At 7:30 p.m., on the dot, I told Babygirl, “Time for night-night.” I kissed her soft cheek and placed her in her crib, along with New Dolly and Old Dolly (twins, separated at birth, but reunited by me–I found one at a Value Village, then found a new one at the local Fred Meyer and bought the new one because it was clothed), Tiger, two soft pink blankets and a heavy hand-knit baby blanket. Babygirl said, “Dolly hat?” New dolly has a hat, which Old Dolly must wear to bed. I switched the hat from New Dolly to Old Dolly and said, “Night-night, Sweetie.”

On some nights, she says back to me in her baby-voice, “Night-night, Sweetie.”

The love I feel for this tiny child almost suffocates me sometimes.

I close the door and flip on the fan in the bathroom for white noise because it will still be an hour or two before the boys are quiet. My husband is still gone (officiating at that wedding) and I step into my bedroom and sit on the bed and flick through a few channels, checking the Olympics, but settling on the news.

And then complete silence blankets my house.

The power was out.

The electricity very rarely goes out here. I suppose that’s because most of the power lines are underground, but for whatever reason, we very rarely sit in a silent, dark house like pioneers in sod houses back in the Litte House on the Prairie Days, or like those poor post-hurricane souls in Florida.

For the first thirty minutes, my living room remained fairly bright with the waning light of day, so I sat and read (Rosie, by Anne Lamott) until I came to the end of a chapter and realized that this outage might last awhile. Better prepare.

My boys came filing out of their room, acting as if I had just done the most magnificent magic trick, making electricity vanish. I retrieved two flashlights from the laundry room–which miraculously had working batteries inside. Then I set to work lighting candles. My boys stood watching in awe, oooo-ing and awwwwww-ing with each match’s s-c-r-i-t-c-h and the whoosh of flame. TwinBoyA said, “Cooooool!” as if I was a performer eating fire in a spectacular circus.

They sat at the kitchen table, staring at candle flames, holding their hands to the warmth until I said, “Don’t! Don’t move the candles! Do not get burned!” I’m such a kill-joy.

I washed dishes while they ate pretzels and gazed into the fire. They were actually arguing about who could stare at which candle, but fortunately, the sound of the water drowned out most of that insanity.

Then I finished the dishes and decided to clean off the avalanche of papers on the kitchen counter.

Flylady would call this a “hot-spot,” that place where things just seem to collect, that spot which must be dealt with severely and swiftly less the clutter spontaneously combust. Or something like that. Darkness had fallen, so by that point, I had to lift each paper to my jarred Yankee candle (Hydrangea) to see what it was.

I remarked to the children, “You know, this is how people used to live, without electricity all the time.”

TwinBoyB said, “Well, how did they keep their milk cold?”

I said, “They had cows.”

TwinBoyA said, “Ewwwwwww.”

TwinBoyB said, “Warm milk! Ewwwwww!”

They pondered this as they ate. I could clearly hear the “CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH-MUNCH-CRUNCH” of my boys eating pretzels and it was all I could do not to stab myself in the ears with a butcher knife. Is it just me, or does the sound of mastication drive normal people insane? I kept saying foolish things like, “Would you please just stop crunching? Just eat! Quick! Don’t dilly-dally! I can’t stand the crunching! Argh!”

My poor children finally abandoned their pretzels and reminded me that I had candles in the living room fireplace that were unlit.

I lit those candles and the boys gathered pillows and afghans and settled in to stare at the flickering flames. I finished my project with the papers and realized it was bedtime for the kids. My favorite time of day!

I lit a candle in each bathroom so they could brush teeth and sent them to bed with a flashlight.

The silence of a house without power is so still, so loud, so weird. I borrowed a book-light from the twins and sat to read in the living room, feeling very disconnected from the outside world. Thank God for books. I was happily engrossed in the story when the buzzing started, then a hum, then clicks and purrs and lights came on and the voice of the television upstairs murmured.

The kids all came out of their darkness to say, “Mom! The power’s back on!”

I said, “Yes, I know. Now, go to sleep.”

