Category: Confessions

. . . are good for the soul.

Electrons and Bonding

I was in eighth grade. In my town, eighth and ninth graders attended junior high and during those first few weeks of school, I was scared to look around for fear that someone might notice me and mock me. I had no basis for this fear, really, other than the typical awkward self-consciousness of being a teenaged girl.

My salvation was not in make-up and cute clothes. My redemption was entirely within textbooks and class lectures because I was a brain. That’s why I loved Mr. Ainsworth.

Mr. Ainsworth taught eighth grade physical science. He grinned his lopsided grin and demonstrated scientific principles with vigor and verve. One day, he hopped up on his desk and explained that he was an electron. He hopped up and down, showing us how atoms bonded by sharing electrons, how they sought a stable orbit of electrons. Here is a refresher course. (Trust me, you want to know this . . . and for those of you who won’t click, here–important facts:)

“Why do atoms connect to one another?
There are many different types of bond that will exist between atoms. One of the most common types is a covalent bond, the sharing of electrons. The electrons of an atom exist in orbits, with each orbit holding a certain number.
The orbits and the number of electrons that they can hold are:
1st orbit – 2 . . . 2nd orbit – 8. . . 3rd orbit – 8 . . . 4th orbit – 18

When an atom’s outer electron shell is completely full, it is stable and will not react with other atoms. All of the Noble Gases (Argon, Helium, Xenon, Krypton, Radon, and Neon) are inert, and will not naturally react with other elements. Due to this, single atoms of these gases can be found in nature. Other elements such as Oxygen (O) and Hydrogen (H) are not stable as single atoms.

In the picture (you’ll have to click on the link above–go ahead, I’ll wait . . .), the larger Oxygen atom has only 6 electrons in its outer electron shell, needing 2 more to completely fill it. The 2 smaller Hydrogen atoms both need 1 electron to fill their outer electron shell. In the other picture (click on the link again–I’ll still be here) . . . the Hydrogen atoms are “sharing” their one electron with the Oxygen atom and the Oxygen atom is sharing one electron to each of the Hydrogen atoms. Now each of the atoms have complete outer electron shells, making this molecule stable.”

I thought about this scientific principle the other night. I pictured Mr. Ainsworth–wavy, groovy, 1979 brown hair–hopping up and down, showing us how atoms needed electron-shells to be filled just so in order to be stable–and I thought that I am just like an atom. Well, a really, really BIG atom.

I have some vacancies in my outer electron shell . . . leading to some instability. Why can’t I find someone else with electron-shell vacancies so we can bond together? Every single atom I bump into seems to have a full electron shell. And you know as well as I do that if the electron shell is full, it’s impossible to bond, atom-to-atom.

So you see where I’m going with this? I have a basic scientific vacancy in my outer electron shell. I’m oxygen and my electron shell has a couple of vacancies, desperate vacancies, flashing-red-light vacancies.

Well. I’ve lived here six years and it seems that all the women I know here have full electron shells. They have their quota of friends, full social calendars, demanding jobs, busy husbands, children with activities. Everyone is so busy, so full, so complete.

I’m busy and all, but I still long for a friend who would sit and watch me dump out my purse and eat fuzzy gum and let me unzip my heart, dump it out and then watch me sort through it without judgment. It’s probably my old eighth grade paranoia, but I feel like I must guard myself and put on a pretty face, complete with mascara (make-up has become my salvation now that I’m nearly 40). I need to keep my true self quiet and secluded. I can’t vent about my life because I am the Pastor’s Wife. At least that’s how it feels to me.

But I would. If I could find someone who qualified. Which I won’t as long as I am home, within these walls, teaching big kids school at home while watching little kids build block towers and dance to Sesame Street. The only women I meet attend my church and even if I could feel free to appear without mascara (and my industrial strength shield which keeps my negativity neutralized and my whiny self strait-jacketed and stuck in a closet) . . . well, I don’t think they would see me as anyone other than The Pastor’s Wife, complete with stereotypical expectations. I do, after all, play the piano, sing, coordinate the nursery volunteer schedule and direct Vacation Bible School in the summers, just like a dutiful Pastor’s Wife.

Recently, I mentioned to a church friend that I’d like to start a book club. She was agreeable, but then she made a little comment that made me suddenly realize: I can’t recommend a book to her that is less than “Christian” and edifying and encouraging, because I’m not just a woman she knows. I’m The Pastor’s Wife. I can’t start a book club with church women–I’d constantly edit myself, censor myself, keep my opinions to myself. I don’t want that.

I can’t figure out how other pastor’s wives do it. Maybe they have full electron shells already and they don’t feel like flinging themselves against other electrons until they bond and form a neat, tidy molecule of water. But my shell has an open space and like a string of Christmas tree lights with a burned out bulb, I’m not lighting up the way I should. Maybe I’m not Christian enough or spiritual enough because I feel this empty little spot.

Or maybe I just need more sleep.

Is That a Tootise Roll? (Or: Don’t Step on the Poop!)

My husband, The Pastor, is sick. He has a cold and has taken to our bed (actually my side of our king-sized bed because it has a better view of the television). Yesterday, he rested most of the day and this morning, he nearly didn’t go to church. As chance (?) would have it, he didn’t have to preach this morning, so he went, faked it and came home, back to bed. I stayed home with all the kids because Babygirl is recovering from her cold and sounds like she is coughing up a lung and her spleen, too.

