I’m going to have to update this blog to the new version of Blogger. I’ve been putting it off a LONG time because I don’t actually HAVE to—but it’s time. So if the blog doesn’t seem quite right for a day or two or three or FOREVER, that’s why. Sigh. Let’s see if I actually DO it now that I’ve SAID I’ll do it.

I got another note from my mom about their trip to the Grand Canyon. (First note is here.)

Hi Kidz,

We had a great morning exploring. We took a shuttle bus along the rim. It was still early, so not crowded — the bus was only about half full. You can get off at any stop and then just get on a later shuttle — they run every 15 minutes or so. We got off at a stop where no one else got off, and we found we were the only ones there. It was great — silent on the trail.

We stayed and strolled around maybe a half hour and then hopped a shuttle and rode on. By the time we got back to the starting point, there were already long lines of people waiting to catch the shuttle, so timing is everything.

It’s just so odd how the land goes along perfectly flat, and then just drops off. I keep imagining what the first settlers must have thought when they came upon it. Dad suggests, “Like, whoa.” [Swistle suggests: “Oh sh**.”]

One thing that surprises me very much about the canyon is the ledges. The trails aren’t real narrow — maybe 3 feet across — but there aren’t railings and the drop-offs are frequently sheer and of the sort that if one were to step off it would be certainly fatal. Families walk along with little children running ahead and peering over without anyone seeming to be the least alarmed. You may think I’m exaggerating and the drop-offs must not be QUITE that sheer or deep, but ask Dad — one slip and that would be that. [Next sentence contains Narnia reference:] There were several spots where I thought about the cliff Eustace fell off of — the kind where there’d be a long time to think about one’s error if one stepped off. Eventually one would BUMP along, but there wouldn’t be any stopping for a real long time.

Here, for example. The trail goes through that rock tunnel on the left. To the right the trail edge drops off exactly like what is visible to the right in the photo. And it’s about as far down as if one were on a tall building. I watched children no older than the twins running ahead of their parents on this very stretch. Not to mention slightly older children pushing and shoving and arguing as they walked along, no parent in sight. I admit MY technique would be a little extreme in the opposite direction — without a word of discussion, I would scoop the children up, put them into their car seats, and leave the park.

It’s hard — impossible, really — to photograph a ledge that one is standing on, because with the camera pointed down, the cliff edge looks horizontal. One has to show something in the distance and say, “It’s LIKE this.” Okay, the trail often runs along the very edge of places LIKE this one:

When we FIRST got on the trail, I would think as I approached it, “What an optical illusion! Haha! It looks like the trail is running right along a sheer cliff!” Then I’d look over and freeze, like Eustace. It’s one of those ledges where the upside of falling off would be you wouldn’t need to bother to retrieve the body.

The trail is horizontal, I’m happy to say — not sloped. The trails are very nice — flat and with a little line of stones running along the ledge. But I’ll say this — if I took a class of my students on this trail, I would return with fewer children than I started out with. The trails are very good: wide …. flat … secure. But disconcerting to think, “Haha … looks like if you stepped off the trail you’d go straight down, haha!” and then find out that’s exactly what would happen like for maybe a couple thousand feet.

One sees mule droppings all along the trail (and there’s a mule pen at the top for the mules to wait in for the daily mule train), and as we walked along we imagined being up on a mule. I notice the mule prints tend to be about 6″ from the ledge (and signs say to let the mules pass on the drop-off side). No. Thank. You.

By the way, the Q&A poster on mule rides has the Q “Do mules ever trip and fall?” with the answer being Very Seldom. But yes, it has happened. But that so far no human has ever been killed. Only the PACK mules have actually, well, plummeted through space. They said they use particularly steady ones for humans. So don’t worry.

Another thing I think about is that story a couple years back about the woman who was posing on a ledge for her husband to take a photo of her when she stepped back and fell. Of course one assumes her husband gave a little push, but looking at the ledges, one realizes how very little push would be needed, and how confident he would be that she wouldn’t live to tell on him (which she didn’t). It actually surprises me that people are trusting enough to pass strangers on the trail, since the smallest push from anyone along at least half of the trail would have fatal result. One thinks of these things. Well, SOME of us think of these things!

