I am that mom.

The scene - Target at 5:00 on Sunday evening.

I never go at that time, and will never again. It was busier than I think I've ever seen it. The aisles were so full of people, I had a hard time maneuvering the 'kid cart' that held my two monsters and the three ink cartridges I needed for Monday's workday.

The offspring were fairly good in the beginning. I owe that to the fact that they inexplicably buckled themselves into their seats to be cool, and couldn't move much.

I picked up the ink cartridges and diapers, and headed to the promised toy department so they could look. The deal is this - they look, we don't buy. They can look at stuff they want to add to their birthday list or Christmas list, or whatever. They know this, we do it every time and it goes smoothly.

So this went fine.

In fact, except for a few outbursts here and there, my kids blended in with everyone else's.

Until we got to the checkout.

The lanes were thick with people. We got in behind one guy who had a fair amount of items, so it was a few minutes before she got to my stuff.

A few minutes of sheer hell. Followed by a few more minutes of even darker circles of hell.

My kids LOST. IT. Cooper wanted to look at the movies. Griffin wanted to look at whatever Cooper was looking at and in order to get out of the cart he was strapped into, he started screaming "GODDAMN IT! GODDAMN IT!" at the top of his lungs. I let him out of the cart.

Cooper threw a rather large fit because I wouldn't buy him {fill in the blank, I can't even remember now} and he lay down on the footrest of the cart. I told him to stand up so I could move forward without removing his head from his body, and he ignored me. I bent down and picked him up and he started pitching a gigantic fit, screaming and crying and claiming his foot hurt.

This went on and on and on, in one of those bits of time where you're sure it has come to a standstill and you will never move forward, except then at some point I found myself out at my car. I'd managed not to yell while in the store, that was a plus.

I did at one point whisper into Cooper's ear, "Do you see anyone else crying in this entire store? You are going to be in so much trouble for this when we get home." I didn't look one single person in the eye the entire time we were in the checkout lane. I know we had an audience, I believe a two year old shrieking "GODDAMN IT!" is a guarantee of that. The ride home was unpleasant. For them. Cooper even managed to remain silent in shame until we got home, which is some sort of record.

Clearly, I have lost control. Let's call it - I never had it to begin with.

I came home and spent a bit of time in the yard with Ruby, decompressing. Where have I gone wrong? What can I do to fix it? My kids are spoiled, that much is clear. I started working on the "no toys" campaign earlier in the summer when a lovely trip to the Botanical Garden ended with 14 minutes of screaming because I bought Cooper the wrong toy from the gift shop.

As I folded laundry tonight I contemplated my options. Running away from home is out of the question although it does hold quite a bit of appeal. Nanny 911 is also out, they'd probably edit my parts to make me and my kids look even worse than we already are, and nobody needs that trauma.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I've implemented a "no kids may come with Mommy to any store" rule that I plan to keep up until I no longer remember this incident. Which may be years from now.

- H

Reverse psychology

What a lovely Saturday. My hubs took my kids to a car show far far away, so they won't return until dinnertime. I have had the entire day to myself!

I'm trying to break out of my sewing hiatusfunkcollapse so I went to the fabric store and started in on a pattern/tutorial for Sewing in No Man's Land, one of the freshest awesome sewing blogs around.

As I was finishing up on the tulip pants downstairs, the doorbell rings. I start sprinting up, catch a fifty-pound whirling ball of brown lab puppy as she barrels into me on her way to the party, and opened the door to a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old, because there is no way that kid was older than eighteen, salesman.

He had on a shirt from a local construction company who will go nameless but their initials are Thomas Construction.

"Hello, we're doing some work in your area and I'm wondering if your next home project is going to be inside the house or outside?"

"Uhhm," (I was bent over with Ruby's collar in my hand) "we aren't planning any projects for now and my husband tends to do the work for us..."

"Because I noticed your gutters [as he looked up at them] and you probably are planning on replacing them--"

"Those gutters are copper. That's what copper gutters look like. We aren't replacing them, we have to worry about people trying to steal them. So no, thanks but no."

I shut the door. Hard.

Here are my sales suggestions for the afore-unmentioned company, since I've spent the last fifteen years in sales (I know, I'm shocked too):

1) Don't insult your customer or their gutters.
B) Don't send a kid to my house to sell home repairs if he isn't old enough to drive a car and have a mortgage.