How about that? My kids were perfectly entertained with flashlights and the glow of candles for an hour and a half–they did not die from not playing Nintendo and not watching television before bed. We would make horrible pioneers, though. Ewwwwww! Warm milk!

I remembered this afternoon of a few things that scared me when I was a child.

I was afraid that if I used too much toilet paper, the toilet would overflow. I used four squares, no more, until I was no longer a scared child. In fact, I think I was married before I started using generous amounts of toilet paper.

I was afraid that I would slide between the outdoor stairs–you know the kind of stairs without backs on them? I was terrified of going up those kind of stairs. I knew I would fall straight through.

I was afraid to speak in Sunday School class because I never spoke on Sunday mornings before class started. I was afraid my voice would be all scratchy and choked.

I was afraid people were talking about me behind my back. I was afraid of being left out and of being different.

I was afraid that when I stepped into a boat–rowboat, yacht, motorboat–it would sink.

I was afraid that the center of the golf ball my brother had dissected would explode and kill us all.

——————————————–

Just a while ago, I was sitting here in the family room, perusing blogs, when I realized that the television was blaring. I walked over, turned off Cartoon Network and resumed my reading.

A few moments later, YoungestBoy slid open the patio door, came in, looked around, turned on the television and went back outside.

He closed the door before I could say, “HEY! TURN THAT OFF!”

——————————————

My husband is gone overnight to officiate a wedding in Portland. I feel a little adrift, alone again. The skies have turned blue and I think I’ll take the kids to the pool tonight. It’s supposed to rain again next week and then the pool will be closed. I don’t want to don my swimsuit, but I will have to because Babygirl will insist on swimming with her beloved rubber ducky floating ring. She even sleeps with “ducky” now.

I am mourning the end of summer and the passing of time.

And now, Babygirl is screaming, “MOM! MOM!” from her crib. So, the second half of this day begins.

You know what I hate? Besides raw tomatoes?

I hate people deciding who I am based on my marriage alone. I married a man 17 years ago who is now a pastor of a church. And somehow, that gives people all the information they need to decide who I am.

That’s why it’s not listed in my profile on this blog. The fact that I am married to a pastor has hardly anything to do with who I am as a person. People see “pastors’s wife” and they stand back, gape, cover their mouths, share private jokes, judge, snicker and come to a swift conclusion. They conclude that I am completely unlike them, that I must pray in tongues while I dance through the house doing my housework, that I spend hours teaching the children memory verses and that I am standing with my hands on my hips judging them because I think I am Perfect. It’s really no wonder that it’s so difficult to find a New Best Friend when you are known as The Pastor’s Wife.

People who have different standards for me based on my spouse’s profession are misguided. They are the worst kind of people–unthoughtful people. And by that, I don’t mean people who are unkind or ungenerous, but people who just don’t think, who wouldn’t recognize a thoughtful moment if it pinched them under the arm in that really sensitive spot. Unthoughtful people cannot engage in thinking conversation, because they are missing whatever essential component that thoughtful people have in their souls. So, if you ever offer a thought-provoking comment to an unthoughtful person, you will see that person go completely haywire with screaming alarms and blinking lights and flailing limbs. And then they will call you a hypocrite or worse. The point of your thought-provoking comment will inevitably be missed in the hoopla of their crazy response and then suddenly, you are on the defense, wondering why.

Frankly, unthoughtful people wear me out and on bad days, they make me question humanity. On really bad days, they make me think I was right–people are horrible and not to be trusted and why did I ever think otherwise? Why bother?

People who don’t think live in some foreign land without a map. I can’t even find the entrance to the housing development where those kind of people live, let alone get close to them and understand them. When I encounter those kind of glib, mean, stone-souled people, I smile and walk on. No, I run.

But I’m a “pastor’s wife,” so I don’t give them the “You’re Number One” salute, even though that’s pretty much all they understand, because it doesn’t take much thought to flip someone off.

