In the mood for a pissy irrelevant rant? OH GOOD ME TOO.

I sure am glad I’m not in the public eye right now: my house and family couldn’t live up to that kind of scrutiny. One of the things making me all crabby about the octuplets story is the way news sources (by which I mean celeb mags, obv) bring up insignificant parts of Nadya Suleman’s life as if they were evidence against her. Some things matter, some things don’t—and the fact that her children don’t have bed frames DOESN’T MATTER. It’s just something that sounds bad if you don’t think it through (sample: “Wait, does it MEAN anything bad if a bed doesn’t have a frame?”).

Though my children’s beds all have frames (whew, I’m a fit mother!), one of my friends DELIBERATELY puts her children’s mattresses on the floor—even though her living-in-the-household husband (and father to their non-fertility-treatment-conceived children) makes a kajillion dollars and AFFORDING or FINDING ROOM for the bed frames is not at all a problem. She prefers it because it makes falling out of bed a non-issue and because her husband is a doctor and says mattresses on the floor are better for spine development.

I guess, though, that my friend’s children should be taken away from her, because “mattresses on the floor” = “unacceptable living conditions.” In what country would that be, where having a nice clean firm mattress on an indoor, non-vermin-infested floor, under a non-leaking, solid roof, in a heated house where no insect nets are needed over the beds, is neglect and abuse?

The clutter, too. The photos of the clutter in her house are not that different from what a photo would look like of MY house, if someone visited unexpectedly during the day, except that her carpets looked cleaner. And oh dear, because is toy clutter now a sign of parental unfitness? If so, I am in TRUH-BULL. And I have one fewer child in the house than she does, so I have less of an excuse!

Now I’m hyper-aware of what a celebrity-mag review of MY living conditions could look like. This morning, if a reporter had stopped by unexpectedly and at a poor moment, she could have reported:

1) A child with a dirty diaper, crying in a playpen.
2) Toys all over the floor.
3) Laundry piled high in three different bedrooms.
4) Unmade beds; sheets on one bed not changed for more than 2 weeks.
5) Child still in pajamas after breakfast.
6) Child with hair still ratty in the back from sleeping.
7) Breakfast dishes still on table, including sippee cup of room-temperature milk.
8) Crumbs on the floor. Partially-eaten GRAHAM CRACKER on the floor.

Man, doesn’t that look awful? And yet I assure you, the children are loved and well cared for, and the hair did eventually get combed, and I got to the diaper as soon as I noticed it, which did not take long TRUST ME (what did that child EAT??).

And oh god, please let her not bring a photographer with her to document:

1) The scunginess around the back of the toilet.
2) The dust build-up in the corners.
3) The dishes in the sink.
4) The dish on the counter, with an elderly cat eating off it.
5) The toy clutter, oh my dear Target, the toy clutter.
6) The area under the couch, which is probably 3 inches thick.
7) The scunginess around the faucets.

Oh, no: are they going to have someone dig into my past, too?

1. A marriage that lasted less than a year.
2. A year in therapy to resolve anxiety issues (FAIL).
3. Several cigarettes while UNDERAGE.
4. Bottle of vodka while UNDERAGE.
5. Took Percocet after c-sections—AND ENJOYED IT.
6. When Paul lost his job, we ACCEPTED UNEMPLOYMENT CHECKS.
7. We had all our children while we were covered by health insurance, which means OTHER PEOPLE helped pay for our children’s births.
8. We send our children to public schools, which means OTHER PEOPLE help pay for their education.

It makes me so FURIOUS that anyone would use any of these things to judge someone’s ability to PARENT. Seriously, a child can live in GENUINE SQUALOR and still be loved and well cared for—but a nice house with wall-to-wall, running water, indoor plumbing, a good roof, several bedrooms, and a mattress for everyone is NOT squalor. “Clean” clutter (that is, not heaps of rotting food and fly-covered diapers, but just blocks and other toys) on the floor means nothing except that a household has children in it. Unemployment and disability checks show a faulty character only if you are NOT unemployed/disabled when you accept them.

OTHER ISSUES ASIDE, a person’s ability to parent successfully can’t be judged by their furniture and other material possessions, or by their interest in housecleaning. Thank god.

Get Up and Play is having a baby guessing contest for a prize package. I LOVE baby-guessing contests!

