Two minor domestic triumphs:

1) Located Source of Mysterious Bad Smell. First thing this morning, I started encountering little air pockets of Bad Smell, mostly in the kitchen but also everywhere else. The usual culprits proclaimed their innocence: twins’ diapers were clean, kitchen trash seemed fine; the diaper pail, while not exactly springtime fresh, was within normal limits. I kept smelling something, though. Then, as I went to wipe up the twins after their breakfast, I found the problem: a nasty washcloth. A washcloth can turn on you like that. I spritzed the hell out of it with Febreze: when a washcloth smells that terrible, I like to do prep before it goes through the wash.

2) Used a $10 Off Coupon at Target. The challenge was to spend the necessary $100, but on things we would buy anyway. A coupon for $10 off $100 is good, but if I buy a bunch of pretty-sparklies and dishes and baby clothes we don’t need, it’s only 10% off—that’s hardly even a sale. If I buy diapers and dish soap and cat food, it’s a free package of diapers. I came home with the world’s most boring Target haul (paper towels! light bulbs!), but I used that coupon.

Hey, ethical dilemma: The other day when I went to Target, I got a pair of earrings that were 75% off—$3.74. When I got home and was looking at the receipt to see if I needed to save it, I noticed that the earrings were not on there. They were in my bag, but unpaid for. On one hand, it’s only $3.74, and I’m going to feel like a major kiss-up dork if I go to customer service and insist on paying. On the other hand, it doesn’t sit well with me to just let it go. Usually I wear new earrings the very next day, but I find that when I look at them, I think uncomfortably of how I—totally inadvertently—“stole” them. What would you do? I’ll tell you later what I’ve decided.

I really liked the suggestion some of you made about getting a DVD player for the trip I’ll be going on, the one where I will be trying to contain a toddler for hours and hours and hours and hours. I’d had it in my head that the only way to have a DVD player in the car was to buy a car with a DVD player already installed. Then, when you guys mentioned purchasing the DVD player sans vehicle, I looked into it and found that hey! you can BUY these things! Furthermore, my dad thinks he might be able to rig his portable DVD player somehow, and he has made it his mission to make something work. So—thanks! I don’t mind telling you I’m a big fan of television, especially in its child-muzzling capacity.

Anyway, this got me thinking about children’s DVDs, and what I could stand to be trapped in a car with. There are certain children’s shows that would motivate me to fling myself out of the moving car, thanking the gods of momentum and gravity for the privilege. The first few notes of Barney, for example, make me run for the remote yelling “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” to keep any sound from entering my brain. I don’t care if he does have the best clean-up song ever, he’s horrible, and so are those child actors. Someone must be holding those children’s parents at knifepoint right in front of them to elicit such strained and vigorously cheerful performances.

And Caillou. I don’t think I have ever heard such irritating whining. And Maya and Miguel, with their whole “He thinks with his brain! She thinks with her heart and with her sparkly twirling ponytail! Because she’s a silly girl!” And the newly-formatted Sesame Street, with “Journey to Ernie” and “Elmo’s World” taking over all the good stuff.

Well. I enjoy anything that gives me an excuse to buy things I’ve been wanting to buy anyway, and I was thinking this trip would be a good excuse to buy those “old school” Sesame Street episodes that have started coming out on DVD. I might also buy some Blue’s Clues. Do I have to specify that they’d be the ones with Steve? Of course they’d be the ones with Steve. We have a bunch of Blue’s Clues episodes on videotapes that are totally legal, legitimately purchased, not at all taped off the TV—but we have nothing on DVD. I wish there were more than just a couple of episodes per DVD, though. If someone were to tape onto their own videotapes, for example, they might get more like 15 episodes per tape. I’m just saying IF.

Successful and non-irritating DVDs we already own are:

1) Baby Bach, Baby Mozart, and Baby Beethoven from the some-good-some-bad Baby Einstein series. These are good because the background sound is mostly just classical music, rather than hyper piping voices or “the FISH song! Fish-fish-fish! fish-fish-fish! fish-fish-fish-fish-fish!” And I can look away from the screen when Little Miss “I Think of Myself as a Hand Model” is on, or when they’re doing the not-exactly-Jim-Henson-quality puppetry.

