Moving Forward By Staying Still

I'd start this post out with the usual barrage of OMG and I can't believe it but frankly, if this ISN'T the face of a newly minted second grader, I don't know what is. 

I guess this is as good a point as any to mention a little side plot line in our lives that certainly didn't FEEL little, even though I chose not to blog about it, but: We were planning to move. We've since changed our minds.

Oh my God, 10 words to sum up over SIX MONTHS of crazy offline craziness. That's so not fair.

We decided over the winter to put our townhouse on the market and look around for a single family in the same general area. We set an end-of-the-school-year deadline for ourselves and completed a monstrous to-do list of painting, fixing, improving, decluttering (or decrapifying, as we usually called it), you name it. All the stupid little piddly house shit you know you need to do but...don't.

(Apologies for including "you" in my procrastination process, if you are not the sort who lets stupid little piddly house shit pile up around you until you are boxed in by shit mountains.)

I packed and purged and donated; Jason powerwashed the deck and ripped out and replanted landscaping. None of our friends saw us for months unless they were willing to show up with some paintbrushes. (And of course, they were, because that's what awesome friends do.) I washed windows and wielded power tools. While we were in Williamsburg I paid a handyman friend to live at our house and power through the remaining items on the list. Because there was A House.

It was nearby, even closer to Noah's and Ezra's schools. Bigger than what we had — the boys could have their own bedrooms, or Noah and Ezra could at least share a bigger room and not be so on top of each other — but nothing huge or obnoxious. A cozy little house with a big yard and a home office for me. It wasn't perfect but it was damn near close. Like all the properties on the market at the time, it had been for sale for awhile. There'd been a price reduction. The townhouses in our little cluster were selling fairly quickly, on the other hand, so we just need That House to stay on the market for two, maybe three more weekends before we could make an offer.

It sold the next week. I still haven't fully recovered. 

It was around that time that two more things happened: 1) Noah was integrated into general education for math, and 2) the real estate market in the DC area lost. its. damn. mind. 

A "lack of inventory" created a panic, essentially, with buyers going insane over everything — ANYTHING — that hit the market. Everything was under contract within days. Escalation clauses drove prices up and up and up. A small fixer-upper in our neighborhood (WITH A MOLD PROBLEM) went for $100,000 over its list price. We could no longer be sure we could even afford houses we didn't even want, much less the ones we did. 

Our agent kept sending us listings from other, nearby neighborhoods — all ones we'd said we'd consider back when we started the process — but that's when thing #1 would rear its inconvenient little head.

I didn't want Noah to change elementary schools. We didn't want Noah to change elementary schools. What seemed like not such a big deal a few months before — it's not like we would change districts, his IEP would transfer, we're in a district and area where the schools are almost uniformly excellent, he'll get all new teachers next year ANYWAY and we could hate them — seemed like the Single Stupidest Thing We Could Do. 

We love his elementary school. LOVE. He's been there since preschool, he knows every teacher and administrator and they know him. And they LOVE him. On Valentine's Day a homeroom teacher who is not Noah's homeroom teacher handmade an extra class valentine just for him, because he stops and talks to her every morning and she finds him so sweet. And his IEP team...well. There's no way to talk about them — the principals, the special education teachers, his OT — without resorting to over-the-top hyperbole. They are the best.

His current special education teacher in particular, is beyond wonderful. She took a kid who (in September) claimed to not know how to read because he would give up the second he came across an unfamiliar word, and transformed him into a kid who now reads chapter books at a third grade level. She'll call me on the phone and we'll talk for an hour if Noah's having an off day, and basically goes above and beyond to help him succeed. Noah loves her, naturally. She's the kind of teacher who prompts me to write gushing emails to the school administration, just so they know. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE OVER THERE? AN ANGEL STRAIGHT FROM HEAVEN. GET YER DIP-TET. ETC.

But restricting a house search down to a single, not-especially-huge elementary school? Sisyphean ordeal. We were lucky if ONE house came on the market every few weeks, and the chances of it being 1) in our modest price range, 2) not a shit hole, 3) not getting 200 escalating offers on it by Sunday night, OR 4) being a house we even halfway liked in the first place were ridiculously low. 

A townhouse up the street from us sold in three days and suddenly we were barraged with hand-written letters from people who'd lost the bidding war on it. Were we thinking of selling? Could we please let them know? Here is a picture of our dog and brand-new baby; please sell us your home, we don't even care what color you painted the living room.

And so one night, not very long ago, Jason and I sat in our lovely, freshly painted living room and decided that really, we didn't want to move. The improvments we'd made and the massive decrapifying had resulted in a beautiful home. We shared a wall with neighbors and had no garage or extra bedroom and I sure wish this house had X, Y or Z, but...dude. This house is fine. This neighborhood is wonderful.

(We're in a no-outlet loop so the neighborhood kids all roam free-range style, going from house to house and yard to yard for hours after school. Noah and Ezra yell goodnights and other important messages from their bedroom window to a little girl in the house behind ours, a kindergartner who has become their most beloved playmate. Two nights a week are "dinner party nights" where they go to her house for dinner or she comes to ours. What decade is this? What sitcom is this?)

It was still a little disappointing to admit real estate defeat. The idea of a new home is always exciting (especially when you're still in the dream world of realtor.com listings that all look so glorious until you see them in person and realize there's seven huge power line towers looming over that backyard hot tub). But we couldn't risk selling our house too quickly and then being stuck and buying something else because we had to, even if it wasn't exactly what we wanted.