Life is Good (who won my recent baby-guessing contest for my niece) is having a contest for a spring pick-me-up package (including cloth napkins and napkin rings!).

Want Not is having a contest to win some EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE (SIX dollars!! EACH!!) cloth napkins!

I get pretty frustrated with the themes of children’s TV shows. Not frustrated enough to turn off the TV and interact with the children myself, but pretty frustrated. Major themes:

1. You can be anything.
2. You should always be yourself.
3. If you are unsuccessful, unhappy, or unliked, it is because you’re not believing in yourself and/or being yourself.

So there will be an episode where a character tries to be “cool,” and instead this results in them being clumsy and wrecking stuff for other people, and other people get angry and don’t like it. So the character acts like himself/herself instead, and everyone loves him/her.

Lesson: Be yourself and everyone will love you! Second lesson: If you’re clumsy, or if people don’t like you, this means you’re not being yourself. If you were being yourself, everything would go right and everyone would love you.

And since you can be anything you want to be, if you’re being something OTHER than what you want to be, you are a failure. Never mind that almost everyone wants to be the president or an astronaut or a ballerina or a writer or an actor, and almost nobody wants to be the other 9,999 out of 10,000 jobs: if you are not What You Want To Be, you’re probably not being yourself.

I think this is really dumb. But of course I WOULD, since I never did become a ballerina.

White = terrible clothing color for children.

I am having kind of a perky, excited kind of day. MANY REASONS.

1. I ordered about one (1) million dollars’ worth of reusable pads and now I am VERY KEEN to try them out and to tell you what I think of them. (Yes, I will warn you before I start to tell you so you have a chance to avert your eyes. Hello, male college friends! Hello, Dad! Hello, squeamish girls!)

2. On this post about cloth napkins and napkin rings, my friend Maureen commented that she’d found some great clearance napkin rings at Kohl’s, and that she WOULD have bought ME some except she wanted them all for HERSELF. So, I don’t know, it depends on how you define “friend,” but I count “giving the heads-up on an obscure shopping thing even if she DOESN’T SHARE,” and I went to Kohl’s this weekend and bought not one, not two, not three, not four, not AND SO ON napkin rings, but TWENTY-TWO napkin rings for 39 cents each down from $3.99 each, and $3.99 is a ridiculous price for a single napkin ring but 39 cents is perfect. So now I am SWIMMING in napkin rings and I suppose you might be wondering why I would need 22 of them for my family of 7, but HELLO, I might suddenly CHANGE PERSONALITIES and start throwing HUGE DINNER PARTIES. And maybe someday we really will have the Dreamy Dreamy Dream House and I’ll need napkin rings for everybody! Actually, it’s because I bought one of each kind for our household, and then I bought duplicates to send out whenever I send out cloth napkins in the future, in case I do that. Plus, OKAY FINE I got caught up in the excitement. 39 cents!

3. I won my first Want Not contest, and notice how I use the word “first” like I’m planning on winning many, many more. (I totally AM planning that.) I won five coupons for free tubs of “decorator” Clorox wipes, which is TOTALLY AWS because my kids’ teachers are always begging for Clorox wipes and then I go and look at the price and I’m like “Whoa,” so instead I buy the tissues and the hand soap they also beg for, but it’ll be nice to send in the expensive stuff for a change. PLUS I am getting a reusable tote, and I totally love reusable totes, and I am also getting an APRON, and the apron MATCHES the tote, so I am going to be totally stylin while doing my shopping.

4. I am having So! Much! Fun! doing a care package swap with Lisa of It’s Pretty Okay. Lisa lives in JAPAN, so there was no frocking way I was mailing a package all the way there (it’s like $50 to mail a SMALL package that weighs less than a CAT) (not that I’d mail a cat, even though I have extras), but it turns out that because she’s in a military family I could use the APO/FPO flat rate box which lets you ship a nice satisfyingly big box for less than twelve dollars. To JAPAN!! So Lisa and I are exchanging surprise care packages, and I am feeling all happy about it. It was fun putting together a package, and it will be fun RECEIVING a package. Lisa and I both struggled with some Package Performance Anxiety (“What if she hates this? What if she’s sorry she ever agreed to do this??”), but we overcame it and went instead for the THIS IS SO FUN! attitude.

