This morning, I sat outside while Babygirl and DaycareKid played. I didn’t see it happen, but Babygirl apparently gave DaycareKid a little shove and he landed with a little splash in the small, orange wagon that contained a small puddle. When he stood up, I saw his backside was wet. I said, “Bummer!” Babygirl eyed me, surveyed DaycareKid’s soggy britches and said, “Bummer!” Then she gave an evil little chuckle and said, “It’s funny!”

“Bummer” is her newest word. “It’s funny” is her best new phrase.

This afternoon, the boys’ twin friends came over. All five boys immediately headed for the backyard, where they proceeded to work on their new creek. The backyard slopes a little, so my boys discovered quite by accident that if you water the flowerbed closest to the patio, the water heads downstream along the edge of the flowerbed. The boys worked with a shovel and hoe, taking turns to dig and hack at the hard dirt so the dribbling water would pool in their hole.

Periodically, one of them would spray the hole with water, which is why they all have dirt in their hair. At one point, I glanced out the kitchen window to see one of my boys dangling his feet into the “creek.”

Then YoungestBoy came rushing inside. “Mom!” He had a smear of dirt on his forehead, a scowl on his cherubic face and was drenched. “Mom! They sprayed me and now I’m going to have to take a bath!” Babygirl stopped dancing, gazed at him and said, “Bummer.”

YoungestBoy growled at us and stomped upstairs to change clothes. Babygirl resumed her crazy, whirling dance, clad only in a diaper.

I noticed something during the week of Vacation Bible School. For the first year in quite a few years, my role was completely behind-the-scenes. I didn’t speak into a microphone even one time. I did not lead a song, I did not shush a crowd, I did not appear on stage.

And it was strange. Surprisingly, I missed it.

I am a good administrator, an excellent detail person. Yet, when I was in college, I discovered my talent for communication–especially with children. I worked as a Children’s Ministries intern for Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker at Heritage U.S.A., in Charlotte, North Carolina. My boss was a goateed man with black hair that was firmly Aqua-netted into place. His wife was a short, squat woman with matching black hair. He was a ventriloquist and a puppeteer and he was kind of forced to accept me as an intern because I had inadvertently weaseled my way past Human Resources and into a job by introducing myself to Dick Dortch, who ended up being not only an old family friend, but also Jim Bakker’s right hand man.

Boy, was the woman in Human Resources mad at me.

Anyway, instead of working on the grounds crew, I ended up working in the children’s department and that’s how I ended up on a stage in Heritage U.S.A. entertaining the passing crowds. Speaking into that microphone and performing the little skits we created and telling crazy knock-knock jokes energized me, thrilled me, gave me confidence that I didn’t even know I lacked. It’s wacky to find out that you happen to be good at captivating a crowd, especially when you are a solitary soul at heart who prefers to sit home than to mingle and make small talk.

When you speak into a microphone, people notice your work. They pat you on the back and write you thank-you notes and tell you what a great job you’ve done. When you spend hours at home with spreadsheets and registration forms and to-do lists and self-created forms, no one notices. It’s like housework: people only notice if your floors have not been mopped.  They see smudges on your mirrors, but don’t notice the absence of smudges.  If those forms had not been created, if the children had not been organized into acceptable crews, if people had not been recruited and trained and if the supplies had not been ordered, people would notice.  But a smooth-running organization is like the skeleton–invisible, unless, of course, you are Mary-Kate Olsen (sorry, anorexia joke just popped in there).

Really, though, the invisible work makes an event run smoothly and so people notice the things they are supposed to notice–the public speaker, the music, the decorations, the happy faces of children. It’s strange, though, if you are used to being noticed.

This year, we have a new youth pastor and I immediately assigned him my usual role. For the past two years, I’ve done the closing program, the twenty-five minute wrap-up at the end of the day. I wanted to pass along the burden, but also, I wanted to see how he handled the microphone and the challenge of speaking to 80 children. He did a fantastic job and I was really thrilled to hear him keep the attention of the children while teaching and entertaining them. And I am relieved to not have the job myself. But I did notice that I noticed the lack of attention.