Meanwhile, I’d invited my sister and her family over for an early dinner and trick-or-treating. This obviously meant that I had to clean off my dresser and pick up all the books scattered on YoungestBoy’s floor. All the toilets needed scrubbing, all the floors had to be vacuumed. The piles of laundry had to be washed and the dishes had to be put away. I had to cook. I had to bake homemade butter cut-out cookies shaped like pumpkins. I was nearly finished mixing the dough (which had to chill for one hour), when I realized I was a quarter cup short of flour.

Please. Why don’t I plan ahead? Check ingredients? Miss Huson, my seventh grade home-economics teacher, would be so disappointed in me. So, I joind a bunch of other people who do not plan ahead at the grocery store this afternoon.

I did have a slow start this morning, but then I worked all day (hello? Day of Rest? Where is my Day of Rest?). How can a medium sized house with only four children and three cats and one husband degenerate so quickly? If only the Second Law of Thermodynamics (The “Law of Disorder”) hadn’t been debunked with statements like this: A typically erroneous quote from a high school chem text is: “The law of disorder states that things move spontaneously in the direction of maximum chaos or disorder.” First of all, there is no such law of disorder for things. But the worst here is how the sentence misleads students about things moving by themselves when the author puts in that word “spontaneously”. That defeats understanding of how the second law works. Molecules tend to become random spontaneously by themselves, but things do NOT.

For one glorious moment, I thought the Second Law explained everything! The reason for scattered socks! For crumbs on the floor! The disintegration of anything resembling order in this house.

I put the boys to work cleaning and running the vacuum cleaner. Everything did come together–even with the unplanned grocery store excursion. My sister and her family were an hour and a half late (typical!) which I had anticipated, so when they arrived, it was 4:30 p.m. and just about time to eat tacos.

I had originally intended to leave Babygirl home with my husband, but since he wasn’t feeling well, I took her trick-or-treating, too. She was enthusiastic about the idea of going outside in the dark. Since the moon eclipse, she wants to go into the night every night.

I dressed her as a Seahawks cheerleader, completely with homemade pom-poms (made from yarn). She even let me put yarn ribbons in her hair. Her pink coat covered her costume, but I took pictures of her first, which really is all that matters. YoungestBoy went as “Flame,” an alter-ego he created himself. He had a black cape with “FLAME” in prominent yellow felt letters. Most importantly, he had red hair, thanks to red hair gel.

We live on a circle, so we hurried from house to house. Babygirl is a cautious soul and has refused to be held by another adult since she was three months old. She scares easily. But not tonight! Tonight she jogged in the dark streets and even went into some homes to snatch candy from their over-sized bowls. She said “trick-or-treat” when we were in the street and then at the doorsteps, she just said “Pleeeease!” And then “thanks!” The people in our circle are generous because we don’t have many trick-or-treaters, so they gave the kids handfuls of candy.

When we came home, we stood for a moment in the doorway, Babygirl and I, and I caught a glimpse of a chocolate colored mound in the entryway. I said to no one in particular, “Is that cat poop?”

Our mutant cats occasionally leave a random log of waste . . . it’s as if it sticks to their posteriors like some kind of stinky velcro and then falls off. I didn’t really think it was poop, but then TwinBoyA said, “Yes!” And I said, “Get me a tissue!”

Then I stood guard, holding Babygirl. The kids–my three boys and their two cousins–were high on the excitement of full candy buckets. They were circling around like vultures, scurrying like ants carrying a giant grasshopper corpse and then YoungestBoy stepped up to me and said, “Look, Mom!” And I said, “No, no, no, no, don’t M O V E!” And then, “NO NO NO NO NO NO! I SAID D O N ‘ T MOVE!”

And then he pranced, mushing that cat poop into about five different spots which I hollered, “WHERE IS THAT TISSUE!” I keep a tissue box as mere six feet from the front door and TwinBoyA had been gone for a long, long time, much longer than necessary. I didn’t dare grab a tissue myself because I was guarding the cat poop–and doing a–excuse me, I can’t resist–a crappy job of it.

My husband crawled out of his sick bed and came downstairs to see why I was yelling. I explained that there was CAT POOP all over now and I was waiting for a tissue–and here TwinBoyA calmly walked up and handed me a measly wad of toilet paper–not a tissue, as I had requested–and I made some kind of gutteral animal noise of disgust and horror and pain.

Then I took the smelly cat-poopy shoes to the bathroom and scraped them and cleaned them and rolled my eyes. I cleaned the carpet (yes, carpet in entry way, how stupid, huh?).

When I went upstairs, my husband said, “Are you finished yelling?” And I said, “You would have yelled, too!” He denied that. I contend that it’s only natural–and right–to yell when you have kids milling about a live grenade “cat deposit” and when you can see with x-ray vision that someone will STEP IN IT and the universe holds its breath for just a second while it waits for you to intervene. Yelling is a perfectly appropriate response.

You try it. And let me know if you yell. Place a chocolate-colored roll of cat poop in your entryway as five children stomp about and the doorbell rings and you are holding a two year old and a candy bucket and then let me know if you YELL when someone steps in it and grinds it into the carpet five times before he stands still while you wait for a tissue which should have arrived in seconds, not minutes.

