Road Trip Ranting

I am a bit tardy in publishing my weekly literary temper tantrum, but I have had a rough week and have a rougher few to come. Most of the turbulence is of my own design, but that in fact is a morbidly bad thing rather than good. You see, when someone else is imposing impossible standards on you, once you meet them, the demands, in theory, will end. (The exception being your mother or your children whose demands are neverending.) When the standards are self-imposed there is no escaping the demons in your brain, at least not without medication and this seems imminent with the insanity invading my every waking moment.

This coming weekend, I am headed on my first vacation since my eight-year-old princess was learning to walk. I used to believe that this lack of recreational escape was entirely economically-based, but I have actually concluded that by spending all of our recreation money on other things, my subconscious mind was reminding me that I hate packing and I especially hate changes in routine. This disgust for the minor hiccups in the mindless monotony of everyday has apparently been passed to my minions and it makes for several weeks of purgatory.

My past month or so, since the revelation that we were dragging all six children on an epic road trip, has been fraught with continuous fighting. I am going to use this moment to educate the populous that there is a difference between the words continuous and continual. Continual means that the activity lasts for a long duration with occasional lapse or pause. Continuous means that it continues for an indescribable and eternal duration with only minor decreases in the intensity of the anger-inducing mania. I quite purposefully used the latter. I am about ready to request refunds for all the tickets we have already purchased and invest in a half dozen straight jackets and ball gags. THEN we can worry about a road trip.

My husband was scandalized that I insisted on investing in an in-car DVD player. “We will just listen to audio books like we planned a month ago, we don't need to watch television the whole vacation.” His two hours of frustration between work and bedtime do not give him the adequate scope of hysteria that has gripped our normally difficult, but now IMPOSSIBLE offspring. I am sure that in our twelve-hour pilgrimage to his homeland, we are going to kneel and praise a higher being several times along the way for the blessed invention of the boob tube, which admitted dumbs the minions down, but puts temporary ceasing to the hostilities.

Additionally, the thought of leaving my home and packing (hopefully) has me trembling with crippling terror. I have a hard enough time getting six kids out the door with the correct ensemble and equipment to go to the gas station, let alone several hundred miles from home.

My girl-minion is the height of femininity. I would have to concentrate quite intensely to achieve the level of sheer glittering, prim divaness that oozes from her very pores. So, I have on several occasions taken her to have her fingernails professionally painted. On this particular occasion, she arrived at the technician's home studio and being so overcome with girly delight threw herself on the couch and flung her legs over her head. Her ruffly skirt gracefully flitted around her hips and revealed a shocking sight. My daughter was as naked as the day she emerged screaming into this world. If I cannot even clad my daughter in quintessential foundation garments for a trip around the block, I feel fairly defeated at the hope that all six minions will be adequately prepared for the jungles of a road trip.

The other thing that terrifies me is that we are visiting my in-laws. Many women have mother-in-laws that resemble villainesses from ancient fairy tales. I have a wonderful mother-in-law that is logical, organized, kind, pleasant, and completely quiet about my shortcomings. This kind of mother-in-law is infinitely worse because it leaves the wife (me) with an unexplained desire to appear infallible and confident, neither of which are adjectives that adequately describe me. When I brought home my first little bundle of joy, my physique and my brain quickly rebounded, but with each subsequent spawn, I have become a drooling, mouth-breathing mound of flab. I just struggle to hide it when in public. But, something about meeting with my dear hubby's parents, leaves me an insecure mess, who can't even dress herself competently in the morning, let alone a flock of little people.

Perhaps this anxiety also stems from the fact that my normally brilliant husband suddenly turns into a four-year-old when we are preparing to leave for something exciting and regresses several more years if his mother is involved. He only packs his most disgusting clothes, his under clothing with the biggest holes directly in the rump, T-shirts with the most offensive sayings that are seconds away from abandoning structural integrity entirely. Then his mother, did I mention she is a really kind and charitable woman, sees fit to shower him with gifts because he is so neglected. It is almost Oliver Twist/Dickensian in it's craftiness. I am not sure if it manipulatively orchestrated, or just a product of my own spousal insecurities, but still.