2) Schoolhouse Rock! I never saw these as a child, but Paul did, and I’ve really been enjoying the 30th Anniversary Edition he insisted we buy. It has all the songs, and you can watch them by category (grammar, government, etc.) or you can put it on shuffle mode so it plays them in random order. I’ve never been so close to understanding how our government, circulatory, and banking systems work. It’s way too old for a 2-year-old, but our resident nearly-2-year-olds don’t seem bothered by that—they like the animation and the music.

3) They Might Be Giants have a kid DVD called Here Come the ABCs, and it is great. We bought the DVD/CD combo pack so we can listen to the music in the car and watch the DVD at home. The kids like it, we like it, everyone’s happy.

Okay, tell me the children’s shows you hate, and the ones you love. My credit card is itching for action, and I have such a good excuse for using it.

Hey! Hey, I just swayed as I walked down the hall. Houston, we have waddling.

One of my strengths as a parent is Talking. I can talk at great length with a child who wants to know why we wear dark dressy clothes to funerals even if we’re not sad about the person who died, or why thank-you notes are crucial and how they should be written. I can even handle “What happens to us after we die?” and “But how did the baby START in your tummy?” and “WHY do we have to zip up before we come out of the bathroom?” Rob and I do particularly well as a parent-child team: he likes to repeatedly talk every subject into the ground and I am happy to oblige.

With William, I have more trouble. When we were making muffins this morning, he said thoughtfully, “That sugar looks like it’s picking its nose.” You tell me how to start an attentive and loving conversation around that opener. I thought we were on a better track when he asked, “Can we talk about what I want to grow up as?” and I said, with relief, “YES! What do you want to be when you grow up?,” and he said, “A sound wave.” Oh. Not a firefighter? Because I have a whole conversation about being a firefighter.

This morning I was getting Elizabeth dressed, and she was playing with a sweater that had been on top of the changing table. When I was finished dressing her, she indicated clearly (grabbing the sweater, yelling, trying to wrap the sweater around herself) that she wanted to wear the sweater.

I explained to her that the sweater had been on the changing table like that because she’d outgrown it and I needed to put it in the handmedowns bag. I pointed out that the sweater did not go with her outfit anyway. I reminded her that the weather report had suggested that today was going to be warm and springlike, not a good day for sweaters.

Her debating tactics need work: her only argument was “EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Outcome of our disagreement?

Whose debating tactics need work NOW?

Maybe you have been wondering why there have been no Digging Ourselves Out entries lately? There are three reasons. First, I was getting jumpy about the number of posts: I would think, “Well, I already posted a Digging Out entry, and now I’ve posted a regular entry, so I really shouldn’t post another entry.” Second, I think that whole cleaning idea might have been Second Trimester Energy. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but compared to how I feel here in the third trimester, I think it was. Third, here are the Before and After pictures from one of my first tasks, the kitchen table project:

Doesn’t that look nice, all clean and smooth? So much better. And now here’s the After After:

It’s not as bad as the original Before picture, but nearly. And the worst part is, I didn’t put that stuff there. Those are Legos put there by Paul and Rob and William, a mask put there by William, school papers put there by Rob, magazines put there by Paul, etc. I know The F1y L@dy says that if your family doesn’t cooperate with your clean-up ideas, you should go ahead and do all the clean-up for them, but I say SCREW THAT!

The Flying Mum tagged me for a “7 Songs I’ve Been Enjoying Lately” meme. I’m supposed to include links to clips, but apparently I am too dim to do that: I tried copying The Flying Mum’s idea of using Rhapsody, but couldn’t make it cooperate with me. I am failing this meme.