Yeah. See? I’m right again.

And thus ends another Day of Rest. Bring on the week! I’m so refreshed.

It Could Always Be Worse (Or Why Mothers Compete)

In Five Year Increments: My Life Is Worse Than Yours

When I was fourteen, getting up and arriving at school on time–with obedient hair and fashionable clothing–consumed my energy. My parents were divorced. My hair was frizzy. I had no social life, but I was a Babysitter Extraordinaire. I had to ride my bicycle to school in the drizzly rain that characterizes the Puget Sound.

When I was nineteen, pining over college boys and studying hermeneutics kept me awake at night. What would I be when I grew up? Would anyone truly love me? Why did he talk to me, but not want to date me anymore?

When I was twenty-four, my customer service job at Blue Cross filled my days. My baby sister’s hijinks involving methamphetamines and my dad’s death broke my heart. A decision to conceive a child with my husband of two years proved to be the Impossible Dream, leading to severe heart bruising, and not that kind that heals with rest.

When I was twenty-nine, our adopted one year old twin boys wore me out. I no longer had time to read or exercise or write. Our family life revolved around these children, the very center of our universe. I orbited around them, anxious, attentive, devoted. We had no money. We had noise. And diapers. And chaos.

When I was thirty-four, God was still laughing at His surprise. I had another year old baby–a “free” baby I grew myself–and suddenly I wondered how it had seemed stressful to take care of twins. We left our home of four years and moved across the country with three children stuffed into the backseat of our car. Now, we were a family of five. I was tired.

Now, I’m thirty-nine. I have another child, another shocking miracle. She’s two now. I used to think I was busy. Even back when I was fourteen! And yet, every step along the way had added more, more, more. More laundry, more decisions, more expense, more children.

Last night, upon hearing that I’d agreed to take a transcription job for my occasional-boss, the private investigator, my husband said, “Did you not have enough to do? Shall I pick up an application from 7-11 so you can work the night shift?”

I have a 2 year old.
I have a 6 year old.
I have 11 year old twins. I am schooling them at home.
I babysit another 2 year old, nine hours a day.
Today, I watched a third 2 year old for two hours.
I typed tonight.

And today someone dared tell me that a 2 year old is easier–way easier, much easier, so easy, compared to having a teenager.

That is not what I need to hear two short years before I have two teenagers.

It reminded me of this lady I met at a writing class way back when I was a young woman, on a waiting list to adopt a baby. She heard about my situation and told me in a girlish voice, “I have nine adopted children. Worst mistake I ever made. I had no idea what I was doing. I totally regret it.”

Well. Um. Thanks for the encouragement.

Is it just human nature that we play this weird competitive game? “My Life is So Much Harder.” Or “I Know Someone Who Has It Worse?” Or “You Will Hate That. Don’t Try!”

I used to feel burdened by the pressures of junior high. And the rigors of college life nearly broke me. And the early days of marriage when my dad died and my responsibilities increased and my reproductive system wouldn’t work knocked me down like a runaway boulder.

And then motherhood. Oh, motherhood! These children obviously hadn’t read “Martha Stewart Living” or her companion magazine about children. For one, they hate wearing sweaters. And then, they hate art projects. They wouldn’t pee in the potty until they were three and a half.

Life was difficult. And then I had another child. And another. And more kid-debris and more bills and this part-time gig babysitting.

But I would never tell a new mom, “Oh just wait. It gets worse. Much, much worse. You might want to rethink that second kid. Stop while you’re ahead.”

I live by two slogans: This too shall pass and things could always be worse.

And please, I’m begging you, just tell me I’m right. Things are going to get better, easier, or at least that my boys will stop spitting popcorn kernels at each other.

Loneliness

Last night, as we watched David Letterman, my husband said, “So, what’s new on the board?” Usually I regale him with stories of happenings on the message board. When I discovered I was pregnant in January 2002, I nosed around a bit and landed on this board for women expecting babies in September of 2002. I’ve participated avidly ever since, through crazy debates and educational threads and laugh-out-loud hysteria and drive-by postings by trouble-makers and the mundane, everyday stuff.

Two weeks ago, I decided I’d had enough. That was the day I wrote this. Although I had a lot of laughs and sharpened my detective skills (I’m just warning you–don’t lie to me unless you have a better memory than I do) and made some excellent friends, but I just got slapped once too many times by women who think pastor’s wives ought to be vacant, spiritual, uncontroversial and sickly sweet all the time.

And just because of my marriage. Nothing else. Somehow my marriage to a pastor requires me to be perfect, though if I were, I would most definitely hear, “You think you’re perfect, don’t you!?” Nevermind that these same women are regular church-attenders with similar religious backgrounds to mine. At any rate, lest this turn into actual Gossip, I’ll just leave it at that.

I had enough. Enough. I just shut the door without saying good-bye and crept away.

So last night. My husband says, “What’s new on the board?” and I say, “I left it.” I was on my side, facing away from him, and he said, “What?” And I said, “I left the board.”

He said, “Why?” I said, “I just had enough.”

