I wonder if the liquor store delivers? or What Looks Like Hell, on a Wednesday Night (IS it Wednesday?)

LOVE my ex; just love him.

Okay, so Saturday is currently his typical One Day of Fatherhood, a week. This past week, he'd wanted to switch that day to Sunday, as he said he had to go with his aunt to pick out a headstone for his recently-demised uncle, on Saturday.
Weird, but okie-dokie.

Sunday comes, and at 8am, the time he should be leaving his house to come pick her up, he calls, and in a voice that sounds every inch like he's been out all night, tells me he cannot come, because he has broken his glasses and cannot drive. He claims they were broken the night before, "in the car, when we wuz comin' back from Shreveport."
Shreveport. Infamous party city, two hours from his home, and not the place you'd be tombstone-shopping, late at night (IS there a place you'd be tombstone-shopping, late at night?).
He also claims that he has already tried to fix his glasses, to no avail, and that he's even taken them to Walmart's optical department, to be repaired, where they were declared unfixable. Amazing, that Walmart's Vision Center was miraculously open, sometime between Late At Night, and 8am The Next Morning.

Now, might be the interesting juncture at which to point out that, in the six years I was married to this man, he drove, and even worked, many, many times, without his glasses, as he is not severely nearsighted.

He wants to come see her, sometime during the week, and I tell him it just so happens that Monday is an off day, for her, as it's Parent-Teacher Conference day. He's THRILLED, and swears he will be here at 2pm, to pick her up for a few hours.

Okay, whatever. We explained to Deirdre that bio-dad was not coming, when she woke up, and she didn't seem to care - we had put new fish in her fishtank, and that was much more exciting. We did NOT tell her that he would be coming to get her the next day, as we are Well-Experienced in This Sort of Promise, coming from my ex.

Monday dawned, and after we came back from meeting with D's teacher, I gave him a call. No answer.
I tried calling him three more times, as the afternoon passed - no answer.
Yesterday - no answer.
Finally, late this afternoon, he answered his phone. And what was his reason, for standing his daughter up? He didn't get his glasses, 'til yesterday.
And what was his reason, for not picking up his phone, or responding to the message I left?
He's just been SO busy, with work.
Yeah. Because with three kids, we're NEVER busy. Peyton got up this morning (and by GOT up, I really mean, we never did make it to bed) to help me get Deirdre ready for school, and spend a little time with her - you know, like you do, with a child you love. He then dozed on the couch for half an hour, before leaping up to run a bunch of packages to the post office for me, and swing by the police station to arrange an appointment with the Chief, for later this afternoon. Came home, slept a few hours, and was up again, to make his 1:30 interview (P is currently being courted to go work for our local PD). Came home from that, played with his kids, greeted Deirdre when she got home from school, then rushed to get ready for work, at 4pm. When he gets home, assuming I've successfully chased all the kids to bed, he then has another pile of paperwork to fill out*, and then I do believe he's planning to cook us some sort of Special Romantic Meal.
*Peyton's current plan of Find A Better Job involves applying EVERYDAMNWHERE, and then picking the one that will give him the most Christmas Money to spend on his kids, heh.

And that is what a busy man looks like.
Me, I have a lazy, relaxing evening ahead of me. All I have to do, is go make the kids' dinner, which is late, but Idontcare because they don't seem to care. Dinner is especially fun, lately, as Deirdre must be given her veggies separately and first, or else she will choose to eat them last...and then when I look away, shove a finger down her throat and make herself vomit, to get out of eating, say...five baby carrots. Adding to THAT fun, is the fact that Deirdre recently brought home some sort of Death Bug, from school, and so every other Vomit or so, is now a Legitimate Vomit. All our kids have the immune system of Superman, so they rarely give any normal sign of illness - they just stop playing for a moment, to vomit on the floor/raise a fever hot enough to fry their brains, then go back to energetic playing, leaving me to wonder if I should call a doctor, or an exorcist.

Kalel, taking a brief siesta on the floor, like a fat, drunk whore. As soon as this picture was taken, she immediately rolled over to her brother and gave him a nice smack to the head.

Oh, and Kalel's sick, too, now, or at least she has joined the Occasional Random Vomit Club. She seems fine, but then did such a horrifying thing to her bedding, during a nap yesterday evening, that Peyton just stripped her, ran for the bathtub (while holding a naked baby at arms' length and screaming like a young girl), and left all her bedding/clothing in a garbage bag by the washer, after chittering at me "Sorry, baby; I really am, but I just CANNOT deal with...that." I, myself, am trying to repress the memory, but let's just say that WOW, she must have a huge stomach.