My name is Mel. My name is not Mrs. Pastor’s Wife. My faith is a skeleton, the framework of my life, not my hair. I don’t restyle it each day in accordance with how much gel or time I have or change it in light of prevailing trends. My faith holds me up, gives me strength, keeps my chin from puddling into my toenails.

I don’t talk about my skeleton as much as I talk about my hair–and when I say “hair”, I’m not talking about my actual wild curls, but rather, the part of life that is visible to the naked eye, the outside stuff–but that doesn’t mean my hair is more important than the bones that give me structure. My skeleton just is, and when people start judging me according to my hair, thinking they know everything about me, thinking they are in a position to judge how consistent I am–well, it makes me kind of testy.

Being judged and misunderstood pisses me off. Can a pastor’s wife say that? I’ll have to check my manual and get back to you.

In the meantime, putting these words here keep those words from swimming around in my already crowded head, so I feel a little better. So, no need to call the ambulance. I’ll be staying here, taking care of kids for a few more years, at least.

And now, I have to go make lunch.

Tonight, I went back to Weight Watchers. I had been absent for three weeks because of one thing or another. (Pringles, mostly, hardy-har-har.) Anyway, I gained two pounds, which–believe me, was actually fairly good news considering my un-Weight Watchers behavior the past three weeks.

After Weight Watchers, I headed to the grocery store, desperate for provisions (since I ate everything in the house–just kidding!). They’ve remodeled the grocery store closest to my house and for that reason, I wandered up and down most every aisle, picking out fat-free chili and skim milk and mini-Oreos (for the kids, wink-wink).

My cart was about half full when I glanced over and saw my Weight Watchers leader, Dianna. Instinctively, reflexively, without even a conscious thought, I averted my eyes and violently swerved my cart in the opposite direction as if I committed a felony by picking out food for purchase.

I know. I have some issues regarding food. Funny, huh?

Now, back to my “Caramel Honey” walls (or “Honey Caramel”–who can remember? I just know that I want to dip apples in the paint).

I put a second coat of paint on during nap-time today. This is what we used to paint. It’s a miracle, I’m telling you! If you are going to paint, buy one of these Paint Sticks. No drips, no drabs, easy as caramel-honey pie!

As for the color–picture the orange-yellow color that Little Tikes (the toy company) uses in so many of its toys. Like this basketball hoop. That’s the color of my walls. The intensity, anyways. Maybe slightly more orange.

When my friend stopped by the other day and I mentioned I was going to paint my walls the color of my hideous second-hand couch, she looked aghast. I said, “Well, my theory is that if I paint the walls that color, my couch will disappear.” She looked completely unconvinced, but I was right. My couch is all but invisible now, sitting against my vivid walls.

For an accent piece, I’m thinking of moving the Little Tikes basketball hoop next to the couch.

Just kidding. What I really want are purple velvet pillows and new luxurious cream-colored carpet. Cream. And Honey. All I need now is a little hazelnut fudge topping and Granny Smith apples.

(Oh, and by the way, why has my profile and picture and list of blogs and everything slipped down the page? Or is it just my computer which displays my blog incorrectly? Does anyone know?)

TwinBoyA had been the child who makes me question my competency as a mother. Since he was a crawling baby, he’s attempted to wrest control of this family from me. He’s a scowler and when he was about two years old, he literally growled at church people who said hello to him on Sunday mornings. He’s always been touchy and moody and prickly. I swear he has the soul of a hormonal teenage girl.

A couple of years ago, I was helping him with homework and he grew more and more angry with me, rather than with the complicated multiplication problems. I grew exasperated with him and things were not going well. Then he threw himself to the floor. (We were in the living room, so it was a small gesture, really.) Saved by the bell! The phone rang.

When I returned to the math torture, he handed me a small folded piece of notebook paper. Inside, it said (in really horrible handwriting), “WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN?! YOU ARE THE WORST MOM IN THE WORLD!” I read it, looked him in the eye, raised my eyebrows and then said, “You forgot to say I hate you.”

He blinked and sheepishly handed me a second folded note. I opened it to find the words scrawled in dark pencil, “I HATE YOU!”

