200 word autobiography.

Happy Go-Buy-An-Expensive-Card-That-Mom-Will-Read-Once-And-Never-Look-At-Again Day! (Or, Mother's Day. Whatever.)

Today marks my 200th blog post, and to commemorate, I give you this amazing piece of literary prose- my autobiography, in two hundred words. You might think that's clever, but I saw the idea somewhere else. (Where? I'm wracking my brain... if it was you please let me know so I can link up.)

So here goes. Don't act like you're not impressed.

I was born in 1982. It was a regular eighties childhood, complete with jelly shoes and slap bracelets. Then I got older and I went to high school. High school sucked, but check this out: I did NOTHING at all, I didn’t even show up 90% of the time, but I somehow passed all four years and graduated in 2000. A couple months after high school ended, oopsy, I got pregnant. EJ was born nine months later, in 2001. I was a single mom. A year later I got in a fight with my boyfriend and slapped him, and he called the cops and I went to jail for a day. (We broke up after that.) Not long after, I met The Hub and we got married six months later in 2003. We had a few miscarriages and a stillborn son, and then Four was born in 2004. We had some more miscarriages and Beastie was born in 2007. Then, oopsy, pregnant again. The Babe was born in 2008. Then, oopsy again, got pregnant, due in October. I went to college sometime in there too. One time I hit a pole in a drive-thru. These are the last six words.

More (!) School Bullshit... I need a friggen Xanax or something.

Listen, I have had it up to here with EJ's stupid school. UP.TO.HERE.

Remember all the crap about the Christian motivational speaker, and before that, the messy desk and EJ's desk nazi teacher? Well, this is worse, way worse. And it's a damn good thing the school is closed, for their own sake, because I am THISCLOSE to calling them up and telling them what a bunch of fascist pigs they are (or something equally appalling.)

Okay. I need to back up. Each week, the students in EJ's class are given a book in an envelope. The kids are supposed to read the book each evening and bring it back each morning to read in class. In the evenings, parents are supposed to sign the envelope to show that the kids read the book, and then they get the next book the following week.

A few weeks ago, Beastie got hold of EJ's book. She took an ink pen and drew all over the back of the book, and on the inside back cover. The book was still readable, but didn't look so hot cosmetically, unless you enjoy the, er, "modern art" look. So EJ took it back to school, and the next day I got a note saying I needed to pay $8 to replace the book.

Fine, but if I am paying for the book, I'm keeping the book. I mean, it only makes sense, right? That if you pay for something, you get to keep it? Yes it does. It makes sense legally too, but I'm not going on Judge Judy over an eight dollar book.

The teacher refused to give us the book. So I refused to pay the eight dollars. And then she got all bitchy with EJ, and screamed at The Hub when he tried to explain our point of view, and finally we just said forget it, pay the damn eight dollars. End of story, right?

Oh, how I wish it were so.

Today EJ came home with no book. "Where is your reading book?" I asked, and she got a funny look on her face. "Did you forget it in your desk?" - Which, I would like to point out, she has never done, but I couldn't think where else this week's book could be.

"No. Mrs. F. says I can't have book anymore, because [Beastie] drew on last week's book."

"Really?" I said, getting angry. "That's pretty amazing, considering we were up north all week, and when we got home, you didn't remember to read the book. So it was in your backpack all week long. She couldn't have drawn on it."

"Well, Mrs. F. says [Beastie] drew on it just a little teensy bit, so I can't have books anymore. But she said I can still read it at school."

"Did she send a note about the book?" I asked, figuring that a normal person would at least send a friggen note. EJ didn't know, so I checked her backpack. No note.

How in the hell is EJ supposed to keep up with the class if she can't read the damn books? How is this fair?

I wouldn't be upset about this, if Beastie really had drawn on another book. But SHE DIDN'T. She had no way of getting into EJ's backpack, unless she woke up sometime in the middle of the night, snuck into EJ's room, climbed up the bunkbed ladder, unhooked the backpack from said ladder, unzipped the backpack - oh and, don't forget, you can never, ever find a writing utensil in our house. No. It didn't happen.

What's happening here is, the teacher is annoyed (or, probably, downright pissed off) with The Hub and I, for having the balls to question the fairness of paying for a book and not being able to keep the book.

I have a call into the principal and the superintendent. I left a message. I would like to say it was a rude message, but it wasn't, because I'm not generally a rude person. (But if they could read my mind, they'd be running. For real.) I am not going to put up with this. This is EJ's education at stake. This school has pushed me just a little too far and I am not going to put up with this. It's bullshit.

You have to have goals. These are mine.

These are my goals. I don't care when they're accomplished. Maybe I'll be done in a year, maybe a decade. But you gotta have goals, right? Yes, you do. I know, because Mr. VanBelois*, my high school counselor, drilled that into my head, semester after semester.

"Don't you have any goals?" he'd ask, looking over my transcript.

And I'd think about it, and I'd answer "no."

And then he would get all red, and blow out his cheeks and look at me down the end of his nose and say, "You HAVE to have goals! Don't you want to go to college?"

And I would think about it some more, and I'd answer "no."

"What about a job? Don't you want to have a good job someday?"

And I'd put on a face like I was thinking, and I'd answer "nope."

"Well then," he'd huff. "Isn't there anything you'd like to do?"

"Yeah," I remember saying. "I wanna go to Burger King for lunch."

Mr. VanBelois and I were not very good friends. So I think he would be surprised to learn that despite my non-existent high school education, I figured out how to set goals. (I can also conjugate verbs and do sentence diagramming, and I even remember the nitrogen cycle from biology class. That that, Mr. VanBelois.)

Here are some goals.

1. Take the Master Gardener class through the MSU extension. I just learned they have a Master Naturalist class too, and I might do that before the gardener one.