The cherry on top to our familial trek of terror sundae is going to be a trip to a Disney theme park. Now, being the mother of six HORRIFYINGLY active children comes with a paralyzing fear of going...well, anywhere public. So, knowing that we were scheduled to visit “The Happiest Place on Earth,” I issued a challenge to my young minions, who somehow become sugar-crazed fiends in the face of a retail institution. “This is practice for Disneyland so we can stay together and be safe.” Apparently, in pre-schooler language this means, “We are going to play a sadistic game of hide and seek in every clothing rack, empty shelf, large container, in every institution for the next month and only emerge when mother starts gasping for air and grabbing the left side of her chest while shouting obscenities.” In pre-teen/adolescent speak, the practice for Disneyland translates to, “Find offense in every time that a sibling touches you and then rather than use the diplomacy that has been instilled in you since you began speaking, SHOUT everything emphatically with several ridiculous insults and then grunt like wild swine and fold your arms with a great HARUMPH.” (Insert a high-decibel excuse to justify your behavior here).

Well, motherly whining vented in an anonymous venue. Hopefully, I will emerge rested and refreshed, but I fully anticipate that I am going to return with PTSD and a slight ocular twitch.

Magic Spray

I miss the days of boo boos and owies. I have found recently that I cannot truly be friends with someone whose children possess the self-preservation gene, because as a defect, all five of mine are noticeably without it. Being a mother of children with a complete disregard for life and limb means that I spend more of my days applying direct pressure than I do sweeping and mopping.

My second child is quite often the culprit, he is desperate to diffuse tense situations with humor and has little regard for the consequences. Additionally, I believe that the veil of understanding between what is reality and what is fiction is a little thin with this one. One afternoon a few years back, after watching his favorite superhero movie, he decided that if Spiderman could traverse a tensile thread, HE could scale a garden rake balanced precariously between two kitchen chairs. Two tentative steps from the launch pad, his feet slid to either side of his balance beam and he painfully straddled the wooden handle, his head punching through the drywall like it was tissue paper. (Did I mention that my children have freakishly large craniums also?) Careful application of a “poor baby” here and a kiss on the swollen lump attempting conquer his forehead, and he was back to blissfully playing.

My four-year old, who has as much courage as he lacks in grace, is the most wonderful example. At least two dozen times during my day, he approaches me whimpering or wailing with a battle wound. Countless times during the week I wonder if it is going to leave permanent physical damage. So, in answer to this, I developed my “magic spray.” I found a pocket perfume bottle and filled it with water. Each time he approaches me with an invisible wound, I give the affected area a little spray, and a kiss and he is miraculously cured, even down to the complete cessation of tears.

I am constantly amazed what the knowledgeable practice of Mommy Medicine can do, but as my children get older my magic spray is becoming less effective and in the case of my more cynical eldest son, he doubts its medicinal properties altogether. So, I am going to increase my arsenal of Magic Mommy supplies, for those moments when magic spray just isn't going to work.

Nair, is going to be the first addition. As the age of my children increases, the number of children who are popular by intimidation have also. Most of these kids have the intellectual equivalent of the contents of their lunchbox and base their entire self-worth on the fact that they are physically attractive. My oldest son has patiently faced such a child, her hair is thick and silky, her eyes are a captivating blue, her mother has dressed her directly from some name-brand catalog, and her over-sized-pre-teen teeth are nearly straight, which is a marked improvement over her like-minded peer group. Therefore she has become the self-appointed queen of the pre-pimple people. Being confronted with this sweet-faced she-troll on a fairly regular basis, I have pondered the medicinal benefits to my oldest child of just slipping a small amount of the hair-dissolving syrum in her shampoo and observing how quickly she is dethroned.

