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ttyki's last day and mother's day. [May 23 2012 - Wed|02:42pm] i think i have to say it's Denial that i've firmly moved into. i know, from googling, that's supposed to be where i start, but there was something else last week. just the whole, raw grief and depression thing. oh, i'm all out of order. i spent the entirety of last week crying daily, feeling bereft and soul achey. having that feeling when someone breaks up with you and you've done all the case arguing you can and they aren't coming back and you stay in bed at night trying to send out these wiggly waves of desperation through the air and across the city to convince them to change their mind (which works, by the way) and, in the meantime, you're left with that feeling. that feeling it plows so deeply through your mind that it descends into physicality. welcome to the early 90s. i believe this was her first xmas. boy, she really did like pounce treats. i had to move them to a more secure location because i would come home from work to find she'd made a day of opening the upper cabinets and chewing the lid of the canister for a pounce feast. i think my mother secretly liked ttyki. or secretly wanted ttyki to like her. ttyki was definitely MY cat. everyone else could generally take off, as far as she was concerned. i blame myself for inadequate socialization. so that's what much of last week was spent doing. i didn't want to vacuum. her little hairs are everywhere. i collected stray bits of snippings that had escaped on her last day and just keep turning up out of nowhere. i felt pain putting the wrapper from my new shampoo bar in the recycling because of the feeling i had had unwrapping it on that saturday to shower before taking her in to possibly die. i felt guilty eating or smiling or laughing or not being fairly immersed in memory. i held on to the pain. i could still feel the energy of the me and her in that room the two times i found myself driving by the vet's office. like i was about to figure out the nature of ghosts or energy impressions or whatever it is. i could feel her, that me, still in there and still going through it. forever. you can probably go in there in the middle of the night and hear glimpses of me crying. cloth napkins on the floor in an adjoining room sticking out into a doorway and viewed peripherally are her, for a split second. there she is. she's still here. i check to see if noises from other cats are her. i look under the little napping table. on the couch behind me. just in case. or to see her there anyway. violet coming out without warning from the back bedroom after her nap sounded exactly like an amplified version of ttyki's arthritic hips dragging the one, too-long nail. in the bathroom, my adrenaline shot out from atop my kidneys and caused me great fear as i looked out the door. i was surprised by my lack of calm and blamed it on too many viewings of flatliners or, maybe, pet semetary. ( she finally came to my dreams sunday night... ) 11 dead X pick your poison

