Said by my 4 year old:
“Mom, you should have had your penis operated on since you are the one who hatches all the babies.”
Why yes I do homeschool my children, why do you ask?
Just when we thought it was over, we are sucked back in. It’s one of those times when I feel like the needle is stuck on the record* of my life.
Today is the first practice for fall baseball. God help me.
*Yes, I am old. It got me thinking though, at what point will this expression be completely archaic and need a footnote to explain it’s meaning.
People ask me all the time why I have so many children. Sometimes it is asked with the undercurrent of “you are crazy”, sometimes it is asked wistfully, but mostly it is asked out of genuine curiosity. In a day and age when the average American family has 1.7 children, seven children seems absurdly large.
I also get asked, “How many are you going to have?” And before I had my seventh the honest answer was always, “I don’t know.” There had been times over the years when I thought I might be done. But yet I mysteriously saved the baby things up in the attic “just in case” and the thought of parting with any of the baby paraphernalia made me well up with tears. I love babies. I love holding them, nursing them, rubbing their round fuzzy heads. Older children, well, I find them to be much more challenging.
This morning I kissed my husband goodbye at the front door, like I do every morning. Only this morning he wasn’t heading off to work. He was going to the doctor for the Surgery-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. He rolled down the window as he drove off and yelled, “You’re sure about this, right?” And I yelled back, “Oh yeah! And you’re going to have SO.MUCH.SEX from now on you won’t know what hit you.” I am sure all the neighbors are thrilled with this newly acquired knowledge.
So this is it. The grand finale. The quit while we are ahead. The why tempt fate. The final curtain call. The caboose. The last straw. The End.
The complete family. Perfection.
I outdid myself for dinner tonight.
I began by picking blueberries off of the bushes in our backyard. I felt so pioneer-like out there in my yard gathering food with my own hands to eat. My ten year old has been telling everyone that we grow organic blueberries, which makes it sound way WAY more impressive than a few scraggly shrubs really deserve.
I enthusiastically told the children that we were going to have blueberry something or other for dinner tonight! Rob is away, so my meal preparations the past few days have consisted of things like cold cereal, and scrambled eggs. So in keeping with the breakfast theme I decide to make blueberry pancakes.
I got out the big bowl and my measuring cups and spoons, at least the ones I can still find that have not been stolen for digging out in the yard. I got out my recipe book where I have written my ever expanding pancake recipe that I have changed and doubled, and doubled yet again. I scooped eight cups of flour out of the bag and into the bowl.
There is probably a reason that the ingredients are in a certain order in the recipe, but I do it my own way anyway. I don’t follow directions well. Most likely I was male in a past life.
I head to the refrigerator. Hmmmm, the only milk I have is vanilla flavored soy. Vanilla is good, I like vanilla flavoring. I pick up the carton and realize there isn’t much left. Ah no worries, I can improvise. My 8 cups of milk becomes three cups of milk mixed with 5 cups of water. It’s like skim milk, right?
Onto the next ingredient, eggs. Look in the refrigerator. No eggs. I remember that I used them all up two nights ago making scrambled eggs. I am moderately worried, but still confident I can find an adequate substitute. I search through the cabinets. What is egg like? I spy a sad lone jar of applesauce in the back of the cabinet. Perfect.
Things go along swimmingly until I come to the baking powder. I remember that I used up the last of it a week ago. I look through the cabinets, but nothing seems to be an acceptable substitution. Should I just ignore that ingredient? What else can I do? I am at the point of no return. I pull out the box of corn starch and toss some of it in. It’s powdery, it’s white, and I have no real grasp of it’s purpose.
I start pouring the batter into the pans. They are rather dense. I flip them over and they make an audible thud in the pan. My spatula bends from their weight. Hmmmm, they also won’t cook in the center. But then I remember there is no eggs in them, so who cares if the center is a little runny.
I decide to rename this food, since it is more like a panpuck than a pancake. I call the children in to the kitchen and introduce the Healthy Pancake Alternative. It’s like having a pancake but without all the pesky fat, cholesterol, and taste!
“Mom, they look really weird and I can’t cut them with my fork. Can I have a steak knife?”
