I don't know those people!

Why is my Flickr widget showing photos from a blog in China no matter how many times I reset it?

I've temporarily removed the Flickr widget until I can figure out how to make it work. One of my techier friends should help me. Consider that a hint.

John and Kate Plus Hate

For the record, I normally have a profound lack of interest in anything having to do with either celebrities or reality television (two categories that should probably be mutually exclusive but somehow are not), but I am finding myself sucked into the John and Kate drama. Why is that?

We watched the first couple of seasons, not religiously or in order, but here and there because reruns would be on at night while I was getting Genevieve to sleep in our bed. SAM and I used to tease BD about having a little thing for Kate, at least until he saw the belly surgery episode. We would shake our heads and say "Poor John" when Kate would treat him like her ninth child, and wish for a van like theirs so our crew of nine could someday travel in one vehicle. But then we lost interest, because really, it was never that interesting in the first place.

I've seen whole websites transformed by swarms of loyal J&K fans coming to duke it out with J&K haters on the basis of one editorial. There's a thread of comments over thirteen thousand posts long on a parenting site I frequent. It's nuts! And truly, I would never dedicate that much emotional energy to loving or hating people I don't even know. But I have to admit, I'm not sorry to see Kate getting her comeuppance.

Maybe it's that I find it harmfully dishonest to present such a shiny-happy false facade to the world, in which one woman pretends to (almost) singlehandedly keep her eight children clean, clothed, and fed an all-organic diet in an immaculate house with a perfectly-organized laundry room while maintaining individualized relationships with each child and having a hot date with the hubby on a regular basis. Girl, please. Who are you fooling, and why would you want to?

Here's something I've learned: if you make yourself look too much better than everyone else, they will take the very earliest opportunity to crucify your uppity butt. But if you make people feel like they are not doing so badly after all, they might just love you. Maybe if Kate hadn't been so busy allegedly elbowing people out of her way on the path to fame and fortune, someone would have told her that.

Open letter to Toilet Hoverers

Dear T-H-ers of the world:

The way this works is that if your butt is actually on the toilet seat, you are not able to pee all over it. In other words, the only one making the seat too nasty to sit on is you, the one who thinks you are too good to sit on it. Please stop doing that.

Yours truly,
Sweet Sassy Molassy

The New Math

Days since last nursing: 10
Weeks this fell before projected goal: 3
Months spent nursing Genevieve: 35
Months spent nursing Somerset: 36
Months spent nursing Joshua: 14 (he got the shaft because S was born when he was 14 months old and I'm not woman enough to tandem)
Months spent nursing Calvin: 27

Grand total of months spent nursing (drumroll please....): 112

That's 9.333 in human years.

Weeks before I got pregnant again the last time I had a weaned, diaper-free three year old: two
How sure I am that this will not happen again: 100%

Months not spent pregnant or nursing since 1997: 4.5

That's right. Four. And a half.

I just figured that out. No wonder I've been cranky!

Analyze This

Suddenly this past week, I've been having very strange and vivid dreams. One was very tactile and color specific, involving a lot of grit and the vomiting of orange feathers. One involved a group of roving attackers breaking into my house and keeping me hostage. We'd heard they were on the loose, so we were going around locking the windows, and then they walked right through the front door. That's probably significant.

Last night I dreamed that a group of domestic terrorists (label applied post-dream) killed everyone in the world who wasn't with them with poisonous gas, but I was part of a secret resistance that survived by somehow not breathing the gas while pretending to be dead. Once they moved on from where I was, I quickly packed one bag for myself and my kids. It was a white nylon drawstring backpack of the cheap fundraiser variety, if you want to know. I chose very carefully the clothes that would get us through life on the run. They turned out to be tshirts mainly. I asked myself if I needed to be stealthy, but since the terrorists assumed that everyone who wasn't one of them was dead, I didn't need to. But as I encountered people I had known before the attack and they acted normal toward me, I started to wonder if these were really the same people, or if their bodies had been somehow taken over. If that were the case, did they have some way of recognizing a body that hadn't been snatched?

