A hazelnut shell would probably suffice

So obviously I am just getting started here, and it must be equally obvious that I don’t have time to post every day. I wish I did. By the time all the kids are in bed and the kitchen is de-crumbed so the ants won’t completely take over (though they continue to press their advantage) and the laundry is semi-folded and stuffed into drawers, I’m—just—so—tired.

So I go to bed and think about what I would have posted if I had the brain power to post.

In some of the post-BlogHer accounts, I read that Arianna Huffington talked about sleep deprivation in her keynote and how that’s something she’s concerned about. It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone single out sleep deprivation as an Issue with a capital I—you’re always hearing about how no one gets their eight hours, tsk tsk, but it sounds like Arianna is elevating the topic to let’s-take-this-seriously status, like Sleep Deprivation should be rubbing elbows with Global Warming or Homelessness.

I don’t know what I think about this. On the one hand, I feel sort of awed and giddy that someone out there, a high-profile someone, no less, recognizes the enormity of what has to be the single biggest problem in my life.

On the other hand, it seems such a personal, individual problem. No national movement or awareness can alter my own personal circumstances, which are pretty simple, really. Lots of kids (by choice! I love them! I want them! Big families are fabulous!), husband who travels. Doesn’t take a Brazil nut shell for my nutshell version. I have many children; therefore I get less sleep than I need. I’m not a martyr. It’s just life.

I haven’t yet read what Arianna has to say on the subject. I’m wondering, speculating. Would she advise me to scale back on activities and time commitments? Check. Since I knew I was having a baby in April, I didn’t sign the kids up for ANYTHING last spring, and then summer hit and Mr. David Copperfield had to depart and so I didn’t sign them up for anything again. We go to the pool, which is close to home and free. We go to the park once in a while. Otherwise we’ve been pretty mellow, just hanging out. No mad rush of gymnastics and art class pulling us out the door in a hurry. Except for Sunday Mass, there’s no place we HAVE to be.

What else, Arianna? You might say I should choose sleep over late-night time sucks like, just for instance, the blogs on which I read about your BlogHer keynote in the first place. Or the Huffington Post, for that matter, which has nibbled away at a hefty portion of my time over the past two years. Here’s where that gets tricky.

1) I read blogs to stay connected, to remind myself I’m not in this alone, to keep my sense of humor in good working order and my sense of perspective firmly in place.

2) I read news sites like the HuffPo to keep myself aware of what’s going on outside my little nutshell. This is very important. Otherwise I become isolated and insulated and liable to make mountains out of my molehills. Yes, it’s hard to take care of five little kids by yourself. But, you know: running water, central air, vaccines, a washer and dryer, a Giant supermarket, a BBT debit card. No bombs, no waterborne parasites, no war or drought that touches me beyond a delicate groping of the pocketbook. I’m guessing there are a lot of women around the world who’d be thrilled to have my problems. If I don’t READ about their problems, I might stop seeing mine for what they are: the kind of problems that really count as blessings.

So I stay up a little too late reading—reading what Arianna has to say, what you have to say (so many of you, who don’t know me, but I know YOU, I wince or rejoice over your daily adventures)—and then instead of adding my bit, I acknowledge that Arianna has a point, and I turn away from the computer and go to bed to write these things in my head.

Except tonight, I didn’t.

An auspicious beginning

I just got my first hit from a Google search. And I am a proud, proud woman, because it turns out my little blog is the FOURTH hit for “diapers made from fish scales.” Fourth! And here I would have thought there were hundreds, nay, thousands of esteemed bloggers who had already covered the ancient Phoenician practice of fashioning babies’ nappies from the surprisingly flexible scales of very large fish. Flexible, I say, yet somewhat disappointing in the absorbency department. But if you are in the market for a waterproof diaper, fish scales are the way to go.

