1. The gross hair is gone. Who would think that the topic of chin hair would inspire so many comments? You guys were more excited about that than you were about those times I produced a whole other human being with my own body!

I was going to tweeze it. Because the internet knows what’s best, and because the damned hair was half an inch long and was requesting that I name it. It had to go.

But we spent the weekend unpacking, so I never had time to get to the tweezer store. A minute a go I decided to give waxing one last try. Success! But don’t worry, I’m going to get tweezers anyway in case this awful life development ever happens again.

So thank you for all of your kind and inspiring and definitely not at all laughing at me comments. At least that’s how I read them. You guys are awesome. It’s just like people with cancer or rare diseases or infertility blogs always say: The internet can help you feel so much less alone. Because really, who feels more isolated from society than a freak with a hairy chin? NO ONE.

2. Owning stuff is wonderful! Everyone should own at least some stuff. Especially couches and lamps. And things to eat with and on.

3. This weekend was exciting for reasons I can’t quite arrange in my mind. As we’re unpacking, I’m seeing a vision come together that I think has been there for a long time. This idea of living in an interesting space that doesn’t add to stress. Having areas for the kids to work and play. Whittling their toys down to the things they actually play with, paring our wardrobes down to the things we actually wear.

Our house doesn’t look like anything from a magazine or a catalog. The Pottery Barn catalog people would cringe at our… well, everything. And the cool kids over at Apartmenttherapy.com would laugh at our comfy chair and our futon for when people come visit, people who we also will cook lovely meals for and will take to the very cool magic and trick/costume store.

The furniture arrangement is probably all wrong in interior design terms. But it works. I have an office now that’s out in the living room, in beautiful sunlight. I also have a kitchen in the living room, which is a little odd, but hey.

Tomorrow I need to take pictures of the boy’s room and their hallway. They love love it. Nicolaus… wait, let me back up. For the last year or so Nicolaus has said that when he grows up he is going to own a college or a high school for babies. That’s precisely what most kids want to do when they grow up, right? Well I set up an area for them to work on science and blocks and Nicolaus bounced around, “I have a college now! I HAVE my real school for babies!”

They spent most of the day in the hallway, getting along with each other. Outrageous.

“You know why I’m being so nice to Graham, Mama? Because today is his first day at this school. He’s new here. So I’m being nice to him.” Ha, but tomorrow – it’s your ass!

Anyway, we got their toys all unpacked and mostly put away. It was totally worth the trip to IKEA, even though IKEA can suck a crazy European dick with their deliberately frustrating obstacle-course store design and their crowds and long walmartesque lines and their confusing information and their meatballs and their HAIRY BÖÖGER Bookshelf, pieces, $2.99.

4. There was more — Kevin almost got in a hilarious fight with a guy at the mall on Saturday. They did go searching for tree frogs and found one, but thank you tiny baby Jesus did not bring the frog home. Graham got new shoes which you might not think is that big a deal but they have rocket ships on them and they light up and they go on his motherfucking feet. Try telling him it’s not exciting. What else… oh! Every once in a while I realize that I don’t take near enough advantage of the fact that I have crazy inlaws who don’t read blogs at all.

But it’s almost 1:00 am and I have to get up at 6 because I’m that stupid person with flexible hours who said oh please sign me up for the very early hours, please! And then at lunch time I would like to stab myself in the eye with a dog turd, please. And for dinner I will go to IKEA to shop for curtains!

Not saying I don’t love my job. Just saying that I really need to learn to go to bed earlier.

Three posts in twelve hours! Well this is important. If I leave out this bit of personal drama, I’ll look back and know that I wasn’t totally honest about what life was like.

I am at war with a hair on my chin.

Now before you start, I can’t stand tweezing. It hurts. I’m a baby. We seriously don’t even own tweezers. So normally I celebrate my Mexican heritage with these awesome little no-heat wax strips from the beauty supply store, or as Kevin calls them, “I hope you realize you just paid $6 for four inches of packing tape.”

It’s easy: peel, stick, rip – tadaa! I look like a normal human member of American society. Except for my crazy black eyebrows and my arm hairs, but whatever. But the night before the first day at my new job… the night I was brushing my hair with a plastic fork… I realized I hadn’t packed my very important waxy things. Crap crap crap.

So I did the easiest, stupidest thing. I shaved it. It was just one little hair, how bad could it really be to shave it in an emergency?

BAD. Super bad.

Because the motherfucking thing keeps growing back. And it’s gruesomely impossible to wax now. I tried to be patient and let it grow out over a three-day weekend, so I could wax it and be done. Peel, stick, rip — shit! It’s still there. Okay, peel, stick, rrrrrip. Fuck. PEEL. STICK. RIP!

By then I had a huge blob of gooey tape residue on my face, plus that stubborn stupid hair. I tried to clean off the wax with the enclosed alcohol swab, which only completed the process of deliberately putting a giant red second-degree burn on my face. With a black hair in the middle of it. Awesome.