And what we wanted most of all was for Noah to return to second grade at his current school. So that won.

Yesterday I found out that 1) Noah will be fully integrated into the general education classroom for all subjects next year, and 2) his current special education teacher will be transitioning to second grade right along with him, to provide support and any pull-outs to the smaller group that she might think he needs on any given day. 

And that, as they say, is THAT. 

We were planning to move. We've since changed our minds. And we are so totally okay with it.

I Can Haz Cat? No I Cannot Haz Cat.

If it were up to ME, today's entry would have been the story about my new cat.

Unfortunately, OTHER PEOPLE IN MY HOUSE do not subscribe to the "finders keepers also she really, really likes me!" philosophy of pet adoption. 

I was watching TV and kept wondering when someone on the show was going to acknowledge the crazy high-pitched meowing happening just offscreen. When it never happened, it dawned on me that OH. That there is a real cat. Who is definitely not MY cat, who is plenty prone to yowling but who has a much deeper voice. But damn, that is some loud-ass meowing.

I got up to investigate, by which I mean I walked confusedly around my house with a dumb baffled look for awhile, because...cat? Hello cat? Are you there? Yes, This Is Dog, etc. And then I discovered a cat pacing in front of our kitchen window. It saw me and amped up its already desperate-sounding meowing. I walked out the front door and it ran right to me, purring and rubbing and sqwinching and in the 15 seconds it took me to pick it up and bring it inside I was already like, "WHELP I GUESS I HAVE A NEW CAT NOW ISN'T THAT JUST THE DARNEDEST THING."

Jason, on the other hand, was not onboard with my version of events. At all. First it took me 10 minutes to convince him that this was, in fact, A CAT, and that I had not just scooped up a baby lynx or mountain lion or pygmy tiger and brought it inside my home. 

Then he pointed out that MAYBE it wasn't the best idea to bring a strange cat into a house with three children and another cat and a dog because fleas? Vaccines? Rabies?

But it was obvious that the new love of my life was a very well-cared for cat. it was a girl, and although she had no collar and was thankfully not declawed, her coat and eyes and teeth were all beautiful and healthy. The popping sound of a can of wet cat food brought her running and she scarfed it up, and then daintily moved on to a bowl of kibble. She recognized the word "treat" and offered up her belly for me to rub.

I decided that she was an indoor cat who'd tragically gotten out and lost. Maybe her family had moved. Maybe she'd been abandoned. I decided that I was her savior, who would love her and care for her and put up a few dutiful flyers and then take her to the vet — where we would sadly learn that there was no microchip, alas! — and no one would call about the flyers AND SHE WOULD BE MINE. 

(Note that my fantasy world did not deal with the fact that Max [and probably Ceiba as well] would FUH-FREAK the fuck out over this cat — currently the only plan for that involved shutting them in our bedroom upstairs. Not exactly a long-term solution, but the practical part of my brain was not exactly firing on all cylinders in the face of SOFT FUZZY KITTEH BELLEH.)

I put on my shoes so I could run out for a litter box and maybe a collar and a bed and ooohhh some jingle balls and fuzzy mice, like Max used to love before he got all old and crotchedy. Jason put on his shoes so he could go see if anyone was outside looking for their damn cat.

As the hours went by, however, it became increasingly clear that the cat was not down with my vision of our happy, snuggly future together. She wanted back out. She'd had her food and gotten her explores on, and now she was ready to hit the road again. And she was getting increasingly ornery about it. I tried to pick her up again and she sank her teeth into my arm and kicked off my chest with her back claws. 

"It's okay!" I said, while running my bleeding wounds under some water. "I understand! It's a lot of love to accept all at once! You've been hurt before! You need some time and your space! WE CAN MAKE THIS WORK I SWEAR I STILL LOOOOOVVVVVVEEE YOU."

Jason coaxed her into a travel crate with some treats and went back out. Two different neighbors finally confirmed what I was starting to accept as the real story: She was definitely a neighborhood cat who liked to be out at night. Despite months of sightings, she remained clean and well-cared for (i.e. not a mangy-looking wild cat or indoor cat with no coping skills). She was notoriously friendly and one neighbor admitted that she thought she was a bit of a con artist when it came to begging for food. She'd shown up at her door, too, and although she didn't let the cat in (LIKE A SUCKER, LIKE MEEEEE) she did put some food and water out. 

"I didn't see her around in the winter so I stopped." our neighbor explained. "I think she mostly goes out when the weather is nice. Since she didn't find food here she probably decided to try another house." 

We came back home and watched the cat desperately search our house for a means of escape. She howled pathetically at every window and door. Jason told me it was time to admit we had someone's pet and needed to let her back out. I cried and protested that that would be irresponsible since we didn't know for SURE, besides, she was hungry! No collar! Let me keep her overnight and search for the owners in the morning. Maybe she's just looking for a litter box! LET ME GO BUY HER A LITTER BOX I PROMISE NOT TO BUY MOUSIE TOYS OR A COLLAR WITH THE NAME "ROCKY" ON IT BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND IF YOU WANT TO BE INCLUDED IN THE NAME DISCUSSION. 

Jason let her out. We followed her for half a block before she crossed a lawn and entered the house through a pet door in the garage. 

Oh.

Okay. 

Never mind. 

