Left To My Own Very Limited Devices

Jason's been away on a business trip. It has taken every ounce of restraint I have in my system to not be complaining constantly about this. 

I remind myself about the single mothers, the divorced or widowed mothers, the military mothers, the mothers with husbands that travel all the time, for weeks and months at a time. And how many of these mothers have a shitload more children than I do and no part-time babysitter to help out during the day and no webcams and Skype so their children can spend an hour or so shrieking at Daddy while Mommy makes dinner and/or single-serve cocktails in the other room.

Yes, I remind myself that my life is not very hard at all. And I even completely believe that.

AND YET

1) Jason accidentally packed my phone charger, and

2) GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHZZZPPJFFFBBT

Yesterday, after picking Noah up from school, I did that thing where I actually counted the number of hours to fill until bedtime. Four and a half. Not bad. Not bad at all. Easily achieved with the help of:

1) One episode of Yo Gabba Gabba with a Wonder Pets chaser,

2) Slipping some broccoli into the macaroni and cheese at dinner, guaranteeing that Noah would sit at the table for at least an hour and a half, carefully removing each and every individual green-looking dot from each and every noodle before actually eating anything, 

3) The aforementioned Skype-time with Daddy, where Noah asked if Daddy saw any chickens on his field trip to Jamaica and Ezra said "HI HI HI HI HI" a lot and threw broccoli at my laptop, and

3) A creative art project involving family photos, gingham fabric, some glue and oh who am I kidding they watched more TV and then went to bed. 

After everyone was tucked in and asleep, I watched Glee by myself, though this isn't unusual because Jason doesn't like Glee because sometimes we have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN COMMON OMG, and then wandered around the house, straightening up piles of clutter that I have happily ignored for months, taking advantage of the situation and throwing stuff out that I know he'd vote to keep if I asked him but will never, ever actually notice is gone. I took out the trash and cleaned up the dishes and caved to the siren call of Eating Snack Food After 7 pm for the first time in months. I wasted money on iTunes. Then I went to bed and secretly hoped that one of the boys would wake up or have a bad dream and request to spend the night with me. 

Nobody did. 

Jason comes home in just a few hours, and I am so very, very happy about that. 

(PS Tomorrow I am chaperoning a class field trip to a pony farm. I think the ponies are all really tiny ones but I will do my best to fall off one or get kicked in the head or maybe bitten by another goose so I'll have a more entertaining entry for you.) 

Building a Better Root-Vegetable-Based Mouse Trap

So about the mouse.

It continues to elude Max's completely uninterested clutches, and Max continues to not give a flying fuck. 

Last night Jason and I heard something crunching on kibble in the kitchen, along with a metallic clang -- like one of the pets pushed the food and water bowls together while eating. 

Except that -- you guessed it -- both of the pets were sitting on the couch, with us. Jason jumped up and cautiously peeked around the doorway, but the intruder was already gone. I proceeded to have a full-body attack of the itching creepy crawlies while Jason checked the humane traps (I KNOW, OKAY) that he'd placed behind the stove at the assumed point of entry.

The good news is that a mouse had gone into the trap. At one point or another. The bad news is that he'd clearly had no trouble CHEWING HIS WAY OUT.

"So, that's that." I said. "We'll get some nice toxic traps that break their backs or fry their brains or something, right?"

He mumbled something while opening cabinets and pulling out casserole dishes or whatever and I went back to the living room. 

Turns out? Jason had a plan.

Behold. This was his plan:

For those of you who have no idea what you're looking at (which I imagine is EVERYBODY), you are looking at the cat food dish, hidden under a mixing bowl that has been propped up with a wine cork and weighted down with a sweet potato.

I'm just...gonna sit here for a minute and let you re-read that last sentence a couple more times.

I swear. I SWEAR TO GOD. This actually fucking happened.  

After laughing my fool head off and taking some pictures, I opted to go to bed. I mean, the evening could ONLY go downhill at this point, right?

At 4:30 in the morning, we heard -- OH YES WE DID -- yet another metallic clang. A more...forceful sounding one.

I poked my husband. "Did you hear that?"

He had. I poked him again. It was a congratulatory, high-five kind of poke. 

