Flight of Chaos

Welcome to Flight 453, Normalcy to Insanity, this is your captain. We have a slight change in schedule, so please bear with me. You will notice that there are no emergancy exits. In an emergency, please just put your hands over your ears and hum until it goes away. In case of fire, oxygen masks will drop down from the ceiling, nowhere near where you are sitting. Off to your left you will see the Mt. Dirty Clothes, surrounded by the Sea of Bathwater. To your right, notice lovely Helsinkydirtydishy, home of yesterday's dinner and sponsor of this year's Water Olympics for Children. That sound you are hearing is not dangerous, it is your mother-in-law knocking on the door. Although you will notice some smoke, it is no cause for alarm, your kids have put toys in the oven, and you have now succeeded in preheating them for dinner. That is good, because the roast you are planning on making just parachuted down into the Sea of Bathwater, along with everything else in the freezer, and your dog. We will be arriving in Insanity in a short time, after a ten-hour layover in Whathaveyoudoneallday. Thank you for flying Stay at Home Airlines, enjoy your flight.

Coffee and Nicotine

There is a line from a Sheryl Crowe song that says, "I been swimmin' in a sea of anarchy, I been living on coffee and nicotine. I been wondering if all the things I've seen were ever real..." I am not even quite sure what that song is about (Miss Sheryl and I have long been sufferers of a communication breakdown), but that line always resonates with me. I think it's because, no matter what could ever go on in the world or at home, I will always love coffee and cigarettes. I am pretty sure that is not what she is trying to say, but that is what makes sense to me. Every morning, as the kids and the husband are racing around, doing their morning thing, I am usually trying to find socks or backpacks, signing homework, checking the calendar, and just waiting on that coffee pot. Unfailingly, it is done as soon as the boys go to school. I grab a cup, sit down outside and have a smoke, and ignore the world for half an hour. It's heaven. Meanwhile, my three-year-old is coloring on the walls, my two-year-old is dumping out the trash, and the baby is crying...even though they all know it's supposed to be mommy's quiet time.

That song brings a mental picture of the world just exploding around me, and everything and everyone is in chaos, cars are out of control, news anchors are conjuring up emotions they forgot they had, and I am sitting on the front porch, screaming, "SHUT UP!!! I need my coffee first!!! Anyone got a light??? I can schedule in complete global destruction at 8:30, just as soon as I get in some toxins!" But really, at that point, what better thing to do than to all sit down and have some coffee? And I imagine that, if a few more politicians would take up smoking, we would not have so many issues. They would all be too busy coughing to do much damage.

The Science of Nursing

Well, I have nursed six babies, so far, and never have my kids thought anything of it. To them, it's just normal. I guess that is all over with now! The boys have been asking me lately why Daddy can't feed the baby (and I wonder the same thing)...I told them it's the same reason daddies can't be pregnant, because they are wimps and no babies would ever get born if daddies were in charge of it!

Well, my littlest has been on table food for awhile now, along with nursing. I sat him down with some KFC the other day, and he loved it. The other kids all had a picnic in the living room, so we were all just hanging out together. Donovan did well with his biscuits and macaroni, but he didn't seem too interested in the chicken. I finally sat with him on the couch to nurse him once more before he went to bed. For some reason, he just wouldn't do it. He would try and then just scream and scream. This brought all the older kids running, because, being elder siblings, they are certian that they know more about babies than I do. So, as they are all standing around, I reached into the baby's mouth and pulled out a HUGE wad of chicken that he had stuck to the roof of his mouth. This was causing all the problems. I laughed and watched my younger kids disperse, confident that they had saved their baby brother from whatever was getting him. The oldest two got the most weirded out looks on their faces and inched away from me on the couch. I saw Warrick's troubled look and asked him what was wrong. "I thought Donovan was supposed to only have milk.", he said. I explained that he was finally getting old enough for some other foods. Still with that weird look on his face (with Huston, equally perplexed, looking over his shoulder), he said, "But you said only milk came out of those! Does the chicken that you ate come out for the baby, too???" LMAO!!! I was sitting there, nursing the baby and eating chicking, and suddenly, I pull chicken out of the baby's mouth, so Warrick had come to the only logical conclusion. Huston had as well, from the look on his face but he refused to discuss, as usual.