Love, Mom

My favorite parts:

1. “It’s one of those ledges where the upside of falling off would be you wouldn’t need to bother to retrieve the body.”

2. “I’ll say this — if I took a class of my students on this trail, I would return with fewer children than I started out with.”

3. “I notice the mule prints tend to be about 6″ from the ledge (and signs say to let the mules pass on the drop-off side). No. Thank. You.”

Where do we stand on the issue of legalized medical marijuana for people stuck in a house with snotty-nosed, coughing, crabby, screaming children? We’re pro, right? I know we’re pro when it’s barfing, obv, but it’s pro for snot, too, right?

My parents are on a vacation to the Grand Canyon. Here’s a letter from my mom, for those who want to participate virtually in the splendor:

Well. We’re at the Grand Canyon. We’ve been to the rim and walked along it, and taken a little trail down into it a bit, and it is indeed large and view-riffic.

But the crowds! The teeming masses of humanity! The bumper-to-bumper cars inching along mile after mile! I’m far more amazed at how crowded it is than I am at any grandness.

Checking in to our enviable “deep-within-the-national-park” lodge room was like finding a seat for the Super Bowl. We found the last possible parking space in a vast parking lot and walked with throngs of people to the registration center, where we joined a line pouring out the door. Forty-five minutes later we reached the registration desk (with four clerks, like in a TJ Maxx except WAY slower) who told us our room wasn’t ready yet. Since it was 4:30, we wondered when it would be ready …. by bedtime, we hoped? She didn’t know, but said to check back in 30 minutes. We asked if we would need to go through the line again and she said “yes.” So we asked if we should just go to the end of the line again now since it was at least a 30-minute line, and she said yes. We actually went away for an hour before we tried again, but we did go through the line again, when finally our room was ready.

Everywhere we’ve been so far has been filled with throngs of people (including one very tall man I keep seeing again and again who has passed us about 5 times and I’ve noticed him because he’s wearing a micro-mini skirt and has shaved bare legs). We’ve checked into our room and are now going to walk back to Grand Central Station where they have an over-priced but convenient mega-mall-type food-court.

Love, Swistle’s Mom

Can’t you just SEE the stunning vistas? the astonishing beauty of nature?

I have two songs going through my head: puh-puh-puh-puh “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga (I love the dogs at the beginning: they’re all, like, “What. Evs,” sniffing the air and almost YAWNING as a leather-clad, masked, dripping, intensely slack-mouthed woman comes crouching-and-posing out of the water)—and why don’t I just start a new paragraph for the other song going through my head, because I have lost my grip on this sentence and we might as well start fresh. I’ll wrap up by saying I liked the song better before I saw the video, which just about SPRAINS something trying to be sex-XAY.

The other song is “Be Happy,” from, um, Wow Wow Wubbzy. One of my kids came home from school with a two-episode disc (yay, marketing to children! through schools! without asking parents first!), and ALL FIVE kids were SILENT except for the LAUGHING. It was GREAT. I immediately put two more discs on my Netflix queue.

What I like about the show:

1. The SONGS. OMG, I would totally listen to a CD of them in the car, even if the kids were not with me. I thought at first they were sung by my boyfriends Angels and Airwaves, but no.

2. It’s PBS-ish even though it’s not PBS. It’s relationships/feelings/life, like Arthur and Clifford and Caillou.

3. Some of the life lessons are really good, such as “People are different, and they like different things and feel different ways.”

What I don’t like about the show:

1. Some of the life lessons are dumb. Example: “Be yourself and you will be a success at everything and everyone will like you!” Or the lesson in the song that’s going through my head, which is that the solution to being sad is to be happy instead. It’s so easy!

2. I find the characters’ voices a little irritating. Wubbzy, male, is voiced by the same person who does Emily Elizabeth’s goody-goody voice on Clifford. Widget, female, has what seems like a fakey, put-on accent (I’m allowing for the idea that it could be the voice actor’s actual accent, but if it is, it doesn’t SOUND it), and she says “little buddy” too often.

