Quote of the Day

While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most uninhibited, intimate and, yes, shocking details about our config.sys settings. ~Dave Barry

Aug 20, 2007

Men and Babies

Ok, not to offend all of you men, but I am sorry, it just has to be said. I am so tired of the playing dumb trick!!! As if we don't catch onto it. As a matter of fact, unbeknown to you men, we women receive a booklet on this trick that is handed down from bride to bride, dating back to the beginning of time. It's called "I Know He's Smart, He Knows He's Smart, So Why Does He Play Dumb?"

There is something about the sight of a baby, a child, a mess, a kitchen, and a few random things (spoons, turkeys, the buttons on the TV -- as opposed to the remote, the handle on the refrigerator door, a washing machine, a hanger...) that turns men into drooling buffoons. They think that we think this is real. But we all know that it is fake. We all know that you guys are just acting like you don't know how so that we will be forced to do it.

I walked in on my dearest the other day "taking care" of the baby, or as he calls it, "really trying". The baby was laying on the couch and my husband was sitting next to him. The baby had his pacifier stuck to his cheek, and he was wailing. My husband had the remote stuck to his hand, and he was watching ESPN. Here is the ensuing conversation...

Me: Did you not hear the baby?
Hubby: Yes, I tried to calm him down, but he just won't.
Me: You tried?
Hubby: Yes, I really tried
Me: What did you do?
Hubby: Everything...I gave him his la (pacifier). I said "Shh". Everything.
Me: Did you pick him up?
Hubby: Yes, but he wouldn't quit, so I set him back down. He just wants to be mad.
Me: Did you stand up with him?
Hubby: (astonished look) Why??????? He just has a bad attitude, so why would I stand up?

Ok, seriously? Everyone in the universe knows that the first thing you do with a crying baby is hold and stand. Everyone. Even my dad, who is the president of the World Association of Pretending Like You Don't Know Stuff, knows this, although he would never admit to it. But somehow, my darling husband, father of six babies, has never even heard of such a thing, and has never thought to even try it, and according to him, the baby was so mean to him that he didn't even deserve to have it tried in the first place!

Playing dumb works on other things, as well. It starts at engagement with wedding planning. You ask him to do one wedding thing, and he says something about how he really wants to, but he just doesn't know...and before you know it, you are so scared that he will ruin the most important day of your life that you don't even talk to him about the wedding until after you have walked down the aisle and you are looking at pictures.

After the wedding, it is a permanent condition. It happens at dinner ("Honey, I don't know how you do it, but I just can't seem to fit these dishes in the dishwasher. If you come do this, I will do flip through the channels until I find a movie for us"). It happens at holidays. ("Sweetheart, you are so good at knowing just the right thing for everyone." ) It happens with your in laws. ("My mom really does like you best, I think you two should talk and make all the plans, and I will just be there.")

And finally, there are babies. Babies take this permanent condition and turn it into something that is degenerative. The first baby, the guys know about 75% of what the women do. Every subsequent baby takes away a big chunk of knowledge. It's weird, because the moms learn more with each child, and the dads forget more. So, this man I married, who could have cared for my oldest son better on his own than I could've, has no ability whatsoever to even place a pacifier in our sixth child's mouth, let alone change a diaper without getting piddled on, feed a toddler without making a clown face, give baths without turning the bathroom floor into a swimming pool, or spend an evening watching the kids for me without them learning at least one naughty word.

So, boys, don't be fooled -- we know that you are just pretending. As if the person who can go to work and keep track of what forty other people are doing is not able to watch a baby who is unable to walk without losing him. Or the man who can take an engine apart and put it back together and have it work better is unable to figure out how to fasten a diaper correctly. We know better. We just let you get away with it because we really are dumb. (Which is why, no, we do not know how to use a plunger or kill wasps!)

Aug 14, 2007

Jesus Salad

My children have come up with the strangest names for things, as I am sure all children have. We have new names for almost everything in our house. Here are a few...

"mamoke" means remote
"la-la" means pacifier
"ya-ya" and "mo-mo" both mean Elmo
"swole-ing" means garage sale (I have no idea...)

There are some words that we just don't like, so we make them a little better...

foots instead of feet
bestest (who hasn't said that?), gooder (better) and badder (as in my brother was badder than me, so I shouldn't be in trouble)
mine instead of ours... :)
woowoowoowoo instead of dog
aaaaahhhhhhh instead of horse...
mouse trapper instead of mouse trap

...see? These are just more fun. They are gooder than the real words.

Being boys, and everything being a contest, the oldest have come up with about a hundred ways to say fast...fire fast, super fast, superman fast...I am not sure which one is the fastest, but that is probably good, because each son can think that his word is the fastest, and everyone is happy.

We have a little chore chart that we use to try to bribe our oldest four into doing what we want. (This doesn't work, either, by the way.) We call it a star chart. My two year old daughter can not say those two words together to save her life. She can say each of them separately, but together, they come out without fail as "char start", making it sound as if we are going to burn down the house every evening that they have done well. The funniest thing is that she has the boys saying it, now, and they can't get it right. So at bedtime every night, we have five kids running around yelling,"YAY! It's time to char start! YAY!!!!!"