At first he said he'd deal with it in the morning, but I worried that perhaps the whole SWEET POTATO thing was maybe not entirely fail-safe, like what if the potato rolled off the bowl and the mouse can like, MOVE the bowl around like a little hamster-wheel and we go down there tomorrow morning and can't find it? 

(4:30 in the morning, you guys. And I'm fretting over the mental image of a POSSESSED MIXING BOWL skittering all over my house.)

Jason got up and went downstairs to check his trap. He returned a few minutes later.

"It wasn't the mouse," he reported. "It was Max. He was just sitting there, staring at the bowl, like, what the hell?" 

"I'm sorry," I said. "That would have been pretty awesome if it worked."

"Yeah."

"But seriously, you've got to let me nuke the bastards next, okay?"

"Okay."

 

(Sweet Potato Helmet Army Man Says Hold Your Ground! Fire When Ready!) 
 

The Tail of the Cat

I really struggled with yesterday's post. I almost abandoned it completely several times, thinking that maybe I should just publish some "before" photos from the party and keep my trap shut about the dropped bunny and turtle bit -- my big trap in which I keep my COPIOUS ANGST -- instead of putting that story out there. I didn't want to paint Noah as some kind of heartless monster, or make it sound like I thought he was, OR make it sound like I didn't get that his behavior was unacceptable and that petting zoo guy was SO WRONG about my preshus snowflake who is allowed drop-kick any animal he wants because: snowflake, my preshus. 

But honestly, I knew I wasn't going to stop obsessing about it until I wrote it out. So I did. Also related the story to his teachers after school, who could not have been more nonplussed about it. This just in: Four-year-olds are just impulsive little shits sometimes.

Jason, oddly, remained unconvinced and thoroughly concerned. 

"He's shouldn't have laughed," he said. "He should be able to empathize."

"Not until age six," I said.

Jason didn't respond, but waited for me to cite my sources.

"according to all my commenters on my blog okay?" I mumbled. "they all said kids don't truly empathize until around six years old and even after that some kids put frogs in lunch boxes and stepped on bugs and killed their fish and still grew up to be totally normal vegans and stuff."

Jason nodded. Then: "Wait. Back up to the frogs in lunch boxes part? What?"

Weirdly enough, though, neither of us had any personal memories to share about childhood "experiments" with animals -- pets or otherwise. I remember crying and tattling on my next-door neighbor when he stepped on anthills, and Jason swore he never so much as pulled his dog's tail. So perhaps that's why Noah's behavior struck as so foreign and OMG This Is A Terribly Big Deal. 

(Also, I GOT YELLED AT. IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE. I DON'T DO SO WELL WITH THAT.)

Later, the phone rang, right when we were finishing dinner. (Or, more accurately, as Jason and I finished up all the mashed sweet potatoes that our children refused to eat -- DELICIOUS mashed sweet potatoes, if I do say so myself, YOU UNGRATEFUL WEIRDOS -- and the boys sat on the couch and rocked their heads Night-at-the-Roxbury style to a Yo Gabba Gabba rap about bugs.) 

"I bet that's my mom," I said. "She read my post and wants to tell me to chill the fuck out."

(That's kind of her thing. Only she can get a point across without potty words. I didn't learn how to curse until I got a summer job at Sesame Place.)

She actually wanted to tell me a story. I was older than Noah when it happened -- probably more like five or six. I was playing in the backyard and she pushed the kitchen window curtain aside, about to call me inside for lunch, when she hesitated for a second. I was standing on our back patio with a strange look on my face. I was looking back and forth, like I was getting ready to cross the street. I didn't see her watching me.

And then I raised my foot. And then. STOMPBLAMSMASH, I brought it down as hard as I could on our cat's tail. 

I have absolutely no memory of this, even though the aftermath included PLENTY of yelling and scolding and go-to-your-rooming. 

My mom, of course, remembers it like it was yesterday. 

(Also the time my brother had his school portraits taken with visible teeth marks on his forehead, after he'd been bitten by my other brother. She told me this story after I had to pause the conversation to tell Noah to STOP SITTING ON YOUR BROTHER'S NECK. HE DOESN'T LIKE IT.)