What does it all mean??

The Ponderous Adventures of Cindabella and Bootie

In an attempt to act like a good mom and play with my kids yesterday, I parked myself in front of the three-story Barbie mansion with Genevieve. Delighted, she helped me pick a doll and parked her at table on the veranda with her own.

"What's your girl's name?" I asked her.
"Um...Cindabella," she replied. "You can be Bootie."

Clearly the Disney Princess indoctrination starts early. Genevieve has never even seen any of those movies. Oh well. I giggled at her interpretation of the names and dressed my brunette Barbie in a sundress that I could barely yank up over her misproportioned hips. We pondered the mystery of the stairs that go only from the second to the third floor, and the elevator that goes only from first to second. I noted that although the mansion seems spacious, Barbie is apparently the doll-equivalent of 8 feet tall. The bar-height kitchen table sits at her hips when she leans awkwardly against the stool. I guess it doesn't matter, since neither Cindabella nor Bootie was able to bend her elbow to take a drink of her "glass of line."

Barbies were a nice diversion in the middle of a day that both started out and ended up sucking. I have been working toward weaning Genevieve, with her third birthday at the end of May looming as our deadline. Sometimes she's been cooperative with the limits I've tried to set, and sometimes not so much. After she woke up at 6:00 yesterday morning and nursed without ceasing until I finally couldn't take it at 8:00, she screamed and cried and threw a fit about being denied. Then I pretty much screamed and cried and threw a fit at BD, and it was all just ugly and upsetting and the result of a lot of frustration and exhaustion and I think we all realized that we just can't do it anymore, any of us.

So we stayed in our jammies all day except when he took the kids to the book store for a brief outing before dinner, and we played Barbies and watched bad (really bad) tweener TV on Disney and tried to just be easy with each other, and when G asked to nurse and I told her I can't nurse her anymore, she handled it fairly well. Until bed time. We have never night-weaned any of our kids, because I'm too lazy and I can't stand all that crying. This is the first time in four kids and eleven years that I have not wanted to nurse more than I have not wanted to deal with difficult weaning rituals. (Usually I just take a trip or, you know, go to the hospital to have another baby.) BD had warned me not to come to her room no matter how much she screamed and called for me. It seemed to go suprisingly well for a while, then it went horribly. I read until I couldn't, and then I cried and felt like a selfish ass while SAM reassured me that she was in the hands of a loving parent who was taking good care of her, and that she was just mad and was making sure we knew it. I knew she was right, but it still sucked.

I never thought I would be anything but ready by the time she finally weaned, ending a nine-plus year nursing total, but I really hate the thought that Sunday morning will be the last time I ever nurse her, because I was just angry the whole time. And I really do have so many sweet, wonderful memories of curling around her little body, warm in the bed with the comforter around us. I can't decide if I can give us both a different last time or not without setting us back. I guess we'll see. In the meantime, I definitely feel like the Bootie in our little duo.

What Kind of Tree Hugger Are You?

I am becoming more and more amused by the proliferation of quizzes on Face Book. I love the "Which Grease Character Are You" quiz that asks questions from a purely male perspective, but assigns only female characters. (I was Rizzo, of course.) There are quizzes that ask you if you love the sunshine and hate rain and then tell you Seattle is your perfect city. There's the "What Kind of Parent Are You" quiz whose questions and answers look something like this:

Your child falls down. You

A. Laugh

B. Rub crushed glass into the skinned knee

C. Light up a smoke

D. Pick him up and put a bandage on the booboo

Guess which answer gets you the "You are a great parent" rating. I think my favorites, though, are the ones that are clearly written by someone who speaks English as a second language, because there is nothing more endearing that Japanese syntax applied to English grammar. It makes me feel like I'm living a David Sedaris essay.

