Knitting, ringworm, nurses, and pink frilly things

Well, I armed myself with some needles, yarn, and a copy of Knitting for Dummies and I Can't Believe I'm Knitting. I've been practicing, creating untidy little swatches for the cats to play with. I am at last catching on to the basics.

I would not, by the way, recommend I Can't Believe I'm Knitting, which someone recommended on Amazon. It's okay for learning the knit stitch and the purl stitch, but it's starter project involves two colors of yarn! I can barely handle one. Knitting for Dummies takes the by far better approach of having you practice making ribbing, seed stitches and bobbles and all sorts of things. Later you can use your swatches in a project.

I think I still want to take a class.

Other news: Daycare called me yesterday to tell me Firecracker has ringworm and I should take her away for medical intervention. So I had to take her to the pediatrician this morning, who rolled her eyes and told me that daycares and schools overeact to everything, and just slap on some Lotrimin and a bandage and trot her right back to daycare. Oh, and no need to burn the bedding. Whew.

Firecracker's asthma is also acting up. She coughs like an old man. So we went through a round of prednisone, which made her a shade tetchy. Given that she's already pretty fiery, that week was not exactly pleasant.

DramaQueen is gearing up for the end of year recital. She's in a drama class and gets to play a sprite or something like that in Sleeping Beauty, which is going to mishmash all the dance and drama classes together into one performance. No doubt they've had to manufacture all sorts of roles to cover the whole academy. I'm happy to say that for the 60 dollars we had to shell out, the costume is very pretty and guaranteed to entertain the cats. The academy is wise to not to hand them out ahead of time. We've only been allowed to see a picture. Last weekend DramaQueen asked me why the academy's gift shop only sold stuff for ballerinas. The shop is full of pink dance skirts, pink t-shirts, pink filmy scarves, pink bags to hold ballet shoes, pink poodles, tiaras, china tea sets, and fairy dust (overpriced glitter). Firecracker sussed out a backpack with a train on it. It's the kind of shop that makes you want to go out an buy a chemistry set and some monster trucks for your girls to play with. I admit, though, that every week I look at the jewelry with a covetous eye. It's exactly the sort of place I would have pitched a tantrum in as a little girl, insisting that I had to have the china tea service. And the fairy wand.

Dear Husband has decided to see if nursing is in his future. This is what comes of doing unexpectedly well in math, which he was convinced would defeat him. He has decided to sally forth and conquer Anatomy and Physiology and Chemistry to see how he likes it. Dear Husband is a very proactive sort, so he has already put in his application to a nursing school, joined an online student nurses group, and signed up to volunteer at a hospice.

Meanwhile, I don't seem to have a spiritual life. I pray, or rather, chatter, to God, but I can't say that I take much time for contemplation. Well, for me contemplation is just one step away from sleep.

RevGal Friday Five, Southern Edition

The Friday Five is about classic family phrases; in my case most of these are part of the great body of Southern colloquialisms. I came up with way more than 5.

1. Crazier than a blind dog in a meat house.


2. You can’t get blood from a turnip.


3. You have the [family name] temper.


4. He doesn’t know his a** from a hole in the ground.


5. You can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear.


6. He’s got no more sense than a jackrabbit.


7. Runnin’ round like a chicken with its head cut off.


8. Give your momma (or daddy) some sugar.


9. I’m plumb tuckered out.


10. She was having a hissie fit.


11. I think you’re gettin’ too big for your britches.


12. Don’t you get sassy with me, missy.


13. I haven’t seen him in a coon’s age.


14. Crazier than a bessy bug.


15. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.


16. I don’t know him from Adam.


17. Stop all that caterwaulin’.


18. Lordy mercy (an all purpose phrase to express fatigue, surprise, dismay, and so on)

And the one that made me hoppin’ mad:

Intelligent people are never bored.

In Hiding

I have not had much time to post, nor much inclination. I’m not sure where I am, but it isn’t particularly good. I’ve been in hiding.

