At 3 p.m. every day, I think to myself, “Boy, that was stupid. I just wasted two hours.” The boys return from school and the baby wakes up and I have accomplished nothing.

I put the babies down to sleep at 1 p.m., then watch a television show called “Starting Over.” It’s reality television and the first time I watched it I thought the women on the show were possibly the most annoying women in America. And now I’m addicted. It’s so embarrassing. I’ve avoided watching soap operas and daytime talk shows and now, I have to watch television every day from 1 to 2 p.m. You can check out the website at http://www.startingovertv.com.

Today, I even got riled up. Josie, a pregnant, single woman with a worthless boyfriend who may or may not be the father . . . well, her water broke.

Now, of course, an educated woman knows that just because your water breaks does not mean that you should rush to the hospital. Especially if your contractions haven’t started. But, this chick seems to know nothing about pregnancy–how else to explain her continual reclining and lying on her back at this stage of pregnancy? (That almost guarantees that the baby will be posterior, which can mean a longer labor and back labor to boot.)

So, off they rush to the hospital. No contractions. What does Josie do? She stretches out on her back in the bed and waits for labor to start. What should she do? She should be walking the hallways. She should be at home, still, hanging out. She should be active. She should be ignoring labor until she can no longer do so.

Oh, and she was hungry and thirsty and housemates tell her not to drink too much water and not to eat a banana. In fact, one of the other women actually reaches into her mouth and takes the banana out. Stupid, I’m telling you.

Would you run a marathon without drinking water during the race? Would you hike a mountain without carrying along snacks? No. Of course not.

That brings us to the next joyous intervention. That’s right boys and girls. Pitocin. Now, Josie had expressed interest in having a medication-free birth, but did she plan for alternative pain relief? Uh . . . no. Didn’t take them too long to get her all drugged up after the contractions started to actually hurt. And yes, pitocin contractions do hurt more. That’s just one reason why you should avoid pitocin or its very nasty cousin, cytotec.

Her stupid boyfriend was sitting in the room, but she had no real labor support. No one helping her breathe, no one rubbing her back, no music, no deep jacuzzi to soothe the pains, no sitting upright, just stretched out, waiting for pain, thinking about pain, expecting pain. Idiot.

The doctor comes in at 2 a.m. and rouses Josie. “Hey, in a few minutes, you’re going to push. Okay, Josie?” Yeah, right. An unconscious woman with a numb pelvis will be ready to push in just a sec. Hold on. Okay, ready.

Be sure to get your sharp instrument ready so you can cut her perineum and then yank that baby out. Why cooperate with nature when you can just overpower it and whack it in the head?

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion tomorrow!

And then it’s 2 p.m. I think about doing laundry. No. Picking up the family room. No. Doing dishes? No. Oh yeah, I should water the flower bed. No. (Gosh, I wish it would rain.) Make a few phone calls? Balance the checkbook? Iron my husband’s pants? Scrub the stinky toilet? Clean off the table in the other room? Organize the mess of shoes in the entry-way? Finish the thank-you notes? No, no, no, no. I don’t want to do any boring stuff. I don’t want to be a grown-up and do what’s got to be done.

And you can’t make me.

Sigh. I wish I hadn’t just wasted nap-time. Tomorrow! Tomorrow I will get something done! For sure!

1) You wish it would rain because your garden really needs a good soak.
2) The weekend is not fun, but actually more work because everyone’s at home.
3) You find gray hairs. On your own head.
4) You can use the following phrase in a sentence, “I remember about twenty years ago . . .”.
5) You are old enough to be a college student’s mother.
6) The “new” fashions of the day look like something you wore in fourth grade.
7) Your doctor is younger than you are.
8) It seems like the past five years have disappeared in a five minutes.
9) You see the merits of plastic surgery.
10) You don’t care what people think.

My cat was last seen on Friday.

Notice seen in today’s Town Newsletter: “Attention Pet Owners: Coyotes are in the area. Please be sure to keep your pets safe.”

Now they tell me.

On the news today is a story of a local middle-school girl who was beat unconscious at the school dance by two other girls. This was a dance for honor students.

