A Wolverine Makes Her Nest

The kids and I live in a spacious, three bedroom house that I feel bad for. Really, I feel bad for any house I live in because deep down inside, despite my best intentions, I want to destroy them all.

I have two sisters who can make any space beautiful. I've seen one of them move into a moldy, shag carpeted studio apartment, and after one weekend of placing the right pillow here and the right bleach-soaked rag there she made it a clean, welcoming little abode that smelled like a cross between vanilla cupcake and functionality. Both of my sisters are the type of cleaners that would look great in a commercial about vacuum cleaners or chemical disinfectants. They could walk through a house, and counter tops and bath tubs would glow clean at their touch. At my touch they would turn into bowls of three day old macaroni and cheese.

I don't know how I got the messy gene where when I see a clean space I feel itchy all over. I went to an art opening a couple of weeks ago, and when my friend Sean and I stepped into the bright, sterile studio I wanted to walk right back out. The white floor, white walls, and the shiny silver chairs were blindingly bright. The art on display, kimonos made out of glass beads, hung from the ceiling on wires that you couldn't see. They were beautiful shirts with no one inside them, like garment ghosts floating in stasis with their arms spread to offer a hug they couldn't give. While Sean was attracted to their beauty, I felt like I couldn't breathe.

This is how I feel whenever I go into someone's house where everything is just a little too nice and in its place. My first thought is "Touch nothing" and my second thought is, "Ok, what's wrong with these people?" Seriously, that's what I think.

Sean argues that a person's outside space reflects their inside space, so if their house is a wreck then they're a wreck inside. If they have a lovely, well-kept home then they've got it together in their head. This is not the impression I get. When I walk into a messy house I feel like I have a handle on what's going on with a person. "An old pair of pants and a bowl of cereal are top of the television. AWESOME. This woman has nothing to hide about how busy, poor, and disorganized she is." How do I know she's poor? Because she can't afford a new, flat television. You can only stack cereal bowls on the old ones. I know this...'cause.

So conversely, when I walk into a house where all of the nice pants are in their polished dressers and the organic cereal is in the box where it belongs and the organic almond milk with fish oil supplements is in its proper container in the refrigerator which is in a newly redone kitchen that's fully up to date with a year warranty in case something breaks and has a smart, skinny television on the marble top counter, next to a sign that says, "Live, Laugh, Love," then I begin to wonder where they keep the horse porn. Because clearly, these people have something to hide.

Don't worry, I'm fully aware of how messed up this makes me, but I'm also aware that I'm frequently right. Though I'm a terrible house keeper, I'm a good listener and you'd be amazed how many seemingly together people open up after they have a few glasses of wine and begin to tell me how, after 18 years of being a lawyer, they've always wanted to be a drag queen and they make up for this loss in their lives by changing from a business suit to a sparkly dress at the end of the day and going to pick up other men while their wife waits at home in their immaculate house. Live, laugh, love.

But does this mean that just because some clean people live a double life, I should let my own place accumulate pants and bowls of cereal until the state has to come in and wrap yellow tape around my house? No. It just feels genetically impossible for me to properly nest anywhere.

Because for me the problem isn't just cleaning. It's deciding where things go. You can't necessarily keep everything in its place when nothing has a place. I have lived in this house for seven months now and I'm still trying to decide where to keep the ironing board. Right now it's by the laundry because it seems like that's where it should live, but it's sandwiched precariously between the table with all of the clothes on it and the dryer and every once and a while it falls over because it's standing on clothes that have fallen from the table onto the floor, so its on a bumpy surface, and while my clean sisters would have picked up those clothes by now because they have the right genes, I just keep standing the ironing board on top of the pile because my genetics tells me that I don't have time to deal with floor clothes. In fact, just imagine that every piece of furniture I own is standing on top of a pile of laundry and you'll have a good idea of what the inside of my house looks like.

The worst part is, I'm passing this on to my children. The other day I picked up Claire from school and instead of getting in, she leaned into my window and asked if we could give her friend Francois a ride.

"Uh," I said. "The car's not exactly presentable."

She peaked into the back, then looked at me. "It's not that bad. I'll just shove the spoons and the skirt under your seat."

And the sad thing was, she was right. For my car, it wasn't that bad. There were only a couple of spoons and Emma's uniform skirt in the way. No comic books, half-eaten food, bills, or coffee makers back there. Just three items that are now under my seat. Because I still haven't taken them inside.

Despite all of this, I am little by little making my house a home. Because for the first time, I live in a house that I love. It's old and has tons of character, and as my youngest sister who used to clean houses for a living once said, you can never fully clean an old New Orleans house. The stains never completely come out. I love old stains and scars on a house, dents where a kid might have rammed his tricycle into the wall in 1922, graffiti from a teenage girl in 1934. Since I love that type of stuff, I do not feel compelled to destroy this house. I won't put holes in the walls, or peel down strips of paint until the walls look like their shedding or crying.

But getting to the point where I can invite someone in to sit without having to move a blanket, a toaster and a hamster out of the way first is another story. That, I'm still working on. I mean, I guess if I wanted to I could blame it on the kids but I know that the problem is me. My whole adult life, whenever I've moved into a new place I've always felt like a wild animal forced to make a nest in a doll house. Maybe that's why there's newspaper, straw and twine all over the floor. It's like bedding at the bottom of a cage.

No Gen, you say, you may not make a nest out of twigs, leaves and saliva. You're a HUMAN. You make a nest out of particle board furniture and candles. And that weird wrought-iron thing you find at Pier One that isn't really art, but it makes for an interesting design on the wall, like a question mark suffering from appendicitis. See, that's all you need, you can have a normal house.

No. No, I don't think I can. I think if I came home and found my house looking like that I'd have no choice but to gnaw on the walls like a beast. So maybe it's best that I put art and concert posters up instead because they feel more like me. With no clothes hanging off of them. That way if Claire ever invites Francois over we won't scurry around the house shoving pets and trash under the couch. I'll lick my paws, and comb out my fur, and then Claire can introduce me.

"Francois, meet my mother. She's part wolverine. Look, there's a portion of the couch she hasn't chewed! We can have a seat, lemme just move these bowls..."

Five Hamsters Starring in - NOT a Sales Pitch

....And now we have five hamsters.

There! That's the end of the story! That's all the explanation you need, right?....No? You need to know why we have five hamsters living in individual cages? Well, it's because they'd either breed or kill each other if we kept them all in the same cage. Oh, you want to know why I have five hamsters in the first place when we already have a turtle, a dog, a rabbit, and a fish? Ok, here's the time sequence:

1) There was light.
2) There were five hamsters.

That's the Biblical version of what happened. Here's the godless version:

1) Emma's dad gave her two hamsters that were living at his house.
2) The hamsters went on a date.
3) The girl hamster gave birth to 14 babies.
4) Emma's dad began to travel with work and could not care for the animals.
5) Emma looked at me with big, sorrowful eyes and asked if we could take care of the babies until they were old enough to go to the pet store.
6) No local pet store would take them because they didn't have their shots or some other stupid reason.
7) Five babies were given to good homes, six escaped into the yard, and three are now fully grown and have built their own homes. In my house.
8) Their parents are still with us and are not allowed to date. Each other or anyone else.

I'm still asking around to see if anyone would like one or more hamsters, complete with cage, but no one's taken me up on the offer. I don't understand. Sure, they're just a step away from rats and if they escape you will find droppings for days, but they're so fluffy! They're like live pillows with eyeballs.

A hamster is the kind of pet that I wish I could put in a tuxedo. I think it's because they're so fuzzily delightful, they make me want to do humanizing and thus degrading things to them to accentuate their cuteness, like when you see a dog in a sweater. The dog in the sweater thing is so old. How often do you see a hamster in a sweater? Not often or possibly ever but if you did, that hamster would setting cute records that a dog could only dream about.

Have you decided to adopt a hamster yet?

So, as you know, our pet count in my house fluctuates depending on the breed, lifespan, and the timing of a cat's speed vs a passing car. Right now we have:
1) Lily the dog
2) Ginger the rabbit
3) Ishmael Fishmael Herman Melville the Third - a goldfish with impressive credentials
4) Lightening the turtle
5) A hamster
6) A hamster
7) A hamster
8) A hamster
9) A hamster

Actually, we have named the hamsters now that we're sure that they're ours and no one wants them. Are you the type of person who falls for people or things that no one else wants? NO ONE wants them! NOOOOBODY! They're so cold and alone on the fringe of society! They just need a shoulder to crawl on, a hand to nibble, a house other than mine! Well, maybe I'm projecting with that last part. But ok. Their names are:
1) Bolt
2) Twilight
3) Brownie
4) Thor
5) Ulysses

Guess which ones I named? The kids wanted to call Ulysses "Scamp," but when he was a baby he went missing for three days and showed up just as we'd given him up for dead. He went on an epic journey, fought a cyclops, was hailed by sirens, and...did whatever else the myth describes. Only he knows what those things are. Anyway, after that ordeal I decided that he'd earned a grander name than "Scamp." Plus, I hadn't gotten to name one yet.

