuum between grief and elation. Hopefully, we’ll spend more time toward the latter. But in all our circumstances, there is cause for rejoicing: the love of friends and family, the providence of the Creator. Sunsets and singing birds. In good times, we inhale joy through our experiences; in bad, we exhale it in the form of the memories that sustain us. But in all things, let us find our way to the celebration.

Okay, I guess I’m done wallowing, or reflecting, or whatever I want to call my little pity party.

Because there’s a family next door that needs a brisket.

So the traffic clears, and now I’m explaining to the children that Elvis Presley did NOT sing Purple People Eater when I look at the clock and realize that because of our lunch stop at Chuy’s (I should really be getting some kind of kick-back for the promo) and the traffic jam in San Antonio, our five-hour drive from Austin to The Valley is going to take us eight hours. IF we don’t stop for potty breaks along the way (quit laughing–it could happen). Lovely….

Three pit-stops and 4,863 choruses of “Well I saw the thing comin’ outta the sky” later, we pull into the in-law’s driveway. The kids are bouncing with excitement to see their grandparents. So am I; my in-laws are awesome! I just wish they lived, well…somewhere else.

Every year as we prepare for the trip, I ask The Hubby to please talk to his dad about throwing some bromine tablets down into their cistern to kill the mosquitos. See, they have this old cistern left over from the days when there were no city services in their neighborhood. It serves two purposes: one, it makes my MIL’s yard an oasis of greenery in an otherwise barren landscape, as the ivy and various flora thrive on the moisture; and two, it provides a never-ending source of mosquitos. So this year when The Hubby finished talking to his parents on the phone, I asked not-too-optimistically, “Did you talk to him about the bromine?” He forced a smile and answered “Dad said there aren’t any mosquitos this year.”

Which would be great, except there are never any mosquitos any year. Until we get there, evidently. In the time it takes us to get from the driveway to the living room, Ethan already has six angry red welts rising up on his limbs. I assure him that my incredible mommy-foresight has led me to already write “Caladryl” on our shopping list for tomorrow.

The next day we head out for Torture. I mean Target. Although when you have four kids in tow, there’s really not much difference, is there? The Hubby tries to convince me to settle for the much-closer Wail-Mart, but I hold out. Then we pass a brand-new SuperTorture only a few miles away. I’m ecstatic–SuperTorture is way better than RegularOldTorture. Too late. The Hubby’s internal GPS is set on the old Torture, and resetting it to turn left HERE instead of continuing on 7 miles, exiting, turning right, and winding through three parking lots is only an option with the upgraded model. Which is, of course, out of the question (because this model is really, really cute). I smile. I’m on vacation. No worries, mon.

Now, the whole reason for the shopping trip–which is an annual tradition in and of itself–is that when you travel 560 miles for 10 days with 4 kids and 3 food allergies, you need your own food. Food that is available at SuperTorture. But not at RegularOldTorture. Horizon Organic Milk, people–is that too much to ask? Yes, yes it is…. I scrawl my list of “everything-I-couldn’t-find-and-will-have-to-run-to-Wail-Mart-for” in the margin.

As far as my children are concerned, the only reason to step foot inside a retail establishment is if there is the promise of visiting the toy department. The other 127,000 square feet are just wasted space. The 5 year-old is bored and wants to know when we’re going back to grandma’s. The 10 year old is angry because I won’t let him have a soda. The 4 year-old wants my undivided attention, and to get it he starts pulling clothes off of the racks onto the floor. And all the while they are narrating, soundtracking, and announcing. So my head is filled with “This is boring. When are we going to grandma’s? Why do we have to be here? Can I have vanilla milk? Look–that sign says….” and “bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-POP! POP! POP!” and “Mama…mama…mama…mama…mama…”

And they’re following me….

By myself, I have a hard time staying on task. You may have seen me in the grocery store–I’m the one talking to myself: “tomato sauce, cheese, Triscuits…tomato sauce, cheese, Triscuits…tomato–oh look, yogurt’s on sale!” Armed with a list I am still unable to achieve higher than a 87% task-completion rate. Add 4 children to the cart and I’m done for.

So by the time we’ve covered the whole store, I am a nervous wreck. Mason has messed up my hair and pulled off one of my earrings. Twice. The Soundtrack is fed up with The Narrator and is telling her so. The crease that runs down the bridge of my nose is deeper, and the left corner of my mouth is twitching uncontrollably. Then Mason decides he doesn’t want me touching HIS shopping cart, and procedes to pull my hands off of the cart handle shouting “NO! NO! NO!” At this moment, I am thinking what a waste of space having a Starbucks in Target is, and how much more relevant a tequila bar would be. A tequila bar with drop-in child care.

