Today I was complaining on Twitter about a loud neighbor child who while playing outside CONSISTENTLY and PERSISTENTLY makes a loud, grating, “motor” sound (EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!) that can’t be good either for his throat or my ears, and then [THIS NEXT PART IS TOTALLY UNCONNECTED TO THE CHILD] I heard a screech of tires and an unmistakable sound of 1.5 tons of metal hitting another 1.5 tons of metal, and then the sound of a woman crying out. And there is NO connection here to the child making the grating sound, except that I was complaining about him shortly before it happened: he was neither injured nor involved, and in fact had gone inside already. But I was rocketing out of my chair and into the yard within seconds (I HOPE it was within seconds, and that I didn’t sit there insensate for awhile before responding), calling out to anyone I saw, “Is anyone hurt?” “Has anyone called 911?” And I don’t know why I did that, because no one can provide answers to that kind of question 10 seconds after a crash and/or BEFORE the point at which someone should be dialing 911. After my first “I don’t know!” answer, I ran back into my house and called 911 and cursed the gods who gave me a voice that shakes so hard in times like this. My goal is to avoid the throat-clamped feeling of tears, or at least to plow through them and speak anyway. Even if they TRANSFER me and make me say it AGAIN, which is what they did.

And here is what I’ve noticed: that you can live a mile and a half from the nearest emergency response station, and it can still take a full year to hear sirens. You can wait, and wait, and wait, and still there is a car way down off the road in a ditch and another car through the neighbor’s fence and into the neighbor’s yard, and nothing is HAPPENING, and traffic is backing up and still no one is there. And yet, 45 minutes later and the ambulances have left and the cars have been towed and the police officers who were directing traffic have gotten back in their cars and driven off. And how can that be, when a year passed before they arrived?

Well. Clearly they need to put updates in the local paper, because NO I don’t know what happened, and I couldn’t figure it out from the position of the cars. One woman was taken away with her arm in a sling, and that was from the car that looked fine. The other car had a building and an ambulance between it and me, but after the passenger or passengers had been removed and the tow truck was hauling it up out of the ditch, I could see the entire front part was crumpled, with part of it dangling off, and both airbags were in the front seats. Which is as it should be: air bags should deploy, the front should crumple to absorb the impact before the impact reaches anything made of flesh and bones.

But I couldn’t SEE much out my window. I saw people coming to my neighbors’ house and getting paper towels and heading back to the car that was in the ditch. I heard a bystander say “…wasn’t belted in…” I saw emergency personnel standing around looking casual. The ambulances didn’t have sirens on when they left. My neighbor started sweeping up the mess in her yard. Most of these things point to everything being okay—just a scary thing that happened and then everything started up again and turned into insurance claims.

Did I ever tell you about the accident I was in when I was 17? I was driving a pick-up truck home from a used book store with my best friend, and I was fiddling with the radio, and I dipped onto the soft shoulder and overreacted, spinning the wheel way too hard back onto the road. And we hit a tree, and we hit it roof-first and in the opposite direction of the one in which we’d been traveling, and the rear-view mirror ended up between our heads. It seemed to me that the ambulance arrived seconds later, and when they asked me if I’d hit my head, I said no, but it took many hair-washings to get all the windshield glass out of the lump on my head. And when we were in the ambulance, the ambulance guy said to me, “Man, when we saw the truck, we didn’t expect to find…but there you were, grinning!”

I’m doing a little back-to-basics-ing this week, which for me means trying to figure out my SparkPeople login information so I can do soul-crushing things such as measure a tablespoon of milk for my coffee and then record it. But, you know how after you’ve been on a diet Heathy! Eating! Plan! for awhile you’re an expert at estimating quantities and mentally tallying points and so forth? And also you get all Aware of what you’re eating, and you start making little lightning-fast calculations of Worth It Or Not, as opposed to only making calculations about Yummy Or Not? And it gets all automatic so then you don’t have to spend a huge chunk of time every day thinking about what you eat and how many calories it has, SPEAKING OF SOUL-CRUSHING? Or maybe I should be saying “I” instead of “you”? So for me it’s worth the practice to get back in that habit in order to ultimately reduce time spent on such a hobby.

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Now. Listen. Privacy settings on Facebook are RAD and IMPORTANT. But some people are taking it TOO FAR. If I search for a cute guy from high school, and the COMPLETE TOTAL of what he’s allowing to sneak through the privacy settings is his name, the fact that he is male, and a picture of a baby, how can I tell if that’s the right person to try to snoop? MINIMUM, I need a photo to squint at and try to figure out if that could be him or not.

