This is the hole in the ground super-cool bike ramp constructed by three eager and imaginative boys. I’m guessing if I said, “Go dig a giant hole in the back yard,” I would have had a mutiny, but this? One hundred percent pure fun. 

I’ve been sitting here for a good three or four minutes, half-listening to “American Idol” and half-pondering what to say. I thought about writing about divorce and how my parents’ divorce affected me. I considered discussing how my viewpoints about prisons has shifted over the years. I racked my brain for some amusing anecdote about my children. I scratched my head, bounced my knee, chewed the inside of my cheek and came to no conclusions.

I might have told you that my husband will be out of town this weekend and most of next week . . . and that I volunteered to babysit my 11-year old niece and 8-year old nephew for three or four days. I could have rambled on and on about how I intend to survive these days alone, with no adult backup (movies and novels and 94% fat-free popcorn, mostly).

(Oh, and there goes cute Ace, booted off American Idol. I have never voted, not once, nor do I ever plan to vote. But he is a cute boy.)

But I can’t really think of anything to say.

I think my teenage twins are faking their illness. I am a skeptic at heart, a trait which won me a few enemies on AOL message boards, but I am trying to overcome my disbelief and play along with them. I am certain that one of my twins was ill yesterday, but today he seems okay. His brother, quick to sense an opportunity to avoid doing schoolwork, cries out, “Oh my stomach hurts!” whenever I look at him cross-eyed. So, I say nothing.

Tomorrow, they take the
Washington State Assessment of Student Learning, otherwise known as the “WASL,” and/or “A Big Waste of Time.” Testing (even for school-at-home students, because we are affiliated with the public school and not traditional homeschoolers) will take place over the course of six days, which means I have six fewer days in which to shove the knowledge they are supposed to acquire down their throats. Oh wait. That didn’t sound very educationally enlightened, did it?

Yesterday at church I heard that two of the children I babysit were home (on Easter Sunday!) throwing up. The three and a half year old boy and the almost-seventeen month old boy both caught my daughter’s stomach virus. I am frustrated by this because I am so careful to wash my hands (while I sing the ABC’s) and in fact, my fingers are cracked and sore from the constant washing. But all my efforts are for naught . . . the viruses transmit as if I’ve been splashing everyone with toilet water and teaching them all to wipe their snot on their neighbor’s crackers. So, my house is empty today, courtesy of the virus that has caused working parents to stay home for a day with their sick offspring. (I only rejoice in my quiet house, not the illnesses. Really.)

I have to say that this day has been gloriously quiet, aside from my chatterbox daughter’s never-ending requests for something to eat. Today she has asked for a waffle with syrup, saltine crackers (“square crackers”), granola bar, apple with no skin, Cheez-its (“orange crackers”), Cheerios, cookies, oatmeal, fish sticks, ice cream, and grapes. She hasn’t eaten all these things, and, in fact, I’ve begun to think of her as my personal petite French woman, who eats only three bites and thus, maintains her sleek and lean thirty-two pound figure.

So, in between fetching snacks, I’ve worked on laundry, cleared out my bill basket, (that wicker holding tank for paperwork and bills), sent off the taxes (woo-hoo, a $40 tax return, whatever shall we do with our windfall?) and our estimated quarterly taxes (what fun to write a check directly to the government four times a year) and finished writing an actual letter to put in an actual envelope with a real live stamp.

And now, a random thought about famous people.

Katie Holmes and Angelina Jolie–I couldn’t care less about their pregnancies, nor their births. Do I want to see a paparazzi-stolen photograph of their post-baby bellies all jiggly like jello and criss-crossed with road-map patterned stretch marks? Uh . . . no? Okay, well, only a little so I can compare my own baby-ravaged body and feel a kinship with them. Admit it. You do, too. (You were also excited to see the headline reading “Cellulite of the Stars,” on that magazine by the check-out lane and admit it, you looked at the pictures of skinny bottoms clad in bikinis and were secretly pleased to see the tell-tale ripples of cellulite. Or perhaps I’m projecting again.)