Where was I? Oh, yes...tonight. Yes, once dinner's out of the way, all I have to do is write a couple more Ebay auctions. Oh, and finish this blog, as it usually takes anywhere from 2-36hrs, to write a single blog. Then, there's really nothing left to do...well, except for getting a couple more packages ready, for the mail. And cleaning the dining room, I guess, as the entirity of our three children's fall/winter wardrobes for this year and last year are currently covering...well...the room.
There's a little laundry to be done, as well, I guess - just a bleach wash, so Deirdre has socks for school, tomorrow. And a dark wash, as the Pile is beginning to creep closer to me, when I walk down the hall - I haven't done a dark wash in a loooong time, like, since day before yesterday, so it's my own fault. But I think there's still a little laundry to be put up, as well - just last night's washes, which is only, like, two loads. Two loads, the size of our bed.

And I guess the kitchen should be cleaned; I've only cleaned it twice, today, so I'm really slacking off. And Deirdre still has her reading homework, once we can shove her brother off to Dreamland, or as I like to think of it - Those Blessed Hours When He Shuts Up and Stops Destroying Things.
But then I can relax, totally - just a lazy night, for me. Once I clean the kids' room, and put up a gazillion toys. Oh, and the den, before National Geographic chooses to come document what they believe must be a new Strange and Primitive Culture.

And remind Deirdre a hundred more times that she was seeing perfectly fine, before I told her she might need glasses, and that anyway, her SpongeBob sunglasses are not likely to correct her sight as much as she believes. And put Lucien's Superman cape on, another thousand times, because he's still too dumb to keep it on for more than two minutes at a stretch, and REALLY...how can he be expected to save the world, with no old, nasty, stained-up piece of velcroed-on nylon?

Hmmm...and then a bath, and some attempt to look more like the Girl my husband married, and less like Scary Old Bag Lady Whose Pants and Hair Bulge Out At Funny Angles. Oh, and must clean our bedroom, as well, as The Man has once again left a Trail of His Manliness (read: socks, underwear, change, receipts and candy wrappers) to mark our home as His Own.

What was I saying? Excuse me; I have to go feed these kids now, so they'll leave me alone.
Okay. Back.
And now, I can finally get a little peace and quiet...aside from Deirdre asking me, over and over, "What's how many carrots I eat?" assuming, each time, that she will get a different answer than "ALL. OF. THEM. THAT'S WHATSHOWMANYCARROTSYOUEAT."
I feel Fullfilled as a Woman, though, as I've now had the chance to pick up the floor a little. And remove one Silly Parts Elmo elephant ear...

...and one small orange pencil, from deep within the bowels of its Mirror Pound-a-Ball hell. Kalel enjoys putting small objects in here, because she's EVIL and enjoys seeing her mother cry.
And then, finding the Great and Terrible Toy Cabinets in a state of horrifying chaos, I took a moment to wish my husband hemorrhoids, as he is INCAPABLE of making the kids put their toys up in the right places, when he's on KidWatch, or of doing so, himself.
It's really not fair for me to be angry at him, though - he has...a handicap. You see, although he gives every impression of being a truly brilliant man, is possessing of an astronomical I.Q., and can accomplish virtually any task he's ever handed...he's...well, special. From what he's explained to me, in limited detail but with great emotion, there are some things he just CANNOT do.
Remembering where toys go, is one, but it gets much worse than that - would you believe he's partially blind? It's true; he cannot see certain objects, including but not limited to:

* dirty diapers he leaves on the floor, after changing a child
* any trash, at all, be it discarded drawings from the children, or bags of garbage in the kitchen *

* dirty dishes

* dirty laundry, including his own, which he has just dropped on the floor

* his towel (he can only see mine, and so is naturally forced to use it, instead of his own)

* dirty children, unless they actually vomit on him

*EDIT*
Actual quote, from my husband, upon reading the above list -
"Cow! I just took the trash out, last night!"
True, but as I explained to him, I also recall being So Utterly Shocked by his taking it out, unbadgered, that I was left standing in the kitchen with my mouth open, for a good ten seconds.
And then this - "And I JUST took the trash out of our bedroom, too, HO-BAG!"
Also true, and he is to be commended. However, as I have also seen him flatten against the wall like a ninja, in order to squeeze past three bags of garbage blocking the doorway into the kitchen, without the slightest thought of taking them out to the cans...OBVIOUSLY, he is still suffering some sort of sporadic malfunction in either his mind, vision, or sense of smell. His ninja skills, however, remain razor-sharp.