And if you took him into your home for FREE you could hear all about it. He doesn't speak English, but I believe that he tries to communicate through whisker twitches. I would take the time to learn it, but with the other four hamsters twitching their whiskers all at once it gets loud in there. Kind of like being on a bus. Full of hamsters with moving noses.

I named the other one Thor because he runs around with a little hammer. Does that affect your decision to take him? Well, he doesn't smack things with it. He fixes things around the house. In fact, yes YES all of the hamsters were named for a unique capability. Bolt is fast, so he can take you places on time. Twilight can tell you stories about sparkly vampires. Brownie bakes sweets. Thor is a handy man, and Ulysses is a sailor/adventurer who will fight a cyclops for you.

So now that you've decided to take any and maybe even all of our beautiful, handy hamsters, please write to me at this address:
12345 Hairball Plaza
Cage Shavings, LA 6789101112

But won't the kids miss them you ask? Maybe we should also do a roll call of the other critters in my house, since it's been a while.
1. Claire - human female, 14, listens to music and is chronically bored.
2. Emma - human female, 12, plays with all of the animals that her siblings have little to no interest in, makes art and avoids homework.
3. Christopher - gamer male, 10, plays video games, also avoids homework. His job is to eat and get taller.

So Emma and I might miss them a little, but since the animal to human ratio is beating us I think we could afford to lighten the load.

That address again is:
1000 Whiskers Blvd.
Oh My God Take Them, LA

Well, I can't put my address on the internet! Sigh. Could it be that I really do want to keep the hamsters, now that I've named them and nursed one of them back to health after he returned from an epic journey, gaunt and gasping for corn and sunflower seeds? Well. Maybe. Maybe I'd miss them a little. Besides, I am starting to learn their whisker language. And I did tape broom straws to my face that one time so I could twitch back. And Brownie is a good cook.

So...does anyone need piles of discarded fur? We've got bails of them. It would make a fetching sweater for your dog.

The Skaterboys and Momma Lame

Last week Christopher got a skateboard, and his mom ruined it by making him wear a helmet. What an insensitive bitch....oh wait, it was me. WELL! Look, I grew that kid, I saw to it that he had an intact, functional head and I would like to see it remain unspoiled until it comes such I time that I must let go and watch him do something brain-damaging like join the army or play football or get into World of Warcraft. But until that day, if he's going to attach himself to a board with wheels then he's going to wear a helmert.

Yeah, you might say, but then you took him to the skate park...What's wrong with the skate park? NOBODY wears a helmet, knee pads or elbow pads at the skatepark. When you went the other day you, Claire, Emma, and Christopher stood at the edge of the cement and watched 7 teenage boys rolling up and down ramps, leaping over picnic tables and ollying over things, and (you noticed) with no protective gear. In some cases not even socks. It was mortifying.

 Claire, mortified for different reasons, took one look at them, pointed to a tree in the park across the street and said, "I'm going to go read over there."
"Mom," Emma whined. She was wearing her rollerblades and, reluctantly, her helmet, elbow and kneepads. "Nobody else is wearing this."
"Well, they're supposed to," I told her and pointed to the sign on the wall behind us. "It's in the rules."
"MOM," Emma stressed in a "I can't believe you just pointed to the rules sign" sort of way.
"Em, go skate."
"But they're gonna think we're weird," said Christopher.
"Guys, I'll bet you they're not thinking of anyhting but their own stuff. Seriously, they're skater boys, they're not football players. Skater boys ARE weird."
"They are?" Christopher said.
"Honey, that kid is wearing a tubesock on his head."

It wasn't really a tubesock. But it was dirty white and so thin that it stuck up at the top like the tip of a skinny balloon that doesn't inflate all the way. "This park is for everyone, not just them. Go ahead, you'll be fine."
Timidly they rolled away from me under the awning and toward the cement slab where there were ramps, tables, steps that led nowhere, and a long gray metal pole that was low to the ground. Nobody used it, but I imagined it was there to give someone a head injury.

At first my kids just skated in circles around me. The older boys made them nervous, and honestly, I would have reacted the same way as Claire at her age, and just left. I wasn't a skater though, and neither is she. Emma and Christopher are. We don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood, and I'm not comfortable with them on the street, especially since Christopher is just learning. A skate park, by definition, seemed to be a good place for them to go.

The boys did leave them alone. In fact, they barely looked at them, but the threw nervous glances at me. Maybe they noticed that I pointed to the sign, and thought, "Shit! She's going to make us obey the sign!" Or maybe they thought, "Shit! Now I can't talk about my nuts." But they were wrong. I'm probably the last person in the world who would be offended by anyone talking about their his nuts - within reason. Talking about them in relation to me - no. Talking about them in general - yeah, that's fine, I don't care. I talk about my nuts in general and I don't even have any. Swearing and crude talk is fine as long as the talker isn't being a jerk. They must have gotten a feel for this because eventually when it became clear that I was not going to call their mothers for saying "Damn, I squashed my nuts!" they stopped looking at me funny and went back to skating and swearing. I didn't care, I wasn't their mother.

I was more focused on not running up to help my kids when they fell, which was a big deal for me. Christopher is going to have to squash his nuts if he's going to learn anything and I'm going to have to deal with that. After a while, when it appeared that the Skater Boys were not going to hang them from ramps by their wedgies, Christopher and Emma began skating all around the park, and even went up a few of the ramps. When they slipped and fell, I laughed. They weren't bad falls, and they were funny. You don't know how funny your kid looks until they roll up a ramp, panic, try to turn around, come to a complete stop, and then fall over.

When it was time to go, and Claire rejoined us she said, "How'd it go?"
Emma said, "We fell and Mom laughed at us."
"You were funny!" I said, and did an impression of of Emma flopping over.
Claire laughed until she remembered to be embarrassed by my behavior and abruptly stopped.
"So Mom," said Christopher, unbuckling his helmet. "Next time we come here, can we not wear this stuff?"
"No, you are wearing the gear. You are wearing the gear for the rest of your life."
"Mooom!" Emma and Christopher whined.
"It's true. Accept it."

They're still fighting me on it. But they're also still falling, so their arguments don't carry much weight. They never will, because even professionals who practice all the time still fall. They will still wear helmets and I will still laugh at them. That's the deal.

Bacchus and Christopher

A few nights ago, Chrsitopher's friend Bacchus slept over. His real name is something Biblical, so I decided to change it to something pagan for good measure. He and Christopher both go to the same school, which is a Christian school that, in the interest of privacy, I will call St. Zeus's Academy for Future Gods and Goddesses.  Bacchus is a small, skinny kid with black-framed glasses, and I swear I will marry this boy off to one of my daughters if I have any say in the matter. Not only is he incredibly smart and makes good grades, which I attribute to the power of his glasses, but when I picked up he and Christopher in aftercare, we had the following conversation:
"Hey, Bacchus," I said, strolling into the gym, which is where they keep the Future Gods and Goddesses of aftercare. "You ready to come to our house? Do you have all your stuff?"
"Yes. And I have the one thing that every sleep over needs..." he knelt in front of his school bag and reached inside. "Duct tape!" he said, brandishing the silver roll.
"Uh...what are we going to use that for?"
"I don't know. Just in case something comes up."