I am a horrible mother, because I giggled, chortled, guffawed, even–which made him burrow under the couch cushions and holler.

He has never been an “easy” child. He can be delightful and he says really hilarious things (usually unintentionally) and he is a great reader and has a shockingly large vocabulary. But he is quirky and strong-willed and raises his lip at me in an Elvis grimace when he’s mad at me. Which is often.

So, here’s where I get revenge: His sister, the practically-2-year-old Babygirl calls him “Elmo” (which is obviously not his name) and she demands that he “rocky-rocky” with her. No one else will do. She stands and screams “ELMO! ROCKY-ROCKY!” and will not stop shrieking until he complies with her wishes. She wants him–and him only–to read books with her. If he walks away, she screeches, “ELMO! COME BACK!” She has become a tyrant.

He complains to me and I just shrug. Sometimes, you’ve just got to let the little ones do the dirty work. Revenge is sweet.

(p.s. After I posted last night’s dull post, I casually used that handy-dandy button up there to confirm that, yes, there are more dreadful blogs than good ones out there in cyberspace. I don’t think I’ve ever found a good blog that way–and then–ACK! A virus started to download itself on my computer and I sat helplessly and tried to “X” out the box and then suddenly, McAfee swooped in and rescued me by annihilating that virus. Boy, did that scare me! Anyway, I will not be using that button anymore and I’m warning you, if you want to find a good blog, do what I do– follow the trail on blogrolls! No more “next blog” for me!)

It’s 11:00 p.m., which bums me out. My husband and I painted our living room tonight–well, half of it anyway and all that productivity cut into my evening. And I am worried that “Caramel Honey” is too much for the living room walls. Sort of.

Me: “Do you like this color?”
Him: “Well, it’s not a color I would have chosen, but I like it.”

Long pause.

Me: “So you hate it?”
Him: “I didn’t say that! I would just choose a boring color.”

He would not have chosen red stripes in the family room or “violet aura” for the bedroom. I throw all caution to the wind when choosing the color of a room. Why not? It’s just paint. I can’t buy fancy-schmancy furniture, but I can make a room feel a particular way with color. My husband likes plain, boring, dull. Dorm room beige would be fine with him. He leaves all the creative decisions to me.

“Caramel Honey” is a good color. It is. Warm, glowing, comfortable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mesh well with my “guacamole” entryway, so I’m going to have to repaint that, probably red. I want to use red accents in the living room and eggplant purple.

We used this cool paint stick thing that worked like a giant syringe. I would highly recommend it. It really did eliminate the dripping mess of a roller.

I’ve just turned this blog into one of those really boring ones I find when I click on that “next blog” button up at the top of this page.

I’d better get to bed before I actually bore myself to death. Although, my husband might like that. With the life insurance money, he could have the living room repainted beige.

I have a lot of ground to cover.

But first, can I just ask a question? Why is it that I can spend two or three hours straightening up, cleaning, organizing, sorting, putting away . . . and yet, my house looks as if debris is raining down from the ceiling? Saturday morning I did not sit down one time, yet by noon, my kitchen remained a breeding ground for dirty glasses and the family room was littered with toys. As I work, the children sneak behind me and wreak havoc. I would like to know where they learned this.

Saturday
My husband had to work a lot yesterday, so he was gone all morning while I attempted to regain control over my house and laundry. I worked until lunch-time, then put the baby to bed and took the boys to a town festival. My husband stayed home with the sleeping baby. The highlights were eating hotdogs and petting baby bunnies and–for YoungestBoy–sitting atop a placid pony named Bunny. We were laughing at the antics of some jugglers when the cloudy skies unleashed a torrential downpour and we ran back to our car–the boys holding their flip-flops in their hands and running in bare feet. YoungestBoy was extremely disappointed in me because I “made” him watch the jugglers when all he really wanted to do was play a game involving rubber duckies and prizes that I had promised we’d play “on the way out.” I’m not sure he is going to forgive me.

The afternoon meandered on at a leisurely pace. I actually dozed a little while Babygirl jumped around on our king-sized bed and then became conscious of my husband taking her downstairs with him to cook dinner. He made pancakes for everyone and I eventually wandered downstairs, still feeling sleepy.

