First of all, regarding the title: Yeah Right.

1. People. Next Monday (a week from tomorrow) is my last day of school this semester. If I make it, I will have survived.
2. I’m so tired. I’m so sick of writing. I have ten more pages to write by Wednesday. No biggie. Pssht. (Hold me.)
3. The plus side to not writing much on my blog lately is that I have so many posts rolling around in my head…when this semester is over, you all shall be pummeled with the barrage of brilliance (hahahahaha) scratching at the walls of my brain. Trying to get out. Right now.
4. Ewwwww. That was kind of creepy. Too much rat imagery.
5. For example, I have a post in my head about Bath & Body Works. Lots of sparkles involved, and words like “enchantment.” I know you’re excited.
6. When I get through this, I will truly feel that I’ve accomplished something. This is the hardest couple months I’ve had in many years, I think. Going to grad school, homeschooling Rocket, working part-time and having my husband gone 5 days/week…meaning it’s ALL ON ME…ALL three kids…holy shit. This is officially not fun. Not at all. Done with survival mode. As my friend told me recently, though, when this is over, I’ll never think my life is hard again.
7. Word.
8. We have reached the stage where it’s no longer fun to go to restaurants with The Toddler. More on that later.
9. We have reached the stage where I’m about to ban Rocket from all activities no matter what they are and no matter how much he BEGS for them, for the rest of his life because…and holy crap people this annoys me… just about the time he actually starts this activity he was simply dying to do, he suddenly and totally loses all interest. More on that later. As well.
10. And…we have reached the stage where I feel the urge to become dictator-like in my decision-making regarding Ava’s friends. I know I can’t do that. And I won’t. That’s wrong. But I really really want to. More on that too.
11. Also, I discovered why I’ll never be able to compete with daddy. When the baby wakes up at midnight and I’m still writing my paper, the daddy does this (see image below), whereas I rock her and get her back to sleep in her own crib because I’m an insomniac who can’t sleep with the baby in my bed any more. Whatever. Whatcha gonna do? Take a picture, obviously.
    

    Proof that they're always gonna like him better.

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.

Sometimes I think I have a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Is that an oxymoron?

Maybe.

At any rate, I have a few “hang ups.” And sometimes, they concern me.

Like today. Today we had to leave one of those mall play area things because this kid had a ring pop.

Okay that sounded even weirder when I wrote it. Let me explain.

Today, for the first time in my life, I went to a mall on Black Friday. Mostly due to chance. Was driving by on the way home from Thanksgiving at my brother’s house, baby started crying, mall was on the left, we went in.

And I thought to myself “Huh. This is the first time I’m not avoiding a store on Black Friday.”

Then we entered the mall and I remembered why I avoid stores on Black Friday.

But I digress. As usual.

So we’re in this mall and I start walking 4 steps into stores then turning immediately around due to check-out line lengths, knowing that even if I saved fifty bucks on whatever, hell, even if they HANDED me fifty bucks, I wouldn’t stand in those monstrous lines with 25,000 neurotic deal-hungry humans.

But that’s not the OCD part. Despite appearances.

So we’re in this mall and since the actual shopping isn’t panning out, we buy some coffee and decide to let the baby and kids run around one of those enclosed play areas.

Seemed like a fine plan.

And it was.

Until I noticed this girl with a ring pop. She had this ring pop, blue to be exact, and it’s appropriately on her finger. She’s running around sucking on this thing and waving it around, going down the slide and whatever…and…crawling on the ground dragging her ring pop then picking the fuzz off it and licking it again.

I stare at her with my jaw agape. At least I think it was. It was in my head.

I swat Mac and show him. Appalled.

He says something along the lines of “Yeah, and we wonder why people in America aren’t going to college. I mean the ring pop problem alone…”

And I realize he’s going to be no help in this situation.

I yell for the kids and tell them to avoid the ring-pop girl at all costs.

They look at me like I’m fucking insane and go back to playing.

Next to her.

I’m cringing.

I’m imagining that blue sugary spit-covered mess touching my baby’s head.

I glare at her parents. Obviously.

I realize at this point I’m being a nutjob. But there’s no going back at this point. I’m totally hung up on this – staring and obsessing and contemplating the destruction of our society, one ring pop at a time.

I get up and grab the baby, put her on another structure.

Ring-pop girl follows. Sucks the candy then pulls a piece of hair from her mouth, which was, evidently, an unwelcome guest clinging to her delicious Red Dye Number “Cancer” treat.

I can’t take it. Decide we must leave. Right NOW.

And…we leave.

Okay so is that OCD? I mean in hindsight it really wasn’t THAT big of a deal, but something about it just disgusted me and I couldn’t stand watching her flail around with that thing in mid-air, just ready to bop one of my kids in the face so I then had to clean sugary mess off their mostly clean mugs.

I just threw up a little in my mouth.

And that, my friends, is just another one of the many reasons I am not a kindergarten teacher.

I hate ring pops.

Can we all just agree ring pops are a freaking bad idea?

Okay, fine, I’ll get behind this thankfulness thing. I’m thankful for all kinds of things.

I do a lot of complaining.

But this is my blog. I can cry if I want to.

The truth is, though, I know I’m pretty much livin’ the dream and my whining is just that. Whining.

And I do it with full knowledge that I’m whining. Somehow, in my head, that makes it better.

Plus, I believe the truth of the moment has a right to be heard, and sometimes I get sick of being a parent and sick of living from one paycheck to the next and sick of the work and sleepless nights and the struggling and blah, blah, blah.

But I always know, somewhere, that what I have in this life is one giant, steaming pile of goodness.

And I don’t mean that sarcastically.

There is nothing worse than the friend who stands in her 3,000 square foot house complaining about the neighbors and how her kids’ private school just won’t do what she wants and her husband is just so busy and her kids are getting D’s and my god. You know the story.

And she really believes she’s got a tough gig. You just want to grab her and shake her – “DUDE. I know fifty people who would switch places with you RIGHT NOW if given the opportunity.”

And when I’m complaining, bitching about my mariachi-addicted neighbors and ironworker husband working out of town and the noise in my house and the stress of school and the seemingly unending chain of shit that needs to be done…

I know there are hundreds of women who would give anything for a husband who did something other than sit on his ass and play video games…

Or own a house in any neighborhood at all, anywhere…

Or have the opportunity to pursue their dream of grad school…

And there’s the woman

Who lost

Her baby and

would lay down every moment of the rest of her life

For just one hour of the chaos

And the pressure

And the expectations

I face and struggle with and

complain about,

every day.

Happy Thanksgiving, people.

Yep, pretty much.

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.