Recently I took a quiz that was supposed to tell you where you fall on the political ideology spectrum. Now, you and I both know where I fall, but I couldn't resist getting that terribly unflattering photo of Nancy Pelosi published on my profile, so I took it. The questions were surprisingly valid and grammatically correct, and there were a lot of them, by Face Book quiz standards. I actually started to sweat it a little when several questions about the death penalty came up. What if I lost my liberal cred right there on Face Book for all the world to see? Because, yes, I believe in the death penalty. Not in all cases or for the full range of crimes to which it may now be applied, but yeah. Child molesters and serial killers cannot be reformed. And I don't care if it's a deterrent to others, or if it can't bring back the victims or change what happened. I believe there is a point of no return. I believe you can forfeit your right to share oxygen with the rest of humanity. I'm okay with the concept of purely punitive action in those cases, and yes, I believe I would be willing and able to push the button myself, so to speak.

I have come to accept this fact about myself--I am forgiving to a fault on my own behalf, but my capacity for grudgeholding-by-proxy is astonishing. I have let go of shocking personal betrayals and wrongs, but if you hurt someone I love, or an innocent stranger, I want nothing less than your utter destruction, and I usually want to be the instrument. This rage on the behalf of others is sometimes hard for me to reconcile. I value my inner peace; I loathe drama of any kind. In my personal life I strive for zen-like acceptance of reality and of people with all their flawed humanity. And yet, all the self-talk I can muster falls short of convincing me to let go of my anger on behalf of others. Maybe I should. But maybe, on the other hand, a little righteous indignation never hurt anyone.

So that's how I know the "Which Norse God Are You" quiz is flawed. Clearly I am not Frigg, as stated, but Vidar.

Oh, as for the political ideology spectrum, I guess my pro-gay marriage and anti-victimless-crime answers redeemed me, because it said if I went any further to the left, I'd be in Stalin's back yard. Phew!

Long Slide into Summer

There are years when spring break makes me feel rejuvenated and recharged enough to finish out the school year, and then there are years when it just makes me ready for summer. This year it did the latter. All I want to do is sit under the massive wisteria-dripping pergola and read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, drinking sweet tea with mint from the courtyard herb garden and tanning my legs while the kids run around in the yard. Isn't it summer yet?

This doesn't bode well for the 100 Othello analysis papers I need to grade, or the classwork for the six weeks that ends Wednesday. Senioritis happens to teachers too.

What Memphis is Like

Imagine that you are a young woman in the prime of your life. You have this boyfriend; he is sexy and smart and fun to be around, mostly. As soon as you met, he opened himself up to you and you could see all this amazing potential. He could be great, and you could be great by his side. The two of you have chemistry. There's just something about him that feels right to you.

You even like a lot of his friends. They're interesting and sharp and when you all hang out together, you feel so at home. You know that if you were dating some other guy, some Joe Schmoe from the office, you would never have found friends this cool. They introduce you to all this great music and they know all the best places to hear it. There's not a hole-in-the-wall or greasy spoon they haven't tried and judged, and you revel in the fruits of their searching.

He even cooks. He can make all kinds of things, but he has one dish, let's say barbecue, that is really special--the best you've ever had. Sure, maybe sometimes he gets in a barbecue rut, but even then, you have to admit it's good. It's what you want him to make when friends come over, and it's what you crave when you have to be apart.

But this guy, he has some issues. For a while you can overlook the problems--no one's perfect, right? So he's a little moody. A little bit of a slob around the house. The apartment you now share is starting to look a little shabby, especially when you compare it to your friends' places. Still, its better than what you could afford if you weren't with him. And really, you could let all of that go, every bit of it, if it weren't for this anger thing that just seems to be getting worse with every passing day.

