1. On Friday we visited my brother and his family. There are 6 kids between our two families, ages: 10, 6, 6, 3, 19 months and 4 months. Yeah. It isn’t quiet.
2. The four older kids all sleep in the same room. It takes like 3 hours and 12,000 threats of varying intensity to get them to stop giggling [and actually sleep]. I want to get mad, but I can’t, because I remember doing the exact same thing with my cousins. And it was like the best thing in the world.
3. My insomnia has returned, which is weird, since I still hate her. You’d think she would get the message that she’s unwelcome in these parts. But no. She has no manners. Consequently, I sleep 4-5 hours a night and pretty much want to cry every morning.
4. Georgia has hit the “no” stage. Isn’t  19 months a little early for that? Our favorite game is to ask her “Do you like saying ‘no?’”, to which she of course responds “no.” And then we ask her “Are you a ‘no-no’ girl?’” and she says, yeah you guessed it, “no.” I don’t know why, but it’s funny like every time, even though the results are rather predictable.
5.  A few days ago at the gym I asked my husband when he wanted to leave. He said “ten minutes.” I asked “are you going to shower here?”, he answers “no.” I ask “oh, you’re gonna shower at home?” He answers “I’m not gonna shower.”
6. No really. Why are they so disgusting? WHY?
7. Georgia has also learned to move the kitchen table chairs all over the kitchen so she can access the counters. I’m considering getting rid of all kitchen chairs. We can sit on the floor, or kneel, or stand. Or never eat again. Or move out. BECAUSE I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE.
8. Somebody please explain to me how it’s possible that I gain like TWO POUNDS just by eating crap for TWO DAYS. I hate being not-22. When I was 22, I could eat grilled cheese and Top Ramen and rum & coke all day and remain skinny. Now, I eat crap for TWO DAYS and my pants are tight. It’s so uncool.
9. Have any of you ever noticed that Phineas & Ferb is actually a pretty intelligent show? The other day the kids watched an episode that talked about existentialism and mentioned Sarte and Kierkegaard. I realize kids (and many adults) may not know about those guys, but it’s pretty cool that their names popped up in a cartoon, especially for a Super Geek Literature person like me. Plus, the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz is ahmazing. No really, it’s a smart show. Check it out.
10. Not that I let my kids watch T.V.

Have a great week, friends!

Also, wanted to thank everybody for voting for me for the Circle of Moms contest. I haven’t made it in the top 25, which is no big deal at all — I can’t compete with the big-shot bloggers! And that’s cool. We’re all hipster and shit – you know, the blog you’ve never heard of. HAHAHA!

But thanks again everybody. I love you people.

1. When I was a kid, my mom would often announce on a Saturday or Sunday morning “Hey kids. We’re going to the beach. Come on.” And we’d jump and squeal and get in the car and go. It was only 30 minutes away. We’d play, all day, in the sun and sand. We’d eat hot dogs. We’d come home in the evening, sunburned and exhausted and uncomfortable from sand and dried salt water.
2. Those are some of the best memories of my life.
3. Sometimes, I wake up and announce “Hey kids. Come on. We’re going to the beach.” And the kids jump and squeal and we get in the car and go. We did it on Friday. Mac had the day off. We drove just north of San Francisco, just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands. We were there all day. The kids ran and jumped off logs and assaulted dead jellyfish with sticks. Georgia ate sand and sucked on large rocks. I sat on a blanket and watched the surfers and waves and sunlight. My heart beats for California.
4. Anyhoo, just wondering, do really inappropriate conversations sometimes evolve in your house, without you meaning for them to happen? Yeah, it happens to me on a semi-regular basis. For example, this:

Ava (walking along the beach): “It smells like the Further concert.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s because somebody is smoking marijuana.”

Rocket: “What’s ‘juana?’”

Georgia: “whaa-na. na.na”

Me: “It’s an herb people smoke to get high.”

Ava: “Is it illegal?”

Me: “Well, yes. Sort of. I mean technically it’s illegal, but it’s not illegal like acid or crack.”

Rocket: “What acid?”

Ava: “What’s crack?”

Georgia: “Ack.”

Me: “Can we talk about something else?”

5. I have all kinds of winning moments with my children. I also had a winning moment with a police officer. I got pulled over. He asked me if I knew why I got pulled over. I said “no,” and meant it. He said “Well you were talking on your cell phone.” And I said “but I had it on speakerphone.” And he looked at me like I have some sort of disorder and said “Um, but you were holding it up to your mouth. What’s the difference between that and holding it up to your ear?” And I looked at him and smiled and said “Sir, I am an idiot. Please give me a ticket for being an asshat.” Then he checked my insurance and let me go.

