Just. Start. Typing.

That's not so much of a post title as it is a command. To myself. I have absolutely nothing to talk about today, in particular, and I even spent the entire weekend wishing extra hard that *something* worth blogging about would happen. The following is the closest it ever got to that point:

1) I saw Paranormal Activity 3 on Friday. This was by choice, at my own damned insistence, even though the first two movies just about turned my nervous system inside out. WHAT'S THAT NOISE OH MY GOD SOMEBODY GO CHECK THE POT RACK FOR SIGNS OF DEMONIC POSSESSION, etc. While waiting for Jason to come back with the popcorn, an entire family waltzed in, with a whole pack of kids ranging from preteen all the way down to no more than four years old. Being the tireless champion for children that I am, I glared pointedly at the parents and bitched about them on Twitter. 

The coming attractions started and I continued my silent judgy fuming, waiting for one of the kids to lose his or her shit over sci-fi horror trailers about people disintegrating or whatever the hell, even I know better than to pay attention to anything advertised during the ONE horror movie I watch in an entire year.

Finally, by the third or fourth IN A WORLD WHERE ZOMBIES FROM MARS KNOW HOW TO OPERATE BEAR TRAPS style trailer, the family was up and hustling the kids back down the aisle and loudly arguing about theater numbers and hissing to the children that YEAH SORRY I DON'T THINK THIS IS PUSS IN BOOTS YOU GUYS.

The movie went on to scare the crap out of me, but not as much as the first two. Mostly because the mother character was kind of dumb. Look, lady, it's not MY fault you're trapped in a unnecessary prequel and didn't learn the rules from the first two movies, you know? If you're just gonna be all "I know crazy shit is going down but I refuse to watch the readily available footage of said crazy shit going down on principle of something something conveniently muddled character development" I can't help you. The previews are trying to tell you something. I'm just here to silently judge you until you figure your own crap out.

(Jason was even more adamant that this installment was inferior to the first two, however he was noticeably less confident in this opinion around 4 am when I snuck downstairs and fired up the old electric breast pump once it became clear that Ike wasn't going to wake up anytime soon and I was uncomfortable. RRRR-rrr-RRRR-rrr-RRRR-rrr-I'M IN UR HOUSE, POSSESSIFYING UR BOOBS.) 

2) I got my hair cut and colored. (This is what I was dealing with before.)

It's a little fluffy. But hopefully not too Mom Hair? You know, when you reach that point where long hair is just too much so you aim for that perfect short-but-not-too-short cut that still goes into a ponytail without falling too much in your face and doesn't need to be blowdried or curled and even though you're almost 34 years old you haven't yet realized THAT PERFECT HAIRCUT DOESN'T EXIST and suddenly you're like, oh God, the Rachel. 

I completely lost my grip on that sentence. In other news, I am eating Elmo crackers for lunch.

I really hope that block of cheese is not to scale. 

3) I keep finding my underwear hidden in the corners of my dog's bed. Repeatedly. The weirdest part is that it's always, consistently a thong. 

I suppose I should be...flattered? 

4) HAMS!

(And also stuffed pigs, yes.)

I bought half a dozen apples on Saturday. He has already eaten all of them. I've always viewed fresh fruit (FRESH FRUIT!) as one of those free-for-all anytime-you-want kinds of snacks, and by "always" I mean "in my dreams" because Noah has never touched any sort of fresh fruit on the non-banana variety with pointed stick in his entire life. Ezra, on the other hand, will eat an entire pint of raspberries or blueberries in a single sitting, has been throwing periodic tantrums over the package of fresh cranberries in the fridge that I will not let him eat, and I spent most of yesterday having to forcibly remove apple cores from his sticky little fists because if you let him, he will eat the ENTIRE THING, poisonous seeds and all. Last week he handed me the stem and that was it. 

5) Noah wrote a book, you guys. After watching a little bit of Diary of a Wimpy Kid on TV, he asked for a diary of his own. I gave him a spiral-bound notebook and a purple crayon (like Harold, OF COURSE) and told him he could doodle a little bit in bed. The next morning he presented me with a complete masterpiece, with illustrated scenes from several of his favorite books and movies blended together to tell the story of a boy and his bunk bed, and one time the boy got sent to the principal's office but then he also stopped being afraid of dressing up for Halloween. The final page says: THEE EN.

And I will be dragging that notebook around with me until the day I die. THEE EN!

6) Imma just gonna leave this right here:

AND THE CHEESE TRIANGLES DON'T GO THAT WAY EITHER

It's been a...well, it certainly has been a week. (Said with deep, emphatic, eyebrow-raising emphasis.)

I'm all jumbled up inside, unable to put the not-so-good stuff into words and the not-that-terrible stuff into a humorous context, like: usually a story about an overflowing toilet during a playdate should be good for some pathos, right?