So in the end, I do not have a new cat. I let Max and Ceiba out of our bedroom and they spent a couple hours running around and determining FOR SURE that whatever animal had been here was definitely gone. I grumbled about collars and pet tags and traffic and tried to get Max to cuddle with me, but I guess I smelled like Other Cat and he wanted nothing to do with me. The whole evening ended up being kind of a bummer. 

But still. Of all the crazy wildlife that has randomly invaded my home over the years, she was by far my favorite. 

The Plastic Wrap That Ate New York City

Happy Monday, Innernets! How was your weekend? Ours was fine! I learned two things:

1) When Ike comes down with his big brother's cold, he gets this hilariously gigantic cough -- CAAAAHHH-UGH CAAAAAHH-UGH-UGH-CAH -- and sounds exactly like an old man having a top-volume coughing fit at a quiet restaurant. So the next time you hear a cough like that and start looking for the person to scowl at, like GO OUTSIDE, DUDE, NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOU COUGHING UP YOUR LUNG, be forewarned that it could be my baby.

    1a) I mean, you can still scowl at him, if you want. He won't care. Old-man cough badger don't give a shit.

    1b) CAAAAHHHHH-UGH-GGG-CAH-UH-ETC.

2) Before you bundle your children up and send them outside to frolic in a couple inches of freshly fallen snow, you should PROBABLY confirm that the white stuff on the ground actually is snow. As opposed to a deadly, pointy mix of 10% snow and 90% ice. And you should confirm this fact through a testing method OTHER THAN watching your six-year-old pelt your three-year-old in the face with an iceball. 

    2a) He's fine! The cut didn't even need stitches. 

    2b) (dies)

    2c) Though I have to admit, the sight of both them lying on the icy ground, flapping their arms and legs in a desperate attempt to make snow angels while shrieking "WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING?" was pretty damned funny. But obviously I am tremendous jerk who routinely derives humor in the pint-sized suffering of my children. (See item 1. Also every blog post ever.)

***

Anyway. Enough about them! I need to talk about plastic wrap! SHUT UP THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I made the fateful decision to buy a box of generic plastic wrap. 

And when I say many years, I am not (for once, not even a little bit) exaggerating. This roll of plastic wrap is like the goddamned loaves and fishes, because it never, ever runs out. It just keeps going and going. An endless, magical supply of plastic wrap.

I should maybe call the Vatican. Or the Paranormal Activity people. 

Because this is the absolute WORST plastic wrap in the history of human kind.

I can't even express how terrible this plastic wrap is. It clings directly and desperately to itself, and nothing else. Put it on a bowl or dish and it will just...sit there, all non-sealing-like while its edges curl in to create an un-straightenable mass of gummed-up plastic wrap. It puckers and creases and instantly folds up into a three-inch-wide strip of uselessness the second you tear it from the box. That is, IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH to even get it to tear from the box, since instead of those fancy metal tearin' strips the hoity toity brands come with, this stuff has an edge of slightly perforated, long-since-worn-to-the-nub cardboard "teeth":

Hello! Do you need some plastic wrap! Okay! I will start gumming my way through that shit now! You come back in an hour or so. With the scissors. 'Cause we both know this ain't happening.

We HATE this plastic wrap, is what I am saying. Neither of us can use this plastic wrap without vocally complaining about how much we hate this plastic wrap. And while we're not like, AVID plastic wrap enthusiasts, or anything, the topic does come up quite frequently. Several times a week, for YEARS, one of us has bitched out loud to the other about this terrible, terrible plastic wrap.

Giving old boring married people something to talk about since 2007. Can your name-brand products deliver on that promise? For pennies on the dollar? I don't fucking think so, son.

And yet, the plastic wrap keeps going and going and going. I know I bought the big economy size, but this is RIDICULOUS. I should not still be paying for one single crime of frugality, all these years later.

Every once in awhile -- usually while muttering and cursing and trying to rip my third sheet of plastic wrap off the roll in order to mummify an ice cube tray of baby food -- I do stop and think, "Fuck this. I'm throwing this crap out and buying some new plastic wrap. Because life is too short for shitty plastic wrap. Because I am worth it!" 

But then, for whatever reason, I don't. I don't throw the box out and I don't buy a new one. Is it guilt? The fact that we're not using some recycled BPA-free hemp-paper alternative to the shitty plastic wrap? Or because we've made it this far so we might as well see this never-ending shitty plastic wrap storyline until the end? Because we maybe don't even believe that end will ever come so what's the point, we might as well just suck it up? Is it because the SHITTY PLASTIC WRAP IS FULLY IN CHARGE NOW?

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. YOU WILL ALSO GET A SURPRISINGLY NASTY PAPER CUT ON MY WEAK-ASS CARDBOARD TEETH. 

I don't know. It's an easily-solved problem that instead has become an epic years-long struggle for no particular reason. If this was a Paranormal Activity movie you'd probably be yelling at us to move or call an exorcist, so maybe we'll just try one of those things. 

The Mom in the Mirror

On a scale of one to 10, how corny would it be to kick off a blog entry with expressing gratitude to a supreme diety for the fact that it is currently Friday? Eleventy hundred? Ish? 

Fuck it. TGIF, man. Tee gee eye eff.

I have no idea why this week felt particularly rough, but it did. There isn't any one thing to point to and say THAT. RIGHT THERE. That's where my week went off the rails and into the realm of I hate everything and am going back to bed and I would like to see anyone try and stop me because I will fuck your shit up. 

