1. My baby is a super talking machine. She says everything. It’s slightly creepy to see a kid that little demand “up” and “out” and “taco.” It’s pretty safe to say she never shuts up.
2. All I know is she did not get that from me.
3. We put up Christmas lights yesterday. Usually we’re doing it 5 days before Christmas, in a panic, when it’s raining, because the kids won’t leave us alone about it and the Big Day is approaching. So I was impressed with us.
4. Then one string kept going out in varying locations, resulting in 3 strands of lights in the trash and FOUR trips to the store in search of extension cords, new strands and other devices we thought might fix the situation. Neither Mac nor I ripped down all the lights or broke the reindeer’s head off in desperate exasperation, which makes me even more impressed with us.
5. I play Christmas music pretty much constantly from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day. I do this mostly because it irritates my family. Don’t tell them.
6. Speaking of Christmas music, can we all just agree that dog-barking and cat-meowing renditions of Christmas carols are fucking lame? Not cute. Not amusing. Annoying.
7. Not totally unlike the fact that my toddler has an acute fascination with the TOILET. She’s like a wayward cat I tell you. She just digs toilets. Playing in them. Splashing in them. Placing various household items in them. And just to add a little more fun to the scenario, since the 6-year-old has some sort of disorder making it physically impossible for him to FLUSH THE FUCKING TOILET, the toilet water involved is very often not clean. I hate my life.
8. In other news, you can dunk a Blackberry in the toilet multiple times and it will still work. FYI.
9. Oh, and Thanksgiving was awesome. We spent it with my brother and his family. It was our first holiday together since he moved back and it was even better than I had imagined. Lucky, lucky me to have loving, wonderful family within driving distance.
10. Okay. Hallmark moment over. Let’s get back to reality: I don’t care what anybody says, I will not miss the fact that I pretty much never get to go to the bathroom alone. And if they aren’t IN the room with me, they are RIGHT outside the door… “Mama! What are you doing?” Me: “Going to the bathroom.” Them: “Pee or poop?” Me: “Leave me alone.” Peals of laughter. Toddler pounding on door. Banging. Flailing. Toddler wailing until I let her in. Kids straining to see. Me, thinking “There are a lot of things about motherhood I will miss, but I will not miss this.”

Huh. I think I’m going to name this “the toilet post.” Happy almost-December. I love Christmas.

You know what else I love? Train overalls.

1. On Friday, Ava had her 10^th birthday party.  It was a slumber party. There were SEVEN 4^th and 5^th grade girls in my house, at once. Did you catch that? SEVEN. SEVEN 10 and 11 year old girls.
2. There was a lot of squealing.
3. There was not much slumbering.
4. Setting aside one moment of self-doubt when I thought I may need to call a few of the mothers as back-up, or, perhaps, to pick up their psychotic screaming child, it all went well. In fact, I decided that I kinda dig that age.
5. They’re just so weird. I love it. One moment they are playing “babies,” (literally, playing house with baby dolls), the next second they’re talking about “dating,” which of course they have no understanding of whatsoever. (Evidently, in 4^th grade, dating means “holding hands at lunch.” I asked.)
6. The truth is I loved being around them and I was rather fascinated by the precious, precarious spot they all inhabit – teetering on the cusp of pre-teen years…holding on to the last moments of girlhood – but so consumed with each one. When they’re little kids, they’re TOTALLY LITTLE KIDS. When they’re pre-teens, they are totally pre-teen. They are walking contradictions – walking conflicts. Like all of us, I guess. Only they haven’t yet learned to hide it. They’re just so real.
7. Tomorrow my first child turns 10. Double digits, people. Somehow I am kind of okay with this, but I think that’s solely because I don’t have time to be upset. I’m too deep in chaos and survival mode to feel anything right now. Maybe that’s a defense mechanism. Maybe that’s denial. Maybe this one just isn’t hurting that bad.
8. Of course, there’s always tomorrow.
9. I believe the highlight of the evening was when one girl said, in the heat of an animated discussion on the horrors of healthy cafeteria food, “They serve these weird orange mushy things!!” And another girl looked over, rolled her eyes, and said “Um, they’re called sweet potatoes.” I don’t know why I loved that so much. It was just adorable.
10. Either that or it was the moment one girl said to Ava “Your mom is COOL” and Ava said “Oh no, she isn’t. She thinks it’s funny to tell people she studied music and dance at Julliard while she twirls around singing 80s songs.”
11. Okay, but that is damn funny. Don’t you think?