Of course what’s funny here is that I hadn’t even WRITTEN my post yet about running out of diapers and desperately seeking an emergency replacement (ME: “Polly! Quick! Grab the World Book!” POLLY: “OK, Mommy…let’s see, D for diapers…” ME: “What are you doing??? Looking it up? No, I meant start tearing out pages, this baby is peeing on the sofa!”) and thus discovering the aforementioned Ancient Phoenician Secret. Which worked out great, because I had all those leftover fish scales from the dinner they wouldn’t eat.

And I bet after this post I’ll be FIRST in the Google queue for diapers made from fish scales. I am upwardly mobile, and it is thrilling.

I know I can’t be the only one who does this

I’m lying down with the toddler, wishing he’d hurry up and go to sleep because there are fifteen things I need to be doing while he takes this nap. And then just as soon as he conks out and I’m free to sneak out of the room, I can’t make myself move. Because he is so beautiful this way: the heavy, rhythmic breathing, the smooth curve of his cheek, the way he flings his arms up onto the pillow and sprawls there, unconscious, a little sweaty, peaceful. I can’t leave him. The precious minutes of his nap are slipping away. I’ll regret it later, when I’m trying to get work done with him underfoot.

But I tell myself: you’ll regret it later if you DO leave. When I’m seventy I won’t remember the floors I didn’t wash. I’ll remember the smell of his head and wish I could nestle close and inhale it just one more time.

So I just sort of began in the middle

But there’s no way to back up to the beginning; we’re in the middle of our story here. And I felt silly trying to write introductory remarks, like I was commencing a David Copperfieldesque narrative. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own blog, or whether that station will be held by someone in the comments thread, these posts must show.” So I skipped ahead to the part where the plot has already thickened to the consistency of pudding, and David has a bunch of charming but picky children who (charmingly) turn up their adorable noses at the nice kippers their mother made on her George Foreman grill, and David isn’t actually home for months at a time because of His Job which is Far Away Right Now But Fortunately Provides for a DSL Connection so his wife can chronicle her adventures in serving grilled kippers to the tousle-headed Copperfield moppets.

Or something like that.

Please don’t make me make dinner.

This time of day, I want to weep. Really. The deciding what to make, the making it, the not eating of it by the children (no matter what it is), the tupperwaring of the not-eaten it, the cleaning up of the dishes used to make it. Ugh.

I’m really a pretty decent cook. I don’t know why they won’t eat my cooking. I mean, I almost never put the rat guts and the fish scales so close on the plate that they touch. Because, you know, kids HATE when their food touches. That’s why I use separate dishes for things with runny sauces like sauteed snot of frog.

Damn picky eaters.

Green is the scariest part

It was my fault for letting her take a nap in the late afternoon.

The five-year-old, Jill. I heard her steps on the stairs, pad pad pad, after 10 p.m. when the house was hushed for the first time all day. Everyone was asleep, or so I thought, and I was just cozying up to my bestest friend, Bloglines, when I heard the padding feet.

“I’m scared,” she said. “Mary saw green eyes shining in the dark. For real.”

“She did? Just now?”

“No. Once.”

Ah, I see. This is about being the only one awake in a dark room. Your big sisters can’t protect you when they’re asleep. Especially from the green eyes, which everyone knows are devious. They’ll never stop watching you, because that’s what they do.

I took her back upstairs and lay down beside her on the skinny little bed.

“Mama,” she whispered, “you’re my best mother.”

Um, thank you, child to whom I gave birth.

“Mama. I can blow a bubble.”

Because you are fabulously talented.

“Mama. Alligators swallow their food whole, WITHOUT CHEWING.”

In that case I shall not invite them to dinner, ever.

“Mama, when I am old I will always remember this.”

Oh! Oh, sweetie, will you? Really? Or will it fade, will you move away from this moment with the obliviousness of mortality that is right and proper for your tender age; will there be nothing left of our lying here but a shred of sense memory, a vague and faintly puzzling sense of comfort in your future years whenever you hear the word alligator, or see a deer’s eyes in the headlights of a car?