Note to self: Call Jason's mother. I bet she's got the dirt. 

Pierced Through the Heart

Look at me, with my teeny little sensible hoop earrings! SUCH A BADASS. That must be why I'm giving myself the stink-eye in this photo.

Here's a close-up of the new hole vs. the old-n-busted sinkhole one:

 

And my peach-fuzz sideburns. You are WELCOME. 

So, obviously, I did it! I went to a local and reputable tattoo-and-body-piercing emporium and was all, hello, I would like to be your most boring customer ever.  I almost wished there was something else I wanted pierced just so I'd seem a little less lame. Honestly, it's probably amazing that I left the shop with just the ear piercing -- I could really see myself getting a giant impulse-buy dragon tattoo, out of a misguided attempt to be polite.

***

For Mother's Day, I slept in, then had breakfast in bed, then had to wash Hollandaise sauce from the sheets, then took my own solo self shoe shopping. While I was still sleeping, Noah (with Jason's help) wrote out a large Happy Mother's Day banner. Jason then photographed them all holding it, then made a card of the picture, which they then delivered to me with great ceremony and huzzah. It was all very sweet and overly-complicated, especially when I found the outtakes on our memory card:

 

 

 

 

Noah is so very proud of that banner, by the way. It says HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY on top, and EZRA JASON NOAH underneath, and he tried very hard to draw a heart. "For love, Mommy," he told me later, when he showed me the actual banner. "I drew that for love." 

Star Wherefore Art Thou

DAMMIT, SELF.

There was this other story I meant to include in yesterday's entry, but I completely forgot about it until a comment by Julie triggered my memory. And then I went and told the story (kind of ) in the comments section, which was DUMB because it's a GREAT STORY and deserves BETTER, especially because it involves me GETTING HURT. 

So if you haven't read the comments section: Good. Don't. If you have read the comments section and already know about the story I'm going tell: *waves hand mysteriously*

(I just erased your memory using the Force. Did it work? I bet it totally worked.)

Last week Jason and I were outside on the back deck, dueling via the Lightsaber app on our phones. (BECAUSE OF COURSE WE WERE.) "Dueling" mostly entails waving your phone back and forth a lot and pretending to block your opponent's imaginary lightsaber blade. It's kind of like playing on the Wii, only with way less dignity.

Anyway, we were getting pretty into it (OF COURSE WE WERE) but were also sitting way too close to each other, so after a few minutes Jason swung his phone down wildly and *CRACKCRASH* whalloped the side of my hand, directly on my knuckle. This hurt like a fucking bitch, to put it nicely. The phone hit me so hard that it then flew out of Jason's grip and sailed a good three feet in the air before landing on the deck. 

Faced with a yowling injured wife and an airborne iPhone, Jason dove after his phone while I dug ice cubes out of my cocktail to hold on my throbbing hand. He picked it up and reported that "it was fine" and moreover, the stupid goddamn Lightsaber app had just declared him the winner of our duel.

"CURSES!" I shouted. "I shall go build myself a robot hand and come back to defeat you, asshole."

Anyway. That's also kind of why hard and unyeilding lightsaber toys are probably not a good choice for anyone in our family right now, myself included. Thank y'all for the many links to all the the soft stuffed/knitted versions available out there, which are absolutely delightful. (I'm especially partial to the catnip-filled felt version.)  Also thanks for the various ideas re: the Yellow Letters In Space request. I think Noah will be thrilled with any of those suggestions, considering this is what he came up with in the meantime: 

 

Three soundtrack CDs, lined up end to end, which he slowly pushes upward while humming the theme music. I honestly have no idea where he gets his weirdness from. Especially since his parents are the absolute epitome of perfectly normal, sane human beings. Other than our weekly imaginary lightsaber duels in the backyard, of course. 

(My bruise is almost gone, which means IS REMATCH TIMEZ NAO.)

 

I Shall Rent It Out For Weddings & Make My Fortune

Old n' Busted: the Ball Popper.