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I am so annoyed EVERY MONTH by one of our bills, which says “Non-receipt of bill is not an excuse for failure to pay.” O RLY? It seems like a pretty good excuse actually. I feel like writing on the payment slip “Non-receipt of payment is not an excuse for failure to credit account.”

I saw on Want Not that St. Jude’s is having a clearance sale. And I love clearance sales, and St. Jude’s is my favorite charity, so you BET I went over there. I bought a bee costume for Henry for $5, and a t-shirt for myself for $10, and several t-shirts for the kids for $3.99 each. I was worried the shipping would be killer but it was $7.50 which isn’t too bad.

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I can’t explain why we like this video so much, but we just do (totally safe for kids):

A bee! A bee a bee a bee!

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Our little grey fish died. I was sadder than I would have expected, considering we’d had him/her less than a week and he/she was, you know, a goldfish. He/she was so frisky and perky! And at first we didn’t realize he/she was dead, because of the currents caused by the filter, and coming to a gradual realization was additionally sad. This weekend we’ll take a sample of water to the pet store for analysis and see what they say about it. My guess is that they’ll say, “Here, have another 13-cent fish.”

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A recent favorite post: Someone Who Reads This by Princess Nebraska.

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Kitten picture:

We may have named her Chicken Feather (Mrs.), but we still call her The Kitten so maybe C.F. isn’t her name.

After Henry and I drop the twins off at kindergarten, we walk toward our car and I say to him, “Just you and me, buddy”—which is exactly what my mom used to say to my little brother after I’d left for school. Then Henry and I go to the grocery store to get ice cream, or we go to the library, or we go home and read books, and the whole time he TALKS and TALKS and TALKS—and instead of saying, “Just a minute, Henry” or “It’s someone else’s turn to talk now, Henry” or “Henry, you’re INTERRUPTING,” as I usually have to say repeatedly when the other kids are home and he is TALKING TALKING TALKING, I say, “Why?” and “Oh, do you?” and “What would you like to do next?” and “Hey, do you want to go outside with me and see how the sunflowers are doing?”

There are disadvantages to being the youngest (handmedown EVERYTHING, and everyone perpetually thinks of you as a total baby), but there are advantages too. In many ways it’s like being the firstborn, except you get to have your turn at being Only when you’re old enough to appreciate it. Henry gets to be the Only for 2 hours a day this year, and next year it’ll be more like 6 hours a day, unless I can’t face that kind of quality time let him be in preschool for half of it. And when everyone else strikes out on their own, he’ll get the full sunshine of his parents’ attention—which he may value considerably less when he’s 16 and wishes NO ONE would pay attention to what he’s up to (*pause to kiss him and squeeze him because NO, HE CANNOT EVER BE 16, SORRY NO*).

Plus, he gets his “only child” treatment when his siblings are aware he’s getting it, which is valuable currency, especially in a large family. If a sixth grader thinks YOU’RE lucky? That is GOOD STUFF.

It’s good for me, too. It’s like the mirror image of my experience with my firstborn. When it was just me and Rob, I thought of him as a big kid; when it’s just me and Henry, I think of him as my baby. “Just me and Rob” was business as usual; “just me and Henry” is a break from the usual. Not a BREAK-break in the “lunch break” or “taking a break” sense, I hasten to clarify, since in many ways I find it more difficult to have “just one” than to have the entire roiling mass—but a break FROM THE USUAL, the way doing a different job at work is a break from the usual. And it IS a break from the usual “several people talking at the same time ALL THE TIME” thing, and from the “so many people! wanting so many things from me! all at once!” thing. It’s nice to be able to FOCUS on ONE THING—even if that one thing talks incessantly.

Have you been wondering where I’ve been? (Just say yes. It’s kinder.) Our school schedule is a little on the GRUELING side. Anticipating this schedule (and how it will worsen) may be what has caused my gentle shift into a stage of not really wanting any more children.

First child catches the bus just before 7:00 a.m. Second child catches a different bus at a different stop at just after 8:00 a.m. Twins get driven to kindergarten, where there is no parking lot and so parents must park wherever they can find it (hint: HARD TO FIND and MOSTLY PARALLEL) and then walk the children to school—rain or shine, heatwave or blizzard—and wait outside the door until a teacher comes out to get the children. We got a letter from the school saying they realize this is tough, especially for parents with smaller children who must come along, but that we should suck it up. (Man, I would pay CASH MONEY for a school memo to actually say it like that instead of waffling around. We all know they MEAN “suck it up.”)

Then I have just over two hours with Henry before children start arriving home. First child home at around 2:30. Second child and twins home at about 3:45. Homework everywhere! Paperwork everywhere! Lunch boxes and backpacks everywhere!

Well.

Anyway.

This will soon be a well-worn routine, with all of us knowing what’s what.