I think I spend lots of my time in hiding and pretense. I’ve spent a good deal of my life pretending one thing or another.  Childhood I spent hiding from myself that my mother was mentally unstable and both my parents hated each other. Consequently I had to hide them from my friends and pretend that I had a normal home life, one that wasn’t full of screaming, paranoiac rants and emotional violence. In college I hid behind a carefully constructed counter-culture image. It’s rather nice to instantly repel the people you would least like to talk to, simply by wearing certain clothes and dyeing your hair. I could hide my amazingly shy and self-conscious self behind a grand display of plumage. I started work I had to pretend that I was competent, or assertive, or downright aggressive, as the job demanded. Then I had to pretend that I knew how to be a mom.  I’m still pretending that.

Now, at work I pretend that I’m a conservative, orthodox Christian.  I bite my tongue and find myself fighting my own cynicism and negativity.  When they start bashing Democrats and liberals, I sometimes feel like screaming, “You’re talking about someone like me!” The people I work with are wonderful, caring people. They love God passionately. I doubt I would find another job where my employers are so understanding about the need for moms to take off for sick children and school events. But there is no way on earth I could ever be real with any of them.  I don’t express my true views about anything: parenting, women clergy, homosexuality, the war in Iraq, President Bush, immigration, biblical inerrancy, evolution, predestination, sovereignty.  The list goes on.  My beliefs about any of these would find me on the wrong side of the fence.  I spoke with someone who mentioned that a vote would be taken by Denomination X on ordaining homosexual clergy, and that he knew for a fact that a lot of people in Denomination X weren’t even Christian.  There is a lot of talk about “true Christians.” Who is and isn’t in the camp. Do you go to church every week? The right church—an orthodox reformed church with no taint of liberal theology? Read the Bible every day? Vote Republican? Believe that creationism should be taught in school and that the United States should make Christianity the state religion? Think that homosexuals should be barred from certain jobs and denied partnership rights (but loved, oh yes, they should be lovingly taught their essential wrongness)? You might pass.

I don’t pass, not nohow, not noway.

What's Going On in My World

1. DramaQueen lost another tooth and says several more are loose.
2. New neighbors moved into the apartment next to us. They have a daughter DramaQueen's age and a son Firecracker's age. What's really nice is that the mom seems really happy that there are kids next door to play with. You'd think that would go without saying, but it doesn't.
3. I have more work than I can do. The powers that be have begun the process to find someone to help. I won't hold my breath.
4. Dear Husband is taking math classes. He has lived in dread of this for a while, but he's actually doing well.
5. I bought hair color on sale.
6. I found knitting classes at a craft store, but I'm not sure we're going to be able to fit this in at the moment. Meanwhile, the other night I had a vision of doing the knit stitch. It was very clear.
7. I want to see V is for Vendetta. Stephen Fry is in it somewhere, and I always like to see Stephen Fry (If you haven't read his book The Liar, I recommend you go out and find it now, just so you can read the part about the discovery and critical reception of a long-lost Dickens manuscript about Victorian rent boys).

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair / Flow it, show it / Long as God can grow it

1) Do you like your hair?  I am fine with my hair. I wish it had less gray at the moment. Less gray without me having to dye it.

2) Have you ever colored your hair? Oh, Iused to dye my hair all the time. Back in the 80s I had one of those asymetrical cuts and a tail (remember tails?). I sometimes bleached a section of my hair in the front and the tail, and sometimes I dyed them pink or blue. I tried bleaching my hair once—it came out the color of butterscotch pudding. I was okay with that. I dyed my hair blue-black quite a few times—really got into the goth look. And then there’s red, which until I started getting quite a bit of gray, was my dye color of choice.

3) What's the longest you've ever worn your hair? The shortest? The longest would have been mid-back, way back in my childhood days. I frequently wore it in braids then. Sometime in my mid twenties I started getting it cut about as short as a guy’s. Those were the flannel shirt years.

4) When and what was your worst. haircut. ever? In sixth grade I got a Toni Tenille haircut.  Say no more. Then in my teens I got my hair cut short and permed. I think I looked a bit like a mad poodle.