I had a cold, but got over it pretty quickly. Ezra kicked a kid at preschool, but his teacher was all, "Yeah, they're all kicking each other right now. Kids! Whattaya gonna do?" We missed the bus one morning and I yelled at Noah for refusing to put his shoes on the first seven times I asked and at Ezra for taking his shoes OFF right as we were trying to leave, but then we caught up with the bus at the next stop a block away and I felt like a jerk, especially since I drive right past Noah's school on my way to Ezra's school and the only reason I was hellbent on Noah taking the bus was because I didn't want to have to get out of the car to escort him in. Because I was still wearing my pajamas. Stretched-out, saggy-butted ones.

On Wednesday I took Noah to karate, with Ezra and Ike in tow, and as I was directing Ezra to take a seat in the back, I caught a glimpse of myself in the giant mirror that lines the room. And I had that moment, like when you turn on your phone's camera to find it reversed and reflecting the underside of your chin(s), and you're shocked to see what you actually look like, and it's about 10 years older and 100 times more homely than you look in the mirror in your head. 

I was wearing makeup, but it clearly wasn't enough to mask the dark circles and pale cheeks and random red splotches. The workout pants and baggy shirt I thought looked casual but not sloppy at home...did not look like that at all, actually, but more like your standard uniform of the overwhelmed 30-something suburban mom who has completely given up. I haven't gotten a haircut since Ike was born or a color job since Blogher and the split ends and dishwater roots I've been telling myself aren't really that noticeable are, in fact, very noticeable. 

It all just...showed. How little sleep I get, how much I worry, how hard I work, how often I bump myself to the bottom of the priority list because at least I can operate kitchen appliances and put on my own underwear, and I'll put clothes on and do my hair once everybody else is dressed and fed and happy and my writing deadlines are done and I reply to just a couple more emails and oops there's the baby again and it's almost time to go meet the bus again so I know! I'll just put on some black workout pants and a baggy shirt! IT'S TOTES SLIMMING.

If "TGIF" is too trite, I suppose this entry won't be improved if I include some wistful expression of the necessity of a visit to a faraway tropical locale for relaxation purposes? Because Christ, I think I need a vacation.

The thing is, I'm not unhappy. Like, at all. I love this life, this crazy minivan-full-of-many-boy-children life that I never, ever expected to be living, but oh, I'm so glad I do. Honestly, I could kind of see myself having baby after baby, if I only had a place to put them besides Ikea dresser drawers. Or enough money to keep them all in karate/braces/camp/pizza/college.

Or enough patience to promise myself that I wouldn't yell at them for taking too long to put their shoes on, thus making me get out of the car and show the world that I didn't have time to get dressed that morning, even though that was my own damn fault for not getting out of bed 15 freaking minutes earlier, because...what? I thought today was going to be the magical day when everybody puts their shoes on the first time I ask instead of the seventh? Come on. 

I do wish I wasn't so tired, that I could take a nap occasionally without feeling guilty because there's so much STUFF that I should be doing, or that I didn't have to make the nightly choice between hanging out with Jason after we get the kids to bed or...sleep, maybe cramming an extra hour or two before Ike wakes up. I wish it didn't take me twice as long to look half as good as I used to. I wish Noah liked school better and I had more one-on-one time with Ezra and that Ike would stay a baby just a little longer than I know he will. I wish I had more patience, I wish those black workout pants really were as slimming as I imagine them to be, I wish I'd made a stupid hair appointment for this weekend.

I wish I wasn't such a cliche. But hey! TGIF. Amirite? Right. 

PS After rereading everything I just wrote I made an executive decision and booked a babysitter for tonight. Sorry, workout pants, Mama's gonna wear herself some JEANS tonight! Provided she can get them buttoned over her Spanx. 

It's Tradition, Dammit

Hey, so you know what happens when you get an email from your blog provider that reads, "The credit card on your account expired. Please provide a new one within X number of days or else you won't be able to post on your blog?"

And then you forget to provide a new card within X number of days? You totally are not able to post on your blog! Just like they said! I know, right? 

And then you're like, OKAY FINE, WHERE'S MY WALLET and you can't find your wallet and you're like, SCREW THIS, IT'S A HOLIDAY ANYWAY and you put it off again and  then you find your wallet the next day and finally update the card information...only to realize that this exact anecdote about mildly suspenseful credit card hijinks is the ONLY INTERESTING THING YOU HAVE TO TALK ABOUT ON YOUR BLOG. 

And then you're like, I REALLY SHOULD REEVALUATE MY LIFE. ALSO STOP USING CAPS LOCK SO MUCH.

But hey! I've been saying both of those things since I started this blog back in 2003. And hell, if I can't even be bothered to find my wallet within a perfectly reasonable, specified time frame, I'm probably not going to do anything that requires much more effort than that. Maybe by the time this current credit card expires. In 2015.

It's nice to have goals, I think.

***

We took the kids to see fireworks last night. But the actual fireworks were waaaay less exciting than the part where they got to sit on the roof of the car. 

Seriously. Experience of a lifetime. Next year we're staying right in our own damn driveway. I'll throw some glowsticks and shit from the shredder basket in the air or something.

Ike watched the fireworks from my lap in the front seat. And by "watched" I mean "completely ignored the copious amounts of commotion and BANG BANG BANG and WHOOOSHEEEEE noises and a bonus crazy lady wandering around the parking lot yelling at all the double- and triple-parked cars (of which we were one), all YOU CAN'T PARK THERE YOU CAN'T PARK THERE."