2. Open an all you can eat buffet restaurant, but instead of having crappy buffet food, have really good food that people will want to eat. Like homemade mashed potatoes and gravy and fried chicken and pasta salad.

3. Walk to the Canadian Rockies. If you feel like donating, I need forty pairs of shoes and one of those machines that turns pee into drinking water.

4. Build a log cabin with nothing but hand tools. Then build another and another. That way when I get to the Canadian Rockies, I'll be real good at building cabins, and I can whip one up right quick before the snow flies. (Another goal - quit talking like a damn hillbilly.)

5. Go on Wheel of Fortune, and while I'm there, ask to buy owls and repeatedly call Pat Sajak "Alex."

6. Go ghost hunting at Gettysburg.

7. Buy forty-three acres of land and get it certified organic, and plant and harvest tons of organic vegetables, and sell them in a little market. Also I will grow pumpkins and in the fall I will have a corn maze and a petting zoo, and I will give people free glasses of apple cider, because I hate when you go to those things and they charge you four dollars for a dixie cup full of apple cider. In the winter I will sell Christmas trees and wreaths and in the spring I will sell seedlings and gardening stuff.

8. Spend at least one week in bed. I will get out a couple times a day to use the bathroom, but otherwise, I will stay in bed. I won't even take a shower, because that's too ambitious. When I finally do get out of bed, I will wash my sheets with lots of Clorox. (Oh, and I will need someone to come over and cook for me and bring me ice cream a couple times a day.)

9. Get a cream colored Pomeranian and name it Jack, because last night I dreamed I had a cream colored Pomeranian named Jack, and he was so cute and he cuddled with me and he never pissed on the floor. When I woke up I was so mad because it was only a dream. I won't be able to get a Pomeranian until the kids are grown because of the hair issue. I bet it would get stickers and pieces of candy canes stuck in its hair all the time. [I only capitalized Pomeranian because spell check told me to. I think it looks kind of stupid like that, but it got me thinking - is there really a place called Pomerania, and do you call peope from there Pomeranians?]

10. Come up with a tenth goal - a good one, not the one I was thinking of, which was to help my brother build the biggest Fig Newton ever and get in the Guinness Book of World Records. (See, my brother has goals too.)



* Yes! That's his real name! You can google him if you want to, but he isn't very interesting.

March Kalends

March Kalends, the first day of March. And yes, I am dorky enough to refer to dates using the Roman calendar. (The first one, you know, the one created by Romulus, who just happens to be mythical. And I am nerdy enough to know that without googling.)

Today is a special day. It's the day I didn't get born.

Not that all the 364 other days I didn't get born aren't special, but I wasn't supposed to be born on all those other days. I was scheduled to arrive on March 1st, 1982. I'm guessing my parents were pretty anxious for me to come, because I had two siblings who should have come before me, but didn't. I'm not sure why - even though the late 1970's wasn't that long ago, it was the dark ages, obstetrically. My older siblings were born at the end of the second trimester of pregnancy. I don't know if they were born alive or dead, if they were boys or girls, if there was something wrong with them or not. My mom doesn't know either. She wasn't allowed to see or hold those babies, which is a tragedy.

So my parents were pretty excited for me to be born, and this first day of March is the day the doctor said I was to come. They even did an X-Ray in late pregnancy to determine my size and the shape of my mom's pelvis. (An X-Ray! I know, right?) Today was the day. My mom had felt horrible for a few weeks, because even then I was a bit of a trouble maker, and thought it would be hilarious to jam my fat butt into her stomach, thus causing her to lose her meals shortly after eating them. What a joker I was!

Not long before I was (supposed to be) born, my mom also came down with bronchitis. Every time she coughed, her belly button would poke out, and it hurt, so she taped a quarter to it. My mom is so smart.

Also, and I don't know what this has to do with anything, when my mom was pregnant for me, she was into Little House on the Prairie. She had looooong hair that she wore in two braids, and she favored Gunne Sax dresses with aprons. She also gardened in her tiny back yard, and had a yellow lab mix named Priscilla, who would grow up to my best dog friend. (In fact, my first word was "Pissy," and I didn't get smacked for it, cause I was trying to say 'Priscilla.')

So anyway, my mom was pretty geeked for me to show up. But I was in no hurry. "What's the rush?" I thought. "I hear there's a big snow storm coming in a few days. I'll come then, just to see what happens."

And that's exactly what I did.

Stash....

Sew Mama Sew has a little interview questionnaire on the blog. Go check it out, and add your link. It's so fun to see what everyone else is doing! Even though I am absolutely no good at sewing, I enjoy it, and I can't get too hard on myself because I've only been doing it for like six weeks. Seriously. And my first project were those dumb stuffed animals that just don't work out... but don't worry, because I'm working on another one. You know what they say, if at first you don't succeed...

What do you usually sew?
-So far, just lambikins. And lambikins are probably not the best beginner project. I've also made felt food but I don't consider that sewing, more crafting. Oh and I've made some little sachets and stuff.

When you shop for fabric, what size cuts do you usually buy? (i.e. If you see something beautiful, but you don’t have a use for it right away, how much do you buy?)
- Since I have absolutely no intentions of ever making anything large, like clothes or something, I buy a half yard at a time. I did buy a full yard of NASCAR fabric to make a curtain for The Hub's man-cave in the basement. I'm going to work on that on Sunday.


Do you buy on impulse or do you go out looking for something you need?
-I go out with specific intentions to buy fabric. So far I haven't had a specific idea in mind, except for terry cloth, which as it turns out, is a total PITA to sew. Won't be doing that again soon.

Are you a pre-washer? If you are, do you wash your fabric before you need it, or only when you’re ready to use it?
- I do prewash. I usually wash it when I get it, then fold it and put it away. If it smells funky, I'll wash it again. I don't want my kids snuggling with sizing-laden lambikins (no matter how ugly they are!)