New Hotness: THIS SHIT

 

Because let's face it: Kids like bubbles way more than you like sitting there blowing them. Over and over again until your hands are all soapy and your knuckles are scratched up from constantly trying to dig that little annoying wand out of the bottle after it slipped out of your fingers for the millionth time and every other attempt is a dud that produces no bubbles and ladies and gentlemen, THOSE DAYS ARE BEHIND YOU. THE FUTURE IS NOW AND IT INVOLVES BATTERY-POWERED BUBBLE MACHINES.

You may be tempted into thinking that a million bubbles is enough, and that a gazillion bubbles is just marketing overkill.

 

Don't be fooled. I counted. After a million bubbles we were only having about one-hojillionth of the fun we were having after a gazillion bubbles. That means you're technically getting about four squidillion times the fun for only about $4.99 more.

 

 

(This is Noah setting things up so the slide would be like a "car wash.")

(This is Ezra eying the thing warily while Noah busts some bubble kneecaps.)

 

(He calls them bubbas. It's awesome.)

Another plus: since bubble solution is mostly just soap, I think this (followed by a blast with the hose) counts as a bath.

 

(Teaching your son to care for your garden while wearing a shirt that says You Don't Win Friends With Salad: +5 irony.)

Hey, remember that time with the bubbles just now? That was great. Wasn't that great? You wanna go see if we can go scale the fence or something now?

Yes, clearly it's been one wild and crazy week around here, in between all the big educational decisions and playdates and turning our backyard into some kind of toddler Studio 54 because YOU KNOW I had Lady Gaga playing the whole time the bubble machine was on. YOU KNOW I DID. 

(I also wrote advice stuff, boob stuff, IEP meeting stuff and frivolous reality show stuff. I'm just ridiculously well-rounded.) 

(Oh, shit. I almost published and committed a felony. That link to the bubble machine is an Amazon Affiliate link. Wow. That was a close one. Living on the barest edge of the law, y'all.)

Scootastrophe!

So Noah fell off his scooter yesterday. Skinned both of his knees up.

And you know, THE END.

Unless you are his father. Remember the fruit sticker? This was way worse than the fruit sticker. Because not only was a fall off a scooter -- a three-inches-off-the-ground scooter -- the worst thing that could ever befall one's precious snowflake offspring, it was totally MY FAULT, YOU NEGLIGENT MONSTER.

My fault, his version = holding precious snowflake #2 at top of a deceptively slopey hill, allowing precious snowflake #1 to fly past me on scooter, shouting at him to "turn into the grass" when he picked up a little too much speed instead of...I DON'T KNOW. Dropping the baby on the curb to run after Noah, perhaps hurling my body onto the pavement underneath him at the exact second of impact. Stopping the scooter with my mind powers, thus revealing ourselves to be a family of telekinetic mutants to the entire neighborhood. Writing letters to the county four years ago to have the sidewalks replaced with packing peanuts. Because I really should have seen this coming.

My fault, my version = I think he was mostly mad because I was entirely too calm about it. I made him look totes uncool, you guys. There was blood and and I was all, yep, whatever, that's why we wear helmets, dude, and Jason was all, OMFG SMELLING SALTS.

We brought Noah inside and offered various bribes in exchange for calming down -- ice cream sandwich? candy? chocolate milk? -- and after awhile he mournfully accepted some chocolate-covered raisins. Jason poured himself a scotch while I hissed at him that oh, you know, IN THE FUTURE, I would prefer if he NOT shout "What the fuck were you thinking?" at top volume in front of the CHILDREN, in front of the NEIGHBORS, and on second thought, could he just go ahead and not spazz out over skinned knees, like we have BOYS, TWO OF THEM, which equals about 4,500,075 skinned knees, lifetime. Also: YOU PANSY.

(Also. ALSO! Who is the parent who vetoed the elbow and knee pad set as being "dorky"? And was upset that the bike store didn't have the skater helmet in Noah's size because it was more "badass" than the bike helmet?)

(Hint: The same parent who was now sobbing helplessly into a sofa cushion because BLOOD! BLOOD! HE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!)

Noah finished his candy and turned his tear-stained face towards me. I launched into a cheerful pep talk about falling down and getting hurt and the importance of Getting Back On and Trying Again. He nodded solemnly and announced that he also needed that ice cream sandwich, after all.