This enthralled me. What could come up that was duct tape worthy? A flat tire? A broken Wii remote? Thirst? I spent most of that evening asking Bacchus if we needed the duct tape.
"Bacchus, I'm parking the car. Do we need the duct tape?"
"No, Miss Genevieve."
"Hey Bacchus, I'm out of butter for the pancakes. Do we need duct tape?"
"No, Miss Genevieve. That would be gross."
"I suppose. What if I broke a plate? Could we use it then?"
"Yeah, I think so. Is there a broken plate?"
"No. Not yet. You're being too careful with it, look, it won't break that way. Don't set your plate on the table. Set it on the dog."
"I don't think she'd like that."
"Ooooh! Fine. Keep your duct tape, I don't need to see it in action."
"Christopher," he said to my son, who has had nine years to get used to me. "Is your mom always like this?"
"Yes," Christopher said.
"Ok. I like it," said Bacchus, pushing his glasses back.
That's how this kid talks. Monotone, even when he's excited, and especally when he's serious. Which is a lot.
Take for instance, our conversation about slang. He and I have a similar distaste for the term "brain fart."
"My nanny says it when she forgets something. She says 'uh oh, brain fart,' and she thinks it's funny. But I prefer to say 'I forgot' because it's not disgusting."
"Me too," I said. "And everyone says it. Even smart people who you wouldn't imagine saying such a crass word."
"Yeah! It's true! Everyone says it! Why do they do that?"
I said that I didn't know and we shook our heads at a world of brain gas that we didn't understand.
Sometimes Claire uses that term and she probably would have defended it if she'd been in the car, but the girls were at a freind's house for a sleep over, so it was just me and the boys.
"We're going to stop at Subway for dinner, guys," I told them. Then I remembered that I didn't know what this kid liked. The nanny had told me that he was allergic to shrimp, which left everything else open. But still, kids can be weird about food. Maybe just the thought of sandwiches made him wet his pants. "Bacchus, you ok with that?"
"Yeah, that's good."
"I just want a six-inch sandwich this time, Mom," said Christopher, who'd been knocking out foot longs lately. "I want to watch my portions."
"Are you on a diet?" Bacchus asked. "They say kids shouldn't diet, it's bad for them."
"No, I'm not on a diet. I just...well...when I get older and I have a girlfriend, when I go to the beach and I take off my shirt I want to show her that I have muscles."
"Dude," Bacchus said, leveling with him. "Girls don't care about a guy's molecular structure."
"Um...do you mean a muscular structure, Bacchus?"
"Oh, yes," he said.
"Because a girl's got to have some standards and most of them like molecules in a man."
"Of course."
During this conversation Christopher had begun convulsing with laughter, and then I felt bad about interrupting. Here were two nine year old boys having a serious conversation about looks, girls, and diets, and I'd interrupted to correct one of them. I should have been filming it.
Bacchus looked over at Christopher who was hanging loosely in his seat belt with his hands over his eyes. "Molecular structure!" he giggled.
"He's not going to stop is he?" assked Bacchus.
"No," I said. "Maybe now's a good time for duct tape."
Bacchus smiled. "Maybe so."

Then the two of them played computer games and talked until they fell asleep. I brought Bacchus home the next day and met with the nanny. He lives with his father, who's a surgeon and who is seldom home. But the nanny I've met a few times and I let her know that I think Bacchus is a great kid, and he's welcome over any time. Even if he didn't use the duct tape.

Roller Derby and Love's Mixed Messages

Tonight me and the kids and I went to Roller Derby. In case you don't know what that is, it looks like this:


Actually, that looks very polite. Imagine those three women shoving each other with some "bam!" and "pow!" signs around them, like in Batman fight scenes, and that's closer to what it's like.

This goes against the skating etiquette that I have taught my kids, where you DON'T shove into people and make them fall over. But in a ring with loud music, whistles blowing, and women in fishnet stockings, it's ok. This is just one small example of the mixed messages of my parenting.

Take, for instance, our conversation about love and marriage earlier today. We were driving passed the church where a bride and groom were walking briskly out of the fromt door towards the white Royals Royce that was waiting for them.
I said, "Awe, look guys, it's a wedding!"
They looked at where I was pointing and made impressed noises.
"Congratulations!" I yelled, as if they could hear me.
"Congratulations! Good luck!" the kids yelled, and we all waved.
"Mom," Emma asked me a minute later. "Were you happy on your wedding day?"
Ah. They like to do this, ask me questions about my wedding day and marriage to their father. The best I can do is answer them honestly, which I did.
"Yeah, I was," I told her. "And we were married in that church."
"The one we just passed?" Claire asked.
"Yep."
"And you really were happy?" she asked.
"Yes. I really, really was. It was a great day."
In the silence that followed there was another question floating around that I'm glad they didn't ask. "If you were so happy, why didn't it last?"
"I wanna get married," Emma sighed. "And I want my husband to have freckles."
"That would be cute," I said.
"On his face," Emma added.
"Well, yes," I said.
"And he'll have red hair and he'll wear glasses."
"Do you have someone in particular in mind? That's specific."
She ignored my observation and continued, "And we'll see each other for six months and then he'll ask me to marry him."
"Hold up," I said. "You should date him for atleast a year."
"But YOU got engaged in less time than that," Claire said.
"Uh....yeah. And...."
"And Grandma and Grandpa got engaged after just a few weeks."
"Uhhhhh...........yeah."
"They're still together."
"Yes, well, even they would tell you that it's best to get to know someone first."

Sometimes I find myself tripping over my own relationship advice because most of my relationships have been like this:


But I know that they say it's best to take things slow and I've never done that. Four of my closest friends who have been married to the same people for over ten years also dated those same people for atleast three years before that. So that's the advice I gave the kids.

But then I thought about something else.  A cousin of mine dated the same guy for ten years, then married him and they got divorced after two years. Then someone I know who was in a 29 year marriage which had started off sensibly, they had dated for a couple of years, got jobs, bought a house, had a kid and STILL got divorced. On the other hand, a friend of mine had a one night stand with a guy and she's been in a monogamous relationship with him for over twenty years. Another dude I know had an affair with a married woman. That was 14 years ago. They've been together the whole time and now they're married. Then I remembered another affair that turned out that way, one which EVERYONE was sure would never last because of how they'd started off.

"You know what," I said told the kids after thinking about all of this. "You just never know. I still think it's a good idea to get to know somebody for at least a year but I'd be lying if I told you that I know any secrets about all of this stuff. Just pick somebody who's good to you, and be good to them too. That's all I got. Let's go to Derby."

And we did. And it was like this:



Roller Derby is as risky as love, but there are nachos and men dressed as Elvis who throw candy into the stands.  Who knows maybe that's the secret to happy relationships that no one has shared with me - nachos and Elvis. Those uppity bastards and their secrets about love.

The Third Yell is the Breaking Point

I got up at 4:00...and so did all three children. I don't understand how this happens so I won't speculate, but it really throws off my writing groove. So I'll write what I can during the serious, nerve-busting, frantic time crunch that exists between the hours of When The Kids Wake Up - 6:15. Because of the commute, that's what time we have to leave to get to work and school on time.

The morning began with a cry from a kid in the shower, "MOOOOOOOOOOOM! There's no water pressure! Did somebody flush??"
"No," I muttered, staggering out of my bedroom.
But I didn't mutter loud enough. She two seconds later, "MOOOOOOOOOOO@#@#@%#@$%^??!!!OOOOMMMMMMM!!! THIS IS TERRIBLE! THERE'S NO WATER PRESSURE!"
"I know, honey. I know it's a pain." I say outside the bathroom door. Still didn't hear me.
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!"
I slap the door. "I HEAR YOU! DEAL WITH IT!"
"BUT MOM!"
'BUT WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT? I'M NOT A PLUMBER! SUCK IT UP!"

See how things turn around like that? I'm a rational, sympathetic person until the third yell. That seems to be my breaking point. The whole last part of that conversation is how I would imagine my landlord and I would speak to each other if she answered her phone.

We hate this house. The water pressure is moody, the dishwasher broke and the landlord won't respond to my phone calls or texts about it, and some of the light fixtures work and some of them don't, as if the house has had a stroke. We can not wait until our lease is up. Every time I take a shower and the shower head dribbles a tiny stream of water as if it's weeping over it's patheticness on top of my head, I begin to plot my escape. I imagine a large U-Haul truck pulling into the driveway with the same fantastical pleasure as if it was a stretch limousine with a bouquet of flowers waiting for me on the backseat. Ahhh...moving.  It'll be nice when I'm my own landlord again, but honestly I can put up with having a lousy landlord again if it means that I don't have to commute for over two hours a day anymore.

It is now 5:45 and I need to go stand under the shower head so that it can drool like a mental patient onto my hair.

How to Screw Up Laundry in 13 Easy Steps

I'm not sure how you do the laundry, but this is what I do:
1) Wear an outfit that I don't like to work.
2) Change into shorts and a T-shirt when I get home and throw the work clothes on my closet floor.
3) Four hours later, take off T-shirt and shorts and throw them on top of the work clothes on the floor.
4) Repeat process for 8 days.
5) Take a snow shovel and heap the laundry from my closet into the laundry area in the pantry.
6) Throw the snow shovel on the couch and get a forklift to gather the dirty clothes out of the kids' rooms.
7) Do 126 loads of laundry.
8) Pile clean clothes on the couch, and in the process bury the snow shovel, the remote control, my cell phone, car keys, the dog, my son's homework, and an unfinished burrito.
9) Complain that I can't find anything.
10) Begin to sit on the clean clothes pile because I haven't been able to bribe the kids into picking them up and putting them where they belong.
11) Begin picking through the pile whenever I need a clean outfit, most of which has ended up on the floor.
12) Repeat until the pile is gone.
13) Return to step one.