We ignored her too, actually. Bitch, we've been double-parking next to this same dumpster in the same back corner of this same semi-suspicious-looking gyro shop every Fourth of July for five years now. This dumpster and us go waaaaay back. We call her Smelly. Don't you be hassling us about Smelly, okay?

Anyway. Ike nursed and stared into space for awhile, and then Noah and Ezra got bored of the roof and decided they'd rather sit in the driver's seat and honk the horn, like, yeah, MORE NOISE IS WHAT WE NEED HERE.

Also: Hair. Has anybody seen all my hairs? I had some a month ago and now I haz no hairs. Woe.

And when the fireworks were over we came home and put everybody to bed and then I ate some Advil. The end. Happy Fourth!

Cracky

Why is today still spring break? Why wasn't one whole week off from school enough? Why this one extra stupid day -- the same day, of course, that I traditionally spend alone and gleeful as I thoughtfully and judiciously "edit" the contents of my children's Easter baskets because THAT BUNNY HAD NO RIGHT TO BE SO GENEROUS -- of stir-crazy kids running around the house begging for peanut-butter eggs?

And honestly, I'm not so sure Noah is particularly thrilled with being home with me anymore either. He's bored and done and over it too. Especially since I won't let him ride his little brother like a donkey anymore or swaddle the dog like an infant.

I am No Fun, you guys. And he is done with me, professionally. 

***

You know what IS fun, though? The new car. The kids looooovvvvvve the new car. They want to live in the new car. Yesterday, in a fit of We're Completely Out Of Activities related boredom, we simply opened all the doors to the new car and set them loose in it to climb and explore and turn traction control on and off.

Jason and I kicked back on the grass with iPhones and Kindles and supervised (which basically meant we looked up frequently enough to confirm that nobody had magically started the car and put it in gear and taken off for a new life on the road) and congratulated ourselves on being the greatest parents ever.

Except that -- and oh, we walked right into this one just like a Creed song -- when Noah was first informed that our Green Car was no more and we now had a new White Car, he took the news (predictably) very badly. Not a fan of change, that one. And I rushed to soothe his tears with the little detail that HEY GUESS WHAT, THERE'S A TV IN THE NEW CAR. Upon hearing this, Noah froze. His eyes went very, very wide. Then he said, "Let me get my coat."

"The TV in the new car is just for special trips," I tried to explain, "Long trips. Like going to see Grandma. Not short everyday trips."

To which my children were like, "HA HA FUNNY MOM NOW HOW'S ABOUT THAT DESPICABLE ME DVD?"

"Well," I tried next. "Today can be all special trips, since it's the first day in the new car. After today, though..."

"AND WOULD IT KILL YOU TO POP SOME POPCORN?" was pretty much the response I got.

Monsters. I have created them. Or at least equipped them with personal wireless headphones.  

***

It's something like 900 degrees outside right now (give or take a few degrees to account for the whole eight-months-pregnant thing), but since our one big planned organized outdoor activity was scheduled for Friday, that means it was 41 degrees and pouring down rain the whole time. 

The eggs were real and wet and covered in grass and filth, as if you plucked them straight from the underside of a chicken, for that extra authentic experience...

...which was admittedly dampened a bit by the sight of a parks employee openly marching through the egg hunt area with cartons of hard-boiled eggs, dropping them half-heartedly into the grass with a look of STUPIDEST JOB EVER on his face, while all parents in the vicinity rushed to explain to their preschoolers and toddlers that he was simply the Easter Bunny's HELPER, YEAH, THAT'S TICKET, and he just looks that grumpy because the Bunny doesn't offer very good retirement benefits.

None of our eggs made it to the (indoor) decorating table intact. Ezra kept dropping them and Noah insisted on "opening" his eggs to check for candy inside.

I sense I've let that one down in the whole "know where your food comes from" department, a little bit.

And there's your belly photo for the week, right there. I know you can't see my face or anything, yet I still feel like the massive amounts of fun I was having at the time really radiates through, somehow, anyway, regardless. 

The Great Confession

A long time ago, back when I only had one singular solitary child, my car had to go to the shop for a few days. I rented a car in the meantime, but when I arrived the rental place had given away the last mid-size class car I'd reserved. 

So they offered me a minivan. I think they thought I'd consider this a fabulous upgrade, since I was clearly SUCH A MOM and all, but I made a face, like, really? Ugh. My mom car is a Subaru WRX! It's a turbo. And a stick shift. It's fucking fast as shit. We used to take it to the racetrack for rally-car driving lessons. Until we got tired of replacing the tires so often. And, you know, we had to put a car seat in the back and a stroller in the trunk. And stuff. 

But I took the minivan. And to this day, I remember that moment out in the Enterprise parking lot when I opened those remote-controlled side doors and saw how easy it was to get Noah in and out, and all the interior room, and how smooth and quiet it drove and was like, damn, I could get used to this.

AND I WAS SO ASHAMED. 

So my Great Solution to the minivan question was to simply never, ever drive one again. Because I knew.

***

Last night, after test-driving every giant-ass all-wheel-drive SUV option in existence, Jason finally convinced me to sack up and go to a Toyota dealership to look at a Sienna. We needed to look at ALL the options, you know, before we could really make up our minds. 

We approached the sad-looking row of fat-bottomed symbols of I've Officially Given Up Everything I Used To Be on the lot and I immediately started bitching. It's ugly. It's too big. Why is the trunk like that, what the hell is that thing for, the DVD screen blocks my visibilllllllity, blah blah blah. 