5) Tell us a favorite song or scene from a book or movie dealing with hair. How dull I am. I really like the movie of the musical Hair, and I like that song about, well, hair: “My hair like Jesus wore it / Hallelujah I adore it”.  Also at the top of my list is the part in Little Women where Jo gets all her hair cut off and sells it. I thought she was so noble. I suppose I could be spiritual and pick the scene of the woman drying Jesus’ feet with her hair, but I just have to face the fact that the Bible is not the first thing that comes to mind.

A Gorey Death

What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?

You will swallow some tacks. You are a little weird, maybe not so much in a good way. Buy a yellow tie and wear it on your head.
Take this quiz!








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The Tooth Fairy Paid a Visit

Yesterday DramaQueen lost her first tooth! She was so excited. I convinced her to put the tooth in a box for the tooth fairy—the tooth is so very tiny, I was afraid I would never find it under a pillow.

RevGal Meme: Practices Past, Present, and Future

The RevGal Friday Meme is about what we practice, now and in the past. None of these have anything to do with Lent, which I don't observe. So, here are four things I have practiced:

1) Yoga. Unfortunately this is a past practice. I have scoliosis. Most of my youth it didn’t bother me, but in my late twenties I started noticing some stiffness, and once I pulled my back severely. After that I started doing yoga regularly, and my back felt great. I kept this up for several years, but then I became interested in improving my cardiovascular health, and I couldn’t manage to do both yoga and aerobics, so the yoga went.

2) Curves. I’ve been going to Curves regularly for about two years. I’m probably the only person who has managed to gain weight while going to a gym, but I feel like at least my muscles are strong. I like Curves because I don’t have to think about what machine to use or exercise to do: there’s one sequence and that’s all ya got. When I have too many options I tend to dither.

3) Breastfeeding. This taught me what “natural” really means. Oh yeah, that was a bigger commitment than I realized at the time. I pumped milk at work, and I decided that I wouldn’t worry if DramaQueen wasn’t weaned until three or four. Well, ah, teething turned out to be a real challenge, and then when I was pregnant with Firecracker I began to feel a teensy bit resentful of the whole business. And then when Firecracker was born so early, I was determined to give her breast milk because it’s ideal for premature babies. She was fed through a tube at first, because she was too small for either breast or bottle. I encouraged DramaQueen to keep nursing to keep the milk up. And then little Firecracker adamantly refused to nurse, despite lactation consultants and devices and sheer will on my part. The hospital was very supportive but it was an hour away and I couldn’t be there at every feeding, so she had bottles of my milk. When she came home I pumped and gave the milk to her in bottles and endured multiple bouts of mastitis, and began to have to mix milk with formula. DramaQueen then weaned herself and that was the end of my milk supply. I am not sure that I have ever been so determined about anything, even if it meant putting my health on the line (and I did end up in the hospital for three days with a raging infection). When a La Leche League leader tells you you might want to let it go, you know you’ve perhaps gone too far.

4) Reading to my children. Now, I have to admit that I don’t always get to the recommended book a day with DramaQueen, but she’s at an age where she’s trying to read by herself, so I count the “Mom, what does __________spell?” that I hear every 2 minutes. We go to the library every weekend and get way more books than we can ever read. I love books and am so happy that the girls love them, too.

Now, as to something I might like to make a practice, maybe.

The other day when I picked up DramaQueen from after-school care, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Mom, I learned how to finger knit and we have to get some yarn now.”

I had heard about finger knitting because it’s big in Waldorf and Montessori schools (the schools I dream about but can’t afford), but I know pretty much zilch about these sorts of crafts. My mom was an excellent seamstress and loved sewing and embroidery, so I was taught a certain amount about that, but I wasn’t very interested. Knitting was not among her interests, perhaps because it’s bloody hot in South Georgia and the need for knitted items is minimal. But I looked up finger knitting so I could help out DramaQueen, and she knit a little scarf. It’s full of errors that of course I didn’t mention, because she is enormously proud of it and wants to make one for Firecracker, and make a lot for people in hospitals and shelters. I tried it myself and found it oddly satisfying. Now I’m wondering if I might like to learn to knit with actual needles.