I am possibly the only person in southern Louisiana with a snow shovel and that's because everyone else can get away with a laundry basket, but I need a heavy tool with a wide scoop at the end. And really, I'm not sure where all of these clothes are coming from. I know what we wear! I see us every day! But tonight I came across an Emma-sized purple shirt that I'd never seen before.
"Emma," I said, "is this yours?"
"Oh yeah." She smiled, took it and dropped it to the floor. Before I could tell her to pick it up the rabbit hopped to it, grabbed it with her teeth and scurried off to make a nest. On the couch.
But where had it come from? Emma couldn't remember. How does this happen?
I know that when I was a teenager, the opposite was happening - I was constantly losing clothes and didn't know why until I found out that my middle sisters' friends were stealing my coolest band T-shirts. I couldn't blame them, but I was still pissed.
"Julie," I said, confronting one of them. "Where's my Soundgarden t-shirt?"
"Oh God that was months ago. I wore it home and then Jessica borrowed it, I think. Sorry."
"Who's Jessica?"
"I don't remember."
I don't know where these girls are now, but I hope that rabbits are making nests out of their pajamas.

Anyway, this morning, as the children and I picked through the clothes we needed off of the piles of clothes throughout the house, I made a declaration.
"Tonight!" I said. "We'repicking all of this up. No TV! No computer until it's done! Does everybody understand?"
It was 6:00 in the morning and they all made the same reply that went something like "Beeeehhlhhhhhaaaahhhhh...." like zombies pillaging a laundromat in slow motion.

And tonight when we got home, I stuck to that. I changed out of my work clothes, WHICH I PUT IN THE WASHING MACHINE (thank you, thank you, I know, you're too kind to acknowledge my accomplishment), I cooked dinner, and after the kids finished their homework, we spent the next hour organizing the clothes into piles and then putting them away.

I don't know if we'll stick to this. Not cleaning for weeks and then sudden bursts of cleaning are more my speed than a consistent load of laundry which we all pick up for five minutes a day. I'm going to try, but I'm holding on to my snow shovel just in case. It's made a comfortable groove in the couch and I don't think I could get rid of it if I wanted to.

Dead Things on the Seawall

Yesterday the kids and I went to the Lakefront for the first time since Hurricane Isaac hit. I wasn't sure we'd be able to drive all the way down there, really. The last I'd heard the lake had topped the seawall and flooded the surrounding streets. But the main street had been cleared and we were able to park by the seawall, and survey the damage.

Emma pulled on her Rollerblades and skated out of the car, and Christopher, Claire, and a friend of hers ran for the seawall and jumped on top of it to stare out into the lake.  You wouldn't think that much had happened to look at it. The sun glittered on the water, there were only wisps of clouds and besides a few tiny dead crabs on the path by the seawall, there wasn't any other sign that a hurricane had come and gone.

But as we walked on, we found other things. Like the bar across the street that was being gutted. The flooring and walls had been ripped out and were piled outside, and there was that sickening mold smell that will forever remind me of the way the city smelled in the months after Hurricane Katrina.  I swear it smelled worse than the dead alligator we found by the seawall. A full grown, I am not kidding you, alligator, washed up next to an empty gas can, and piles of brown weeds and sticks. Its jaw was open, looking ready to bite, except that it was dead, and ash pale.  Close to that we found a dead nutria rat, a small gar fish, more crabs and an otter.

"I didn't know we had otters," Emma said.
"Neither did I," I told her.
"I don't like all these dead things."
"Me neither. Could be worse though."

Could be people, I thought, but didn't want to depress her further by saying it. Sometimes I wonder, when I hesitate to say the dead, dark thoughts, if they're already in my childrens' minds. I wondered if she had realized that just seven years ago, in the aftermath of a hurricane there were people found just like the alligator, washed up with trash, and stumbled upon by other people surveying the damage. But seven years ago, she was four years old and in the safety of a neighbourhood that had not been flooded. Inconvenienced yes, but no one had died. So most likely, that thought, the thought of how it could be worse, was not in her head, and I hoped that she would grow to be a very lucky woman and she would never have to consider it.

We didn't stay long. It was blazing hot, making all of the dead things smell worse, and since the water park by our favorite beach was closed, I wanted to get home and hold the garden hose over my head.  Which I did, damn thankful for the uncontaminated water running through my hair, over my blazing feet, and in my stomach when I drank straight from the hose.

I hope it's back to normal soon. The lake's beach in Fontainebleau State Park has become our stomping grounds. We call it "our beach" and "our lake" as if it formed thousands of years ago just for us, and these hurricanes blowing through to disrupt our water time just will not do.

There are Only 5 Top 40 Songs

The kids take the morning commute with me now that they've switched schools, as we prepare to move yet again. I know, we just moved at the beginning of the year, but this is a really really REALLY good change. I'm not sure there's a limit to how much I can use the term "really" as is applies to the happiness of this situation. All four of us are happy about it at the same time, and it's a miracle when we all share that attitude about any one thing.

Like the radio. We do not share the same attitude in terms of what we should listen to during the hour that it takes to get to work and school and the hour back. The problem is I loooooooooooooooooove music, so I'm not just picky about it - a song that I don't like actually hurts me inside. And sometimes I don't even know why. It's not like "Whistle Baby" is a terrible song. The whistling is quite nice. And let's set aside the fact that it's obvioulsy about oral sex and I just don't feel right listening to it with my kids. There's something about the sound of it that I can't put my finger on that's intolerable, and if it plays for more than five seconds, my immune system begins to shut down.

So Katy Perry's "Wide Awake," doesn't just bother me. My kidneys fail whenever it plays, and it plays 70 times every five minutes. This is nothing against Katy herself. I love the song "Hot and Cold." But if I have to listen to "Wide Awake" one more time, I'm going to have to go on dialysis.

It's the same with every song by Maroon 5. When "Payphone" plays, this is what happens:
(Radio plays) I'm at a payphone trying to call home/All of my change I spent on you
Claire: Mom, are you ok?
Me (left eye beginning to twitch, line of drool falling): Yes.
(Radio plays further) Where have the times gone?/Baby, it's all wrong, where are the plans we made for two?
Me: Kids (my spleen ruptures) Can we change it?
Christopher and Emma: No! We love this song!
(Radio- the rap part in the middle of the song of the song begins, and my frontal lobe shuts down) You can tell it I'm ballin'/Swish, what a shame could have got picked/Had a really good game but you missed your last shot/So you talk about who you see at the top/Or what you could've saw/But sad to say it's over for/Phantom pulled up valet open doors/Wiz like go away, got what you was looking for/Now ask me who they want/So you can go and take that little piece of shit with you
Me: (reaching for the radio buttons with trembling hands) Must...change...station...need antedote...
All three kids: NOOOOOOOO! We love this song!
(I change it, and "Revolution" by The Beatles is playing. My brain stops leaking from my ears)
All three kids: WHYYYYYYY? Why did you change it?!
Me: Because we only left the house two minutes ago and we've already heard it 87 times.

So we have a deal now - we can only hear each song we listen to once a day. So if Adele's "Fire to the Rain" plays once, that's it. This song is bearable to me, so maybe it's not a good example. If we hear "Starships" by Nicki Minaj once, then we don't listen to it again until it comes on the next day. This is a great comfort to me while my uterus goes mad and begins attacking my liver, because the sound of Nicki Minaj turns my internal organs against each other. I think, "After this once, it's all over."

Of course, I could just assume tyrannical control over the radio. It is my right as a parent. But I also undsertsand that just because a certain song is pleasing to me, that doesn't mean that everyone else is going to like it. For instance, when I mentioned The Bealtes earlier, your white bloods cells might have exploded. My kids, though they don't have the same taste in music as I do, have the same physical repulsion to music they don't like. Sometimes they like it when I play The Black Keys, they love The Pack A.D., and luckily for their sakes they love The Beatles. But when I'm feeling my roots and I play Metallica for old time's sake?
"MOOOOOOOOOM! Turn it off! AHH! It burns! It burns!"
The other day Emma had a frank moment with me and she said, "I'm sorry, Mom, I just don't like heavy metal. I'm sorry." Dude, she was genuinely sorry. I told her it was ok, she doesn't have to like everything I like.

And this, in essence, is why we take turns. They keep me aware of Top 40 music and I teach them about music that's actually good. Win - win. Actually, I'm kidding, there's some Top 40 stuff I like. But there's some other stuff that's out there, like The Pack A.D. that not enough people know about, so I feel that I'm giving back to the world by raising kids who know about an indie Canadian chick bluesy/rockity/punkity band. Plus, I've looked at the Top 40 list for this week, and either I've heard a lot of it and don't know the names, or New Orleans radio stations only pick five of those songs and play them in a loop. Like, who the hell is Rita Ora? I don't know, but she's got the number 1 song for the week. I've probably heard it 786 times, but my ears fell from my head every time it was played and I was too busy screwing them back on to pay attention. 