"Where are the keys?" I asked the saleswoman.

"Push-button start," she explained, "Right there."

"THAT'S DUMB," I muttered.

I pushed the button. Whee! Heh. I like buttons.

"I AM STILL ONTO YOU, MINIVAN," I warned it. "STOP TRYING SO HARD."

The saleswoman smiled from one of the middle-row bucket seats. She reclined it a little and flipped out a fancy, La-Z-Boy style footrest.

"No SHIT, WHAT?" I sputtered. "That's ridiculous. This whole car is ridiculous."

Jason looked up from the brochure. "So you can hook up an XBox in here too?"

"MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST."

***

I drove it about 10 minutes down the road, executed a ridiculously easy U-turn, and practiced parking. Jason asked how it compared to the last big lumbering crossover SUV we'd just finished test-driving, the one I said was "fine" and "not too much like driving a truck, only kinda."

"DAMMIT," was all I said. Which told him everything he needed to know. 

We switched seats and Jason drove it back to the lot. The saleswoman left us alone to play the 4,000 other various buttons and cubbyholes. 

"I knew this would happen," I sighed, after discovering the built-in sunshades on all the back windows. 

"I know," Jason said, while messing around with the iPod interface on the navigation screen.

We went inside. I sat down and sighed deeply.

"I want a white one. Do you have a white one?"

***

They did.

And now so do I. 

(NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.)

(YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. XBOX PARTY IN THE BACK SEAT, Y'ALL.)

Welcome to the Nursery

No, not THAT one. That one's still an unspeakable pile of horror and disorganization and missing crib screws. I meant this one:

Goddamn hippies.

When we first moved from the city to the 'burbs we were pretty much incapable of keeping anything green alive (except for one hand-me-down decade-old jade plant), and in fact saw the tiny yard we have here as a plus: LESS FOLIAGE TO MURDER. 

We moved in. The jade plant promptly caught some disease and died. But we bought some herbs and stuck 'em in a planter out back. And then a tomato plant. Then peppers and zucchini and cauliflower and strawberries and onions and kale and butternut squash and beets and parsnips and leeks and homemade baby food and now it's a big production involving self-watering containers and concrete wire supports and composting and newspaper seedling pots and big ugly greenhouse light in our kitchen and I'm pouting because I don't have a deep enough pot to grow sweet potatoes in.

YET, anyway. 

We have no immediate plans to move, though every time a single-family house goes up for sale in our neighborhood Jason and I play a game of imaginary landscaping and discuss just how big of a garden we could have, and what the light and soil situation is probably like, and oooh, look at that porch! We could enclose that and have a greenhouse! We could do containers AND a real-live soil-patch grown-up garden! Maybe I would keep some chickens! PLUS, THINK OF ALL THE SWEET POTATOES. 

The mortgage calculations always kill the daydreaming. It's okay though. I still think last year's garden was pretty good for a couple of formerly death-thumbed city noobs...

...especially since it all started out small enough to fit on our kitchen counters.

P.S. If you're curious and also a dirty hippie lamesauce, I wrote a little about container gardening and composting over at AlphaMom, along with recommended books and such that helped us get started and not kill the majority of everything we planted.

P.P.S. And while I'm self-pimping and all, here's a Top Chef recap. It's about food! Super relevant to everything I've been saying today, shut up.

And How Was YOUR Day?

It was on this exact day in history when I realized that I needed to make a change. That the working-outside-the-home thing and I were not a good fit. That my poor already-meager brainpower reserves were overextended to the breaking point, making each and every venture into the outside world fraught with danger and the potential to snowball into a comedy of errors, or at least a story that could only be told with at least a dozen "...AND THEN!" transitions into the next circle of absent-minded hell. That being required to walk out the door remembering my keys AND my lunch AND the daycare bag AND the work I'd brought home the night before AND my shoes AND where I'd parked the car AND the baby, omg the baby was just too much. Something had to give. 

Five years and a whole extra kid-and-a-half later, this remains probably one of the most self-aware things I have ever realized about myself. Five years later, and it still holds true that the simple decision to "get out of my pajamas" is usually the exact point where my day goes completely haywire.

For the record, I am only required to Leave The House once a week, other than the weekends, but that doesn't count because Jason is there so he can supervise. I mean, so it's a team effort. Yes. That. On Thursdays, however, I alone am responsible for getting everybody up and fed and dressed and out the door for Noah's weekly OT appointment.

Yesterday, AS YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE BEEN AWARE, was a Thursday. So up and out we went, and I was feeling pretty good, considering I'd managed to shower and dry my hair AND find one whole hat for one whole child, so I only had to remember to repeatedly yank up one coat hood over one head, while muttering old-lady threats about colds and catching death. 

In fact, the only snafu was when I remembered that I'd never brought in my travel mug from my car, so I needed to run out and grab it and wash it out really quick so I could take my coffee with us. (NOTE: In my lifetime, I have personally purchased a good four dozen high-quality travel mugs, every single one of which is sitting in a desk drawer or under a car seat somewhere belong to my husband, so the travel mug featured in this story is my very last mug, a cheap promotional one that Tracey and I received when Mamapop won Best Pop Culture Blog from The Baltimore Sun. Tracey said I could keep our major award, which was very nice of her, except that it leaks all the time.) 

