Side effects so far: dreams are not as detailed and interesting as usual. Though I think I did dream something very funny about an old man who came to the present from 1,000 years in the past via time travel, but it was confusing see because he looked so old. People thought he meant that he was a thousand years old and it was very funny in a Three’s Company way to watch him try to explain that he’s only 90-something, even though – sigh, yes, well he was born some thousand years ago but that’s not how it works and – oh nevermind.

But the texture of my dreams is normally a lot more interesting and fun. These are sort of like watching a movie while half asleep.

Other side effect: Is there a word that means “full of words”? I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel very… wordy. If I actually posted everything here that I want to post right now, you’d all run away for good. And how!

So I won’t.

So. How’s it going? Anything… good on the internet?

Graham was in a horrible mood today which – please forgive me – is almost entertaining. He wants so bad to be awful, to tell us all to fuck off, to throw the tantrums his brain is demanding. But part of him likes us, and is embarrassed, and wants a hug, and wants to tell us a joke. He was howling and furious because he couldn’t cut. It is his right to cut, and he is very good at cutting, and he wanted to cut and I – an unreasonable whore of a mother – was saying no. So we faced off.

“Graham. Put the scissors down and stop throwing a fit. If you don’t stop it, you will go to your room.”

He stood, old-western style and stared at me, deciding what to do. His face quickly morphed from one expression to the next. He scowled… then melted into sad. Then shifted to an angry pout. Then – a tiny twitch of a smile? Back to scowl. Then a flash smile. Then hurt. Outrage! Half a smile followed by a look of total confusion.

He needed help. I scooped him up and gently took the scissors, swirled him around and changed the subject. We moved on, until the next human rights violation occurred four minutes later. Dinner was announced, and he wanted to eat but also wanted to bring his paper boat to the table but we didn’t hear him so we said just come and eat, and he thought that meant no you can’t bring your lousy boat to the fucking table, so he howled and we told him to quit it and

I’m doing it, aren’t I? I told you. It’s a problem. Maybe there’s a wordpress plugin that will auto-cut a third of what I write.

When he messes up, he hides his eyes. It’s should be infuriating that this otherwise capable person pees everywhere but my god, he looks like a little rabbit with his paws over his little face and it just makes me want to hug him until I gobble him up, but not in a violent child-eating way. In a oooooh I just can’t squish him hard enough way.

Nicolaus meanwhile was more bouyant than usual, and he chatted with us and instructed us on the ways of many things. The kid is writing a book of funny history… he dictates while I type, then he draws pictures and he wants me to print the whole thing out and make him famous somehow. Here are the entries he has come up with so far:

Nicolaus Copickleus
Discovered that the Sun goes around the Earth and THAT all goes around ANOTHER SUN.

Julius Meaner
Julius Meaner was an emperor in Rome. He was called Meaner because he was really mean and one time he killed Jesus. His reward from God was to get stabbed.

I have got to find the picture for that one because it is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Julius Caesar is standing there with blood gushing out everwhere and there are knives that his friends threw down and he’s saying something like “Oh I’m dying” – and there’s a beautiful angel up at the top saying “HER IS YUR REWRD.”

When Nicolaus tells this story he almost can’t talk he’s laughing so hard. “You know, your reward for killing Jesus?” Hahaha. Ha. Alright so technically Caesar predated Christ but the premise is still pretty funny. He cracks up telling it because haha! REWARD? Being killed? Get it? That’s not a very nice reward!

I love this kid. He is so damned weird.

Today was Kevin’s ten year anniversary of being married to me on purpose. When we explained this to Nicolaus and told him we were all going out to lunch to celebrate he asked why we were celebrating now, ten years later, instead of you know – like, at the time we actually got married. Because. We had our wedding that day and it was so stressful and exhausting that we weren’t up for going out to eat afterwards.

Oooh and! We have declared Saturdays our family art day. Tomorrow is the first one – we’re all going to work on projects and make a giant mess in my studio. Then we’ll clean it all up and go to the grocery store. I’m trying this new thing with cooking at home, and it’s almost becoming fun in a sick, satisfying way because hey look at me I’m acting like a regular person.

Okay shhhhh. I’m going to stop now.

