1. Did you know that when you spend money on printing and art supplies you can’t count those as business expenses?? DID YOU? For much of today I’ve felt like throwing up thanks to this wee detail in our nation’s tax code.

All of my raw materials and inventory are considered assets until the year I sell them. So where I thought that I had more than $10,000 worth of expenses, it turns out that what I really have is assets. The good news is that it sounds very grown up to say I have material assets.

2. Whatever you are doing right now is wrong because YOU are doing it. Didn’t you know that Graham wanted to go to your job today and surf the web and read blogs? Are you implying that you don’t think a three year old could do those things? He is capable, you know. He can do it by himself. I suggest that you apologize to him, quickly, before he destroys you and sounds the THIS ISN’T A HAPPY DAY alarm.

Last night I was worried that he had permanently twisted himself into the shape of a tantrum. He was so angry that he tried to block the doorway so I couldn’t come back into the house. Everyone in our building now knows that THIS ISN’T A HAPPY DAY.

When he’s really mad at me, he wants to hit me and call me Poop, Stinky, or Flat head. But he stops himself. The result is a weird slow motion, closed-fisted pat while he yells, “You — you — MAMA!”

Which is a pretty good dis.

3. It’s been two months, and Roux is still not housetrained. I bought some spRay stuff that is supposed to show dogs where to pee. The bottle looks exactly like the stuff we use to clean up his accidents. A little disconcerting.

I also bought some of those training pee pads but they have some basic design flaws. They are the perfect size and shape for a puppy to enjoy shredding. Second, it feels confusing and awkward to stand there and encourage him to pee in the house. Third, the package says they are scented like grass so the dog will want to pee on them. What? If my dog would pee on grass I wouldn’t need training pads. They should be scented like a beige chenille couch. Or hardwood floors. Or Graham’s bed.

Obviously there are worse problems than my three year old acting like a three year old, and a dog acting like a dog. It’s really the taxes thing I’m bummed about. And my own dumbness. And my hungriness, but that will be solved as soon as I gather the energy to put the boys in the car and drive to Taco Bell for a tostada and a Dr.Pepper. Gluten free! Yay! I’m stupid!

It has been a subplot dream sequence kind of week. On April Fool’s Day someone sent an email inviting me to a very cool thing. I rolled my eyes upward and fixed them on some imaginary point in the upper right hand corner of the scene and sighed a wistful sigh, thinking how nice it would be if the email were real and not a mean joke. Everything got blurry and then refocused as I saw myself reading other bloggers’ accounts of SciFoo as the coolest, funnest, life-changingest thing they’d ever been to. Then I imagined me replying to the email and saying: Yes, I graciously accept your invitation to come to California and be the dumbest person in the room.

Right after I replied, Tim O’Reilly wrote a thing about my baby books on twitter.
Right after that, people emailed me nice things about the baby books and some people ordered things.
Then Boingboing posted about my other book, Pat Schrodinger’s Kitty.
Then a lot of people ordered things.

Meanwhile, back in the main plotline, we started thinking maybe we should move into a bigger apartment. So we rode the elevator up and down and looked at all of the nice available apartments with their spacious living rooms and upgraded kitchens. I kept expecting to walk into one that felt like aha! This is it, THIS is the beautiful place with the great view and the high wonderful cool urbanite ceilings where we belong.

We looked at half a dozen lofts and none of them were exciting enough to justify the hassle of moving and the increase in rent. Walking back into our own 900 square foot, weirdly cavelike space we all felt a wave of Oh wait! Here it is. Our place doesn’t look like the set of a trendy sitcom — in fact it looks more like a supervillain’s flamboyant underground hideout — but we really do like the place.

The real problem isn’t the apartment, it’s that my god we are stupid packrats. No amount of square footage will fix that. This week while my mom was visiting I forced myself to dig through bins and boxes that we have carried with us for fourteen years. I threw away scribbled grocery lists from the mid-nineties, art supplies from college that were dried out and unusable, and a hundred or so tiny glass contact lens vials which we have moved back and forth across this great nation three times because hey neat! little glass jars! I took five bags of trash to the giant Star Wars-style compactor and drove two large loads to Goodwill where I am told that my donation puts people to work. Get to work, you people! Here is a toddler-sized chair and a bunch of sweaters I don’t wear anymore, and a laser printer that needs toner which costs more than a new laser printer, and a video tape of Bob the Builder which makes me queasy to even think about. Hopefully it will go to someone who really needs it, like maybe a pregnant lady who can use it for four months to babysit her two year old while she sits on the couch and tries not to throw up.

Don’t forget about meanwhile! In the dream sequence: I got invited to a conference for smart people and that led to viral-type publicity and that led to orders which led to me being happy and a little freaked out because oh my god I need to make more books, but that’s okay – I like making them! – but still, woah. And back in the main plot, my mom came into town and paralyzed my children with her iphone so we could clean the holy hell out of everything.