1. Dragostea Din Tei, by OZone
2. Welcome to the Black Parade, by My Chemical Romance
3. Life Less Ordinary, by Carbon Leaf
4. What Hurts the Most, by Rascal Flatts
5. Behind These Hazel Eyes, by Kelly Clarkson
6. Too Little Too Late, by JoJo
7. Angel, by Shaggy

Do you know, I am actually a little nervous making that list? I feel like maybe you’re going to be snorting and saying, “She likes THAT song? She is SO lame.”

I’d like to start a meme of my own, if I may do that and I don’t see why I mayn’t. It’s a perfume meme. List three (or whatever–we’re casual in this meme) perfumes that are important to you, or have memories associated with them, or that you currently love, and say why.

Charlie (Revlon)– I wore this most of the way through high school, and I still have a bottle of it. I remember how appealing the ads were to me: beautiful girls in tough pinstriped suits, and, if I remember correctly, the idea that under their tough career exteriors they were wearing lacy lingerie. That concept makes me barf a little now, but I loved it as a teenager.

Sand & Sable (Coty)– I wore this during college. I still like it, but I can’t smell it without thinking of a relationship that ended very badly, and so I haven’t worn it since.

La Chasse Aux Papillons (L’Artisan)– This is one of my current favorites, and the first very expensive perfume I’ve owned. The way I found it is a little embarrassing: I read in US Weekly magazine that some celebrity liked it. The way she described it (“like fresh-cut flowers”) so intrigued me that I went online and bought a sample of it (I like Luscious Cargo for samples and also for their fun, cool site), and I loved it and now I have a whole entire expensive French bottle of it and it makes me feel special and pretty and not-frumpy to use it.

So! There’s my very own meme! And I tag ALL of you! Yes, ALL of you! You are ALL tagged! Well, all of you with blogs. All of you who have blogs and also wear perfume.

You guys. You are not going to believe this. I emailed Tal, saying almost exactly my sample email but with more gushing afterwards about the baby to cushion the first sentence, which started with “I don’t think it’s going to work out to get together…”

He wrote back within a couple of hours, and he says: “Are you on bed rest? Why the grim prognosis for visiting?” And then he talks about how great it would be to get together and catch up sometime soon.

Whuh? Has he experienced severe head trauma? Does he not understand any social cues at all? First I put him off, then I tapered off the emails, then I took ages to reply to this one, and then I said it wasn’t going to work out to get together but let’s “try” to keep in touch via email. That’s pretty clear, right? I mean, it’s not as clear as “Look, idiot, I don’t like you anymore but you can email me with major life changes if you must,” but it’s about as direct as I get with these sorts of situations. And he wants to know if I’m ON BEDREST??

Dropped on his head as a baby. Repeatedly. That’s my guess. Or else a LOT of recreational drug use since I last saw him.

Short version, for people who dislike reading other people’s long and not particularly interesting memories of their youths: Someone from my old teenaged social circle has reappeared and wants to start getting together socially, but I don’t like him anymore and need a good way to say “No, you idiot, can’t you see we have nothing in common anymore?” without feeling like a jerk.

Long version, for people who love long, unnecessarily detailed descriptions:
Back in high school, there was one summer where I spent almost every single evening with the same group of people. We all had daytime summer jobs, so around 5:00 we’d start calling around saying, “What are we doing tonight?” It was a lot of fun. I’d never been that social, before or since.

One member of the group was named Tal, and back when I was in high school I thought he was pretty great. He was bouncy and theatrical and outgoing and friendly, and the first day we met, he and I were assigned to go out on a snack run, and in the store he slung his arm over my shoulder. The first day we met! Plus, he was cute. Really cute. We saw each other a lot in our group, and he kept making me batiks and drawing charcoal sketches of me and sitting too close to me and so on. We did go out on one real date (he wanted me to meet his parents, who totally interviewed me as a Wife Candidate during that whole dinner–that would have freaked me out if I’d been a little older), but we never officially dated: he went off to two weeks of camp, and while he was gone, the ex-boyfriend I’d pined for all summer came back to me, that stupid loser, and I got back together with him. Later I kicked myself for losing my opportunity to date Tal, but LATER-later I realized it didn’t really matter which of them I’d dated, because neither of them were going to work out anyway.