3. As with many children’s shows, the example set by the characters is “If you feel left out or hurt, sulk self-pityingly until people pay attention to you.” The characters say things such as, “SIGH, I guess they don’t need ME anymore” in re lifelong friends who have spent all of 10 minutes playing with someone else. Then they go off and sit sadly alone, but well within view so they attract attention.

Overall, I like the show. I’m buying both discs I linked to above, to give to Henry for his second (SECOND!) birthday in May, because at some point the cost of keeping them for WEEKS from Netflix ADDS THE HECK UP. And I’ve had Pirate Treasure on my Netflix queue for ages (it didn’t release until today, which is why it’s on my mind; also, THE SONG THE SONG THE CATCHY CATCHY SONG), and now I have to send a movie back pronto so I can get it.

Edited to add: “Pronto”? Who SAYS that?

I referred to this once before…somewhere…but anyway I did a care package exchange with Lisa of It’s Pretty Okay. Oh, here it is: #4 in this overly perky post. Lisa is in a military family living in Japan, so to me this meant:

1) I could use the APO/FPO flat-rate priority boxes, which cost only $11.95 to mail no matter how heavy they are, instead of the usual $40-$60 for international mailing.

2) Cute stuff from Japan, SQUEEE!

And to her it meant:

1) Famous Dave’s barbecue sauce

And so it was agreed. Both of us got a little nervous about it (we both worried that the packages we were assembling were lame), but I think it went REALLY WELL, don’t you, Lisa?

You can go over to Lisa’s blog to see what I sent her.

And now I’ll show you what was in the box Lisa sent me!

This is the box when I first opened it and fluffed a few things out of the way of other things.

These are the WEEest little cookie cutters you have ever seen! The big green square? Is, like, 3/4ths inch square. You can use these to make the cutest ever kid meals. Paul used them last night to cut slices of cheese for the kids, and it was ADORBS.

I could not—COULD NOT—get a picture that shows this great purse to advantage. Here it’s flung over the high chair tray, and I swear this was the best photo I got of it.

Ice cream scoop and coffee spoon. Lisa says the ice cream scoops in Japan are TEH BEST.

Snackies! With little Japanese characters and pictures all over them!

Stickers! Origami paper! Activity books! Stationery!

Close-up of some of the stickers, because I thought they were soooooo cute.

Bendy giraffe straws and clothespins. Lisa says the clothespins in Japan are also TEH BEST.

Dream Toothpicks! Adorable container, and also another of the things that are TEH BEST. Look at the cute carved tops!

Things for the kids (what? the stickers weren’t for me?): pens that you write in invisible ink that only shows up when you shine the other end of the pen on it, a puzzle, a “Miraculous Ruler,” etc.

I went to the Urgent Care clinic this morning for a UTI beauty treatment, and already I am feeling a lot less like flinging my poor afflicted body off a ledge prettier. This paragraph takes a huge confident stride into TMIville, I realize. Sorry. (Not really sorry. I feel too much better to feel sorry.)

The BEST thing about an, er, beauty emergency that occurs right after closing time on Friday afternoon is that I am forced to go to the weekend Urgent Care, which means Paul is home and I don’t have to bring any children with me. There are only so many times I can say, “PLEASE don’t lick that” before I lose my borderline-germphobic mind.

Today I brought a BOOK to read in the waiting room! And I didn’t have to explain ANYTHING to ANYBODY, other than “what I was there for” to “who I was there to see,” which is okay because everyone involved was a consenting adult and nobody said “But WHY?”

Then, of course, I had to fill the prescription, and what could be more convenient than the Target pharmacy? And when they said, “10-15 minutes,” I said, “Oh dear no, TAKE YOUR TIME” and went browsing around in the near-total silence of both my ears and my mouth, broken only by the sound of OTHER people’s whining children, which is like the sweet relief of listening to a phone you don’t have to answer.