Do you iron it?
-Yes, always. I don't know why. My mom told me to, so I do, and it seems like something I should be doing.

How do you sort it? (color, print size, collection, etc.)
-I don't. I just fold it and put it in the tub.

Do you have any special folding techniques?
-Nope. I do pin a little piece of paper on it with the quantity and width, because that's what my mom does.


How do you store your fabric?
-In a big rubbermaid tub.

What tips do you have for building up a well-rounded stash?
-I don't have a nice stash yet, but I think it's important to have the basics. I have something from each color family, and pieces for babies and bright primaries and different textures and stuff.

When do you say enough is enough?
-I don't know. I haven't been doing this very long at all.

What are some of your favorite stash-busting projects?
-This is another one I can't answer.


Do you have a current favorite print in your stash? Let’s see it!
-Yes!

This is going to be a giraffe. It's a red-orange polka dot cotton. I adore this fabric, it is definitely my favorite print. It was also the most expensive fabric I've ever purchased, at $14.99 a yard. I think the giraffe will have green yarn for his mane and tail, and a big orange bow around his neck.

So, I get an email from a random internet user, and its your typical letter of adoration, but at the end, the sender added something that threw me. "What exactly qualifies you as a ninja? Do you do karate?"

I didn't answer the email because I'm an asshole like that, just reading emails and not answering them. Hey, at least I'm honest about it. But, I did think about the answer, and since I am a non-email-answering-asshole, I decided to make up for it and reply in this post. (Because I am not just a run of the mill asshole. I am also narcissistic.)


Dear Random Internet User,
Thank you for your kind email. I am flattered that you find me hilarious, but unfortunately, it isn't true. In real life, I'm dull as a doorknob. I've had people ask whether or not I had a lobotomy at some point in my life, because most of the time I sit around with a silly look on my face, often accompanied by drool. So while I appreciate your sense of humor, I am most disturbed that my every day life is so funny to you. Maybe it wouldn't be so funny if you lived it. Maybe you too would be cursed with children who swear and draw on walls. Maybe you too would have a completely OCD husband with a wrinkly old face. Maybe you'd make a penis cake or have a sick fascination with John Philip Sousa. Maybe you would even be possessed to write about pretty much nothing in a blog that follows absolutely no pattern whatsoever. No, Random Internet User, this is not a hilarious life I lead. Hysterical, maybe, but not in the way you probably intended.

Oh and that whole ninja thing? Nah. Totally not a ninja. I don't know karate or tae-kwon-do or jujitsu or even tae-bo for that matter. I did take a self defense class once, but I got kicked out for eating a blow-pop during drills. However, I think ninjas a really cool, and ninja is kind of a code word for "cool," and since I'm not all that cool but would like to be, I call myself a ninja.

I can still whoop your ass in a heartbeat, Random Internet User. Don't get me wrong. I can whoop your ass so fast you won't even see me. You will just be standing there, and then you will hear a sound like wah-shaaaa! and then all of a sudden your clothes will be all ripped and you will have a black eye and an "x" shaped band-aid on your cheek, and you won't even know what hit you. I will be two thousand miles away smoking a congratulatory cigarette in a New Mexico bar by the time you figured out what happened. Not that I would ever do that of course.

Thanks for your email. Sorry I am too much of an asshole to write you back. But hey, at least you are famous now.

Signed,
Super Ninja Mommy

Fish Food.

I like fish. I don't like to eat fish (although I do take fish oil capsules every day, cause Crystal told me to), but I do like to go out and sit on a boat and act like I'm fishing, when really all I'm doing is looking at turtles and lily pads and watching my skin burn to a crisp.

I have a fish tank, because I like fish. It's a small ten gallon tank with nothing fancy in it - a couple little stripy fish, a gigantic pleco (which is the fish-fancier word for "fish with sucky mouth,") and a huge goldfish who always tries to eat the little stripy guys. I also have two little aquatic frogs in there, and the pleco is always trying to eat them. I keep hoping the frogs will copulate and make little froggy babies, but I think I actually have homosexual frogs. It's cool though, so long as they don't go getting married (because a gay frog marriage would totally destroy the sanctity of my own heterosexual human marriage.)

You might ask yourself what these fish eat, and I would totally laugh at you if you did, because that would mean you are an idiot. They eat fish food. The frogs eat fish food too, but they eat the kind that looks like little pellets and sinks to the bottom for their dining pleasure. Fish food is really gross. Its basically all the guts and scales and bones and nasty parts of fish, and then the people at the fish food factory grind it up and mix it with water and spread it out, and it dries into a nasty hard fish food sheet, and then they bust it all up and put it in fish food jars. I know, because I saw it on Dirty Jobs once.

Four is enthralled by the fish food. She doesn't feed the fish, because the tank is up high on the entertainment center, but even if it wasn't, she still wouldn't feed them. She has no desire to. She just likes to look at the fish food, and smell it, which frankly is just sick, so I try to discourage it.

The other day she asked to please see the fish food. She had the container in her hands, and she held it out to me. "Open?" she asked.

"No," I said. "We're not looking at fish food right now."

"OOOOPPPPEEEENNNNNNN!!!!" she yelled.

"I said no," I replied, resisting the urge to holler back at her. "We're not looking at fish food now. Mommy's hands are busy."

She looked me in the eye. "OOOOPPPPPEEENNNNNN!!! NOW!!!"
And as she screamed, she pulled at the cap.

Suddenly, the cap popped off, and fish food went flying into the air, fluttering to earth like fish cremain confetti.

Fou's mouth fell open. She checked my reaction, then dropped the empty container and high-tailed it out of the room.




I cleaned it up with the vacuum cleaner hose, and I didn't discipline Four, because I am a crappy parent.

