So yesterday I went out with the three kids. Mac was working (shocker), and I was feeling ambitious and altruistic, figuring “I can handle this. I’m a good mom.” Plus, if I’m OUT of my house I don’t have to deal with the mess IN my house.

I know. I’m a thinker.

So we went to breakfast. Then we went to a craft store to pick out fabric for curtains I’ll never actually sew, and we walked around the 2^nd-hand baby store (where I bitched about the prices, realizing I can buy the same shit for cheaper at Old Navy and it’s NEW)…then we went to a couple other stores, then Costco.

And really the little hoodlums were pretty good. I mean they’re kids, so they can’t be THAT good, but for kids, they were alright.

But by the end of our outing I realized something: My kids never stop talking. They never, ever, ever fucking EVER stop talking.

“Mama, do you think it’s weird when girls talk about boys they like?”

“Mama, why are we going this way? Can’t we walk to the next store? Why can’t we walk? I wanna walk. We never walk ANYWHERE. Why do we never walk anywhere?”

“Mama, can we buy this wooden chest of drawers for my doll clothes?”

“Mama, I love it when I fart in my underwear.”

“Mama, Georgia has a booger.”

“Mama, you never buy us anything.”

“Mama, how do the police tell the bad guys from the good guys?”

“Mama, how did the Russian Revolution start?” (Yes, Ava actually asked that.)

“Mama, how come Hitler used gas on the Jews when  all the countries signed that agreement after World War I promising never to use gas again during war?” (and that too.)

“Mama, will I ever grow up as tall as daddy? How tall is daddy? Is he taller than an elephant? I want to be taller than an elephant. A crane is taller than an elephant. But what about a giraffe? Is daddy taller than a giraffe? A crane is taller than a giraffe for sure. Pretty much everything isn’t as tall as a crane. Right, mama? Is a crane taller than everything?”

And ON and ON and ON and ON.

And on.

And on.

And on.

Please give me a break. One break. Two minutes of silence.

Holy fuck do they EVER stop talking?

No. They don’t. They are relentless. I don’t think they breathe. They only talk.

When I’m with all three of them, there is always one of them making noise in my direction, needing me. Always.

Whether it’s whining or crying or wailing or squealing or talking…there’s always noise coming at me from the little people.

My husband can sit there and, by all appearances, not hear a single smidgen of it.

I on the other hand hear every single speck of chatter and feel compelled to answer each and every question they pose. [Unless it has to do with farts or poop or underwear. Most of those questions I let go unanswered, realizing the purpose is usually just to say the word “fart” or “poop” or “underwear” – any response being almost wholly irrelevant.]

I do okay at the beginning. But after a few hours…my Lord I’m tired of people talking at me. I’m an extrovert and all, but shit. Everybody’s got a limit.

And then I start giving one word answers and my daughter starts picking up on my impatience and I start feeling guilty so I try again but my heart’s not in it but they don’t stop because they actually physically cannot (by the way, is that some sort of ailment?)…so we just go on like that…forever….it’s all really quite a lovely little picture.

So I turn on music. Loud.

But they talk anyway. OVER THE MUSIC.

Sometimes I pretend I can’t hear them.

But they only TALK LOUDER.

Deep breaths. Mantras. “I am a rock in a stream.”

Yeah right. That shit never works.

I tried telling them once about the Dalia Lama stating that “senseless chatter” was a bad thing, clouding the mind and separating us from our Buddha nature. While it appeared promising at first, that particular strategy backfired miserably when they started accusing me of “doing senseless chatter” almost every time I brought up a subject they didn’t feel like hearing.

Oh well.

I know I’ll miss this in 20 years.

OR WILL I?

The only time I get any peace from the NOISE. Except wait a minute. Ava is not in this picture, which means she was probably with me. Talking. Talking to me. Talking to me endlessly. Shiiiiit.

Goodbye employment. Hello homeless encampment.

Okay so we probably won’t end up homeless, but yesterday I quit my job. I QUIT MY JOB. On purpose. I quit my job on purpose.

Sorry. It still shocks me a little.

Why did I do such a thing?

Because I’m returning to graduate school.

Because I can’t return to graduate school and work and see my kids (at all, ever, even a little).

Because I’m effing INSANE.

I mean who does that? Abandons security, comfort, regular income to pursue a degree in English Literature, a virtually useless degree, a degree that promises no particular job at all – and if it results in ANY job it will surely be a low-paying one?

Who.does.that?

Well, I do. I guess.

But I had no choice. I stood at a crossroads. I kept writing posts like this one and this one, registering discontent and a feeling of lack – a sense of being unfulfilled. Something had to change. Something wasn’t right.

You know how sometimes you go through life and there’s this quiet suspicion in the back of your mind that maybe you should do something else? Like a low hum it buzzes constantly “Maybe you should go back to school, Janelle. Maybe you should quit work…” but it remains just an annoyance…background noise…until all the sudden it surfaces completely…rings like a crisp clear bell and YOU KNOW. You know what to do. Suddenly the path materializes in front of you and you just know “Oh. Right. I need to go this way now.”

Maybe I am insane. Maybe I am.