Now that I think about it, I'm starting to see a connection, here - the man is literally blind to dirt. God...isn't that just awful?

The mental thing is even worse, though. His inability to understand which Little People go to which set, remember the normal household chores that need doing, or even that drawers must be closed after opening, is staggering. I want him to get tested, make it official, and get some sort of Idiot-Savant disability check from the government, but I think he must still be shy, about his handicap, because he just gets mad, when I suggest that "functionally retarded" is not the stigma it used to be. Oh, well.

Where was I, again? Oh, yes - my fullfillment as a woman, via my choice of a traditional domestic role.
Umm...it's working out great. The baby hasn't vomited yet, Deirdre has eaten four carrots (and in just an HOUR!), and soon, very soon, I get to get rid of put my lovely son to bed, after his deeply nourishing meal of carrots, a piece of cheese, and one noodle, before throwing the rest at his older sister.

I do not like my children. Especially The Boy. And I STILL say, we're being punished, for conceiving him, out of wedlock. Speaking of - the answer to that most recent poll, was actually "Be quiet, or I'll put the blanket over your face again," so congratulations to the Anonymous Nine of you who guessed correctly.
Do not question our methods, until you have experienced The Horror That is Lucien. Besides, he likes that blanket; always has. We suspect he may be into bondage.

Anyway, the point of this story, is that I truly pity my ex-husband, for the busy, busy life he must lead - the rest of us can only imagine the kind of fast-paced, frentic life led by a single man trying to squeeze a daunting half-day of parenting, or even a five-minute phone call, into his Deeply Important Existence.

Now, you must excuse me - I have to go remove my eldest daughter's small, very fashionable purse from its new location, where it seems to be consuming my youngest daughter's head.

Random Fun with a Five-Year Old

And Deirdre wins Quote of the Day, before 7am -


So, after grocery shopping last night, I removed a Rubbermaid container of Highly Questionable Leftovers, from the fridge, to make room for more food. I sat it on the counter, and kind of forgot to dump it out and put it in the sink to let it soak and think about what it had done


This morning...



Deirdre: "Momma, what's these?" (lifting the lid)
Me: "Baby DON'T open that! It's nasty!
Deirdre: "But what IS it? Lemme see!"
Me: "I think it used to be black-eyed peas, but it was in the fridge too long, and now it's just Nasty."
Deirdre: "I wanna see!"
Me: *opens the container a bit, to let her have a look* *huge amount of OMGWHATISTHATSMELL comes wafting out*
Deirdre: "Oh, UGGGHH!" (holding her nose) "It's stink! Peas are PUUEEEY! Like Kalel's poopy diaper; peas is POO!"
Me: "No, peas are good. Peas with bacon that have been sitting in the fridge for two or three weeks are Poo. Food just gets nasty when it gets too old."
Deirdre: "Like grandaddy! Grandaddy is OLD!"
Me: "NO, Deirdre; grandaddy is old, but he is not....well, I guess you may have a point, there."



And now, more Fun With Deirdre...


Just some of the Random Weirdness that's been flowing from her direction, as of late:

The night of The Cake Incident, lying on our coffee table because she is "at the doctor" (and wearing her brother's hat, thus making her pulsing five-year old brains look freakishly large). Let me tell you...if Kalel is the "doctor," we're going to need a helluva lot of malpractice insurance.

This is a little something I like to call "6am, on a School Day" -

And this, is the result of letting a too-creative-for-her-own-good child watch Watership Down:

That would be Peyton, giving her the Weird Eye.

Oh, and here's the inside look at that Cake O'the Doom:

See? Told ya it was edible.

Deirdre is currently setting the dining table with her huge blanket as a tablecloth, and miscellaneous unmatching bowls and cups. I suspect I am about to be the victim of a birthday party, but hey...maybe she'll finally let me unwrap that Chicken Little dvd, before we have to return it to the library.
More weirdness to come, I'm sure.

Cake or Death, or Why I Love My Daughter

Recently, I've noticed that my blogs have been focused much more on Kalel and Lucien. It makes sense, with Deirdre being in school all day, but I did feel a little bad about it. Just yesterday, I kind of had it in the back of my mind to do a post on all the various little bizarre anecdotes from her new life as a Girl in Pursuit of Education - it was on the old mental to-do list.

I needn't have bothered pondering What to Write About Deirdre. Girl Wonder never lets us down, for long, and WOWZER, has she been on a roll, in the past 36hrs.