Later I told my friend Amber about the incident, and she laughed, and then said she had some fish food at her house, but no fish. I told her to mix the fish food with Eazy Cheez and make it into little balls, and throw the balls in the river, and when a catfish comes up for it, noodle it out of the water. I might have to try that myself.

Why I'm So Inconsistent.

I spend a lot of time looking for explanations as to why I'm the way I am. The less these explanations have to do with me, the better. It would be great if I could blame all my problems on Chernobyl. Unfortunately, I was many thousands of miles away from Chernobyl in 1986, so that's a no-go. I briefly entertained the idea that it was the power lines that made me this way, and then I wondered if maybe my mother beat me regularly, and I just don't remember it. (My mom got mad when I asked her. "Of course I never beat you!" she protested... perhaps a bit too much, methinks.)

Maybe it's because I was only breastfed for a year. Maybe it's from that one time when I rode my wagon down the steep hill in our backyard and slammed into the back of the garage. Or it could be all those fresh fruits and veggies my mom made me eat. (Just in case, I'm making sure we avoid all these troubles by steadfastedly refusing to allow fruits or vegetables under my roof. Same with whole grains and vitamins.) Actually, I bet it's because my mom would never let me stay inside playing Super Nintendo all day. She never let us watch tv either. I'm sure she hated us.

Turns out, though, it's none of those. It's my personality type! And what a frickin' bummer, too, because that means I can't blame my mom. Don't worry, Mom. I'll find other ways to make you feel like an awful mother. And don't try to pull the John Phillip Sousa card on me either.

This is my dorky bird blog, where I took daily pictures and sometimes videos of some birds from hatchling to flight. go see it, it's kinda cool. start at day one. it's dorky-neato.
http://flockofstarlings.blogspot.com/

The Penis Cake (with pics.)

My sister in law, Trees, is a lot younger than me. She just turned 20, and I am (gulp) almost 27. A couple years ago, when I was 24 and Trees was 17, she invited me to a Pure Romance party that she herself had been invited to. I don't even want to tell you what Pure Romance is, because I know a bunch of pervs will google it and end up here, on this lil ole mommy blog. Okay I will tell you. Pure Romance sells s3x toy$. Got that?

Okay. So the thing is, everyone who came (ha!) to the party had to bring a s3x themed dessert. Then everyone voted, and the best dessert got a prize. We thought about making cupcakes that looked like b--bs, but then we had a better idea.

We decided to make a penis cake. As in, a cake that looked like a penis.

We bought miniature bundt cake pans and made a whole bunch of cakes. Then we stacked them all up and used a skewer to hold it all in place, and then we iced it pink.



We took the skewer out when we got there, of course, because, um, yeah.
But check it out. We made two penis cakes, because the first one ended up all over Trees. This is a great story.

This party was in the middle of February, and my porch was all covered in ice. We made the cake in the middle of the night, and we figured we would put it in the car overnight so my cats would stay out of it. (Because you don't want cat hair on your penis.)

The cake was kind of heavy, but we figured we could manage. It was top-heavy and kept wanting to tip, so Trees held one side of the plate and I held the other, and we carefully went down the three porch steps. We were bringing it to the driver's side of the car, since that was closest, but the door was locked. So we inched our way around to the passenger's side, Trees in reverse and me guiding her carefully and slowly, since it was so slippery.

We were almost there when Trees hit a patch of ice. She seemed to flounder there on the ice for the longest time before her feet finally slipped out from under her and she just plopped down on her ass, right there on the driveway. And the cake went with her, sliding, it seemed, in slow motion, right off the plate and all over her face and hair.

No one said anything for a moment, and then we broke into hysterical laughter. "Oh my God," she said. "Did you see that?" And that made me laugh even harder, because, um, duh. Of course I saw that. I helped her up, and we put the remains of the great penis cake on the plate, and we went inside to face the music -erm, our significant others.

You should have seen my brother, The Genius. I thought he was going to pee himself when he saw Trees all covered in pink gooey penis cake. There were big clumps of it stuck in her hair, and sticky icing smeared all over her face. She was laughing and crying at the same time, because we had worked so hard on that cake.

She got all cleaned up, and while she was in the shower I baked some more little bundt cakes. We were up till three am working on that second wiener, and we decided not to put it in the car until we left in the morning.

Here I am "tasting" cake number two. Notice I am wearing makeup in this picture. That s3x toy party must have been quite the occasion, considering I got dolled up and all.

Someone said our penis cake didn't have a head, and I said yes it does, its just not circumcised.

Now the best part is, we won the prize for best s3x themed dessert. It was a mini v!brator.
I let Trees have it; I wasn't up for sharing.

Felt Food, Part Two

Okay. So I talked to my very creative mom, and showed her the pictures of felt food, and guess what? She said it looks really easy.

"Easy for you, or easy for me?" I asked - because my mom's definition of easy is making an entire outfit out of scrap fabric without using a pattern and somehow not looking homeless, but rather like something out of Vogue.

"Easy for you," she said. "Look, you don't even have to cut a straight line."

So since this is going to be a very frugal Christmas (recession, anyone?) and because I may not be creative, butI am resourceful - I am going to get the girls' kitchen from downstairs, and clean it up really nice. It's one of those Step 2 kitchens, made of crazy heavy plastic, so it should clean up easily. Then I am going to [crossing fingers] make them each a bunch of felt food, and get them each an inexpensive set of utensils, because they brought all theirs outside and they got ruined.

I figure, even if I can't swing the felt food, I can at least coerce convince my mom to make it. And I think the girls will love it. No, I KNOW the girls will love it. Knowing my girls as well as I do, and I think I do, they will play with this all year, and then hopefully Beastie and The Babe will get use out of it too.

I will update you on my progress. Wish me luck.