my apple-headed ttyki. [May 18 2012 - Fri|04:38pm] for much of the past year since ttyki was re-diagnosed with diabetes, the vet has theorized that there might be an additional, underlying cause for it. it was difficult trying to get her blood glucose levels under control and her crash awhile back and the crash this past week were seemingly without warrant. her last blood test showed no signs of additional issues. after crashing last wednesday, i did not give her any more insulin shots. i was too scared. i checked her blood that night and it was in the 200 range. a little high, but low for her. we went to oliver's soccer party friday evening. we returned home, ate, and i fell asleep on the couch. there had been some bright yellow urine on the floor by the box. not altogether unexpected in our household, except i had just cleaned the box. when brian woke me to say he was going to bed, i did what i always do when ttyki isn't sleeping next to me and i asked him to make sure she's okay. he went to find her. i heard him call my name in a worried tone from the bathroom and i ran in there. she was lying on the floor and hovering over the water bowl. this is not terribly unusual for times she's not feeling her best, but it did have me worried. she seemed particularly weak. i brought her back to the couch with me. i woke over and over again through the night. the first time, ttyki was no longer beside me. i forget where i found her, but i put her back on the towel in a box i had set up for her to nest in with a little privacy after her crash, and i slid it over to where i could see it from the couch. when i woke again, she was gone. i believe i found her in the kitchen. i decided to get through the night just letting her be where she wanted to be. i was feeling pretty sick that she had something horribly wrong, especially since i knew she wasn't crashing on insulin. i knew we would be going to the vet in the morning and i started hoping she would die during the night, if that was where she was headed. i continued to wake over and over and kept myself from getting up each time to check on her. when i finally decided it was time to get up for the day, she wasn't on the couch or in the box. i walked through the dining room, holding my breath, and could see either urine or watery vomit in the back living room. i didn't see her on the back couch or under the little table where she likes to nap during the day. i turned toward the kitchen and saw her lying in the far corner, just past another pool of bright yellow urine. she looked awful. there was a knot forming in my stomach. she had obviously not had the energy to leave that spot. and i tried to not feel guilty about not checking on her over and over again through the night. about the decision to not bring her back to the couch each time. i guess i called to brian because i remember him being there to help clean up. i think i sat down on the floor with her. maybe i cried. i didn't know what to do. she was covered in mats and thin as a rail and i had to take her in. i said i wanted to bathe her, but i didn't know how because she didn't look like she could hold herself up. brian started the bath and scrubbed her while i helped her stand. i kept going back and forth from feeling like i was preparing her to die and crying, crying, to hoping it was like so many other times i felt she was dying and instead, she came back home with something silly like advanced constipation or a UTI. i don't know, i guess i knew. but you never completely know. i've been noting how peppy she's seemed, all things considered. how she's the one who comes into the kitchen approximately every 12 hours to patiently wait for me to give her a couple of treats with her injection. she hobbles with energy after me when i come back from dropping off the kids, waiting for me to crack open some wet food for her. she would lay on the couch while i worked at night, waiting to join me on the couch. some nights, she got to where she would fall into such a deep sleep, she was surprised when i would nudge her to let her know i was leaving the room. i gathered up the courage to call the vet. i asked if dr. debender was in and was told she was, but all the vets were completely booked. i explained i had an elderly, diabetic cat who seemed very sick. she said she could work us in and asked what was going on. i told her she had crashed and was now very lethargic and weak. she sounded more urgent, saying, "you should go ahead and bring her in now." i went to the bathroom to tell brian they sounded worried. and then i sat on the toilet, watching her, and cried. a little later, i sat down with oliver and told him i didn't know what was going to happen with ttyki. i didn't know how sick she was or if she would be coming back from the vet. i told him he might want to tell her goodbye, just in case. then, at some point, i realized brian was trying to go with me. after i had finished getting ready, i came out of the bathroom and found ttyki had crawled halfway out from under her bath towel inside the box and was lying partly on the floor. i felt the knot in my stomach tighten. i sat down with her and did the best i could brushing her and cutting matted hair out. then it was time. i got out the old, pink towel. the one i used with her when she was a pup. i put it in the bottom of the carrier and she went straight in. i heard her mew anxiously a couple of time as i was walking up to the car. i held the carrier on my lap while brian drove and tried to keep her from falling over during turns, stops, and starts. when i walked in the door, i placed the carrier on the counter and cried, "this is ttyki." they took her to the back immediately and the four of us sat down. it only took a handful of minutes before the technician took us back to the examination room. i gave her the details of the past couple of days and in no time flat, dr. debender came back into the room. this certainly was not normal. she carried a piece of paper listing a 95 degree temperature, normal blood glucose levels, and a backsliding weight of five pounds. they had already put a shunt into her leg, but i don't recall what for. it didn't take long for her to cut to the chase. "she's dying." just like that. no mention of possible treatments. no shots or pills or liquids or IVs. no hope of anything at all. it was such a certain response, i didn't even think to question it. "she's dying." i started wailing. it just all started spilling out from way deep down. she said she had turned yellow and i immediately realized i had subconsciously noticed something had been wrong with the color of her ears while i had been grooming her inside that dim box. she said it wasn't the diabetes. it was that mysterious underlying cause. i imagine whatever it was, that was the reason for her crash wednesday. i think the doctor said she was yellow because possibly her liver, her gall bladder, was breaking down red blood cells. she said she was suffering. she said i could take her home, but it was going to get a lot worse and she would likely start having seizures. she would be in terrible pain. there was no hope of anything. nothing. she passed the box of tissues to where i was standing. eyes leaking. i wailed and i fought and i said i didn't want to be there and i didn't want this day to happen. i sat on a chair in the corner while she went to go get ttyki. i cried and cried and cried and tried to find some way to make this not be my reality. i wanted my cat who defied death over and over again. death rolling right off her, oily and slick. my cat who could take anything you threw at her. my cat made of steel. where was she? this wasn't happening. i couldn't escape. dr. debender came back in carrying ttyki wrapped in a towel. she was quiet. still. the catheter stuck in her leg hard to ignore. i cried some more and rubbed her head over and over. i needed her to tell me what to do in a way that wasn't possible. i begged her to tell me. i begged her to forgive me. for everything. ever. for now. for that day. i called to her, baby, baby, baby, please, baby. i asked what would happen. she said she there would be two injections, the first to make her unconscious and the second to stop her heart. the same drugs used for anesthesia. dr. debender drifted in and out. trying to be present, yet unobtrusive. i had told her i understood what needed to happen, i just didn't know how to get from here to there. i asked brian to leave with the children. i asked the children to tell her goodbye. "goodbye, ttyki!" violet chirped happily as brian held her eye level with the examination counter. they left and i shut the door. dr. debender said she wasn't rushing me, but would go ahead and get the form to sign and draw up the drugs. i told her i already knew i would want her back. she left. i picked ttyki up in her towel and sat on a chair. cuddled her like a little baby. i eventually noticed i could feel the warmth of her stomach against mine, which i have loved feeling so many times over the past year when she slept next to me at night. i talked to her. i told her i loved her. i told her i was sorry. i cried. dr. debender came back with the form and kneeled down to use the chair next to me. she asked if ttyki had bitten anyone in the past 10 days and i said, "yes." i think she thought i wasn't be serious and i repeated that she had bitten violet. she looked worried and i became alarmed that whatever was killing ttyki could have made its way through that bite. "what's wrong?!" she said they're required by law to test for rabies if that's the case, and i managed to do enough calendar math to know it had been over two weeks since the bite. dr. debender said i didn't want to know how they tested for rabies, but i was way ahead of her. she handed me the pen to sign my name. i started and then realized just what my signature meant. i wanted to run out of there. she left to get the drugs. more crying, more cuddling. ttyki started trying to get up and out of the towel. i don't know where she was trying to go, but it made me feel even worse. had she been unconscious or definitively showing signs that she was pretty much not there anymore or in tremendous and undeniable pain, it would have been... easier, i guess. but to see her getting up. god. it was unbearable. did she want to use her legs one last time? was she trying to find a way out of there? did she know? was it just another day for her? i held on to her. i think that actually propelled me to put her back up on the table. there was a soft, blue blanket folded up for her to rest on. i asked dr. debender if i could i retrieve the pink towel from the carrier and cover her with it. she said, "of course. it smells like home." i told her i've had it as long as i've had her. i stood there struggling with what to do. or, how to do it. dr. debender offered to take the catheter out and let me take her home. i told her i knew i couldn't do that. i just didn't know how to decide when it was okay for her to be alive one minute and not okay to be alive the next minute. how was i supposed to know when we had reached that threshhold? who was i to make that decision for her? i went back and forth from leaning across her and hugging her and kissing the top of her head to crouching down and staring into her eyes, looking for a sign. her pupils seemed so incredibly large. there was nothing there telling me what to do either way. whenever i thought i had reached the place where i couldn't take the torment any longer, i would stop crying and start muttering, trying to figure out how to make the words come out of my mouth. i said, "okay," a few times, but it was so quiet, it didn't count. i noticed that i was moving back and forth during those times. from one foot to the other. like i was checking something out and trying to make sense of it. then i would retreat back into tears and staring into her eyes. i would look at dr. debender as if there was something she could do and drop my eyes again because i still couldn't say it. she asked me to think about why i would want to keep her alive. i explained i didn't feel i had the right to decide the last moment of her life. she said this would be the most selfless thing i could do for her. that she wasn't going to get better. that this would give some dignity to her death. i asked her to explain the injections again. how much time between the two? i think i wanted there to be some pause where she was unconscious, but living. that maybe seeing her like that would make it more peaceful for me. there's no pause in between. as she gently picked up each syringe to explain its purpose, i couldn't help but notice one was a cloudy white and that there were three syringes. i didn't want to ask what the third was for. i cycled back through my three phases for what felt like an eternity. my mind going down and down and down this big plinko board of life and death, trying to fit itself through the right channels to land in the right slot to make sense of this. and then back to the top again. plink plink plink. i tried closing my eyes and counting to 20 and trying to imagine who all might be on the other side waiting for her. i mean, i really don't know what i believe about the after life, but i hope there's more after this and believing there are friends and family waiting on the other side of the coin was what i needed to feel. maybe it's all those episodes of long island medium i've been watching lately. and i felt like there was a crowd coming through those walls. a huge mob in sepia tone. i imagined ttyki, young and soft-haired and fuller-figured, hopping off that table and jumping into someone's arms. i reached 20 and muttered another, "okay." but it didn't take. she didn't know. i lost my nerve again and had to start back over. more last looks. more tears, not the last. i put my forehead to hers and kissed her. i counted to 20 with my eyes closed again, breathing as slowly as i could. and said i was ready. she said she was starting the first injection and i dropped to my knees and pressed my head to ttyki's and cried, telling her i was so sorry and i loved her and it was going to be okay. she was going to be okay. i felt her going limp and she said she was asleep and she began the second injection. i repeated over and over she was going to be okay and i loved her. i tried to not say i was sorry. i tried to concentrate on making her feel better. it was only seconds before i could see dr. debender pull out her stethoscope, place it under the towel and say, "she's gone." i've never held anything dead before. there's a very big difference between the resistance of holding something that's asleep and holding something that has died. like liquid in a membrane. almost like it's losing its form. her little head. her little face. i tried to gently close her left eyelid. i nuzzled my face against her neck. more i love yous. dr. debender had already quietly stepped from the office, whispering, "i'm sorry," and placing her hand briefly on my hunched over back. i didn't have a clue how i was supposed to stand up and walk out of there, leaving ttyki behind. how long should i stay? what was appropriate? what would leave me with the least regrets? i guess i could have stayed the rest of my life. but i know how i am and the longer i have something, the more difficult it is for me to let it go. i said goodbye to her for probably a couple of minutes, petting her head, and making sure i had no regrets about touching her body. i made sure the pink towel was covering her as much as possible, pulling it up farther around the top of her head and covering the end of her tail. i knocked on the door and called, "dr. debender?" she stepped back in and i asked to make sure the pink towel would go with her. it would. i thanked her for all the help she's given me with ttyki and opened the door to leave. brian was standing out there with the kids. i shut the door behind me and fell into a tearful hug in the hallway. i bawled as quietly as i could. we went back to the front and i asked him to pay so i could get out of there. oliver came out with me. my car was only yards away from the exit and after opening oliver's door for him, i heard someone call out. i thought it was someone from the office telling me i had forgotten something. i looked at her and she asked again if i needed anything. i shook my head and she walked over to me. she was older and quietly beautiful. stunning eyes. she told me she was sorry and held me for a moment while i cried. she asked if i was able to drive and i said my husband was inside. later, when i asked brian where she had come from, he told me she had gone back in and given him a hug as well. i rode home quietly. holding the empty carrier on my lap. i walked back through the courtyard and to our door, wondering if joann had noticed the emptiness. i couldn't believe i was coming back home without my furry little girl. may 1993 - may 12, 2012 since this has stretched on endlessly and saturday felt like one of the longest days of my life, i think i'll save some of the torture of writing this for a different post. oh, wait. today, friday, i was baking cookies for the end of year school picnic and thinking, wondering, when i was going to get the call from the vet to come pick ttyki up. it had only taken a couple of days when beany died. i was trying to be patient, but was at the point where i was starting to worry. you can only make so much progress knowing you still have another step to take. i spent all week wondering where she was and if the cremation had taken place yet and putting all this emotional energy into trying to "stay" with her through it. then it occurred to me. they probably used brian's number to call and, for whatever reason, he never checks his voicemails. i grabbed my phone to look at the vet's number and then pulled up his call log. three days ago they had called. i was crushed. she had been sitting there for three days. three days. while i had been sitting here all wound up about her. i was pissed. and i didn't want her to sit there for a second longer than she had to. but those cookies were taking too long and i had to go pick up violet. the second the last round chimed in as done, i looked at the clock and saw i had an extra three minutes. i took them and drove over there. as soon as i walked in the door, i knew an emotional bandaid was being ripped off. i was shaking and crying quietly. she brought her back out and said they were sorry for my loss. there she was. sitting in that little cedar box with the gold padlock. two gold keys dangling from it. i took solace in the fact that she was going for a ride in the car. i even opened the vent for her like i used to. she used to sniff the outside air immediately, her nose pointed toward the vent and her eyes squinting. and, of course, i cried and cried and wondered how on earth i was going to have time to recover enough to pick violet up. i turned on to audelia and, in an attempt to escape the replay of a donna summer interview and the spectacularly bad music on kxt, i switched to mesquite school's radio and, by god, they were right in the middle of playing this: i couldn't believe it. i laugh-cried and nudged ttyki's box. who knew my cat had such a spectacular sense of humor. but then, with the threat of having to act like nothing was wrong in front of others, i started leaking again. i sat in the car for a minute, enjoying al stewart and wishing it was cat stevens, even though the kids were already coming out to the parking lot. and then i saw john and marianne come up the sidewalk, so i got out. marianne asked how i was and i murmured, "oh, okay." she said something about the party tonight and i muttered, "mmhmm," with my head down and walked past them. all hope was lost. violet was the last one there and i was losing it some more. i had to briefly explain to charlotte before getting back out of there. god, i'm so tired. but i think i'm on the verge of figuring this whole soul-displaced-from-body bit. i think i'm about to crack a really big code. i'll let you know more later. maybe i'll write a new age book about it. 20 dead X pick your poison

