This is a fun test to take: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/. It tests whether you can tell a fake smile from a real one. I got 14 out of 20 correct.

Listen, just because the Millicent debate was a long time ago doesn’t mean you can’t still vote. But right now we have another name to consider. I realize I am not pregnant and so have no reason to be thinking of baby names, but it’s a hobby, okay?

All right, get ready to speak your mind on my new Baby Girl Name of Great Interest. I’ve been saying it again and again for two days now, and I think I love it. As with Millicent, this makes me feel a little shy about presenting it to you, since maybe you will say “BLEH! YECK! GROSS! Oh, I HATE it!” But bravely I tell it to you anyway: Beatrix.

Discuss.

You would think that, as a mother of five, I would be immensely relieved to have two of the five off to school all day. But I am not.

Part of it is nothing but practical: Rob and William can be given tasks as if they were little remote-controlled cleaning machines–albeit extraordinarily inefficient ones I’d return to the store if I’d bought them for this purpose. All summer I could say, “Get the dustbuster and vacuum under the high chairs” or “Put all those toys back into the playpen” or “Put this dishtowel in the laundry,” and they would do it. I must have been giving out orders casually all day long without even noticing: with Rob and William back in school, the floor is littered with toys and towels, cereal and socks. It’s oppressive and depressing.

Also, they voluntarily played with the twins, and they did it more than I’d realized, because now I’m scraping bored twins off every surface. Rob could even lift a twin out of a crib–so if Henry was nursing when Edward and Elizabeth woke up from their naps, Rob could go get the twins up and give them cups of juice. Now it’s a choice: do I listen to Henry cry, or do I listen to the twins crying? Choose your own soundtrack!

And Rob and William could be trusted to watch the twins for short periods of time, like when I needed to pee or when the laundry needed to be cycled. A few days ago, while I was changing Henry’s diaper, Edward somehow magicked out of the ether a brown permanent Sharpie marker and used it to color on my yellow recliner. Yesterday he did the same with a black Sharpie, and also crayoned a clipboard. He must be squirrelling away any unattended weapons of destruction, then waiting for his opportunity to strike.

But it isn’t just the convenience of having minions to do my bidding. Another part of it is something I haven’t experienced since William was a new baby and Rob was a toddler: the unpleasant feeling of being trapped in a house where no one speaks your language. Without me knowing it, Rob and William were fulfilling some of my need for sentient companionship, for people to talk to–even if all they were saying was “HE HIT ME!” “NO I DID NOT!” and all I was saying was “Settle down now, I mean it” and “You are TOO WILD, go to your rooms for fifteen minutes.” Now I’m here all day with people who can’t even tell me what they want, or understand when I tell them what I want. I feel like the only intelligent life on this planet, handmaiden to the apes.

my planet

Semi-Desperate had her cute cute cute baby boy! Go say congratulations!

I have been exercising for one month. I have done it three times a week, faithfully. I have died at least ten times. My posture is improving, and I feel new muscle-type feelings here and there. And I am UP TEN POUNDS from where I was a month ago. OMG NO PONIES.

Sure, I’ve eaten the occasional post-jogging pan of brownies. But before I started exercising, it was a post-pan-of-brownies pan of brownies, so it’s not like I’m eating MORE now. Brownies + exercise is better than just the brownies, RIGHT?

I’m not going to weigh myself for awhile. Is this because “health is what really matters, not numbers”? NO. It’s because if I know my weight is going THE HELL UP, I am going to stop exercising. It’s the NUMBERS I care about, not some theoretical “health” (huge air quotes). And while muscle may weigh more than fat, it doesn’t weigh TEN POUNDS more after ONE MONTH.

Also, who am I kidding? Clearly I am going to be weighing myself, like, TWICE A DAY. Because, holy crap! This situation must be closely monitored! A watched pot does not boil, and a watched scale had better not go up–unless it wants to go down, very quickly, in the direction of the pavement below the window.

Here is another issue: the day I started exercising was the day I started the mini-Pill. Shall we blame the mini-Pill? But then what if I go off it and the weight stays?

Whenever I am getting overwhelmed, and my voice is getting increasingly shrill as I tell Paul all the things that are overwhelming me, he quotes one of our favorite lines from The Simpsons:

Kent Brockman (news anchor): So, professor, would you say it’s time for everyone to panic?
Professor: Yes I would, Kent.

Paul condenses it down to “Would you say it’s time to panic?,” asked in a soothing, affectionate, backing-away-to-get-the-tranquilizer-darts tone of voice. Today I am leaning towards YES I WOULD, KENT.

Suddenly I am overwhelmed. Everything was fine, and now everything is not. I am so far behind on photos, I don’t want to think about it or talk about it, and let’s not think or talk about laundry, either. My friends are wondering if we’re still friends. My mother-in-law is coming in two months, give or take a month, and I don’t see any way to get the house cleaned for that visit. Books, movies, and magazines are piling up. My toenails need painting, a present needs wrapping, my hair needs cutting and coloring, brownies need to be made and eaten. I need to tell you about the dream I had about David Boreanaz. And now Henry wants to nurse again. YARRRRRGGG!