So, before I even start...thank you, my eldest, weirdest daughter, for doing the work, for me. Thank you, for reminding me that no matter how dumb your brother, or how wicked your sister, you have been and always will be my Most Bloggable Child.


It all started, yesterday evening. After we went over her homework together, Deirdre settled down to draw a hieroglyphic letter, for one of her friends (whom she actually has only met once, three years ago, but you know...she's 5; everyone she sees is her "bestfriend"). I left her in the dining room, with the much-coveted Mommy's Markers, and came back into the den, in hopes of finally getting a little respite from the usual Crazy.
Not too long after, Deirdre came in here to ask "how many days" 'til my next birthday, having been vaguely aware that her mother had aged yet again, last month. I told her it was a long-long-time, nearly a year, and when she then informed me that she was going to make me a cake, ALL BY HERSELF, I just nodded, said that was nice, and didn't give it a second thought. Naturally, I assumed the five year old who cannot reach anything and has never so much as used the microwave, was about to go draw me a cake - "make" and draw often mean the same, to her. And anyway, Deirdre is always full of shit; she's constantly making nutty proclamations like "I am Moses" or "I'm going to go see my friend and have her party and give her presents and we'll love each other forever, in ONE days," or even "I'm going to freeze that monster with how I shoot ice like this - shhhhhhhh! - an then I'll EAT HIM like a popsicle."

You get the picture. Five year olds are crazy and pathological liars and not to be believed.

So, I approved this idea, patted her head, and fully expected to be interrupted in ten minutes or so, with an invisible cake, or a picture of cake (I've been given lots), or maybe even plastic blocks in the shape of a cake. When she did not reappear in the next 10-15min, I wondered, but still didn't give it much thought; I just went to look for her, to remind her that the dinner hour was approaching, and make sure she wasn't eating her newly-finished homework, or some such nonsense.

I found her in the kitchen. Standing on a chair that she'd taken from the dining room. Stirring with a spoon she'd found in a drawer (and that I'd actually never even seen before). Stirring something that she'd put in my God-Almighty-Huge casserole dish - the one I pull out, when I have a need to feed a small army...or Peyton, twice. She'd carried that heavy glass casserole over to the counter, and up a chair.
There was no mess - or at least, no mess that she had made. There was just a tiny girl, calmly and cheerfully making her mother a cake, as if she had done it a hundred times, before. But when I saw what was in the casserole dish, I spun around on one heel, took off after my camera, and immediately began Blogging It In My Head.

I asked her to show me what she had put in my "birthday cake," one ingredient at a time:

Froot Loops, in a nod to the stereotypical KidFood (Deirdre rarely eats them)

And eggs? "Oh, Deirdre...you did not put EGGS in there!" Deirdre has never handled, much less cracked, a raw egg, so I found this difficult to believe.

By this point, Lucien had appeared, playing the role of Secondary Pointer. Here, Deirdre is telling me that she also used strawberry yogurt and Cool-Whip. Again, foods she does not eat, which made them seem unlikely candidates for her recipe.

But checking the garbage...I'll be damned. She DID use yogurt and an egg. I go back for a more Serious Look at that "cake." Meanwhile, Deirdre is far from done, and I am THRILLED to let her run with this, sensing a Legendary Tale, in the making.

And here, is your first good look at The Horror in the Casserole.

Daddy's Heath toffee syrup, because she thinks it's chocolate. I intervene, briefly, when she next suggests using the last of Daddy's Vanilla Chai Spice Coffeemate, then return to my position of Gawker and Non-Authority Figure.

But what else do we need, for a really GREAT cake?

Why, PEPPERONI, of course! In Deirdre's world, it goes with everything.

Now, more eggs, and would you look at her? Perfectly cracking, without a scrap of shell - she, herself, could not explain how she had learned this skill.

But something's missing....

Nutella! The chocolatey hazelnut spread is PERFECT with a pepperoni/frootloop/toffee/coolwhip-laced egg and yogurt base!

Add a dash of salt, and she's done! Or at least, add a dash of salt, and then insist that it needs to be "bigger," at which point, your mother begins lying her ass off. I reassured her that it was the Magic of Baking that made cakes "bigger," and that this was GREAT, just the way it was - too many flavors would just overwhelm the delicate balance she had already attained.

All the while, my mind is racing, wondering "How the hell do I get out of THIS ONE? Shall I "save it for when Daddy gets home," then hope to distract her until after bedtime, at which point we can claim we ate it while she slept? And then...

Eureka.