I would say it's because I'm getting old, but I've always had this attitude towards pop, even at 13. The summer before I turned 13, the number one song was "Hold onto the Nights" by Richard Marx. I was so physically repulsed by that song I am surprised it did not stunt my growth. By who knows. I'm six feet, but if they hadn't played that song 11,985 times a day, maybe I'd be 6'5". This makes sense. Now that I'm older, bad music is shrinking me. The next time I have to hear Demi Lovato's "Give Your Heart a Break" I'll be 5'3".

Now I'm off to listen to The Pack AD mend myself. And since I'm plugging them anyway, here is my favorite video from them, called Haunt You.

It's Better Not to Know About the Corn

So, as we all know, the best thing to do with your kids if they're sick is to take them to the doctor, and the best thing to do before that, if you've got some time to kill is to go to the petstore and get freaked out about what's in dogfood.

I did this rather successfully the other day. I went to my favorite pet supply store, Jefferson Feed, and said to the lady behind the counter, "My dog is developing a sensitive stomach. The vet doesn't see anything wrong with her, and I'm wondering if it's her food."
"Ah," she said. "You need to talk to the dogfood specialist."
This took me aback. There is a dogfood specialist, like a person who specializes in dog FOOD? A person who just hangs around the dog food aisle and waits to share knowledge?
AND THERE WAS! Hanging around the dogfood aisle was this guy! Who specializes in dog food! And he was waiting to share knowledge! Which he did. And now I kind of wish he hadn't.

"What are you feeding her right now?" he asked.
"(Insert name of generic dogfood)"I said
He smiled. "Let's take a look at the ingredients in that, shall we?"

The first ingredient was corn, the nutritional benefits of which, for a dog, are debatable. He said it's basically cheap filler. I think the two ingredients that really got me though were the second ingredient "chicken by-product meal" and the fifith ingredient "animal fat."  He explained that chicken by-product meal is anything that isn't deemed fit for human consumption - beaks, feet, undeveloped eggs, and possibly that red thingy on top of a chicken's head. "Animal fat" could come from the fat of any animal from anywhere. This could be slaughterhouse waste, or even restuarant grease.

I imagined my dog eating a bowl full of chicken beaks with corn and McDonald's grease dressing.

I gulped. "Um...what do you recommend?"

He brought me over to another aisle where there were bags of dogfood, with flowers and chunks of meat floating around on them. He suggested one that I now can not tell you the name of, because I don't remember, but I can tell you that the first ingredient was lamb, which is processed in such a way that he garunteed me that my dog will not be eating the lamb's hooves or wool, but actual lamb meat. It has 15 ingredients in it instead of 50 and none of them include corn, or corn by-product, or the vegetable-formerly-known-as-corn.

Miraculously, it worked. Lily is happy and her tummy is no longer upset. Mine is, though, when I think about eating chicken feet, and knowing that it's probably a good idea to look at all the labels on processed food, both for humans and beloved beasts alike. Health awareness and carefully reading labels! No! It upsets my stomach!

Beachy Keen

"Here's what we're gonna do," I said to the kids yesterday afternoon, and they gathered around me conspiratorially. "When I get off of work tomorrow afternoon...be ready! Because we're goin' TO THE BEACH!"
The kids smiled, then hesitated. They know that when I start sentences with "Here's what we're gonna do" and raise my hands in a grandiose style, that I'm either going to say something ridiculous like, "We're gonna go to the caves of Crystal Creek!" and dive behind the sofa, or I'm going to tell them something that we're actually going to do, but it's not that exciting, like "We're gonna go TO THE BANK!" and they all groan. So when I said that we were going to the beach, which is someplace that's not imaginary and also some place they like to go, they were confused.
"Seriously?" said Claire.
"Yeah! Why not? It'll be a Friday."
"But how long can we stay?" asked Emma.
"Til dark!" I cried.
"Til dark!" cried Christopher.
"Yay!" cried the girls, and we all did our own version of the happy dance, which makes us look spastic, but overjoyed non-the-less.

The beach at Fountainbleau State Park is not far from our new house and the kids and I have been taking advantage of this situation for the past month. It doesn't look a thing like the pictures that Michelle has from living in Hawaii for six years, but it does fit the requirements of four Louisiana natives 1) it has sand, 2) it has water, 3) it has shells, 4) it has fish that leap out of it now and again, much to our delight, 5) it has no alligators, 6) it has no oil residue. It's just lake water, and waves that don't knock us down unless a jet ski goes by.

This is a place where we can go where all four of us agree that we like it. We all don't agree on how we feel about our new house, or the new schools, or what song to listen to on the radio, or whether to eat fast food at Wendy's or McDonald's, or what movie to watch at night, or whether Emma's socks are faded black or dark blue, BUT! there are no arguments where the beach is concerned.  It's a place where we can watch other families interact and realize that there are people who are more dysfunctional than us.

Like the parents who sit on the sand chugging down beer from their cooler and yell things to their children in the water.
"LOGAN!" a bikini-clad mother croaks to her son. "Stop throwin' sand at your sister, you gonna hit her in the - STOP THAT DAMN IT, I'LL DRAG YOUR BUTT.. [sound of beer chugging, then laughter as her husband snaps her bikini bottom]...RED! Red, I'ma kill ya!"

Or the well-dressed mothers and fathers who bring their toddlers in expensive swim wear, complete with swimmie shoes, beach hats with frogs on them, and sunglasses, and then they set their darlings on the sand and don't let them touch anything.

"Marcel," says a bone-thin middle aged mother, chasing her two year old as he runs away from her. "Marcel, you're going to get sand in your eyes." She turns to her husband who is speed walking behind her. "Richard, he'll get sand in his eyes for sure."
"I'M getting sand in my eyes," complains Richard, rubbing his eyes, and struggling to keep up with the chase.
I imagine that these are people who waited a long time to have Marcel and now they are getting too old to keep up with him as he skips away from them and attempts to pull off his swim trunks, which puts him at further risk of getting sand on him.

I'm just concerned that my kids will wander too far into the lake. I keep telling them not to swim out past the pier because of boats and jet skis that whiz by, but true to form, they keep testing this limit.
"Come on, Mom," Claire hollers. "THEY'RE doing it!"
She points to three teenage boys who have waded so far from the shore that they are just silhouettes, holding their beer cans up out of the water.
"Yeah, but they're stupid!" I yell, hoping that the silhouettes can hear me.
Emma shoots me a look. "MOM."
"Well, they are. Drinking and swimming is just about the dumbest thing you can do," I say.

Then we see someone do something even dumber. We see Christopher yell "karate CHOP!" and splash water at Claire. She is enraged. An enraged Claire is more dangerous than alligators and oil spills combined. She splashes him back and a hellacious dousing ensues. It only ends when one of them goes too far and gets water in the other's eye, but after some groaning and griping, they're both laughing again.

And most of the people that frequent the beach are not dumb, or at least they have the decency not to display it. There's a big teenager crowd, but that doesn't really bother me. It bothers me when I think about how fast the kids are growing up and how it feels like just a few years ago, I was chasing their toddler selves as they pulled their swimsuits off. But that's ok too. Right now they're at a fun age where we build sand castles and then destroy them, we collect shells, and float on our backs and say things like, "When is that butler going to bring us our iced tea?" when we have no butler.

Right now is good. And I can't wait until this afternoon!

Working Mom's Guide to Making Kids Find Their Own Stuff

I just got a book called Working Mom's Survival Guide. Because, as the following conversation will demonstrate, we are just barely surviving:
Me, 7:15 AM [answering my cell phone on the way to work, seeing that it is Claire and knowing that there is a problem]: Yeeeeeeessss...
Claire: MOM! Christopher can't find his socks!
Me: Did he look in the socket basket?
Claire: Yes!
Me: Did he look on the floor by the couch?
Claire: Yes!
Me: Did he look on the floor by the front door where all that stuff is?
Claire: Ye - uh, I don't know. [to her brother, without pulling the phone away from her mouth] CHRISTOPHER!!!!! Mom says look by the door by the pile of stuff!...He found 'em!
Me: Good. Lemme go, I gotta drive.
Claire: WAIT! Where's a hairbrush?

Notice a few things about this conversation. Notice how I never suggested that he look in his dresser. How, even though things are obviously in disarray, I still had a pretty good idea where the socks were and the kids didn't. Notice how Christopher didn't call me himself, or continue to look for his socks by himself. Notice how as I speed further and further away from my children for the day, children who are old enough to dress themselves and brush their hair, I am still assisting with these things. This, people, must change. I mean, the kids still need me, they'll always need me in one way or another, but my 12 year old is really going to have to start using her hairbrush and putting it back in the place where she got it OR at least stop calling me when I'm 30 miles away and asking me where it is.