As for newborn celebrity baby photos? I don’t care. No one does. We just want to see the postpartum mother and gasp at how good she looks while hoping she looks horrible. That’s the truth. All babies look the same three days after they are born (except for your beautiful baby).

The teens just came out to fix themselves a snack. Yeah, they’re real sick.

(And now? A true confession. I have a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke with Lime in my refrigerator and I’m going to go drink more of it. Right now. A girl has to have a vice and that’s mine.)

Mopsy over at Lifenut writes beautifully about dealing with pregnancy fears after miscarriage. Go. Read. Savor.

Here she is right before she ate a Hershey’s kiss and dribbled chocolate down the front of her Easter dress, which, of course, I purchased for $15.99 last year at Marshall’s on clearance and fully intended to resell on eBay to finance next year’s Easter couture.

The children all looked pretty good, at least for ten minutes until the boys’ shirt came untucked and the knees of the pants became muddy during the post-church service Easter egg hunt. I couldn’t help being pleased with my savvy shopping skills–they were outfitted entirely in clothing purchased on clearance at Marshall’s, (aka My Favorite Store) and Value Village. Every item looked new and carried an satisfactory label (Ralph Lauren, Dockers, The Gap).

After church, I finished cooking dinner and my mother surprised me by bringing my grandmother (now 100-years old and counting) as a guest. We had a lovely meal, except that one of my teenagers (I have teenagers now!) has the beginning symptoms of the virus and preferred to sleep than eat. He’s headachey, lethargic and on the brink of throwing up.

And two of the little ones I watch were home on this Easter Sunday vomiting. And with uncharacteristic optimism I had thought maybe no one else would get sick.

Oh, and my daughter woke up with a stuffy nose this week. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Today, we did this . . .

. . . and this.

That is all I have energy to report. Carry on and have a great Easter . . . and I hope you aren’t like the woman I saw at Target at 9:30 p.m. who was trying in vain to find food color because Easter egg dye was sold out all over town.

My daughter is learning what letters are in her name and what letters are in mine. She has the Leapfrog refrigerator magnets which recently returned to the refrigerator following a hiatus due to a spate of annoying flinging of the alphabet around the kitchen. So, an old toy becomes new and lately, we spell our names all day.

Alas, only one copy of each letter is included in the set, so while she can spell her name, I can’t really spell my name: M-O-M because there’s only one M. Being resourceful, though, I simply turned the W upside down. My daughter, being not only cute, but also bright, caught me, though, and refused to let the W lie on its back like a turtle. She flipped it back to its proper position.

And that’s how I became Mow. That’s right, Mow, rhymes with Cow. And Pow. How Now Brown Mow? Pow! Wow! If you ask her, she will tell you that my name is spelled M-O-W.

And in other news, last night, my daughter slept all night and so did I. And today? The carpet cleaner came, I taught my boys Shakespeare and I bought thirteen balloons . . . for tomorrow is the day I become the mother of teenagers. Wow, Mow, How Now?!

Because Jody asked, I am doing a “Weird Meme.” Apparently, I am supposed to unveil my soul and tell you six weird things about me. And then I am supposed to trust that you will all still like me in the morning.

So, here goes:

1) I was a college sophomore before I realized that basketball had strategy and game plans. I thought it was a free-for-all, even on a professional level. I never heard the term “March Madness” until I was twenty-three.

2) I didn’t have my first date and my first kiss until I was in college.

3) I’ve never been hospitalized, except when I was a baby and had an umbilical hernia repair. My mother had another baby by then, so she dropped me off and left me during the surgery and overnight because she had no choice. I was a year old.

4) I hate watching DVDs/videos at home. I even joined Netflix, thinking that would be convenient, but no, I haven’t even watched the first movie they sent three or four weeks ago because I hate watching movies at home.

5) I read the newspaper and magazines in sequence, front to back. I fold over the page to keep my place in magazines. I never skip around.

6) I rarely listen to music at home. It’s too loud here and I can’t stand competing sounds.

That was surprisingly difficult to do . . . and I have decided I’m not all that weird, because I even bored myself writing that. My apologies to the blogosphere.