We watched David Letterman in silence then and my heart was so solid and heavy that it pinned me to the bed. I felt like I’d swallowed an ever-expanding balloon that filled with hot breath I could not exhale. Tears began to slip from my eyes and pool on the side of my nose where my glasses formed a little dam.

I felt so lonely, so completely all alone, even lying next to my husband, just on the other side of the house from my sleeping children.

At last, his breathing deepened and I considered going into the bathroom and curling on the floor and crying until I died. But I didn’t want to wake him. So, I gingerly reached for a tissue and his soft snoring stopped and he said, “Are you all right?” I said, “Yes,” but he could hear the sadness, I guess, and so he reached over and hugged me–stiff and resistant and said, “I’m sorry about your board.”

I said, “It just sucks to have no friends.”

Even as I said it, I knew it to by untrue, but sometimes the feelings are more real than reality. He said, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” And I said, “It’s probably just hormonal.” I considered telling him how lonely I felt, how alone, what a horrible wife I am and what an impatient mother and how truly, if I weren’t here only Babygirl would be damaged forever–or maybe she wouldn’t even remember me in a few months and then I thought how YoungestBoy would miss going on rides at the fair with me and so, I said nothing at all.

At last, he rolled back over and slept and I dabbed at my eyes and wiped my congested nose and felt utterly miserable and lonely.

How is it possible to feel so lonely and to long to be alone at the same time?

This morning, I woke with swollen eyes, no worse for the wear.

Wanted: New Best Friend

Married, almost-40 year old female seeks New Best Friend (NBF). I like movies that make me cry (Mystic River, House of Sand and Fog, Schindler’s List), books that make me laugh (anything by Anne Lamott)and cry (Elizabeth Berg, Jane Smiley, Annie Dillard, Anne Tyler, Jane Hamilton, Barbara Kingsolver) and silence. I wish I were really hip and could claim to like improvised jazz, but it makes me a little dizzy and irritable. Dan Fogelberg and James Taylor and Norah Jones and Marc Cohn are more my speed, though if given a choice, I often opt for silence.

NBF must laugh at my jokes (self-deprecating, sarcastic, shocking) and be available for random phones calls in which I will ask “What are you doing?” NBF must be willing to spontaneously go to movies at 10:00 p.m., yet be self-sufficient and family-oriented as well. NBF should have interest in co-founding a long-lasting spectacular book club with other like-minded, funny women. NBF must have calm, easy-going husband who is willing to assume childcare duties so NBF can participate in Girl’s Night Out events.

I vacuumed under my sectional today. Before I could even run the vacuum, though, first I had to pick up the debris the children slide between the cushions. I collected enough unpopped popcorn kernels and popsicle sticks to fill a paper lunch bag. Just knowing that the carpet beneath my sectional is clean makes me feel virtuous. Nevermind that there are still unfolded socks next to my keyboard and an unfolded basket of laundry sitting behind me.

Now, if I had a New Best Friend, she would laugh at that visual picture and then she’d tell me about the dust bunnies and worse under her couch and then we’d compare what we made for dinner and we’d plan our book club meeting.

I am in desperate need of a New Best Friend. No offense to my Old Best Friends (not that they are old, either). It’s just that I really, really need someone local, someone not long-distance, someone I know in real life, an actual person who could meet me for coffee (not that I drink coffee). My Old Best Friends live so far away–New York, North Carolina, Missouri–and somehow, I’ve lived in this house almost six years and I still haven’t clicked with anyone. No love connection, no magic, no instant bonding.

I’m mostly a solitary soul. I don’t mind my own company and I laugh at my own jokes. I love going to movies alone and I prefer to shop alone. But sometimes, I look above the crowd that is my family and I think, “Where is my circle of friends? The ones I’ll grow old with? Am I the only one wishing for friends?” Are they all too busy with their families and their jobs and their Old Best Friends?

In college, it was so easy to make soul-mate caliber friends. You see each other in your underwear, you cry over boys together, you eat too much pizza in your dorm room, you go on crazy road trips, you stay up all night eating M&Ms and studying and you bond.

Then graduation splits you apart and you have to start all over, only this time around, there is no easy camaraderie, no built-in bonding, no simple solution to the problem of finding a local New Best Friend.

Some people are lucky and they continue their Grown Up Lives in the same place where they’ve made friends. Some people are friend-magnets and attract happy-go-lucky, exciting people to them like bees to a barbecue.

I’m not like that, and I sense that I’m rambling and my eyes are burning because my contact lenses have been in so long today.

So, wherever you are–New Best Friend–call me! We need to get together, soon!

Meanwhile, I asked my husband tonight if it would be asking too much to want to have the legs and buttocks of the Olympic gymnasts without actually devoting my life to working out. Or working out at all. And while being 20 years older than they are.

He said, yes. Definitely asking too much.

Drat.

Mr. Snowman Blows a Fuse

Saturday morning means donuts at our house. My husband usually heads to the hole-in-the-wall donut shop and brings home a dozen warm donuts, which our kids then pounce upon. Babygirl ate the frosting off three of them this morning. Sometimes, there are a few left over for breakfast on Sunday morning.

This morning, my husband delivered the donuts, then went to the church for a pre-marital counseling appointment. I decided–what in the world was I thinking??–to sort through the storage room (10 x 10 feet of stuff) to find cast-offs I could donate to the church rummage sale, which takes place in two weeks.