easter 2012: school hunt. [May 11 2012 - Fri|02:05pm] got the kids all dolled up the thursday before easter for their school egg hunt. i had already delivered 24 plastic eggs filled with animal stickers. the school had finally wised up and begun accepting last year's post-hunt eggs to be refilled this year. no more buying-new-plastic-eggs angst over here. no siree. violet was kind of somber while i requested they allow their photograph to be taken in the courtyard on the way to school. i imagine she suspected something was afoot, with those pails in tow and all. after dropping oliver at his classroom, i walked violet to her room. "heeey, beth," said miss charlotte. "april's out with a sick daughter today. do you have any plans?" actually, for once, work was trying really hard to interfere with the holiday goings on of my children. the night before, i had gone way out on a limb and attended a screening of life happens at the angelika (hey, it was free) and came back out of the theater to a text saying we had a project coming in to start dialing at ten the next morning. i begged the client's IT guy to send me the info so i could get started and that's when i learned there were two projects going up. i got everything in place by midnight and crossed my fingers they weren't going to throw a wrench at me in the morning. i had to maneuver an 8:30 drop off, violet's hunt from 8:45-9:30, oliver's hunt from 10:30-11:00, and a noon pick up. hey, no sweat. i told charlotte i could hang out until the end of their hunt. holy shit. working with children is a lot of, uh, work. tara immediately became my best friend as i sat down on the blue rug. and then i was kind of frighteningly surrounded by these looming, grinning faces. it was like someone had switched to the fish eye lens on my life and i suddenly felt the need to retreat to higher ground as they all moved in with tiny questions and large heads. violet worked the pink tower for me. riley pulled out the brown stairs. i concentrated really hard on saying only montessori-friendly things and occasionally found myself wondering if i should backtrack on what was coming out of my mouth. then, we all lined up with our baskets and started the arduous journey through the school and out to the playground, where it turned out the hunt had already started, which i found a bit mysterious. fortunately, toddlers are slow and there were still plenty of eggs to be found. violet lit up and i gently guided her from one ovo-treasure to the next. finding 12 eggs and takes really no time at all. then they converted over to playing on the playground like any other day. though it turned out caroline was well aware this was no ordinary day and she began wailing in protest of the schedule upset. one of violet's teachers took her bucket from her to place on the picnic table. i had thought it was to make sure everyone had the appropriate number of finds, but i think it was really just so they could play unencumbered. regardless, this just totally broke violet's easter-loving heart. her mouth threw itself open and a wail started from way deep down and leaked slowly up to the top. whichever teacher quickly realized the error and handed back her bucket, but that was that. mood destroyed. we spent the rest of our time circling the wood chip area, as she did not want to be anywhere near this year's easter bunny. she refused the little slide. she refused the swings. charlotte tiptoed into the cafeteria and came back with two half cups of coffee. a little liquid energy to say thank you. it was something else, getting all the toddler classes to line up with the appropriate groups. charlotte sings this little song called PUT YOUR BACKS AGAINST THE WALL, which also happens to be the lyrics, and they just line up like little pavlovian robots. there were several BACKS AGAINST THE WALL stops heading back to the room to get all the stragglers caught up and then we were back in. it was time to race home and check in on work. fortunately, things were fine. annoyingly, there was no need for me to drive home, but it saved me from having to actually speak to anyone through a phone. i returned to school and waited outside oliver's door until they all poured out and lined up, many with easter baskets on their heads. an old favorite, to be sure. i remember nearly getting those fluorescent plastic pails with metal handle nearly stuck forever on my head. and i still couldn't resist doing it again. no wonder i have issues with claustrophobia. this walk was much more relaxed, as they were saving their energy for the explosion of primary-aged children competitively gathering eggs. after they sounded the starting bell, i couldn't keep up with oliver, as i refused to run criss-crossedly all over the playground. two minutes later, the eggs were about gone and i convinced oliver to sit with the easter bunny. then, he managed to spill a dime from one of his eggs in a gully of clover and boy did he spend a lot of time looking for it. hayes' father was standing uphill from him and we remarked how we needed to add this to our list of time-killing activities for children. he considered tossing a dime down there for him, but ended up letting him pick a replacement from a handful of change from his pocket. a quarter! it was quite sporting of him. oliver moved over to the sidewalk with aubrey and they continued hunkering down over their baskets. i crouched down and got real close to his face and told him three times how i was leaving and would be back at noon to pick him up, none of which made it through his ears and to his brain, because he looked rather frazzled and eye-wipey when i arrived at noon to pick him up. ( CUT... ) 2 dead X pick your poison

hey, sugar. sometimes, you save lives. [May 9 2012 - Wed|09:06pm] in the comsos' never-ending quest to make sure i don't ever lose weight, my workout plans were foiled for the second afternoon in a row. violet was busy traveling to naptown and i was vacuuming the back living room so that i would have less debris on my feet during workout time and fewer pubic hairs to stare at while doing walking push ups. it was at this point i saw ttyki stand up on the couch (middle cushion) and mosey toward the end, placing her nose to nose with ozzy (left cushion). a couple of seconds later, i looked up to see her back on the middle cushion and peeing on the couch. this was particularly unusual because ttyki is 100% a phantom pisser. she leaves her calling card on area rugs and secluded corners. but, by god, you will never see her doing it. i dropped the eureka! easyclean, still running, and lifted ttyki up, expecting there to be a stream of urine pouring out of her undersides. i guess the valve shut off, thank goodness, and i plopped her to the floor so i could start removing the couch covers, the easyclean still running. i noticed ttyki kind of laying a little on the splayed side and i picked her up and took her to the bathroom in case she needed to finish emptying her bladder. i returned to the mess and finished up. powered down the eureka!. i returned to the bathroom to check on ttyki and i think this was the part where she was hanging over a food or water bowl, but her legs were splayed again. like she couldn't hold herself up. she had passed out and i woke her up. obviously, things were looking grim to me at this point. i grabbed the blood glucose monitor and took a reading. 25. that's about two percentage points away from death. and i thought, oh god. here we go again. is this it? she wasn't making the googly eyes yet and i didn't feel the immediate need to rush her to the vet, as i have started wondering if that whole emergency-vet-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing isn't a racket. her bg reading goes up 7 points just from the stress of the ride up there and they make a killing just for sticking her on a bag of glucose. i was also kind of feeling like she's just an old gal. 19 years this month. and maybe if this was it, this was it. i grabbed the emergency karo and my cell. while twisting the lid, i phoned brian. i told him, i think ttyki's crashing. i've noticed i have to speak with great energy to make so few words come out in a legible fashion when life and death is occurring. brian responded with equal efficiency that he was on his way home. unless he needed to meet me at the vet. i didn't know. i didn't have the energy to get that far ahead. i started forcing fingerfuls of karo into her mouth, learning just how sharp her ancient, little fangs are. and then i remembered how i had saved violet's antibiotics syringe from last week. from the time the week before when ttyki bit her face and it blew up in two places with pus. did i tell you about all that? well, great. it just occurred to me that might be my thumb come morning. anyhow, in a twist of pack rat luck, i realized that had been a wise decision. and so i began pumping her mouth up with syringes full of karo. she grew a little, brown, sticky beard. i was checking her blood periodically and it rose higher each time. i was afraid to give her too much caro and make her throw it all back up. i switched over to disgusting wet cat food and she started going to town on it while i helped her stand over the bowl on her little tripod legs. because they were splayed and not because she has three of them. whatever. i'm ready to go collapse on the couch. brian had arrived home around there somewhere and he mechanically patted my back while i cried on the toilet. lid down. i stopped hassling the poor dear once her BG hit the 70s. which is also about the time she vomited. the first of two times. then she laid two of her patented little, rock solid ttyki turdlettes and i thought, gee, those sure do smell strong. as poo with no moisture in it generally has no stink. now, i can't tell you if this is a side effect of too much karo or too much visiting with angels, but i later entered the bathroom to see her squirting poo water on the floor. let me tell you, it's a tricky game to know the precise moment in between a poo-peeing and fleeing where one can stick a couple of squares of toilet paper on a cat's bottom and not reap (m)any ill consequences. this happened on at least four occasions and periodically included the birth of additional turdlettes bathed in amniotic plooid. i'm tired. thank goodness i had vacuumed and steam mopped in between stabilization and intestinal malfunction. i also groomed her a little. i hoped the stress would increase her BG levels and i also didn't want her to die on a filthty floor with ear wax so complex, oliver said last night she had plants growing out of her ears. i think that's the end. let's call that the end. 4 dead X pick your poison

i'm not a soccer mom anymore! is that something that can be undone? [May 8 2012 - Tue|04:02pm] oliver tells me after five seasons of soccer that he's done with soccer. "okay," i said without hesitation. his uniform fits well now. after a rough season marred with equilibrium upsets like family illness and holidays and and a missing soccer ball and out of town-ness and the referee noticing he didn't have shin guards for the first time and not letting him play and him refusing to wear anyone else's shin guards, i was about ready to say we weren't having a trophy or a celebratory pizza dinner (which, of course, has been canned anyhow). but then we had our last game last saturday and even arrived 1.25 hours early, thanks to a secret schedule change. oliver played at least three quarters of the game in the bedraggling heat. he even volunteered to go in at one point. he might have spent most of his time jogging after the pack in a lackluster fashion, but he did stop the ball once when it ran into his legs and i somehow got all these high action photos of him to preted like he's some kind of savant soccer star. those last two just crack me on up. said farewell to the old potty chair yesterday. WE'RE DONE WITH DIAPERS and POTTY CHAIRS!. i left oliver's little reward stickers haphazardly stuck to the back and handed it over to delayna for aaron during after school playtime yesterday. violet became rather sentimental, despite not having used it in about six months. she tried to get naked on the sidewalk and use it, though that might have just been more for novelty's sake. she was nearly in faux tears last night over it and asked after it this afternoon. i calm her anxiety by telling her she can visit it at miriam's house. i calm my anxiety by telling me i can visit it at miriam's house. brian successfully craigslisted his old television, which we've watched approximately twice during the past five years. and then he took to making what turned out to be a cat bed of 140 cassette tapes from the glory days so that he could try to push them off on some unsuspecting internetite. it's like we're cleaning house to move, or something. 2 dead X pick your poison

