I’ve been working like crazy on a website. It’s good! We’re determined to focus on paying off all of our debt, so projects are good. But it’s bad because it has stopped me from:
* Cleaning my house
* Participating in social norms involving personal hygiene /food consumption /leaving the house ever
* Parenting
* Working on the new nerd art pieces which are so very cool in my head, but don’t exist yet
* Emailing or calling any of the few friends I have/used to have
* Uploading this video of Graham talking at length about one of his favorite topics: Barack Obama is a different kind of man

Now, as it turns out if you go to YouTube and search for Barack Obama + two year old, there’s a lot of videos. Who knew? It’s a whole big thing out there! The difference is that the parents are teaching their kids to say cute things about who is going to be the next president? Whooo? And the kid yells Obama! And Yay!!

Which is pretty cool and all. But Graham’s is mainly entertaining to me because it is so damned random. We didn’t coach him or even talk to him about Obama at all. We don’t even have a TV. He’s picked this up from pieces of conversations, and maybe a little on the radio. The rest comes straight out of his weird little head.

And yes, it would have killed me to clean up my studio a little bit before filming.

See here? Blog. There’s this weird thing of not updating for a few days and then it feels awkward like hello blog, sorry I haven’t updated in so long, so now it’s sort of awkward and so then I keep not doing it even though this is the exact sort of reason why I don’t have very many friends.

My mom is back in Dallas. It’s a good thing in adult life to reach the point where your parents don’t drive you insane. It was a great week, and now we all miss her. And right after she left, perhaps unrelated and perhaps not, Graham stabbed himself in the eye with a straw.

Then he cried until he fell asleep at 6:30. Then at 11:30 pm he woke up and said, “Mama? Maybe this can be our party.” With one eye squinted half shut, and the rest of him still half asleep he stumbled around the living room and said, “Mama? Some people fall down.”

At certain kinds of parties, yes they do.

But he’s fine now, his eye is fine and the party was nice.

He still has his Mitten Hands, by the way, and he also still has his tiny invisible princess. Did I tell you he has a princess? I think I did. She’s very small. He trapped her a couple of months ago and now she loves him very much. He’s constantly dropping her though, or leaving her in Petsmart so we’ll be buckling him in to leave and he’ll say “Wait!! I forgot my PRINCESS!!”

His new thing is elaborate pantomimes. Nobody taught him to do this, unless he is sneaking out at night to go to improv classes at the community college. Possible. As he walks around through the day he unlocks and opens imaginary doors, then steps through and closes them behind him. Earlier we went outside and he baked and served an invisible cake. We were about to eat it when he said, “Wait! You need a fork.”

He toddled over to what we assumed to be the kitchen, opened a drawer at eye level, then stood on his toes to reach in there and dig for a fork. He even closed the drawer.

So that’s Graham. He stalls, he hugs, he hassles his brother. He has a rock garden and I swear he thinks rocks are going to grow in it any day now. He asks everyone we meet their name and age. He declares in front of strangers, “Mama? Maybe this lady doesn’t love me.”

The potty training project is on hold. What he apparently took from the library potty video is that big boys sneak off to other rooms to try and change their own diapers. I admire his ambition, but anything that causes me to step in poop twice in one day has to stop. So Nicolaus is off the project. Me too, actually.

More soon, I’m working on a Friday deadline but had to write down all the reasons I like Graham in case he poops on the floor again and I almost stop loving him because OMG.

It’s after one in the morning, when only the children of our nation’s crappiest parents are still awake. It’s awful, I should be strict about bedtimes but it’s hard when your kids are most charming and most sweet and mellow after 10pm. Plus! My mom’s in town, and she is a late-night stayer upper. So she’s on the couch with Nicolaus, they’re online watching Netflix documentaries. She picked The History of The Brooklyn Bridge and figured it would bore him to sleep because it’s not like he’s obsessed with history, building, fires, bridges, and New York. Or anything.

It bored ME though, so I’m going to bed pretty soon. They can stay up all night and learn about architectural wonders of the world.

She’s in town for no reason, which is the best possible kind of trip. We’ve been doing all of the things that we do in a normal week, and she comes with us and I make fun of her and she buys me dinner and we laugh and stay up half the night. Errands and junk are so much easier and more fun with her along, so the week has gone really fast.

Today I went to the doctor mainly to get a refill on my Zoloft prescription, but also to ask about the ten different things I’ve been meaning to go to the doctor about. As I was going through my list of questions for the doctor I started to get embarrassed that maybe he’d think I was a totally crazy hypochondriac, especially since I was there for Zoloft. “I swear I’m not crazy and these are legitimate non-crazy questions. Oh and also — more crazy pills, please!”

Ah well.

There was more — always, right? — and it was good stuff too. Plus pictures and a video of Graham talking about Barack Obama. But Obama will have to wait for his nonsequitor-laced public endorsement from very young America. Because there’s this Brooklyn bridge thing on… I mean, those guys worked their ever-loving asses off. Man. I am going to bed.

A warrior stood A pretend history story by Nicolaus
Once upon a time, there was a warrior. He was wearing a tunic that wasn’t sewn together on the sides. He had a headband with gold and jewels on it, and a belt made of gold with gold strips hanging off of it.

And off in the distance he saw people. They had lassoes and bow and arrows. It was weird, he had never seen them before.

They were the Huns, and he also saw the Vandals. They were smashing buildings.

The warrior wasn’t a Roman, he had been fighting against the Romans. He was glad. He knew what they were going to do. He knew they were totally going to destroy the Romans and he thought they would be able to do it. Because he saw they had lassoes.

So you know what he did? He got a giant rope and he wrapped one end around in a circle to make a lasso. So Ooooh! The warrior made himself a lasso.

That’s the end of the story.

We were joking when we offered Nicolaus twenty dollars to potty train his little brother. But you know how some jokes are jokes at first, but then once you say them it’s like hey wait. That is exactly what we should do.

So that’s why Graham is running around in big boy underwear today. He’s only had one accident all day. Two if you count when he pooped in the bath and freaked out because he had tried to go in the potty but then couldn’t go and then got back in the bath and then oh no!!! I am pooping right now in this bath!! GET ME OUT OF THIS BATH, MAMA.

And then Nicolaus — bless him but oh my gosh, there is a reason even smart little kids aren’t allowed to get their own place — gave Graham a TROPHY for pooping in the bath. An actual trophy that he made himself. Because: “I promised him that he’d get a trophy the next time he pooped, and I didn’t remember to actually SAY like don’t go in the bath. I just said don’t go on the floor? Or? In your underwear. So. Trophy!”

Graham was delighted. There’s nothing in the potty video about trophies. What a cool surprise.

Since then he’s only had one other very minor accident, which means that my five year old is better at potty training kids than I am. Fair enough. “Potty training” is what I say whenever I’m in (imaginary) job interviews and people ask me what my biggest weakness is, “And also I don’t really come to work before 10am.”

So that’s why Graham’s in underwear today and nothing else. But what about Nicolaus? Well, that’s easy. He’s being Perseus trying to slay Medusa, and I’m too lazy to make him a tunic right this second. Cammo boxer-briefs were a popular second choice for Greek half-gods during the great tunic shortage of 340BC.