The best here lately is a new phrase. Jesus Salad is the name of a rosary. I have some idea of how this got started, but it is still a little shaky. I think it has something to do with the fact that it is green. I overheard the boys talking about it, and it went something like this...
6 yr. old - I want this one because it's my favorite color.
5 yr. old - Well, I want this one, it's blue.
6 yr. old - That's blueish-greenish
4 yr. old - It looks like a salad
6 yr. old - It can't be a salad - it's a rosary.
5 yr. old - It's Jesus Salad color.
Other two in unison -- ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
And now, every night, we have a huge fight over who gets to use "Jesus Salad", which is odd, considering that none of my kids will go near a salad, and cry when I drag them to church, insisting that there is no way it has been seven days already. Maybe if we come up with better names for church and salad, I would have the healthiest church-goers around.

Aug 8, 2007

Stain Chart

Laundry time again! When is it not, right? Anyway, I have been discovering a new love for stain removal, ever since I discovered that I can't pass down half of my oldest girls clothes, because she ruined them much worse than the boys ever thought about. Now, every load of girls' clothes is like a battlefield, with Tide and Spray'n'Wash as the weapons. It has made me realize that almost everything in your laundry room has some kind of stain chart. If you look under your washer lid, there is one there. There is one on every detergent bottle, on the bleach bottle, on the stain remover bottle (you would think it would just say "spray me for everything")...they are everywhere. And they are completely useless.

Unless you have committed a murder in a very grassy area while spilling a glass of red wine down your shirt, there is no use for this chart. I have looked and looked, but nowhere does it tell you how to get mustard out of your clothes or out of the dogs fur. So if you are wondering where to find a yellow dog, I am your man, because that stuff does not go away!

If you have kids, you will understand the next two...baby poo and "drool bib". You would think that someone would have developed a line of baby clothes that is poo resistant, but they have not. If you wash it within one hour, it comes out like a dream. Any later than that, and your kid is a walking scrapbook of how much he likes or dislikes any particular outfit. "Drool bib" you have seen if you have a drooler. This is for the kid who drools all the time, and constantly has a wet spot on the front of his shirt, shaped like a bib. (Yes, at this point I have figured out that a bib would have taken care of that problem, but it's too late now!!!) The wet spot then attracts anything within 100 feet of the kid. So, by the time the shirt gets to the stain removal stage, you have no idea what is there, but you do know that it's not grass, blood or wine. (If you have been at a function with your childless aunts or uncles, you may want to check the wine thing, though, which could have been the cause of all the drooling.) So, therefore, a little chart in there for "drool bib" is totally called for. Also, this would be good for many older members of my family, because apparently, a lot of us missed swallowing class, and at any given time, at least three adults are sporting drool bib.

There is also nothing on any stain chart for pink lemonade. Pink lemonade is what you give your kid when you aren't being mean and making them drink water, and you don't want them to have pop. And it's a much bigger mess than anything else. I know some people would argue with me that Kool-Aid is the bigger mess, but I don't think so. When you hand a kid a glass of Kool-Aid, you also say something like,"IF you spill this, I am going to go track down (here insert the latest Harry Potter monster that has been keeping them up at night) to clean up the mess, and WHEN he is done, I am going to let him drag you down to his cave to dine on you at will." See? With Kool-Aid, there is fear there -- that kid is NOT going to spill that drink, and if he does, he will do whatever he can to make sure that you never know about it. But with lemonade, you think,"Hey, it's pink -- light-pink, even. And it's mostly water, so I'm good, right?" NOPE! That's where it all goes wrong!!! As soon as you give that cup away, at least half of it is soaking into the kids clothes before you even turn around. Why??? Because there was no element of DANGER!!! You just handed it over as if it were nothing. No, an ounce of terror as you hand off the drink would have totally eliminated the need for a pink lemonade stain chart, had you known any better. And now, standing by the washer, holding a white (and pink) shirt that is sticky and also covered in ants, you have nowhere to turn, because pink lemonade is not on the chart.

Spaghetti....need I say more? I can't even get the stuff off of my tile. That is the one meal my kids are allowed to eat naked, preferably while sitting in the tub, as well.

Cheetos. Why isn't there instructions for Cheeto slime??? Ok, I know that Cheetos are just orange powder and shouldn't be worthy of stain-fighting, but that's just not true! When a child eats a cheeto (and it need only be one), the orange powder (cheese???) mixes with whatever else is around (yup, enter pink lemonade and drool) and makes something else. Orange dye or something. And that is a very common problem, and there is no stain chart option that includes cheetos!!!

So, I have come to the conclusion that it is the clothing manufacturers who write those charts, just so you will have to buy more clothes. And somewhere, hidden in the basement at Levi, is a real chart, that only the clothing lords have access to, while the rest of us are standing in our laundry rooms, fists clenched, looking at the ceiling and wondering just how we are supposed to get silly string out of the baby's bloomers.