But despite my best efforts to come at it from a new angle, rework it, reinterpret it, it became undeniable that it was time for a change. The path had materialized and I just couldn’t go anywhere else. I tried to rig it – figure out how to do both work and school, but I found that was impossible. There are not enough hours. Something had to give.

It got down to a simple question: do I stay where it’s safe or risk everything to pursue what I love?

We chose to risk everything. And I say “we” because my husband – my heart, my rock, my truest and best friend (and staunchest supporter) – has told me in no uncertain terms that he’ll work 3 jobs to keep us alive, while I sit in a classroom discussing postcolonial theory with a bunch of skeptical sleep-deprived grad students.

I often feel that the universe gave me a kiss on the head when it sent me Mac. It’s like it said “Hey, you. Take this. Have this gift. You’ll be fine.”

And with him by my side, we will be fine.

[Wait. Hold on. I’m still a little flushed from that whole postcolonial theory thing. It’s so hot I’m struggling a little to find my words.]

Whew. That’s better.

Anyway, to answer your questions: No, we really can’t afford for me not to work. No, we don’t have a back-up plan. Yes, we may end up under a bridge.

But whatever, bridges are cool.

“Leap, and the net will appear.”

I’m learning to trust. I’m learning to be okay with the uncertainty. Sometimes you just have to LIVE, and worry about it later.

Right. I’m brave. I’m not scared. I laugh in the face of worry. I am a fearless spirit, trudging my way along the path of destiny.

[Oh shit. Did I really do this? Hold me.]

There are a few things that confuse me, a lot, even though I see them, um, a lot. Almost daily in fact. I don’t expect to ever understand them, but I’m becoming secure with confusion and uncertainty. They’re like old friends to me. You know. Old reliables. Good buddies. BFFs. Yeah. Okay. Enough of that.

So here’s ten. There are more.

1. Feeding babies & toddlers soda – WHY? They’re too young to even know soda exists, unless their parents introduce that crap to them. SO WHY DO IT? Why not just feed them healthy crap? The time will come soon enough when they start asking for crap food and crap drinks no matter how hard you tried to shield them from it, so why not take advantage of the brief interval of total control over their diets, without the whining complaints?! Not to mention, it’s a prime opportunity to look like a good parent without trying very hard. Psssht.
2. Giving kids caffeine – um, aren’t they annoying enough without the addition of stimulants?
3. Why female bathrooms don’t have more stalls than male ones – obviously, we need more. just look at the damn lines. Worried about equality? Whatever. Hundreds of years of a male-dominated society and you can’t do us this ONE TINY FAVOR?
4. License plate frames that say the make of the car they are attached to – Dude. We know you’re driving a Lexus. We can see the Lexus sign right next to the license plate frame. It’s actually JUST ABOVE IT. You’re kinda just being redundant, yo. No need to repeat oneself.
5. Leaving the stickers & tags on baseball caps – While I for one feel better knowing your Giants cap is indeed authentic, you look like a fucking asshat with that shiny sticker under your bill.
6. Baby stickers on car windows – okay so I understand how they get there. Kids stick them on the windows. What I don’t understand is why parents let their kids have stickers while they’re sitting in their car seats, judging from the number of people driving around with 1500 Dora the Explorer stickers on their rear windows. I mean what are they thinking? “It ain’t gonna happen to me?” – “My kid’s different?” And furthermore, why don’t they take the stickers off? Haven’t they heard of “Goo gone?”
7. Ed Hardy. In any form. We’ve been over this.
8. Leaf blowers – the name alone confuses me…”Leaf Blower.” Blowing leaves. Forcing air through a tube to move shit around. Not removing it. Not even cleaning it. Just blowing it around to a new location. And they are loud and they involve standing outside, usually in the sun, holding a loud roaring machine, pissing off every single neighbor in the vicinity…and for WHAT? Plus, who the fuck cares if there are leaves on your driveway? WHO? Oh right. People with neat houses and manicured landscaped yards.
9. How to fold fitted sheets – really, is there a way to not just wad them up in a vaguely rectangular shape? Is there?
10. Styrofoam plates – It’s a “plate,” and yet it melts when you put hot food on it. It MELTS WHEN YOU PUT HOT FOOD ON IT. Do you see a problem there?

Plus, they kill sea turtles.

And now we see, even fucking geniuses get confused sometimes.

or confused.