But then, her 36 year old mother doesn't put things back where they go after she uses them. Hence, the survival guide, which promises me I'll be thriving and "taking care of" myself before I know it. I'm already in a self-help program that helps me take care of myself. Really, am I ever going to learn? YES! Yes, I will if it takes me the rest of my life, so help me God I will remember to put a hairbrush back where it belongs so that my family is not scrambling around the house at 7:00 in the morning screaming, "WHERE'S THE HAIRBRUSH!!?? I DON'T KNOW!!! GET MOM ON THE PHONE!!!!"

So what would I like to do when I reach the advanced stages of taking care of myself? Beyond stuff like flossing regularly? I want to watch movies more often. I still have not seen The Artist, The Descendants, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Sucker Punch, or Wilde, the movie about Oscar Wilde that I got in the mail from Netflix about a month ago and is still sitting unopened on my dresser. I know, Sucker Punch doesn't really fit with the others but I saw half of it a few weeks ago and was mesmerized in that "this is kind of cheesy but also kind of awesome and damn sexy" kind of way.

...So what was I talking about? Oh yeah, working mommy stuff. I hope it will help. If not, I will work on accepting the chaos for what it is, and just try to watch more movies.

You Can Trust a Clear Plate

Claire took the ACT test on Saturday, which taught me a few of things. One, she's way smarter than I was at the age of 12, two, as old as she's been looking to me lately when you put her in a line of 16-18 year olds she suddenly looks like a baby, and three, a long line of teenagers smells bad. Really, I wanted to get the Febreeze out of my car and spray them all. I was proud that Claire smelled like the Bath & Bodyworks lotion that I'd put in her stocking her for Christmas. I looked around at the greasy, slack-jawed teenagers and thought, "Not only is my kid smarter than all of you, but she smells like flower, while the rest of you would make a dog faint."

I feel that I should explain that I'm not one of those moms who thinks my kid is better than everyone else's. I just think she's better than all teenagers. This will change in five months when she turns thirteen, when suddenly no amount of Bath & Body Works Paris Amour will shield the smell of hormone-filled sweat. In a few months she will walk into the kitchen, and our dog with take a deep breath and faint, and that's just the way the world works.

The other two have a few years left before they become hormone-ridden stinkbags. They certainly have their own quirks, which I am curious to watch unfold with age. Christopher (a smart kid who expresses himself...uniquely) said about our new clear, glass plates, "This is good, Mom."
He held up the plate before he put a Hot Pocket on it.
"Yes, it's always good to use a plate when you're microwaving something that will leak cheese," I said.
"No, I mean the plate," he told me.
"The plate's good?"
"Yeah. It's clear. You can trust a clear plate."
My eyebrows went up. "Can you? How come?"
Michelle, who was sitting at the table listening to the conversation, said, "Because you can tell that it's clean."
"Yeah," Christopher agreed.
"So that makes it trustworthy?" I asked. "This is a plate that you can rely on? You can trust it to show up on time and be true to it's word?"
Christopher frowned at me. "No. That's just weird."

So apparently, there's a limit to this trust. But it's important to Michelle, Claire and Christopher who care about cleanliness. For broads like me and Emma, "clean" is open to interpretation. One spot on a plate does not necessarily make the plate dirty. A few crumbs on a plate that you're going to make a turkey sandwich on? That's not really dirty. Just dust it off. A spot of mustard on a plate that you're making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on? Well, it needs to be wiped off, sure, but is the plate DIRTY? Not really. And how old is the mustard in question? Is it so old that it's hardened? Because if so, then it won't rub off on the pb&j and you can re-use it.

Emma is like I was at her age, and still kind of am. Her room is littered with dirty clothes, scraps of writing, scraps of drawings, cups and (once) a tortilla. Claire stepped on the latter and was horrified.

"MOM!" she cried from the bedroom. "There's a tortilla on the floor with a BITE taken out of it and I stepped on it!"

She said this last part "I stepped on it" as if she'd stepped on lizard guts. Really, I think she was just affronted by the idea of it - that her sister would take one bite out of a tortilla and drop it on the floor like an animal. To make matters worse, the girls share a room now and so Emma not only messed up her own room, she befouled CLAIRE'S. And Claire does not understand how Emma could allow a tortilla to happen on their floor.

But me - I understood. I imagined myself walking into my bedroom, and taking a bite out of a tortilla and then spotting a copy of Yoga Journal on the floor. "That's where that is!" I'd say and sit down to finish reading the article on how to meditate by breathing through my eyelids, and I'd set my tortilla down on the floor next to me, which I would be comfortable with because the floor is relatively "clean." While I'm reading my phone would ring in the next room and I'd fling the magazine across the room to another spot on the floor and rush to answer the phone, which would also be buried underneath several things. A day would go by and I'd walk into the room and spot the tortilla on the floor, and I'd think, "I guess that isn't good anymore. It's probably hard. I'll throw it away later, I think I hear the phone ringing." I would walk past the tortilla every day until it would just become part of the floor and I wouldn't notice it anymore.

I'm not justifying it, I'm just telling you how these things happen. Chaotic messiness is created one ADD-fueled mishap at a time. The phone rings and you fling your magazine across the room, and forget your snack on the floor. And so it begins.

And yes, twenty years ago I would have been the smelliest teenager in that line.

ps- Claire took the ACT early because she scored high in the English section of her Leap test, and she's trying out for the Duke TIPS program. Wish her luck!

Closing the childhood home

This afternoon I close on my house. I finished cleaning it on Sunday, and cried for a while because (for the first time in a long time) I remembered good things about it. Waking up way too early on Chrsitmas mornings, my dad's 4oth birthday party, playing Badmitton in the backyard with my sister April, the pet semetary where Nissa, Mittens, Dribble, Delilah, and Sky are buried, asking my sister Stephanie if I could sleep in her room because I was scared to sleep alone, the mornings I woke up to pancakes, mowing the lawn when my estranged Aunt Beth showed up walking across the yard, sitting on the blue shag carpet of my bedroom floor and writing story after story after story. In the sixth grade I walked down the hall when my dad got home from work and I told him I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. He smiled and said he was glad, and to remember that writing was hard work but that I could do it. I remember that he held a briefcase for a job he hated. I remember the exact spot in the hallway where I stood when I told him that, and where he stood when he smiled at me. I could mark x's on the floor.

After I finished cleaning I stood in the hallway, near the front door, and told the place goodbye. My voice echoed even though I said it quietly, because, you know, I was talking to a house and I felt a little silly. As I heard my good bye carry through the house I realized that it was empty for the first time in 26 years. I'd been living in it when I bought it from my parents. Then I stopped feeling silly about talking to an empty house, and went on to assure it that a good family was moving in and that they would take care of it. Then I thanked it for sheltering so many people that I love for such a long time.

And then I went to my new home.

Don't Bother Him With Names

Within his first week of school, Christopher's gotten a girlfriend but he doesn't know her name.
"It's 'A' something, I think" he told me.
"'A something?'" I asked. "You asked her to be your girlfriend today and you don't know what her name is?"
"No, I SAID I think it starts with an 'A,'" he reminded me, frustrated with my inability to recognize his efforts in the relationship.
"Honey, if you're gonna have a girlfriend you need to know her name. It's part of the deal."
"Ok, tomorrow I'll ask her."

I would have told him that it would be best not to say something like, "Hey girl I like, what's your name?" But they're in the 2nd grade, and communication seems to be a lot less complicated on this level.

Take, for example, how he asked her in the first place. A-something had asked him to be her friend on the first day of school, and Christopher said they had fun together. Then they played the next day too. He thought she was cute and wondered if she liked him, so on the third day he asked her about it. This was how it went according to Christopher:
Christopher: Hey, I was wondering if you have a crush on me.
A-something: No.
Christopher: Oh. You wanna be boyfriend and girlfriend anyway?
A-something: Ok.

And viola! Love!

Yesterday I asked him if he'd found out her name yet, and says that she told him but he forgot again. I wonder if she's noticed this. Does he just call her "girlfriend?" Or "you?" I would not put this past my son. If I ever meet her I'll tell her that I understand the frustation. Sometimes he forgets my name is "Mom." I'm just "M-something."

His sisters, whose names I have forgotten because this complex is heriditary, were appauled that he has a girlfriend in the second grade, and they, at 4th and 7th grades, do not have boyfriends.
"It's not fair," C-something said. "How come he has somebody and I don't?"
"Me too!" Something-that-ends-with-an-a agreed. "And it's only the frist week of school."
"Well, he asked her," I told them. "Have you guys asked anybody?"
"No," they sulked, hanging their poor, nameless heads.
"I don't think any of you are old enough to be having girlfriends and boyfriends anyway. There's certainly no rush."
"Christopher's DEFINITELY not old enough!" one of them declared.
"Yeah, but it's not like they're kissing or anything. They're just playing together...Christopher, you're NOT kissing, right?" I asked.
Christopher recoiled. "No!"
"Ok, well, good. See? They're just playing."