How to Self Induce Labor

My virtual friend Jenni is trying to have a baby. But her baby is messing with her. He decided to flip himself butt-first at the last minute, and now he just won't come out. So I am compiling here a list of things I have tried to get my babies out.

Pretend you are in labor, just to get a cervical check. That might work. It probably won't, but it might, theoretically.

Sit on a trampoline and have your kids jump around you, so you bounce repeatedly on your tush. Don't stand though, because it just seems dangerous to jump on a trampoline with a forty pound belly.

Have your partner get really close to your vajayjay, and have him scream up there, "Go toward the light!! This way out!!"

Go on your favorite online community and bitch and moan about still.being.pregnant.

Notice that you have forgotten to purchase an essential item.

Ask your doctor if you can take castor oil. Go buy the castor oil, but chicken out and don't take it. Watch in delight as your older child dumps it all over the rug.

Call everyone you know and assure them that you are not in labor, and don't even feel like you are going into labor. DO NOT tell anyone you are having even the slightest labor symptom, because that will jinx it all and you will not, in fact, go into labor that day.

Have your seven year old come home from the first day of school with a huge list of crap you forgot to buy, then take a walk through WalMart looking for all that crap. Try not to beat up the fifty thousand other bad parents who also forgot to buy everything, even if they do snatch the last box of crayons right out from under you. It is best if the first day of school also happens to be the hottest day of the year.[This one works.]

Good luck Jenni!! Hope that baby gets his butt out of there pronto! (Get it... "gets his butt out of there".... he's breech... yeah.)

Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to The Babe... he's three months old today!

I'm thankful.... (meme)

So, there are days when I get really upset about money, and get myself all worked up about what we're going without in order to pay bills. We aren't rich, let me put it that way, and sometimes it all builds up and I get so mad. Like last week, my radiator went out on my van, and that cost like four hundred bucks, and then the next day the heater core burst and started ejaculating antifreeze onto the driver's side floor. I say ejaculating, which is kind of funny, because antifreeze smells like a dirty cooter. I'm sorry, but it's true. I told The Hub we should bring it to the OB/GYN, with that smell and all.

And did you know it costs $500 to fix a heater core? Yeah, I didn't know that either. But I can't just drive around with green stinky cooter-y stuff spurting onto the floor of my van, can I? No.

So during times like that, it's easy to get caught up in what we don't have, instead of focusing on what we do have. And to that end, I am going to now list for you the things I am thankful for, because I know you are dying to read it.

I am thankful for....

1. My amazing husband, who puts up with my oddballness.

2. My four beautiful children, and my nine little angel babies waiting in heaven.

3. My morbidly obese chihuahua, Petey. (I put him on a diet though, he only ate one grilled cheese today, and part of a smoothie, and some dog food.)

4. My cross-eyed cat, who purred in my face during labor.

5. My house, because even though it is small and drafty, the roof doesn't leak and I can afford the payment.

6. My van, even though it smells like a really dirty vulva.

7. Water. Cause I like drinking water.

8. Living in the country, so I can walk around naked.

9. Skin, because it would be really gross if everyone walked around without skin on.

10. Having enough food to eat, even if I have to cook it myself.

Yep, it looks like I have a lot to be thankful for. I was going to list things like toilet paper (for obvious reasons) and elmer's glue, and coupons, but I thought that might be stupid. So there.

Apian Karma

I get stung by bees several times each summer. You might think this is because I live in the country and never mow my lawn, but you would be wrong. Actually, I am stung by bees as a form of cosmic punishment.

A long time ago, in the mid-eighties, McDonald's Happy Meals came in a white plastic bucket. The bottom of the bucket was notched, so you could use it to make sand castles, and there was a red sieve lid, so you could sift stuff, I guess. If I remember right, you also got a toy inside the bucket, so it was a three-fer. Things just aren't the same anymore - these days you are lucky to get a crappy three inch tall Barbie whose hair permanently stands on end from being encased in polyethylene film.

Anyway, me and my brother begged my mom to take us to Mickey D's, and she never did, because she hated us. I know she hated us because she made us do things like clean our rooms and eat liver, and also, she never took us to McDonald's.
But anyway. My mom never took us to McDonald's, so we worked on Grandma and sure enough, we were able to build up a pretty good stash of those buckets. We had a sandbox, the kind shaped like a turtle, but I don't remember ever using those buckets in the sand. We found a better purpose.

Our yard was always neatly mowed, thanks to my stepdad, and we hardly ever had dandelions, because he was pretty anal retentive about that too. (I clearly remember him spending hours in the yard with a screwdriver, digging out dandelions and drinking beer. I think he was trying to get away from us kids, to be honest, because we were a little, shall we say, rambunctious.) So we never had any blade of grass longer than the others, and we never had a single dandelion, but we always had lots and lots of little white clover plants.

Do you know what really likes to hang out on clover plants? Honey bees. And they will sting you if you step on them, so we learned two lessons really quickly - one, don't walk barefoot in the yard. And two, hate bees.

I don't know how or why we came up with this idea, but we came up with a great way to seek revenge on the bees. Here is what you do:

Take your plastic McDonald's buckets into the yard. Hold the bucket in your left hand and the sieve lid in your right, and slowly creep up to a honey bee on a white clover. Now clamp the bucket on the bee, and quickly slap on the lid.

Now you have a bee in a bucket, and did you know, bees really prefer not to be in buckets. They buzz around in there, and throw themselves against the walls, and because of the shape of the bucket, the hum of their wings is greatly amplified. It sounds like a whole swarm of bees. Angry bees. Except it's just one, so it's not really all that dangerous.