- H

This is a trick question, right?

My eyeballs are burning and the Powerpuff Gurllzzz are almost over, so I'm a gonna share a quick story witchoo and then go nighty.

Yesterday morning I awoke at the beautiful hour of 4-dark-thirty to get to the airport and trek my ass over to Omaha. So I could pick up my manager and drive both of our asses to Des Moines, Iowa. Where we met with a woman, and then drove back to Omaha to meet with a man.

Then we ate dinner.

Then we went to our hotel, checked in, I called home, and collapsed in a heap of tired in the LOUDEST HOTEL EVER ON EARTH. It was so loud I thought there was some lunatic from housekeeping vacuuming the floor above me all night. Weird.

Anyway, I got up again at 4:30 (by now I'm hating my life, wishing I could win the lottery and just SLEEP AGAIN FOR CRIPES SAKES) and somehow drove us to the airport (probably shouldn't have been driving in my impaired fatigue state, but whatever, we made it). Flew back to San Louie.

Since the travel plans had gone all screwball on me, I returned home on Southwest. It's in a different terminal from my departure flight. There are two terminals. They used to be called East and Main, but now I've noticed they've renamed them TERMINAL 1 and TERMINAL 2 and we have all sorts of official-looking signage to help you figure it out, because clearly they think it's hard and they think the public are idiots which in this story is irony.

So I landed in TERMINAL 2, and walked outside where there was a shuttle bus waiting to take me to TERMINAL 1 where I'd parked my car. It was labeled TERMINAL SHUTTLE. Perfect.

As I climbed on board, the driver turned to me and said "Good morning! Where to?!"

"Um, Terminal 1?"

"Alrighty, then."

Uhh?

- H

Birds in flight

Thanks for tolerating, even remotely understanding, my whinefest yesterday. Whaaa, I didn't get a girl, whaaaaaa.

OK, over it. I was reminded today of friends we know who fear for their health, their lives. Allie, who is in the Mayo right now battling an undiagnosed autoimmune disease. Bob, who doesn't think he can go on with the plasmapharesis or whatever it is that's keeping him alive these days, since his years-long battle with multiple myeloma. Who doesn't think he can go on at all.

I get it. I am happy with what I have, and if I have to force one of my grown sons to have a mother-daughter relationship with me in twenty years, then so be it.

Speaking of sons.

They got haircuts tonight.

Cooper wanted a mohawk. So we got him a fauxhawk.

Fierce fauxhawk.

That caused him to win the footraces, despite a clear cheat headstart by the shorter opponent.

Score.

- H

Pissed, and I don't mean drunk

I still want a daughter. How lame is that? And it pisses me off! Not that I don't have one, that I still want one. It makes me feel like some sort of idiot for not being able to just move on, dammit.
Tonight on the way home from my in-law's I actually said outloud "we could adopt a little girl, you know." After he choked down the vomit in his mouth my husband said no we absolutely could not and our family is complete and we all need to be happy with that and decisions need to be made that are good for everyone and some other bullshit that I didn't hear because by then I was totally pissed.

You'd have thought that by now I'd totally be over it. But after refereeing my kids for the weekend, breaking up countless wrestling-slash-death fighting matches I found myself saying "couldn't just ONE of you been a GIRL, for crying out loud?!" Because I'm totally convinced that girls wouldn't be so flipping physical all the time.

But I don't really wish that either of my boys were girls. I just wish my life was different, that having a large family and lots of kids was a possibility. There would be all sorts of shape-shifting and personality-switching going on for this to be a reality, but a girl can dream.

Eh.

- H

Hey, Lunesta. Enough with the somnolence, kay?

Remember how last week I wrote about how I was all "I took a sleeping pill and it was the greatest thing in the world?"

Well, I was wrong.

On Thursday I had to drive to Joplin, Missouri and back. For those of you not familiar with the geography of Missouri, this is something like driving from New York to Miami and back. Four hours down, four hours back.

I got back at dinnertime, did baths, got the kids to bed, and tried to lay down.

No dice. My body was still buzzing as if I was on the highway.

So, hey, I had the great idea of taking another Lunesta! I slept like a champ.