Except when the overflowing toilet overflows twice (because said playdate wouldn't stop flushing it over and over) and floods the basement bathroom at the same time, and this happens right after you learn that your kindergartener was sent to the principal's office that day for behavior problems, and then came home and declared himself a "loser" because of it and begs you to "sign [him] out" of kindergarten, and "sign [him] out FOREVER"...

And right before the cat starts vomiting all over the house and taking random bloody shits in the kitchen...

Which turns out to be an extreme yet ultimately run-of-the-mill reaction to SOMEONE accidentally grabbing a similarly-labeled-but-actually-different bag of cat food at the store, which is a relief...right up until the moment you exhaustively collapse into your bed...and discover that oh, the cat puked there, too...

And then the baby wakes up at 1:15 am, like he's done every night for almost three weeks straight now.

Mix in some of the aforementioned life stressors, a couple of poetically timed diaper/potty incidents from the other two children (AND the dog, who has suddenly developed an aversion to crapping outside first thing in the morning because it's too chilly, or something), a full-moon-like and across-the-board increase in temper tantrums and sibling conflict AND ALSO the triumphant return of my period, and that pretty much brings you up to speed on what the last couple days have been like. A classic slow-burn sneaky hate spiral.

And while usually my first instinct to most of those things would be to curl up with my laptop and CAPSLOCK my way into some insight or catharsis or even just a "let's keep things in perspective, first-world-white-girl" punchline, this week I mostly just want to hide under the covers until everybody promises to JUST STOP POOPING ON ME FOR 15 GODDAMN MINUTES, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. 

Of course, we all know that's not gonna happen anytime soon. So I think I'll just take a couple deep breaths, hope that tomorrow is better and then stare at this picture for awhile instead.

Halloween in Real Life

Noah still won't dress up for Halloween, by the way. Won't even consider it. In the past we've managed to get him semi-costumed at the 11th hour via:

1) Lying. 

2) Candy-fueled panic with a side of peer pressure. 

3) Bribery. 

While I was debating which one of these FANTASTIC options to go with this year, my mom actually had an inspired idea: Why not just let Noah wear his karate uniform? 

I asked Noah what he thought about that: It would look like a costume without actually being a costume. We'd be playing a little trick on people, kind of.

He liked that idea. He liked that idea a lot.

"Everyone will think I'm the Karate Kid from the movie but actually I'm just Noah the Karate Kid. From real life."

It didn't exactly make for very exciting pictures, but still. This is easily the happiest he's ever looked on Halloween.

And everyone in the neighborhood was completely fooled by his non-costume costume. 

Ezra, on the other hand...

Ezra just can't even deal with any of y'all right now.

I mean, God. You people.

Around 5:30 pm, Young Master Ezra was sent to his room for a time out. By 6:00 pm, I was scrambling to make the boys some non-chocolate form of sustenance while simultaneously answering the door for early-bird trick-or-treaters and gathering up costumes and realizing that I couldn't find the boys' beloved Pumpkin Buckets (hence the last-minute procurement of They-Only-Had-Cauldron Buckets by Jason, a substitution that damn near RUINED HALLOWEEN)...and Ezra was sound asleep. 

Sound asleep and not at all happy to be dragged out of bed and propped semi-upright at the table in front of a sad bowl of non-sugary pasta.

His mood did not improve with the addition of his little chef's jacket and hat.

(The giant RANDOM HIVES ON HIS FACE didn't help either.)

Stop taking my picture or I will beat you with this wee wooden spoon, woman. 

Real chefs have knives, anyway. This is the worst Halloween ever.

Like last year, Ezra tried to pitch us on HIS version of trick-or-treating: Grab candy from house bowl, deposit in bucket, done. So streamlined! So simple! With no walking around in the scary dark AND less time between the acquisition of candy and the face-stuffing part. 

We didn't go for it. He showed up at a good five or six doorsteps still sobbing his eyes out about it. "TICK OH TREAT," he bawled to several slightly alarmed homeowners, miserably accepting Reese's Cups and lollipops before FINALLY snapping out of it and realizing that all told, this Halloween thing is a PRETTY GOOD DEAL.

(Please note that the one person in the house who could have been worn any costume of my choosing without means of protest was basically dressed as Mommy Bought a Hat* & a Onesie On Sale At Old Navy, What More Do You People Want From Her, Jesus Christ, She's Tired.)

(If you're wondering where the pictures of my costume are, I didn't take any. I went as an Exhausted Suburban Wrangler of Many Small Children. I wore jeans and a headscarf and an overwhelming sense of not giving a shit.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to figure out how sneak all the Red 40 and Yellow 5 dyes out of Noah's candy stash before I have to peel a six-year-old gremlin off the ceiling later today. Because yes. Every year we go through all this sturm und drang over costumes and parties and trick-or-treating...and then everything fun magically vanishes the next day and I leave them with like, a bag of pretzels and one Hershey's fun size. 

*The hat actually says "BOO!" on it, but I now realize I put it on him backwards. I WIN AT EVERYTHING.