Speaking of the 80s, check out this picture of Ava opening her presents, complete with blue eye shadow, which they put on themselves, pretending they were going “clubbing.” Ha.Ha.Ha. Clubbing.

She was so happy. It was awesome.

1. Being a single parent must SUCK. My husband has been working out of town all week (hence the tragic lack of blog posts) and I have been watching my life flash before my eyes on a daily basis.
2. Okay that was perhaps slightly over-dramatic. But only slightly. Most days I wake up and seriously people I have no idea how I’m going to get through the day – get the kids to where they need to be, work, write my papers, feed the baby, retrieve the fucking Houdini dog who keeps escaping, go to class, get gas, buy milk. My God. So much respect for people who do this all the time.
3. Georgia’s newest word is “auk” which is, of course, “sock,” and her saying it may be the cutest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
4. Incidentally she also learned how to take her “auks” off, which is less cute.
5. Next week my little girl turns 10. Double freaking digits. I am more or less okay with this because she wears penguin flannel pajamas and a fluffy panda sleep mask to bed,  both of which serve as evidence to me that she is still my precious little baby girl and the years are simply lying.
6. Yes. That’s it. They’re lying.
7. It’s been cold for like two weeks (and of course I’m using that term “cold” loosely) but nonetheless I’m already sick of wearing real shoes. I’m from California. I do flip flops.  Shoes stifle me. Ha.
8. Yesterday I saw a 6 year old with a pacifier in his mouth. Not like playing with it or chewing it into a thousand pieces which he will then chuck at his sister’s head, but sucking on it. Like a baby. His mother had three boys, aged 6, 4 and 3 and ALL THREE had pacifiers in their mouths. And when I tried to talk to them they just looked at me, sucking away.
9. I judged her. I did. That’s so fucking weird.
10. You know what’s going to make this Christmas amazing? The fact that school will be over. Holy CRAP that will be nice.
11. Oh, and Rocket read his first word by himself. “Not.” It makes my eyes fill with tears, right now, just thinking about it. Go Rocket. You’re doing it, little man.

1. It’s really annoying that Facebook doesn’t tell you who unfriends you. So anti-climactic. I saw my friend number go down one (*oh horrors what ever will I DO?*) but I don’t know who it is, so there’s no drama involved and I can’t sit here speculating how I pissed that particular person off. It’s all very disappointing.

2. Although most likely I said ‘fuck’ one too many times OR failed to return their phone call for 3 weeks. If the person in question is reading this let me just say “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Unless I did mean to. In that case, I don’t know what to tell ya.

3. Apparently nobody told Georgia about the time change, so we’ve been getting up at 4am.

4. Kinda takes away the joy of “one more hour of sleep.”

5. You know you live in a small town when you know the person who finds your bastard Houdini runaway dog. TWICE.

6. My daughter has taken to carrying around with her a little journal and pen, which she whips out and starts writing in whenever she’s annoyed. Evidently it’s a Book of Insulting Poetry, which she decided to write in attempt to vent her frustrations instead of lashing out verbally. She has agreed to let me share a couple of these with you, so here you go:

There is a boy named Rocket.

I wish I could stuff him in my pocket.

I’d rather be a mango doing the tango

Than be the sister of this big blister.

******

Someday Jenny will be mowing my lawn

Because she is such a pawn.

She has a herd of cattle from Seattle,

But against her wishes she’s not getting silk – just milk.

******

Joe is so dumb

It makes me glum.