And I haven't woken up since then. Seriously, since taking that stinking pill on Thursday night I've been dragging my ass around in a sleeping pill fog. I can sleep at any time, anywhere. Last night while the kids and I were waiting in the car for my hubs to run into Lowe's and get a part for something or other I dozed off in the front seat. I take naps during naptime and go to bed at 9:00 with Cooper. I sleep til 7:00 and could stay in bed longer if my kids would. They won't.

I knew it was too good to be true.

No more sleep aids for me. After I get up from this next nap I'm going to google how to get rid of sleep aids that won't leave your body. First I need to lay down.

- H

Self portrait, sort of. Not really.

This is all I can put together for today's self portrait. Partly because I want to share my absolute favoritest clogs ever right now until I find other clogs that become my favorites, and partly because my ENTIRE BODY HAS TURNED DISGUSTING.



I don't know what happened! I didn't start eating differently. I even ran out of my bestest ice cream sandwiches from Costco, so it isn't because I was eating one of those every day.

No, it's a mystery. But my body is not cooperating with me and it's ballooning.

So these, dear friends, these are the best part of me this week. My slightly swollen veiny feet, clad in my bestest blue woven Swedish Hasbeens.



I love Swedish Hasbeens. I even ordered some mustard yellow boots that I found on clearance somewhere, but sadly they didn't fit. Cause I couldn't pull them on my fat feet.

If my train of thought seems slightly askew, it's because it is. I just read this post by Aunt Becky (who is younger than me, and we call that irony people) on Mommy Wants Vodka that really has me thinking. And by thinking I mean staring off into space with an empty head.

Becky's right. It's beige paint, this watered down version of what's really going on in people's lives. I don't know anyone in real life whose life is beige paint. Oh, wait, there's a girl I work with who seems kind of beige until I remember that she was carrying on a long term affair with another married man and then broke both of those marriages up to be with her man, and there were kids involved and dogs. But if you met her? You'd totally yawn and think "beige paint," and you'd probably order her a cheeseburger because she seems kind of malnourished.

I actually feel guilty, writing something real and then editing it for content. I don't know why, it kind of feels like lying. And then sometimes I feel guilty for not editing the content. For telling anyone and everyone what's going on. Ack, this is a dilemma. Not nearly as big a dilemma as why the hell my weight keeps going UP when I'm eating LESS THAN I'D LIKE TO.

- H

Hello yello

If you like gardening, and you know you do, then this time of year can be especially frustrating. The flowers are pretty much over, especially if you've had a vicious hot summer like we have. We started with 100 degree weeks back in May. Nothing has grown properly this year, except maybe the grass fungus?

By now, this is all that's left of my garden. Coneflower seeds. Uuuuuggly.


Every year at about this time I start to think "oh, I should just cut those stalks down, they're hideous." And then I step outside one day and I'm reminded of why I leave them up.

Cause I love these little guys. And they love the hideous stalks of seeds. It's like a smorgasbord for birdies.


I don't know where Yellow and his ladyfriend Slightly Muddy Yellow live during the rest of the year, but in August they live at my house! Oh, and you know what else is awesome about leaving up the coneflower seeds for the Yellows? Now there are a lot more coneflower plants living around here. In my neighbor's yard, for instance. Where the word "yard" is a stretch. Where it could be called "barren nuclear wasteland with weeds." Or something like that.

- H

I love you, Lunesta

I haven't been sleeping well lately. It's a shock, I know, but the shaky job situation (oh, did I fail to mention that my group has been given a heads up that our futures are questionable?), the Summer of Diarrhea, the little boy sleeping in a Big Boy Bed, the Big Boy moving to an even bigger school, they've all managed to wake me up around 2:00 every night and help me flail around in bed, trying to get comfortable and fall back to sleep and failing miserably.

I'm really resistant to taking sleeping pills. I know, everyone else is doing it, but I never did. I'd go to meetings and hear everyone talking about popping an Ambien so they could sleep in a hotel. Not me! I can sleep like the dead in a hotel, it probably has something to do with 90% of the above-mentioned issues being temporarily out of sight.

I heard this crazy story from the Ambien rep a few years ago, about a woman who took an Ambien on a Friday night. She woke up on Saturday morning, refreshed and ready to go. Her kids were dawdling so she said "come on, guys, we've gotta get ready for the soccer game and birthday party" or whatever it was they had planned for the day - it was a big day with lots of events they had lined up.