5. Amazing Trips (a TRIPLET blog, not a travel blog as I assumed the first time I saw it a couple of years ago) (and by the way, in child math, triplets are twice as many children as twins) is doing a raffle for a KitchenAid mixer. I just entered and OOOOOO I WANT TO WIN SO BAD. I love love love my KitchenAid mixer, but the other day Edward pulled it down off the counter (!!!) and luckily for Edward’s head it fell not on Edward’s head but on its speed lever, but that was kind of unlucky for the speed lever. Also, the whole thing is out of alignment now and doesn’t mix like it used to. And also-also, it’s white, and I want pink or light blue or maybe spring green. So I’m tempted not to tell you about the raffle, because the fewer people who enter, the better chance I have of winning. But my chances are so slim anyway I LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH, I’m telling you about it anyway.

6. Two and a half cups of coffee. So far.

Oh, hey. I have kind of an embarrassing question to ask. I thought about just not asking it, but I really do need input. I’m preparing to make an expensive purchase and I think it’s better to get recommendations about these things. But…this involves feminine hygiene products. So if that kind of thing squigs you out, now’s the time to take a powder.

I cannot believe it was almost TWO YEARS AGO that I read these two posts by Jonniker talking about the, er, Diva Cup. And The Keeper. And The Moon Cup. Each of which, if you’re not familiar with the names, is a little cup that is inserted into the tampon region for the tampon purpose, but unlike a tampon it is reusable. You, ah, empty/rinse it out periodically during the day.

The comments on those posts were some of the funniest I’ve ever read. By the time the discussion was over (it took a long time to die down), I was definitely planning to buy one of those things. I totally get how some people are grossed out but I’m just NOT grossed out even a little bit (I did the Fertility Awareness Method for YEARS, and that involves checking your cervical fluid), so ANYWAY it seemed like a good match for me. But I was pregnant at the time (!) and then I was nursing, and I didn’t have much incentive to buy anything of the sort.

And now it has been two years. And I realized there is another reason I haven’t made this purchase: I HATE tampons. I use pads. I’m not saying I LOVE pads, but they don’t bother me either. So you know what makes more sense for me to try? Launderable pads.

You’re a little worried, aren’t you, that this means I’m going Environcrazy. Next I’ll be eschewing launderable pads in favor of LEAVES from the BACKYARD. Would it be reassuring if I mentioned that I use an entire flush of the toilet to dispose of a bug? It’s true. Also, I don’t turn my computer off at night because it’s too much trouble to push the on button in the morning.

In fact, I’m a little worried that the only reason I’m interested in this at all is that when I was searching for cloth napkins on Etsy I accidentally found a bunch of THE CUTEST reusable pads EVAR in this shop. I mean! Will you look at this?

Pink paisley, forthuhluvuhguh. And this!:

I WANT. I almost bought them without even investigating if they’re any GOOD. I mean, do they leak? Do they stain? Do they shrink? Do they fade? These are the questions a person should be asking herself, rather than “Are they cute?”

Anybody still reading? If so, and if you have experience with this sort of thing, can you tell me what to look for or where to buy? I know I could also theoretically make my own, but that would involve theoretical sewing abilities, and really I am MUCH better at shopping.

You’ve probably noticed already how no one can say WORD ONE about a childbirth experience without LOTS of other people chiming in. There’s a certain “flock of chickens” charm to it. I notice it most often with a new mother who is trying to tell her childbirth story, and she gets to say only about half a sentence at a time because all the other mothers keep jumping in to say how that half a sentence is or is not the same as how their labors went. It’s automatic and unpreventable, and it MATTERS NOT if you have heard these stories MANY TIMES BEFORE: you will hear them again anyway.

I was thinking about this yesterday when I saw Jonniker‘s Twitter update about how she was off to Labor & Delivery because her water had broken with a weird pop first thing that morning—and I was irresistibly compelled to EMAIL HER to tell her that OMG, that’s how MY first labor started over ten years ago WE ARE PRACTICALLY SISTERS!!! Now I’m picturing that weird little email sitting in her inbox while she’s, you know, GIVING BIRTH, and unaware as yet of this AMAZING COINCIDENCE. Maybe I should see if I can find out the number of her hospital? Or I could just contact the local news.