I learn that my children, who cry at the sight of homemade macaroni and cheese, who painstakingly pick the diced vegetables out of fried rice, and who believe ketchup is a vegetable, these same children will eat something that has the consistency of a super ball if it is swimming in enough syrup.
Looking on the bright side, we can resole our shoes with the leftovers.
I had a bunch of things running through my brain that I was thinking of writing about.
1) I learned sheetrock is heavy. I was almost crushed to death by sheetrock this afternoon and how I felt like the old lady in that infamous television commercial, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” I had no idea that 5 pieces of sheetrock could totally knock me to the ground and trap my foot underneath. Makes me wonder if the one legged man lost his leg in a sheetrock accident.
2) I picked out a paint color, an actual color not in the white family, for the kids’ powder room and it turned nicely out despite my hyperventilating panic attack when I first put the paint on the walls, because ohmygod it’s so dark and so brown and I feel like I am trapped in a turd. But, hey what better place to feel like you are trapped in a turd than a bathroom.
3) When I go to the library it is as though all knowledge is sucked out of my brain and I cannot remember a single author I like or books I want to read. I wander through the library looking over all the shelves and can’t find a damn thing. Interestingly enough the opposite seems to happen at the bookstore, where I find way more interesting books than I can afford to buy on a single trip.
So those things were going through my mind as I walked through town today, trying to keep up with my running children, while trying very hard not to run myself.
Then something else happened that made be cry. And I am not really the crying type of person. I knew this is what I’d have to go home and write about.
I went to the post office today and there was a package for me. A package from someone I only know through the internet. A really cool someone.
Kathy and her family sold all their stuff, gave up their “normal” life, and took to the road with their four children. They just returned to the states after spending 7 months traveling through Mexico. A part of me, a large part, is jealous of their lifestyle. A dream of mine is to take a year or two and travel around the world with my children.
I’m not sure that I even have the words to express how thankful I am. I never really get presents from anyone. When I was a kid my mother used to give me money to go buy my own Christmas presents and then she would wrap them up and put them under the Christmas tree. Then on Christmas morning I would have to get up and unwrap them all. What sort of messed up craziness is that?!?
And my husband, as much as I love him, is not a great present giver. He is famous for buying me nothing, but telling me what he wanted to get me and then providing excuses for why he wasn’t able to get it. There is a reason Father’s Day is after Mother’s Day, I say. He will never live down the Christmas he gave me a stack of yellow legal pads (don’t you need those for law school?) and a box of Junior Mints (I thought you liked those?). I need and like tampons too, but I don’t want them wrapped up under the Christmas tree, even if they are the ones with the silky plastic applicator.
Today, I opened up the package and wrapped inside was the most gorgeous piece talavera pottery. I have been walking around the house clutching it to my chest. No where seems special enough, or high enough, to put it down. It has a place on the back of it for hanging it on display on a wall. I may just thread a string through it and wear it around my neck. That way I can show it off to everyone.
Kathy, thank you for your friendship, your kindness, and for a kick ass piece of pottery.
And shortly after the photo was taken I shoved the children off the couch and told them to stay away from my pottery.
“I had to eat all of them. There were only five cookies left and I didn’t want one of the kids to feel left out. Honestly, I did it for them. The kids are worth the slightly nauseous feeling I have right now.”
Said by me after my husband asked what happened to the five large cookies that he had last seen on the kitchen counter.
First she colors all over me with magic marker, then she locks me out of the house.
“Mom, do they make Lyme-strong bracelets?”
And though I snickered at him and his dramatics, thanks to google I have found that they do in fact make a bracelet in support of Lyme Disease awareness. The only problem is that it stands for many other things:
Kidney disease, lymphoma, muscular dystrophy, organ donors, bone marrow donors, ecology, environment, ovarian cancer, missing children,childhood depression, glaucoma, tissue donation, and worker safety.
Putting aside the cynic in me who questions the reasons behind publicly displaying causes you support. How is anyone supposed to recognize what you are supporting? Doesn’t it make the bracelets meaningless? Also, isn’t the embossed phrase: HOPE, FAITH, LOVE, just a wee bit over dramatic for supporters of work safety?
So I made my own bracelet. Now there will be no doubts.
Get yours now. All proceeds will go to a worthy charity, my beer fund.