We proceeded on to Baking, in an oven specifically adjusted for such a culinary masterpiece, which translates to "Preheat, at 100 degrees." Also known as "a great temperature in which to grow bacteria."

Random Glum Face - she was actually still quite thrilled over her mastery of cooking.

I began Project Lie, and reminded her that cakes take a LOOONG time, to bake - many, many hours, and sometimes even all night. This lie found fertile ground, as I prompted her to recall how many times she'd seen me up very late at night, making birthday cakes. She doesn't know the difference between "up all night baking" and "up all night making apx. 738 different shades of custom-tinted frosting," so it made sense, to her.

I also made sure she understood that "Cakes look different when they finally, finally get done. All the colors of stuff you put in melt and blend together, and the cake gets MUCH bigger; it even tastes different."

Remember: I are a genius, and just as Deirdre uses her gifts in Strange and Terrible Creative Ways, I, too, have a Special Way of using my own gifts. It's called Lying.
Forced to wait for her cake to cook, she turned her attention to my birthday gift, or rather, its wrapping, which seemed the only important part (like mother, like daughter).

This child never picked up a pair of scissors, until she started school, last month, and she has certainly never touched real *adult* scissors. Yet here she is, without a moment's hesitation.

And now glue, as Scotch tape proved too annoying for her. Later, she moved on to my heavy clear packing tape. Looks like there's something in that paper, doesn't it? Nope; still just wrapping air.

Though she seemed to be doing well, for a time, eventually, the Green Paper of Doom thwarted her best efforts, and she switched to Stripey Masculine Paper of Slightly Less Doom.
This was taken this morning, right before the bus came - Success!

THIS time, there really IS something in there. Although I have been told that it is NOT my birthday, and that Deirdre will tell me when it's my birthday, I cheated as soon as she got on the bus, and looked inside an opening in her wrapping paper-envelope.
OMG! I GOT CHICKEN LITTLE! THE EXTRA-HAWT BIENVILLE PARISH PUBLIC LIBRARY DVD VERSION THAT PEYTON CHECKED OUT YESTERDAY! SCREW YOU, LIBRARY; IT IS MINE, NOW!
Don't worry; I'll still act surprised. ;D

"But What About the CAKE??!" you may be asking. Indeed...what about it?

It looks fine, to me.
After a nice night of baking, it turned out just as I predicted - evenly colored, much bigger, and totally Cake-like. Deirdre was thrilled to see how well it had turned out, and assured me I would love it. Actually, I think she said "Loves it," considering the fact that she asked me "Do you love it?" quite a few times, the night before, while making the cake - apparently she's groovin' on some kind of Paris Hilton/Nicole Richie vibe.

What?

Ohhhhh...I get it; I know what you want to hear.
Okay, so here's the deal: Once Deirdre was finally distracted with dinner, I sent Peyton a text, asking him to swing by and pick up a few things from Walmart, on his way home. Meanwhile, Deirdre's cake was still in the oven, when she went to bed, as I'd promised her that we'd take it out for her, when it was "done."
I had already asked her what this cake was going to taste like, and she assured me that the yogurt and Nutella would make it taste like strawberries and chocolate - that sounded like a plan, to me! Once she was down for the count, I sprung into action, scraping out that Abomination Casserole into the trash, and making Peyton take the evidence out to the garbage cans.
But first, of course, I took a picture:

Mmmm. Who says you have to choose, between Cake or Death?

Once the Official Food of the Church of Satan was out of the way, I whipped up a fast swirly mix of strawberry and chocolate cake batter, in the same (sanitized and prayed over) casserole dish, then sprinkled in some chocolate chips, for a chunkier effect. It actually looked pretty gnarly, as I'd spiked the strawberry batter with a hint of pink paste food color, so it was bright pink and brown swirled. Once it cooled, I melted chocolate frosting and sealed it in a thin layer (cause of course, that's the Nutella!).

I did worry, for a moment, that she might not buy the switch - she's a REALLY bright kid, and observant as hell. However, her self-esteem is such that it actually does make sense to her that whatever she throws in a pan will just naturally turn into a perfect cake - this is a child who is almost completely without insecurity, fear, or self-doubt.
She bought it hook, line, and sinker. ;D

So here I am, Bad Mommy Extraordinaire, having pulled off a Grand Lie that has boosted my child's already unnaturally high self-esteem, and brought Wonder and Joy into her little life.
Know what I call that? CASH IN THE BANK. Yessirree, I have just bought myself one helluva lot of Good Mommy Karma, which means I can totally read her diary, when she's older, and not go to Hell, even a little bit.

Happy Late Birthday, to me.