Then she left because she’s mean and doesn’t love me enough to do whatever I want her to do. Can you believe that? Tonight as I tucked my children in bed they almost cried because they miss Mámo and her iphone. I hugged them tight and told them don’t worry, she and it will be back for another visit soon.

In summation, as a new spring dawns and Easter is upon us it is time to reflect about the glories of rebirth and new opportunities that our lives constantly afford us. My business is building momentum, our home can breathe because it isn’t stuffed full of crap and, if my mom comes back again soon, Nicolaus can maybe beat that level of the airplane shooting game.

I went to my doctor early this week and said doctor, my stomach hurts all the time and it’s been thirty years of my stomach hurting and I’m getting tired of it so I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to try eliminating everything out of my diet except for cashews and clementine oranges and maybe bell peppers.

He looked at my history which includes seeing specialists and a recurring diagnosis of IBS and asked me a bunch of rude questions about my bathroom business. He’s nosy. Why is he so nosy? That stuff is private. He’s worse than the lady who answers the phone when I call to make an appointment. “And what did you need to see the doctor about?”

I always hesitate while the part of my brain who is a smartass has a quick discussion with the part of me that hopes to someday cause a localized stroke that will disable the smartass so that I can function normally in our society. So many things I could say. And what did you need to see the doctor about today?
“Poop and farts.”

Or: “Well I remembered that there used to be tiny people living inside my vagina, I want to make sure he has that in my chart. I heard about a woman in California who recently turned out to have a bunch, and it’s happened to me twice now so — anyway, seems important to not be caught off guard if that ever happens again.”

Or “Can you just put down that I don’t feel good? My bathroom scale broke and we have that lower copay now so I want to come in mainly for the part where they weigh me.”

Or “That son of a bitch owes me money.”

And so on. But usually I just mutter something about girl problems, which is neither in nor out on the smartass thing. It’s what usually happens when the two sides of my brain compromise: I end up making a joke, but it doesn’t make sense and it isn’t funny.

I laid my plan out for him and he listened and asked questions and the whole time my kids were in the room chatting to each other and to me and to themselves because now that Graham talks my life is a non-stop picture-in-picture infomercial for whatever random shit just came into my kids’ weird little brains, in a good way I mean, except that it makes it hard to concentrate on doctors who are saying things about my diet idea. Things like no, Tiffany. Don’t do that diet, Tiffany. That’s not the scientific method, Tiffany.

Oh. As much as I like the idea of trying my new “safe food” diet plan, I do love the scientific method.

So for the next few weeks he wants me to cut gluten out of my diet. Just gluten. I am specifically supposed to NOT cut out other things. Then we’ll go from there. Fine. So what the hell is gluten? I’ve been researching this on the web and have discovered that most people who end up on this diet are far more upset about gluten-free diets than I am. This is for three reasons:

1. Most people eat things besides Mexican food. The entire country of Mexico could develop a sudden wheat intolerance and they might not even notice. Corn, beans, rice, vegetables — all fine. My default meal is a bowl of lean taco meat mixed with organic salsa, beans, rice, cheese and chopped vegetables, eaten with salt-free corn tortilla chips.

2. Most people haven’t had stomach aches that rival labor pains for most of their lives. I’m not whining, just saying. It’s tiresome enough that trading bread for stomach aches is sounding maybe alright.

3. Most people hadn’t already resigned themselves to a diet consisting of three foods. When I started reading about the gluten-free diet I was dazzled by its variety and richness.

Ooh and! 4. Most people hadn’t already found themselves avoiding these foods out of the kind of superstition that only an IBS patient can understand. I made it through the day in high school by eating no breakfast, followed by a lunch of lemonade, butterfinger candy bars and cheetos which are all not only very yummy and nutritious but are all gluten free. Coincidence? Almost definitely! But then I’d come home and eat regular food and have a stomach ache and blame the junk I ate at school. Hmmmm?

We’ll see what happens. I’m honestly not sure what to hope for. If this diet works then that’s sad because it means no more pizza and I do dearly, dearly love walking to our favorite pizza place and eating horrifying amounts of pizza. But if it doesn’t work then that’s sad because of all the other stuff I just said. Either way my standard of living is excellent by global standards and my kids are funny and my dog is cute. So you know. Gluten.

Did I tell you that we were building a spaceship? It turns out that closets are the perfect size for a playhouse. Sure, when you’re living in roughly 950 square feet that could be useful storage space but really. If you could go back to your own childhood and choose between having a place to keep clothes and toys and spare sheets or your very own space ship, what would you choose?