Aug 7, 2007

Drunken Spiders

Well, I got to take a shower yesterday! It was very exciting, because I woke up before the kids. This meant that I could shower without a four-year-old asking me why my butt is so big if it is not going to have a baby. Needless to say, that sort of shower is very exciting, so I jumped out of bed and started the water going.

It really is the simple things that matter most, right? So, still blissfully unaware of any evil, I get clothes together, find a razor, and jump in. BRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is no hot water! Ok, well, that's ok. That just means I will be REALLY awake for the rest of the day. Most people might go reset the water heater, wait an hour and take a shower then. I, on the other hand, would have to wait another three days to take a relaxing shower, so I decide to brave the frozen waters and pretend I am rafting or glacier hunting or whatever people do where the water is cold. Ok, so I begin soaping, and I am telling myself that it's not that bad, it's kind of nice, actually. I have no idea why it's kind of nice, but I keep telling myself that, hoping I will believe it.

Ok, so I didn't die. So now it's shampoo time. Up until this point, I had not been brave enough to get my hair wet, but it's time to take the plunge. I tilt back my head and squeeze my eyes shut, and waited for the brain freeze to stop. As soon as it did, I opened my eyes and screamed. There is a nice little light right in the middle of the ceiling over my shower. There was a nice big spider crawling out of it. And I am not scared of spiders, but this one was drunk. I am not kidding. It was trying to crawl away from the light, but it was going in this lopsided, zig-zag line, and at any given point in time, at least two of his legs were overcome by gravity and poking down toward, well, toward me, actually. I watched for a minute, and realized that gravity works on drunken spiders just like it does on drunken people. After each swerve, the spider would correct his course again, and promptly fall off of the ceiling. (Most drunk people only fall off a sidewalk, but hey, we aren't spiders.) He caught himself with a little web, I guess, but then he would actually get that all caught in his legs and fall again. Ok, I want out of the shower.

I am not scared of spiders, but I have a serious phobia of things being stuck in my hair. Actually, there are a lot of bugs I am scared of, and 90% of that is from the possibility of them being somehow caught in my hair, forcing me to run until I die, trying to get away from my own hair, knowing the whole time that I could just cut that piece off if I could stop long enough. This has never happened, but I have obsessed over it so much that I am pretty sure this is how I will eventually die. Ok, since I did have a lot to do yesterday, I wasn't quite ready to die yet, and this spider was a serious threat.

I decided to hide while I washed my hair, and to skip any extras, like conditioning or shaving. I hid under the water, and began to shampoo. I was looking up, back against the wall, the entire time, making sure that the drunk spider-of-certain-death wasn't going to meander over to my side of the shower. I rinsed with my eyes open and watching, until I got shampoo in my eyes. I had to stop and rinse out my eyes, all the while keeping my back to the wall. I still had a head full of shampoo when that swaying spider headed my way. I decided to jump ship and rinse my hair in the sink. I took a deep breath, judged the distance to the nearest shower-curtain opening, and made a leap for it. I immediately sprang right backwards, knocking my head into the wall as I went the complete opposite direction that I was supposed to be going!

This was because, as I was looking up and washing my hair, it had become tangled in a little bar of hooks (for hanging loofahs and things on) that my dearest recently attached to our shower wall. I am sure that, when he did that, he had no idea of the mortal danger it would eventually put me in as it barred my escape from the deadly spider.

I watched the spider as I tried to untangle my hair. It was getting closer and closer to my corner. It FELL! I said, in my loudest big-sister-I-am-the-boss voice,"NO, SPIDER!!!!". The spider had apparently had enough of the ceiling, so it decided not to heed my warning, and just come on down to the floor. It was heading right for my hair!!!! I yelled again,"NO, SPIDER! YOU CAN'T COME DOWN HERE!" It didn't work, but I did wake the kids up.

So, while the kids screamed and the spider inched his way down, I finally yanked my hair out of the hook, or out of my head (I still haven't checked to see which, but it did hurt), and leaped through the shower curtain like some kind of naked hairless superhero. And landed squarely on the wet tile (since dearest had removed the bath mat -- maybe he is out to get me), and proceeded to do a five minute get-my-balance dance that made me glad that I had locked the bathroom door. But I was safe! The drunken spider had changed his mind and gone back to the ceiling (probably about the time he realized that I was making the floor a very unsafe place to be).


I spent the next half hour freaking out because every one of my children were burning up as I got them out of bed, and I had no idea what to do. I really lost it when I realized that the baby was feeling like he was probably in a dangerous temp area, and we would probably all have to head to the hospital. So I made a pot of coffee, but, for some reason, the water was hot, even after I checked again to make sure it was on cold. At this point I discovered the reason that all my kids had fevers...my body temperature was so low after being trapped under the cold water for so long that they all felt hot to me, as well as the cold water.

From now on, I am going to check the ceiling before every shower, and when it comes down to it, just enjoy how much safer it is to take a shower while being insulted by a toddler!