I did teach myself to knit once before when I was in high school. I don’t know what inspired me, but I bought some needles and a skein of yarn and pored over the instructions in my mom’s Reader’s Digest craft book. I taught myself to cast on and the knit and purl stitches. How I did this I don’t know, because when I read instructions for this now I’m utterly baffled. Anyway, I knit a swatch and then, because my mom wasn’t interested and I didn’t know how to move from swatch to anything else, I abandoned it. I was a teenager and knitting was not a common pastime among teenagers in the 80s. Hmm, this reminds me of the macramé craze that swept the 6th grade in 1978/79. I think, as in most things, we were well behind the national interest. All the girls made macramé handbags. Mine had bamboo handles. But I digress.

So, if anyone has any advice on how to start knitting without taking a class (which would be my preference if I could actually schedule this into my life, but it just isn’t humanly possible), let me know.

Possession Is Nine-Tenths of Something

Yesterday I started reading Glimpses of the Devil by M. Scott Peck. I picked this up at the library because Peck is a psychiatrist, so I thought he might have something interesting to say about evil.

After reading about three quarters of it, I can say that it’s relatively entertaining but not very convincing. Some of it is laughable. He picked up some idea (from Malachi Martin) that possessed people have remarkably smooth skin and unwrinkled faces. Oh give me a break. Demons as botox—everyone will want one.

It didn’t help that he laid the blame for his second patient’s possession on an “evil” book, Gods’ Man. From the way he talked about it, you’d think it was some arcane book of the occult. I looked it up and it turns out that it’s by Lynd Ward, one of our premier illustrators, and it does not have a history of destroying the lives of those who viewed it (and given that it sold very well, it got quite a viewing). The story, a parable of an artist selling his soul to the devil (which is the most pedestrian story ever—Faust, anyone?) is told entirely through woodcuts—no text. Looking at a few of the woodcuts from the book, I can’t see anything particularly malevolent. Goya’s “Disasters of War” collection was more viscerally disturbing. I felt like jumping under a bus after going though an exhibit of those drawings. And those weren’t parables at all. They were about real events.

Anyway, his credibility went kerplunk for me, because he obviously didn’t know anything about the history of the book or its creator. And he also got a lot of his info on exorcism from Malachi Martin, who seems to have been either a complete charlatan or just a manipulative bastard. Peck admits that he was himself manipulated, but he felt loved.  Isn’t that sweet?

Despite the fact that I think the book is shaky in its conclusions, I still found it pretty creepy. Both these women had been abused and had pushed that information way way back. That in itself is disquieting. I was also disturbed by Scott’s premise that a victim’s need to believe a lie (everything’s fine, nothing happened) lays her open to evil. That seems possible indeed.

The reason I’m interested in the topic of possession at all is because my mother went through a period of obsession with it. When The Exorcist came out, she was keen to take me to see it with her. I was six.

Think about that, how we strive to protect our children from seeing unsavory things, yet my mother wanted to take her six-year-old daughter to see a movie about the possession of a young girl.

Even at six I knew something was wrong with this arrangement and flat-out refused to go. The movie was re-released when I was thirteen, and this time I did go with my mom.

Big mistake

That movie terrified me. I cried. I put my hands over my eyes and cried. I wanted to leave, buy my mother was fascinated. She was weird fascinated. For a very very long time I was seriously frightened that I could become possessed. I was worried that I would become possessed and chop up my parents with axes.

There was a period of time when there was something seriously wrong with my mom. Beyond the schizophrenia or bipolar or whatever she had, which was bad enough. When I was quite young I had a dream that I walked into the bedroom and saw my mother, but then I also saw her in the bathroom. I had two mothers, and one was fake. The fake one had two snaps at the base of her neck. I was scared of her. That seems like a classic dream about having a mentally ill mom—there’s nice mom and there’s hallucinating paranoid mom.