Later, Jason asked if I planned to "write about this" and I asked if he meant "this" as in, the time Noah fell off his scooter or the time you revealed himself to be a total wuss, worthy of much Internet scorn and derision because HAAAAAAAAAA YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR FACE?

The second one, he said. I kind of deserve it.

DONE, I said. Also, you're adorable and I love you.

***

I should probably mention that prior to the Great Scooter Crash of Aught-Nine, we took Noah shopping for his very own big boy birthday bike. (SPOILER: Noah is getting a bike for his birthday. Nobody say anything to him. At least not in the...say, two hours right before we give it to him.) His favorite one was pink and had butterflies on the seat. I hope he won't be too disappointed when he gets the blue version, as I enjoy crushing whimsical individuality in favor of gender stereotyping. I can't raise a boy who screams like a girl at the sight of a bloody knee, you know?

BOY MUST BE WARRIOR. GO OUT AND SHOW THAT SIDEWALK WHO IS BOSS. THEN WE SHALL CUDDLE AND I WILL PINCH YOUR BUTT AND FEED YOU MORE CANDY BECAUSE AWWW, LOOK AT THOSE POOR LITTLE BOO-BOOS.

In Which Wii Bowling Ruins My Life

Or, What Happens When You Let Your Wii Bowling Pro Status Go To Your Head

Or, Not To Be Overly DRAMATIC, Or Anything

Scene, Bowling Alley, Saturday Night

Amy: Ew. Bowling shoes? Hasn't technology rendered community shoes obsolete yet?

Jason: Wait, did you forget to wear socks?

Amy: *pause*

Amy: Yes.

Jason. EW.

Amy: Also, none of these balls have sparkly stars on them.

Jason: And?

Amy: So how will anybody know how awesome I am? That I am their better? They should put my face on a blimp, at least.

Game One

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Amy: *makes lighthearted jokes at her expense, trying to mask how DEEPLY and GENUINELY rattled she is, OH MY GOD, she cannot LOSE AT THINGS, gaaaaaaah*

Ball: *gutters*

FINAL SCORE: 34

Game Two

Two couples arrive, including one guy who is already slurring his words at the top of his lungs, and are assigned to the lane next to us. The one we share tables and a score machine with. I am immediately thrown even further of my game by the presence of other actual human beings who are not part of my Mii gallery and shockingly, do not exist solely to cheer when I bowl a strike. Am so unnerved I send the ball backwards into the seating area on my next frame.

Drunk Asshole: WHOO HOOO WAY TO GOOOOO.

Jason: Hold the B button down longer next time!

Drunk Asshole: (to the waitress) Your goal tonight is to get our wives druuuuunk. The druuuunker they get, the hiiiiiiiigher your tip, okay, Peaches? (continues in graphic detail to describe WHY, exactly, he needs his wife to get druuuuuuuunk)

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Amy: That one was because of FEMINISM, by the way. Not because I suck at this.

Jason: *not bowling particularly well, but at LEAST manages to knock pins down most frames*

Drunk Asshole: *is obsessed with returning unused balls in our lane to the racks, keeps trying to take our balls away, has also started referring to us by our first names, thus illustrating the reason why you always go with initials-only for the scoring screen in real-life bowling*

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *gutters*

Drunk Asshole: Niiiice. Try aiming for the pins next time.

Amy: Really? You're going to heckle me? Because...no.

Drunk Asshole: *opens mouth, wisely closes it, appears to sense he has been outmatched in assholery*

Jason: Holy shit, what did you say to him? You actually said something to him? We've been together over 12 years and I've never seen you confront so much as a laundry hamper.

Amy: I hate him. I hate him so much. I hate this game. I hate everything going on right now and WHY AM I SO BAD AT THIS? PEOPLE CAN SEE HOW BAD I AM AT THIS AND IT'S FREAKING ME OUT, MAN.