And it’s always a little weird when you see your own foibles, when you notice the 14-year-old inside who clamors for attention.

So, to answer my question–yes, without a microphone, I am invisible. Does that make my work less valuable? No. Do I mind? Not so much. Well, okay. Maybe a teeny, tiny bit. Will I reclaim the microphone next year? No. It’s all right to be see-through. I always thought that transparency would be a cool superpower to have. Although, I’d really rather be able to fly. Or spin straw into gold. Is that a superpower?

Today, the temperature nearly reached 100 degrees. I know that’s just summertime for some parts of the country, but for us, it’s a new record high. This is Washington, the Evergreen state. We depend on overcast days and frequent drizzle to maintain our greenery. And even though July is our driest month, normally our temperatures are milder–like 75 or 80 degrees, tops.

We have air conditioning–which is rare in these parts–but tonight, when I walked into our house after running late errands, it was warm inside–warmer than the night-air outside. Our poor heat pump was just tuckered out from trying to combat the hot air, I guess. I turned everything off, cleaned the filters and opened the windows. Overnight temperatures are supposed to be in the 60s, so hopefully we don’t spontaneously combust in our sleep.

My husband returned home safely yesterday. He says he never plans to move to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The kids took his return in stride and then resumed bickering. We expected to get together with our vacationing friends last night, but they stood us up. We figured that’s what was happening, so we waited until 6 p.m. and grilled burgers at home and stayed put all night. This morning, our friend, David, called to apologize. They remembered about our plans last night at 1:30 a.m. on their drive back to their hotel. No problem, I said. Don’t worry about it. I did clean my house for four solid hours, but no problem. I needed the motivation to pick up Legos and vacuum and deal with the kitchen-counter paper piles and scrub the sink and wash the bathroom mirrors and put away folded laundry and on and on.

Any motivation to clean house is good motivation, I say.

Today, I informed my newly returned husband that I would be leaving the house when Babygirl went down for a nap. He’s such an easy-going man. I couldn’t decide where to go or what to do. I ended up at two different thrift stores for a little “retail therapy.” I bought books, some Legos made just for babies, a doll for Babygirl, and a few items of clothing. Oh, and “new” sandals. I love a bargain, though I have to say that my fellow-thrift shoppers sometimes scare me. A man totally invaded my space at the checkstand and tried to engage me in conversation. I completely ignored him with the same steely determination I use with street people or obviously insane people. And then I made sure I was in my car with the doors locked when he came into the parking lot. I blame this weirdness on my mother.

Babygirl has been talking a lot these days. Her first real sentence was “I got it!” She says that frequently. When I gave her the “new” doll today, she looked at it and said, “OH!” Pause. “OHH!” For the past few days, she’s developed a new attachment to a stuffed dog and a pink blanket. Puppy and blankie. My twins (now 11) still sleep with their baby blankets. (Shhhhh, don’t tell.) YoungestBoy was never very attached at any particular objects, but he did bite his nails from the time he had teeth.

I sense that I’m beginning to ramble, so I think I’ll head to bed and read another chapter of Anne Lamott’s fabulous book, Blue Shoe. Why am I so tired when I have so little to show for my time?!

My husband returns tomorrow. He’s been out of town since Monday. Since he was gone, I accomplished a few things:

1) Kept all children alive.
2) Fed all children.
3) Washed laundry, lots of it.
4) Took children to beach on Monday.
5) Went to meeting about k12.com on Tuesday. (Took Babygirl. Left big kids with a babysitter.)
6) Took kids to Weight Watchers meeting on Wednesday, but weighed in and missed meeting part so they could play on slides afterwards. Bribed them with ice cream to leave play structure, ensuring future Weight Watchers customers who have Food Issues. I didn’t lose weight, nor did I gain, which I consider a victory considering I went out to eat twice this week, then had a small skirmish with a carton of low-fat ice cream in my husband’s absence.
7) Scrubbed my shower stall and cleaned bathroom sink.
8) Vacuumed family room, though why? There are popcorn crumbs and kernels scattered everywhere, just from tonight. A family of mice could survive for a decade on the provisions found on this carpet.
9) Cleaned the twins’ room and washed their bedding more than once. (Don’t ask.)
10) Met my mom at the swimming pool tonight. Ate dinner and swam for almost 3 hours.
11) Cared for daycare baby a total of 36 hours.
12) Went to the zoo with five children.