If you opted for storage space, you might want to quietly excuse yourself now. It’s awkward. Sorry.

So! The design challenge:

1. Make a children’s bedroom look as though people live there on purpose
2. Give the kids a place to play on rainy days where they can safely jump and/or bounce and/or navigate their way into a black hole by jumping through time thus appearing to go faster than light if for only a moment
3. Don’t do anything permanent or horrifying to the walls because this is an apartment and we’d like to get our deposit back someday without a crazy amount of work.
4. Spend less than $50 on the entire project

These aren’t the greatest pictures, but here it is!

There are four stations: The Lab, The Command Center, Engineering, and Navigation. This helps prevent fighting and allows for one or two more kids to come over and play. I tried to include plenty of assorted things to push and do and wiggle and read to keep them interested.

Here is the Command center:

The lab:

Navigation: (that’s Graham operating the mapping system on his tiny etch-a-sketch)

Engineering:

Window to the outside: (The boys painted this together)

The door… I want to add round windows or something spaceshippy.

Here’s what their room looks like now. It’s hard to see, but there’s a flight path through the solar system drawn on the wall with chalk, and all the planets are labeled.

Oooh dang it, I forgot to take a picture of the fuel cell container. It’s a brushed metal toilet brush holder that was on the damaged clearance aisle at walmart. They have a pair of kitchen tongs for handling the radioactive material, plus safety goggles so I’m sure it’s alright. I handled radioactive fuel cells all the time when I was little and I turned out fine.

So yeah! Yay! They love the spaceship so far and I am dorkishly excited. Most of what’s in there was purchased in the automotive accessory department at Walmart, except the rope lights which were given to us by a kindly internet friend and the cushions on the floor. Those are six-inch foam cushions from an old sectional couch that my parents were throwing away. They’re perfect for jumping and bouncing and falling and maybe even sleeping on.
The posters on the ship’s wall are some of my larger prints that were damaged or creased, so we flipped them over and painted on them. The boys told me what labels and buttons they wanted – the only one I came up myself with was Flux Capacitor. They resisted, but they’ll understand and appreciate that one when they’re older. They drew circuits and all kinds of electronic things, and I painted the walls with verrry pale watercolor. Hopefully that will be easy to cover with a single coat of white when we move.

As for the room, those are vintage posters that decorated my dad’s room when he was a kid. The rug was a gift when Nicolaus was born. The boys’ quilts were handmade by Aunt Alisha and Internet Aunt Amy. The solar system was a project we did together.

Woooooo blast off!

Well his name is Roux. Or Roo, if you’re feeling more Disney than Cajun. Or Cutie-Roo Cute the Cute Pup if you’re feeling more like you are Graham.

I keep waiting for this dog to freak out and be terrified of something, or to call the police on us for taking him out in cold weather, or to write frantic emails to my mom begging for help because we don’t feed or pet him enough. But no, he’s pretty alright with his dogness. It’s a relief. And it also makes me that much sadder that poor Mouse was so distraught all the time. When we got him he was already grown, and his brain was already a mess. His first home wasn’t abusive or terrible, she just didn’t socialize him at all.

Then we, because it was the olden days before cable shows about dog training, accidentally encouraged his panic by telling him “It’s ohhkayyyyy, it’s okayyyy…” which dogs it turns out take to mean: It’s okay to choke yourself until you pass out trying to get away from that leaf. It’s okay that you want to die because you saw a person in a wheelchair.

The only thing we did right was to laugh — rather than reassure him — when he was scared of the dog in the oven, and what do you know? He eventually got over it. I haven’t yet seen that British dog lady suggest derisive laughter as an important technique, but we only get to see the show when we visit my inlaws.

Anyway, we’re trying to socialize this dog as much as possible. And when something potentially skirry happens, I underreact. Huh. Train. Shrug. Hey, strangers, weird. So Roux starts to freak, looks at us, realizes there’s nothing to worry about, and chills out. Over the next few weeks we’re going to keep taking the dog with us everywhere so that he gets used to people and wheels and noises and leaves. I’m going to order pizza so he won’t pull the fire alarm whenever a deliveryperson shows up, a personal sacrifice we must make, because that’s what committed, responsible dog owners do.

I’m also coming closer to understanding what people mean when they talk about socializing kids. After all of my pre-defensive worry about being judged or hassled about homeschooling, the only objection I’ve really consistently heard is: But what about socialization? Kids need school for socialization.

Part of me always goes: what does that even mean? The fun of hanging out with kids? The stress of dealing with bullies? The chance to practice conformity?

But as we try to socialize our puppy I am realizing that I know exactly what socialization means. It means exposing a child to all different situations and experiences while their brains are young and flexible so that they hopefully won’t grow up to be freaky, stressed-out oddballs who are afraid of their own reflection in the oven.