Dildos & Firefighters

P.S. The dildos and firefighters story is totally, unbelievably hillarious.

Alas, it is not mine to tell.

It does make me smile, though, and last night I really needed that smile.

:* (kisses)
j

fast moving pendulum

We are all okay.

But last night we had some firefighters over.

But we are all okay. And really, if you have to have a story about calling firefighters to your house at 11 pm on Thanksgiving night--this is the story to have!

Hamdillah.

So last night I was at the computer and everyone else was asleep. And I smell this foul, plastic burning smell. So I look around and can't find anything. But the smell gets worse and then a foggy, kind of smoky haze fills the living room, kitchen and study.


I look harder.

Nothing.

I wake Scully up. We both smell and see it. We cannot find anything. Basement is clear. Christmas tree lights are off. All the nightlights get unplugged. Everything looks clear. And the burning stench endures. The haze is getting worse.

Forget it.

Get the kids. Get out.

911.

Firetruck.

Siren.

Police car.


Sobbing Khubz in her jammies in the truck.


Wake up the neighbors.

Firemen come in. Boots. Hats. One guy had an axe. I am not kidding.

And they smell nothing. And see nothing.

I come back in the house with them. You don't smell that? It stinks but it is not as heavy.


"Smells like burned food." one says. Thanks but I haven't been cooking.


"Smells like potpourri to me." another says. We don't even have candles. We have kids.


"I smell it." Thank you. "It smells like there's a burned transformer outside. I think that smell must have come in."

I opened the door when I smelled it to see if the smell was coming from outside. It wasn't. But they couldn't find anything. The smoke alarms hadn't gone off. They found nothing.

They were very nice. I couldn't believe I called the fire department out for nothing. But that's what they found. Nothing. Nothing hot. Nothing smoky. Nothing.
"I am not crazy!" I tell Scully as we bring our children back in our house.

She thought it had smelled like an electrical fire.

Thumper, bless him, is asleep. He was asleep in his crib when I first smelled it. Fell back asleep in the truck after being evacuated. Slept through the lights and sirens. Fell back asleep once back in the house. And blissfully slept in his crib until six this morning.

Khubz was upset. She clung to Scully, crying in her arms because she was scared. They cuddled on the couch for an hour after the all-clear.

And then Scully and I sat on the couch. Clinging to each other with all of the "what-ifs" racing around us. And then what we need to do differently.

For example, no more sleeping naked. Or at least, I need to have some clothes handy. :(
We need to know where our keys are and make sure they are put in the same spot, easy to dash out of the house with.
Scully needs to save her dissertation work online as well as on flashdrives and our computer.
You know how this list goes.

And then we walked around the house catching faint glimpses of the previous smell.

And then. . .wait. . . the dishwasher. . .


Oh My F*ng G.

Unbelievable.

Since then I have been on a fast moving pendulum that swings back and forth between vomiting with fear that there could have been a fire in my house where my babies and my partner live--and vomiting from embarrassment for calling the fire department to my house because a goddamn tupperware lid melted against the heating element in the dishwasher. Not even a tupperware! Fucking GLADWARE!

Unbefuckinglivable.

At least the dildos weren't out.

much, much better

A number of things helped today.

Preschool.

A long afternoon nap for everyone (especially mommy!)

and especially,

Tia Teefa taking Khubz ice skating!!! There will be skating pictures uploaded at some point but everyone can just picture Khubz and her Tia as Khubz periodically calls out, "Mommy, I'm doing GREAT!" It was awesome! Totally & completely awesome!!!

And it was right after preschool. So in the car after ice skating I fed her a PB sandwich and she crashed out in the car. I carried her in to the house and put her in bed. 15 minutes later Thumper was also asleep and I got him in his crib.

5 minutes later Khubz woke up.

So I ask if she wants me to sing to her and I get in bed with her and I WAKE UP 2 1/2 HOURS LATER. BOTH OF MY CHILDREN ARE STILL ASLEEP.

It is as if God was, in fact, rewarding me for making it through yesterday.

But it was now 4 pm and I was in danger of sabatoging bedtime. So I woke up both of my children--this sort of goes against the grain but it was the right thing to do. And we had a really nice day. Late bedtime, but all okay.

Scully is traveling for work and won't get home till about 10 tonight but when she comes in she'll find a well-rested, not crazy Mommy in a messy but happily-played-in home. Want proof?

zits

So it goes like this.

Thumper has a double ear infection. We cannot hold this against him. I have no hard feelings that we were up from 3-5 a.m. last night. Ear aches hurt. He is a baby. These are facts, like gravity.

Khubz plows through a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. Scully is off to catch the bus. Khubz gets in to bed and begins to harass me to, um, mother or something. So I get up. Thumper is asleep in his crib. Khubz is needing some attention.