Anyone with children understands the freakish nature of clutter. You have a child–or twins–and then suddenly, your garage is full of carseats and booster seats and outgrown toys and boxes of baby clothes and random wire hangers and ten thousand boxes of junk you can’t quite figure out how to handle. Not to mention four years’ worth of Martha Stewart “Living” magazines.

My parents saved everything–which explains why my mom has a stash of about ten boxes of worthless junk in my storage room. She lived with us for almost two years and left a trail of her belongings when she went. When my dad died, I held the Mother of All Garage Sales to get rid of the accumulated jetsam and flotsam of his forty-seven years of life. He was a ham radio operator and a computer fanatic from way back in 1977, when he built a computer from a kit. In those days, he actually programmed the thing using cassette tapes. He died before The Internet became what it is today, which is unjust. He would have loved The Internet more than anyone alive. He’d just been accepted into a program to study writing technical manuals at the University of Washington. Anyway. Apparently, I have become sidetracked.

Junk, clutter, stuff. It’s everywhere now that we have kids. This is particularly troubling to my husband because his idea of perfect interior design is a dorm room. And not a fancy-schmancy dorm room with a built-in loft. No. He’d love nothing more than to live in a room with bookshelves, a bed, a refrigerator (for his beloved Dr. Pepper and rootbeer popsicles) and a television. All this other stuff–the stuff that keeps us afloat, like winter coats and toys for the children and a bike rack for the car we keep just because some day we might actually take the bicycles somewhere and ride them, the mostly used buckets of interior paint–all this he considers worthless junk. He wants to live in austere simplicity.

But we have kids. And we have kids’ stuff. And we have a house. And Christmas decorations.

I do my best to weed through the excess now and then. This is the first time we’ve actually lived in a house longer than four years, so I haven’t had the built-in pressure to throw dead weight overboard so we can sail to another port. This time, I just have to fling open the closets and toss stuff into black garbage bags and ditch it before the kids notice.

Which brings me back to the storage room. I thought Babygirl might be distracted enough and cheerful enough that I might accomplish sorting through at least the surface layer of debris in that room. I started–and handed her a bin of Fisher-Price Little People, the old kind that are choking hazards. She busied herself and I plowed forward, throwing stuff into a bag. Then she returned the bin to me and I found a play-toolbox for her to look at. That bought me another few minutes.

Then she saw Mr. Snowman.

Mr. Snowman is a plastic Christmas decoration that stands about four feet high. It plugs in. I figured she wouldn’t remember about the plug since she hadn’t seen Mr. Snowman since Christmas-time. She wanted him, so I carried him to the family room and plunked him on the floor, plug-side in, out of sight.

Next thing I know, TwinBoyA has plugged him in. Babygirl is thrilled and I peek in to see her hugging Mr. Snowman. I hurry back to the storage room, sort through eight-hundred Play-doh related toys, then hear shouting. Mr. Snowman is broken.

YoungestBoy has been smacking Mr. Snowman with a pillow. I told him to stop once, but he ignored me and now Mr. Snowman no longer lights up. This is a crisis for Babygirl, and how do I handle it, being the mature mother of four that I am?

That’s right. I yell. I yell things like, “Why can’t you just listen to me? Why did you have to plug in the snowman? Babygirl didn’t even know it would light up! Arg! Why didn’t you stop hitting it? Arg! I can’t get anything done around here! Arg!” (Yes, I say “arg” just like a pirate.)

Okay, fine. I call Babygirl into the storage room. She notices a package of markers–extra school supplies from last year. I have a serious addiction to school supplies and always over-buy. I say, “You already have some of those. Here, how about this?”

She will not be deterred. She wants those markers. My frustration level has reached orange now. Is that the higher level where you should look out for terrorists? That’s the level I mean.

I say, “FINE” and swoop her up, stomp into the kitchen, plop her into her high-chair, realize I can’t find paper, rip off some freezer-paper for her to use, tape it to the high-chair tray, open the drawer to get a bib so she doesn’t write all over herself and–HEY! The entire drawer front comes off in my hands.

Now I am really mad. I wonder for a second if I could be suffering from my week of PMS already. No, not possible. I am just angry because I can’t get any task finished. Babygirl is crying and rejects the marker after all that.

I take her out of her seat, comfort her and sit down with pliers and a hammer and Liquid Nails to repair the stupid drawer. This is the second drawer to break in my kitchen. I fix it, then retrieve the other broken drawer from the storage room and fix it, too. By the time I finish, I am calmer. I return to the storage room. Babygirl fixates on Mr. Snowman again.

So, I get a screwdriver and replace the bulb in Mr. Snowman. It still doesn’t work. I investigate further and conclude that Mr. Snowman has blown a fuse. As I am doing this, the boys are in the next room goofing off. I tell them to be quiet, to stop, to STOP! Moments later, YoungestBoy is crying because TwinBoyA did not stop and now he’s hit YoungestBoy in the eye with a stuffed Barney–the purple dinosaur.

Alert! Alert! I’m immediately back at Orange Level, yelling stuff that sounded to my kids like “Wahnk-wahnk-wahnk-wahnk-wahnk-wahnk” just like in a Charlier Brown special. I should be carried off to solitary confinement and have my vocal cords severed. I have blown a fuse of my own.