At first you only hear about it. There's a story of how he lost it with some guy at a bar, or the office smartass. Then there will be a day now and then when he seems touchy, quick to raise his voice. After a while, it gets harder to relax around him. You're always wondering, in the back of your mind, when he's going to blow. And finally one day, it happens--he directs the full force of his anger at you. You probably didn't even do anything, just minding your own business when suddenly, Bam! He's in your face, screaming about nothing you did, and then the unthinkable happens, and he hits you.

You are stunned. Somehow, even though you knew it was happening all around you, you cannot believe this has hit home. You think about leaving, but it's so hard to wrap your mind around all the things you will lose. And even though it makes you hate yourself a little bit, you still love him. You can't forget all the good times, all the things you only feel when you're with him. You know that you won't get to keep his friends. Sure, you'll stay in touch, but it can never be the same. And you won't be able to go to the old hangouts--they're his territory. You imagine never tasting his cooking again--where will you get babrbecue that good? You look at other apartments and think of how you could fix them up, make them your own, and it all seems great, but then you go home and all your stuff is there, and your good memories, and it makes you angry that he has done this.

Why should you have to leave? Why can't he get himself together, why can't all those things you love about him be the whole story, why can't he see how perfect things would be if he would just deal with his problems? But in the end, you know that he won't. You know that you have to go. And you know, already, that you will never get over the feeling that he was the one, that it really was meant to be between the two of you, but he ruined it, and you just can't forgive him for that. You will never stop feeling angry about what could have been, the waste of it, the frustrating clarity of your vision of the man he could have chosen to become. You're young, you'll meet someone else, but you know there's some small part of yourself that you won't be able to give again, because you never got it back.

That is exactly what Memphis is like.

I'm Okay, You're Okay

One of the things I like about reading my friends' blogs is the way their thoughts and experiences can lead me to closer contemplation of my own. For example, reading Rita's post about people's reaction to her return to martial arts classes brought me back to something I've been thinking about lately myself. And really, what good are other people if they don't provide me with a platform to talk about me, me, me?

Really, though, Rita was saying that she's gotten a lot of "you're so brave" comments, which she can't help but hearing as "wow, you look so foolish, yet you get out there in that hideous uniform anyway" (to paraphrase). Wisely she has decided to enjoy herself and not care what people think. So how does that relate to me? It's kind of complicated. I think a lot of my persona is built on th foundation of "I don't care what you think of me," and on reflection, for the most part, I find that to be true. The trouble is more with what I think of me, or if your idea of me doesn't match up to my own idea of what you are supposed to think of me. That's reasonable, right?

I know that I have a problem with taking myself too seriously. Sometimes that makes it hard for me to determine why I'm really doing or not doing something. I think there are a lot of things I don't do because in no universe can I comprehend how those things are supposed to be fun. Which wouldn't matter, except they're always things that a lot of other people think are fun, and the end result is that I come across as a curmudgeonly or stuck up or more-highbrow-than-thou. It's hard to even list specific examples because of the mental list of friends who are going to read them and say "Oh, so you think all these things that I do are stupid, huh?" Which is tricky because, while those things do seem kind of unfathomable to me, that doesn't mean I think you're dumb for doing them. Maybe that means that I'm not so much worried about me or what you think of me, but about what you think I think of you? This is getting confusing.

Suffice it to say that even if no one would ever see me or know that I had done it, I would never, ever, ever stand in my own living room and play Rock Band any more than I would ever stand in front of a bar full of strangers and sing karaoke. Just like I really and truly do not like reality TV, even though you may suspect that I secretly watch and love it but just pretend I'm "better" than that. I know that makes some of you sad for me, but really, it's okay. Because knowing that I wouldn't want to do it even if no one were watching or would ever even find out assures me that it's not about making an ass of myself. That's just not what I think is fun. So I'm okay with that. And I guess I want my Rock-Band/various-other-video-game-playing/Rock-of-Love-watching friends to be okay with that too. I won't be embarrassed for you, and you don't have to feel sorry for me for missing all the fun.

As for the American Idol thing, well, maybe we don't need to talk about that right now.

