Saturday night we sat outside while the sun went down. The little bit of wind was perfect. Kevin and the boys ran around catching fireflies, while I sat on a metal swing and watched them and thought about the wonderful stereotypes of summertime fun. While they caught and named and tried to make a pet out of insects, I worked on my sewing. Because — right? But no really, I did. A couple of weeks ago my crazy Oklahoma friend Kathryn suggested that I make play food for Graham’s little kitchen out of felt. She was sort of joking, because A) I don’t have enough free time for personal hygiene, much less new hobbies and B) I can’t sew worth a crap.

But once she said it, the idea wouldn’t go away. I bought seven dollars worth of synthetic craft store felt and embroidery floss, and started carrying it with me everywhere. So far I’ve made:
2 slices of bread
3 slices of lunch meat
1 slice of bacon which looks a little like poop
1 piece of romaine lettuce
1 tomato slice
3 pickle slices
1 slice of cheese
3 pancakes
1 sugar snap pea w/beans
1 strawberry

I’m working on some cookies now. Graham honestly doesn’t seem very interested in playing with the toy food, but he is fascinated by the idea of me making toy food. “Mama, now can you make another trawberry?”

No, sweetie. Strawberries are a perfect whore to make. Can I interest you in another pancake?

So I’ve been feeling domestic.

And! Last week I expanded the daily laundry concept and applied it to the rest of the apartment. Toys, floors, dishes, beds, etc. And the darndest thing — our place stayed sort of clean. When our home isn’t all messy, a lot of background stress disappears, along with the nagging feeling that I suck. It’s nice.

It’s nice too because most weekends my entire goal is: Clean this fucking place up.

But not this weekend! This weekend my entire goal has been to take a shower and wash my hair. Look at me, Miss Ambitious.

Oh and the other goal was to purchase gift on Saturday and attend Nicolaus’ friend’s bounce-house birthday party on Sunday. Do you see what comes of having friends? Now do you see??

The party wasn’t horrible, actually. First, it was really impressive to watch Nicolaus run and jump and climb and bounce like a human child. Only a year ago he refused to go into those obviously dangerous bounce thingies. Today he did come find me a few times to express safety and structural integrity concerns, but mostly he ran around like a wild man. Neat. Graham meanwhile, walked in and was Home. Whatever planet he is from (did I tell you? He keeps saying “I am! from a different planet.“) most certainly has bouncey things. And a lot of yellow. And pizza.

Then we came home and all felt very hungover and cranky, but also proud because we had done such a normal suburbanite thing with our weekend. Look at us!

Kevin and Nicolaus decided that what we need? Is Capsella. Lucky thing Kevin has a Capsella set. So they drove to our little store room and brought home Capsella, a bag of legos and a large model of the Millennium Falcon. I took a nap while they all did whatever boys do with all of those things, and woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm outside, and also the melodious sound of everyone griping at everyone else.

The boys went to bed early. Jumping in a giant yellow room is exhausting work. And now it’s time for a new week to start.

“Mama? I had an idea for something we should do. It’s written on the fridge.”

The magnets are disappearing lately, so I was surprised he’d managed to write anything. I looked over. It was nonsense.

“What does that say?”

“BUSENIK”

“Yeah but — oh wait. Is this in Birdie Talk?” He and the bird are inventing their own language that conveniently no one else understands.

“Yep.”

“Can you write it in English please?”

Big sigh. “Well I don’t know if I have enough letters. But I’ll try.”

A minute and four fights with his brother later (4 fpm) he announced he was done: D O N U S

Close enough. Donuts!

“Well Nicolaus, that’s a fun idea but there are — well, three problems really.”

“What are they?”

“First of all, it’s big traffic hour right now. Driving there will be awful. Second, donuts are really bad for us. Third, it costs a lot of money to go get donuts and we’re trying to save money.”

“Aha!” It took him zero seconds to respond. “Easy. Number one: We wait until after big traffic hour. Number two: While we wait, we eat something super healthy so – you know? And number three: We won’t buy a whole big box this time. We’ll just get four donuts, one for each person. No box. So we won’t even have to pay for the box.”

He pulled the fridge open and produced a massive bag of baby carrots, which he handed out to everyone.

Well? How could I argue with that? I couldn’t, that’s how.

So here’s what we tried:
1. Shaking vigorously
2. Tapping the side
3. Olive oil
4. A long paintbrush with super sticky tape on the end
5. Fire
6. Ice
7. Tapping the side some more
8. Air pump

Here’s what the guy at the brass instrument repair shop tried:
1. Drop a small weight in behind the marble, shake it twice

Pop! Marble. No charge for the repair even.

Nicolaus loved seeing the brass shop. My dad has the exact same setup for violin/cello type repairs, and this was exactly the same and exactly different at the same time. “Excuse me? What happened to that instrument?”

The guys were incredibly nice and patient. They even threw in a quick bugle lesson, answered his questions, and showed him what bugles looked like 350 years ago.

Graham meanwhile yawned and rested his head on my shoulder and tried to ignore the great dane that was sniffing his toes.
He fell asleep as soon as we were back in the car, despite the triumphant bugle music being played just one carseat over.