I give up. I fix lunch for the younger kids and the older kids make themselves something. By the time my husband returns home, I am normal, no longer frothing at the mouth and convulsing, but my kids gleefully tell him, “Mom is having a bad day.” I feel like I’m going to be sent to the Principal’s Office at any second.

That’s what I get for attempting to accomplish anything.

I managed to fill my trunk with donations for the garage sale. After I put Babygirl to bed, I delivered the bags to the church basement, then went to Target to buy more school supplies. My addiction to spiral notebooks (10 for $1.00) needs professional attention. When I returned home, we went to the pool where we met my mother and my neice and nephew. We swam until we were water-logged.

The warning level has returned to purple, or wherever it is that all you have to be concerned about is someone giving you a dirty look. Tomorrow morning, leftover donuts and then we head to church, where hopefully I can be redeemed.

Going in Circles

Babygirl slept until 8 a.m. today, so I did, too. That was a lovely start to a day which turned out to be dizzying. I went in circles, lopsided circles with a baby on one hip, trying to get stuff done. I sort of cleaned out the laundry room, including the grime under the utility sink and the stack of stuff balancing on the freezer. I cleaned the boys’ stinky bathroom. Then I tried to clean up the kitchen, but Babygirl refused to be put down and I can’t do dishes with one hand, so I thought I’d straighten up the living room, but got distracted by the laundry. And, of course, I have three boys to supervise. And the baby always wants something, even if it’s just an audience while she empties the dirty-clothes basket in the laundry room.

After lunch, my husband took the boys to the middle school ball-field, along with their twin friends, to play a little baseball. While he was gone, I went to Bargain Street Liquidators, where I heard they were having a $2.00 clothing sale. I found a pair of Liz Claiborne pants and pair of capri pants and a shirt for Babygirl and a little blue cardigan for her, too. I bought YoungestBoy a pair of sandals. I bought my husband a short-sleeved, knit shirt that retailed for $42.00–and I bought it for $2. I love a bargain. Of course, it was hard to pick through the deep bins to look at everything, especially holding Babygirl in one arm. She suddenly feels like a fifty pound sack of flour when I’m holding her while shopping.

She grew impatient with shopping, so I promised her a cookie and drove through McDonald’s to buy her one. And five more, too, which I somehow ate. What? How did that happen? I had five cookies for lunch. Very nice. Someone, please, slap me now.

We were home only a short time before the boys returned. And not just my boys–but their three friends, too. They had a wild time of playing hide and seek and running around in the yard and making a lot of noise. I cleaned out my dresser while they were playing and then came downstairs and sat in the backyard with Babygirl. The weather was so perfect–in the upper sixties, low seventies, I’d guess. My husband was at church, participating in the interview of another youth pastor candidate and his wife.

John came to pick up his kids at about 5:30 p.m.–by then, I was feeding everyone a nutritious dinner of frozen pizza and corndogs. At 6:00 p.m., TwinBoyB was in the bathtub, TwinBoyA was in the shower and I was vacuuming the living room, wondering how it was that I was busy all day, working all day, not sitting down all day–and my house was still a wreck! I was half-way through, thinking that I just might actually be ready to go to dinner at 6:45 p.m. when I suddenly realized green salad! I was supposed to bring a green salad to the dinner. Oops.

At 6:12 p.m., Babygirl was in her pajamas, YoungestBoy was in the tub and I was nursing Babygirl to sleep. She had no nap all day. By 6:25 p.m, she was asleep. My husband had arrived home and was washing YoungestBoy’s hair and getting him ready for bed. I went to the bathroom and did what I could to make my face presentable and to arrange my hair in some semblance of style. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate my natural curl?

By 6:35 p.m., I was ready and downstairs assembling a salad out of the Romaine I found in a drawer. I had only a carrot to add to it. Sad, very sad, indeed. I made salad dressing and we hurried out of the house, minutes after the babysitter arrived.

We were late for dinner, but not very. The youth pastor candidate and his wife made an excellent first impression and proved to be outgoing, competent, smiling young people. He was 23, she was 22, and I suppose we seemed so old to them, but I remember being 22 as if it were yesterday. The dinner was delicious, though it was very funny that the main dish was Chicken Divan, which involved a lot of broccoli, which my husband hates. He’s made a crack about broccoli before she pulled the hot dishes from the oven, so we all had a good laugh about it. He was in fine form, telling amusing stories and cracking jokes. The host couple are fifteen or twenty years older than us, in a different stage of their lives. They have a beautiful home, quiet and clean and gorgeous. I suppose in twenty years I might have a clean, quiet, gorgeous home. One can always hope.

My home is not clean now, but it is quiet. The kids are all asleep–or are faking. My husband went to bed after I reminded him that we lose an hour of sleep tonight. It’s 11:10 p.m., then, suddenly, boom! An hour gone! Tomorrow will be a long day because there are lots of meetings after church and tomorrow night.

But hey, my underwear drawer has been purged and now I will be able to get dressed without picking through through maternity underwear first.

Childhood and Happy

I’ve always said I had a happy childhood. I’m not sure why I think that. My parents moved twenty-five times by the time I was five years old. And not just down the street. We moved from Wisconsin to Kansas to Montana and points in between until finally, we landed down in Washington state like the house that settled on the Wicked Witch of the East. I remember very little of the tornado that was my early childhood.