What I did not accomplish:
1) Mopping floor.
2) Writing thank-you notes to volunteers from last week.
3) Ironing of any sort.
4) Eight million other things that nag at me every day–from smudged windows to grimy floors to scattered toys and the ever-present pile of papers on the kitchen counter. The very idea of the clutter in my storage room drives me to distraction. My living room cries out for paint. The back yard needs mowing, the front yard ivy needs trimming.

I did not exercise.
I did not make any overdue appointments with the children’s doctors.
I did not arrange for the kittens to get vaccines.
I did not scrapbook.
I did not find the cure for cancer, nor did I compose a heart-wrenching love ballad to my husband.

The thing about being a mother and being me at the same time is that I cannot work in the manner that is comfortable for me–working sequentially and systematically on projects. The “me” part needs to work in order. The “mom” part of me is constantly interrupted, day and night. A constant stream of noise squeezes the thoughts out of my brain. Tonight, on the way home from the pool, all four of my children were making noise at the same time, talking, chanting, babbling. And the radio was on. I clicked the radio off, because that was the only noise I could silence.

I often feel like I’m not getting a thing done. So why am I so exhausted?

I just finished reading Candace Bushnell’s Four Blondes.   She’s the author of Sex and the City, which I have not read, nor have I seen the show.  She talks about Four Blondes here.

Let me just say how thankful I am that I purchased it at a garage sale for a quarter, because that’s exactly how much it was worth.  She should pay me for the time I wasted reading it.  I read the entire dreadful book–which I don’t always do.  When I was young, if I hated a book, it didn’t matter.  I had to finish it, according to my self-imposed standards.  Not any more.  Now I will abandon a book without a flicker of guilt.

But I kept reading Four Blondes, thinking it would get better.  It did not.  This book purports to be the tales of four different New York women.  It read more like a rough draft of a college creative writing project.  No plot, no theme, no underlying meaning to her stories of shallow women living sorry lives.  As far as I’m concerned, Candace Bushnell owes me $28.00–minimum wage for four hours of time I spent reading this book.

Now, I’m reading Anne Lamott’s Blue Shoe.  The writing is beautiful and stands in vivid contrast to the clunkety writing by Candace Bushnell.  Anne Lamott rocks.

I’m also re-reading A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle.  I love this book so much.  I penciled in comments the first time I read it.  Everyone who aspires to write or create should read this book–even though it was written in 1972, it’s timeless and inspiring. 

I am crabby.  Really, really, really crabby.  So crabby that Child Protective Services should come to my front door and remove my children.  So crabby that the sound of my children eating popsicles annoys me.  Now they will be all sticky and a sticky cellophane wrapper will stick to my sock when I am least expecting it.
 
Everywhere I look, I see stuff I want to unsee.  I see piles needing organization.  I see messes needing cleaning.  I see crumbs needing sweeping.  I see children needing nail-clipping and tooth-brushing and lessons from Miss Manners.  I see unfolded laundry and wrinkled shirts.  A stack of videos balances precariously on top of the dusty television.  I’ve decided I am just going to dump my unread magazines into the recycling bin.  As soon as I shake this crabby lethargy.
 
Oh.  My.  I’m living in a Goodwill store. 
 