Tal and I lost touch when I went off to college, and in college I lost my taste for bouncy, theatrical guys, instead preferring quiet, environmentally-conscious, flannel-shirt-wearing guys. We wrote a few letters, he sent me a couple of mix tapes (mix tapes!), and that was nearly it: we did write once or twice in a “here’s my new address” and “I got married” way, but nothing more.

This past fall, I got an email from him. He said he and his wife had moved to a nearby town, and that he’d love to get back in touch. He said his wife was pregnant with their first child, and he invited me to their baby shower. He hoped I and my whole family could come over some time for dinner.

I went to the baby shower, and here I am getting to the heart of this problem: I don’t like him anymore. I don’t like the theatrics, which seem even more abrasive in someone who is 32 not 17. I don’t like his wife, who says things like “I consume very little sugar” and “I don’t see why I have to get the same exact gestational diabetes screening as some obese woman who eats Twinkies all day” and “Yes, well, the way they do it in [country she spent a year in] is they….” She was snappish with him, and he was foppish and childlike. They referred to their cat as their “first baby.” I found them both irritating, and their baby registry was annoying.

After the baby shower, Tal and I exchanged a few emails, mostly talking about people we used to know. I allowed the emails to taper off, and when he suggested getting together for dinner (meaning him and his wife, me and Paul and all the children–in their perfect house filled with their international breakable souvenir collection, I’m SO SURE), I put him off with an excuse about being busy over the holidays. Then I didn’t email anymore, and I hoped that would be the end of it.

However, recently he emailed with an abject, bowing apology about being out of touch for so long, and reasserting his interest in booking a date for a get-together. I really, really don’t want to. I thought he would have noticed at the shower, as I did, that we don’t have anything in common anymore, but he hasn’t. I’m not sure how to put him off. If it was someone saying, “We should really get together sometime” it would be easier, but he’s saying, “Let’s set a date and time! How about a week from Sunday?”

There are probably people who would say to him, “Listen, idiot, I don’t even like you anymore,” but what I need is something more subtle. Something that doesn’t make me feel mean, but also doesn’t let him keep trying to set up a time, because he’s apparently not going to get the hint by me being all vague and “oh, currently too busy but maybe someday” approach. I could just not answer, but I don’t think he’s going to drop it. What if I wrote something like, “I don’t think it’s going to work out to get together, but let’s try to keep in touch by email–I’d love to hear how your new baby is doing!”

What I really wish is that there were an emoticon I could use. A certain little face that communicated, “Hey, I know we used to be friends, but we’re not anymore, and you really need to drop that whole idea before I have to hurt your feelings. Also, your wife is a humorless, judgmental bitch.” Anyone seen an emoticon for that?

Bags of candy containing assorted flavors present a problem in our household.

There are two philosophies regarding mixed bags of candy. The first philosophy is that you should select the flavors you like, and leave the others. Why would you waste candy by eating it when you don’t like it? Leave it for someone who does like it. This makes total sense.

But there is another philosophy. This is a philosophy formed when a person who likes all the flavors confronts a bag containing only a few. And it happens again and again, through nearly ten years of married life. And so she never gets to eat certain flavors. This philosophy states that if you don’t like all or at least most of the flavors, don’t eat from the bag at all. Buy non-mixed bags, containing only the flavors you like. You selfish, thoughtless, inconsiderate jerk.

It has taken me over a dozen years of sharing a household, but I have nearly trained Paul not to THROW AWAY the flavors he doesn’t like, which was his former approach to mixed bags. And there are times when I wonder if maybe I should have allowed him to continue that. In some sense, it solves the problem: he goes through all the flavors at a steady rate then, some consumed and some destroyed. And what happens when I forbid it? I get a bag of, say, all the blue SweeTarts. All the Mr. Goodbars. I like blue Sweetarts, but I like them combined with their purple and orange and pink friends; Mr. Goodbars are my favorites, but I like them better when I’m also eating Krackels and plain Hersheys. But first I have to finish off these leavings–and by the time I do, Paul has left me another picked-over bag. This is the kind of situation that gradually begins to seem fraught with underlying meanings. He gets the first pick; I have to accept whatever he leaves behind. He doesn’t worry about what happens to the things he doesn’t like; it’s my job to take care of that. You see how this is dangerous ground?