So I did exactly what Jesus would do: I worked from home for a week to let the damned thing heal up and grow out so I could start over.

A week into the healing I tried waxing it again, just to make sure this really did suck as bad as I thought. Peel. Stick. Rip. Ow.

Then I shaved the hair again, and immediately felt like an idiot because that is why we are here today dealing with this. But at least now it was a giant red spot with no hair in the middle of it. Much nicer, I think.

Finally I gave in to the suckiness. I stopped messing with it, and just went on with life. It’s just like that movie where that mom let her kid spend all his time unsupervised together with Bruce Willis: I see gross chin-hair people. Walking around like regular people! They don’t know they’re gross.

It healed. The hair grew back in, but this time I waited. I left it alone. Must be patient and let it grow back long enough before waxing again. I can be patient. I live with kids who think that walking from our door to the car is a terrific chance to really look at the world around them… because like tiny monks they ponder really, what IS time? What IS late? What IS our mother yelling at us about?

I’ve been patient all week. I went to work! And talked to other humans and things and pretended there wasn’t anything gross on my face.

So now I’m back to the original problem of a big fat hair on my chin. It looks plenty long enough to wax but oh no no I tried waxing it last night and the fucker wouldn’t move. It’s there forever! Oh God, why is my life so hard?

Somewhere I bet a woman in Darfur just felt the sudden, mysterious urge to punch someone right in the throat.

Bedtime was easy tonight. Graham geared up for the gleeful battle when suddenly! I pressed play on the magical music-playing device which had all this time been hidden away in the pod. He’s heard peaceful sleepy versions of Beatles music at bedtime most of his life, but I’m stupid so it didn’t occur to me to bring the CD with us on our trip to the land without any stuff in it.

“No bed!” Like I said, he was gearing up. Then he heard the bongbongbong chime beginning of Blackbird. He slowly smiled and looked at me like wait. Have you been holding out on me?

“You hear the night night music?”

“NighNigh Muse.” I don’t know why the word music is so hard for little kids, but it is.

He flopped down onto Dora #1. Next to the loaner Dora, and can I just say that what that boy and those two Doras do in there is none of my business but from what I saw when he realized that there were TWO DORAS IN HIS OMG BED, maybe those people whose whole thing about how alowwing gay marriage would be a slippery slope that could lead into things far more disturbing than we ever even thought to think about do have more of a point than I used to think.

It still took him a long time to fall asleep but it was a dreamy long time, loaded with cute sighs and mutterings and things instead of the less cute screaming “NO BED! DAM PLAY DOWNNNNNN.”

But just a minute ago he woke up crying. I went in to check on him. “What’s wrong baby?”

“No!” It’s a reflex with toddlers. They don’t even have to be awake to say No. It’s like teenagers and “Fuck you!” or my mom and Madonna.

His eyes were closed, but he was still crying. I patted his back and said nice things and reminded him to listen to the pretty music.

“No priddy muse.” He mumbled.

“Do you want your drink?”

“NO. NO DINK. No dink.”

“Okay, baby. Do you want mama to lay with you?”

“No mama.” He was mumbling now, eyes closed, almost back to sleep.

“Do youuuu… um… do you want Dora?”

“No Dora.” he mumbled softly.

“Do you… want me to eat your fingers?”

“No eeda…” he trailed off. “Finners.” He slowly pulled his hand under his blanket, and was back asleep.

You know what I just did? I just tuned my guitar. The six string… actually sat down and tuned it all correctly. E-very A-ngry D-ude G-ets B-eaten E-ventually

And then I played for a while. For the total silly fun and prettiness of playing.

My fingers hurt, but somewhere under tender skin are old callouses.

I haven’t done that in a long, long time. This is such a good place for me to live.

I set up my desk looking out onto the courtyard. Where I think I maybe saw a rat the other day but nevermind. The light in this corner is warm and blue and perfect. I love my new home.

Which Kevin will be relieved to hear because he spent all of today unloading our crap from the pod, which is positioned at the other end of the parking lot. Ideal if you don’t like Kevin, which maybe you don’t, so haha! you can think to yourself (you strange and petty person whoever you might be) Kevin had to walk and walk and load and unload today. And would probably leave me if I told him we were going to need to move it all again soon.

My job today was supervising two small boys who were stunned by the arrival of everything. Each new thing made them so happy. Wheee! A chair! Ooooooh! Another chair! And this one’s good for jumping! And then they’d fight over it and I’d make them get off. Then Kevin would bring in something new. Oooooh! What’s THAT? A lamp. Can we turn it on? Can we touch it? Can we jump on it? No.

Oh my god you should have seen Graham’s face when he realized that there were blocks right here in his very own home. Building towers is very important to Graham, second only to space shuttles and astronauts. SPASE Shattul. AstoNOT! It’s a serious kick right now. Which is perfect because the space rug and the space blankets made by Aunt Alisha and the space art is all here now. He’s beside himself with awesome.