A bee in a bucket is fantastic leverage. You can use this leverage to gain pretty much any domestic product available, especilly cookies when Granny's babysitting. All you have to do is bring the bucket in the kitchen, and Gran will holler at you to get that thing out of here. Let her holler awhile, then make your way to the front door. On your way, stop and ask "Can we have cookies?" She will hand you a cookie as you leave, just to get you out of the house. Works every time.

However, using bees in buckets as leverage gets old pretty quickly. There is something far more exciting to do with a bee in a bucket, as we soon discovered.

*Warning: sick twisted child alert*

Somehow we figured out that if you took your bee in a bucket and threw it at the shed, man, that bee would get pissed off! It would really buzz around in there. You could practically smell the danger.

So we threw it against the shed again, and the bee was even more agitated, except this time the sieve/lid was really close to popping off.

Don't leave me now, I'm just getting to the good part!

My brother, The Genius, thought we should throw the bee in a bucket at the shed again. "Maybe the lid will come off," he reasoned, "and the bee will chase us."
Sounded good to me.

We threw the bucket at the shed as hard as we could, and just as The Genius predicted, the lid popped off and out came the bee. Man oh man, you never saw a more agitated honey bee. You know on the Discovery channel, where they show killer bees going all wonky? Yeah, that's what the bee did, and we ran as fast as we could, and you won't believe it, but we didn't get stung.

So we spent that whole summer catching bees and throwing them against the shed and running for dear life. It always went something like this-

Me: Hey, you wanna go torture bees?
My brother: Sure.

It seems to me that we did this for hours each day, and to my knowledge we never killed a bee, at least not immediately. They might have gone somewhere and threw up and then died, but as far as I know, we were chased every time. We never got stung, either.

In fact, after that summer, I never got stung again, until many years later when I was a teenager, and a bee stung me while I was sneaking a cigarette behind the school cafeteria. My brother never got stung either, except for one time my mom hung clothes on the line, and a wasp was in my brother's pants, and she brought the clothes in and the next day my brother put on his pants and got stung right in the balls. True story.

Anyway, these days, I get stung at least five or six times a summer, and it's always just out of nowhere. I'll be walking into the house and get stung in the neck, or playing with the kids on the swingset and all of a sudden I get it on the back of the hand. Oddly enough, I often get stung while putting things in the shed. Of course, it's not the same shed. It's not even the same neighborhood. But I have to wonder... is this some sort of apian karma?

Purging the Mommy Guilt

I spent a number of years beating myself up for things I couldn't change. Some of those things were stupid - oh, I have flabby arms, boo hoo. Some were valid - I should have paid my friend back that twenty bucks.

But mostly all of that stewing and guilt-tripping were related to motherhood. And now that I'm okay with myself as a parent, I can forgive myself for my many mistakes. I can forgive myself for trying to fit in a mold, and I can accept the way I parent as good enough.

For instance, I refuse to feel guilty about formula feeding my first baby. I can tell you I was young and didn't know the benefits of breastfeeding, but it sounds like a cop-out. Formula feeding worked for us, and EJ is fine (well, mostly, except for her attitude, but I have a strong suspicion that her attitude is inherited from - ahem. Yeah. Me.)

I refuse to feel weird about nursing Four until she was 37 months old.

I will not feel guilty about weaning Beastie at four months. I had no choice - I was pregnant and had no more milk for her - but she is fine. And I do not feel guilty about it one tiny bit. I also do not feel the need to explain to anyone (except youse guys) why I weaned, or that I did in fact get pregnant while nursing, despite judgemental moms who have said to me "You wouldn't have gotten pregnant so soon if you had breastfed." How 'bout you shut the hell up.

I refuse to feel guilty for using disposable diapers 99.9% of the time.

I refuse to feel guilty about hollering at my kids sometimes. Do I like yelling at them? No. Do I try not to? Yes. But does it still happen? Duh. All I can do is apologize to them and try to do better and know that everyone gets hollered at now and then, and for the most part we are all fine.

I don't feel guilty for feeding my kids fried food and sugar alongside their veggies and whole grains. Go ahead, tell me about nutrition. I won't listen. Better tell someone who might take you seriously, and not waste your time with me.

I do not feel guilty for letting my kids watch television. Once again, regale me with the dangers. I don't care. Also, I dare you to call CPS on me for letting my kids watch Yo Gabba Gabba. They will laugh at you, and probably even give me a medal for tolerating that crap. (Sometimes I even walk around singing, "There's a party in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy!" Yeah, it's that bad.)

I will not feel guilty about saddling my children with unbelievably popular, common names. Sorry kid, you get what you get in the name department. At least they aren't weird names, or white trash names, or Amish names. They are just regular names, even though the kids will always have to be known by their first name and last initial.

Vacations? Nope, I feel no guilt that my kids will never go on a "real" vacation. The very thought of a theme park makes me cringe. It aint gonna happen. When the children reach the age of majority, and I am no longer responsible for them, they can go on whatever vacation they want. We'll just stay right here in BFE Michigan, thank you very much.

I refuse to feel guilty for sleeping with my babies. The pediatricians will tell you not to, as will your grandmother and well-meaning (and probably childless) friends, but seriously. There is nothing better than suggling up with a fat naked baby. I would spend all day cuddled with my fat man if I could, and as far as SIDS, well, if my baby is going to die of SIDS, I want him next to me, not far away in a cold crib. I will not feel guilty about this, but I will also not ever tell the doctor, because I don't ever have the energy to fight them.

This one I'm working on. I will not feel guilty for taking antidepressants. Okay I still feel a little guilty about that one, like maybe I am really obvious tot he whole world. I think I might have a big note on my back that says "Crazy person!!" But starting now, I refuse to feel guilty about it. At least I have control of the crazy, instead of the crazy controlling me.