Bubble wrap will also be joining my fix-all arsenal. The same oldest son recently decided to abandon his use of peripheral vision, which is a very important God-given gift to people who intend to live past their teens. While kindly pushing a neighbor child on a swing set, he took one misjudged step backward into the path of my daughter's oncoming swing. The heel of her shoe connected with the bridge of his nose and he plummeted to the grass like a rag doll. (I must enter a side note here, that when I embarked on this mission of motherhood, I would faint when my children were given immunizations. I was marveled three years ago when I merely vomited after stitches at an ER visit, and am pleased to announce that I was only severely nauseated during this latest saga.) While we sat patiently and waited for his x-rays, I noticed several yellowing photographs of children engaged in different activities wearing protective gear, framed on their wall. One child was holding his baseball bat, poised in anticipation and covered with pillows which were duct taped to his limbs. Another child was running a relay race clad in full-plate armor. Yet another was playing soccer shrouded in bubble wrap. Since armor would be prohibitively heavy and pillows would just look paranoid and ridiculous, I have decided that bubble wrap is the way to go. His five stitches, eight nasal fractures and need for complete reconstructive surgery may not have been solved with a kiss on his boo boo, but would have been entirely prevented by a fashionable bubble wrap bavaclava.

Lastly, in the non-conventional motherhood first-aid kit would be chloroform, for those moments that no amount of hugging, soothing, comforting, talking or ice-cream can help. I have mentioned that a mere 20 percent of my offspring are female and though that brings me great longing it also brings me great comfort because no trip to the emergency room is going to mend her broken feelings. I have tried every psychological trick that I have garnered from my years of therapy, complaining about my mother the way that my children will undoubtedly grossly overpay someone else to complain about me. As the years compound, the number of hours spent soothing a broken heart increase and the conclusion to the session is more frequently a sobbing, “Mom, you just don't understand.” Therefore, since the conclusion will be the same defeatist declaration, wouldn't we all feel better with a good nap? You have heard the saying, “Get some sleep, you'll feel better in the morning.” I am just applying good old-fashioned wisdom that has minimally worked for centuries.

I combat my helplessness with sarcasm and humor, but I guess I am having a hard time acknowledging the passage of time. My eldest turns twelve this week, and I miss the days that Mom could solve anything with a kiss and a pat on the head. I really cannot pinpoint when life got so much more complicated for my little minions. My husband teases that I am “a mama bear on steroids,” but I have decided that the best medicine that I can employ is to be their coach--standing ringside with a towel, a box of tissues and a tub of ice-cream and ready to tag-team and fight the good fight when the situation arises.

Rhinovirus Rantings

I am oozing and post-nasal-dripping my way through this week's post. Last Thursday, every child in my house collapsed with a fever within the space of four hours and by Saturday afternoon, I realized that I had either been unknowingly hit by an invisible truck, or I was doomed also. So, I am going to briefly babble incoherently about being sick with minions and then...be sick with my minions.

So my aspirations as an amateur neo-classical interior designer are being overthrown by a strange combination of vapo-spewing, meets lotion-tissue, meets white sale vomited on the floor, meets essential oil bottles, accented with the occasional sticky squirty syringe and topped with a fashionable colorful thermomenter chic. I am renaming it Phlegm Eclectic.

This particularly violent virus came with an unrelenting fever that has had to be vigilantly monitored day and night. This means that my normally cluttered living room became carpeted in a mine field of little bodies. What is worse is that each little body is enshrouded in the complete camouflage of character-adorned bedding, so with each step comes the threat of causing serious bodily injury. Currently, crossing my living room is more perilous than crossing Death Valley. It is like some sort of sadistic game of Twister to walk across my living room this weekend. Right foot on Batman blanket (SQUEAL), nope lose 10 points. Left foot on Tinker Bell pillow, (OUCH!) advance immediately to right hand on yellow bean bag and left hand on treasured square of clear floor in a maneuver closely resembling a game of London Bridges, complete with the falling down part.