When I was five years old and halfway through kindergarten, we moved to a house in a housing development called “Whispering Firs.” My dad teased and said the house was haunted. It was the first house we owned–three tiny bedrooms, a living room with a fireplace that had two sides, so you could enjoy the fire from the family room, too. Not that I ever remember a fire burning. Small kitchen and sliding glass door leading to the back yard. When I was very small, at night I was scared of the side of the yard that sat on the other side of the garage. No light shone there at night.

I loved animals and one year, my dad asked me in the hallway what I wanted for Christmas. With uncharacteristic boldness, I said, “A puppy” and he said, “Don’t count on it!” But he presented me with a small black poodle anyway, a black poodle that my mother doesn’t remember at all. She was named “Midnight” and one day when I came home from school, she was gone. My mom had a new baby and the dog was just too much and so they just made her disappear without warning.

Then somehow, years later, my dad presented me with another dog, a Miniature Schnauzer he named Mitzi. He’d made some arrangement with the breeder and contrary to that arrangement, the breeder bred her while the dog was boarded and one day, shortly after I remarked that Mitzi’s tummy sure was getting fat, Mitzi gave birth to four tiny puppies on my twin-sized bed while I slept. But the time I fully woke and ran through the house to my mother’s bed, Mitzi had licked off the last pup and placed it in my slipper for safe-keeping.

But Mitzi eventually became too much, too, and she was sold.

My dad had cancer when I was in the second grade. He had Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and he was extremely ill. He endured chemotherapy and wasted down to a skeleton of himself. He shaved his head one night while we were at church and then he wore a hand-towel over his bald head and scared me by yanking it off his head and making a face.

I hardly knew my dad because he worked graveyard shift from midnight to 8 a.m. Then he worked in his own shop, tinkering with ham radios and electronic equipment and eventually, computers. He never ate dinner with the family. He was sleeping then. I was kind of scared when I had to sit next to him at the dinner table because he was so unfamiliar to me.

Once, I jumped out my bedroom window to join my siblings in the back yard. I bit my tongue hard when I landed and blood spurted everywhere. I ran inside where my dad gathered me in his arms and sat me on his lap, though I was much too big to sit on his lap. He rocked me in a chair while I cried and he kind of laughed at me and asked me if I was going to live. I can’t remember him ever holding me or rocking me at any other time.

My mother stayed at home and took care of us. She was stern, yet she gave us a lot of freedom. We rode our bikes until the streetlights came on. We walked down to the creek and got muddy. We played all afternoon in the “honda fields”, pressing down the waist-high grass to make little rooms to play in. Her friends came over while we were at school and drank coffee and ate cookies and made crafts.

Every week, my mother would bring home friends from church, or my dad would invite some of his ham-radio buddies over and the grown-ups would play cards and eat snacks. I’d try to linger outside their attention, but I’d always give myself away by crunching giant pretzels in my mother’s ear and then she’d shoo me away to play with the kids.

We played a lot. Outside, inside, in the backyard, in the streets. I read a lot. I had friends in the neighborhood and I remember them trying to get me to dance, but even then I was too self-conscious and had no rhythm, so I would just watch while they danced to the Jackson 5.

When I was in fifth grade, my parents divorced. We lived with my mother for maybe a year, but by then, my dad had remarried (six months after my parents divorce) and my mother soon remarried, too. My childhood essentially ended when we moved out of that house and into a rental house a few miles away. My room had hot pink carpet, but the rental house did not have my mother, but a stepmother who hated children and who had no idea what to do with an 11 year old girl.

By then, I lived almost entirely inside myself. I remained self-sufficient for the rest of my school years. I even bought my own shampoo and my own clothes from then on.

But the thing is, I remember my childhood as being happy. I thought I was happy. I was happy. Did my parents even think of my happiness? Did they obsess, like I obsess about whether or not my children are having a happy childhood? It seems like parents used to just live their lives, dragging their kids along for the ride. And we survived. We scared ourselves sometimes when we went too fast down the Big Hill and crashed our bikes with banana seats, but that was just part of being a kid. If bigger kids threatened us, we just adjusted our paths and put on a tough face and averted our eyes and dealt with it.

Sometimes, I think I am still eleven years old, wondering what I will do, now that I am so alone. Is it possible to avoid any more pain? Is it possible to do everything just right so I will never stub my toe again? I guess not.

I wish my kids had a guaranteed Happy Childhood. I wish I could be sure I was doing everything right. I wish I could let them eat chocolate and potato chips all day and never tell them to turn off the t.v. for their own good. I hate being the Mean One who makes the rules and then reinforces them. I hate it when they yell that they hate me.

We don’t have quite enough money and they don’t get to have enough fun, nor do we travel as we should. I yell too much, I am not consistent enough, I am tired too often.

But here is what I know I’m giving them that I did not have:

1) Parents who stay married forever.
2) A mother who does not leave.

I don’t know if they are having a Happy Childhood. God, please let them remember it that way, though.

Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me

I have another cold.

Tonight I have an obligation, a meeting to attend. Of course, I’ll be late because first I have to put Babygirl to bed.