I’d rather be a textbook

Receiving vexed looks

Than be a peer to this can of beer.

****

7. She also had something to say to “people who fan themselves with paper:” “Don’t do it! When you move vigorously it heats up your blood, therefore you get HOTTER! Beat that, punks!”

8. Yeah. I dunno. She’s either brilliant or mentally disturbed.

9. You know what’s weird about radio stations? They ask the stupidest most irrelevant trivia questions and yet somehow I get all INTO the answer…like I JUST HAVE TO KNOW… “What is the 2^nd most consumed food in America?” “Which type of clothing item is the most hated by men?” “What is the one single biggest complaint women make against their husbands?”  And I can’t answer my phone or change the station or MOVE because I may not hear the answer and – I simply MUST know!

10. More evidence that my brain is totally fucking unreliable. It thinks that crap matters. It gets all interested. I’m trying to train it to focus on real shit by purposely changing the station at the critical moment, just before the answer comes, despite the little death I endure deep down in my soul. Each time I do it.

Holy hell she got it from me. I’m INSANE. She gets irritated about people fanning themselves because her mother’s a basket-case who thinks her brain has a vendetta against her by focusing on irrelevant trivia.

Oh well.  Least we’ve solved that stumper.

Am I scaring you people yet?

Hope not.

But just in case, here are a couple photos of cuteness to make up for the weirdness of the preceding few sentences. Georgia has become quite the helper, in this case, cleaning out my mom’s linens drawer – and finding a nice perch in the process. How the hell did she get so CUTE?

"I know, mom, isn't it GREAT what I've done?!"

1. Remember long ago when I posted about how much I just LOVE grad school and all that surrounds it and oh it’s just so exciting! And then you may recall I mentioned at some point, probably in the middle of the semester, I would pretty much loathe the whole deal and wish I were dead?
2. Yeah. I’m there.
3. There’s just so much due. And to do. Why do we have to turn shit in? Why can’t we just sit around all day and talk about turning things in? Or better yet, the theory behind turning things in. I mean, other than the fact that that’s useless.
4. When this is over I will never feel busy again.
5. Speaking of busy, our cat is insane. She is busy. She does this darting thing where she charges through the house at full speed, scaling furniture, bolting round the kitchen, over the chairs, down the hall. I love this feline so much she may turn me into a cat person. Hahaha. Yeah right.
6. Which reminds me, Ava asked the other day why old people always have “so many cats” and I said well they don’t, really, it’s more of a stereotype, and then she proceeded to list all the characters in her books who are old and have cats and I didn’t have the heart to tell her books aren’t real. I love that she still does that.
7. AND speaking of old people, some 9-year-old who sits behind me in one of my classes mentioned something about “people my age” and I realized she really thinks I’m old the way I used to think 30-year-olds were old. You know, when I was 18, and was going to be 18 forever.
8. Okay people, do years go by faster now than they did before? I SWEAR a year took a lot longer to pass when I was 18 or 19 or 20 than now. (And I don’t think it was because I spent most of those years in a black-out, but maybe). Then all the sudden a few years ago Christmas started arriving 6 months earlier each year (which works pretty well for my neighbors who leave their lights up all year, but not so much for me). Anyway, why is that? Why do years go faster? Because we’re so much busier now? Because our days are too filled? Because we thought we’d live forever then? Does our perception just change? Can I do something to make the years slow down again?
9. By the way, I gotta be honest, I wouldn’t be totally heart-broken if my baby slept past 5:30am or 6am once in awhile. Just throwin’ that out there.
10. Also, my brother and his wife are about to have their third child. Fighting the urge to send them a condolence card. You know, for the end of all things as they know it. But that may not be totally appropriate. And you all know how focused I am on appropriateness.

But totally stoked to meet my new nephew soon. Happy Halloween people.  Check these photos out. My friend Tracy Teague is amazing.

Sorry they aren’t Halloween-related. Those will have to come later. These will make ya smile anyway.