Does anyone actually like middle school? I hated middle school. Sixth and seventh grades were possibly the worst years of my life. My parents had recently been divorced and my dad had custody of us. Prior to this, I hardly knew my dad, even though I’d lived with him my whole life. He worked the graveyard shift at a ship-to-shore radio station and then worked more tinkering with electronics during the day (he could fix anything) and then slept while I was home. I’d hear him up in the late evenings and occasionally, I’d even be awake late enough to hear him roaring with laughter at Johnny Carson.

Then, my mother disappeared into a new marriage and a new job and a new apartment and my dad was the main parent. His wife, Pattie, was quirky. She had lived in a small house, which she called “The Little House.” This house was a free-standing garage originally and it had been converted into the tiniest house I’d ever seen. It had a miniature kitchen (no matter, she hated to cook), an adjacent living/dining room the size of my bedroom, a small bathroom and a bedroom so small that you had to walk on the twin bed to get in the room. If you got a pitcher out of a cupboard, you’d find dead spiders in it. You never heard the scritch of mice, but you’d find their droppings.

My dad left our house to live in an apartment across town, then married Pattie and moved into The Little House. My mother’s intention to remarry caused my father to spring into action and demand custody of us. I think he intended to right all his wrongs as a father.

At any rate, the year I went to sixth grade was the year all this happened. The Little House was very close to the middle school, so we’d sometimes go there after school. I remember listening to Gordon Lightfoot at that house, which seems odd since Pattie liked classical music. She was classically trained on the flute and played a bunch of other instruments as well. She had a degree in political-science, but she worked at a regional library. She was 29 when she married my dad. She wore no makeup, had long, straight-as-sticks hair and drove a Mustang convertible.

Sixth grade, though, was a bleak time for me. I’d already grown and developed, so I had this figure that an 11-year old girl should not have. I remember the day a boy named Jeff teased me in front of my entire art class. (Mr. Wise, the teacher, had a hair growing directly out of the top of his nose. Not from inside, but on top.) I slapped Jeff’s face. He never did that again, but after that I hid by wearing my heavy winter coat all through school. Getting straight A’s was no problem for me, but I couldn’t figure out how to giggle and joke and be friends with the other girls. My life had fallen apart over the summer, while they had learned to wear eyeliner and ride in cars with boys. I was self-conscious and no fun. And worst of all was the school spelling bee. I made it to the final round held during a school assembly. I missed the word “cellophane,” which was a crushing blow, because until that moment, I had not tasted spelling defeat. When I got back to my classroom, I found a teeny-tiny folded piece of paper. I unfolded it and found “c-e-l-l-o-p-h-a-n-e” printed in small, neat letters. How embarrassing.

So I hated sixth grade. Seventh grade was no better.

So I ask, does anyone actually like middle school? I’m planning to homeschool one of my twins next year. He’s always struggled in school, academically and socially. He has not really learned to write and he still struggles with his multiplication tables. He needs more attention than he can get in public school. I think he may suffer from a processing disorder of some type or an attention-deficit issue.

My other twin, TwinBoyA, can’t decide whether to go to homeschool or our local middle school. Yesterday, they had an assembly for fifth-graders and described to them what they could expect in sixth grade. Last night, he said to me in the darkness of his bedroom, “Mom, I just can’t decide.” He held up his hands like a scale. “Homeschool? Middle school? There are good things about them both.” I told him maybe he could go for a year and then decide. He said, “A year is too long.” I said, “Well, maybe half a year?” He agreed to that.

Yesterday afternon, he said middle school sounds like fun because they have brownies. And pizza. For lunch. I said, “Well, you probably shouldn’t decide about school based on the lunch menu.” He said they also have cool classes like Spanish and computer.

Is there a way to just wake them up in three years when it’s time for high school? I’ll pay extra.

1) Tonight as I drive to the store for a couple of things, I notice duck, a mallard duck, crossing the road at an odd place. No pond, no wilderness, no water. But a duck. On the way back, I notice a truck pull to the side of the road and a man hurry out of the driver’s side. He walks across the road and picks up . . . a dead duck. As I pass this scene, I see a second duck on the side of the road, alive. A widow? I don’t know, but I thought that dead duck was so sad.

2) My cat is missing. This is the third day. No sign of him. Sigh.

3) Why do women go really blond after they lose substantial amounts of weight? Carnie Wilson, for instance. Why? Why do they make The Swan contestants blonder? What’s up with that? Do blond women just look thinner?

