Perchance to Dream . . .

Our electricity went off tonight. Dawn had been in bed for about 30 minutes. The kids had just settled down. I was enjoying a little solitude.

Not many of you know this, but I am panicky scared of the dark, especially of electricity-less dark. It's too quiet and WAY too dark, just as I imagine the opening moments of the apocalypse may be. Yikes and shivers.

I was immediately still as a statue can be in a swivel chair. With its eyes closed. I know that doesn't seem right, but here's my argument . . . When the lights are down, it very often is the shadows that freak me out and cause me to do things destructive like jump and run and knock over something that crashes something else or my toe. So for the last few years I've been closing my eyes in the dark so I'm not unnecessarily distracted from my goal - survival.

So there I was in my swivel chair, eyes closed, waiting for Dawn to get up and come and save me. Instead of her shuffling/stumbling pads, I heard a herd of elephants. It wanted a Mommy. And just when I was feeling my best.

I got my herd snuggled together on the couch and assured them I would be right back with a light. Turning to face my darkened path, I chanted something like "Ham Sa Brea Thing Is Good Ham Sa Ham Sa Damn It And Gulf Po Wer Brea Thing Brea Thing Please For The Love Of God Let Me Keep Brea Thing."

Wouldn't you have loved to see me, a completely un-blind woman stumbling around dining chairs in the dark with my eyes squeezed shut, all the time noiselessly mouthing monosyllabic babble?

As it turned out, I got to spend a complete hour with all of my children, all to myself. I read aloud, by candlelight one of the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osbourne while they snuggled together near-silently. I can't remember the last time they did that, for that long. When the book was done, they all lay down together on a pallet; and the little boys fell asleep while I rubbed their foreheads.

And that's a true story - I'm not even making it up.

Clearly, the power is back on now and my heartrate has returned to something close to normal, and my breathing will soon mimic that of my sleeping angel-kids. But before my big slumber, I had to take a minute to appreciate the storm that brought the lightning that brought the thunder that brought down the lights that brought my children to my arms that held a story that rocked us all into calm that delivers us to dream . . .

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You're Not Sick of Beach Pictures, Are You?

Super Cool Jellyfish

Super Cool Mom

Super Cool William Surfing the Perfect Wave

Faith Diving for Super Cool Shells

Super Cool

Super Cool Chick Thinks She's Super Funny

Super Cool Googles

We Thought This Guy Was Super Cool, Too.

I'm Never Going to Get Tired of These Pictures.

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More Tide Pool Pictures

Margo takes beautiful pictures. I wish on everything holy that she would do something with this talent, something that makes money, I mean. She's especially good with children. She can get kids to make the perfect face. I also wish I felt more comfortable with showing you examples of those perfect faces but, alas we don't live in a perfect world.

When she posted pictures from the tide pool (speaking of perfect), she left out some of my favorites.

I swear Ray is one of the funniest people that has ever stomped this planet.

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Forever Young

The First Day of School is always emotional for me.

Sorry about the whole diaper thing.

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Makeover

As you can see, I'm sporting a new look. And a makeover may be just what the doctor ordered for this girl.

As I'm sure you can guess, it's all thanks to Rocket.

She was struck by my ridiculous self-loathing pity party about my Mississippi upbringing. So she emailed us and asked for pictures of my kids' hands, palm up. What she sent back is my new header. There was the sweetest note with it that said something like, "Now nobody is 'white' or 'black'. They're all green martians!"

Is she the best or what?

As if all of that isn't enough, she also spit out that fabulous thing right over there. See it? The Pinkness? Yeah, Baby!

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Since I'm Struggling for Inspiration

I'll just tell you funny things that my kids say and do.

We have a book called Quiet Loud by Leslie Patricelli. It is a simple board book with one sentence on each page. "Birds are Quiet. Airplanes are Loud." (Clearly the author has not met my Tranny Cockatiels Opie and Lou.) Faith was reading/has the book memorized and was reciting the book in a whisper in the car yesterday. She turned the page and paused. I looked over to see which word had stumped her. "Sniffles." I waited while she thought about it. Finally she said, "Boogers are Quiet. Sneezes are Loud."