The worst part is that I inadvertently shared this viral gift from the gods with my charitable friends, who so kindly invited my disease-ridden offspring to play while I did the mandatory three-hour pilgrimage to ballet class. When I was a young mother with only two minions to train in world domination, I agreed to kindly watch the son of a family in our neighborhood who were in desperate need of a babysitter for their toddler son. At least every other week, the lady would deposit her son at my house with a flimsy excuse as to why his nose was bejeweled in green crust, or why he was covered in little blistery spots, or why he was bleeding from his eyeballs. Having not yet grown the spine and bitch switch that comes with the birth of a third of fourth minion, I would smile and take the infant into my home, not knowing that he was actually a means of biological warfare. My husband one day proposed that perhaps this child wasn't a child at all, but instead a little “Ebola monkey.” I scolded him through my pink-eye, while I slathered lotions on the kids' chickenpox. The nomenclature stuck however, and I swore that I would never be the mother of little carrier monkeys. So imagine my dismay when I retrieve four little boys all docile and snuggling in blankets on my friends' couch. It sounds benign, but if you know my kids, it is eery and ominous.

When my children are sick, the mass occupation of my sleeping space accelerates rapidly. I tried to set up a make-shift hospital ward in my living room. Each child assigned to their own color of bean bag and hidden under their own blanket, and me perched on the couch to oversee the administration of treatments. It sounded like a good idea at the time and saved a fortune on buying humidifiers for each room of the house, but what has ended up happening is EIGHT people puppy-piled on ONE couch. Add the radiating fevers, and I was ready to turn on the air conditioning in the middle of snow-crusted January. When the virus finally hit me, I wasn't sure if the muscle aches were from two nights of sleeping under approximately 300 lbs of children, or if it was actually the microscopic organisms succeeding in their attack.

I have also noticed through years of mucousy observations, that the minions get better approximately 12 to 24 hours before I am completely down for the count. (My afflictions also lasted a minimum of three times longer than theirs also, but that may be in inverse proportion to the amount of time I get to moan and sleep it off.) My four-year-old is the master of creating mischief—it glimmers in his lavender/blue eyes. Some people mistake his dimpled grin for a congenial and innocent smile, but it is truly just him imagining your face when he has achieved his planned level of chaos. Today alone while Daddy slumbered and I snorted and dripped through the basic routines of normalcy, he finger painted in numerous bathroom substances, he used the lotion-filled tissue as confetti, he robbed two piggy banks, unrolled an entire roll of toilet paper, raided the fridge and pantry, changed the password for the school laptop, stole two MP3 players and one set of earbuds, tied one of my balls of yarn to the cat, and systematically poured an entire pitcher of water on the kitchen floor through a series of tunnels and straws that managed to dampen every dining room chair. All the while, I am wiping my cherry nose, begging in a voice that is reminiscent of Droopy Dog, and chasing him in what seemed to be slow motion.

Which begs the question: what idiot decided that it was GOOD thing to make children's cold medicine NON-drowsy? I am completely flummoxed by a human being that thought that oozy, ornery, little mucous factories who are alert and running around touching and licking everything was a prime marketing point. I think that the ideal and most intelligent thing would have been to advertise that a medicine was EXTRA-drowsy. With all six monsters down at the same time, I want a medicine that has Snow-White-mythical-deathlike-coma-inducing cough medicine. Somehow, I don't think that is on the market, but it should be.

The worst part of being sick as a mother isn't nursing the children, it is nursing a husband. My husband is a burly and brooding sort anyway. A good friend calls him one of the “burnt marshmallows” of the matrimonial world. He is bitter, black and crispy on the outside, but that masks a creamy sweet inner layer. But that sticky layer sweetness is nearly non-existent when the slightest amount of prolonged viral discomfort is involved. My husband has an amazing immune system in that it only allows invaders exactly 24 hours after I am afflicted. Literally, when I get sick, I am on a tight schedule. I have ONE day to get from the onset of aches and pains to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again. Right now it is 7 p.m., and I am trying to smile and breathe through my gritted teeth, (the breathing part is because it is an impossible feat to accomplish through my nasal passages) because the children (being slightly recovered from their afflictions, therefore not sick enough to be immobile, but not well enough to be congenial, self-controlled, and/or diplomatic) are doing some sort of combination of climbing the walls and arguing at obscene decibel levels. And where is the hubby? Snoring in the middle of the mayhem, while I try to direct traffic around his slumbering corpse.