It feels like a giant year-shaped connect-the-dots. And somewhere in between errands and clay class and music class and swim and gymnastics for Graham that really felt like the one thing too much, but Graham said that he was going to call motherfucking CPS if I didn’t sign him up for a gymnastics class — at least I think that’s what he said; we are taking him in for a speech evaluation in a week or so — but somewhere in the middle of all of that, we are homeschooling.

It’s going well. That’s what I say whenever people ask me how it’s going. It’s going really well, actually, in the sense that my kid is partway through kindergarten, is reading and mathing and whatnot, and learning about science concepts like what’s inside the earth and how different kinds of rocks are formed and how electricity works. He’s suddenly over the history obsession, I’m not sure why or how such an intense passion vanished so all of a sudden, but it did. He’ll still listen if I start reading something history-related, but he doesn’t ask me history questions all day anymore. No more frantic stuffing his books with bookmarks so we can read and answer his questions about what’s going on in this picture and what are these guys doing to that other guy?

It only happens about once a year, but Nicolaus is between obsessions right now. Oooh unless you count a total, possibly unhealthy, addiction to this game.

I was going to write more about our little school but I fell asleep and it’s morning now and the boys are driving large plastic cars all over me. Hard to focus.

The core issue is that, while he is a wonderful person with a very big heart, he is someone who seems wholly unable to predict and announce bathroom activities before they happen. Or AS they happen or, for that matter, after they happen which is strange because I remember a certain younger version of him who would army crawl to the phone and try to call the police if we didn’t change him the very instant that he peed. We all mellow with age I guess.

Every once in a while I walk around like a damned fool trying to figure out what IS that smell? It doesn’t smell like a dirty diaper — it just smells like bad house funk. You know? So I make Kevin take out the garbage, we do the dishes and scrub the sink, and start to haul the refrigerator out to the side of the road before it dawns on me that wait. Could it be Graham?

I go to change him and holy living lord. It’s beyond a dirty diaper. It’s… it’s… I don’t even know what it is. It’s horrible.

“Graham!” I say, as I use the 37th wipe and look up the number for HASMAT to dispose of his pants, “DUDE. You have to TELL me when you are poopie.”

“I’m poopie, Mama.”

2. When I saw this post on Reddit, I panicked because how did they know!?
Nicolaus has discovered Star Trek. And honestly, I’m so, so relieved. There was this whole Star Wars thing with him, and it was fun, but a five year old’s endless questions about Star Wars are hard to answer. Because Star Wars is deep and philosophical on one level, but on another level it’s about whatever the fuck George Lucas thought would be awesome that day. That means that there are a lot of things that just don’t make a lot of sense.
Now I know, I know, you Star Wars people are going to be all but no! It makes perfect sense! And then you’ll give me this big ad-hoc complex theory which explains why everything makes sense. But you know what’s a simpler explanation? George Lucas pulled it out of his ass. Which is totally fine! Good for him! I commend his skill at doing so. Except I have this kid who wants to know why every single thing in a movie was said or done, and Star Wars makes this an exhausting hassle.

Star Trek questions are way, way easier to answer. They have a vocabulary and rules and they work their nerd butts off to stay consistent. Their simplified wrestling with ethical and moral issues makes sense to a young kid.

We’re working our way through all of The Next Generation, skipping over any super intense ones for now. Nicolaus thinks Data is the coolest thing ever. Now he walks around the house and says things like, “Computer. Activate the transponder matrix to my positronic impulses. Engage.”

And that officially makes my life complete.

3. Sometimes we use candy in lieu of parenting
Early this summer we were having real problems with bedtime. Nicolaus. He would lay awake for hours, talk to himself and get up repeatedly to make sure we weren’t having lots of fun or anything.

Wait. Did I ever tell you about the time when he came out and caught us eating Kit Kats and watching the Cars movie? We were testing this stupid thing that was supposed to polish scratches out of DVDs. And eating Kit Kats because hey! Halloween candy is still in here! Nicolaus was all holy cow, so this is what they do whenever we are sleeping.

No wonder the poor kid’s an insomniac.

Anyway, Kevin was putting the boys to bed one night this summer and he told them “Go to be with no problems tonight, and maybe the Tootsie Roll fairy will come.”