Faith walked through the kitchen carrying the fish food. I asked her what she was going to do. (I understand that it should have been clear to me what she was going to do. Right? With my kids it's better to ask. The odds that she said, "I'm going to feed the fish" were as good as the odds that she said something like, "I'm making a collage. I need little yellow flakes to represent the sand.") On this day, though she said, "I'm going to feed the betas." One of the betas is William's fish William. So when William heard her say that, he jumped up, put his hands on his hips, arched his back and buried his blue eyes in a furrowed brow that would make Churchill proud and said, "Nonsense! Only I can feed William!"




Last night, when William asked for dessert I handed him what was left of an Organic White Chocolate bar (YUM!) He took a bite, handed it back to me and said, "I not like it. Let's sell it on eBay."


Storm. Storm. As I noted in an earlier post, Storm is my most loving and most ridiculously difficult child. He has spent most of this week in his room because he refuses to write 20 words a day in cursive. Refuses. Flat out will not do it. He has missed a lunch outing, a trip to Fort Pickens for bike riding, and an episode of The Penguins of Madagascar. Trust me, that's a heartbreaker. This morning he was up to 100 words because he hasn't done it for 5 days. He and Dawn renegotiated. 20 words, 20 math facts, 20 pages of reading from a book of her choice, 20 spelling words to be found in a word search, and 20 something else. She numbered the paper 1 - 20 for the cursive writing. Storm sat down and not 5 minutes later brought me the work. Totally done. In 5 minutes. The words he chose, you ask? That little shit wrote One, Two, Three, Four, Five etc.


Baby Ray came running down the hallway in a total panic. Totally naked. With a massive erection that he was pointing to. He said, "Uh Oh! Uh Oh! Uh Oh!"

Thanks for everyone's sweet words over the past few days. I love you guys.

Tornado-ish

This is my den. Today, unfortunately, it looks very much like my living room, playroom, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. I'm swamped. After the washing machine went out and created a backlog of laundry and then Dawn and I both got sick and then Dawn got called into work all week and then Spring Break and then our biggest festival of the year (made bookoos, by the way!), the house is beyond repair. The problem is that even if I worked on it continuously it still wouldn't get clean because the 4 kids leave such destruction in their wakes. While I am repairing they are destroying. Adrienne Rich wrote something like, "The greatest frustration of Motherhood is doing jobs that are constantly undone." How true.

I'm seriously considering using some of my festival profits to hire a Merry Maid to help me climb out of the wreckage. Is that terrible?

Easter

We started with 36 real eggs, 29 plastic ones and now we're only missing 3. I call that a great success. We've watched all the new shows, opened all the new toys, and eaten too much candy. The Lord is Risen!

Jaws

I don't like to post pictures of my kids, because who knows which of you is a big Creepy Creeperson who might take a shine to one of them. I'm making an exception today because they're all incognito in this particular picture. The HUGE Easter box from my mom arrived today. These goggles were the biggest hit!

What about Ray with his paci? How hilarious is this?!

This Is Why I Can't Afford Another Pillow

The barfing and pants-crapping continues and now the washer has gone out. Fuck!

Battery

Last night was Storm's first little league game. It was full of comedic moments, but I think my favorite happened just before the first at-bat. The coach was calling out the kids' numbers to tell them the batting order. Storm was listening attentively when a look of total panic swept over his face. He dashed out of the dugout and sprinted to us. Just before he ran his mother over, he turned around, looked over his shoulder and said, "What number am I?"

All was going well until Faith jumped up from the bevy of little girls and began chasing another of the flock with a sharpened pencil. I could hear that horrible piercing "Renk Renk Renk" sound from Psycho. Thankfully, Mimi grabbed up our little Norman Bates before she caught the other child. When I asked Faith why she was stalking her prey, she said, "Because she was singing, and I didn't like it." My God.