So for now, I guess, it's ok if he doesn't know who she is. When he proposes, though, it better not go something like this:

Christopher:"Would you be my wife?"
Girl: "Yes!"
Christopher: "Great! Then we'll be Mr. & Mrs. Christopher!"
Girl: "But my name is-"
Christopher: "The same as mine!"
Girl: "But I've been trying to tell you for years-"
Chrsitopher (whistfully): "The same as mine."

Fast update of worriedness

It looks like a U-Haul sneezed all over my new house. There are boxes, children and animals everywhere. The bus driver at Emma's new school dropped her off far from the house and she got lost. She eventually made it home. I don't have word on the other two yet, on how their first day of school went. Michelle has been wonderful with them today. I want to quit my job and just stay home with all of them. There's too much to be done with their new schools, getting them settled, getting the house together.

It's the next day. All three kids made it home. The animals are all contained within the house. My girlfriend, who is not accustomed to living with children, is fatally exhausted and possibly died in her sleep last night, but I don't know because I had to leave early this morning to get to work. The kids are back at school today. Their new schools. I'm pretty sure that they will all hate me for this change that I have forced upon them and will become serial killers.

That's all for now.

Adjusting takes more than good cheese

Last night, though the beds haven't been moved in yet, the kids and I spent our first the night in the new house. We camped out on the living room floor, and watched "Shrek" on Michelle's portable TV. Then when that was over, and it was 10 at night but we were too excited too sleep, we watched "Up," the only other movie we had available. It was oddly appropriate, at least it was for me, because I have mixed feelings about letting my old house go, and "Up" is a movie about an old man who eventually lets his old house go. Weird.


In fact, I'm having a hard time writing this post because of all of the mixed feelings. Writing about a move that involves so many mixed emotions is similar to writing about alcohol when I've had too many mixed drinks. It's disorienting.


And how are the kids? They're disoriented too. Even Lily is thrown off. I brought her over there with us the other night and she ran circles in the empty living room until she exhausted herself and curled up on Claire's lap. Then, well rested, she got up and did the same thing again. She only relaxed when she ate a piece of Swiss cheese that fell off of my sandwich. Dogs are strange people. For more information on dogs adjusting to moves, read this bit of genius:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html


Unfortunately for the rest of us, eating cheese off the floor doesn't solve everything. It's going to take time. At some point, one of the girls teared up, thinking about the old house, and Christopher mentioned a friend that he's afraid he'll never see again. I thought of the Planetarium. Luling might not have much, but it's got a great planetarium and I've been taking my kids there since they were toddlers. We've seen so many specials on the stars that are visible through different seasons, that we've memorized some of their names. The kids know how to find the star Arcturus by making an arc from the handle of the Big Dipper, and then "spiking to Spica." We'd find them in our backyard on clear nights.

Then I remembered that our new neighborhood had a sky too! So I proposed that we go outside and take a look at it. We stepped into our new driveway to check out how many stars we could see. There's less light pollution there, and it was a clear so we could see clusters of stars. Claire pointed to Venus, shining brighter than the moon.


"That's a planet," she told me.
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"It's not twinkling, and it's where Venus should be."
"Oh...maybe it's Venus then."
"Venus lives here too!" Emma exclaimed.
"Hooray!" I said. "All of the stars and planets from Luling also live here!"
"Hooway!" yelled Christopher, who still does not pronounce "r"s.
"They live everywhere, Mom." Claire said, flatly.
"Well, yes, but isn't it nice to know for sure?"


She supposed it was. And knowing so did make us feel better. Then we got too cold and went back inside to watch "Up."


There have been times that I've wanted to lift up my house in Luling and just move it closer to people I love. Or maybe drop it smack down in the middle of New Orleans so I could be close to the artistic hubbub of things, without having to change houses. That was before my divorce. Now selling the house is part of my divorce grieving cycle, if there is such a thing. I'm renting a new house that I haven't inherited or struggled to fix, a place that I'm not going to look around and see ghosts of people I've lost. Of course that doesn't mean that I won't suffer AT ALL at my new place. I'm sure the suffering will continue, and all of the cheese on all of the floors of the world won't make up for it. But it's different somehow, and I can't exactly explain why. I just know that it has to do with the divorce.


The house is going to a good family, a guy, his wife, and 2 year old daughter. They want to fix it up and everything, and I'm eager to see what he does with it. We'll be seeing it from time to time because I've vowed to take the kids to visit their friends on the street. My sister lives close, so we'll have a good excuse. Besides, we need to get to the planetarium occasionally. There are more stars to see in Mandeville, but we know their names because we learned about them in a dark room in a Luling library.

A week to move + Christmas!

Creature Feature House is moving to a new house!...or a townhouse, or an apartment. I don't exactly know yet, I just started looking. But! There is a closing date for my present creature house for next week. The kids and I are filled with excitement and anxiety, which makes us wonderfully nauseated and none of us can wait until it's over :)

What else? I've been eating too much. Yes, I know, tis the season and all of that, but I'm not so much eating like a person who's letting herself go at Christmas but more like a person who's just letting herself go. I told my friends last night that after the move I'm going to start really paying attention to what I eat and exercise regularly again. Ok! Dieting, I'm talking about dieting! Dieting is such a trendy word. But! But! But! It's true. I'm too young to give up! (sob, gasp, whimper, munch on cookie) I can't give up the fight!
"I give up," one of my friends said to me last night. "I'm not even trying anymore."
"No!" I cried. "We can not accept defeat!"
"I'm not accepting defeat," he said, smiling. "I'm just not fighting, so I can't lose."

What's going on besides accepting my unacceptable weight and the defeatest attitude of my friends? The kids are out of school for Christmas break. Yesterday they gave their teachers gifts, and I was relieved that I'd managed to convince Christopher that he couldn't give his teacher an Angry Birds chew toy.
"But it's cute!" he protested, squeaking the red, scowling rubber bird.
"You don't even know if she likes Angry Birds," I said.
"Well...I know she downloaded it so her kids could play it."
"But that doesn't mean SHE likes it," I argued.
""She WILL like it!"
"It's a dog toy!"
"No, it's not!"
"Christopher, it says 'dog chew toy' on the tag!"
"...Oh. Well, let's get her Pokemon cards."

I kept telling him that the point of gift-giving is to give someone what THEY want and not necessarily what he wants. "Do you think a grown woman would want Pokeman cards?" I asked and he gave me this confused look as if to say, "What human being would NOT want that?" In the end, we settled on a tin of red hots because he remembered that she likes spicy things. Emma got her teacher a mug and Claire got hers a candle. I guess I could have turned things on them and said, "Why can't you be more original like your brother??" But they wouldn't have known I was joking. They would have cried and I would have ruined Christmas for all enternity. The story would be told year after year, over rounds of eggnog, "You remember that Christmas when Mom said we weren't good enough?"
The other daughter's face will blacken. "How can I forget. I thought about getting her something nice this year but then I remembered all that, and I just wrapped up a bunch of barbed wire."
"I made her nails-and-saw-dust preserves. How's THAT for originality Mom!"

Obviously, I have some worry about how my desicions and the things I say are going to affect the emotional development of my children. Will my ridiculous sense of humor warp them somehow? Will this move be a good thing for them? I think so. About the move, I mean, not my warped humor. I actually think the humor thing is good for them, though it does embarass Claire lately. I get the "Do you HAVE to act like that?" look a lot. And I say, "Yes. Yes, I do." I don't know how this move will affect them in the long run, but worrying hasn't done any good.

I will keep you all posted. For the next two days I'm just going to try to give us all a nice Christmas. Lots of snuggling up with blankets and playing games or watching movies. And no diet just yet.

Honesty is the Best Chaosity

On Sunday Emma wanted to go to church so I let her. But it wasn't as simple as it sounds.

A couple of months ago, after years of on and off church-going, I finally came out to the kids.
"Guys," I said, as we were gathered around the kitchen table. The kitchen table is where we disclose most things to each other, even if we're not eating. In fact, for digestive purposes, and the speaker's safety, it's best. For instance, if I'd confided in them at dinner that night, they might have spit forkfuls of potatoes at me when I said, "I don't believe in organized religion."
But since they weren't eating, they just opened their eyes wide and looked confused.