I do not feel guilty for being the type of mom who avoids playgroup at all costs. I avoid it because I don't feel like sitting in a room full of moms with whom I have nothing in common, other than the fact that we bore children. I went to playgroup four times, and each time I ran around and kept everyone else's kids from eating the chalk while they sat together and compared four hundred dollar diaper bags.

I don't feel guilty for not coming up with cute creative things for my children to do. You're kids. We live in the country. Go find something to do outside. It is my job to keep you alive and to guide you into adulthood with psyche intact. It is not my job to entertain you. I know a couple people whose parents did that kind of thing for them, and guess what? They're weird.

I won't ever feel guilty for not assuaging my children's egos at all times. Yes, my children are great, they are fantastic, they are super cool and I love hanging out with them, and I am always amazed at them and humored by them and they are my world... but they do not need to hear that thirty times a day to feel worthwhile. 'I love you' will suffice quite nicely.

I refuse to feel guilty for the ten million mistakes I have made, and the infinite more I will make, while I lovingly parent my children. They are loved, and they know it. I am human, and they know that too, and I am giving them my best. And that is good enough.

You can talk to them, but it's useless.

The other day was a hard, hard day at our house. The weather has been nasty for a week or so now, so we couldn't get outside, and the van broke down and has been in the shop, so we couldn't even go for a ride.

It was one of those days where all of the kids are crying for no apparent reason. When they weren't crying and whining, they were doing their best to eradicate each other. I was nursing The Babe with Beastie on my lap, a feat in itself, and all I could hear from the bedroom was "She hit me!" and then "Nuh-uh! She hit me fust!" and then "Mo-om! She's lookin' at me!" and "I'm only lookin' at her cause she's stawin' at me!" (Four can't say her r's quite right.)

It was one of those days, and I was thisclose to completely freaking out. So I called the older girls into the living room, and tried to have a heart to heart with them.

"Girls," I said, "I need you to be on your best behavior. Mommy has a migraine, and the babies are--"

"Mom?" Four interrupted.

"No, I'm talking. You can tell me when I'm done. Now, the babies are tired and cranky, and Mommy isn't feeling well. And it makes Mommy feel really angry when I hear you yelling at each other in the bedroom. So I need you to--"

"Mom?"

"Four, it's rude to interrupt. This is important. Girls, it's so hard for Mommy to do everything she needs to do, and it makes moms sad when we hear our children hurting each other. So I really really want you to try your best and be nice to each other. Because--"

"Mom?"

"Four! You need to wait! What have I told you about interrupting? Anyway, I just really need you to be big girls, and help each other and love each other so Mommy doesn't start yelling like a crazy person. Don't you hate it when Mommy yells? I do too. So let's get along, and be kind to each other, and stop hollering for mom every three seconds. Do you understand?"

EJ said, gently, "Yes, Mama."

And Four said, brightly, "Hi! I'm Lisa and I'm new here. Are you the teacher?"




Oh dear God.

My Life Ambitions

Ten things I want to do:

1. Learn to dance like Michael Jackson, because MAN! That guy can DANCE!

2. Walk to Alberta, or maybe farther, and take my morbidly obese chihuahua with me because he could use the exercise. It will be the grandest adventure ever. Ever. I am seriously planning this one. I already have a map and stuff. I figure it should only take 22 days, not counting sleeping time, so maybe six weeks total. I will leave in May and get there in June or July, and hang out for awhile and then come home, because it's probably pretty boring out there in the woods.

3. Get paints and canvas and learn how to paint like Bob Ross, because Bob Ross effin rocks.

4. Get a really nice camera and take classes and become a good photographer. Not a great photographer, just a good one. Good is good enough.

5. Chihuahua-proof my house, and get a bunch of chihuahuas, and laugh when they run around and yap. And maybe give them some sort of caffeinated beverage so they will spend more time running around yapping, because that is so funny when they do that.

6. Read every book in the library, even the stupid ones. And also, make a catalog of all the books I've ever read, just because.

7. Build a log cabin in my back yard. Except really, it will be more like a shed, because if it's bigger than 10' by 10' the township will make me get a building permit, and what if I get a building permit and then I don't build a log cabin? The township will think I'm nutjob, and they already yell at me for having too much junk in my yard.

8. Create some sort of invention that would turn black jelly beans into bio-fuel, because no one eats the black jelly beans anyway. I would also like to point out that this was an idea I had when I was in chemistry class and seventeen years old, in 1999, when we were not in the midst of an economic crisis. But no one ever listens to me.

9. Dig a swimming pool in my backyard, with a shovel and a pick-axe. I figure eventually I will reach water anyway and then I won't have to wait four days for the pool to fill up via garden hose. I don't have the patience to wait four days for it to fill up because hello. I just dug a swimming pool by hand, and did you know, that would take you forever. I would be a hundred years old and if I waited for it to fill up, I might die before I get a chance to swim in it, and that would just piss me off.

10. Get an adult sized trike and ride around with all my chihuahuas and pick up cans for deposit. (See I am assuming that by the time I reach goal #10, I will have accomplished goal #5.) I would use one of these to help pick up the cans, because the chihuahuas would get real mad if I kept stopping, and they would probably bite me in the neck. Chihuahuas are moody like that.

Don't Act Like You're Not Impressed

I know what you're thinking. You're like, 'Wow, Ninja Mom, you are freaken amazing. You should get a blog award.'

Well, just so you know, Jenni at Oscarelli thinks so too. Boo-Ya! (Holy shit. I just typed boo-ya. Scarier: I said it out loud as I typed it, and freaked out the dog.)

And the rules:
1. Post the award on your blog.
2. Link to the awardifier
3. Link to the originating post
4. Pass the award on to five or more deserving people
5. Post the fight club award rules.

So, on what lucky bloggers shall I bestow this award? How can I pick just five? I have tons of them, now that I'm kind of an official mommy blogger, which I never really intended (more on that craziness later. Later as in, maybe sometime in the next year I will write about it. Neener neener neener.)