I was reminded, though of a story that I think you guys will all get a kick out of. It concerns my aunt Lisa who is now a big dyke living happily in Atlanta with her big dyke girlfriend. When Lisa was a girl she, of course, was a tomboy. At half-time of the high-school football games, the little boys and Lisa would play touch on the field until the game resumed. One Friday night, when Lisa came off the field, she saw a little turd boy chasing her younger sister and trying to kiss her. Lisa got a hold of him, threw him up against the chain link and beat him until the fence was leaned over. A teacher seperated them and marched Lisa up into the stands to her parents. When they got home, her father said, "Next week, you're gonna wear a dress and sit in the stands with me." Lisa said, "Well then I'm not goin'."

Conversation On The Way Home From School

William: What does a purple flag mean? Purple flag at beach?

Me: It means there are dangerous animals in the water.

William: Like jellyfish.

Me: Yes.

William: And stingrays.

Me: That's right.

William: And dragons.

Me: Dragons?

Faith: Yes. Some people believe there are dragons and monsters in the sea, but I don't.

William: Well, I do.

Ray: Roaaaaaaaaarrrrr!

Spring has come to Florida!

67 degrees, sunny now with thunderstorms in the forecast for this afternoon! I kicked the kids outside before 8:30 and got in the shower to get my legs ready for their yearly debut. It quickly became obvious that I didn't have the proper hair-removal tool. The Venus razor was good for cutting down the foliage. The Gillette did pretty well with the stalks and stems. And finally, the good old pink plastic bic finished off the stubborn stubble. What I needed was a bush hog.

Time out for humor that non-southerners may not get. My mom was a doctor in Mississippi. She was working in the ER when a new director from Michigan came on board. On his first day, a nurse came running in saying that they were all needed in trauma. As they all rushed down the hall the nurse told them the patient was a man who had been run down by a bush hog. When the director saw the patient's injuries, he said, "What the hell kind of animal is this?"

My freshly shucked legs are sporting new capris from the end of the season sale last year and my shirt only has one small hole in it! My springtime uniform!

Ahhh . . . I love the smell of bug repellant in the morning!

Dawn - Part II: This all happened in a 24 hour period.

Yesterday, we loaded up the kids who were out of school again for no good reason (something about the teachers going to New Orleans for a conference (Mardi Gras)). We were on the way to Mobile on I-10 when Dawn very calmly said, “That was a Wild Boar.”
“A what?” I said
“A wild boar. It was in the median.” Let me say now for those of you not from the South, that a wild boar sighting is VERY rare. I’ve lived here my whole life and never seen one. I still haven’t - I missed it. Dawn went on to say that she has a certain affinity for wild boar because it was part of the best meal she’s ever eaten.
“You ate wild boar? Where?”
“In Brasil.” This is the answer I was hoping for. I LOVE hearing about the year she spent there. She’s so modest that I kind of have to trick her into telling me about it or wait patiently for moments like this.
“We were at my host family’s farm. We had gone out on the river in the boat. We saw a boar cross the river, but when it got to the other side it couldn’t climb up. The bank was too steep. It was going to drown anyway, so my host dad whacked it on the head with an oar.” No shit. That’s what she said. Back off, girls. I saw her first.
As she got more and more carried away with her love for Brasil, stories spilled out. Fresh milk with brand new chocolate, pizza with mangos, trees filled with toucans, and a spiritual gathering that her host family wouldn’t take her to because the group still practiced sacrifice and Dawn being a blond virgin might not be safe. She says all of this with a light in her eyes and a melodic laugh.

Last night as we were getting ready for bed, Dawn was tending to the birds and chatting and I was checking the email one last time. I wish I could remember what she was talking about. It was something funny and charming. When I shut the computer down and turned around, she was sitting on our bed all aglow with tiny white down feathers all in her hair. She was, as is her way, totally unaware of her beauty. My angel!

This morning, she was working at the computer downstairs and had turned on Pandora.com. (If you don’t know about this miracle of modern life, go now. My feelings won’t even be hurt if you stop reading and proceed immediately.) She had it on the musicals channel. When “My Favorite Things” started up she called Faith in to hear it. Dawn has managed to infect Faith with her abiding love of “The Sound of Music.” They sang and danced together. When Faith ran off to get dressed so she could watch the movie, Dawn told me about the special trip she took to Austria just to go the place featured in the opening scene. “Did you spin around and sing?” I asked.
“All day. All day.”