It isn’t that I don’t understand his point of view. I like Hershey miniatures, but I don’t like the Special Darks. Does that make me a bad person? No. Does that mean I should have to eat full-size candy bars instead of cute miniature ones, just because I happen to dislike one of the four flavors? No. Does that mean I should force myself to eat the Special Darks, out of a sense of duty to the bag of Miniatures? No. What I do is this: my mom likes the Special Darks best, and I give them all to her. That’s using smart and considerate candy management principles.

The only time Paul and I are in harmony is with jellybeans. He likes the oranges, the yellows, the greens, and the blacks, ONLY. I like the pinks, the whites, and the purples, ONLY. Neither of us like the reds. We can peacefully share a bag of jellybeans. There, our marriage works, and we are happy. But we have not yet been married long enough to share a bag of Hershey Miniatures.

In June, when the new baby is about 3 weeks old, I’m going on a 3-day trip with my mom and my dad and one toddler (probably Edward) and the new baby, to attend my cousin’s wedding. It will be one full day of driving, one full day for the wedding, and then another full day of driving.

Some of you will think this is berserk, but consider for a moment:

• If I stay home, I will be exclusively in charge of five children: a fighting 8-year-old and 6-year-old, two 2-year-olds, and a newborn. If I go on the trip, there will be two additional adults and three fewer children.
• If I go on the trip, I will get to eat meals out three times a day, without having to cook or even open the fridge.
• If I go on the trip, I will be able to go to a wedding, and I love weddings. I will get to buy a wedding gift, and I love buying wedding gifts.
• I am fond of my cousin, and would like to be there on an important day like this.

Now I realize there is a flip side:

• If I go on the trip, we will have to stop every 2-3 hours so I can nurse a newborn.
• That newborn will probably spit up all over his car seat.
• Spit up IF WE’RE LUCKY.
• A toddler in a car for two days.
• A toddler in a hotel room.
• A toddler at a wedding reception.

But still! I think it will go okay. I think it might in fact be very nice: I tend to be a little overwhelmed and weepy at 3 weeks post-partum, feeling as if all the happy anticipation of life has drained away. A little trip like this might be great. I don’t have to do any driving, and can rest in the car. I can eat lots of nummy snacks. I can buy new postcards for my collection. I don’t have to look at a dirty house. I can show off the new baby to lots of relatives who, because of being related to the baby, will refrain from noting how rashy-cheeked and patchy-haired and generally unappealing he is.

I think I even have a dress I can wear. I was worried about that, because I’ll still be kind of puffy and pregnant-looking 3 weeks after the c-section. And it IS a little worrying, because it’s not as if I can try the dress on right NOW and see if it’ll fit: I’ll have to try it on after the baby is born and make a decision THEN if it’ll work or if I have to somehow drag myself out shopping. But I think it will work. It’s a dark blue floral print, and it’s a forgiving cut. If I remember correctly, it’s the kind that’s really loose and then there’s a string in the back to tie it the right tightness. It’s not high fashion, but who’s going to be looking at me anyway? It’s a wedding, so there’s the bride just for starters, but also I’ll have a newborn baby with me. I could wear nothing but a hospital johnny and an arch expression and no one would notice.

Oh! I nearly forgot the point of this post! Which is that I will have a toddler in the car for about 24 hours. And I’m going to buy some new toys for the trip, and I am hoping for recommendations. Edward will have just turned two years old. He likes things with buttons: an old TV remote was a big hit for awhile, until he realized the buttons didn’t do anything. I’m thinking along the lines of handheld battery-run toys that aren’t so annoying that an adult trapped in the car with them will go nuts. And of course if you know of any SILENT toys that are just as entrancing, TELL ME RIGHT NOW YOU MUST TELL ME RIGHT NOW.