Tonight, I have to attend a meeting about a new school program.  At 6:30 p.m., with my almost-2 year old in tow.  That will be fun.  Big sigh.  Tomorrow night, I have another meeting.  When was it that I thought I’d gallivant around our beautiful state with the children?  That means no pool today, no pool tomorrow.  Thursday, maybe, is our zoo day.  The ocean is positively out of the question since Friday–my day “off” with no daycare baby to care for–is the day my husband returns and then we’re having a barbecue at the pool with our friends that evening.  And I have to make and take all the food.  In my spare time.
 
I’m such a whiner.  Please.  Someone, shake me. 
 
And make it a chocolate malt, if you don’t mind. 

The minute DaycareKid’s mom picked him up, I herded the neighborhood boys out the door and loaded my kids up in the car and drove them directly to McDonald’s.  Thus, marginally nourished, I drove to the beach where we spent the next two hours. 
 
I just want to know–why, oh why, do I have children who are fixated on swings?  My older boys (you know, the adopted ones who are on the lower tier of my affection) hated swings.  They would freak out if I pushed them too high.  YoungestBoy has always adored swinging and tonight, Babygirl fully embraced the whole swinging experience for the first time.  Her hand muscles are probably going to be sore tomorrow morning when she wakes up because she spent close to an hour clutching the metal links while clamoring “more swing!  more swing!”. 
 
Why are so many motherhood activities so mind-numbingly boring?  I mean, pushing her on the swing for fifteen minutes–perfect!  Half an hour?  Uh, I’m losing interest and I’d like to sprawl out on the lawn and watch the sunlight shimmering on the Puget Sound.  A whole hour?  Puh-lease.  Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring.  Of course, I put on my Good Mother face and push and then tickle her when she swings close to me again and I do all this while trying to keep an eye on my boys who have joined in with another boy in making water balloons.
 
Anyway, first she did slide for awhile.  Then the swings.  Then we all went down to the edge of the beach and the boys waded in–YoungestBoy went to his waist and then lost his flip-flops and then sort of plunged in to swim after them, giving me heart palpitations.  Babygirl would have nothing to do with the waves as they splashed on the rocky shore.  She climbed the retaining wall, saying, “Swing.  Swing.”  She would not be deterred, so I made the boys come back up to the swingset, which is when they found the Water Balloon Kid.  Then I was stuck pushing the swing for an hour.  Or so.
 
We bribed her out of the park with a promise of ice cream.  At first, she said, “no,” but all of the sudden, she said, “Okay.  Fast!” and she started to run.  She ran all the way up the wide walking path, all the way across the railroad tracks, all the way up the hill to the parking lot and then all the way across the parking lot to the car.  I think she will run marathons when she grows up.
 
We went to McDonald’s again for ice cream.  I know.  There goes my Mother of the Year award. 
 
By the time we returned home, it was almost 8:00 p.m., her bed-time.  The boys will be going to bed in minutes and finally–Mom is Still a Grown-up Time begins!
 
By the way, I noticed a couple of days ago that Babygirl’s hair is exactly the color of a dead lawn.  Just in case you were wondering.

When I was a teenager, my most overused phrase was, “I’m so sure!”  I still say it.  For instance, when I woke up early this morning and realized I have a cold, followed by this week I’m home alone with no help from my husband.  I thought, I’m so sure!
 
But, I took Advil, I ate my usual oatmeal breakfast and I don’t feel too bad.  It’s 10:10 a.m., so naptime is less than three hours a day.  How pathetic that I’m counting down the hours.  I used to do that when I had a really boring customer service job way back in history when I used to have a job with benefits–benefits other than the benefit of wearing black scuffy slippers all day.  I had to clock in for 7.5 hours each day and I counted down starting at about 6.5 hours.  Back then, I longed for a baby and for this life, the one I have now.  Lucky me, dreams come true.
 
Last year was my 20 year high school reunion and it was so much like high school.  I sat at a table with the two smartest high school girls (both still single) and we chatted while everyone else drank a lot and talked loudly.  Okay, maybe not everyone, but it did remind me a lot of high school.  I’m glad I went, though, because I reconnected with a few others from high school and it’s such a surreal experience to see the high-school kids you remember transformed into balding, pudgy men and actual grown-up women with colored hair that you can’t really recognize.  Why do all these people look so old when I am still so young and spry?
 