But then there was this possession obsession. She bought a few books on the subject. She tried to talk with me about it. I suppose, since she heard voices, that she wondered if she was possessed. She seemed to imply that maybe I was. Or could be.

She went through a spell of buying True Detective magazines. If you’ve never encountered one of these, they are all about violence--describing violent acts in gloating, graphic detail. I picked one up once to see what she was reading and felt physically ill, and pretty freaked out that my mom devoured this trash.

She bought a Oija Board. This was something I stayed faaaaar away from. I had no interest in talking to dead people. I wanted dead people to stay faaaar away.

She bought me a collection of ghost stories. This was no innocent collection of folklore—these were horrible, lurid stories.  Of course, my mom did once choose to read as a bedtime story “The Tale-Tell Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. Pleasant dreams, little one.

So I spent a good bit of childhood and adolescence scared out of my wits.  After I left home for college my mom lost her weird obsessions and started reading Aquinas and William James. Even her bipolar schizophrenia whatever seemed to go into remission for long stretches, so that by the time I was a mother she was just a sweet, intelligent woman who could have been happy studying in a seminary.

To this day I do not like the dark, and I will not look in mirrors in dark rooms. I will never watch The Exorcist again—I can’t even bear to hear any of the sound. I’m still uneasy about what might be under the bed. Seriously. Sometimes the memory of one of my biggest childhood fears—a hand coming out from under the bed to grab me—flashes through my mind and I experience the same irrational terror, despite logic and years of experience.

RSVP

I always thought that RSVP had a very specific meaning.

My definition: You will phone to let me know your child will be attending Firecracker's birthday party, and you will also phone to let me know if your child will not be attending.

The definitions I'm assuming other people are using:
Option 1: I will phone you only if I know for sure we won't be there. But I don't know for sure. My kid might be bored that day.
Option 2: If I don't phone it means we'll be there. Maybe.
Option 3: If I don't phone it means we won't be coming. Probably.
Option 4: I will call you the day of the party and ask if it's too late to RSVP.
Option 5: haven't met you so I don't have to RSVP.
Option 6: Huh?

I hope someone of the 20 or so people I invited actually show up.


Update:

Well, exactly one child showed up. Luckily, Firecracker didn't seem to care. And it was just McDonald's.

The suggestions to call would be great, except that schools don't release phone numbers. And of course I have never met any of these parents. When would I? I work. So do they, I imagine. And there aren't many (make that any) after hours events. DramaQueen's teacher had the foresight to get permission from all the parents during orientation and gave us each a sheet of names and numbers. Of course, all DramaQueen's classmates RSVP'd to her party.

But it didn't much matter. Firecracker had a great time climbing through the McDonald's playground with her friend.

Conversion

I ran across a post today on conversion at Thoughts on the Way to the Abbey. I found it compelling because I never had any blinding flash of light conversion experience. Conversion seems like a rather slow and not always pleasant process, and accepting Christ as savior is just the beginning. I was “saved” at the age of seven or eight, when I didn’t have much understanding of what it meant, and then life led me away from faith and then I started inching up to it again. Anthony quotes a monk, Father Simeon, in his post. Here is what he says:

Father Simeon said that if conversion means anything,it must mean that your life is not going to be the same. If your life is basically the same after you said some words or something, you have not been converted. He said that he sometimes wonders when he hears people talk about their conversions, and he wants to ask them, "Is your life any different apart from a few added on religious observances? Has your life been disrupted?"

Has it disrupted mine? I have to admit that I very much like to be comfortable. I wonder how much conversion actually disrupts the lives of most Christians. I witnessed a lot of emotional walks to the altar. People get caught up in the emotionalism of being saved--but as for fruit . . .

I was also captured by the idea of marriage as conversion:

He said everyone who has been married for very long has been called to conversion, because that's what marriage is, a call to conversion, though people seldom see it that way, and that may be a reason so many marriages fail. We enter marriage with the idea that "this person will enhance my life." Father Simeon says, "What, like a new Lexus will enhance your life?" And notice the emphasis on "my" life. Marriage is no longer my life, but our life.