Her son said "mom, we already did all that, that was yesterday." That's right, folks, she woke up on Saturday and went about her day business as usual and had absolutely no memory of it. Total amnesia. That story scared the crap out of me. She drove her kids around!

Anyhoodle, a couple days ago I had to wake up early to go to Omaha, and my eyes could barely function they were so swollen. That night, I caved. I took my first 2 mg Lunesta and slept great! Not like I was drugged. I was still able to wake up and help Cooper at whatever hour it was he needed help (will these little people NEVER sleep through the night without waking??!!), and fell right back to blissful sleep.

I did it again the next night.

Two nights and I kind of felt like a junkie. A well-rested junkie. A junkie with slightly smaller bags under her eyes. Now I'm scared to go to bed without taking one. What if I have a horrible night and totally regret it? Then again, I'm also not interested in being hooked on sleeping pills, especially since I've seen the damage they can do.

You know what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about Hope on Days of Our Lives. Don't pretend like you don't read Soap Opera Digest when you're in the grocery store checkout line. I even bought one last week, it was a new low for me.

Apparently, Hope started taking sleeping pills to deal with the insomnia from her divorce and then she started waking up in the night as a totally different person. This alter-ego sleepwalker lady committed all sorts of crimes and even tried to off her soon-to-be-ex-husband Bo, although I can't really blame her because they're not even divorced yet and he's blatantly making out with that weirdo Carly with her facial twitches.

So. No more sleeping pills for me, no sirree. But it was nice while it lasted.

- H

Transitions

That was Griffin's shirt at the end of the day yesterday. And this wasn't a particularly bad day by any means.

This has been a month of transitions. I haven't had a chance to write about it yet, but Griffin made the leap to his Big Boy Bed a few weeks ago. Here's what happened -

He and I were playing in his room (on the main floor), the one with his crib. The crib that he lovingly slept in every night for two and a half years without complaint. The crib that he never attempted to climb out of, let alone sit up in. I would lay Griffin down and come in when he yelled for someone to come get him. And he'd still be laying down. It was that easy.

So back to our conversation a few weeks ago:

G: This is my room.
Me: Yep, this is Griffie's room.
G: This is where I sleep.
Me: That's right.
G: Daddy and Cooper sleep upstairs but I don't.
Me: [GULP] No, your room is down here.
G: My room is downstairs and Daddy and Cooper's rooms are upstairs. [accompanied by forlorn look on his face]
Me: [GULP, heart breaking in two, chin quivering] Do you want to sleep upstairs, honey?
G: Yeah.
Me: OK, we'll set up your big boy bed in Cooper's room.
G: OK!

So that's how it happened. He guilted us into setting up his Big Boy Bed, which is technically the trundle drawer for Cooper's twin bed but it works perfectly. They sleep next to each other, Griffin on the lower part so he can't fall out, and Cooper above him so when he falls out he lands on Griffin's bed. Which has happened twice already without any tears or waking.

Griffin's bed is flush with the corner walls, so the worst that happens is we hear him kicking the walls in the middle of the night. Unlike everything else about parenting him right now, the bedtime transition has been remarkably easy.

Cooper is also about to make a big leap. Today was his last day at his old daycare/preschool and on Monday he starts at the fab-u-lous preschool attached to the fab-u-lous elementary school in our town. Triple-A rated or whatever it is they say that indicates that it's a fab-u-lous school.

We went to the open house last night and were overwhelmed by its awesomeness. The two teachers in Cooper's room? They both have their masters in early childhood education. Miss J is a young woman about 30 (I'm guessing, it's always hard to tell after about the age of 12, I'm not a good guesser), and his other teacher is a young African-American man with long dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail. Cooper fell instantly in love with Mr. L.

This may make me shallow, but I'm really happy that Cooper will be having an African-American male teacher. It'll be good for his cultural development or whatever it is that teaches kids to love and accept all sorts of people.

It was super hard for me to tell his current teacher that we're moving him, and the sad part is he's leaving his BFF Collin at his old school. But! Griffin will still be there so hopefully we'll be seeing him either in the mornings or in the afternoons, depending on the transport scheduling. Oh, and we've signed them both up (along with a few other boys in their class) for soccer starting in September, so the dazzling duo will be together every Saturday morning.

Whew. That's about all the change I can handle for one month.

- H

Fear of flying

I'm not afraid of flying. I'm afraid of crashing.