the things which make a butterfly garden enchanting. and those which do not. [May 4 2012 - Fri|10:24am] about a year ago, i purchased this living social coupon for the butterfly garden at fair park. not surprisingly, i didn't get around to using it until today... barely moments before its expiration. last weekend was too stormy-looking and the day i went was another weather-perfect day. on my way out the door to pick up oliver from school and head over there, it occurred to me that violet would be admitted free of charge, meaning i still had an adult and child that could get in for free and it would be a total waste to not have another adult and child. i texted delayna, who has a five year old and an under three year old and she was on board. we got there about an hour before closing time. the breeze was cooling. the sky was blue. shady trees were shading. we could already see butterflies fluttering around the outside perimeter of the building. oliver grew jealous, i suppose, of the fact that miriam was holding violet's hand. i'm not sure if he was jealous of miriam or violet or both, but he did his best to break into the middle of their grasp. now, violet spent the first half of her life being defenselessly subjected to her brother's tough love and i suspect she suffers from some kind of periodic subconscious PTSD, which causes her to occasionally become rather vocal when oliver tries to hold her hand or hug her. you never really know how she's going to react to his affection. it was with vociferous objection on this day. which, of course, did not dissuade oliver. in other words, we weren't even in the door yet and i was already experiencing some behavioral issues, which i mentioned to oliver. as if it would change anything. here is a picture of it, in which you can completely not tell there was any problem at all. perhaps by the end of this entry, i will appear to be a hallucination-having loon. the many joys of motherhood. we found an employee buried in the depths of the gift shop, who took our coupon in exchange for lapel stickers and we took the elevator to the second floor and stepped into this dual-doored chamber designed to allow us entrance with no exit for the butterflies. the second door slid open and whoosh. it was a butterfly utopia. you hear "butterfly garden" and you might think, "oh, that does sound nice and pleasant." and then you actually walk into a butterfly garden and it is just badass butterfly-ness all over your face and you just can't believe a butterfly garden could be that fucking awesome. it took two seconds for someone somewhere to accidentally squash the life from one of the butterflies. we spiraled down the walkway through the artificial butterfly heavens and spun down on to the earth. you could get worked up just over the foliage in there alone. one thing, the butterflies like it muggy, so wear your best hippie deodorant and a tank top. look for a/c vents if it becomes too much. there was another worker in there to keep us in line. she sat next to one of those caterpillar habitat things you can buy and she was waiting for these fresh, gigantic, white and black butterflies to mosey out into their new world. oliver insisted on tapping the mesh and i asked him to stop. he persisted and the worker explained how they would perceive him as a predator and not want to allow him a closer look. he tried to blow on them through the mesh. i took many opportunities to explain to oliver how he was the oldest child there, yet was acting like the youngest. younger than the youngest. no avail. the more we walked through the garden, the more we would find ourselves in the middle of butterfly storms. miriam was so involved trying to find them on her chart, she would miss the enormous, blue-winged ones flying right past her nose. the worker let oliver have an errant butterfly wing and he angered his sister by trying to give it to her. here is a picture of that. please note how violet's dress contains a stylistic representation of a butterfly garden, brought to you by HealthTex. time was becoming scarce, so we tore ourselves away to the outdoor gardens. holy shit. more amazing foliage. a light breeze. a fountain that grew bigger the closer you got. imagine that! or just look at the photos below and save your creativity! oliver started picking at his butt with worrying frequency. it's easy to dismiss at first, as his underwear collection is the same one he moved into from diapers and the kids like to wear them backwards these days, so, you know, up the crack. at some point, i asked if he had pooped his pants. because there was that one time awhile ago, where he pooped his pants, took a siesta, went to whole foods, and made it to the dinner table before the crack-scratching became wild enough to expose his mystery. it gives me flashbacks to this day. oliver refused to acknowledge one way or the other about pants-pooping, answering only with furtive pants yanking. i promised not to tell miriam. finally, FINALLY, he admitted it and we took the long, slow, ambling walk back to the building. i asked the gift shop ticket lady for a plastic bag and took him to the handicapped stall (handicapped by poop, that is), and stripped his lower half... holding my figurative and literal breath the whole way. well, thank you god and jesus! it was just a manageable shart! whew! the underpants went in the bag and into my purse (where they stayed for two days). oliver squirmed and giggled while i tried to remove the shart from his crack and he was commandoed back into his pants. we took another, less long walk back to the others after being told the building would close in 15 minutes, but we could escape out some side gate in the outdoor gardens. while delayna was telling me violet had been totally cool while i was gone, i could hear her beginning to shriek because oliver was trying to barge in on hand holding again and so i threw my hands up in the air and made that grimacing face i always make when my child won't listen to me which is all the time. wow. you can almost sense the jealous sorrow here. poor fellow. it was around then that delayna discovered Aaron the Hungry had red berries in his mouth and she found the skins in his teeth. we didn't know what kinds of trees they were, but her mother always told her the trees with the red berries were poisonous. we took some time trying to see if our brains could decide the definition of poisonous and the amount of panic that should accompany it and the likelihood that the entire length of the child-friendly butterfly garden would be lined with poisonberry trees. we wandered through some vegetable gardens and over to a grassy knoll. in an uncharacteristic move, Aaron the Great Escape Artist began clinging to delayna. and we thought, "uh oh." violet started saying she needed to pee. the outdoor bathrooms were locked. aaron laid himself flat out on the ground. and we thought, "oh fuck," and delayna began looking up the number to poison control while i stood there uselessly punching buttons on my phone which was taking one of its frequent vacations from internet access while away from home. not so smartphone after all. poison control said they didn't know what kind of tree it was. TAKE HIM STRAIGHT TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM AND WHICH ARE YOU GOING TO SO I CAN CALL AHEAD AND TELL THEM YOU'RE COMING?! and we thought, "really?" and she tried texting a photo of the tree to her pediatrician while miriam tried to show violet how to pee in the grass and oliver refused to stop peeking no matter what i said to him and violet finally peed in the grass, as did miriam. and that reminds me that i should purchase two of those pee-while-standing-up lady cups. delayna decided to wander off and look for someone, anyone, to identify the tree. oliver said he needed to go to the bathroom again. delayna found someone who told her it was a something-holly-or-another and she called her husband for his googling access while i tried to get oliver to pee in the tree and miriam returned the peeking favor. it was almost six at this point. a good thirty minutes after closing time. somewhere along the way, oliver had made another juicy sounding noise and was threatening to poop his pants for real and he never did pee in the tree anyway. delayna was delaying, see how i did that there? and i mouthed the words, "I'M GOING TO START WALKING OVER THERE TO TRY AND FIND THE GATE OUT." and she eventually followed. miraculously, we found the gate and then one of the large snapping turtles who had lost his way from the swan boat lagoon. or had he? we thought he was a statuette at first and then realized he wasn't. exciting! dangerous! i don't really know if it had a penis. i don't know. i don't think i've really summed up just how fucking frustrated i was with oliver's behavior. it sounds pretty tame to read it. it was one of those days where you keep saying, "NOW WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE NICE WHEN YOU ACT LIKE A TWO YEAR OLD AND WON'T LISTEN TO ANYTHING I SAY? I TRIED TO TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE NICE TODAY. CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" oh yeah. he hit miriam twice while delayna was identifying poisonous berries. good grief. my powers of coincidence returned night before last. i told gennie that she could have free horses and donkeys if she lived in texas. then, i pulled up my amazon cart to find the horse and unicorn masks sitting in there that i'm dying for (oddly enough, the seed for that was planted by gennie... a coincidence within a coincidence) and i showed them to brian, hoping he would tell me to purchase them. then, liz lemon opened her door to find a horse in her office. i swear there was a fourth one. i mean, it was just over the top horses there for a couple of hours. pick your poison

drink two margaritas and put a scarf over your face [Apr 29 2012 - Sun|06:46pm] and you can see the ghosts of your future moving all around you. you can kiss them on their faces, once on each cheek. you can see songs of cherries and nuts and squawking chickens while they twist and turn and are tickled on the kitchen floor. pick your poison