Ethan, my 10 year-old with a heart-o-gold, takes a break from fighting with his sister, steps up to the plate and says “Mom, I’ll push the basket for you.” That might be just what I need. I cede cart duty to my son and proceed to precede the basket.

It is worth mentioning at this point that one of the hallmarks of Down syndrome is “ligament laxity.” Basically, it means that their joints fit together loosely. In practical parenting terms, it means that they have the ability to reach behind them–far behind them–without rotating their trunk, enabling them to grab objects undetected. Objects like, oh…I don’t know…let’s say a six-pack of Sam Adams.

CRASH! Glass breaking, beer splashing, the other three kids screaming. Chaos. Complete and utter chaos. Except for Mason. He is a little island of tranquility, intently watching the reactions of the rest of his family. And why not? His work here is done.

A sea of red shirts descends upon our chaos with rags and mops and buckets. Which is kinda funny, because The Hubby is actually wearing a red shirt, so I’m sure passersby think he’s a slacker-employee, watching the rest of his teammates work while he watches. But I have to admit, the only thing I was thinking at the time was that only five of the six bottles broke, and since they weren’t labled for individual sale they were going to have to toss that last one anyway, so would it really be inappropriate for me to ask if I could have it? Because at this point I really needed it….

Next time: The actual reunion: Mason chasin’ and the rules as they apply to marriage and concussions….

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. If you haven’t, please don’t tell me–I’m kinda fragile that way. Let’s just both pretend that you missed me, and everything will be fine.

I have just arrived back from our annual 8-day mega-pilgrimage to the Rio Grande Valley, only this year our 8-day pilgrimage was actually a 10-day pilgrimage due to a family reunion that required us to be safely landed and unloaded at my in-laws by Friday. And technically I haven’t just arrived back; we got back three days ago, but it took me a while to unpack my mind. Same with my suitcase.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the mega-pilgrimage. Every year (hence the ‘annual’ part) we pack the Suburban up to the roof with four kids, twice as many outfits as we’ll wear, half as many DVDs as the kids will require, and two-weeks worth of food to satisfy the various food-issues, and set out on a trip that used to take us 10 hours back before we had kids, but which now takes about 4 hours longer and must be broken into two days of pure mind-clawing torture thanks to the efforts of the Soundtrack, the Narrator, and Ferris Beuler’s Teacher.

You’ve already met the Soundtrack and the Narrator (…with Liberty and Justice for All). Ferris Beuler’s Teacher (FBT) is a 30-pound public address system whose greatest fondness lies in repeating names over and over. Due to sheer probability I’m the target 87% of the time. In action, it sounds something like this:

“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Mama?”
“What?”
“Mama?”
“What is it, dear?”
“Mama?”

The game usually culminates in the target yelling “WHAT DO YOU WANT CHILD?” which is immediately followed by the target being reminded that she is an adult and really needs to remain calm. Which is in turn followed by some snarling and pouting and some daggers being shot from eyes and the words “He started it.”

By the time we completed the first leg of our journey, half of the passengers of the Suburban were ready to strangle the other half, and the feeling was pretty mutual. We spilled out of the overpacked vehicle into the tranquility of my sister’s house on what used to be Lake Travis (and is now a giant sandpit), ready to infect her abode with our chaos.

Now, my hubby is not at all the superstitious sort, but he nonetheless believes there is a certain travel curse that follows me on vacation like the blue-gray smoke out of a 1972 Buick Regal’s tailpipe. According to him, anywhere I go there is bound to be drama, injury, and (of course) the requisite chaos.

Never let it be said that I would disappoint the hubby.

Within moments of entering the house, Mason made a bee-line for a huge framed print on the other side of the great room. He’s fascinated by object d’art that hang on walls, and is obsessed with the notion of freeing them from their seeming captivity. Either that or he figures it would make a pretty cool crashing sound. Seeing him reach up toward the frame, I sprinted across the room to stop him. At full speed, my left foot hit the new blue area rug, which had apparently been purchased from the Acme Cartoon Rug store. The edge my foot was planted on skidded across the floor to meet the opposite edge where my son stood on tiptoe, reaching for the frame, the expanse between the two edges rippling like oversized corrugated metal. Arms poised to the sides like a surfer on a blue shag wave, I skidded to a less-than-graceful stop, while Mason found himself landing with a ‘thud’ on his diaper. Of course, in the process I managed to pull every muscle on the left side of my body.