Okay. Well I have to pick Mommy-Medic at Firefightin' Soccer Mom. Her blog rocks, especially if you are a weird ambulance chaser curious person like me. And one of my new favorites,
breedermama at The Breeder Files. I think I'll also bestow this on Issa at Issa's Crazy World because I love her blog, and of course we can't leave out Susan at One Year Apart, who has babies 13 months apart like me. Oh and Elizabeth at Me and Les Girls, another mom raising kids with just 13 months between them. Get to it, girls!

Postpartum Weirdness, part one

You know, postpartum depression is a sinister thing. You are going along in life, taking your little purple pill each morning and evening just like they tell you, and then one day, the sonofabitch stops working. (No, not your husband. The purple pill.)

The other day I had a mild breakdown. Mild for me, anyway. See for me, PPD isn't so much depression as it is excruciating anxiety and internalized anger. There are days, and luckily they are few and far between, when the anxiety is absolutely crippling and I can barely move. Those are the days that I stay awake all night, making the rounds to all my children to make sure they're breathing. And if I do fall asleep, it's a weird, fitful sleep - kind of like the sleep you get when you're at the height of a bad cold.

Then I have days where I am just so angry. Sometimes the anger is scary, uncontrollable rage, and some days its just a mild simmering just below the surface, but either way, the anger is there on those days. I don't take this anger out on my children, thankfully, but I do yell at the dog a lot when I'm mad. It's okay, he's used to it. And I'm fairly certain he won't suffer any psychological damge from being called a stupid fat-ass chihuahua (especially since it's true.)

The other day was an angry day. I was so angry I could spit. Actually, I did spit and that didn't help so really I was even angrier than that. I was freaken furious. I don't want to go into detail because it will just make me angry again, but basically I was pissed off at my position in life, and at rich people, because I hate rich people. (I'm not rich, but if I was rich, I would still hate rich people, so if that includes any of you, dear readers, well, just don't tell me you're rich and I won't hate you.)

That day, I stalked all around my house, cursing everyone in the world who had more than me, and especially those that flaunt it. I stormed through my kitchen, slamming the freezer door and breaking the ice machine spout, which in turn made me curse all the people who don't have broken ice machine spouts. My PPD anger is not rational anger, although there is some thought put into it - when I am angry, like I was the other day, I get even more ferociously angry at the world's injustices, like people buying expensive handbags while other people starve to death on the streets. Fuck you capitalism. Except on angry days, I want to get up on my roof and scream FUCK YOU CAPITALISM!!, and if I lived somewhere where people could hear me (or at least where the paramedics could be there in less then forty minutes, perchance I fell) I would do just that, just climb right up there and scream my fool head off till I was too tired to be angry anymore.

I think that a big player in postpartum mood disorders is a desire to do more, to be more. To be better. I am no psychologist, but I did take Psychology 100 at community college, and since I'm on the internet, that more than qualifies me to talk about this with an air of authority.

But I'm too tired to go into that right now. I'm an old woman, people. Okay, I'm not, but I'm twenty-six years old and I have four children, and do you know what that means? That means Ninja Mom is going to take a nap while the babies are napping, and I will be back for part two later.

This is my life in one tiny snapshot.

The chaos that is my life can be summed up in one story.

EJ had parent-teacher conferences earlier this month. I was battling a terrible cold, and feeling like crap because some people had made fun of me, and I was so tired and sick and aching. But I had to go to conferences.

So after dinner I dragged myself to my bedroom to put on clothes. You can go to conferences sick, but you can't go in your pajamas. Anyway I got dressed in my favorite ratty t-shirt and jeans, and dragged a comb through my hair and threw on my chucks (because I am a fourteen year old boy at heart, or at least in fashion sense). I realized I wasn't wearing a bra, which is kind of an important accessory for a nursing mom, so I undressed and put one on, and got dressed again.
Then I grabbed my jacket, which is really a white zip up hoodie with blue arms, and sat down really quick to nurse the baby.

The Babe finished up pretty quickly, and I kissed the kids and left. I got to school and parked in the loading zone because it was raining and because, quite frankly, I don't care. I always do crap like that.

I sat at a miniature table on a chair designed for either elves or first graders. Probably first graders. Because of the way I was perched on this tiny chair, I had to lean forward to maintain balance, and my chest was kind of pressed on the edge of the table. I didn't notice - I was trying to pay attention to the teacher. I never have been good at paying attention to teachers.

So conferences go well, but toward the end, I am feeling an ominous dampness on my shirt. I thought it was my imagination - after all, I had stopped to put on a bra, and since I was in public I had nursing pads too. I notice the teacher doing her best to not look at my chest, and I glance down and see that my maroon shirt has a large wet spot on the front. Except because the shirt is maroon, the wet spot is strikingly black and oh-so-noticeable. I didn't have a choice - I finished conferences and went back to the van.

As I'm walking down the hall, I discover the cause of this leakage. The flaps of my bra were unhooked. This threw me into a panic - where are my nursing pads? I glanced behind me - nothing. Now I'm sweating, hoping I didn't leave a wet nursing pad in my child's first grade classroom.

I walked out of the building into the pouring rain, and there is one nursing pad on the sidewalk. Thank God no one was around - I swooped down and grabbed it in my fist, and then got in my van (which was right there, since I parked in a loading zone. See, I think these things through.) I sat down in the drivers seat, tossed the wet pad on the passenger side floor, and looked down at the console for my cell phone. That's when I noticed that my sleeve is totally caked with chewed up, dried on oreos.

EJ's teacher must think I am freaking Mom of the Year. For real. Half the time I forget to send her mittens or homework, and then I show up for conferences with my boobs milking all over the place and cookies on my coat.

And I never did find that other breast pad.