good monday. [Apr 14 2012 - Sat|09:16am] there's an easter sandwiched in between these two entries. egg salad. as with all major events, i'm just going to expend tremendous angst over not documenting it instead of producing the small amount of energy required to just write it and paste a stack of photos on top of it. i had plans for good monday. nothing concrete. hopefully something casual outdoors. the rain was remaining up in the sky, so why not. the children had napped until 6:30 on the way back to dallas the day before, so they took their time returning to unconsciousness that night. 10:30 for violet. that didn't stop them from getting up around 6 or 7. i was eventually convinced to start moving in a meaningful fashion and managed to produce these peanut butter pancakes. oliver took one, made a small amount of headway into it, and then asked, "what's in these?" which, like most questions from young people, confused me. what do you want here? flour, hempmilk, baking powder, peanut butter? are you thinking like i was that a few chocolate chips in these things wouldn't exactly be a bad idea? i have been known to insert a secret chocolate chip into a pancake. no, he just thought it was going to be some kind of reese's peanut butter pancake with a peanut butter patty sitting right there on the inside. what am i? david copperfield in an apron? anyhow. my children are curiously fickle when it comes to pancakes. okay, when it comes to just about anything. monday was an i-don't-like-pancakes day. i don't know what the problem was. i found them to be fairly supersonic delicious. but whatever. somewhere in there, i had two projects come in for dialing. and then i received a text from catie's mom, andrea. catie is one of oliver's inner circle of ladies. andrea asked if we would like to come over for a playdate and i said we would and how about after naptime, because violet was going to need one desperately. i sat in my pajamas with unkempt hair and scrabbled away at work. i took breaks to ask oliver why, oh why, on earth was a playdate with catie not sufficient motivation to spend all of ten minutes getting dressed and making his bed and i think one other ridiculous thing. he would look very industrious and completely serious until two seconds had passed and he would be distracted by something shiny. this is pretty much how i spend most of my days with oliver. he also spent an ubelievable amount of time lining up the thirty dimes he received for easter from my grandmother with all of his other change, trying to figure out if he had enough for this $46, gigantic, animatronic, battling dinosaur with missles that i've been trying to talk him down from for some time. he asked me ten ways to sunday what this many dimes plus another this many dimes was, ad infinitum. and i kept telling him daddy and i would have to discuss this with him, regardless of how much money he had. and i finally started looking at it again on amazon to see if i had changed my mind about it and i saw those fucking ridiculous missle launchers on this T-Rex and, in case you don't know, i'm terribly anti-gun/anti-violence/anti-glorifying these things to children through play. and those missles just made me snap. and i very seriously informed oliver that missles are not toys. they are rockets with the sole purpose of destroying buildings and killing people. mommys. daddys. children. babies. that is all they do and i don't think that makes for a very good toy or a good message for children, don't you agree? and showed him a photo of real missles on a launcher and a short video shot by someone in syria hiding in alleys while missles boomed in the background. it's okay. yesterday, we addressed what it was he liked about the dinosaur and parlayed that into choosing a much cheaper, educational k'nex motorized robot for him to buy and now he is k'nex jazzed and next wants to recreate this gigantic k'nex ball maze that's on youtube. by the by, it is laughably surprising how one can search for motorized robots (or whatever i was searching for) and find that 90% of the results returned included missles in the description. back to monday. i finished one project and then started getting this inscrutable error on the second and began to feel my furstration levels rising as i tried to isolate the issue and discern why oliver can't seem to make his bed still. my plan was to have violet in bed by noon and out of bed by two. it was 11:45 and i hadn't found a break to put some form of lunch on the table. i squeezed out a couple of burritos and then begin the long road of trying to get someone, anyone, to eat the fucking burritos. i finally just tossed violet in bed and, fortunately, she really was super tired and provided me with only minimal fussing before passing straight out. oliver was busy not eating and not making his bed. i was still in pajamas, wearing stink pits and limp hairs. the error continued to mock me. somewhere in there, i decided something is going to have to fart its way out a release valve and i canceled the playdate so that andrea isn't hanging the hat of her day on my shifting wall nail. and also, TO TEACH THAT KID A LESSON. oliver, not catie. i finally isolated the error and engaged the yellow bird and a pair of clean underpants. i scrubbed my pits and applied my stink eraser. along the way, i had been waiting a couple of hours for my boss to reply about when they were going to begin dialing, so i would be ready for the trickle of ridiculous five minute requests for changes or corrections, which always fuck with my day. i put the kids in the car, dropped off two rolls of easter photos, and went to drive down the ramp to the underground whole foods garage. this is the part where i wait for oliver to begin lamenting the fact that we aren't going to the above ground lot. "when are we ever, ever, ever, ever going to park upstairs?" i asked him why he was so hot to park up there and he said it takes too long to get inside when we park downstairs. mind you, parking downstairs means you get to ride the escalator. TWICE. so i really don't get what's going on there. anyhow. i park in a spot and oliver turns the volume up full blast with a total meltdown. that boy was putting his shoes on the back of the new car's seat. probably lost ten minutes of my life with the stress of bracing for one of his tennis shoes to crash into my head. i asked him a couple of times if he was going to calm himself down before i peeled the hell out of there and drove back home empty-handed. after returning home, oliver and i made our way to the foyer door with violet trailing behind. i stood on the step waiting for her and her green boots decided to run the last three feet. but they were running on that 1960s heavily-pebbled sidewalk surface, which is prime territory upon which to trip, and she tripped and it was in all kinds of slow-motion. i can't figure out where her hands went, except maybe out to her sides, but i did see how her face went straight down into the pebbles with nary an appendage to impede its velocity or impact. i tossed a stack of mail down on the sidewalk next to her and began reliving that afternoon that oliver tripped on those same damn pebbles and landed forehead first on a pointy pebble on the step and gushed blood all over the rick-a-rack place and i'm thinking, oh god oh god, please don't let me pick her up and have blood dripping all over. and i picked her up and her hair was kind of hanging straight down as she was still horizontal for a moment there and it had taken her absolutely no reaction time to start screaming. there was a road rash on what was already a puffy bruise under her right eye and another little purple knot above her eyebrow. so she kept most all of her bleeding well-contained under her skin. i managed to grab the mail back up and haul it upstairs. i believe we were both crying at this point. i kept pulling her back to see if the deluge of red had begun yet, but it was holding steady with just the bloody scratches. she wasn't too keen on me putting a damp napkin on her face and certainly wasn't a fan of me wrapping an ice cube in it. so i sprayed some of that analgesic neosporin on her bandaid (she chose the bears) and i patted myself on the back for resisting the urge to spray the neosporin straight under her eye initially. we kept the band aid on for a day and a half and i finally managed to remove it, much to her protest, to find she had a bit of a black eye, the poor dear. i'm thinking with all this mess, i neglected to send oliver to his room. it's possible, likely, he was sent later for some other grievance and asked to take a siesta. it was kind of the beginning of a particularly rough week with him. the moon must be in some kind of phase and, if so, it needs to fucking stop it. i began to fashion dinner out of no new groceries. at some point by now, brian has made a reminder known that he has a luxury appointment and will not be home until post-bedtime. which is what makes it luxurious. i don't remember what i managed to make for dinner, but oliver did his usual pooping during the eating of it and, for the second time recently, he began complaining that he couldn't feel his feet. since this is a weird one, i chalked it up to sitting on the pot too long and god, i don't know. am i a neurologist? a psychiatrist? this led to all sorts of hullaballoo and he forgot his ailment momentarily and walked across the dining room for a few feet before remembering he had been hobbled somehow and he was starting to get over it and i reminded him to go wash his poo hands and he said, "BUT WHY DO I HAVE TO!?" which he has started demanding with such mind-boggling frequency that i have begun to ignore it. he wound up on the bathroom floor SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING that he couldn't walk and SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!, to where i thought for sure some neighbors were going to come knocking. maybe this was wrong, but i recorded 30 seconds worth of it on my phone and played it back to him after he finished a good 20 minutes of this and finally washed his poop and returned to the table. you have these big talks with the kids about respectful behavior that isn't sociopathic and they answer you in a reasonable fashion and you figure that's all behind us and then it's a half hour later and someone's screaming bloody murder and beating the shit out of you because you politely suggested they take three minutes to write their spelling words before eating a slice of apple. i got punched in the back last night because oliver didn't know where he'd put his wallet and he refuses to be a person capable of finding anything. so, PUNCH. we survived dinner. a time later, violet was over by the fridge and lifted up her right foot and said it hurt. i'm sure it's some kind of signifier or omen that the right side of her body was so afflicted. so, my first thought was... finally, the first victim of the tamari bottle incident. and i looked at the bottom of her foot, but all i saw was this short, black thread standing at an odd angle to the surface of her foot and i tried tugging it off, but it wasn't budging. which kind of made me hyperspace. i tugged again. and it tugged back. and i was like, holy shit. i got some tweezers and prepared to do battle and noticed it was threaded through her foot and poking out a tiny bit a millimeter away. i yanked and it came out. i still wasn't believing she had a thread stuck through her foot. turned out, it was one of brian's whiskery hairs that he's always refusing to vacuum out unless i specifically carry the vacuum to him while he's clipping away in there. am i the only person livejournal spell check no longer works for? 5 dead X pick your poison