Happy Birthday, Firecracker!

Firecracker is four today. She'll have a party later in the month, but tonight we celebrated with cupcakes piled hight with pink and white frosting. The girls have been buzzing with sugar all evening.

When Firecracker was born, she weighed only 1 lb, 15 oz. She wasn't much bigger than the Beanie Babies that the nurses used to prop up the various tubes that fed and oxygenated her. She was born at 26 weeks, and we didn't know if she would live, or if she would survive but have serious physical or mental problems. The doctors told us to prepare for a rollercoaster ride. But from her first days Firecracker was fiesty, and she made it through her two-month hospital stay with very few issues.

Some problems developed later--seizures, hypothyroid, asthma, learning delays. Tomorrow Dear Husband and I meet with her IEP team to discuss the strategy for next year. She has made dramatic progress over the past few months, but her language skills are nowhere near those of most four-year-olds. She can understand at a four-year-old level, but speaks (just barely) like a three-year-old.

Firecracker is such an affectionate child, lavish with hugs and kisses. She has never met a caretaker she couldn't charm. She runs after them saying "Big hug!" and they break out into smiles. DramaQueen is very protective of her, and Firecracker is pretty possesive of DramaQueen. When she can't find her, Firecracker says, "Where's my Bish?" (She can't pronounce DramaQueen's name, so this is her radically short version.)

Firecracker loves baby dolls, trains, Bob the Builder, and toy cars. She insists that all her clothes have pockets (which she stuffs with toy cars). When she's excited she pumps her arms up and down, shouting "Huwway! Huwway!" When she laughs, her whole body laughs.

Happy birthday, little Firecracker, little miracle.

The Number 12

Yesterday at the daycare after-school program, the teacher noticed that DramaQueen was writing down a number sequence

12, 24, 36, 48

so she explained how the sequence works and how to continue it.

All evening DramaQueen, using two-and-a-half hands, added 12 to increasingly large numbers until she got to 156. Then she started over again. She was very excited and pleased as punch with herself.

I don’t know how she ran across this sequence. And why 12? That’s an unwieldy number to manipulate when you have to use your fingers to add. I don’t think she understands that you can manipulate all numbers the same way. She just really likes 12.

Work Sure Can Ruin a Day

My job is beginning to feel like a three-ring circus, and there’s a man-eating tiger in every ring.

1. I’m taking a class in FrontPage so that I can take over updating our web site. This is daunting, since they want the web site redesigned.
2. I’m about a week behind getting our yearly devotional ready to go to the designer.
3. I forgot several steps relating to 2, which will delay matters even further.
4. Oh, and I have to promote the devotional, which involves setting up email campaigns to our churches and bugging other agencies.
5. I have to create a bunch of schedules for upcoming projects. This is always time-consuming.
6. The monthly e-newsletter is breathing down my neck.
7. An appeal letter that the director keeps saying will go away hasn’t gone away and I still have to write it.
8. I have to edit and update all our fliers. Oh, about half a dozen if not more. I think I have until May 1, but
9. There will be quite a few other things due by May 1, the cutoff date prior to big ol’ General Assembly.
10. Oh no, General Assembly.

The art instructor at DramaQueen's school chose her artwork for display at a new teacher training center in our county. She was one of two from the school, so this is my first official "brag" on my daughter. Dear Husband was so tickled he emailed everyone in our address book and posted the letter from the teacher on his blog.

Now We Are Six

This morning I let DramaQueen go into daycare ahead of me while I put Firecracker on her bus. Then I went in to give her a goodby hug and kiss. She looked at me warily and said a quick "bye-bye" that came out more like "ba ba," then gave me a perfunctory hug when I kept coming.

She was embarassed to hug and kiss me in front of the other kids.

I thought I had at least another couple of years.

On the way home this evening she asked if she could watch some television when we got home. I said she could either finish her movie or watch whatever was on "her" (Disney) channel.