See? The toenail polish situation is dire. DIRE. Also, will someone please replace hideous plaid loveseat kthanx.

First, you must go congratulate Becky Fay, who had a BABY, a cute little NEWBORN baby who makes MY baby look like a huge hulking TODDLER, practically. Oh, newborns. You are like crack to me.

Today must be Try Something Different Day, because I have been MIXING IT UP all morning. First, I was bored by the idea of jogging (heck, I’ve done it TWELVE WHOLE TIMES, no wonder I’m suffused with ennui), so Rob and William and I did Tae Bo instead. That is to say, we flailed around with a Tae Bo DVD playing in the background–it’s difficult to get the hang of it at first. I used to do Tae Bo a number of years ago, but then during my pregnancy I switched to Denise Austin (“Come on, I KNOW you can do it! You’re doing GREAT! Can’t you just FEEL your muscles WAKING UP to a GREAT NEW DAY?”), who offers a milder, less sweaty workout. After William was born, I thought I should start Tae Bo again, but I couldn’t face watching that same one (“We did it in one unrehearsed take, so you can wincingly anticipate our mistakes every! single! time!”) so I ordered a different workout. And then never did it, not even once. Until today!

Then, during my shower, I tried something NEW with my shampoo and conditioning procedure! Check it: I used the L’Oreal Vive Pro Nutri Gloss shampoo (which I bought because the bottle is gorgeous pink and because Erica promised it would give me shampoo-commercial hair), but–wait for it–didn’t use the conditioner. Then, after I towel-dried my hair, I put in a small quantity of the conditioner as if it were a leave-in conditioner. I am waiting on the edge of my seat to see how this turns out. It could go either way!

THEN, I parted my hair on the other side! Yes! Normally I part it on the high left, and today I parted it medium right! I KNOW! But I said to myself, “Self, if you’re not living Xtreme, you’re not living.”

Several of you commented yesterday on our big-ass clock. It is indeed enormous. In fact, it is so enormous, we lived for months mentally changing the time by an hour, because we couldn’t get ourselves to take the thing down to change it for “fall back.” Fortunately, “spring ahead” came along and now the clock is right again! Problem solved! I said, PROBLEM SOLVED.

I read a lot of your blogs, and what I’ve noticed is that most of you have better decorating sense than I do. Furthermore, some of you are like, “I whipped up some new curtains this weekend!,” which is, to me, like saying, “I popped over to the moon for a minute!” And so it is to you I turn for advice, hoping that on your path to the moon you discovered other, simpler decorating ideas.

We live in a raised ranch. The picture below shows the inside of our unused front door, which is between the top floor of the house (the “where we live” part) and the bottom floor of the house (the “where we do laundry and store boxes of crap” part).

There is a shelf of videos and DVDs there right now, but that’s just to keep them out of the grasping paws of my fourthborn. They won’t live there permanently.

The trouble I’m having is with the little windows. I like the little windows, but we get strong, STRONG sunlight at the front of the house, and it heats that entryway to, like, a billion degrees. Plus, I just put some of the kids’ portraits on the wall (these are from before the twins were born, and I only just now got around to it), and the sun shines brightly upon them, and lo it worries me.

Some of you are probably thinking, “Duh, put up curtains.” But so far in my (admittedly lethargic) searches, I haven’t found narrow little curtains like that. They’re all regular-window-width. I didn’t see any short little curtain rods, either. (Oh, fine: I only looked at Target and Wa1mart. That’s still “searches,” plural.)

Maybe some of you are thinking, “Well, why don’t you sew some?” Ah ha ha ha. I can sew a button, but that is IT–as long as you don’t count the elastic-waisted four-tiered skirts I made in seventh grade home ec and would never be able to remember how to make now, even if anyone had a need for such a garment, which, surely not. And I don’t have a sewing machine, and if you ask if my mom has one I can borrow I will lie to you and say she most certainly does not. I don’t know how to use it anyway. And if you say I have to, well, I’ll just never get around to doing it, and the portraits will be sun-bleached and it will be your fault.

Is there a clever decorating trick I don’t know about for little door-flanking windows like these? Is there perhaps something clever I could do with the heaps and heaps of unused twin-sized flat sheets I’ve squirreled away for no other reason than not wanting to throw away large pieces of perfectly good hemmed fabric? Or do you know of a source for doorside curtains and cute little shortened curtain rods?

Keep in mind when making suggestions that I am an inherently lazy person. If the suggestion is, “I think there’s some sort of thing that you can put on windows to keep the heat out but still get the light in, but I don’t know what it’s called or where to find it,” my eyes will read “hard work” and skip on past. You would need to say it more like, “There’s this stuff called X and I found it at Y.com, and I’ve figured out the measurements you’d need and put it in your online cart for you and all you need to do is enter your credit card information and click the ‘buy now’ button.”

This morning I am feeling hungover, blog-style. “Did I really write about…CHILDBIRTH CHOICES last night?,” I think to myself, holding my head and hoping the answer is no. “I didn’t use…excessive punctuation, did I? Oh god—-did I use CAPS LOCK? Tell me I didn’t use caps lock.”