good friday. [Apr 6 2012 - Fri|09:35pm] i managed to scare the shit out of the children this afternoon. well, let me back up. i managed to scare the shit out of oliver this afternoon. as a five year old, he doesn't really possess the skills to understand the importance of safety restraints and little things like not distracting the driver by hollering or fighting with his sister or kicking the driver in the head or throwing his shoes at the driver. and he recently discovered how to hold up that little lever at the front to release the belt and he's been doing that and we were halfway to somewhere today when he said, "mommy! you forgot to tighten my seatbelt!" and i was like, "YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO LOOSEN YOUR SEATBELT." and i had to tighten it on the fly and i said he should remind me to show him videos of crash tests when we got home. and he remembered. and i did. just two. the first was a british one, which left him convinced the dummy infant ill-placed in the front seat was actually driving the test car and that's what had caused the accident and that took some deciphering and explaining. there was a three year old dummy hanging around and facing the rear package tray, like he was looking back through time at the 70s. the infant crushed its head into certain death and the three year old flew like an eagle and busted up the windshield. and then we watched another where the child was in a booster seat with the belt going under its arm instead of over the shoulder and it flippity flopped about in slow motion. and boy did this set oliver off. he was genuinely freaked out and he doesn't usually get freaked out by that stuff. but he was kind of wide-eyed and teeth-chattery and said, okay! that's it! and i spent the next several hours discussing how our bodies can take some degree of flippity flopping and what it feels like to be sore and defensive driving and turn signals and brake lights and pointing out the six air bags on the new car and the five point safety harnesses and not driving directly between two other cars and looking in mirrors and out windows and hesitating before entering an intersection when the light turns green. i accidentally said whiplash really only happens to old people he said he doesn't have to worry about that because he's young and i'm young, and i thanked him, and he said god forbid mema and papa ever got in a wreck because they're REALLY OLD. and i guess that was like fireworks in the sky spelling out how i should tell him about the time papa rolled the conversion van two and a half times on the way to vegas and tricia got wrapped up in mema's foam pallets covered in polyester fabric, but i forgot. and then i think he enjoyed pointing out how he was freaked out and would like to make sure to never watch one of those crash videos again because, hey boy, that sure scared him. and i told him with the afternoon of instruction he had just received, he was almost ready to become a driver himself. we had the good fortune of passing a couple on a scooter in the middle of a lane in the whole foods subterranean parking garage and he was easily convinced he never wanted to get on a motorcycle. during our post-video drive, i told oliver i was going to take him on a little surprise. after pumping gas, i rolled us up to the car wash entrance with a premium code. we waited for the car in front to finish and i looked at violet and saw kind of a look of terror spilled across her face. we went in and that thing started up and i think i was catching oliver shielding his face, despite having done this with brian in the past. violet looked like she was going to throw up which is pretty much the same look i had for three hours last tuesday during the tornado matinee. and i thought, oh fuck, so much for that surprise. i got all montessori on them and played up how fun and not scary that car scrubbing work was, but she just gripped on to my hand and wouldn't let go. frankly, i'm surprised both of them were able to get to sleep tonight. earlier, i dragged them out to north park mall to find a tank top and modesty shorts to go with violet's new skirt. i was finding these things at american apparel, god bless my soul. oliver stumbled across this tub of canvas belts and wanted the white one, but it was too small. so then he wanted the mint one and i said it didn't really go with his clothes, though it just happened to match the dinosaur on the ASK ME ABOUT DINOSAURS shirt he was wearing. then he wanted the hot pink one and honestly, that still wouldn't really match his wardrobe. the yellow was neon and would clash with his boots. so my five year old is on an american apparel call list for a white belt. i took them for apple juice boxes, since no one had exploded yet. which means they would explode immediately after juice boxes and they did when violet realized we were headed for the elevator button and she usually loses out on the dash and i told oliver to let her go and he could do the one inside and he dashed after her and it was pretty super frantic there and i also think she's the one who pushed it but OH HOLY SHIT did she melt way the fuck down and i had to do that walk all the way from the elevator to the parking garage through dillard's men's department with all these people giving looks like they're oh so fucking glad THEY don't have kids or MY kid would never do that or something equally disdainful feeling. one couple did say i seemed patient. well, at least right now... they added. mommy took a little extra drive with her soy latte since the children had bankrupted her energy stores. during oliver's conscious siesta, he eventually leaked out to where i was and i let him watch ina garten knock out an apple pie, which gave him ideas. i napped for a glorious ten minutes. during the sour cream mashed potatoes and oven-baked fried chicken. then paula deen came on, giving us the opportunity to discuss diabetes and how two cups of cheese on your personal portion of alfredo seafood nachos is too much, as is an entire stick of butter in your pot of rice and he thought paula and bubba were pretty disgusting and getting fat. brian called around quitting time to tell me he had a 6:30 accupuncture appointment, thank you very much. after he stumbled in, meekly and smartly thanking me for watching the kids ALL DAY (including the handful of hours he slept in this morning), we painted wooden easter eggs. the easter bunny is going to come into our home to steal them, along with the whole foods snack bar clementines they forgot they had begged for while i was sliding chocolate bars right under their noses and into my bag without them even noticing and that rabbit is going to show way the fuck up in tyler with those things. SURPRISE. no wonder they don't want to have their photo taken with him tomorrow. ps: our fridge is a piece of shit. the little plastic bars that hold condiments in on the door shelves like to spontaneously disengage on occasion and the bottom one did so tonight. in addition to tetra packs of soy milk and hemp milk and mustard and worcestershire sauce, a nearly full large bottle of tamari came flying out of there like a salty kamikaze aircraft covered in glutamic acid and the bottom busted out and it is still smelling like tamari town in here. i can hardly wait to see who it is who will find the tiny piece of glass with their foot. 9 dead X pick your poison

xmas letter 2011. [Mar 27 2012 - Tue|02:24pm] well, since i'm so terribly at posting anything, i might as well post something. 4 dead X pick your poison

remembering violet's voice. [Mar 6 2012 - Tue|05:25pm] VoicePost 81K 0:31 (no transcription available) 2 dead X pick your poison

having an only child in a two-child family. [Feb 28 2012 - Tue|10:23am] violet woke up at 2am thursday night, tossing and turning. she said her ear hurt. we gave her medicine and poof! no more ear hurting. she played for two hours. two very long hours. this morning, she tossed and turned and got up at 5:30. she said her ear hurt and she wanted some ear medicine. so here's the thing, for you people without modern kids. they LIKE medicine these days. i don't know, maybe the medicine-makers have pumped up the percentage of aspartame and unnatural flavors or something. back when i was a kid, there was just that brief phase of thinking those disgusting, peach-colored, i-don't-know-what flavored chewable baby aspirins were up there with tart 'n' tinies on the delicious scale and then you came to your senses and realized they tasted like the sidewalk chalk of the future. your other choice was that treacherous spoonful of burgundy-colored twing-twang coming at your face while you sat on the kitchen counter and the non-spoon-holding parent pried your mouth open. so when one of the children tells me they need medicine, especially when they've had medicine in the recent past, i raise an eyebrow or two and rub my chin hair. it's one of those double-edged swords. the kind that cuts both ways. yea! no struggle over medicine administration! boo! my children are ibuprofen addicts! what i'm saying, and this isn't actually what i came here to say... it's not the core, which means you might want to get a little more comfortable if you're actually reading this, what was i saying? oh, what i'm saying is violet got her meds and was instantaneously hunky dory and here comes oliver stumbling out of the dark and into the glow of the television, saying he doesn't feel good. low grade fever, claims of an achy head and stomach. "DO YOU THINK YOU NEED TO THROW UP?!" i ask. he says, no. my head puts the gigantic vomit bowl back into the cabinet. we took violet to school and oliver and i went to whole foods. he picked up one of the little, yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers that had blown off the gigantic climbing vine outside and gave it to me. i let it ride in the shopping cart. he ate an orange slice and did that waffling in and out of feeling good thing, which is another thing i don't remember doing. if i had a stomach virus, i was on a pallet on the floor in the dark until it passed. no hopping around in between bursts of vomit. but then, i must not have been sick, considering i almost always received a Perfect Attendance certificate on the last day of school each year. i wonder if that practice still exists, the shunning of those not hale enough to survive an entire year without homebound illness. perhaps my mother sent me to school as Patient Zero. anyway. we arrived back home. oliver worked a little on his oatmeal from yesterday morning, before getting the chills and parking himself on the couch with Little Einsteins. he's been perfectly pleasant, even at the store. oh, i know he's working with diminished capacity. but what i'm here to say is this: i think i figured out something about the children, especially oliver. if you're still foolish enough to be sitting there reading this, you'll likely find me an idiot for not seeing the light in front of my face. i think oliver suffers from sibling jealousy. it's started occurring to me that it is much easier dealing with them individually than together. oliver just goes motherfucking haywire bonkers, if you give him long enough. i reckon he's looking to grab violet's share of the attention. when we brought her home, he had just turned three and was not particularly verbal. that was a hard day. we were late leaving the hospital and went straight to pick him up from his summer school and he climbs in the car and just BAM! who the hell is that little kid sitting in that car seat? i mean, there's really no gentle way to come along and shove a new family member into the picture. i can not tell you how incredibly bizarre it is to not have a child there one day and then there's a brand new child there the next. bringing-home-baby day is very twilight-zonish. so many hyphens, so little time. we have this little video of him when we came in the door for the first time and we're asking oliver to introduce violet to the cats and he introduces ozzy and then he just razzamatazzes right off to the kitchen. i don't know. maybe he was hungry for crackers and i've just forgotten, but i know i programmed my emotions to feel sad every time i see that thing. we decided last weekend to start doing that thing that people do with their kids where you have mommy-son/daddy-daughter and mommy-daughter/daddy-son dates to sort of focus some attention and have some less stressful outings. i obviously am a big fan of everyone being together for everything as much as possible, but i figure the separation might be supersonic worth it. saturday, after claire's third birthday party, oliver and i are driving to mansfield. i asked if he would like to be my date to dylan's jazz band's spaghetti fundraiser, and he said yes. i'm hoping he'll break out some of his world-class 80s alternative dance moves. like he did on the patio of the rusty taco last saturday evening to piped in country music. 2 dead X pick your poison