I bought some Girl Scout Cookie ice cream, and the cutest little baking sheet EVER (it’s for a toaster oven and it is SO WEE), and there wasn’t really anything on clearance but I looked at the picked-over remains, and I considered a shirt for Elizabeth, and then with HUGE reluctance I went and paid for my prescription.

I wanted to take the first pill right away, but I was already at my car before I remembered that, so instead of going back inside to the drinking fountains I went to Wendy’s and got a fish sandwich combo, which I know will totally gross out some of you but MAN I love fast-food fish. And I took my first health-restoring pill with a big drink of diet Coke, followed by a french fry from a packet I didn’t have to share.

Then I drove home in a quiet car. Best time I’ve had in weeks. I should have a beauty treatment more often.

My Wii Fit’s daily fitness tip for me was that I should have protein and sugar after a workout. So I put TONS of pecans on my sundae.

(Paul looked at it and said, “Don’t we have cherries?”)

This morning I went to Target with the three littles, which is a crazy plan but I thought I was going to go crazier if I stayed in the house with them one more day. Plus, I had a prescription to pick up, and the automated voice system gets cranky if you don’t pick up within ten days.

I’m sooooo glad I went, because TOTAL SCOREAGE. I’m just showing one of each item, but in some cases I got two so I’d have one to keep and one for a future Swistle care package.

Four different cute notebooks, assorted sizes. Pack of cute notecards, stack of cute round paper, another pack of cute notecards, and gift tags. Re the gift tags: I already HAVE those gift tags, because Jess Loolu gave them to me back when we did the very first pay-it-forward package (on this blog, I mean, not, like, in the history of the world). And I love them, and I use them sparingly to make them last. So I’m happy to have another set, either to use myself or to give away in a future care package.

Box of recipe cards. Sheet of Elvis stickers. Another box of gift tags, this time solid-color.

Three more cute notebooks. I love notebooks.

Hello Kitty napkins, cute oval notecards, pretty stationery, pink argyle post-it cubes (center), and three more cute notebooks (because of love of same).

Princess napkins. Two slightly different (one is circles; the other is squares) sets of mod birthday candles. Pack of flower stickers (also got Hello Kitty and those little animals with huge eyes, but I must have forgotten to take a picture of those). Cute pens. Cute mechanical pencils. Cute non-mechanical pencils.

Arts and crafts stuff. A kit that makes custom bouncy balls. Assorted coloring kits of the “no mess” and “color with water” varieties. A…hover launcher. And a set of double-ended crayons.

Large birthday gift bags, birthday-themed tissue paper, and three rolls of wrapping paper (2 birthday, 1 all-purpose). This is particularly awesome timing because we have a birthday party to go to on Saturday. I like to do up the package, but not when it’s $4 for the gift bag and $1.50 for the tissue.

EVERYTHING was 75% off. It was MADNESS. I had to take both twins out of the cart so I’d have room for all the STUFF. Now I want to go to the other Target in our area so I can scrounge for more stuff.

Now. Sometimes when I have a huge score, there is complaining that other people’s Targets are not as good as mine. And that may very well be. In fact, the situation might be that you and I share a Target, and I am stripping it clean before you get there. But if this is not the case, I have a few tips to help you make your Target the very best Target it can be:

1. Go SOON. I did some HEAVY PICKING at my Target today, and there were two other women doing heavy picking as well. If you wait until Saturday, or even until Friday, there might be nothing left.

2. Go to the ENDCAPS. The endcaps are the ends of the aisles that face the walls rather than facing the main aisles. NEW stuff goes on the caps near the main aisles; CLEARANCE stuff goes in mixed heaps on the caps near the walls.

There might also be good clearance mixed in with the non-clearance stuff on the shelves, but it’s less likely.

3. Be patient and persistent. Sometimes a Target has NOTHING, and sometimes it has TONS. And sometimes, like in the case of my brown toile bird shower curtain, NO Targets had them, and then there was a big pile at one of the Targets I’d already checked. So I think sometimes they consolidate.

4. In fact, how about just going to Target every day? That’ll do it.

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!