ANYWAY. BUT THEN! I retrieved the mug from the car, only to realize there was a very gross, very frozen chunk of last Thursday's coffee still in the bottom. We were already running late, the car was already running (in a very FORESHADOWINGLY-like manner, by the way) and the kids were already buckled into their seats and there I was, waiting for some warm-ish water to flow from the sink faucet in the kitchen so I could melt a week-old expired coffee ice cube or at least break it out with a knife handle or something. 

After a few desperate minutes, I put the mug in the microwave -- expressly disobeying the printed instructions on the bottom -- but then changed my mind after 10 seconds because you know, it would be SO LIKE ME to have to call Jason and tell him that I blew up the microwave for just this exact precise reason. 

Finally, I had a nice, cleanish cup of new coffee and we were back in the car. Which is when I noticed that the gas light was on.

Just like it had been on last Thursday, when I had consciously decided to NOT get gas, because 1) the gas light comes on in my car almost laughably early, like with more than 30 miles to go (according to some display thing on the GPS screen that I can check to more accurately gauge my gas-tank recklessness), and 2) as long as I made it home and then never left the house again, odds were good that Jason would drive the car next and would stop for gas. 

But we were all terribly sick last weekend, so nobody drove it anywhere, so I was now stuck knowing that I'd already cashed in my free early-gas-light trip and was probably close to fumes at this point. But we were late! Because...well, I'd spent all that time trying to melt that thing out of my travel mug.

We made it to OT on time, though I knew there was NO WAY we would make it home without filling up. But no matter, there were about three gas stations super-close to the therapist's office...I could stop and still get Noah home for a quick sandwich and catching the school bus in plenty of time. 

Except...for some reason, instead of just -- I DON'T KNOW -- driving to one of the actual gas stations that I was already familiar with, I decided to head towards the one that the GPS said was the closest. Huh! I thought. I had no idea there was a Shell station right there! That's really convenient, actually!

And it really would have been convenient, if it existed. Which it didn't. It was an office building. So I changed course and headed towards ANOTHER gas station, right around the time the stupid computer screen thing started yelling at me like, SERIOUSLY, YOU HAVE NO GAS, WHY DON'T YOU STOP AT A GAS STATION. YOU WERE LIKE, FIVE FEET FROM ONE A MINUTE AGO, MORON.

Oh, and did I mention it was snowing? Because it was snowing. What started as flurries around the time we arrived for OT was now a full-on snow "event," as the local weather people like to call it anytime we start seeing ACCUMULATION! Of UP TO TWO INCHES! YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE IN YOUR CARS! YOU ARE PROBABLY ALSO ON FIRE!

So there was a crazy amount of traffic, as the lines on the road were already more or less covered up, and as you know, when the lines on the road get covered up, everybody forgets where the lines ever even were to begin with. 

So I'm driving, all white-knuckled and over-caffeinated, with both kids in the car, and I can't even figure out which thing on the dashboard to freak out more over: the now below-E gas tank indicator or the clock, which says I have all of 15 minutes to get Noah home in time to catch the bus.

But I make it to the gas station. I pull up to the pump and reach into the diaper bag for my wallet.

No wallet.

No wallet.

NO WALLET.

No wallet, all of 10 cents in the coin tray, no secret $5 bill or credit card in the glove compartment, zero gas. Oh, and a cell phone with a red battery-charge indicator and yes, I have a car charger for my phone but no, I had no idea where it was at the moment.

I did the only thing I could think to do. I drove away from the gas station, back towards the snow-covered highway. 

See? Brain. Thinking. Not good at it. Obviously I'd hit max capacity for problem solving sometime that morning, probably during the thing with the mold-flecked coffee ice cube.

I called Jason and told him to like, omg, pray or something. He -- in a typical lack of faith and/or confidence in my coping skills -- ordered me to get the fuck to a gas station and wait for him there. I mewed sadly about the bus! The bus! I have to get Noah home for the bus!

"Yes, which you will most certainly NOT be able to do while stranded on the side of the highway."

(Right around this time, I drove directly by my old office building. Or more like...coasted, as I tried to use the snow to my advantage instead of the gas pedal. I'm beginning to think that general business park area has it in for me, for real.)

10 minutes later, Jason called back. He was still looking for my wallet. I told him to look in my black purse, which I'd carried last week to a BlogHer Meet-Up in Bethesda, which NOW that I think about it, was the other last time I left the house by myself. (I drove Jason's car. So he could have the carseats in case of an emergency. Also, because I knew my car needed gas.) He said he already checked that bag, and it wasn't there.

So. To recap. Things Amy Was Currently Freaking Out About:

1) No gas. Still sitting in traffic trying to get somewhere close to Gas Station Number Three, AKA the one every single driver in the area seemed to be flocking to, because OH MY GOD SNOW SNOW SNOW PANIC ALSO I NEED BREAD.

2) The bus. Even though that was pretty much a done-and-missed deal by now and I was going to have to drive Noah directly to school, I was upset because I didn't call the bus depot ahead of time to tell them Noah wouldn't be on the bus like I'm supposed to and what if I get in trouble for that? Or the bus skids on the ice right outside our house and everybody dies and it was ALL MY FAULT because I DIDN'T CALL, or maybe the bus driver will just be generally kind of MAD AT ME from now on?

3) My wallet. Where the hell was it? Did I lose it? Drop it? Get pick-pocketed? What happens if I got into a fender bender or something without my license right now because the road is slippery and you know, there are all these IDIOTS out there who don't know how to drive in the snow? I may be an idiot who spends 15 minutes melting coffee backwash from promotional travel mugs before driving her children miles and miles away in the snow with no gas and no wallet, but AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I know how to drive in inclement weather. Kind of. Pretty much.