After my brother-in-law assured me that the frame was so securely mounted to the wall that not even Mason could dislodge it (which I highly doubt…), and after a wonderful meal of grilled chicken sandwiches and a much-needed Shiner, the brother-in-law brought out my niece’s set of stacking blocks. Titled “Attack of the 50 Foot Baby,” each cube-shaped block is made of heavy-duty laminated cardboard, open at the bottom, designed to look like part of a high-rise building with hysterical scenes of people carrying out various absurdities (like bathing cats or throwing TV sets out of windows). When stacked, they reach a combined height of about three feet. But of course the point of the game is for the 50 foot baby to knock them down–a game Mason excells at, I might add. It was funny to watch, right up until the open edge of one of the blocks caught me in the face, driving my upper lip into the edge of my front tooth with the force of…well, I can’t think of a witty comparison, but it was something with a lot of force–enough so to leave me with a busted, bloody lip.

Curse: 2, Me: 0

Obviously, the problem was that Mason had been cooped up too long–first in the car, now in the house. A walk would cure all our ills.

One doesn’t take Mason for a walk. One follows Mason and tries to keep him from eating strange plants or picking up spiders or making dirt angels. So Mason led down the excruciatingly-steep hill to the boat dock, and I followed. And then carried him back up when his little legs proved unable to make the journey. He ran down the road, I followed. Again and again. And again. It started to rain, much to Mason’s delight, and there was no convincing him to head back toward the house, so I had to carry him, writhing and wailing all the way.

I have been told more than once by self-proclaimed experts on the matter that Croc flip-flops should never, ever be worn on wet surfaces. Given the source, I figured it was more a alcohol issue than a footwear issue. My theory was dismissed the minute my foot hit the front porch.

There is a motherly instinct that will keep a child safe even at the sacrifice of the mother’s own body. As I went down, that instinct wrapped my hand around Mason’s head and twisted my body so that I took the force of the fall…directly on my already-blown-out right shoulder.

As I lay dazed on the cement, Mason uncharacteristically calmed by the commotion, I realized that the only thing worse than the pain that told me I had now pulled every muscle on the right side of my body was the fact that my sister and brother-in-law, in their infinite attention to all things that epitomize style, had a full-length glass entry door that allowed the hubby a perfect view of my performance.

In case you’re keeping score: 3-0. Not in my favor. And we’re only 6 hours into our vacation….

I wish I could tell you it ended there, that the rest of our trip passed by in blissful uneventfulness. But then, that would be someone else’s blog now, wouldn’t it?

To be continued….

So, this is where the journey starts.

Well, the journey started a long time ago. But this new chapter–this celebration of the chaos that is my life–begins here.

Every blog seems to embrace a theme of some sort. There are the ‘how-to-be-frugal’ blogs, the ‘ways-to-do-it-better’ blogs, and the ‘can-you-believe-you-ever-lived-without-this-jewel-of-information’ blogs. Blogdom is a world rife with opportunities to improve your status-quo.  Everywhere you turn, at your very fingertips lies a wealth of information to facilitate better living.

This ain’t that kind of blog.

I wish it were. But the truth is, I don’t have it together. I aspire to, but there’s always something getting in the way. Every once in a rare while, I find that I’ve managed to craft  a tenuous  illusion of togetherness, but then I sneeze or a child falls off of a piece of furniture that was never really intended for standing on in the first place, and the ethereal vision vanishes, like fog on the bathroom mirror when you turn the blow dryer on it. (You didn’t know that? Consider it a freebie. And a fluke).

No, I can’t help you do it better or cheaper, or look better while you do it cheaper.

What I can offer you is a frame of reference, a bar set so low that, on your worst day–the day that you catch the baby eating dog food and your new, uninsured cell phone falls in the toilet and nobody took a nap and your husband calls to say that he’ll be at least three hours late and you’ve looked in all three refrigerators and what’s the point of even having three refrigerators if there isn’t any beer in any of them–hypothetically speaking, of course–that on your worst day, you can stop by, enjoy a laugh or two on me, and go back to your life knowing that in this crazy, chaotic world, there is one person you are more together than.

Fair enough? Good. Let the journey begin!