4) My kids have been saying things like, “Mom! He said the C-word!” Or “Mom, he said the F-word!” Or “Mom! He said the N-word!” The thing is, they don’t know any actual cuss words. The “F-word” is Fart. Et cetera. These kids crack me up.

5) Babygirl is afraid of weeds. She freezes and points and jabbers if she encouters a firece-looking weed in our yard. Unfortunately, there are many warrior-weeds, waiting to conquer the back yard.

Yesterday afternoon, upon my return from Target (my “break” for the week, a shopping trip for household necessities while Babygirl naps . . . yeah, now I feel refreshed and ready for another week) I realized I had a long four hours facing me with four children alone at home again. Still. Always. My husband had to go back to work. I decided that we’d go to the beach and enjoy the last sunlight of the day. I gathered water bottles and sand toys and jackets (because truly you never know around here) and off we went. First to McDonald’s, then to the beach.

Babygirl chanted the whole way there. “Beach! Beach! Beach-beach-beach!” She couldn’t remember being at the beach before, even though she has been. A few weeks or months (?) ago we went to the beach and she freaked out when I put her down on the sand. She hated the sensation of sand under her feet. Last summer, she hated the beach because the swings terrified her (me holding her while pushing her brother, specifically) and the train’s whistle scared her.

This time, she loved the beach. She loved the grassy expanses, she loved the swing, she loved the big slide, and she loved the sand. She did not, however, like the waves which kept moving up to “get” her when she wanted to put her toes in the sand.

YoungestBoy and Babygirl are getting wetter and muddier than I anticipated. They always do and somehow, it still always surprises me.

The twins worked together frantically building a sand wall to keep back the tide. Only, just as they finished patting the sand, I said, “Hey, you know what? I think the tide is going out!” The last time they did this, the tide was coming in and they dug and patted sand and barked instructions to each other as if the lives of dozens of helpless children depended on their efforts . . . and then the drama as the waves crashed through their sand wall! Thrills! Chills! Yesterday’s activity dwindled to a sudden stillness when they realized the water was going and not coming.

So, we went home, sandy, tired, and wet. This, I hope, is what they remember of childhood.

You know how sometimes you are driving and suddenly you realize, I have no idea how I got here. How long have I been driving on auto-pilot? Did I stop at that last stop-sign? Your mind has been whirling away while your foot is on the gas pedal and you have no memory of the past stretch of road.

That’s how I felt today when I spontaneously pulled out an old home video from 1999. The twins were six years old then and YoungestBoy was 18 months old. I thought, how did I get from there to here? I know the minutes passed in full sixty second increments, the hours lasted precisely sixty minutes each, the weeks were a complete seven days and the years lasted exactly fifty-two weeks. But it seems like I have been daydreaming the whole time because I cannot for the life of me remember the actual drive.

I think this is probably as God intended it to be. You can’t remember everything, just the highlights and if you are especially pessimistic, the worst parts. And, of course, the things your write down and the videos you make and the photographs you take. My whiny journals will be balanced by very happy images of children playing and showing off and smiling. We look happy. We are happy.

Except today. The twins were quite unhappy because they could not compromise on their video game. Each insisted that it was his turn to play and refused to listen to the other. I told them to come outside and negotiate while I was watching. Their tactic is to yell louder and louder at each other. I finally said, “Look, you need to listen to him and then repeat back to him what he’s said.” (This is called Active Listening and I didn’t just make it up. It’s a real communication technique.) TwinBoyA was incensed that I would suggest such a thing and he refused to listen to TwinBoyB. They sounded like a presidential debate, only without the civility she says wryly.

I did what has worked before. I said, “Hey, hold on, I’ll be right back.” Meanwhile, they are still yelling while I run inside to grab the camera and the newly charged battery. I return–they are still hollering–and I can’t fit the stupid battery into the recorder. I want to record them arguing and fighting so they can see how ridiculous they look and sound. I fumble with the battery, growing more and more frustrated. Babygirl is fussing at me, YoungestBoy is saying, “Mom, mom, will you videotape me?” and TwinBoyA is shouting, “No” and TwinBoyB is outing, “Listen!”

You know how the video “The Blair Witch Project” was shot all crazily, the camera bouncing around and the subject’s nostril in focus and the cameraman shouting while running? Well, I didn’t actually get the battery in, but if I had, that’s what that moment would have been like when TwinBoyA belligerenly looked at me and said, “Mom, get out of here! Leave me alone! Go away!”