we took a walk yesterday. and rode a train. [Feb 20 2012 - Mon|09:58pm] yesterday, we spent the early afternoon strolling the aisles of target. back home, i whispered to oliver that once he and violet finished their lunch and violet got to sleep, we could take a walk around the block... going alongside the new behemoth apartment complex. the day had turned from being sunny and surprisingly chilly to sunny and just chilly enough to keep you from getting warm. i explained to oliver this was perfect weather, followed by a brief description of the usefulness of vitamin D synthesis. he pressed each number on the gate's keypad as i spoke it and we marveled at the motor pulling the chain to open the gate. we turned left and crossed the street. once we got around the corner to the right and alongside the back of the complex, i pointed out the massive, old trees commanding the new stone and wrought iron fence to box its way behind it. i explained to him the money-grubbing ways of real estate developers and how they tried to pay us off so that we would change the rules for them and we said no, but others said yes. but, oliver, we won on the trees! they couldn't cut down the trees! ... followed by a brief description of the usefulness of trees and plants for cleaning the air. as luck would have it, oliver is rather amenable to these types of conversations, the rabbit holes of which his mother enjoys tumbling. we turned left to twist our way back around when oliver began spotting clear, green plastic beads turning neon in the sun. as any child would be, he was quite anxious to collect them all up. six, initially. he just knew that if we walked back by that spot, we would find hundreds more. i offered to give up my looping path and turn us back around and he excitedly accepted. we found another in the muddied water sitting in the gutter and i requested a pass on that one. there was a smattering more, making for a lovely hunt. he grasped them tightly in one hand. after witnessing the hood of an suv driving its bag of garbage to the dumpster, we came up the far side of the complex and commented with a tsk tsk tsk anytime we located errant dog poo. i provided a brief description on the importance of maintaining community spaces and shirking selfish behaviors. dog poop all over the grass is pleasant for no one. the jogger we had passed after initially beginning our walk was now passing us again, running in what seemed an almost frantic-styled jog. as a gate opened, oliver noted this one was made of two pieces, each with its own motor. we found ourselves at the front of the complex, along car-laden university blvd. i continued a previous explanation about why there were balloons tied up out front... to let people know, hey! we have built a lot of homes here and now need to fill them! since we had received some balloons from wesley's bday party at the self defense studio the day prior, one of which had descended from the ceiling overnight, we were ripe for a discussion regarding the properties of gases. shortly thereafter, i noticed the tiniest colonies of fluted mushrooms inhabiting the border plants. we knelt down. oliver plucked one up, squished it, and quickly flung it back to the ground, giggling a squicked out giggle. i dared to press on one before noticing the gorgeous acorns which had been falling from the tree above us. honey-colored striations that would have made the most amazing hardwood floor. i tried in vain to pick one that didn't have a small, precise hole already bored through its side. one of which was already spilling out tiny, white maggots. we squickedly giggled again while i dropped it back down to the ground. oliver could not be stopped from collecting after finding two with roots already emerging. i stopped him when he pulled the third from the mud. we rounded the final corner, with both of oliver's hands clutching his treasures. two young men were unloading a large mattress from a small moving truck and filling the foyer door of one of our buildings on amesbury. we crossed the street, but a car on its way out beat us to opening the gate. oliver took the liberty of announcing the number of each and every parking spot from one end of our complex all the way to the other. we gently folded the two acorns into the loose dirt of a pot on the balcony before oliver took to quietly assembling his snap circuits in his room. but first, he built a tinkertoy sculpture, based on a symbol on the side of the can. he asked if i could find the surprises. i did. the flashing green of the treasure beads was peeking out from secret tinkertoy spaces. we added a few non-tinkertoy items to the structure. a couple of old curtain rings and two plastic screws from his tool set. we eventually pulled violet from her bed. i packed up a frozen pizza and we went to our third birthday celebration of the weekend (we had spent the first part of saturday at my sister's, making and eating cabbage rolls for her 43rd before schlepping back through uncomfortable amounts of rain to wesley's party). this time, it was barry's turn. arriving at four he was. out of all the parties i have been to since oliver entered the primary class, this was only the second being held at the child's home. so brave, so brave. i watched juice, cake, mud, pizza, and piss each have their turns on the floor. i scraped up chocolate cake with my bare hands as much as i could. a child sat on a step eating pizza, his pink cupcake, naked of any frosting, settled on the bare floor next to him. children were treated to backyard toys like a miniature bouncehouse, a miniature fire engine pedal car, and a miniature, yet driveable, escalade. it was madness. i was served a beer. an elderly man in engineer-striped overalls and cap had assembled a train out in the road. everyone piled in and he would drive back and forth a couple of blocks each way, much to the ire of motorists navigating the narrow roadway. brian and i rode with violet in a car. i sipped my beer and waved to children playing on the elementary school playground. it was a good time. aubrey's mother, who was originally going to ride in our car until the engineer made her ride in the caboose, ended up stuck with four small children and i would wave happily at her and make a face saying oops! so sorry! sucks for you! a child in her car hopped from the window after we had stopped, and i bet i could correctly guess which it was. i heard him say, "i just jumped from the window!" and boy was that the wrong declaration to make. the engineer was in earshot and gave that child a stern ear full. words about falling and busting his head open. after enough rides had been given, he came around the front yard and kindly shook all our hands. the cake was so delicious, it made me ill for three and a half minutes. i had asked for a very small piece for violet. i deemed what we received still too large and criss cross applesauced myself into a spot on the wood floor to help her out with it. with her hand sharing the fork with mine, she gently and graciously took turns feeding herself and then me. it was late when we arrived home. going on seven. i made some mommy macaroni and burritos. i believe shit eventually started hitting fans. fights over party-sized, loosey-goosey gumball machines, i don't know. we put them in beds. today was winter break. presidents' day to some of you. brian did not celebrate, except by going to the solitude of the workplace. i took the children to whole foods for winter provisions. i placed them in an airplane cart, so as not to have worry about fighting over riding in it. i am very wise. there was some kind of scuffle with the seat belts and violet decided that oliver had trespassed on hers, though he hadn't. but she wasn't listening, as she was busy holding handfuls of his hair and clawing and shrieking and i calmly removed her and set her down while she screamed even louder, right there on the OUTSIDE of the whole foods doors. people gave looks and i considered scratching their eyes out. but i was remaining rather calm today, somehow. must be the calming phase of my monthlies. i spent a lot of time singing to children, instead of hollering. you can't do much hollering when you're singing. violet was inconsolable over being removed. i explained to her fifteen ways that we would go inside for a banana from the snack station and she would eat her banana from the ground floor and then be up for consideration for being reinstated to her previous position. two year olds don't understand nothing they don't want to understand. i managed to get us over to banana town and even though she could clearly see me approaching the banana bin to retrieve some for them, she was just losing her shit ten ways and wailing BANANA like she was just up and dying a banana death. and i was like, dude, you see me right here getting you a banana. and she was like, oh, okay, that's cool. and she took the half cracked banana and proceeded to lose more shit because she wasn't going back in the basket. i tried walking us down the main thoroughfare, but it turned into her trying to impede my progress physically and carrying her hadn't really worked either. and i said, motherfuckit, and hauled that airplane back over to the banana tarmac and tossed us all on the escalator to the parking garage and said something about them systematically destroying just about every trip to the store. violet screamed and turned shades of magenta like she was being remote-control driven by an unflaggable crying machine, for 25 minutes. she only stopped because she became unconscious. as luck would have it, so did oliver. i drove around and located this old house we found on trulia in our price range that strongly resembles disney's the little house. only, happier. okay, like this: it lives between apartments and a pub. since i had time, i then drove by this house, which is a bit out of our price range and lives on an entire street of similar gigantic and beautiful old homes. then i came home and made delicious shepherd's pie. 2 dead X pick your poison

reason 8 to sleep on the couch: you can't put down saran wrap without opposable thumbs. [Feb 16 2012 - Thu|10:53am] it finally happened. last night. i'd been waiting quite some time. during the wee hours of the morning, juana shit on the bedcovers whilst brian and violet slept underneath them. SHE SHIT RIGHT UP THERE ON BRIAN WHILE HE SLEPT. and, as anyone who knows brian's penchant for sleeping might conclude, the horrible stench of the brand of cat diarrhea that juana is capable of churning from her bowels, like some kind of rancid feces pudding, did not wake brian. i think it is likely impossible to truly relate the depths of smell to which this cat's shit will plunge, without one experiencing it directly with one's own nose. despite the fact that most all of you live at least hundreds of miles away, it would not surprise me to learn you could smell a fresh batch from where you're sitting. i have been woken by this unsavory aroma from multiple rooms and doors away. i could smell this morning's crime for a couple of hours. and yet, yet, they slept under that warming, spreading blanket of liquefied anal expulsions. perhaps they were so close they were simply passed out from the smell. i fear we may never see juana again. despite many attempts to have her body and feces analyzed, multiple vets seem to have no sense of urgency over the fact that this animal has the habit of spreading this muck gleefully over all our fine furnishings... leaving brian to jail her up in our bathroom for considerable hours every day, allowing her reprieves when he retires at night. i frequently grant her furloughs (FURloughs!) when i cannot take the pitiful whining any longer during the day. but now. NOW. i mean, really, cat. what are you expecting here? do you WANT to be locked up in there with your own, disgusting business? what do we do with you? i have tried multiple times to unload her on brian's mother, but even she hasn't been willing to take this thing on. and this woman. you don't know about her and her wild animals. or, maybe you do. anyway. i did have to wonder if i only smelled the excretions today because i had been brought to consciousness by ozzy placing his disgusting paw directly on my lips. if i didn't have that Toxoplasma gondii protozoa rooting around in my brain already, i'm sure it's safe to say i do now. let me know if i start dressing fancifully and falling all over myself to go on playdates. i went to this week's monday montessori meeting an looked at the fancy display they had set up with the charming floor bed and woven floor cushion and just thought, "litter boxes." we cannot have nice things. like unbesmirched bedcovers. 2 dead X pick your poison