Dirty Santa

Genevieve has a habit of fixating on ideas and events. For a long time, she was obsessed with her birthday party. We could see a motorcycle and she'd say "I had two motorcycels at my birthday party. They were pink and purple." If she saw something she liked she would insist that she either had or would have that thing at her birthday party. Every day was about her birthday. The funny thing is, she's never even had a birthday party. My kids have their first real party when they turn five and are old enough to remember me spending that kind of money for a Spongebob cake at the bowling alley for them and their spazzy friends.

Lately, though, she has changed her focus. Christmas seems to have been the catalyst, although the effect was slightly delayed. Now it's all about the fat man in the red suit. And even though she sometimes speaks of him as a friend who is going to bring her things, she also blames him for all her injuries.

It started as Christmas approached and we tried to get Genevieve excited about Santa bringing her toys in the middle of the night. Without fail, she would insist that Santa was going to punch her in the stomach. I have no idea where my two year old got the mental image of a jolly old elf sneaking into her room in the dark of night to punch her in the gut as she slept, but it seemed to be firmly entrenched.

Now whenever she has a mysterious bruise or scratch, if I ask her how she got it she replies witout missing a beat "Santa hit me." Where is she getting this? Am I going to catch some stranger lurking around my house at night dressed as Mr. Clause?

Refreshed

I did not touch a computer all weekend. It was an unplanned break, one that happened naturally, and that's probably for the best since the minute I set a limit for myself, I will defiantly break it just to prove that I can. Such is the life of the ODD sufferer. Anyway, it was nice!

We hosted a group yard sale Saturday, since we do have plenty of yard to go around. I amused SAM and BD by taking seemingly random strangers on a spontaneous tour of the house, including my closet. Because if you come to my house, I'm showing you that closet! But they were not in fact random strangers. They were Kristen from the MOMS' board and her husband Josh and their baby girl whose name, I believe, is Ella. So there.

In other acts of gregariousness to total strangers, I introduced myself to our new neighbors and ended up sitting and chatting with them for an hour on their lovely back porch while my boys joined their boys on their trampoline. Also, last night while going through the U-Scan line at Kroger to buy exactly one tub of Cool-Whip for a terrible pie I attempted to make, I allowed two different people to use my discount card since they didn't have one. Like I do.

Slain

I read this story on this blog this morning and it just immobilized me. It's from Bird by Bird, by Anne Lammot. I own that book but I've never read it, because she's kind of Christiany and spiritual and I tend to avoid that stuff.

Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight year old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight.The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girls' IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, "How soon until I start to die?"

Now, I know this story has some problems: why would it be blood and not bone marrow? Why would it only be a pint of blood? But still! What killed me when I read it was thinking of an eight-year-old boy making what he thought was the sacrifice of his actual life, and doing so while believing that his parents were willing to trade his life for his sister's.

I really hope that is not a true story.

Samoas and Other Mysteries of the Universe

My girl scout finally located her cookie order form and took a break from edging out the Chip-Juices to bring me my four boxes: Samoas, Trefoils, Lemon Chalet Creams, and of course, Thin Mints. This prompted a discussion on the beautiful mystery that is the Samoa. How is it that none of us likes coconut but cannot resist the luscious Samoa? We talked briefly about the new flavors but agreed that the Samoa is still Troop Leader #1.

This indisputable fact was confirmed whenI shared the fact that I was a girl scout for many years and always sold the most cookies in my troop. This was thanks to the fact that my mom worked at Methodist Hospital and would take my order form in to work with her, then bring it back with several sheets of notebook paper stapled to it and covered with orders. A girl in the class smacked her hand on the desk and said with an earnest face and a voice full of longing: "That's because Samoa's ain't no joke."

That Was When I Ruled the World

In my English classes, we are starting on the period in British history known as The Restoration (or The Enlightenment or The Age of Reason or any of several other names), which happened around the same period of time that the colonies grew, revolted, and became America. Since so much of the literature we read in this period consists of social commentary and satire, I spend a little more time on background information than usual, and I had my students presenting on various aspects of the period in groups today.