I wish I’d had the energy to post all this week. There were some good times. But now I can’t remember anything except Nicolaus telling me that he tooted on my car. I told him that was gross and not to tell ladies things like that.

He looked down and said, “I’m sorry Mama.”

“That’s okay, you didn’t know.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know.”

“Okay.”

“Except I seriously DID toot on your car! Like, I needed to toot when we were in the car but instead I saved it UP — and then you know what? When we got out I leaned my bottom on your car and –”

“Nicolaus.”

“I tooted right on your car.”

“NicoLAUS.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay.”

“But I really really did toot. Like, right on your car.”

That wasn’t the best thing that happened this week. It’s just the only one I can remember right now, that and his new thing of pretending to throw a whiny fit and then when I start to get all grumpy about it he starts laughing and says “I’m only joking! And you really believed that was a real fit didn’t you?”
This is what I get for marrying someone whose entire genetic makeup is devoted to picking on me.

Oooh wait! I just remembered one other thing. This morning we went to IHOP for breakfast. And Graham brought his own plate. He insisted. He grabbed a paper plate as soon as he heard that we were going to drive and go get food, he clutched it all the way there, and very proudly ate off of it.

And! You haven’t lived life on the edge until you’ve dared to take your kids with you to an important meeting with an important work person, where the agenda is for you to present everything you’ve been working on for the last two weeks. Dude. Bungee jumpers and skydivers are so jealous of me.

That’s really all I remember.

I’m writing this update at work which I promised myself I wouldn’t do but living with dial up is pretty much the ultimate suburbanite problem. At home I still can’t send emails out, have trouble getting blogs to load, and want to kill myself every time I try to visit reddit.com — the main page loads super fast. Wow look! Cool interesting stuff to read! Except all that cool interesting stuff takes several seconds to load. Minutes, sometimes. Do you see the hell that is my life?

So I’m at work, where I’m just now starting to not feel stupid all the time. My first full day of work was a Monday. My boss and I were standing near my cube. He had just told me about a new assignment that was due Wednesday morning, and I sort of panicked. My brain helpfully offered: Ideas… smart… not good.

He clapped his hands together. “So! Tell me what you need from me to be able to do your job.”

Um. All of the information in your brain. And a large bucket of perfect ideas. And a Coke. I babbled something about specific direction on what the client needs and limitations on the format of the piece…

He looked confused. “No. I mean… like, we have really nice pens. And pads in all different colors… are you a doodler?”

Oh right. Office supplies.

The whole first week was like that, me trying to guess some big thing people were asking me when really all they were asking was would I like them to bring me back a sandwich from Subway. But the postcard clunked along and somehow I made the deadline despite spending way too many hours making it look awfuler and then better and then awfuler. I was also getting used to using a PC. I used to use Windows all the time, but now it’s all fancy and helpful and weird. I’m getting used to it. The main thing I find disconcerting is that it has its own shit to do. Every day it lets me know Hey I’m going to do these updates! Hey my virus wizzywazzit is yellow, I’m going to make it blue now! Hey something to do with Adobe!

I just say okay or ignore it and let it work through its little list of things to do today while I work through mine.

So this week is going much better. I’m working on redesigning a bunch of medical forms to make them more readable and — I swear to God this was part of the directive — FUN. You didn’t know that filling out forms could be FUN, did you? Well that’s because you’ve never filled out one of my forms! Seriously, it’s sick how much I’m liking the forms project. Such a sense of satisfaction taking something that’s hard to read and confusing and making it pretty and useful and informative.

But none of that is what I’m updating about. I’m updating about all of our material possessions! Which are right at this minute being delivered to Kevin.

Poor Kevin, he is very tired. The boys did not want to go to sleep last night. The twinkle twinkle little toes thing was a lot less adorable the second time around, especially since it was punctuated by spitting fart noises and announcements that Dam down bed, play DOWN. Then he’d get up and close the door and laugh, and Nicolaus would freak out because he’s scared of doors being closed. There was one refrain somewhere in there about Twinkle Twinkle Dora that did make me smile, but the rest was just frustrating and horrible. So bedtime dragged on very late, and then both boys took turns waking up through the night with problems.

When I left for work at 7, Nicolaus had been awake for almost an hour.

So Kevin is tired, and he has full charge of two boys which are also tired and probably cranky and who will make unloading the Pod impossible. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to unload it. But it will work out. We’ve been without our stuff for what? Weeks now. Weeks and weeks and weeks. Graham has started stacking up groceries instead of blocks. Nicolaus — well, he hasn’t really noticed his stuff missing honestly because he can get more joy out of a 75-cent package of stretchy sea creatures than out of anything else — but still, he’ll be glad to have furniture and books and a microwave so I can feed him again.

I am totally giddy about this. I know I battle with stuff, and really in a way I hate stuff. But having NO STUFF is going too far, and it makes me want to go out and buy stuff which isn’t good either. But none of that matters because today? WE HAVE STUFF!!