Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom

Begun yesterday, finished today; still sadly lacking the creamy filling of sanity...


Fun day, thus far.

Perhaps I can sneak a few minutes of Sane Time, now that I've completed The Great Clifford Hunt. Lucien, who has the attention span and energy levels of a hummingbird on crack, was intent on finding "A CLIIIFFFORRD!" despite the fact that we do not even own a stuffed Clifford the Big Red Dog. There's no explaining concepts like "DO NOT HAVE" to a crazed toddler, of course, and so I finally consented to go see if perhaps the desired stuffed toy had fallen out of the air, or been left here by some Clifford-loving aliens.
Thus began ten minutes of searching high and low for an item we do not possess. Lucien's first stop was (naturally) his sister's potty, where he lifted the lid and leaned down towards the bowl, inquiring "Clifford in here?" I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the fact that he actually believed a toy he has never seen in our home might appear in a potty...or that he thought Clifford might actually answer him, from inside the potty.
I'm quite sure if he were in there, we would have heard him screaming. God knows I would scream.

In the past hour, Lucien has:

• Watched apx. 20min. of Clifford cartoons
• Watched apx. 12min. of Cars
• Watched apx. 15min. of The Wild
• Asked to watch a Justice League dvd
• Wept, at not being allowed to sample his fourth movie in an hour
• Screamed because we have no Clifford toys
• Screamed because Kalel came too close to his food
• Screamed because Kalel saw him lying on the floor, took advantage, and sat on his head (my kingdom, to have gotten a picture of that)
• Screamed because I would not get him a "hurrrnngglllhh" (your guess is as good as mine)
• Loudly announced that he is watching (insert dvd title here) apx. 87 times
• Run about the room on all fours, barking and mooing (continuous). I have no idea, regarding the mooing
  

In the past hour, Kalel has:

• Stolen everything her brother has been holding, looking at, or thinking about
• Bellowed a war cry fit for a Spartan, then smashed her snack bowl across the room and into the floor, sending unacceptable food all over the den
• Screeched in rage because I would not let her throw a book out the window
• Screeched in rage because she had thrown her own cup across the room, and was now displeased with this decision
• Screeched in rage because she did not want to watch The Wild
• Built a small house out of blocks
• Yelled "AH-DEE-YA-YA-DEH-DEH" apx. 214 times
• Hurled a number of small plastic balls against the opposite wall, narrowly missing my head, as I foolishly crossed her path
• Shoved the entire front of her dress into her mouth and shuffled around the room, yelling a garbled "UUURRRRGGG!!!" through a mouthful of skirt
• Sat on her weenie brother's head, making him cry - which I fully condone, and would like to try, myself

And still, Boy continues to pester me. He never gives up; no amount of Gentle or Forceful "no"s will do the trick, and as for reasoning...pffft...I'd have better luck reasoning with a stale Cheesy Poof. The more I "reason," the more he jumps up and down like an agitated gorilla, waving his arms and becoming increasingly loud.
What DOES work, I've found, is hitting him. No, bear with me, here - Lucien is, of late, obsessed with "ows." He LOVES an excuse to say "OW!" This child actually invents imaginary injuries, just so he can claim pain and get a kiss for it; he's like a neurotic little dog whose foot was stepped on once, and is still limping, years later, often forgetting which paw is supposed to be injured.
Sooo...if he won't stop, after about the twentieth "NO," I just smack that little waving hand. Immediately it's "OWWW! HUUURRRRT!" And he'll go away and leave me alone, for the price of a kiss - the kiss means he's gotten something he wants, and he completely forgets that the kiss wasn't what he originally wanted. Awesome. I'm convinced that God made little kids dumb, for precisely this purpose.

Time for me to add, here - I started this blog THIS MORNING, and it is now 5pm. Welcome to Motherhood.

It's been a pretty crappy day, or at least, it should have been. I don't even REMEMBER this morning - that should tell you how *chipper* I was, upon waking. Later, after Deirdre left for school, Peyton discovered (apx. 20min before he was due to go to work, of course) that he had no earthly idea where his wallet had meandered off to. How this even happens to a person, is beyond me. I lose MANY things - some of them quite important - but losing a wallet baffles me. Worse yet, as usual, he was convinced he knew just where it was, an idea which never, ever proves to be true.

If it's just like a man, to lose his wallet, then it's doubly Just Like A Man, to be in complete denial of the shoddy memory that has resulted in that loss.
And my own dear husband is King of the "But I Remember Exactly..." Tribe. Sadly, my love for him precludes me mocking him any further, over this incident, as I promised him I wouldn't.
I said "this incident." I am, however, perfectly free to mock him over pretty much everything else in the world. Fine print is everything, in a marriage, you know. ;D

At any rate, wallet was eventually found, but (of course) not before we'd had a nice little fight over it, or more specifically, Peyton's insistance that he knew just where it was. Add to that the fact that, with all the kid-interruptions, it took me literally half a day to list half a dozen items on Ebay. Those same kid-interruptions also distracted me enough to miss out on bidding on a few items I'd hoped to win - fall clothes for them, as usual - and as that happens frequently, I'm always tempted to start yelling "Alright; that's it! No clothes for you; you will all have to run around naked this winter! Noooo...it's too late to be sorry - those were THE LAST CLOTHES IN THE WORLD, and now you're just STUCK, aren't you?" There's just such a short window of time during which you can get away with that sort of lying, and it seems a shame not to take advantage of it.
On top of that sort of thing, and the usual badbadbadbadohwhatiswrongwithmykids, I somehow managed to ram my right thigh into...you know, I don't even remember, now...ram it into something, at any rate; something that left a bruise bearing a remarkable resemblance to a hickey. On my thigh. So now, I look like a slut, but with none of the fun benefits.

So, as I said, it should have been a bad day. But I did get most of those auctions up, and I also snagged a brand new silk coat and pants set, for Kalel, that I remember seeing selling for around $30, earlier this year (on Ebay; God knows how much it was, new), for the ridiculous sum of less-than-$10-including-shipping. And look! I'm blogging, even if it took all day, to do so.
More importantly, I've had "Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)", by The Crew Cuts, playing at downright Zany volume in my head, all day.
And it's just damned hard to stay dour, with "Hey nonny ding dong, alang alang alang...Boom BA-doh, ba-doo ba-doodle-AY...Oh, life could be a dreeeam, SH-BOOM!" toodling along as a soundtrack to your day.

And now, since this post is moving into it's second day of not-being-posted, I'm cutting this sucker off, right here. Tune in Next Time, which will assuredly come much sooner than This Time did. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

Oh, and you guys REALLY need to go click this link, to see a perfect example of just what Bad Parenting is all about.