4) Phone battery. Seriously, where the fuck did my car charger go? Ohhhh, that's right, last week I met HeatherB for lunch and she texted to say she desperately needed an iPhone charger and all I could find in the house was the plug part but not the cable part so I yanked the cable from the car charger and then I guess I took the whole inside the house or something and see? All my problems in life stem from unsupervised outings. 

5) Starvation. We were almost out of the only snack option I had on hand: A bag of cheese-pretzel sandwich things that I desperately needed to believe was counting as a nutritious, pre-school-day lunch for Noah.

EPILOGUE

I made it to the gas station. We sat there for awhile until Jason showed up with a credit card and I racked up the single-most-expensive fill-up in my entire car-owning life. I drove Noah directly to school and got there before his bus, because the snow delayed everything by a million billion minutes or so, and when he got back home I fed him the entire contents of our pantry, because the poor kid was starving and I am mother of the fucking year.

EPILOGUE TWO

My wallet was totally in my black purse. Jason said, "Oh, THAT black purse." I have not yet asked him which black purse he thought I was talking about, because the only other black purse I own is a crystal-encrusted black satin evening clutch that is smaller than my actual wallet, and for the sake and safety of our family I need to keep on believing that that's NOT the purse he looked in, because ONE OF US HAS TO BE SMART, AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT. 

Turkey Run

DISCLOSURE TALKYSPEAK: Thanks to American Express for sponsoring posts today about small businesses.  American Express is presenting Small Business Saturday, a way to honor the local merchants who are the backbone of the economy, this Saturday, November 27.  They're offering statement credits to people who shop at small businesses, advertising for small-business owners, and donations to Girls Inc. for "Likes" of the Small Business Saturday page on Facebook.  Join the celebration by clicking the "Like" button at the bottom of this entry and then visiting the Facebook page to learn more about the program and read the terms and conditions that apply. 

ACTUAL AMALAH-TYPE TALKYSPEAK: 

I cannot lie. I just spent three hours in the car. Three long, torturous hours. Procuring our Thanksgiving turkey. 

It wasn't supposed to take three hours, of course. Half hour up to the farm, 15 minutes there selecting the bird, another 20 minutes or so wandering around with the boys, visiting with the -- ahem -- pardoned birds still wandering around the pens and the cows and what-have-you, taking adorable photos with them all decked out in Thanksgiving-y outfits I done picked out special...and then a half hour trip back, high on life and the knowledge that HOT DAMN, that is one delicious-looking, never-frozen turkey sitting on the passenger seat there. 

Most turkeys from the grocery store around here -- and all of them at the farmers' markets -- have to arrive frozen. Buying directly from the farm is the best way to get fresh, never-frozen bird, and as we discovered about three or four Thanksgivings ago, the difference will blow the top of your skull off. Figuratively speaking, with only the teensiest dash of hyperbole. So ever since, we've made the trek up to Maple Lawn turkey farm and lugged the thing home in a big-ass cooler. 

This year, it was my turn to make the trip. The day got away from me and I left a smidge closer to rush hour than I would have liked, but hey, I was driving to the COUNTRY. There's no rush hour in the COUNTRY. Come on, kids! Grab the camera and the earth-toned sweaters, and let's make some memories.

It took us an hour to get there. Noah fell asleep. Ezra demanded my entire stash of for-emergency-only granola bars. We hit traffic and red lights and detours and fender benders. It started drizzling at one point and the entire driving population of suburban-to-rural Maryland lost its damn mind. 

And when we got there, it was already too dark to take any pictures of the turkeys or the cows. But it wasn't too dark to see the line. THE LINE. 

The line for turkeys stretched across the barnyard to the...uh...turkey dispensin' barn, I guess, where it wrapped around and looped back and forth about four times inside. Most people came armed with their preorder slips and wheelie coolers -- except for me, who came armed with only a clunky SLR camera and two stir-crazy children. 

But we waited. "Everybody" swore they'd never seen a line or demand like this, even though "everybody" also swore that they'd been buying turkeys from this farm for years. That math didn't really compute, but I didn't really care. I was...happy for the farm. Happy to see the dozens and dozens of people buying their food directly from the growers and caretakers of that food. The other parents explaining to their children that yes, the turkeys in that pen over there were, in fact, the same thing that they now carried wrapped in butcher's paper and a plastic bag. Everybody, despite being gobsmacked by the line and worn out from the drive, readily swearing up and down that it was worth it. Buying from here was worth it. 

"You should have seen my mother-in-law's face," the woman behind me said, as I eavesdropped on her conversation with another stranger in line. "You can't screw these turkeys up, but SHE doesn't know that."

Eventually, it was our turn. One of the farmers asked Noah and Ezra if they were excited for Turkey Day, and they both obliged him with an enthusiastic "GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!" on cue. I selected our bird -- which cost just about a buck less per pound than the equivalent organic birds at the supermarket -- and wearily corralled the boys back outside, where it was now way, way, WAY too dark to get the pictures I'd hoped for. 

Instead, we marched back to the car and prepared to leave. Suddenly, Noah started to shriek and laugh. I looked over out the window...just in time to see two or three dairy cows stick their heads over the fence I'd pulled in next to, close enough for Noah and I to reach out our windows and touch the tips of their noses. They mooed in approval before moving away. 

Yep. Just like every year: Totally worth it.