The kitchen was a disaster–which seems impossible since I spent so much time in the morning cleaning–so as dinner ended, I headed for the storage room to get a replacement trash bag for the compactor (which doesn’t work, still). As I passed the laundry room, TwinBoyA walked out and said in a calm, unhurried voice, “Uh, Mom? The toilet is overflowing.” I looked down and saw a stream of water rushing across the floor.

In a single bound, I flew through the laundry room into the adjacent bathroom and sloshed through the inch of flowing water and grabbed the plunger. Plunge, plunge, plunge and the water stopped flowing over the toilet rim and began to recede.

Remarkably, I couldn’t find a single bath towel in the laundry room–dirty or clean–so I hollered for TwinBoyA–who was standing, watching me in silence–to “GET TOWELS! GET TOWELS! RUN UPSTAIRS AND GET TOWELS!” Then, I unhelpfully grabbed two old cloth diapers (relegated to the rag pile in the cupboard) and threw them in the path of the stream.

I flailed my arms, spun around two times and yelled again “GET TOWELS! SOMEONE GET ME SOME TOWELS!” TwinBoyA had conveniently disappeared. TwinBoyB appeared and asked what was going on. I screamed, “GET TOWELS!”

The water filled the bathroom, half the laundry room and was seeping out from under the walls, making me think of Amityville Horror, a book I read as a teenager in which a house is demon-possessed or something like that. Stuff oozed from the walls in that house (if I remember it right). Here, water oozed from under the wall.

Finally, the boys delivered an armful of towels and I sopped up the water, throwing drenched towels directly into the washing machine. Nothing like stinky toilet water everywhere to make you wrinkle your nose and mutter under your breath.

My husband disappeared from the house shortly after this ridiculous display of panic where none was really warranted. Why get excited about a little toilet water? It’s only pee water squishing into my socks, after all.

TwinBoyA stood mutely while I exclaimed, “Son! Next time! Do not! Stand there! And watch! The toilet! Overflow!! It! Is! An! EMERGENCY!”

I think he understood. Later, I explained that the toilet overflowing is just an accident. Standing, watching as it overflows is what made me scream and act like a lunatic. “Please!” I said. “If this happens again, use a plunger–like this,” I said, as I demonstrated sticking it in the toilet and plunging, “or get a grown-up. Please. Please? Okay?”

Today, I had at least four extra loads of laundry to deal with because of this minor flooding. Pee-ewwwww!

Sunday
After church today, while Babygirl napped, I hurried to Target to buy vacuum cleaner belts. I love my Dirt Devil vacuum, but the belts break frequently. They cost $1.99 for two, so today, I bought three packages. Take that! I thought. I will outsmart you, ridiculous machine! I managed to fill my cart, even though I only went for milk and vacuum cleaner belts. My friend, MaryKay, calls Target the Forty Dollar Store. It’s true. You go in for toilet paper and no matter what, you spend at least forty dollars.

Today, I spent $65.00. I love the clearance sales.

When I got home, Babygirl was still sleeping, so I picked up the boys and took them shoe shopping. Earlier, I’d checked out the local Famous Footwear store and found they had a good selection, good prices and a “buy one, get one half-price” sale. YoungestBoy picked out a black pair of Chuck Taylor converse high-tops with flames on them. TwinBoyA picked out white “Shaq” leather high-tops with blue accents, while TwinBoyB picked out the same shoe, only with red accents. I almost bought Babygirl pink Chuck Taylors, but they didn’t have her size. Instead, I bought a pair of “school shoes” for myself–black suede clogs with fuzzy, fleecy lining. My other black scuffy slippers will have to go.

Total price? Less than $110.00.

The twins couldn’t figure out why they were getting school shoes when they aren’t going to school. They are schooling at home with http://www.k12.com. I said, “Well, you will be leaving the house, you know!”