6. I met a woman recently with 11 kids. ELEVEN KIDS. She’s an undergrad where I go to grad school. I sometimes just sit there and stare at her with my jaw agape, wondering. Just wondering. ELEVEN FREAKING KIDS?

7. Ava’s taken to sleep walking on occasion. I’ll be in the living room doing something fascinating like writing a blog post and she walks in and sits down, silently. I say “hi,” knowing she’s asleep, she rubs her face and looks at me. Then I take her back to bed. It’s slightly creepy.

8. Please don’t tell me that only disturbed kids sleep-walk. I used to pee in the backyard in my sleep, and clearly, I wasn’t disturbed. I mean look at me. This face screams “not disturbed.” Or something.

9. After my dog gets a bath he runs around in circles, full speed throughout the house, stopping for 9-second intervals to roll around on the carpet and grunt. Incidentally, I think he got that from Rocket.

10. Anyway, hope you all have a great week. If you have a moment, perhaps you could look over to the left and hook me up with a vote for Circle of Moms Top 25 “funny mom blogs.” You click that link, then scroll down the page to Renegade Mothering, then click “Vote”. If we all work together we can stop The Bloggess from winning more shit. Just kidding. She’s freaking hysterical. But she’s already arrived, damnit! It’s somebody else’s turn. Only fair.

xoxoxo

Marin Headlands. Beauty.

before she started tasting it she played in it

inspecting dead jellyfish

1. So I went to a parent-teacher conference on Friday (oh yeah, I’m THAT good of a mama). While there, I asked the teacher what books she recommends for Ava. When she answered “Shakespeare” I looked at her like maybe she should stop smoking that funny stuff. She notices, responding “Well, she’s reading at a 10^th-grade level.” After I picked myself up from the floor, I felt a little proud. I’ll admit it.
2. Let’s not talk about the fact that perhaps I should have known about that whole reading-level thing, being her mother and all.
3. On a similar front, when my kids are doing really awesome shit, extended family members on both sides often say “oh, she/he got that from our side”…but what I want to know is, how come when those same kids are bolting through restaurants or screaming at one another in wild abandon, nobody says “oh, she got that from our side.”? Mysteries of the world, I guess.
4. Can we all just agree that “I have nothing against gay people I just think they shouldn’t have kids” is one of the stupidest fucking statements in the world? That’s probably what they said back in the day of Jim Crow laws: “I have nothing against black people, I just don’t think they should go to school with my kids.” Separate ain’t equal, people.
5. My 6-year-old son has taken to cooking his own meals. I’m scared, also contemplating fire insurance. He’s just so damn PROUD of himself, though, I don’t have the heart to deter him.
6. Georgia has taken to removing her diaper when she wakes up from naps and peeing in her crib, standing up. She is also quite proud of herself, though I have no problem deterring her. (If I could only figure out how.)
7. Ava has taken to coming home every day and talking to us for at least 2 straight hours about the drama circling through the 4^th-grade. Guess we’ve entered the “social” stage. Pshht. Can we please go back to the “I’m super interested in what we did at school today and I’m going to tell you all about it” stage?
8. Do you guys read Kim at Yep, they are all mine and Stephanie over at Momma be Thy Name? If you don’t, you should. I desperately enjoy their blogs.
9. I turn 33 this month. So much better than when I turned 30. I had like a serious breakdown when I turned 30. Now I just get to flip out about turning 35 in just two short years. Waaaaaaa. It’s not the fear-of-death thing, it’s the “why the hell haven’t I come further than THIS” problem. I guess that’s what I get for drinking whiskey and giggling through my entire 20s, as opposed to making real decisions that actually further one’s life. Oh well, late bloomer I guess. Or just dumb.
10. I’m so excited that it’s March, which means it’s almost April, which is soooo close to May, when the weather gets warm and the beach becomes a real part of our lives…I love the summer with all my almost-33-year-old heart.

Have a great week, all.