And because I am lame, I’m not tagging anyone . . . but feel free to tag yourself and let us know in the comments and I’ll put a link to your blog right here:

Stephanie plays along at her blog, Adventures in Babywearing;

So does Kris over at Kris’s Korner of the World;

And here’s Robin at her blog, A Little Bit of Me.

Look! Mary at Mary on a Mission posted about her weirdness, too.

Sue at Susie’s Space adds her six cents, too.

[ space reserved for links to blogs playing along ]

My daughter is still not entirely well. She woke up crying at 1:30 a.m. last night and followed a trip to the toilet with a bath. A BATH at 1:30 a.m. Today was a hodge-podge of happy-happy and sad-very-very-sad.

So, this was a long day. I’m terribly behind on my blog-reading and my head aches with that lack-of-sleep pain.

But tomorrow, I’ll be back and better than ever. Or at least, better than today. Or, truthfully, at least back, if not better.

(Oh, and the van? The 1987 Chevy Astro van . . . died today in an intersection while my husband was driving home from the YMCA with my son. He managed to restart it, but ack!)

The news reported that 20,000 people marched the streets of Seattle today, demanding their rights as illegal immigrants. What a great country we live in when you can be in violation of the law, yet demand your rights. From the U.S. Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the privileges and immunities we enjoy in this country are extended to its citizens. Yet, isn’t it remarkable that thousands upon thousands of people who have no legal right to be here take advantage of our magnificent freedom of speech? I love this.

Well, enough of that. What follows is a discussion of bodily fluids and if you are squeamish, you may want to look away.

Last night, 10:45 p.m., cries from my daughter’s room. I hurry upstairs–she’s had a cold, remember, a mild one, but lately, bad dreams have plagued her. One involved a spider eating a bumblebee, which was traumatic for all concerned. I expected to pat her on the head, offer a trip to the potty and sleep tight.

Alas, it was not to be. I opened the door to find her distressed and gooky because her tummy ache had turned into a vomit-fest. I ran bathwater, stripped her crib, remade the crib, dried off the girl, dressed her in fresh pajamas, rocked her and put her to bed.

Then I repeated the process an hour later.

And an hour later.

And two hours later.

And two hours after that.

And an hour later.

After the second set of soiled sheets, I wised up and put a thick bath towel over the sheets and covered that with a king-sized flannel pillowcase, so the next time she woke up and threw up, I only had to remove the towel, not the sheets. Unfortunately, by that time, she was having involuntary diarrhea, so I still had to run bathwater and change her pajamas.

At 7:00 a.m., I telephoned parents to ask them not to bring their children. This is the second time in three years of childcare that I’ve had to do so, but I still felt terrible giving such late notice. I was so happy that Spring Break was over and that my sons would all be gone–either to school or homeschool P.E. at the YMCA.

So, my day (a lovely, spring day full of breezes and blue skies) was spent holding my girl as she gazed at the television, interrupting the stupor only to occasionally heave into a Rubbermaid bowl. She faked me out, though, at one point and vomited all over my shirt while proclaiming, “I AM DONE! I AM DONE!” She wasn’t. We went upstairs, then, and she curled up in my bed and watched television while I showered. By the time I finished, she was asleep and so, when the boys got home from P.E., I was able to march them through adding and subtracting decimals. When she woke up, she was fairly cheerful, though not entirely well.

Demonstrating my superior abilities and endurance as a mother, I cleaned out the refrigerator during her later afternoon snooze in the recliner. And I made a healthy dinner featuring broccoli and brown rice.

At this point, I am just hoping to sleep all night long.

And I do apologize for this lengthy discourse about vomit. Turn in tomorrow for our next installment of As The Stomach Turns. Or more scintillating, uninformed political commentary. Look out, Eschaton and Instapundit, or I’ll be stealing your readers and usurping your place in the Ecosystem!

I also want to talk about secret things women keep in their purses. Soon, I hope.

Update: Last night, we slept all night! This morning, the stomach ache is gone, but now she has a persistent headache.