Amy: *bowls*

Ball: *strike!*

Amy: *OMG POINTS! POINTS! LOOK*

Drunk Asshole: *too busy rearranging the tables to notice*

Amy: *storms back to seat, pulls HER table with HER mozzarella sticks back towards HER side of the lane because it is HERS and NOT HIS and PERSONAL SPACE and ALL THAT*

Drunk Asshole: *bowls a turkey, like an ASSHOLE*

FINAL SCORE: 19

Amy: Fuck this, let's go home.

Amy & Jason: *go home, to find both children still awake and ornery and needy, thus defeating the WHOLE POINT of getting a babysitter, but whatever, our rockstar lifestyle is what it is, yo*

Jason: Maybe next weekend we'll go play some ping-pong.

Epilogue

Amy: *gets on the Wii and bowls a 217*

Drunk Asshole & Co.: *are probably still trying to figure out what was up with that raging bitch at the bowling alley last weekend, Jesus H. Christ, her husband should try getting her druuuuuuunk next time or something*

Weekend Vignettes

For reasons that I believe can go mostly undocumented, we thought the dog had salmonella on Saturday. We found stray mussel shells from a disastrously ambitious dinner scattered in the yard; puddles of sick scattered pretty much everywhere else. She's actually just fine, but I just wanted to mention it anyway because I had to clean up a LOT of barf. You know. Just in case Ceiba ever reads this website one day. I cleaned up your barf, and I didn't like it. And now you never call! Ingrate.

*They ALL DIED before we could cook them. I set them on a paper towel for ONE MINUTE and every goddamn mussel decided to commit ritualistic suicide rather than face the hot pan of death. I was going to drown you in WINE, you bastards. WINE. We should all be so lucky to die such a death.

***
In other best-left-to-the-imagination news, we have a mouse in our kitchen. And clearly, the most useless-ass pets EVER.

***

Scene: Every Saturday Morning In Our House, Ever

Jason: Anything you want to do today?

Amy: I want to go to Ikea.

Jason: We're not going to Ikea.

Amy: (dramatic flailing)

Fin.

***

You probably know by now that I eat pretty much everything. Food is my hobby, since I don't know how to knit and dislike standing for long periods of time. I'm actually trying to think of something that I won't eat. Wait, okay, I've got it: raw onions, Cool Whip, head cheese. Tongue as long as it still resembles a tongue. I used to not eat rabbit -- because you know, bunnnnnnies! -- until we moved to the suburbs and a goddamn rabbit ate all my flowers and now I will eat the hell out some rabbit. I will eat that rabbit, if my dog ever stops gnawing on diseased mussels long enough to catch the stupid thing. (Hey, here's a recipe!)

Saturday night I ate pork cracklins for the first time -- fancy cracklins, apparently, since they were served on a charcuterie board alongside wee little pickles -- and for the first time in ages I was completely flummoxed by a food item. It was salty, crunchy and aggressively unhealthy -- my top three most favorite adjectives for food -- but OH MY GOD, IT WAS SKIN, RECOGNIZABLE SKIN, THERE WERE VISIBLE HAIR FOLLICLES. I could FEEL the skin-like texture on my tongue, I was Homer Simpson, sampling from the regenerative bacon buffet in the Garden of Eden.*

So instead of eating them, I lined a few up on my arm and asked Jason to get another few orders because the restaurant was chilly and I wanted a cardigan. Jason was all, "give those back, they're delicious."

*If you know what I'm talking about here, congratulations! We can be friends. We'll eat some deep-fried skin and then go get ice cream.

***

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Noah loved everything about it, except for the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese, whom he eyed warily from the table, nervously eating bites of pizza. When the costumed Chuck E. Cheese (who was missing one furry glove for most of the proceedings) showed up, we had to retreat to a safe distance.

Noah: THAT BUNNY NEEDS TO GO AWAY.

Amy: He's a mouse, sweetie.

Noah: THAT BUNNY MOUSE NEEDS TO GO HOME.

***

As we drove home, Jason and I had a 20-minute unironic conversation about minivans and the many, many attractive features they offer. We're certainly not in the market for a new car or anything, but Jason rode in his coworker's Odyssey and like, maaaaaan, that thing was sweeeeeet. You don't even have to fold the stroller or anything. I remembered the same thing about a friend's minivan in a fit of retroactive lust, shaking my head at my naive young ATTITUDE towards minivans, back when I knew NOTHING about the world and what happens to all your "adequate cargo space" once you have two children.