“We – wait, what’s the Tootsie Roll fairy?”

“It’s a fairy that leaves a Tootsie Roll for children who go to bed with no problems.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes. But she doesn’t come every single time, because there’s only one Tootsie Roll fairy and there are like six billion people on the planet.”

Kevin really needs to write a book about this sleep training method, called “No HERE is the Happiest Baby on the Block, MFers!” Although maybe in the interest of full disclosure he should include the invoice for $1700 worth of dental work our kid is getting next month. But I swear to you we brush Graham’s teeth all the time! And it only works because we normally never give him candy and he drinks tons of water and – crap. You already judged me, didn’t you? I knew confessing stuff on the internet was a bad idea.

The first night of the Tootsie Roll Fairy, both boys fell asleep the instant we said goodnight. And it has continued to work more or less perfectly for much of the summer. I really wish I had known about the power of Tootsie Rolls when Nicolaus was like a month or two old.

Pleased with the success, we’ve started using happy and sad jars full of little candies to bribe the boys into NOT fighting anymore. At the end of every day the boys divide up whatever is in the happy jar, and then they gleefully eat it because omg chocolate. It’s not a perfect system, but it definitely takes the edge off the pointless escalation of their constant battles which go
“I’m going to hassle you for no reason!”

“Yeah? Well I’m going to over react!”

“NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”

Now the battles go
“I’m going to hassle you, okay?”

“No, please don’t.”

“NO! Um. I mean, okay.”

I’m thinking a system like this could work well with warring countries.

4. We’re gradually replacing all of their toys with stuff from home depot.
Okay, that’s not a confession so much as a declaration of intent. Kevin bought a bunch of 1/2″ PVC pipe and fittings. He cut the pipe down into 3″, 6″, and 12″ pieces, then sanded the edges. We put them all in a bin in the newly appointed workshop, and the boys have played with almost nothing else since that moment. The whole project cost like $7. I see a very PVC Christmas ahead…

We’re waiting for our house to close. Yes, that house that we moved out of over a year ago. Glad to be done, but a little bummed about saying goodbye to my cute little home in Rockwall. It was nice knowing that it was there and it was ours. Not $750 a month’s worth of nice though, so I will probably get over it pretty quickly.

It’s humid and gross outside.

I fell off the laundry wagon. Have spent today catching up and cursing myself for letting it pile up like this.

Graham is making things so pointlessly difficult this afternoon – and the more stern I am with him, the harder he giggles at me.

Money freaks me out. I’m about to order a literal crapload of inventory. Everything’s in order with the printer, it’s all finally just about ready to rock and I am so excited. And yet I keep stalling on finally really actually placing the official order because my god, they want me to give them half of my money.

It’s hot outside in that way that drains your will to do anything other than go to Sonic in time for half-price slushes. Lately I accomplish everything in small bursts all day. It probably totals up to less than 2 hours of doing anything productive

I took a 20 minute nap this afternoon, and paid for it in birdseed. The boys decided to make Lovebird Dreamland, which apparantly involves toys hidden under a mountain of seed. Slightly better than the last nap I took, paid for in the form of cleaning a thin layer of watermelon juice off of everything we own. They were very proud of figuring out how to make water by slooshing up the inside of a watermelon and then drinking it with straws.

After the nap I felt guilty for ignoring my kids so much, so we set up a science experiment involving pennies and various liquids and cups and messes and Graham crying because we wouldn’t let him drink the cup of milk with the pennies in it. So I got him a cup of milk to drink. Which he immediately put pennies in.

Yesterday I spent an embarrassing amount of time making Star Wars paper dolls for the boys. We printed out coloring book pages from the good old internet, then cut them out and laminated them with contact paper. It was a ridiculous way to spend precious time, but I can’t even explain how good it feels to watch my kids play with something so simple and home made. Plus it’s just hilarious to watch them play. “I’ll get you Luke!”

“No you won’t”

“Yes and plus, I’m your daddy!”

“NO YOU ARE TOTALLY NOT.”

“Yes I am! Be bad like me and it will be fun haha!

“NO. And plus, did you know that you actually do have some good in you?”

“I do? Oh.”