I thought for a second about just getting into the car and driving away and then realized that, of course, I had to stay. So I ordered TwinBoyA and TwinBoyB into the house. I am completely irrational, because I finished fiddling with the battery before I turned to them and by then, they were huddled under a blanket, finally hammering out a peace agreement. I made them come out and they were rational and announced they had agreed on a plan.

Then I explained calmly and rationally that they were simply not allowed to speak to me disrespectfully. Okay, just kidding. I lectured very sternly until TwinBoyA was crying. He apologized, but when I said, “What are you sorry for?” he couldn’t actually say why he was sorry for a long time. He reminded me so much of “The Fonz” from Happy Days. The Fonz could not say “I was wrong.” I mean literally, he could not get the word “wrong” out of his mouth.

Anyway, finally TwinBoyA managed to squeeze out an actual apology and I told him that he will not be allowed to be disrespectful to me or any other adult. I said, “I will not let you be a teenager who speaks disrespectfully to me, and if you ever do that again, you will suffer a very serious consequence that you will not enjoy at all. Do you understand me?”

I think he did. At any rate, I think I’m glad I didn’t get that all on video. The twins went back in their room to resume their video game play and I went in the backyard with YoungestBoy and Babygirl. I shot some beautiful footage of Babygirl toddling around and YoungestBoy singing three kindergarten songs (“Folks, this is the second song and don’t worry if you can’t understand the words because it’s an Indian song!”). YoungestBoy blew bubbles for Babygirl and she shrieked “be-be-be” when she spotted a bumblebee. How does she have any idea what it is and that it might sting her? Then she carried the hose around for awhile until we bribed her to come inside and watch “the babies.” Babygirl loved the videotape we’d just created.

See? We are happy. I have proof.

My husband took the boys to church tonight and I sat in the $2.00-from-a-garage sale lawn chair in my backyard and watched Babygirl wander the back yard with the hose turned on medium-low.

It would have been perfect, except for the following things:

1) I was cold. The sky was clear, but the sun was weak and I was in the shade.
2) The lawn is spotty at best. Our former dog tore up the lawn pretty badly. Babygirl likes to make mud puddles in the bare spots.
3) Babygirl’s hair is thinning. She needs Baby Rogaine. I have started to fret that she has “trichotillomania, the chronic psychiatric disorder in which patients pull, twist, pluck and otherwise remove their own hair” because really, why not worry that your 20 month old has mental issues? She pulls on her hair while I nurse her and then shows me the strands in her hand and says “hair.” She has little hair anyways. I was a baldish baby myself and now I have enough hair for three grown women (at least I do for now–when the grays start to come in, I may develop trichotillomia myself). Babygirl probably inherited her sparse toddler hairstyle from me.

Come to think of it, those moments were perfection, despite the chill and the bald spots, both human and horticultural. Sun, water and a babe–who could ask for more?

Is it a crime to wish that the boys wouldn’t come home from school today? I would like the quiet afternoon to stretch into the evening without the noise and mess of boys.

Well, they are home.

TwinBoyB: “Mom, what does the word constipated mean?”

Oh please, someone, save me. Or whisk me away to Moorea to snorkel in the South Pacific sea.

TwinBoyA: “Mom, he just took the entire box of Cheez-Its!”

I wish I could lay in the weak sun all afternoon and drift to sleep. I wish someone else would iron my husband’s khakis tonight. I wish my fingers and toes weren’t so cold.

I wish TwinBoyB would not make random, loud, mouth noises. I wish he wouldn’t ask every day, six times a day, “What’s for dinner?” and then respond with “Ewww, that’s nasty.”

I wish I could sleep in until noon and then spend the rest of the day puttering around in the closets, sorting, purging, organizing.

I wish I had unlimited wishes and a fairy-godmother to grant them all.

I went to school with the following people:

A girl named Peppi.
A girl named April Wren.
A girl named Kiki.
A girl named Bobbi Jack.

I went to college with a girl who changed her name while she was a teenager to W i l m a j o y Regina HopeAnn K. She had a plainer name before that, but she and her mother fiddled with her name and came up with that tongue-twister. The funniest thing was that years after college, I located her email address and exchanged a few emails. She and her husband (formerly “Simeon S.”) had changed their names to Joy and John S. Apparently, their previous names were too difficult for people to remember.