We sit and read. We plow through all the books in the library bag and we check out 157 books at a time. But it is destined to be a hard day and not because I am doing a bad job. It is destined to be a hard day because my staff or my customers or my board of directors or whatever labor model (MT, perhaps?) you'd like to use. . . because my children today were dictatorial & unyielding ( a phrase some of you may have heard before.)

And really, this bitch session is directed at Khubz. She was maddening and we are all lucky to have made it through the day without going to jail. A few snapshots of the day.

Thumper is asleep. She has my lap all to herself. We are reading & reading. Out of the blue she gets this look in her eye. This is the look she gets when she decides, "hey, I think I'm going to act like a shithead!" (And listen, o ye loyal subjects of Khubz. I know she is your beloved. I know you are her defenders. I love her too. But really, today? You would have voted for impeachment too. Trust me.)

"What's that, mommy?" She stabs at my chin with her finger. Her finger fresh out of her mouth, thank you very much.

"What? My zit? Mommy has a zit." A great big puss-filled painful zit, actually. Get your finger away.

She scrunches up her face in disgust. "Yeah. Yuck! A zit! And hair. . . Ewww."

Are we reading a story here? Stop touching my face. We are reading a story, right? No? Okay, then you can get off my lap. Okay then--let's just keep reading. No! Stop touching my zit. No. I don't want to talk about it. Or the hair. (sigh.)

Or later when Thumper is up and nursing and nursing and nursing. And crying. And nursing. And Khubz wants to paint. I suggest shaving cream because I am brilliant. After playing at the kitchen table for a few minutes Khubz wants to move the frivolities to the bathtub. "That is a great idea, Khubz. She is in the tub. Thumper and I are having fun watching her paint her body with shaving cream. She is playing peekabo with Thumper. We have gotten this day turned around!

So Khubz looks at me and gets one of her bathtoys (a small bucket) and drinks the water. This is against the rules. "Oh. I see that you're all done." I tell her and drain the tub. She gives me a smile. That smile. And she drinks the water again. I get the towel and invite her to come out of the tub. She scurries to the far end of the tub. I put Thumper in his crib (he doesn't need to see this) and proceed to pull her wet, slippery, kicking body out of the tub. She stinks so badly of aftershave musk from the shaving cream that I almost gag. Screaming, kicking, grabbing on to the door jam and musky.

A-mazing. So I drop her in her room.

"You are welcome to throw your fit in here. Let me know when you are ready to be polite." I turn to leave the room. She screams like a tribe of banshees, "NO MOMMY! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!" and charges at me. I am not making this shit up. What do I do? I looked in the damn parents-as-teachers book. It said nothing about a transmogrified three year old. And I was startled. So I tossed the towel at her (I didn't throw it, I promise) and it landed on her head. This stopped her in her tracks and I was able to escape. Temporarily.

Now I've been watching some supernanny and I know this is not how time out is supposed to go. But at that point we needed to be separated and it was either the towel or call the police for back up.

Its just that, for real, I tried a lot of things that would have worked great on another day and it just all went to shit today. TV backfired on me today. How does that happen? When we watch a show it is usually a 30 minute show. When it is over I ask her if she wants to turn it off or if she wants me to turn it off. She wants to and turns the tv off. I was making lunch and looked at the clock and saw that the show would be ending soon. So I asked her which of us should turn it off. "Its not over yet!" she protests. Ok. PBS often has a little talking bumper to a show or something. So I wait another minute. Then I go in there and ask again. And I see that, actually, the clock in the kitchen is slow. An entirely new show has started. And "It's NOT OVER YET!!!!" So even TV turned in to a knock-down, drag out fight.

Everything was like that.

No-nap-time is basically "how many diapers can I fill with shit in quick succession?"

Play time was basically "how many things can I take away from my brother?"

In the morning I talked to my mom and she said "why don't you let me come pick Khubz up and you can have some one-on-one with Thumper and I'll get her out of your hair." I scoffed. "This is not an SOS," I told her. "We'll all come over this afternoon but I have a brand new can of shaving cream and we are going to turn this day around!" Fast forward a few hours. I called her back, "okay. At this point it is, in fact, an SOS."

I called Scully about 4:30. "Do you want us to pick you up on campus?" Put that through the Mommy scrambler and what I really meant was, "I cannot spend one more minute alone with these children."

We got home and Scully walked in first. "Whew! What's that smell?" "What do you mean? It's roast in the slowcooker." And I walked in. Ah. It is burned roast in the slow cooker. Burned with little burned sun dried tomatoes all burned together in one fucking burned masterpiece. Okay. Pizza it is.