I also had a student selling girl scout cookies in my fourth period as the kids entered the room. So I waited until after the "Relevant Dates and Milestones" group went and mentioned the Boston tea party to charge my cookie tax, paid in cookies. They thought this was hilarious but did not pay up until I insisted "Y'all think I'm kidding. I want my cookies! If you don't want to pay, you can dump all your cookies in the Boston Harbor in an act of protest." They laughed all the way up to my desk to pay me my cookies. I collected five Thin Mints, a Trefoil, a Samoa, and a new flavor called Dulce de Leche.

When I was done I said "Now I'm going to get fat and it's all your fault. I'll have to charge you a fat tax."

It's good to be queen.

Out the Poop Chute

My baby got sick. As in, sicker than any of my four kids has ever been in my eleven-plus years of motherhood. Sometime around 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning, Genevieve cried and asked to come to our room. I brought her to bed, and instead of wanting to nurse as I expected, she seemed to fall instantly and deeply asleep...for thirty seconds, until she threw up. After a complete strip down of bed, baby, and mom, we layered towels over the clean sheets in standard toddler-vomiting procedure so that they could be stripped away one at a time as needed. Sadly, the towels weren't enough to prevent two more changes of sheets before 10:00 a.m., especially once things started coming out the other end as well.

For those of you who don't know her personally, Genevieve is a little cricket bug. On a good day she weighs about 24 pounds, soaking wet. A full day of being unable to hold down a sip of water while any reserves she had seeped out the back door quickly took its toll. Sometime around 6:00 I was changing her clothes again and she was unable to stand up on her own. I called the pediatrician's after-hours nurse, who called the doctor on call, who confirmed that I needed to take her to the emergency room. I loaded up a diaper bag with extra clothes, a towel, diapers, wipes, and plastic bags and headed to Baptist East.

The emergency department at Baptist is undergoing renovations, and so is the parking lot. After circling a few times, I sucked it up and parked in the garage, which meant I had to walk about six blocks carrying a suddenly-heavy 24 pounds of half-awake toddler and an overloaded bag, along with my purse. Fortunately once we reached the E.R. we only had to wait about half an hour, during which time she threw up the water she'd drunk in the car.

The nurse and doctor we saw were wonderful. The nurse remarked immediately that Genevieve's eyes were very sunken and that she would most likely need IV fluids. The doctor concurred, and soon my poor baby girl was being gently but firmly swaddled in a sheet with one arm pinned to her side, then strapped onto an immobilization board with giant octupus-like blue velcro straps so that she would not injure herself by fighting during the insertion of the needle. She was so weak that all she could do was wimper "Mommy, mommy, mommy" pitifully as I stroked her hair and mumured soothing reassurances while fighting back tears of my own.

Once the needle was in, the nurse quickly took blood and a rectal temp, which was 101.2, and then released her to sit in my lap during the actual receiving of the fluids. She also injected some Zofran into the IV line to stop the vomiting, then left us alone for a bit. There was a wallpaper border of jungle animals at chair-rail height all the way around the small room, and after about five minutes, I pointed out the elephants to Genevieve. For the first time all day, she perked up a little and responded by talking about all the different animals, explaining which was the Daddy and which ones were herelf and her siblings. I was so relieved that I almost cried again. The nurse came in and said she looked noticibly better already and chatted about Genevieve's apparently excellent veins. I told her she must have gotten them from her father, because when I gave birth to that child it took every nurse in the hospital to get my IV in successfully. She looked at my apparently veiny hands and scoffed at the lack of expertise. I think the issue is that mine roll when someone tries to stick them. Anyway...