1. Last night we were out to dinner and I asked Mac what he was ordering. He answered “Well, I was going to ask if the waitress would stab me in the eye with a fork.”
2. So that was fun. We were in excellent company (my brother, sister-in-law, their kids, and my mom), but there were 6 children between the two families, which is a really upsetting adult-to-kid ratio.
3. Speaking of insane, at least one of my kids has been sick each day for the past five weeks. No really. I’m not kidding. One kid gets sick then the next then the next, then we start over. I HATE SNOT. And fevers. And I’m pretty sure I’m never going to sleep again. I’m thinking perhaps I should get a little more adamant about that whole hand-washing thing. Or maybe they should all be locked in small rooms until flu season passes. If only that were legal.
4. Yesterday in the mall I heard a teenage girl about 16 years old tell her friend, after a group of African American teenagers walked into the store, “There are black people in here. Let’s get out of this place.” And I shot my head around at her with my jaw agape and my eyes burning into her skull, struck by the hatred and blatant racism, wondering what sort of messages that girl must receive at home to be so backward at such a young age. It was jarring and I haven’t gotten it out of my head since.
5. How does that shit still exist? HOW?
6. On a happier note, Ava told me this morning that she thinks Justin Beiber got big “because all the other pop stars were off doing drugs.” I don’t really know what that means but I think I like it.
7.  I get un-followed by like 5 people a day on Twitter. Luckily I get followed by about 5-7 porn spammers daily, so the numbers pretty much even out.
8. I already feel myself coming out of my annual February downward spiral (aka The Month I Regret Everything and Feel Superbly Sorry For Myself). So that doesn’t suck.
9. I read the other day that California is the most hated state in the nation. Now that’s a little harsh. Don’t you think? I mean what about Iowa. People in Iowa are always up to something. Crafty little bastards.
10. Okay I know nothing about Iowa. I just figured I’d make fun of what appears to be the most innocuous state EVER to demonstrate how weird it is to “hate” a state.
11. In conclusion (remember writing THAT in your 5-paragraph essays in junior high?), I’d like to share with you the following conversation, which occurred recently during one of my classes. I shared this on my personal FB, so forgive the redundancy, but I recently pissed off YET ANOTHER Vegan, so I figured I’d share it again…since clearly it’s still relevant.

 Me, to a woman in my class: “Nice boots.”

Woman: “Thanks, got ‘em in a thrift store. Super stoked because they aren’t leather, and I don’t wear animal products. I’m a Vegan.”

Me: “Then I guess I shouldn’t tell you my husband is a butcher at his family’s slaughterhouse.”

Woman: Silent. Dumbstruck.

Me: “I have no idea what’s wrong with me.”

*******

Happy week all!

******

Poor little guy fell asleep like this, listening to Jimi Hendrix (his favorite CD).

1. Recently I said this: “Mac, in the future, when you ‘dress’ Georgia, please actually put clean clothes on her rather than just layer clean ones over the dirty ones. Kthanks.”
2. True story, ladies.
3. We went to a fair in Sonoma County – a small town fair. I ate part of a funnel cake and wanted to die. However, I got an excellent idea for how I’m going to make my millions: open up a traveling rehab that follows fairs, for the benefit of the tweaker carnies.
4. I know, I’m a thinker. And something of a humanitarian, clearly.
5. Speaking of brilliance, sometimes, when I’m playing Scrabble against my phone [whilst bored outta my mind], and my phone wins, I play again to show him who’s boss. I am also not joking about that.
6. While at the fair, we watched this juggling/comedy/guitar-playing show (um I said it was small town) and they asked for a volunteer. Of course Ava’s hand shot up like lightning and of course they called her up. They asked her to step between the juggling, um, pins (?) when they tell her to, and started teasing her, making all kinds of jokes about getting hurt, etc. The woman at one point said “Well, don’t worry about it, Ava, since they say one person’s pain is another person’s pleasure.” And Ava looks right at her and says “Um what. Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Perfect delivery. Everybody roared, and I was struck by the poise of that kid, cracking jokes up on stage in front of at least 100 people, at 10 years old. She’s something I tell ya.
7. Georgia has been eating most of her meals standing on a chair at the kitchen island. No worries though, we totally don’t let her use a fork.
8.  After Ava burped in an incredibly appalling manner, I commented to Mac that it’s like our kids were raised by wolves. Rocket then stops what he’s doing, gets a far-away look in his eye and says “wow, that would be so wonderful.”
9. So it’s comforting to know my kid would prefer ravenous wild animals over Mac and me.
10. Also, do any of you guys ever attempt side conversations in the front seat of your vehicle with the kids in the back? You know, when you lean in to one another and say something inappropriate for little people, thinking maybe, perhaps THIS TIME FOR ONCE they won’t catch it with those demon bat ears? Yeah, we do that. It’s never worked successfully once. Ever. More on that later.

Also, wanted to tell you people how much I love you and send big cyber kisses your way. (wow. That was cheesy.) No really, thanks for sharing my Valentine’s post. I got like 2,000 hits on it that day, which is a big deal for a no-name blogger such as myself. I was flattered. Thank you.

Here’s Ava up on stage…please excuse the crap quality. I don’t have Instagram to fix my photographic deficiencies. Or even an Iphone. So anyway. [Okay but seriously, Instagram is amazing. It makes good photos look freaking spectacular and crap photos look, well, almost cool. I’m getting an Iphone one of these days, so my crap photos can look less crappy and more hipster.]

Have a great week.