Not desperately afraid, not the kind of afraid where I grip the armrests and pray out loud for God to spare my life and start sweating and swearing and drinking. Just inwardly scared.

You know why?

Because I have kids now. I'm not afraid to fly when my kids are with me. It's just that every time I board a plane without them now, I find myself praying feverishly that my kids need their mother, and please God please keep me safe because they'd never get over it, and what the hell am I doing flying to Omaha for this job this is crazy, is there anything I can do from home where I don't need to even leave the house and could still make the house payment and eat?

I suppose this is normal. My first boss in this industry was this crazy whirling dervish from Romania. She travelled around the world and did great, until one day when she was flying for work she had a panic attack. The reason? She had two daughters, and she was suddenly afraid to fly for fear of them losing their mother. She started flying with Xanax.

My friend Tina went through the same thing. She has three kids. I don't know if she ever flew with Xanax, but I know she suddenly found herself afraid to fly.

I know the statistics, I know it's safer than climbing into my car every day. Except for the part where my car won't give me the flu or rotovirus or something.

I'm an equal opportunity anxiety-ist. Last week on my way to a lunch in Washington, Missouri, I drove by this accident. I saw it up close. I wondered why the radio reports were only mentioning two schoolbuses and a tractor trailer?

I've decided to look for a new career. Clearly, hard work is out of the question. It must be something that pays a lot of money and requires very little of me. I could play the lottery for reals! But only if I could guarantee winning, that's the tricky part. Hmmmm. This is going to be harder than it sounds.

- H

Bathtime

Photo actually taken some evening last week while I gave my kids a bath. We were having a heat wave (hey, yay, we're having another one now, yay! I love the heat and humidity, bring it on!), during the throes of rotovirus. The worst victim that befell its charms was my husband, by far. He's just now recovering.



This is a glamorous life. Jealousy abounds, I'm sure.

On a positive note, Cooper was invited to go on a swimming playdate with his BFF Collin today, and his super awesome swimming skills so impressed his little buddy that Collin, who was heretofore resistant to getting water in his face or hair, he actually went underwater with Cooper! I wasn't there to see it, sadly. But I was super proud to hear that Cooper had helped Collin learn to swim, just a little bit more than he did yesterday.

And then there's Griffin. Sweet baby Jesus above, I need a new guidebook for parenting Griffin. There is one rule that must never ever be forgotten. Never never never never take your eyes or ears off of him. Ever. The risks are enormous.

I keep telling myself "this is a phase, this is a phase," and praying to God that I'm right. He's stubborn, listening is not an option in his mind, and his compass guides him in the direction of doing everything The Wrong Way. If you're supposed to be sweet and gentle to the dogs, then Griffin is going to pull tails and sit on them like they're horses.

He knows what he's doing is wrong, that's the super frustrating thing. He just doesn't give a damn and would rather get in trouble than be good.

And punishment? He laughs at time-outs. He scoffs at my threats of vinegar (brought about because of his absolute refusal to give up saying his favorite word ever, "Goddamn").

I do hope to survive this child. Suddenly, Cooper's tantrums and constant crying from the age of whenever-he-started-who-can-remember-this-shit-anyway to about two months ago seems much more tolerable. And now I can look at Cooper and see that he's a completely different boy than he was a few months ago. He's older. His behavior is much better. Thank you God.

- H

The portrait project

I recently ran across the 52 portraits project on the Southern Institute for Domestic Arts and Crafts, and I am somewhat surprised to say I kind of like the idea. Although her portraits are pretty and artsy and um, mine ar not.

I don't know that I can actually put together a true self-portrait, let alone one a week, but there are snapshots of my daily life that I'd like to capture.

I started today.

Griffin got sent home from school right after he got there for having "constant" diarrhea. Hello, rotovirus, it's been a while since we've seen you. Sorry to see you're sticking around for a little while, I'm sure there's a house somewheres else you could visit?

So my happy, carefree, wild as a spider monkey Griffin and I met my mom and my nephew for lunch. It's always fun when Griffin climbs the walls and performs death-defying feats of balance while you're trying to eat a meal at a restaurant. I made my mom sit next to him.

We climbed back in the car, and a few blocks down the road this is what I saw in my rear view mirror.


There is something so blessedly quiet about a wild toddler that's fallen asleep. With a book in his lap.

Oh, and this was my dashboard thermometer yesterday.


- H