The doctor came back in and explained how the Zofran works and said he'd give me a prescription for more that could be taken orally if needed. He also explained that now that she was hydrated again, the diarrhea would likely reappear, which it did before we even left the E.R. Over the next two days it really never let up, which added an almost bloody butt rash to the mix of her misery. By Monday she was mostly better but cranky, and by Tuesday she was just plain crabby and over it. She really went 72 hours without eating, so it will probably be a while before she's 100% again. Somerset woke up puking this morning but already seems to be doing better, so I'm hoping it won't hit those of us over 30 pounds as hard, if at all.

Suck it, Ken Starr

Breathing Room

It's funny how being in a different space makes everything, well...different. As we settle into the new abode, I can't help being surprised by some of the things I'm noticing. Some are not so much surprising as eye opening, I guess.

I once read an article by an anthropologist who had spent time studying the effects of overcrowding on mice and, later, on people. Well, not just overcrowding but also a shortage of essentials like food and clean water. Long story short, the mice ate their babies, and the humans let theirs wander into the fire and found it funny, or deprived their loved ones of anything they themselves could get their hands on, even if it was something the loved ones needed and they themselves did not, like medicine for a specific illness.

I wasn't quite to the point of eating my young in the small house, but I was getting close. For a long, long time, that house was fine. It seemed to grow as we grew. I felt that people did not really need as much space as we Americans tend to think we need, and I still believe that. But somewhere in the past year or so, suddenly we popped a seam and the house went from cozy to tight like your skinny jeans 20 pounds later. My response to that too-tight feeling was mainly to hide out in my room, yelling at any child who tumbled into my space, and swearing that I hoped my kids either never had kids, or lived far away before they did so that I would not be expected to babysit. Because honestly, for a while now I've been feeling that if I can just get my kids grown and out of the house, I never want to see another child again as long as I live. Ev. Er. And that's a shame, because my kids are beautiful and smart and funny and sweet. But they're also kids, which means they're often spazzy and loud and whiny and needing something, anything, right that minute. Add in the fact that there are so many of them, and the odds that at least one will be doing something undesirable at any given moment go way up. Throw all that into a 1200 square foot house and well, you get the picture.

But now that we have room to spread out, I find myself feeling better. More relaxed and cheerful and less like there's a swarm of spider monkeys climbing up my body and swinging dangerously close to my head. That's not really surprising, but it's still somewhat like waking from a dream in which the bizarre felt normal, and only in retrospect can my rational mind recognize the insanity.

And of course, my being more relaxed and happy has translated to the kids being less clingy and needy. They are even being very cooperative about bedtime, and Genevieve is putting herself back to sleep most of the times she wakes up at night, which is a totally new thing. They're not underfoot while I cook dinner, and they're not fighting over a single couch cushion, b.k.a. "spot!" on the extra-large couch. As a result, I'm spending some time in the evenings on said couch instead of holed up in my bedroom. It's all circular.

Whirlwind

Yesterday afternoon, my mom called while I was waiting in the car line to pick the kids up from school to tell me that someone she knew was interested in looking at our house. She was already planning to see another house on the street at 4:30 and was hoping she could stop by ours afterward.

Since we are moving this weekend, my house was at that moment a wreck of boxes and mess that I hadn't bothered to clean, thinking I'd do it all as I packed and purged the house of junk. But I need to sell my house, so I agreed. I walked in the door at 4:00 and started cleaning. I had the forsight to stop by a convenience store and get the girls a treat, (the boys stay later on Thursdays for piano and computer club, so BD would be picking them up), and thankfully they sat happily on a box in my room, sweetly sharing their Cheetos and M&Ms and watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the eleventy-ninth time while I spun through the house like a whirling dirvish. The whirlwind power clean is a maneuver I am exceptionally good at, if I do say so myself, and in an hour I had the house looking acceptable, with a few neat stacks of boxes, packed and unpacked, the main living areas clear with wood floors and surfaces gleaming, the kids' rooms reasonably straight, and kitchen and bathroom at least wiped down with counters clear.