Tomorrow morning at 10:15 a.m., we are having our family portrait taken. I have all the clothes picked out, ready to go, but I can’t decide whether to battle my hair and straighten it or whether I should just let nature win and have raucous curls. I’m also hoping to have some cosmetic surgery, pronto. Or at least find some good concealer.

All day tomorrow, my husband will be busy interviewing a candidate for youth pastor at church. Yeah, we know what that means. I will be home with the kids all day. I am so sick of being home alone with the kids. I want to drive my car somewhere. I want to walk down the city streets and look into store windows. I want to eat a meal in a restaurant with silverware. I want to leave whenever and come home whenever. I want to buy myself flowers and smell perfume at department store counters and read books in bookstores with no thought for the time.

Then tomorrow night, after spending a pleasant day with the brood, I will be having dinner at a church member’s home with a bunch of other people, including the youth pastor candidate and his wife. They’ve flown in from Pennsylvania. (I want to fly in from Pennsylvania.)

The home is beautiful–I walked through it while it was under construction. I can barely contain my jealousy, though. These people had a gorgeous home before with marble countertops and a view of the Puget Sound and stained glass windows the wife created herself. And now, they built an even bigger, grander, more lovely home with a better view. (I want a home with a view.)

I’m usually quite happy with my house and my little odd-shaped yard ringed with wild hedges and determined ivy. Then I drive two miles down the hill to a home ten times nicer than mine and suddenly, I’ve gone from 1972 and shabby carpets to 2004 and I’m standing on carpet padded so luxuriously that my feet actually sink into it. I wash my hands in bathrooms with no water stains, no toothpaste smeared on the counter. I look out the windows and instead of seeing my moss-covered shed with its falling-apart door that needs replacement–I see lights twinkling on the rippling water of the Puget Sound. I hear the blaring horn of the ferry as it crosses the water. The kitchen is all about marble and stainless steel and spacious cupboard and suddenly, my own little kitchen with its dated cabinets and dull yellow-gold countertops looks even smaller and darker.

Jealousy has always been my issue.

Contentment is my goal.

Sunday always means church here and even if I don’t go (because of sick kids), my husband is busy all day. This week, especially, he’ll be busy all day.

I really hate weekends.

Then Monday all over again.

I realized all this yesterday–that I would have no time to myself–and I was really having a pity party, complete with balloons and noise-makers–and today God smiled at me and caused my baby to fall into a deep sleep. Actually, I think she napped because every day this week, I have followed the same routine. Upstairs at 1 p.m., nurse her until 1:30 p.m., put her in her bed. Today was the first day she actually curled up and slept. The other days, I let her cry for half an hour and when I retrieved her, she looked at me with big, teary eyes and said, “Night-Night” very regretfully. Like “how dare you make me go night-night!”

I’d also like to point out that God must love me because tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be spectacular. The temperatures will reach sixty-degrees and it’s supposed to be mostly sunny. After the pictures, maybe we’ll do something fun outdoors.

A girl can always dream. Even a jealous girl.

What I Lost

Today, for a second, I thought I lost my mind. Then I thought I lost my boy. Then I thought I lost my mind again.

My husband asked repeatedly throughout the day: “Does Youngestboy have a ride home from school today?” I kept saying, “Yes, he does.” My neighbor, Beth, (I think of her as Saint Beth, she’s so wonderful) usually takes him to and from school. So, after dropping off the twins from school, Husband runs an errand. The twins get out of school at 2:55 p.m. YoungestBoy’s school is dismissed at 3:20 p.m.

At 3:15 p.m., I’m out in the backyard, hacking away at the ivy while Babygirl plays nearby, and suddenly, a conversation with Beth pops into my head. She told me Thursday that she could take YoungestBoy to school today, but not pick him up because after today’s field trip, they were going to just stay in Olympia and visit friends.

Had I lost my mind? Apparently!

So, I grab Babygirl and rush inside and try to figure out what to do. Husband does not have a cell phone with him because he broke his charger. My nearly-11 year old twins are home. DaycareKid is sleeping and won’t wake up until 4 p.m. I decide to throw DaycareKid’s carseat in the car and put Babygirl in it and drive to the school (which is less than a mile away). Babygirl screams when I attempt that. Okay. I buckle her into her beloved stroller instead. I tell TwinBoyA that I’m going to get YoungestBoy and that I’ll have my cell phone with me and that he is not to answer the door.

I walk as fast as possible, out of our circle and down the path through the woods to the school. One bus is leaving as I hurry around the building to the front. I see children but I do not see YoungestBoy. I speak to the guardian of the children, a blond woman holding a clipboard. She not only does not know where YoungestBoy is, she is not sure who he is, either. Have I now lost my boy?

The principal strolls up. She knows nothing. She tells me to check in the classroom. No boy.

I now frantically push my stroller out the building and back up the path towards home. I am breathless and sweaty and worried. Have I truly lost my mind? Where is my boy?

I round the corner and see Beth’s van in my driveway. Turns out her friend in Olympia canceled their plans and Beth forgot to tell me.

Ack!

All’s well that ends well, I guess.

Yesterday, I went bowling for the first time in years and years. All I have to say is if you haven’t been bowling for a long time and your bowling skills are rotten, be sure to bowl with little children who are worse than you are. And use the bumpers. I almost scored 100.