When he woke up, we were at his favorite place on earth: the pizza buffet. The bugle came with us into the restaurant, because you never know when you might need to make a really loud, continuous tone. We chatted and ate the entire universe of pizza and salad and dessert, then came home and watched Frontier House.

Both boys are 100% onboard with Kevin’s plan to someday go live exactly like the people in Frontier House. Nicolaus is planning the log cabin we’ll build, and Graham woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, “I want to stay with my daddy! I want to be in the woods!!”

I’m fucked.

Actually I’d agree to it if we could live in the woods and also have wireless internet and a freezer full of pre-cooked meals. Oh and! Garbage disposal. Washer and drier would be good too, even though my sons assure me that in the woods there won’t be much laundry to do because none of the men wear shirts.

In the interest of me having time to shower before everyone wakes up, this post will not come full circle.

TO: Brass instrument repair shop I just found on google
SUBJECT: I hope you can help
Hello,

You are going to laugh at me for asking this, but here goes: is there a way to get a marble out of a bugle? The instrument belongs to my five year old, and he is in tears. He was trying to figure out how the bugle works/is put together… he says he thought the marble would roll around in there and help him figure out if the slide was a solid piece or not.

I’ve tried all kinds of crazy things to get it out, but it’s STUCK.

Any ideas would be great. We’re in Atlanta, so could bring it in tomorrow if you’re available. Thank you so much!
Tiffany

TO: Nice customer
SUBJECT: Update on your order
Hi Pamela – I’m embarrassed to say that my two year old decided to help me out. He scrawled all over the outside of the package with a sharpie as I was gathering up to go to the PO. Ugh! I have it all fixed up now, ready to go. And Sharpies further out of reach. So sorry for the delay… I’m refunding your shipping in just a sec.

Thank you, and I really apologize!
Tiffany

TO: Business contact who wants me to call him so we can talk about business
SUBJECT: Sorry I missed your call
Yes, hi! Sorry – Just got your message. It was chaos when you called, did not hear it ring. When and where would you like to meet? I can do almost any day this week. Mornings would be best, unless you want my kids in the middle of it, which I promise you don’t.

Talk to you soon,
Tiffany

I am on a diet. It’s a modified version of the Specific Carb Diet, which has been proven to improve digestive and general health. The Specific Carb Diet is a clear, well-researched plan that is very, very easy to follow as long as you are careful not to live in modern society around any people who eat food.

So I modified it.

The Very Specific Carb Diet
Day 1:
An embarrassing amount of cashews
Water
Fruit

Day 2:
Spanish roasted peanuts
Water
Fruit
1 Coke

Day 3:
Spanish peanuts
Water
1 vegetable (not potatoes or other starchy veg.)

Day 4:
Cashews
Water
Salad + An entire pizza buffet

Day 5:
Cashews
Water
Sour cream chicken enchiladas with beans, rice, chips, and queso.
Coke

Day 6:
Cashews
Water
Bacon

Day 7:
Wendy’s bacon cheeseburger
Coke, because it comes with a coke! You can’t just waste coke.
Non-starchy Vegetables or fruit
Water

Repeat days 1 – 7 forever, gradually adding in more vegetables and phasing out bread and rice. So far I’m doing great. If I’m able to stick to it, I’m going to market this diet as revolutionary road to health and weight loss. Not that you will actually lose weight on it, but how is that any different than other diets? And with mine you have to eat pizza!

In other mundane suburbanite life news, Graham hurt himself yesterday. It had been a long day, we woke up painfully early to take Nicolaus to his five-year checkup. (He is very healthy, needed no shots, weighs only 39 pounds, may eventually need glasses, and wasn’t very cooperative in general. Ah, genetics.)

After the doctor’s visit — which was a family affair — we came home, ate messily, then drove downtown, turned around drove back to a different suburb to go to a nature center and see animals. Then play play play, drive drive drive, eat Mexican food (because of my diet), then play some more outside the restaurant. They have these big rocks for kids and drunk people to play with, so the kids played.

Graham was running, holding a big round rock, when he fell. He caught himself with the rock-holding hand, so he didn’t bump his head but did smash the hell out of his finger. The nail was cracked all the way through and blood pooled under it and oh God. Poor kid. He howled and howled and made the whole world feel awful for him.

I mentally looked up the proper treatment for a busted fingernail. The treatment, which I found in the same imaginary book as my diet, is this:
1. Rinse the wound and closely inspect for signs of breakage
2. Wrap in bandage or bandaid to stop bleeding
3. Make a fancy “RRRrrrawrrr!” noise at child and encourage him to be a monster, to confirm that child can bend fingers at all.
4. Administer strawberry milkshake, by mouth
5. Watch for signs of breakage/reasons to freak out. Child is probably fine but! may need to be rushed to ER at any moment!

The milkshake worked, although he still won’t let me touch his finger without crying. He did scare me right before bed. All of a sudden he doubled over and started crying and saying that he was cold. Did you see Watership Down? Holy shit. He said he was cold inside his tummy, cried, walked all stiff and weird, and curled up in my lap where he whimpered and begged for warm pajamas.

I panicked. Did he have some kind of toxic shock from the injury? Tetanus? Sudden-onset jaundice? Post-traumatic stress?

Then he burped and felt much better.

Gas from the milkshake, was all.

Which is why (full circle!) milkshakes are not allowed on the diet.