One of the women from high school has a blog and that’s how I know that last Saturday she and her husband went to Seattle, bought tickets to see The Lion King, did a training run with a marathon group, went to the Bite of Seattle, met someone for dinner, and then ended the day by seeing American Idol in concert.  They don’t have children, and I know that was not their choice, but still.  Why didn’t I enjoy my life more before I had children?  Oh yeah, that’s because we had no money and no time. 
 
Jealously is such a waste of time.  You know the last time I went to Seattle?  Um, that would be two days before I gave birth to Babygirl who is almost two years old.  The last concert I saw?  That would have to be about 8 years ago.  The last time I went to Bite of anything?  I can’t even remember that far back. 
 
My life is so small now, confined to this house, in this neighborhood.  It’s like one of those sponges–when you put it in water, it expands to ten times its current size . . . well, my life has been condensed to one-tenth of its former size.  Not that I would trade this life, but sometimes it does feel a little cramped.
 
But Friday, we have a day of freedom coming.  I think I’m going to take the kids to the ocean for the day.  And throw them in.  Just kidding. 
 
[My toddler has refused to wear a diaper this morning.  I just said to her, “Tell Mommy when you need to go pee-pee, okay?” and she looked at me with teenage defiance and said, “No!”]

My husband is leaving me tomorrow.  Today we celebrated our seventeenth anniversary.  It’s always this way because we got married on July 18, right in the very middle of the summer when he always has to jet off for an annual church-related meeting.  Some years, he’s even gone on our actual anniversary day.
 
But we are a very low-maintenance couple.  I’m an extremely low-maintenance wife, in fact.  He should thank me for that.  While the baby was napping, we had brunch at a very hoity-toity restaurant overlooking the Puget Sound.  We spent $50.00 on our meal.  And wouldn’t you know it?  Someone gave us a check for $50.00 today for our anniversary.  I like to think that God is looking out for us.
 
We never linger in restaurants.  We’re kind of that couple who speaks a little, but mostly sits in companionable silence, gazing out the windows, trying to eavesdrop on other patrons (I’m the eavesdropper–he mostly wishes he had a tiny little television screen attached to his wrist so he could always keep tabs on Fox News).  We finished so quickly that I dropped him off at home and went to the grocery store.  We need provisions during these five days he’ll be gone and I most certainly do not want to take four children into the grocery store.  That would be financial suicide.
 
We agreed not to exchange gifts or even cards.  I’m unsentimental like that.  I’ve heard people talk about renewing their vows and stuff like that, which I find to be a silly idea.  My vows haven’t expired and I hated putting on the whole wedding the first time around.  I didn’t like all those people watching me walk up the aisle, I didn’t like the long session with the photographer, I didn’t like having to make small talk with so many people.  Why would I do that to myself again? 
 
Anyway, so happy anniversary to me.  It really is easier to stay married the longer you’ve been married.  If, of course, you chose wisely.  I chose a man who is kind, calm, diligent, trustworthy, dependable, funny–very, very funny–a man with good friends and a consistent, solid world-view, a man who seeks to understand theology and who longs to be an authentic follower of Christ.  He also puts up with me, which is quite an undertaking since I am 1)  a woman and 2) always right and 3) ridiculously sequential in the way I deal with the world.  Also, he laughs at my sarcastic jokes.  How can I not stay married to a guy like that?
 
And now, I have to go clean out our 1992 Buick.  It’s sitting in the church parking lot with a trunk full of hamster cages and a Lego table and other assorted junk.  I need to empty it because we are donating it to charity.  The last time it didn’t start we decided enough was enough.  The poor thing has 265,000+  miles on it.  From now on, we’re a one-car family.
 
My husband leaves at 6:20 a.m. and what better way to spend our last night together–our anniversary night–than for me to be cleaning out the old car?  Happy Anniversary, Dear!