i am doing many things and nothing at once. [Jan 25 2012 - Wed|09:14am] the other night, oliver said anyone who wanted dessert would have to poop their pants. and then he made a little raspberry noise. when violet wakes up in the morning, she bursts out like a little ray of sunshine with some of the best morning hair around and these gorgeous cheeks that you would like to pinch off and eat for breakfast. her teachers say she's started talking a lot up at school. she was in charge of brining snacks this week and while she's been experiencing some hesitation about going in the door when i drop her off, she didn't even bother giving me a hug on monday because she was carrying a bouquet of these generic white flowers that were as big as she and she just marched straight in all the way to her cubbie. i've had severe writer's block when it comes to scrapbooking my life on here. what the fuck is wrong with me. i haven't even composed a full paragraph of my annual xmas letter, now my annual january letter, soon to be my annual february letter. i have been a bit of a wiz (whiz?) around the house lately. i finished caulking the toilet and put new bolt covers on it, which involved removing some nasty nuts covered in ancient thread lock. i magically moved the surprisingly heavy ikea thingamajig brian originally bought for his music stuff all the way into oliver's closet to replace the armoire i gave back to my parents. it's looking much more awesome in there now. i moved the little mid-century desk over to my corner. i re-taped the phone cord from when i taped it in front of robin and adrienne last summer. i've added an action item to my to do list to figure out how to make the jack in here work so we can not have a line running all the way from oliver's room. i've made some difficult decisions about getting rid of some things (difficult for me, not for the average person). i've pretty much finished painting that piece of wall and have purchased molly bolts to hang the book ledges, but need to exchange them for a smaller size and it's raining cats and dogs out there right now. but, the fabric i finally chose (for one of two throw pillows) arrived yesterday, so i'll be making my first slipcover here after i stop procrastinating. i've repaired some of the clothing that's been sitting around in my needs-to-be-repaired stack. i am conquering the earth. i just can't post about the past two xmases or birthdays. i should hopefully have a new used car by week's end. hopefully, my poor and darling camry will last until then. she is falling apart in spectacular fashion. i try not to think about how she'll be leaving soon. the credit union is giving us a 3.5% loan rate. i think there was a discount involved since brian's birthday is in the next month. oh, i don't know. 3 dead X pick your poison

oliver's drawings. [Jan 19 2012 - Thu|02:09pm] pick your poison

i know my camera's messed up and i totally screwed up the camera setting for three rolls, but... [Jan 19 2012 - Thu|01:23pm] here is my child building a pile of leaves. with a GHOST. pick your poison

school observation. [Jan 19 2012 - Thu|11:09am] now that the second half of the school year is underway, i got to do a 45 minute observation of violet's class yesterday. i arrived a few minutes before 11:00 and found her sitting in the toddler sandbox. it was a couple of minutes before she noticed me and then she hopped up and trotted over to grab my hand. caroline was certain this meant her mother was going to come to class as well, even though it's her nanny who always picks her up. violet was doused generously with sand. i sat her down and unleased a tidal wave of it from each cuff of her jeans and shook it out of her shoes. the new year marked the beginning of potty training for all the diaper kids. dottie's the youngest and tiniest and without her diaper on, her sweatpants were down under her butt cheeks. after a teacher corrected this, it was discovered she had pooped her pants. we wandered through the labyrinth of the halls in a loose, unruly line and got all caught up out in the garden before finishing the walk into the classroom. claire was on and ready to show me the slide. violet went down second and riley third, leaving a wet streak behind her. i asked if she had gone potty and she seemed to be indicating she had. she went down the slide again and i confirmed i was not seeing things and sent her off to miss charlotte. violet wanted to use the potty and i got a glimpse of the chaos that accompanies working in a room filled with 12 preschoolers. even with three adults in there (myself not included), it was a lot of work. there were lines of thick and colorful mucous coming out of just about each of the 24 nostrils. i sat with violet to look at the fish and watch her work on the puzzle with the magnet before being told i was really supposed to be at the table on a bar stool. i moved over and violet brought a work to me. after a few rounds of coaxing, she managed to spend some time in the circle learning about texture and listening to bear hunt and singing some songs. not too shabby. i'm still trying to convince oliver to let me observe in his room. i never have, for fear of disrupting his particularly delicate balance. the other day, i arrived as he was wrapping up the stamp game with his teacher... it's a method of using groups of tiles (1s, 10s, 100s, 1000s) to learn how to carry mathematical amounts (exchanging 10 1s for 1 10). it's kind of complicated and it's one of the reasons i'm glad he's spending kindergartgen there. he brought home a new batch of work in his envelope. he seems to have made some big leaps and bounds with his drawings. i'll consider scanning, for my livejournalling pleasure. pick your poison

uh, ikea. [Jan 17 2012 - Tue|11:02am] WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? i am incapable of chronicling my groundhogs day life, to overuse a term. we broke down and purchased two pieces of ikea furniture yesterday. brian wants this gigantic white table with a melamine top upon which to spread out every last piece of musical/recording equipment he owns, and you might be surprised by the inventory. he was attaching the legs and forgot the washers and undid the legs and inserted the washers and redid the legs and, as i was helping him flip it right side up, we realized it was damaged before all four legs even hit the ground. when will we learn our lesson. the first screwing in sans washers had allowed the screws to penetrate the top side just enough to crack off the surface. it is now my goal to learn how to get cancer from using plastic seam filler. which reminds me, i finally got all the caulk off the toilet and applied my first caulking. the whiteness of it really shows off the filthy-colored tile grout, which has already been handscrubbed. oh, someone just bury me in a stream of caulk while i relive the moment where i had to ask a stranger, "excuse me... could you tell me where i could find caulk?" followed by asking the african american man kind enough to help me by selecting a tube when i rounded the corner and was faced with an impossibly long row of caulk options and i said, "IS IT WHITE." and unbased caucasian guilt got the better of me. i just spent some time assembling the pine trofast shelving for the kids' room. right out of the box, a little chip came off, which i gorilla glued back on. this one ledge that fits in a grove was cracked on both ends and their was a ding on the bottom shelf. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE IT CAME OUT OF THE BOX. oh boy. i accidentally dressed my children for the near-springlike weather my phone was promising me at 6:30am. oliver loves to wear shorts in the winter and i was pleased to tell him to go for it. i nearly put violet in shorts with knee socks or whale leg warmers. then, right before we left, i threw open the windows on the sunny day and was greeted by 18mph blasts of semi-frigid airs. theo's dad, wearing shorts, said he also experienced the same weather data error. what on earth and since when. i don't know. i came here to write about xmas 2011. 4 dead X pick your poison

i will invite people over some day. [Jan 5 2012 - Thu|01:42pm] as enjoyable as all that mess was, i am so relieved to be on the other side of xmas (aside from xmas #2 this weekend). everyone is back to school and back to work. i've even had some work this week with frightening promises of more. a presidential election year, god bless me. mid-terms knocked me straight on my ass. to celebrate the lack of celebration, i have been attempting to dig this house out of the knee-deep muck into which it has descended. there are dusty lists of projects and filthy surfaces everywhere. yesterday, after tiring of all the holiday broiling, i replaced the oven's baking element AND I DID NOT EVEN ELECTROCUTE MYSELF. i forced brian, who was home with a poopy stomach, to come into the kitchen to watch it glow. he asked if it was an emergency. i told him it was an emergency of my sensitive emotions and he wandered in there and said, "oh, that's great, thank you." and i was astonished at his low level enthusiasm over this extensive feat of mine. so he rubbed my shoulders and tried again. i couldn't even keep him in the kitchen for more than five minutes to make sure i didn't die fixing his oven. i've also taken to scrubbing the grout of the bathroom and kitchen floors. disgusting. i've pulled up most of the old, uri-poo colored caulk out from around the toilet and am down to one stubborn strip before i can re-caulk. i purchased mesh tape to patch a hole in oliver's wall, but i think it's a hair to large to successfully complete in that fashion. but, since i'm not quite up to cutting away the sheetrock to the studs and replacing it, i shall proceed and just let the new owners eventually find that pocket in the wall to deal with. LEMONS. i collected some paint chips to figure out what color to paint the book nook, but still haven't found the fabric to make the pillow covers. it's got to be hiding in that closet somewhere. i hemmed my first pair of pants over the holidays and plan on doing two more, along with mending a growing stack of unhinged clothing. i've been vacuuming, steam mopping, and dusting. i've removed most of xmas. i've dreamed up 10 new projects to dream about. and this place looks like it exploded. but it's the good kind of exploded, where you're making that kind of progress that requires blowing some shit up. now i need to take a screwdriver to my writer's block and see if i can get motivated this year. look out for the xmas 2010 post! 12 dead X pick your poison

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