"I'll watch whatever's on TV, if that's acceptable."

I'm getting teary-eyed here.

Sick in the Head

Literally. I stayed at home today with a sinus infection. And now it's evening. How did the time, my time of rest, go so quickly? Of course some of it was spent at the doctor's office and the pharmacy, but still, I feel so very tired. And whiney. And I always feel guily when I take a day off work, as if I'm kid playing hookey. And I feel guilty that the kids are still at daycare, even though I'm tired and sick. I dread the pileup of work on my desk tomorrow. I like my job. I like the people I work with. But this afternoon, when I was wandering the drugstore aisles waiting for my prescription, I saw a girl in a school uniform with her mom. And when I drove into the parking lot of our apartment complex, I saw another girl, walking home from the bus, and I felt such a pang of sadness. I wish I could be one of those moms who's waiting at home when their kids come in from school.

Why I Hate Mornings

I have a bit of a quandary that I’ve been dealing with all school year. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have to wake DramaQueen and Firecracker at 5:45 am so that Firecracker can catch the bus to her school at their daycare center. Firecracker goes to a special school that starts an hour earlier than DramaQueen’s school. It isn’t in our school district, and this has led to some complications with regard to transportation, pick-up times, and my job, all of which is too boring to explain here. Life is sooo unfair.

I could probably part the Red Sea more easily that I can get a three-year-old and a six-year-old out of bed at 5:45 am (unless it’s Christmas, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion). Getting them to bed earlier has not worked well—partly because by the time I pick them up after work and get them home, I would have about an hour to do get them fed and bathed before bed. Dear Husband might like that, but the girls have other opinions. And at the end of that hour, Dear Husband will be home and the celebratory dancing and chanting will commence: “Daddy! Daddy! Daaaadddddyyyy!”

(Have I mentioned that no matter what time Firecracker goes to bed, or how busy her day, at 10 pm I will find her sitting up in bed, bright-eyed, playing with a car?)

We have been conscientious about laying out clothes for the next day, having the backpacks and lunches by the door and the coats at the ready, and setting Mommy’s coffee maker to go off at 5:30 am. But all the preparation in the world cannot get around the fact that no one wants to be awake at 5:45 am. Including me.

It’s amazing how difficult it is to dress inert bodies.

And why do they put seams in children’s socks? If we can fly to the moon, can we not develop a seamless sock to save the sanity of moms across America?

But back to the early start conundrum. I think I have arrived at a solution. If I limit their clothing to sweats and leggings with t-shirts, they can sleep in what they will wear the next day! Problem solved!

You think I’m kidding.

DramaQueen's Birthday Party

DramaQueen has a smashing birthday party this past Saturday. She actually turned six on the 4th, but Christmas break makes it hard to coordinate an earlier party. We held the party at a plaster painting place. The manager lived up to her name by managing the children wonderfully. I didn’t have to do anything except sit in the front with some other parents and eat leftover pizza. She was truly amazing. Imagine organizing 13 excited, squealing six-year-olds in a space where everything is breakable. She maneuvered them neatly through donning a smock, choosing a piece to paint, and painting. Then she served pizza and set up a game of musical chairs. She even kept them all in line during the present opening segment. And at the end she was just as calm and collected as at the beginning. And it was her third party of the day. Whatever she has, I need it.

Anyway, we have more toys than she can play with. I still haven’t unboxed some of them. And what is with boxes these days? I need a tool set just to unlock a Barbie doll from its wrapping. I’ll be fishing those stupid twist ties out of the carpet for weeks. I also have a burning question: Who invented Polly Pockets? Whoever you are, you’re going to roast for it. These things have shoes that are smaller than my pinkie nail. That is so wrong.

Friday Five: Pleasures

1. Sex
2. Reading when I should be working
3. Chocolate, particularly a box of assorted chocolates, as long as they are mostly nut and caramel centers.
4. An iced Caramel Machiatta from Starbuck’s
5. Watching someone else clean my house

Bonus: The absolute quiet when Dear Husband takes the girls on an outing.