As we stood, waiting for our turn to pay, YoungestBoy nearly whirled and twirled into another customer. I said, “Hey, come here! Stand still! Stopping moving! Don’t touch him! Come here! Shhhhhh! Stop it!” about a hundred times and the woman he nearly banged into said, “Oh, it’s nice to see little guys since mine are like this now.” She gestured a hand above her own head.

I said, “Yes, they do have a lot of energy, don’t they?”

Shopping with three boys is like having eight arms and eight legs and four mouths–and only control over two arms and two legs and one mouth. The rest of my arms and legs and mouths just spin and jerk crazily, like some kind of maternal Tourette’s Syndrome, where I can’t predict what my arms and legs and mouths will do next. I am a creature which occupies an enormous amount of space with my blurting arms and kicking legs and shocking mouths. It’s so embarrassing when I knock into someone else. I remind myself of that Ghost of one of the Christmases in “A Christmas Carol” who keeps children under her skirts–only my children will not stay tucked under my skirts, but insist on veering into other people’s personal space.

I prefer to shop alone. But now the kids have shoes.

We’re going to paint our living room soon, so I spent the remaining daylight hours removing electrical outlet covers and shoving furniture to the middle of the room and getting distracted in other rooms as I returned stuff to its rightful home. I have lots more to do before I even get to the wall-washing and taping.

But tonight, I’ve done enough. Even if it doesn’t look like I’ve done anything.

Weekends. Not for the faint of heart.

Don’t we all feel refreshed now?

I killed all those spiders with my bare hands (and baby shampoo). I gave birth unmedicated and at home twice–and the first labor was forty-three hours. I’ve driven through Seattle during rush hour.

But nothing comes close to the bravery I displayed today.

Today, I took the kids to (drum roll, please) Chuck E Cheese by myself.

I didn’t even plan it ahead. I slept in (no DaycareKid today) and when I finally was showered, Babygirl said, “Church? Church?” because she thinks we should go to church whenever we don’t have DaycareKid. I said, “No, but we will go bye-bye, okay?” And that was the first that I realized that, yes, indeed, we would go somewhere.

The boys have been begging to do something fun, so I decided to make all their dreams come true. It’s easy to do that if you have a coupon for ninety-nine tokens, a large pizza and four drinks for only $29.99 (plus tax). I didn’t tell them where we were going. I just gave them five minutes to get ready, called my husband to ask for the car and off we went (after first dropping off my husband at the church so he could continue working).

On the way, the kids stayed busy guessing where we were going. They all guessed right, but I did not comfirm or deny. At one point I said in a somber voice, “Would you guys be really disappointed if we were just going to buy new underpants?” I thought YoungestBoy would froth at the mouth, but the bigger boys told him I was just joking.

I did not confirm nor deny.

We arrived at Chuck E Cheese half an hour after it opened. Babygirl was wide-eyed and after I divvied up the tokens, she carried around her own cup of “munny.” She didn’t realize for awhile they she could put them in machines, but when she got the idea, she plugged the games as if they were slot machines. I tried to stop her, much to her annoyance. Then, she simply transferred the tokens one by one into her pockets. (I slid my hands into her pockets at one point and removed all the tokens while she gazed at a game.)

I kept an eye on YoungestBoy and wandered around with Babygirl and let the twins out of my sight. On one hand, I worry about the random child-abductor. On the other hand, I figure a mostly empty Chuck E Cheese is a pretty safe place for a pair of 11-year old twins.

I finally introduced Babygirl to the toddler area, where she sat and rode with Barney in a motorized car. She put in three tokens, one after the other, while I wished I’d brought a camera. Then, she played on the slide until I said, “Do you want some pizza?” and she agreed.

By the time we ate pizza, the boys had used most of their tokens and they each had a wad of tickets. Babygirl and I rode in this tall–dare I say even one-story tall?–rocking horse. It was really cool, I have to say. I’ve never seen a coin-operated ride like it. She just sat back and smiled a dreamy little grin and made me put in tokens three times in a row.

Then I said, “How about ice cream?” to bribe her out of it.