"What do you mean?" Claire said. "Does that mean you don't believe in God?"
"No, that's not what that means."
"Does that mean you're not Chrsitian?" Emma asked.
"Well, I don't know. But I know for sure that I believe in loving God, and loving others as you love yourself."
"What does THAT mean?" Christopher asked.
"Well-"
"So we're not going to church?" Emma asked.
"Are we not having Christmas???" Claire hollered.
The others gasped.
"Of course we'll still have Christmas," I assured them.
"Because Christmas is about love," Emma told me. "And you said you believe in love, right Momma?"
"Of course I believe in love. I just don't believe that I need to be part of a church to love God."
"But that's where God is," Emma said.
"God's everywhere, honey. Look, I've just never been part of a religion where I totally agree with what they say. Some things, I don't agree with at all, and I don't want to be hipocritical. I love God, I love others, and I love myself. That's it. That's as honestly as I can live and I want to teach you guys that. I don't want to teach you a bunch of stuff that I don't believe just for the sake of being part of a religion."
"So, just to make sure, we're still having Christmas, right?" Claire asked.


The conversation went on like this. I was trying to talk to them from these basic principles that I've decided to maintain throughout my parenting: never underestimate a child's intelligence, teach them honesty by being honest about who I am, and always be honest without being cruel. These things, noble as they sound, don't make things easy. It wasn't easy for them to accept that I have a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, even though they've known what homosexuality is since they were little. And it wasn't easy for them to hear what my past wishy-washy commitment to church had already led them to suspect - I don't believe in it.


But after we talked a while, Christopher and Claire seemed comfortable. They said they didn't like church anyway. I told them that that wasn't my point. It's not that I don't want to go because it's boring. I don't want to go because I don't believe in the Bible, which all Christian religions are based on and I feel like a hipocrit standing there in a pew.


We haven't been to church in a few months. But this past Sunday Emma woke me up, and told me she wanted to go back.

"Momma?" she said, settling on the side of my bed. "Momma, you awake?"
(Snort, grunt) "Huh?" I asked, peering at her through half shut eyes eyes.
She grinned in my face. "Mom! You're awake!"
"Mmm," I groaned, closing my eyes again.
"Here, I brought you some coffee," she went to my dresser and carefully lifted a full mug with both hands. She stepped gingerly across the room, and I sat up realizing what she was doing, and that coffee (coffee that I might drink) might spill. Coffee and the prospect of drinking it is what gets me up in the morning. The girl knows this.
"Momma," she said, passing over the cup. "I want to go with Dicey to church."
Dicey is what they called my youngest sister Stephanie, who is a devoted Christian. My oldest came up with the nickname when she was a toddler, which we've never understood because it sounds nothing like "Aunt Stephanie" but we went along with it anyway.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," she moaned, and I thought that might be the end of it. But then she went on. "Because when I go there I feel all good inside. They're all happy to see me and they talk about love and it feels good. And I get to see families and daddies, and the daddies are so nice."

I try not to wince when she says stuff like that. I don't know if I did. It was so early that I was barely keeping up with the conversation. I sipped the coffee. She had made it just the way I like it - extra milk, no sugar.

"Please, Momma," she said.
"All those things you said about feeling good inside and feeling loved - those are the things that people are supposed to feel at church."
"Yeah! I want to go!"
"I know. And you like seeing the daddies there?"
She lowered her eyes. "Yes."
She hasn't been getting along with her own dad lately.
I nodded. "Just promise me that you'll remember that you like church because you love God and you love people. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. It can be simply about love."
She beamed. "I will."
Lucikily I saw the hug coming and I put the coffee down. She hugged me tight and told me she loved me.

This is something she wants and needs to experience. I've told Emma my truth. This is hers.

But she's 10, and she's impressionable, and I'm supposed to guide her until she's old enough to make her own decision about things. This is also a truth. And this is a church that supports banning things like Halloween and Harry Potter books. And according to them I'm going to burn in hell. And she's looking at me and saying, "Please, Momma, this makes me happy and feel loved."

So how do I feel about all of this? What do I think? What am I going to tell her, and am I going to be wishy washy AGAIN and say "On second thought, honey, I don't think that church is a good idea. Yes, I know it makes you happy but I know what's best for you and letting you go some place where you feel loved, but I also think you'll be brainwashed and that is not something I'm comfortable with?"

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuckity fuck. And that is also a truth.

Machinery Sucks - a love story

This morning as I pulled warm clothes out of the dryer, I fell in love again with the used machine that I was able to buy after I had given up trying to fix my old one.

I'm a tomboy and everything, but not the kind that is good with tools. Still, I'm smart so when my dryer stopped working I looked at it and thought, "I'm a quick learner. I can figure this how. How complicated can a dryer be?" I knew of people who had fixed their own dryers, and I was confident that with some internet research, phone calls to fix-it savy friends, and a few trips to repair shops I could have that dryer up and running in no time. And for less than it cost to buy a new one! I was going to be resourceful and thrifty! I was going to cook dinner AND fix my dryer at the same time! I was going to be...SUPER SINGLE MOM! (triumphant horn blast)

Several hours and two trips to the hardware store later I was lying on the garage floor taking out a screw from the back of the dryer with a tool that I can't remember the name of but was having trouble with. I don't even remember what the working theory was about what might have been wrong with the dryer, but whatever it was required me to remove the back of the thing, take out a part and put a new part in. So far, unscrewing the screws and keeping them all together was proving much more of a challenge than I thought it would be, but worse than that was while I was lying there on floor I noticed old cobwebs inches away from my mouth. I backed my head as far away as I could. I guess I could have stopped what I was doing and swept them away, but I was making progress, I had already had to stop a few times to stir the spaghetti sauce and check the pasta, and I wanted to get this whole dryer business over with. Plus, someone had left the garage door open long enough for a swarm of mosquitoes to get in and they kept biting me while I worked. I imagined that this must be what it's like for an evil repairman when a dryer breaks in Hell.

Then a terrifying thing happened. Christopher came in to ask me when dinner was going to be done and my sister walked in behind him to ask if she could help - no that's not the terrifying thing, that's just the build up leading to it. Jees! Lemme tell a story already! Anyway, I asked Steph if she could check on the pasta.

"Ok," she said, and then she slapped her arm. "Man, that mosquito was huge!" She slapped at her other arm. "Oh my God, they're everywhere!"

"I know," I said. I let go of whatever tool I was using to slap the right side of my head and frightened off the little jerk buzzing around my ear.

"How are you able to stay in here?" Steph asked, smacking her leg.

"I don't know," I admitted.

Christopher's eyes went wide. "I'll help!" he cried. "You need a fly swatter!"

A minute later he was back heroically weilding a potato masher. He swung it at a black speck flying by. "I'll save you, Mom!"

"Christopher!" Steph scolded. "That's a potato masher!"

Swish! went the masher. "I couldn't find the fly swatter," he said, and hacked through the air again.

So this is the terrifying thing. When I laugh really hard, I become paralyzed. And watching Christopher race around the dryer swinging a potato masher and yelling "I'll save you!" while almost hitting Stephanie over the head with the thing was too much. I lay there, my mouth frozen open in an insane smile, laughing with no sound, unable to even let go of the screwdriver thingy, or to kill the mosquito that landed on my face, or to move my open mouth away from the cobwebs. I knew if I breathed in I would inhale them. This also struck me as funny. I laughed harder. I laughed so hard I COULDN'T MOVE OR BREATHE. And in that moment I knew that if I kept laughing at us I would die.

"Christopher," I forced myself to say. "Stop!"

""I can't! I have to kill them all!" He scowled at one. "Come here, mosquito!"

"Steph," I whimepered and laughed at the same time. "Please... make him stop!...Going to kill me!"

Stephanie only laughed harder.

"Please...help...spiders...I...hate...dryers."

I rolled over on my back. Somehow. I stared at the ceiling and felt the exhaustion creep in. Christopher's footsteps stopped and he peeked down at me.

"Mom?" he said. "I'm done killing them. Is dinner done?"

"HfgewrwnIwernwer wjguy2y17," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"Derwqeopurwrw01231nnawy," I repeated.

"Mom, you're mumbling and I can't undertsand you. I'm hungry."

"I'm buying a dryer," I said.

And I did, after I tried working on the dryer for a few more days. By the time I officially gave up I had bought two parts that didn't fix anything and spent many hours almost breathing in spider webs. But I did manage to get the back of the dryer off. I considered that a small voctory.

My new dryer is used, it cost less than what I paid trying to fix it myself and it's almost as old as me. But it works like a champ. I love that thing. Because I know that when it eventually breaks I will not fool myself into thinking that I can fix it myself. I look at that machine and think, "I will never ever have to work on you! If a repairman can't fix you, you're out of here!"

And I'm confortable with this. I'm comfortable with the part of me that is not good with tools, and does not want to inhale spiderwebs. I need never learn what a rachet or a screwdriver is or raise my potato masher in violence again.