Funny Morning

About every 2 weeks, we have a morning where everything comes together (or falls apart) to reveal the hilarious nature of our kids. Today is one of those blessed days.
Storm, age 8, sleepily walked down the hallway in mismatched jams. “Why did you change pajama bottoms?” I asked. He stared at me.
“Did you pee in your bed?” Blank stare. “Storm. Hi. I’m talking to you. Did you pee in your bed?” He shook his head a couple of times and then pulled the diagonal nod and gradually worked it into a full nod. “Does that mean yes, Baby?”
Blank stare then, “No.”
“So you didn’t pee in your bed?”
“Yes.” Now we’re both staring at each other.
“Storm, angel, did you pee in your bed?”
“Yes.” OK. He wrapped a blanket around his body and trudged to the table.

William, from the bathroom, yells, “Mom!” I went. He was sitting on the potty, so low that his butt must have been touching the water. His cheek was squished in his little hand attached to the elbow that was propped on the toilet seat. He calmly asked, “What that smell?”
“Poop.” I said.
“No, I not fink so.”
“Are you pooping?”
“Yeah.” he said with a little sigh.
“Well, then I think it’s your poop.”
“No, I fink it be Way.” Ray - the baby brother who is no where in sight or smell range.

Faith and Ray were at the computer, which is to say that Faith was sitting in the desk chair and Ray was sitting in the little kid chair next to the desk chair. Faith said, “I don’t want to play Nick Jr. today. I want the one with the big circle on it.”
“PBSkids.org?” I asked.
“Yes, that one.” She looked at the keyboard, frowned a little and asked, “How do you spell PBS?”
Ray, meanwhile, still had on his pajamas and still had his puppy lovey and his paci which he holds in the corner of his mouth like a cigar. He also though, was wearing sunglasses, red sunglasses, which were on his face a little bit askew because they were only over one ear. The other ear was smooshed under the arm. He was staring expressionless at the screen.

Storm, finally dressed with lunchbox and homework folder in hand, was waiting at the door for Dawn to drive him to school. He started to squirm. He stuck out his butt, pinned his knees together and shimmied. When that obviously had not fixed his problem, he stuck the folder under his arm and pinched repeatedly at his nether region. Mimi, my aunt who lives with us, said, “Storm, you all right?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s just my pants.” The shimmy continued with bursts of twists that would make Chubby Checker proud.
“What’s wrong with your pants?”
“Well, it might be my underwear.”
“Maybe you should put your things down so you can attend to it. You don’t want to be walking around like that all day.” He put down the lunchbox and folder, undid his pants and began to dig. And dig and twist up his face and look very pensive at times. Mimi was turning purple from the effort to stifle a giggle. When his arm finally came free and he re-snapped and re-zipped, Mimi asked, “So what was the problem?”
“It was twisted or something.” We resisted the urge to inquire as to what exactly was twisted.

Faith, meanwhile had decided that she wasn’t going to school and so did not need to get dressed. She and Ray were standing on her bed going through her jewelry/random-crap-that-she-won’t-part-with box. Ray had on a purple headband.

William, still from the bathroom, yells, “Mom! I fink I got dirrea!” This is a pretty good pronunciation for him. He says “diarrhea” differently every time. I went in there to find him still hunched precariously over/in the bowl. “I gonna need your help, Mom.”
“OK, baby. Mommy is always going to help you. What do you want me to do for you?”
“I want you get one of Way’s frozen wipes for my bootsie.” Translation - Get one of the baby wipes which is startlingly cold and wipe my butt. I did.

Mimi had by then miraculously coaxed Faith into some school clothes. She was standing in the kitchen, pink lunchbox in hand. Her wild mane was protesting the cherry print headband that she had worked over it. Her bottom lip was poked out far enough to warrant, “You could walk to Memphis on that lip!” She was totally silent on the way to school. Very unusual. When we got there she stomped into the classroom. I yelled after her, “I love you, Faith!” I was hoping to embarrass her into a reaction. She stopped walking and slowly turned around. She lowered her chin, furrowed her little brow and doing her best not to smile said through clenched teeth, “I love you, too.”