And in the meantime, Henry would like me to know that he’ll be happy to keep me busy.

After I post this, he’s going to have to get the rest of it shaved off to match.

A fun thing happened today. I have been waiting and WAITING for Elizabeth to want to have her ears pierced so that I could make her wait until she turned 5, but her 5th birthday came and went and she’s been uninterested in earrings. But today we were at the mall and I saw a little girl getting her ears pierced and I said to Elizabeth, “Do you think you will ever want to get your ears pierced?” and she said “YES! When can I? Can it be TODAY?” I said I thought we should wait, mostly because I thought it would be fun to talk about it more, and also because I wanted to have my camera with me—but she was DETERMINED to have it done NOW. She is a lot like Rob, and both she and Rob tend to be good with decisions but if they wait too long they start thinking “Uhhhh…..” and not wanting to do it, so we talked for a few more minutes and then I brought her to a piercing kiosk and we DID IT.

It was SO FUN. There have been these MOMENTS in parenting when I think “This is FUN!”: buying baby clothes for a new baby, Rob losing his first tooth, etc., and this was another of those moments. I let her choose her own earrings, and she chose pink hearts. I chose a kiosk where I’ve seen two employees working together to pierce both ears simultaneously. I’d expected Elizabeth to shriek, because that is what she does if she ALMOST stubs a toe, but she said “Ouch” and that was it. They gave her a lollipop, and as we left the booth she said, “I’m lucky AND brave!”

This is SO FUN.

1. We have named the kitten. Her name is Chicken Feather (Mrs.). Both words are pronounced as nouns, rather than as an adjective and a noun; i.e., it’s not CHICKENfeather, it’s CHICK-ken FEATH-ther. This name came about because I wanted to name her Feather (for her plumey tail), and Paul wanted to name her Mrs. Feather (which is odd while she’s a kitten, but we think she will grow into it), and the children wanted to name her Chicken (Henry’s idea) and then I wanted to name her Chicken too. So! It’s Chicken, or Feather, or Mrs. Feather. Or “The Kitten.”

2. Rob has acquired a second goldfish. It’s a grey one. Neither fish has a name yet, and when I told him I was posting this he said “Can you ask them for suggestions?” They are settling in well, and we are learning about The Nitrogen Cycle. I realize measurement of goldfish happiness is more art than science, but the first fish is now swimming perkily around instead of moping fearfully behind his/her plants, so I consider Goldfish Two a success. I tried to get a picture of him/her, but you know what’s hard to photograph? FISH, that’s what.

3. If you were following my silly flustering on Twitter, when Paul and I had a night out on Tuesday and I changed clothes about twelve times? I decided on a similar outfit to the one I wore to that Christmas party I was so nervous about this past Christmas. I wore dark boot-cut jeans, a black cami, a dark pink button down with several buttons unbuttoned, little fancy black sandals, and a necklace on a black ribbon. I finally felt dressed right, so apparently that is my outfit for Times of Uncertainty.

4. I’m not pregnant, and I was glad. I never thought I’d feel that feeling. When the twins were 6 months old I had a pregnancy “scare,” and I was very disappointed when I turned out not to be. Just to demonstrate the depth and duration of this problem.

My cousin and his wife are expecting a baby, and they asked friends and family to enter to win a free cord-blood banking—and if any of us WON and didn’t need it ourselves, to let them have it. I was hoping it wasn’t going to ask for a lot of personal information, and it didn’t: email address, plus they wanted me to say if I were expecting a baby myself or if it was that I knew someone who was expecting. Then they suggest you view some information material, but I just clicked the “continue” button at the bottom without doing any viewing. Took about a minute, tops, for the whole process. Maybe more like 30 seconds.

So! If YOU are expecting, or you know someone expecting, you can enter too! And if you enter and win but don’t have anyone to give it to, and you want to give it to my cousin and his wife, I would send you SUCH a kissy care package! …Er, not that the package would be adequate compensation for such a selfless act. I’m just saying that if you DID, then I WOULD, and it would be like how if you give to St. Jude’s they sometimes send you free address labels and that’s kind of happy on top of the happy feeling of giving to charity. Like THAT. PLUS, even ENTERING to win would qualify as something for the Nice Things We Do For Other People list.

Enter to win a free cord-blood banking.

We have a new member of our household:

The fish is Rob’s: he wanted a pet of his own, and this is the one at the happy intersection of “he could afford it” and “we would allow it.” We went out yesterday and he bought it. He had to pay for the fish, the gravel, the food, the plant, and a portion of the tank equivalent to the price of a fish bowl; I paid for the rest of the tank.