Well, my moments of semi-lucidity have passed. I am going to go seek out the medicines with the highest advertised possibility of drowsiness and collapse under a pile of minions.

Don't Panic!

A long time ago in an alternate reality where I actually got to sit and listen attentively to speakers instead of repeatedly scouting the potty or drinking fountains, I was at a business conference where the keynote speaker encouraged his audience to find a written declaration of their resolve and to post visual reminders of that goal for them and their guests.

When my hubby and I bought our house we sought such a mission statement. We settled on a phrase from Shakespeare (to reflect our shared love of the written word) and a small saying posted invitingly above our entryway which reads,

“Home is where best friends live.”

Although the sentiment is charming, I have concluded that it may be overreaching and slightly saccharin. This month, my children have been about as friendly as a badger wearing sandpaper underpants. We should have settled for “Home is where we pull our punches,” (most of the time) or even more attainable “Home is where my key fits in the lock.”

So, these are the candidates for my new mission statements. I think these more accurately reflect the issues and resolutions of our household of bristling minions and defeated parents.

“People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.” David H. Comins

I know that I am not the only person whose children have selective and sudden attacks of explosive hearing loss. I think that adding the words “Benjamin Franklin says,” to the beginning of any request, might lend a air of expertise that may prompt action. (My eldest minion would move with superhuman stealth if I borrowed the credibility of Nikola Tesla instead.) “Benjamin Franklin says, 'Always lift the toilet seat.'” Perhaps I should be more clever, “Benjamin Franklin says, 'A washed dish gathers no flies.'” Although we are Christians, we will stray from the prescribed WWJD adage and adopt WWBFS (What Would Benjamin Franklin Say?) **Since composing this post, my children have adopted the habit of attributing everything of any import to them to Benjamin Franklin. My four-year-old even said, "Mom, Benjamin Franklin says, you need to let us play video games."**

Perhaps I should just get all cinematic and quote from Cameron's Titanic (suggested by a reader),

“And all the while I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one even looks up.” This quote, though written in a dramatic scene, garners a giggle when put in a parental context. Sometimes I wonder if I am suffering from a Patrick Swayze/Ghost moment and somehow unknowlingly slipped this mortal realm. Perhaps it is more philosophical than Hollywood and my minions have ignored me long enough, therefore I cease to exist.

 

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” Dr Seuss 

I am sure that my interpretation was not the one he intended, but anybody who has had to answer the nagging pleas of a child has a complete understanding of this principle.

 

Complicated question from Minion #5: (Please read with a breathless rapidity due to the fist fight that had ensued previously and a sing songing lilt of a tattling child.)“Mom, mom, mom, mom MAWWWW-OM! Minion #4 says that photon torpedoes are more deadly than a plasma cannon, is he wrong?” (Actual question posed by my preschooler in regards to a declaration by my six-year-old.)

My simple answer: “Dunno. Go ask your father.”

"When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies." Shakespeare

Again, I am sure that the inspiration behind The Bard's words is much more romantic and lyric that my parental interpretation, but parents everywhere are nodding their heads in agreement. I especially love playing detective with toddlers and preschoolers. Every parent knows the puzzling mixture of anger welling up in the heart while stifling a giggle in the throat when the lie is so incredibly evident, but the denial emphatic.
Me: Asking the question as a mere technicality. “Minion #5, do you know what happened to the envelopes of hot chocolate mix I brought home from the store this afternoon?”
Minion #5: (The important aspect of this conversation is the appearance of Minion #5 much more than what he actually utters.) With two magnificent blue eyes, twinkling with a combination of hope of escape and fear of discovery. He is also donning a smile ringed in a powdery, sweet, brown halo. His lips part, unsheathing chocolate stained teeth, and he shrugs revealing dimpled fingers creased in sticky brown rivers of sugar. “No, Mom. Maybe the cats ate them.”
My older minions invent lies of more import, but equal in their lack of creativity.