Being able to make a good pass at cleaning in an hour is something I'm going to miss about my little house. As excited as I am about the new house, there is an element of sadness about leaving the our family's home for the past eleven-plus years. When we bought that house, I was pregnant with our first child. I remember painting the living room and stripping the ugly bathroom wallpaper like it was yesterday. I can remember walking into the room we prepared for Calvin and loving the way the light made the room feel peaceful and perfect for a baby. There was the train ride to New Orleans, en route to Katherine's wedding in Pensacola, when I agreed to name our unexpected third child Somerset instead of Veronica if we could move our room into the back den, giving her a room that would not be shared with her two brothers.

When I remember our house in the years to come, I will think about being able to sit on the couch and see the child playing in the bathtub. I'll remember the rare days when I sat in the living room watching snow fall past the big uncovered back windows in the den, and mornings spent on the front porch glider with a baby in the crook of my arm or playing in the exersaucer while the older kids rode bigwheels and tricycles down the neighbor's driveway. I'll think about making ravioli or having cocktails with a group of friends around the big table in the small dining room, laughing and talking smack over the sounds of too many kids running wild in the front bedrooms. I'll miss the walk to the duck pond and the sight of all four kids piled onto the sectional sofa that has been their favorite sleeping spot since we bought it. I'll remember my twenty-five year old self, buying our first house, expecting our first baby, and feeling like an adult but one who wasn't sure how she got to that point or if she knew what to do now that she was there.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I feel that different now. I still don't feel like a 36 year old woman with four kids and a real job, but my new house certainly feels very grown up. And big! Did I mention all the space? I can already see it filled with our kids and our friends and our beautiful life, and that makes it a little easier to close the 1240 square-foot, one-bath chapter we're leaving behind.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

As many of you know, I'm moving this weekend. Into a house with triple the square feet of our current home, and shaped like a square doughnut with an atrium (aka Baby Jail Yard) in the doughnut hole, on an acre, with lawn care included in the rent. With three and a half bathrooms, as opposed to the one we all share now, and five bedrooms. Not only is there an actual master bath, but there is a master closet triple the size of my current bathroom, with built in drawers and shelves and shoe racks, and yards of hanging rods. There's a big, open kitchen with a fancy gas range and double wall ovens and a giant Sub-Zero fridge that inexplicably lacks a freezer. That part is okay, because there's room in the laundry room right off the kitchen for my big free-standing freezer. There's also a toilet in there, but we won't worry about that right now.

I'm probably most excited about all the outdoor living space, because I am an outddorsy kind of girl. But also? The kitchen and the multiple bathrooms and the ginormous closet and all the space, space, space! And doors that close to keep kids out, and the big stone corner fireplace that is identical to the one I grew up with. Did I mention all the space? Oh, and, AND, it's within walking distance of both an excellent elementary school and Calvin's middle school of choice.

I could really only be more excited if we had already sold our current house. We are working on that, and having all our stuff out of the way will make it easier to do some of the small repairs and touch-ups that need to be done. Ideally we'd love to sell it to someone who plans to fix it up/flip it, who doesn't want us to fix anything. A girl can dream, right?

In case you're wondering, we haven't won the lottery. The house is a very 1970s ranch in a good but older nighborhood in not-so-hip East Memphis. It's awesome but a little dated. (The kitchen was redone in 1995, so it's awesome in a 90s way, which is fine with me. Let's be real--I'm kind of 90s myself.) There's a whole lotta grasscloth. So the rent is not as huge as you might expect for a house that size. We are also combining households with my very good friend SAM and her two kidlets. That's right, baby makes nine. I've always wanted to live on a commune. I just never expected it to involve an East Memphis to downtown commute and complicated carpooling arrangements. Oh well, you can't have everything, right? There is plenty of room for all of us, and based on several factors and habits established over the last year, it just makes sense. I predict that changes in the economy and the general socio-political climate will engender more unconventional and creative living situations in the immediate future. Who knows, maybe we will be trail blazers!