What I learned this week…

1. I love the look of sun-kissed tan kid faces. I love the shiny gold streaks the sun brushes across their hair. I love the freckles and the tan lines. It all says “summer” to me. It reminds me of being young and free all day and sunburned, with that perfect exhaustion, that in-the-sun-all-day glow, calm and serenity.
2. My kids have those sun-kissed faces right now. [Yes, I know the sun causes cancer.  No, I do not make a habit of it. But damn it’s sweet for a while.]
3. I no longer have insomnia. I now have wanttosleepallday-ia. It’s nice to have things back to normal. I think.
4. Speaking of normal, you know what’s NOT normal? The sleep habits of mothers. Check it out. All freaking week I’m exhausted. I mean my head hits the pillow at 10:30pm and my eyes are aching my body is like lead and my attitude is really not that nice. I wake up with the baby at 5 or 6am questioning suicide. So this morning I have a chance to sleep as late as I want. As LATE AS I WANT – I could catch up on all that sleep. And what do I do? Wake up at 9am. Can’t sleep more. WHY? WHY? WHY?
5. Do not talk about ghosts (not even nice ones) ever ever ever around 5-year-olds. If you do, they will suddenly be “scared.” Every night. Even though they’ve been camped on your floor for, oh, I don’t know, FOREVER, they will bump their neediness up a notch, demanding lights on and an adult presence in the room while they fade gently into safe peaceful non-ghost slumber. Fuck me I’m an idiot.
6. I mean seriously who the hell talks about ghosts around their 5-year-old?!?
7. My son will not pick up his messes without being asked. EVER. If you ask him, he will do one of three things: 1.) Ignore you; 2.) Fall on the ground in agony, struck suddenly immobile by a horrible stomach or head ache; 3.) Move to the area of the mess in question and roll around in it, half playing with it, half moving it around toward where it’s supposed to be.
8. I have no idea what to do about #7. None. I usually just end up yelling or beating my forehead with a meat tenderizer. [That was a joke.] Suggestions welcome.
9. I really want to send my kids to summer camp one week this summer, so they get to experience something cool at least once. But good god almighty it’s expensive. Shiiittt. Why do things seem so different than when I was a kid? Am I that old? We had no money, and I went to summer camp. I don’t get it.
10. Next weekend we’re going camping in Lake Tahoe with some of our favorite people in the world, which I’m hoping will balance the fact that camping with an 11-month old is freaking miserable. I do not learn. I don’t.
11. I don’t love mariachi music. From my house we hear it pretty much all day during weekends (our neighbors, evidently, love it). I hear it right now in fact. And no matter how long I listen to it, I don’t really dig it. Live it’s okay. Of course being forced to hear any music all freaking day long is pretty damn annoying.  Oh well. More proof I belong in a nice quiet yurt in Borneo.

Have a great week.

You can't really tell how tan they are from this picture, but they are. And it's lovely.

1. I’m having a little trouble remembering the past week (which is a little alarming), so we’re just going to limit this list to things I’ve learned in the past day. or so.
2. I’m not sure I could survive in an environment without air conditioning.
3. I hope we can afford to run the air conditioning as much as I’ve been running it.
4. If we cannot afford to run the air conditioning as much as I’ve been running it, I’m going to keep running it like I normally do and lie to my husband about it.
5. It’s too bad they don’t have a coffee delivery service. This morning, upon discovering we are out of coffee, (oh hells yeah at least I remember that far back) I faced a predicament: leave my house in the 100 degree heat, by myself with ALL THREE kids, at a time that interferes with the infant’s morning nap (which is, incidentally, the only guaranteed nap of the day) thereby risking a day of annoyed-and-irritated-baby-for-undisclosed-reasons….OR, not have coffee (which seems out of the question, right?). Strangely, I chose option 3: drink a shit-load of earl grey tea and hope for the best.
6. Earl grey works, in a pinch. (And by “work” I mean of course “prevented that knife-stabbing caffeine-withdrawal headache until you are forced to leave the house and can buy more coffee.”)
7. On Friday (oh look! I remember two days ago!) we celebrated my father-in-law’s 60^th birthday party in St. Helena, at a sort of wine & cheese wealthy-person street fair. You walk around to all the shops and each one is serving a different wine, the idea being that you get drunk and buy shit, I guess. Since we don’t drink, we just kind of walked around and looked at things we can’t afford and scowled at the yuppies. It was fun though. The Napa Valley is supremely beautiful and my father-in-law’s sisters are some badass women, all married to laidback, really smart nice men. Good family makes all things fun.
8. While attending the aforementioned street fair, I noticed two things: 1. Hair-flipping 21-year-olds with fake tans, who do that screaming thing when they see each other (you know the one…arms up, running toward one another, ‘oh my GAAWWWWWWD!’) are just as annoying on the street as in a bar (counter to what one would think, the scream does not dissipate in the open air, nor does the scent of their perfume); 2. No matter how thin they are, there are some outfits that should just not be worn on 50-year-old women. Just should not.
9. Vital realizations almost always come to me AFTER I’ve blown it, rendering the said realization useless in terms of preventative value. They only serve as the catalyst for the quiet utterance of the following words: “Oh FUCK I really should not have said that.”  For example, we take these “Myers-Briggs” tests at work and I always think it’s hysterical to make jokes about trying to rig the test so I come out a “feeler” (which is a more sensitive type person). AND THEN after making this joke numerous times, the thought steals into my mind, like a thief in the night: “Janelle, you know, you might not want to make that joke any more, considering it involves FEELERS, who, be nature, get their feelings hurt more often, they may not think you’re funny, Einstein.” DOH! SHIT! But the thing is I wasn’t trying to make fun of the feelers, I was making fun of myself, for being so non-feeler-like…you know, the juxtaposition of my personality with the label “feeler.” You see, then I try to make it better, and it just gets worse.
10. Although, is it possible to rig one of those tests?

Oh well. Some people never learn. Have a good week!