We get home from pizza and I check out to write all this out. Halfway through the mommy-is-bitching guilt catches up to me and I decide I want to do bedtime for Khubz. I asked Khubz to pick her toothbrush. She ignored me. "I'm going to count to three and then it will be my turn to pick." Wailing on the floor of the bathroom when I picked green because she " wants purple!!!" Alas, that is not how we get purple toothbrush. Thirty minutes later we brush her teeth. Yes we used the green toothbrush and, yes, CPS did not swoop in to rescue her from our abusive clutches.

I finish up her bedtime song "you are my sunshine. . . and I am sunburned" and as I am singing to her she gently lifts her hand up to my face to grab at my zit.

I think she was too tired today. I also think she had too much time awake in her room this morning before I got up. She seemed bored/tired/attention seeking. She was looking for trouble all day long and trouble was everywhere. I have elaborate plans to make sure today never ever happens again. My mom says I am incorrect to assume there is a planning solution to what is basically a 3-year-old problem. "She had a bad day. She is 3."

I have decided that I need to get up earlier with Khubz so she is more tired at naptime. PBS does yoga at 6 a.m. I'm going to see if Khubz and I can make a date for some a.m. exercise. It is much more likely that it will be another hard night and I will sleep as long as I possibly can tomorrow morning.

But even if that is the case I will be warm and snug in the knowledge that I will not have to live through this exact day again. After all, tomorrow she has preschool.

Sense & Sensibility

Khubz at preschool about 11:15: Where's my Mommy?

pickup is at 11:30 but this is her daily Q at 11:15.

Miss Wendy: Well, she's not here yet but I"m sure she is on her way.

Khubz: Oh. Well, I will not, not cry because I am very sensible and a big girl and so I will notnot cry.

As Miss Wendy was relaying this conversation to me at pickup and laughing Khubz comes over to her with a hug and says, "thank you for a fabulous day!" and Miss Wendy says "Oh thank you for a fabulous day!"

Miss Wendy begins to praise my child and her great vocabulary.
Go on. No. Really, go on! I am eating this up.

So I am convinced Khubz is brilliant--her favorite word is sensible for goodness sake.

And then it's naptime.
When naptime is over she announces that she has made a great big poop in her diaper.

This is bad news. She saves her poop for the diaper. She won't poop in the potty. It is disgusting. Really. And I have a considerable poop threshold.

So I am cleaning her off and informing her how very disgusting it is and she says,
"And Sensible, Mommy!!"

Also

"That's pretty sensible" about getting a napkin for breakfast.

"That's so snazzy, mommy, I'm so snazzy." about new jammies from Tia Alex

Sometimes this blog is just post-it-notes for someone who wants to do a kiddo scrapbook one day. I do have a lot of other things to write about. It is going on the list of things to work on.

Got that lovin feeling

Thumper is feeding himself now, fist after hungry fist. Tonight? Black beans and roasted sweet potato. And applesauce. And bread. And rice. He must be going through a growth spurt because he is never done with his meal.

He gets totally excited about Khubz. When he heard her not-napping at naptime he got all excited and scrambled down to her room. They then begin to "talk" to each other through the door. And, once again, I am the only one in the house who is begging for a nap.

Later I'm giving Thumper a bath and Khubz comes in to pee! (never to pee. always to pee!!!) I'm with my baby in the tub so help yourself. My back is to Khubz and I hear her say, "Wait! Waiiit! Wait for me! I'm coming in--don't flush!" She is doing a voice over for her toilet paper. She throws the toilet paper in and then flushes saying, "whew! I made it!"

There are all of these ways that she surprises me.

Later in the night we went to the store and were putting the food away. Scully remarks, "oh, I should have gotten some fruit to take to work tomorrow." She was saying this to me. Khubz looks up from her blueberries and says, "I have an idea, Mama! Take some of mine. I will share." We didn't even think she was listening to us.

Earlier at the store she wanted to hold her blueberries. We'd even given her a choice of a clearance halloween costume (with an orange wig) or the blueberries and she wanted the blueberries. (she did come from my body, you know.) So she hands the blueberries to the woman at the checkout and then asks for them back--she wants to hold them. Of course, you all already know the punchline. We turn around and Khubz drops the blueberries. Blueberries roll everywhere at the checkout. Everywhere. Okay. What do we do when we make a mess? "Clean it up!" she says. Okay. Now picture me and Khubz chasing blueberries all over the floor at the MallWart checkout registers. And I mean chasing. People were walking by and (accidentally?) kicking them. I handed her a brush--this was a mistake. Blueberries do roll naturally and with a 3 year old batting them around. . . You get the picture. So we got them all up (impressing the cashier who I guess thought we were just going to leave them there?) and thrown away. She still had some in the container that were saved--thank god. It was actually pretty funny.

We all had a really nice day today.

dia de los muertos

Well, I am posting this too late to get in on the goods over at Crafty Chica. But every good altar deserves a post (even if only a picture post.)