Amy: I mean, just THINK of all the stuff we could buy at Ikea!

***

We never made it to Ikea. We went to the Big Box Baby Store instead and bought additional baby gates, because our 9-month-old does not have the sense God gave a bunny mouse. While shopping, I was approached TWICE about the Ergo carrier and whether I liked it (yes, oh God, yes), what age I started using it (31) (haaaa, I'm an ass), and then approached again by someone trying to decide between two different floor gyms and which one was better (is it for your baby? no? okay, get whatever one blinks and makes noise.)

Less than an hour after that, we stopped at Whole Foods and a timid young thing in high heels asked me what the difference was between brown eggs and white eggs, and if she hard-boiled the brown ones would they like, be the same? With a white part and a yellow center? She then admitted that this was her first grocery-shopping trip out on her own, and I noticed that her shopping list contained the instruction to "open egg carton and check for broken shells."

Amy: Wow, I must look like, really extra helpful today, or something!

Jason: I think it's more that you just look so much like a mom.

Amy: Do I look like I drive a minivan? Because I don't. Yet. Seriously, the back seats FOLD INTO THE FLOOR, OH MY GOD.

***

We've been pricing up laptops for awhile now -- the Macbook's motherfuckingboard was going to cost a motherfucking fortune to fix, plus it seemed like the water damage was pretty damn catastrophic, and the repair couldn't guarantee that other inside-techie things hadn't shorted out -- and I was resigned to buying a cheaper non-Mac, because. Well. Cheaper. I officially put off the purchase waaaay too long, leading to lost posts and enormous amounts of frustration once the mouse key broke, randomly moving the cursor to different parts of the screen while I typed gaaaaaaaaah kill.

So on Thursday we went to the Big Box Computer Store and I glumly pecked on some keyboards and finally declared one "pretty okay." I knew we could get it cheaper online though, so we didn't buy it.

On Friday -- before any of this other stuff happened, even though Jason probably knew it was a pretty safe bet that I would make stupid jokes out in public, that I would bug him about taking me to Ikea, that I would wander around stores looking like a frumpy, frizzy, minivan-lusting mom -- he came home from work and pulled a brand-new Macbook out of his briefcase. I was stunned.

Jason: You use it every day. It's what you do. It's important. You should have the one you want.

Our anniversary is in a few days. Eleven years. Our life is nothing like the one we thought we'd have once upon a time.

(I still have the one I want.)

I Asked a Bottle of Red Wine to be My Life Coach, and Look Where It Got Me

Conclusion to Amy Takes Her Foot-in-Mouth Show On the Road: Holy awkward SHITBALLS, people. She walked by me this morning and didn't even LOOK at me. And then picked her son up EARLY this afternoon. Probably just to avoid me, because I am sure I made that much of an impression and there couldn't possibly be any other explanation, like a doctor's appointment or a vacation or...okay, there are possibly a few other explanations. But me and my mad social skillz remain suspicious. Suspicious and lonely and very glad we were both too lazy to follow-through on the cookie idea.

Over the last few weeks I've read more than a smattering of blog entries addressing the whole "are we done having babies" question. A good number of them were written by women with babies somewhere around Ezra's age. And they of course got me thinking about writing a similar entry, because I haven't had an original thought bash around my skull since at least 2004. (Unless you include the thing with the talking deodorants. Then I am a national treasure of useless creative vision.)

A few weeks after Ezra was born, I tentatively said something to Jason about the topic. Something like, "We're done, right?" And he immediately said yes, we're done.

So I asked him when, you know, he planned on calling the doctor, as per our longstanding agreement on the division of childbearing and childpreventing duties. And then he immediately said, oh, wait, I didn't mean THAT done.

Noah was going to be our only child -- a plan that lasted about five weeks or so. The whole experience was exactly like a roller coaster -- terrifying, thrilling, hard on the eardrums -- and we were already shrieking "LET'S GO DO THAT AGAIN!" before the safety bars had even been released.

