With my weird schedule right now (three schoolbuses to remember to catch/meet), I’ve been searching for a timer I could set to go off at the same times each day. I looked at medication timers, and they did look good but most had features I didn’t need and cost more than I wanted to spend, so then I’d think, “Meh, this is silly, I guess I can just remember.” But THEN, yesterday at Target I got William a Timex watch on 75% off, and I was reading the instructions to set the time and I saw that his watch can be set to beep at certain times each day, and THEN I realized his watch is the same brand as mine, so maybe…? And sure enough! Not only can I make my watch beep three different times a day, it even let me choose “weekdays” so it won’t beep at me on weekends. I love when things work out like this.

********

I am in one of those dumb fits where I’m going over old conversations in my mind and doing them differently—suggesting, for example, that someone take a transcript of our conversation to his/her psychiatrist to see if the psychiatrist agrees with me that it’s time for him/her to get a big medication adjustment. I also had a long mental argument with a SPAMMER. And I delivered an entire mental SEMINAR on why it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of to say a stay-at-home parent doesn’t own an equal share of the household income. And I keep catching myself and telling myself to quit it, but then the next time my mind drifts I’m doing it again. This usually lasts a day or two. Perhaps you picked up on that tone in my post yesterday: touchy and responding to criticisms that haven’t happened yet? Yeah. I am a joy to be around when I’m in one of these fits. Speaking of consulting psychiatrists.

********

I had a DREAM about Hershey Almond and Toffee Symphony bars, so I bought one yesterday and…disappointing. First of all, they used to be 8 ounces and now they’re 4.25 ounces and cost MORE than when they were 8 ounces.

As I’ve mentioned before and will mention again, part of my deal with my review-blogging deal is that I need to mention those review posts on this blog. And normally I try to get this over with quickly for the benefit of those of you who would really rather NOT have review-blog reminders and who are in fact thinking, “You know, if I wanted to read your review blog I WOULD ALREADY BE READING IT,” but I do have one post I would want to bring your attention to anyway, even if I didn’t have to. It’s a post I’ve been composing in my head for months or possibly years now, about how one of my pet peeves is when women call themselves “bad moms” for small, unintentional mistakes. But it doesn’t really go over well around here when I talk about my pet peeves, I find, so I kept not writing and posting it—because another of my pet peeves is getting scolded by a commenter for not being exactly how they imagined me.

But then I got a review assignment for a post about how even good moms make mistakes, and after Paul fell asleep I got up and finally wrote the post I’d wanted to write. So here it is, my pet peeve post [link removed because blog is gone now], and if you tend to get all prickly when I talk about things that bug me, you don’t have to follow the link at all! Everyone wins.

Also there’s the fifth of twelve Kellogg’s posts, through September 13th, this time about favorite things you did this summer. And if those things involve breakfast, then Kellogg’s should have hired you instead of me.

Some of you are going to think I’m a PRIME IDIENT, but I am not worried, because I am comforted by the belief that others of you will be in the SAME BOAT: I have only JUST REALIZED, in my mid-thirties, that when people give me homemade jam THEY WOULD LIKE THE EMPTY JAR BACK. It never occurred to me! Not once!

It’s not that I’m inconsiderate, or a selfish jar-hoarder, or that I don’t care about the other person’s jar situation. No! Not at all! It’s that when I buy jam at the store I recycle the jar, I don’t bring it back to the store. The jar is TRASH to GET RID OF. It is a CONTAINER. This is the template for all jam situations.

Now that I have made jam myself, I see things anew. The jars! They need to go BACK to the person who made the jam! So that the person can put more jam in! Because the cost of the jars is one of the reasons jam-making barely makes sense, but the REUSABILITY of the jars is why in the long run it DOES make sense. BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE JARS! The jar is part of the process! It must not be disposed of!

Fortunately my friends and family are not of the jam-making persuasion, so I don’t have to look back wincingly over a long history of carelessly-tossed-out jars from homemade jam. But still! I quake! Because I WOULD HAVE carelessly tossed out the jar, if someone had given me jam! Not because I didn’t care, but because a non-jam-maker wouldn’t KNOW! How could they?

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.

********

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.

********

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.

********

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!

********

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.”

*********

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

********

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.