I had several goldfish when I was his age, and I kept them in a bowl. No filter. No water conditioner: I left the replacement bowl water out overnight to get rid of the chlorine. No weekly water testing. May I suggest you not say such things to a fish expert? We bought a 2.5-gallon tank and she said we could keep (a) MAYBE (b) ONE (c) SMALL goldfish in there, and that we would need a filter and water conditioner and a test kit. We got the filter (because it was part of the tank we chose, which was half-price because it was the display model) but neither the water conditioner nor the test kit. Then I went back and bought the water conditioner because rrrrrgg, but not the test kit! I draw the line!

Perhaps this is why he’s sulking? Because this is all he’s doing: he’s not doing much swimming, he’s just sort of hovering in the water. Sometimes he looks at his reflection for awhile. I seem to remember my goldfish being more active, but maybe that’s because they were endlessly surprised by each other’s existence. Not exceptionally bright, are goldfish.

Rob thinks maybe he should have gotten gravel instead of stones: he read that goldfish like to dig around in the gravel. I wonder if maybe the fish needs another fish, despite the fish expert saying we would need a TEN-gallon tank for two goldfish (DECLINE). We also think he dislikes the tank light: when we turn it off, he swims around more, and when we turn it back on he retreats to the shadowy end of the tank.

You cannot imagine how much time we have spent trying to figure out this goldfish’s FEELINGS and PREFERENCES.

I had to scroll back through a LOT of posts to find the one I was thinking of, the one where I told you Paul and I weren’t going to have any more babies and I was not, in fact, okay with that.

It seems like that sort of thing could stand to have an update, and so I will update now: that in August of 2010, close to two years later, I feel like I might be okay with that. Maybe MORE than okay with that. Maybe ready for Paul to make an appointment to have The Snip.

This has not been an easy or simple process. I fully realize how krazykakes it seems for a woman with five children to be having a HARD TIME NOT HAVING A SIXTH, especially in a world bursting with women who would kill their own mothers to have a first. I know, I KNOW—I mean, as far as it is possible for me to know, which is admittedly insufficiently far. But what I’m saying is that I know enough to cringe when I talk about it, because I can at least IMAGINE how it would sound to someone who had none, or one, or anyone who had not as many as they wanted but fewer than five—and I can only hope that the feeling of “wanting a child” is strong enough and clear enough that we can empathize with each other over THAT, even if it feels like I’m the woman sitting on a pile of gold and whining for another bag of coins, while other women are sitting on the bare, coinless floor. Or some other analogy that makes more sense.

Anyway.

The first stage—a long one—involved having tears spring to my eyes any time I thought of it, which was many times a day. I felt as if the sixth child already existed, but that I was not being allowed to take that child home. I felt desperate, like I had to convince Paul not to let our child be LOST, or something. A person’s LIFE was at stake, and Paul’s whim was KILLING IT. Like that.

The second stage—even longer—involved feeling like I UNDERSTOOD that we PROBABLY would not have any more children, and that I SHOULD be content with what I had—but I still HOPED Paul would change his mind, and I still thought he SHOULD change his mind, and I still felt like it was wrong that he would get to make this decision when really it wouldn’t be that big a deal to have just one more.

The third stage involved feeling as if there might be SOME upsides to not having another. It WAS kind of nice to be able to get rid of the clothes Henry outgrew, rather than storing them. It WAS kind of nice to be able to buy a 5-opening frame and put the five newborn pictures in it, without thinking about having to start all over if there was another child. It WAS kind of nice to all fit in a 7-seater minivan. It WAS kind of nice to see the caboose on things such as playpens, choking hazards, and potty training. But if Paul changed his mind, I’d still go with it because I’d rather regret having than regret not-having.

And the fourth stage has just begun: a feeling that, actually, even if Paul changed his mind, I might not want another child at this point. A feeling that things might be good the way they are. A disinclination to start over again. A feeling of fear about accidental pregnancy, rather than a feeling of hope. A feeling that five might already be plenty to handle. A willingness to consider Permanent Options. A feeling of gladness to have the “they’re all in school” moment visible on the timeline ahead. A willingness to look forward to grandchildren instead of children of my own.

So. I realize that this schedule might be wildly different from person to person, and that ALREADY HAVING FIVE CHILDREN certainly factors into it, but that’s been my schedule: desperation, unhappy resignation, seeing an upside, and, finally, possible contentment. (I think if I had one child, or two, I probably would have stayed in unhappy resignation with occasional seeing an upside.)

I’m posting this in part because I think it’s unwise to send Paul to the doctor on what could be a passing mood, and I want to be sure I know how much time has passed since I started feeling like it might be nice to be done with birth control and babies.

(Do we predict an accidental pregnancy this month, or what?)