And Ezra, of course, was going to be our last child. I tried to savor my pregnancy accordingly: This is the last time I'll feel a baby kicking. The last time I'll prepare a nursery. The last time I'll have the belly and the boobs and the nausea and the fat face and the weird skin and the backaches and the puking for SIX GODFORSAKEN MONTHS.

Right. So maybe I could kind of see the positives of the "no more babies" situation. At times, anyway. Plus, it was finally dawning on me that babies are actually SMALL CHILDREN. Who become slightly bigger children. And that no matter what we do or how hard we pray it to be otherwise, I am going to have to deal with a three-year-old ALL OVER AGAIN.

We're done. Right?

***

Last week Jason and I booked the babysitter and went out for some sushi and a movie. There was a young couple next to us with their baby girl, who was about Ezra's age. I made some kind of involuntary squawk at the sight of her adorable little cotton sundress, and Jason sighed.

"You want a girl, don't you?"

Do I want a girl? Do I really want a girl knowing how hard it is to raise one in this culture of over-sexualized Princess Dora Bratz dolls and Mean Girls and eating disorders and oh God, the INTERNET? Do I really want a girl, a teenage girl, who may end up being exactly like me, or nothing like me, but either way will be all but guaranteed to hate me for at least a few solid good years? Do I really want a girl to come along and blast me out of the comfort zone I've created as being the mother of boys?

"Yes. I think I do."

Jason sighed again and admitted that if we KNEW we'd be guaranteed a girl, he'd love to have another baby. And before I could even mention the A-word (a complicated discussion we've had many times before, for the record) (edited to add: ADOPTION, holy crap, not the other A-word), he went on. "Whatever. Even if we had another boy, I'd be so happy."

He then went on to wax rhapsodic about Ezra, sweet Ezra, the baby who at one time Jason hoped would be a daughter, but who is a son and who is exactly who he is supposed to be and who our family needed, because HOLY CRAP HE IS SO AWESOME.

***

Okay, so maybe we're NOT done. At least, as Jason said, not THAT done. But I am not in a rush, far from it. We have a few more years before my (admittedly already erratic) fertility clock winds down, so perhaps it's best to simply say we're not ruling it out sometime in the future, when the boys are older and a little more mature or at least capable of wiping their own butts. Perhaps, as Noah's issues become a little more understandable and a lot less of a question mark, we could adopt, thus skipping the fairly awful process of trying month after month after month to conceive. Perhaps we will rule it out later down the road, but for now, let's not rush into anything. Let's just leave everyone's anatomy as-is and...you know...BE CAREFUL in the meantime.

Yes. Good plan!

***

So of course this means that I -- she of the 75-day cycles, the wildly erratic and oftentimes completely absent ovulation -- would suddenly start getting regular periods. Like clockwork! Like birth-control-pill regular, down to the HOUR. Down to the hour BEFORE, when I suddenly realize that I've been a raving bitch all day and developed a single angry large pimple right in the middle of my forehead. Of course.

See, here's the thing: When you don't ovulate, you don't get pregnant, even if you want to! And I've spent most of the past six or so years of my life wanting to get pregnant, TRYING to get pregnant, but only very rarely actually succeeding in getting pregnant. And even before that, I generally viewed my condition as a plus, a perk -- who cares about birth control! I've got your birth control RIGHT HERE! <points to barren, uncooperative womb area, ohhhhh yeah>

And here's another thing: As a relatively-inexperienced regular-period-type-of-girl, it turns out that I am also really terrible at math.

And...dates. And...calendars. And stuff. I pulled up my old fertility-charting/period-reminder program this morning and entered in some data and...oh. What? This weekend? When we...and we didn't use...and...oh. OH.

Cough.

No. I don't have any big announcement to make. NO! As I scan what I've written so far I realize it totally sounds like that's what I'm leading up to, but no.

I'm just a 31-year-old mother-of-two in the midst of her Very First Pregnancy Scare, on the short end of the first Two-Week Wait where she honestly has no idea what outcome she's hoping for.

On the one hand: SPECTACULARLY TERRIBLE IDEA.

On the other hand:

I wouldn't kick another one out of bed for eating mini-waffles, you know?