Preemptive strike

I’m supposed to be taking a nap right now, but I’m not. It was a Sunday afternoon present from Mr. David Copperfield. He is sweet that way.

I asked the kids to have the laundry put away by the time I came out of my room. It had all been folded and was stacked in neat piles on the sewing table, and I have this crazy notion that I might actually sew something this afternoon. Or next month, whenever.

Just now someone slipped a note under my door. (And it’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to nap because you just KNOW the little shooshing sound of paper sliding on a hardwood floor would have roused me just at that delicious moment when I was sinking into slumber)

All the laundry on the table is YOURS, the note says. Proclaims, one might say. Firmly. Not quite belligerently. Sternly, perhaps. You have assigned us two contradictory objectives, is the subtext. Your instructions cancel each other out, Mother. There is no way we can leave you alone for a little while so you can get some rest AND put away *all* the laundry. It is physically and even metaphysically impossible for us to do everything we are supposed to do at this point in time.

To which I say: Welcome to my world.

I have reached a new low

This morning, I was lying in bed reading blogs on my cell phone while the baby sat beside me chewing on a bottle of contact lens rewetting drops. And that isn’t even the low point, that’s just a normal Saturday morning. Once upon a time, I lingered in bed to read Austen or Chesterton. Now I’m clicking through last week’s American Idol open-thread comments at MamaPop, and even THAT isn’t the new low.

No, rock-bottom is when I spot a link in the MamaPop sidebar called “Ten Things I Learned About Amazon,” and I click it even though I know it will probably take forever to load on my phone, and then when it does load I discover that I read the link wrong. The post is called “Ten Things I Learned about the Amazon.”  THE Amazon, not Amazon.com.

Oh sure, if the kids were around—the ones too old to get half an hour’s entertainment out of gumming a bottle of Opti-Free Express—I could muster up some almost-genuine enthusiasm for learning cool new facts about a South American river. I’m a homeschooling mama pro, after all. But no, what I’m looking for on a lazy Saturday morning is more to the tune of insider gossip or bargain tips for the online bookseller who may as well just have a direct line to my bank account.

The thought that there might be Ten Things I didn’t yet know about Amazon.com made my heart go pitty-pat, right before my brain shuddered in disgust at the diet of junk food I insist upon feeding it nowadays. Remember when you used to feed me Chesterton? it whispered mournfully.

Shut up, brain. Who do you think shipped you all those Chesterton books anyway?

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.

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.

Hello Twinkness my old friend

There are just really a lot of kids in this house. Four or five at least. Frankly I’m not quite sure because they don’t stand still long enough to be counted. All I know is it takes like half an hour to buckle them into the van, every time. Also, the diapers. I’m pretty sure there are only two in diapers but if that’s so then how is it possible I am ALWAYS changing one? Or needing to.

So today I was at the grocery store with all of them. I had called two different friends, hoping to pawn some of the kids off and therefore save myself from the buckling, but no one was home. I bet they were at the pool. Lounging, even. But, you know, passel of kids, my choice, Mrs. Devout Catholic and all that, plus you know I’m really extremely fond of them except for the incessant diapers and the buckling, so I piled them in the van and forty-five minutes later everyone was buckled (and two of them? Also in need of a diaper change) and we went to the supermarket. Which I really don’t think is very super, because it doesn’t carry Paul Newman’s Sesame-Ginger salad dressing. I ask you.

Milk. More milk. Several blocks of cheese, to complement the milk. Look! Yogurt. We are the all-dairy-all-the-time family. Who needs vitamin C? That’s why God created Flintstones chewables. But I realize I can’t check out with a cart containing only one food group (that reminds me: ice cream), so I branch out and get some chocolate too. That’s a food group, right? Or possibly a pharmaceutical.

Meat, there’s another group. Look, kids! Just one more and we wil have achieved balance! Where’s the bread?

And that’s when I saw them. On the bottom row, below the Pepperidge Farm Farmstyle 100% Whole Wheat and Also Caramel Color and Corn Syrup.

Twinkies.

Oh my little friends, it has been a long time. For ten years now I have been a Good Mother and shunned you. I have long since ceased to notice you: like a primitive tribeswoman, I ignored you until you did not exist.

But you have come back from the underworld. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the exhaustion: perhaps lack of sleep has edged me to a hallicinatory state the likes of which Carlos Castaneda only dreamed of. All I know is, you’re back, and your voice is sweet. You called to me from the bread aisle, and I answered.

I diverted the children’s attention with a ruse: Look! Do we know that guy? (pointing the other direction)

No, Mommy, I don’t think so, says Polly, all sweet innocence. Little does she know that I have whisked a box of my new best friends into the cart under the shredded wheat while she was peering down the aisle.

Back in the parking lot, I hardly noticed the buckling. My mind was filled with the crinkle of plastic, the soft sticky sponge, the (my heart beats faster) cream filling.

And now the children are all in bed, the whole five or six of them, I swear there’s another one every time I turn around. And I’m alone with my ten individually wrapped best friends. I mean nine.

Actually eight. Shut up.