Parallelism

David's watching a nature program. On it is a fish. The male of the species attaches itself to the female and stays there... permanently. She is responsible for keeping this male alive. She does everything for him. Her very blood courses through his body. His only job is to stay put and pump her full of sperm.

Can any of you relate?

Trippin'

A few weeks ago David announced he was going to take Sam camping in Yosemite. Faced with the unexpected freedom of having to care for only 2 children I decided to drive 6 1/2 hours north to visit my parents. The drive up was quite surprisingly... not horrible. The visit itself was great. But the drive home had me mustering all of my good sense to not drive off the embankment. Clara did not want to be in the car. Actually, she wouldn't have minded the car if she could only have been in my arms; but this is illegal as you know. So I stopped several times to calmly ease her into sleep in my arms. But as soon as her sweet tush hit the car seat she would wake up and scream. After one such attempt we hit an unfortunate strip of highway which had no hospitable exits. So Clara cried. Despite attempts from "the Binkifier" (Jackson's self-appointed moniker) to soothe her and replace her binky from his place next to her in the car, she cried. Despite me singing to her, she cried. Thoughts of the studies on how continuous crying can detrimentally alter a baby's brain, mixed with flashes of news stories on families abducted while parked on the sides of highways. I couldn't decide what horrible fate to choose. So I did what any good mother would do when faced with such a stressful situation: I turned up the music really loud. There was no hope for Clara in either of the two possible scenarios, but my sanity could still be saved. So with Blondie belting it out on my car stereo I went to my happy place and Clara soon fell asleep. That's not entirely true. First she stopped crying and went completely catatonic as if her unanswered cries had caused her very soul to be wrenched from her tiny body. Then she fell asleep.

And now here are some pictures taken shortly before that catastrophic car ride.




And a few pics from the Yosemite trip that David was kind enough to share.

Music and rebellion

I thought that life would slow down once the boys started back to school... but it hasn't. Not only is it busier but it's more scheduled and routine. I dislike schedules and routine. I still have a lot of stuff to do but now there are certain times and places in which these things must get done. So I've been slacking on this blog because, well, that's one thing that I still have control over. I don't have to write anything. What I have been doing instead is reading the blogs of other people and thinking about how I should really update mine. Then I get a little bit of satisfaction when I shut down the computer after ignoring my blog for yet another day. Sometimes it just feels good to defy my own authority.

I've also been exploring some new music. Having thoroughly burned out on "Bananaphone" and "Froggie went a courtin'" I decided it was time to take some steps towards bringing quality, grown-up music back into my life. Pandora Internet Radio is a website I've been visiting a lot lately. It's kind of a no-brainer, passive way of discovering new music. Basically you put in a song or an artist that you like and then the magic web gods play songs that are similar. You can then let it be known whether you like the song or never want to hear it again. It's fun and free. I'm currently listening to some of the music right now which is why this entry is a bit uninteresting. I used to be able to listen to music while I wrote but something terrible happened to my brain after I had children.

It really is an alternative school

During the time we were hard at work trying to unlock the mystery of Sam, I bought some cheap memo recorders from Radio Shack that could record and playback a message of up to 10 seconds. The device was simple and had one very large button to press to play back the message. The idea was that we could record two different choices for Sam on two different recorders. For example, when pressed one may say "eat" and the other may say "drink." We'd let Sam listen to each message first by having him press the button with either his right or left hand and then we'd ask him to make a choice and press the corresponding recorder button. Brilliant, right? Sam didn't think so. He refused to use our ad hoc communication device. Jackson, on the other hand, loved these things and would frequently steal them from his brother to record messages for David and me. Usually he'd set the recorder near me or David while we were in the middle of a conversation, press the button and then run away. See, we're always getting on his case about interrupting us and with his stubborn innovative little personality I shouldn't be surprised that he found a way to interrupt without actually being there himself. So I did not miss the recorders when he finally grew tired of them... or maybe I hid them; I can't quite remember. But yesterday they made a re-appearance. Jackson had a friend over and the two of them were playing with these recorders up in Jackson's room. His friend brought one of them down to me and said, "You gotta listen to this." I pressed play and heard my little boy saying, "I have a girlfriend. She's pretty great. Her name is Natalie and I kissed her at school." Now I know about Natalie and it's always been pretty obvious that she has a crush on Jackson. But the two of them are friends and I always just assumed Jackson hadn't gotten into that whole boy/girl dynamic yet. So I was a little surprised to hear him speak of her as his girlfriend. And I realized my 6 year old has important secrets from me. It was during this revelation that the friend said, "Yeah, Jackson said the girls are really flexible at his school," and this is where the panic set in because his friend's speech was painfully slow, "and they let him..." Oh speak faster child! What do these flexible hussies let my baby do? "Um, they let him kiss them..." Where? Damn it! WHERE? "... on the lips." And I saw that the clock said 5:00 so I poured myself a drink.

You know you're living in Orange County when...

The woman who cleans my house was not able to come last week because she was recovering... from a tummy tuck. Apparently this was not her first surgical enhancement. She must be working her ass off saving up for her surgeries. Or is she paying a surgeon to do that, too?