I am clumsy. I forever have bruises from tripping, falling, or walking into things.
I’d like to say that it is a result of having children and being distracted, but that would be a lie. I have always been this way. My husband still laughs about how on our second (third?) date I got out of my car and ran towards his front door and fell down. Not a graceful lady-like trip and fall, instead I completely wiped out and landed sprawled on my stomach. Since I didn’t know him all that well yet, I popped up and pretended like it was nothing. I was mortified, of course, but tried to pretend that my ripped up tights and blood streaming down my leg was nothing! No big deal! I’m fine really, don’t mind that blood pooling up in my shoe!
As an aside, I wish I still had that kind of energy to run when just walking is completely adequate. Now a days I only run if I am exercising or someone is chasing me with a knife, neither of which happen with much frequency.
So it should be no surprise that yesterday when I was pulling up the wall to wall carpeting from our stairs that I stepped on the nailing strip not once, not twice, but three times. THREE TIMES!
I made little bloody dots all over the stairs and foyer with my heel, which my kids thought were really cool, prompting me to say, “See the lengths to which I am willing to go for your amusement?”
I hate when my kids are sick. It gives me huge pangs of anxiety. Unfortunately my husband is the same way. So when one of our kids gets sick the two of us snap at each other and alternate saying things like, “How sick do you think he is?” or “Well, really, how sick could he be?” or “It’s not like he has some horrible life threatening illness, right?” And then we cross ourselves, knock on wood and throw some salt over our shoulder, just for good measure for even daring to think such a thing.
My 10 yr old has been sick for a week and a half now. His symptoms are odd and varied. It began with pains in his legs and hips. The first few days we chalked it up to pulled muscles. After all, who wouldn’t be sore with all that never ending baseball playing.
But it didn’t feel better as I would have expected in a few days. If anything, he began to feel worse. I was especially troubled when he began limping. Then he started having headaches. The headaches were bad enough that he was crying and holding his head in his hands. Tylenol and Advil took the edge off of the pain for him, but it was never completely gone.
I brought him to the doctor last week and he had a panel of bloodwork done as well as xrays. The xrays were normal, but we have not yet received all the results of the bloodwork.
I keep looking at the other kids, half hoping- half wishing that they would get sick also because then it would mean it was something that he caught from somewhere and he would probably just get better on his own. I need some reassurance that he doesn’t have some sort of degenerative- muscle- eating- brain- and- central- nervous- system- attacking- snotty- attitude- inducing bacteria. Oh wait, the snotty attitude is always there, scratch that symptom.
There have been moments of levity. Like when he was crying and bemoaning his fate and suddenly screamed, pointing to one of his brothers, “Why can’t he be sick?!? Why does this always happen to me?!?” Yes, that is the sort empathetic behavior we encourage at our house. When I laughed he became even more irate, because how dare I laugh when he is sick.
Another moment came when he asked me if he was bit by something and is sick because he needs a shot of anti venom. I questioned what it was that could possibly have bitten him. I was met with exasperation and told, “If I knew that, I would know what would make me better.” And I discovered that being really sick and having migraine headaches doesn’t prevent a person from rolling their eyes.
When my 9 yr old told me Saturday afternoon that he was feeling tired I harassed him endlessly asking him if he felt sick. He finally yelled at me to leave him alone. “It’s almost like you want me to be sick,” he said accusingly. How do I tell him that yes, in fact I would like that.
I can handle coughs, colds, even vomiting and upset stomachs. Those are “normal” and while I cleaning up vomit makes me dry heave, it doesn’t fill me with oppressive chest crushing anxiety.
And so I sit here now, waiting for the rest of test results to come in, peddling Advil and Tylenol like a drug dealer, hoping he suddenly just begins to feel better on his own, and knocking on all the wood I can find.
Including wood laminate, just to be on the safe side.
Updated to add: I just got off the phone with the doctor and his bloodwork came back positive for Lyme Disease. (Insert me using lots of swear words here). It is enough to make me want to pack it all in and move to the city where we would only have to deal with crime, pollution, and crazy street people. I realize in the scheme of things it isn’t so awful, but I’d prefer my kids to just stay healthy, thankyouverymuch.
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Notes from the Trenches
fighting the war on tantrums since 1994