So I’m pretty proud of the paper dolls. They’ll be perfect for entertaining the kids on the train — and I’m assuming other passengers as well — but that honestly was the most significant motion I’ve made towards preparing for the trip. Blah.

This morning Kevin left for work with these cheerful instructions: Be sure you eat all that bacon today. It will go bad by the time we get back from New York.

Oh, sweetie. I might not finish putting the laundry away or packing or gathering snacks and toys and blankets and bottles of tequila and stray dogs and long sticks with bandana bags tied at the end for the trip (did I mention that we are taking the train?) but I will accomplish this one thing. Just for you.

We got all the way through checkout before I realized my wallet wasn’t with me. More disturbing than the hassle of running home to get it was that it should have been in my purse. Where else would it be unless — well, unless I’d been driving all over town all day without it. Obviously crazy and impossible. Both of my kids know that the only reason they can’t drive is because you can’t drive without a license, and if there are exceptions and loopholes to that well, suddenly there are a few things we need to discuss some more.

So we rushed home and I started looking. It wasn’t on the table, it wasn’t on the couch, it wasn’t on the kitchen counter. Not on the bathroom counter, not on my bed or nightstand. Not in the pockets of the skirt I’d worn this morning until we splashed our feet in the pool and the skirt ended up soaked. Not on the table. Wait. Crap, I’ve looked on the table like four times already. But still, maybe! No.

I started to freak out. Oh my God. This is exactly why Kevin is going to one day invent a time machine and go back and warn his past self to stay the hell away from me. Or this! This is why he watches Sliders. He’s hoping there are universes out there where I am not a ditz. Just remember, Kevin: no matter how annoying it is to be with me, it is even more annoying to actually be me.

While I looked, Nicolaus drew pictures of flowers and the ocean for me. Then he made me a sign that said “WAR IS MI WALOT” on one side. On the other side is a picture of me, smiling and happy. It works like those “dishes are clean/ dishes are dirty” magnets. You flip it to the happy side whenever my wallet isn’t missing, and you flip it to the other side whenever I suck.

Then he got out the scissors and made me a spare driver’s license for in case this ever happens again. Which, honestly, I think I immediately misplaced.

We went and looked in the car again. Nope. Finally I sat down in the front passenger seat and tried to decide what to do. Should I call Kevin at work and confess that I’m a total idiot? Since we still haven’t found my keys from that other time, I decided it would be better to maybe wait. There isn’t much he could do about it anyway except freak out that someone maybe has my wallet. What good would that do?

My mom always taught us that you don’t find things by looking. You find things by thinking. It was incredibly annoying when I was a kid, but now – dang it. She’s right. So I sat there and thought for a minute. And then oh! Right! Back pocket of my pants from yesterday.

Nicolaus couldn’t wait to tell his daddy all about the funny thing with me being an idiot.

The next day, Graham had a similar experience. We were about to leave Michael’s when he yelped, “Wait! Where’s? My? Book?”

Crap. Michael’s is a butt-big store. Could be anywhere… crap crap crap. We tromped up and down every aisle. No book. Nicolaus marched up to every employee-looking adult and told them, “Hi. My little brother lost a small blue book. It’s really important. If you see it, please call my mama’s cell phone.”

But after – I don’t even know how long – the store announced that they were closing and we told Graham we’d have to leave and call about it tomorrow. He stopped walking. “No! No. We can’t leave without my book.” Then – well, he’s two. He burst into tears.

I bent down and hugged him. “Well let’s think about this. Where’s the last place you saw it? Did you put it down somewhere?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I didn’t.”

“Like — did you put it down near the toys?”

“No! I didn’t.”

“Sweetie, we’ll tell them to call us if they find it, okay?”

Resigned, he took my hand and we headed towards the door. Then he stopped. “I DID put it down.”

“You did? Where?”

“With the noses.”

“What?”

“I put it down by the noses.”

Nicolaus jumped up and down. Oh!! Oh oh oh! We were pretending those big foam cones were our noses and it was hilarious and Graham picked up the biggest one and put it on his nose and you told us no, put those down and –

Sure enough. Floral foam aisle, stuck in the shelf with the giant green foam noses.

How bad does it suck to be 34 and still have to admit that your mother’s annoying advice was right?