And just when you think you will get out alive, you have to endure the torture of the kids Picking Out A Prize with the tickets they’ve won. The crappy prizes cost 80 tickets. The good prizes cost 5,000 to 10,000 tickets. I would like to meet the person who has acculuated 10,000 Chuck E Cheese tickets and ask them “how?” Have they been stranded in here for a decade? How does anyone have that many tickets? Do they steal them?

My kids had fifty to one hundred and fifty tickets, each.

Luckily for us, there were only three children ahead of us, so the boys stood in line, calculated their net worth in tickets and peered into the fingerprint-smudged cases, pondering which cheap and ugly toy to “buy.” Babygirl repeatedly pulled on me and said, “Ride horse! Ride horse” and I answered her, distractedly, “We don’t have any more quarters. We’re going to get ice cream!” but she would not take no for an answer.

At last I looked directly at her and saw she was clutching a single token in her greasy little hand. She must have had a hidden token in her pockets. I said, “Oh! You have a quarter!” So, we went and rode on the giant rocking horse again, while the boys waited in line.

From my perch at the top of the rocking horse, I could see that kids kept cutting in front of my kids in the line. They were no closer to the front than when I had left them. And Babygirl did a magic trick and pulled a second token, and then a third, from her pocket, so we hogged the Rocking Horse ride for three turns.

Then, I promised ice cream again and we went to wait with the boys. When I arrived at the counter, there was no employee to help my kids–who were finally first in line.

I said aloud, to no one in particular, “Where is the lady?”

Then, Babygirl began to pull at my leg and cry. She was ready to go.

She would not let me pick her up. She began to scream.

I said aloud again, “I can’t believe this!”

I said, “Hellllloooo? Where is the lady?!”

Babygirl is wailing, stomping and crying.

The woman standing over by the check-in point looks at me and smiles.

I finally lean over the counter and say to the pizza-order-taking woman (girl?): “Excuse me? Do you know where the lady is?” I gestured towards the empty cash register near us. “Has she died? Do I need to call an ambulance?” I raised my eybrows in mock concern.

She did not have a sense of humor and did not even crack a smile, but she did, however, pick up the phone and moments later, the prize-giving employee appeared.

By now, Babygirl is in full wail and will not be consoled. I’m starting to sweat and my six year old hasn’t figure out what he wants to get. I’m saying, “How about that? You want a Hulk sticker? Or you could get two things from there for fifteen tickets each. Or one thing for forty points and two for fifteen. How about a pack of pens? Come on! Come on! Come on!” He’d only been standing there for twenty minutes. How should he know? I’d probably be unable to pick from the pathetic little selection of cheap trinkets, too, when the only thing worth having costs 7,500 tickets.

Finally, with a pocket full of trashy plastic things that I will probably throw away later tonight after I step on them with bare feet, we left.

Babygirl no longer wanted to leave and stood five feet from the door, shrieking.

We all said, “Come on, sweetie. Let’s go get ice cream,” in voices one would use to coax a frightened dog back into his leash. Finally, I said, “Well, okay, bye!” and acted like I was leaving and miraculously, she stopped crying and we left.

Whew. For one second there, I thought I would have to carry her out, kicking and screaming (her, not me).

We went through a Dairy Queen drive-through on the way home, then got stuck in traffic on the freeway. Babygirl ate an entire ice cream cone, then said, “Messy, messy, messy,” and wiped herself off with tissues.

The kids don’t know it, but that may have been our last visit ever to Chuck E Cheese.

Until I see another coupon, I suppose. Where else can you buy complete happiness and utter despair for only $29.99 (plus tax)?

In the words of my kids, “It’s not fair!”

Doesn’t that just sum up life? Add that to M. Scott Peck’s famous first line in The Road Less Traveled “Life is difficult,” and there you have it. A philosophy of life.

Life is not fair.
Life is difficult.

Is it any wonder that I wrestle with envy on occasion? You might remember my visit to this house. I wanted to lay my cheek on that glossy floor and writhe around a little. It was that gorgeous.

And let’s not forget her. She drives a Lexus and I drive a . . . oh, that’s right. We only have one car now. I drive the 1992 Mercury Sable when my husband is home.