Well. Anyway. Here is the question I have for you today: If YOU have ever gone into labor, how did it start? What was the FIRST THING? Feeling funny? A contraction? Water breaking? Did it wake you in the middle of the night, or was it first thing in the morning, or were you going about your day, or were you at a doctor appointment? Did you know right away that it was labor, or did you look back afterward and say, “AH yes! That WAS labor!”

If you’ve never gone into labor but are eager to join in the discussion (I myself feel a little sad if there’s a question and I’m not eligible to answer it), you could also write about what was the first thing that happened in your mother’s labor with YOU, or the first thing that happened in a friend or relative’s labor. Everyone can play!

1. Giant 2-cup-capacity Starbucks mug.
2. Enough coffee to fill it about halfway.

3. Milk or milk-like product.
4. Chocolate syrup or powder: lots.
5. Peppermint extract: just a few drops or it’ll taste like toothpaste.

6. Refrigerate.
7. Sip from all day long.

I am happy and surprised to report that so far the cloth napkin experiment has been an unexpectedly smashing success. I was thinking the best possible outcome was “Yeah, I guess I’m willing to cope with this hassle, especially because it’s so fun to buy cloth napkins”—but in fact the outcome is “OMG WE LOVE THESE.” So fond of them are we, in fact, that if they were shown to be WORSE for the environment than paper napkins, we would furtively continue to use them and I would have to switch them over to one of my examples of how we all have things we do that could get us shot by environmental extremists.

The ones that turn out to be perfect for the kids are the “cocktail” napkins. They’re smaller and more manageable than the regular kind. There were two sizes of cloth cocktail napkins: one was the size of a folded paper cocktail napkin (5 inches square?) and I didn’t get any of those (for one thing, they were WHITE). The other size FOLDS to the size of a folded paper cocktail napkin, so it’s more like 10 inches square which is perfect. (The regular size of cloth napkin is 20 inches square, which is HELLA GENEROUSLY large.)

My next shopping quest (and I do love having a shopping quest: even if I buy only cat litter and toilet paper, the shopping trip is still fun because I had something fun to look for) is napkin rings. I bought two sets of four at 75% off, but each set is matched. Paul chose one of the wooden ones for his napkin, and I chose one of the metal ones for my napkin, but now we’re out of Different Rings. So I’m going to keep looking for more. There are always a lot of them on post-Christmas clearances, and I am patient. Well, no, I’m not patient (you should have seen me FREAKING OUT for information about my newly-born niece), but I’m patient about bargains.

I also love Devan’s idea of making some, and I’m going to see if I can get some big chunky gaudy beads for mine. And I also-also love the idea Jac left in the comment section about looking on eBay for old personalized napkin rings. I went looking but found that the ones I wanted (silverplate engraved “Beatrice,” for example) are the ones that are covered in bids and going for $40 each, whereas the ones I would pay NOT to own (geese with country-blue ribbons around their necks) are ending with no bids.

Oh my dears. Look what we have:

It is Niestle. Niecele. Niecstle. Niecestle. Niece-stle. Neestle. I guess Niestle is the best one. Perhaps I should have thought this out ahead of time, rather than making it part of the birth announcement. (Bethtastic gets credit for this nickname, which BLEW MY MIND with its wonderfulness.)

This is my niece. She is 19 inches long, and she weighs 7 pounds. She is so glorious, I am blinded. I had to use the little “home-row bumps” to find the right keys on my keyboard. Only through blurriness can I see her beautiful wahing mouth. Her tiny beautiful hands. Her lovely squinched eyes of indignation.

She was born on March 1st at 11:11 p.m., which is very tidy. I like her already.

If I’ve counted correctly, and it IS hard to count with blinded eyes of love, 14 of you guessed March 1st:

1. Amy of WriteBrained
2. Mimi of Mimi All Me
3. Siera of Take me as I am
4. Salgavin
5. Fiona Picklebottom of Move Along – There’s Nothing to See Here
6. Julie of Life is Good
7. Saly of Incubation Nation
8. Emily R of Righters’ Writings
9. Tess
10. Janet of From the Planet of Janet
11. Sally of Kingston Duo
12. Alison of Laugh Until Your Cheeks Hurt
13. Stacy
14. Jennifer of Guinea Pig Paperie

I used a Random Number Generator to choose a winner, and it chose #6: Julie of Life is Good. Email me (swistle at gmail dot com) with your mailing info, Julie, and I’m going to start putting things into a box!

Congratulations, Erik and Anna! Really nice work there!