Let’s talk about something else, fast. Let’s talk about something we can all agree on, which is the pain and misery of a new exercise program. I did three weeks of Couch to 5K, but the fourth week I went off-program to save myself from quitting: I went the same distance I was going on a typical Couch to 5K day, but I ran and walked at will.

This worked a lot better for me. When I was timing my jogging/walking, I was spending the jogging sessions thinking “Oh god! No more! I can’t do any more! I’m dying! HOW many more seconds??” and the walking sessions thinking, “Oh no, look how fast the time is going! Oh, that’s so unfair! Oh no, I have to run in just ten more seconds! Oh, I can’t face it!”

When I jogged and walked at will, I spent the jogging sessions thinking, “Look how long I’m jogging! I wonder if I can go a little farther? Look, I’m still going!” and the walking sessions thinking, “I’m still too wiped out to jog again yet, but I think I’ll be ready soon. Okay, I’m almost ready! Okay, I’m ready!” Big improvement, morale-wise.

But will I kick my own butt the way the Couch to 5K program was kicking it? This is the question.

I was reading today’s Purple is a Fruit, and it resonated with me so strongly that I went on to leave a Long and Impassioned Comment. Linda put her point so well, I got a little carried away. You know how you get that rush when you read something that is exactly what you feel but phrased so much better than you ever could have phrased it?

And now I keep THINKING about her post, and I want to talk about it more, but hitting “refresh” constantly in Linda’s comment section isn’t enough to satisfy me, and Paul is begging me not to talk about it anymore, so I will talk about it here. You’ll need to click the link to Purple is a Fruit first, so you know what we’re talking about, and also so you can read Linda’s delicious, delicious words. (I once read an interview with an actor who said his least favorite word was “delicious” used for anything other than food. Now I think of that every time I use the word. Well-played, Actor Whose Name I No Longer Remember But Who Has Eternally Affected My Vocabulary.)

Back now? Okay!

During my first c-section, a medical situation was discovered. The OB talked with me about it afterward, and said she was sorry to tell me that this meant I would need to have c-sections from now on, that I would not be a candidate for a VBAC, and that in fact for future pregnancies I would need to be carefully informed about what I should do if I went into labor unexpectedly so that I wouldn’t, for example, DIE. I don’t want to be all Dramatic about it, but I do want it clear that this medical situation is not something like, “Oooooogk, natural childbirth is ICKY!”

I would also like it clear that the precise nature of the medical situation is my Private Medical Information. It’s not that I won’t tell, it’s that I don’t have to if I don’t feel like it. I’m not required by law to disclose that medical situation to the general public as proof that I really do need to have c-sections. “All right, then,” I picture The General Public saying, after inspecting my Proof of Need certificate and satisfying themselves that I do in fact have what they’d consider a valid excuse. “We’ll let you have your c-section…THIS time.”

And yet I’ve noticed that if I say, “I’m having a scheduled c-section” without telling all about the medical situation that requires it, sometimes other people assume that I’m only having a c-section because I don’t understand my options. They think perhaps I have not considered the possibility of a VBAC, or that my OB is pressuring me into a repeat c-section because OBs just LOVE c-sections and want to strip women of their Natural Childbirth Powers. Or they think perhaps I am unaware that c-sections involve risks, unlike natural childbirth which is natural and risk-free and has been done for millions of years in complete safety. Or they want to tell me how if I have a c-section I’m basically saying I don’t care about my baby’s health. Perhaps I am unaware of the DRUGS the baby will be exposed to, both during and after the surgery! Drugs which no one has considered might affect the baby, and so have been prescribed with no thought for the baby’s well-being!

Listen: if I say, “I’m having a scheduled c-section,” I want it to be assumed that I am a mentally-fit adult capable of making decisions based on research I have ALREADY DONE and don’t need to be instructed to do. I especially dislike it when the “research” other people want me to do is only in the one particular area the other person thinks I should be agreeing with. My lack of agreement with their point of view must mean I’m IGNORANT OF THE FACTS, as opposed to having an EQUALLY VALID OPINION based on the SAME AVAILABLE INFORMATION.

Which reminds me that I ALSO hate when the other person assumes that I’m being some sort of spineless patsy and agreeing with my Medical Establishment Doctor when I should instead be insisting on my right to do things in an unsafe way–which the other person, without a medical degree of any sort, tells me IS safe, without knowing my reason for having c-sections. Oh! Okay! I’m SURE my doctor is wrong and YOU’RE right! I shouldn’t let my DOCTOR “push me around,” but I SHOULD let YOU do it! And perhaps you will also DELIVER THE BABY, since you are SUCH AN EXPERT!!

And here’s my final point. If I DIDN’T have a medical reason other people would consider “acceptable,” if my reason WERE “Oooooogk, natural childbirth is ICKY!,” it would STILL be my business to choose what method of giving birth was right for me, and I would STILL want other people to assume I was a mentally-fit adult capable of doing research and coming to my own conclusions.