Envy is a sin. I know it. The handy-dandy on-line dictionary says envy is a “painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.” Even if we call it “ambition”, envy is still so uncool.

Envy is one of those sins that mostly hurts the sinner. I’ve known this ever since I was a little girl staring at Lisa Palombo at the Assembly of God church I attended. Lisa sang with the voice of an angel–way before Charlotte Church, and way better, too. But I didn’t envy Lisa for her voice alone. No way. Lisa had the flattest stomach of any girl in our church. And school. And town.

Her nose was a little too big and she had a smattering of freckles, but she walked in a sort of continual spotlight of attention. She blinked her eyes a particular way when she talked and I did my best to imitate her. She was four or five years old than me and I adored her. I wanted to be her. “Single White Female,” anyone?

Of course, I was only a child. I was still enamored with her when I was a teenager, but she had the nerve to grow up and go to college, so I fixed my attention on Bobbi Jack, instead. Bobbi Jack had a flat stomach, too, and she also had a father who coached her softball team. I think that’s why her team always creamed my team. My father never even attended one of my games. And Bobbi Jack had really cute clothes in really small sizes. And her hair flipped exactly like Farrah Fawcett’s. My hair looked like Farrah Fawcett’s hair after a tornado.

I’ve always noticed other people, always envied the good stuff, always minimized the bad stuff and then wondered why my life was so crappy.

You see the problem, though? We each measure other people’s good stuff by our bad stuff. I never compared Bobbi Jack’s flat stomach to my ability to calculate complicated math problems. I never compared my musical ability to April Wren’s dimples. How could you really quantify the diversity of good stuff versus the bad stuff? We are all so different. But when you are twelve, all you know is that the boys are googly-eyed over Lisa and not you.

The more you compare, the more you find people who have more than you do. And if you are sensible, you realize that there are a whole lot more people who have less than you do–less health, less wealth, less wit, less compassion, less stuff. It’s like realizing there is always someone fatter than you and someone thinner (unless, of course, you are the 58-pound anorexic on the Maury Povich Show). It’s just a big continuum.

I started to really comprehend that in college, right about the time I decided to forgive my parents and move on with my adult life in an adult fashion. So what if my parents divorced and shattered my childhood? It could have been oh-so-much-worse. Things could always be worse. (And you thought a doom-and-gloom outlook was unhelpful.)

And so, even though the green-eyed monster dares to show his ugly face around here occasionally (sometimes more than occasionally), I never, ever invite him in to share an icy glass of Diet Coke with Lime. I kind of look into his dull eyes and roll my own brown eyes, close the door, bolt it and say “Whatever.”

So what? I live in an older home. My yard is being overtaken by English ivy and wild blackberry vines. Our tiny used car barely seats us all. But really, I don’t care. I chose this. Every bit of it, down to the carpet in the upstairs bathroom and the yellow-gold sink in the kitchen. This is mine. I made deliberate choices and all that accompanied those choices are my responsibility, my blessings, my reminders.

This life is the one I want. I chose my husband, that calm, sweet, kind man whose worst habit is not cleaning his George Foreman Grill. Despite an early bout with infertility, I ended up with three sons and a daughter. Even though I haven’t flown in an airplane since 1994, I live in one of the most beautiful regions in the United States. On clear days, I can see Mt. Rainier and the sun setting on the Puget Sound. Who needs to vacation?

I won’t lie. I would love to live in a house with glossy floors and marble-faced fireplaces and carpet so padded that your feet sink with each step. I would be thrilled to drive a gas-guzzling car and even better, to not have to worry about the cost of filling that gas tank. I’d accept the services of a maid and–why not?–a cook, too. Vacations twice a year? I’m there.

I would relish the finer things in life. But I know they are just things. Things that Hurricane Charlie could blow away.

And when it comes down to it, I have everything I need right here, in this house built over thirty years ago. In fact, I have so much that I have to keep cleaning out the cupboards and closets, lest we are overtaken by an avalanche of stuff.