“You are a perfect example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain." Doctor Who (the fourth Doctor)  

 

I include this not only for the exquisite quote, but for the geek-cred with my hubby and eldest minions. I am the harried mother of a pre-teen boy and for this reason, this quote is intensely applicable. Yesterday, in the throws of trying to derail a pre-teen tantrum (complete with foot stomping and flying limbs that allude to the grace and presence of an angry gorilla), I growled, “Not one more word or I am going to have to **insert applicable punishment for his one hour of ranting maniacally here**” With a sour pucker on his face and blind determination for victory in his heart, he looked me in the eye and contemptuously said, “Hi!” REALLY!?! I know that I am raising intellectually brilliant children, but in this situation, the televised Time Lord is right. The portion of the brain that regulates self-preservation is obviously miniscule in proportion to the mouth that muttered that ill-conceived one-word salutation! I know with surety that there were so many moments where my mother fought the urge to lace her fingers around my wildly ranting throat because my brain temporarily shrunk to the size of a peanut, but my mouth continued spewing venom like a faucet. (So sorry, Mom.)

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” George Orwell

I know academically that this is a symbolic literary evaluation of communism, but for every parent who worries about buying an equal number of presents at each birthday or refereeing fist fights and games of keep away over a millimeter more of cheese in a slice, this quote takes on an entirely new meaning. This weekend, my singular daughter minion had a sleepover with a dear friend's daughter. This sweet child is friends with ALL of my children regardless of age or gender, so the benefit was fairly mutual, but ONE of the boy minions skulked around the house mumbling about the injustice of it all. This same minion complains about being bored when he has chosen seasonal sports and rejects offers because they are, “not his thing.” I would love for my minions to have a gentle visual reminder that I could treat them all equally, but a preteen boy with painted fingernails, tights and a makeover might not be the equality that he anticipated.

 

“Roses are red, violets are blue I'm schizophrenic and so am I.” Bill Murray

I know that my children are not true sufferers, but being the mother of an eight-year-old girl sometimes makes me wonder how many little girls are living in that one little body. Her moods swing like a pendulum, only more erratic. At least you can predict the path of a pendulum. One minute she is giggling and spinning around the house and the next she is writhing on the floor like a worm on a hot sidewalk and screaming as if she should be vomiting split pea soup alla Linda Blair. Then, in a flash, she is weeping as though I had just murdered a unicorn. An inkling of predictability would be a worthy goal, even though I understand from firsthand accounts that it may be more fruitless the closer she gets to her teen years. **My daughter wants it noted that this paragraph is not funny**

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." Mark Twain

 I have explained to all of my neighbors and friends that they should not approach my house during school hours. I add now that they should not grace my doorstep during the hours of getting ready for the morning, fixing breakfast, trying to leave for an outing, bathing for bed, cleaning the house, trying to get into bed. In other words, as much as I value your friendship, unless you want an education in colorful expletives loudly shrieked, my house is pretty much out of bounds. I will come to you and your blissful ignorance of my foul language can continue. I have faith and confidence in the power of prayer, but when I am facing a child who is dragging their feet about doing algebra, the artful use of profanity has been shown much more satisfying than an uttered prayer. (Ducking and searching the skies for signs of targeted lightning.)

“Don't Panic!” Douglas Adams

This is a fairly universal rule to those entering the chaos and mayhem that comprise my life. The overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety that wash over you when you step through my door...dance over three or four school books...politely ignore several crumpled homework assignments...stagger through the wading pool of laundry guarding the top of my stairs... or fluff the blankets that overshadow the surfaces of my couch...These feelings of anxiousness are completely normal. I have it every time I enter a room. Adams offers a great and simple piece of advice that should be posted as a visual reminder on every surface of my home. Actually, in thinking about it, his suggestion of the constant companionship of a towel wouldn't be ill-advised in my chaos either.

Sleeping Standoff

Today I am pondering the results of reverse psychology. I have decided that this is a complete misnomer because the usage of it, at least on my herd of wild beasts, rarely reverses anything. In fact, I have only once seen it effectively work, and he was very young and very tired. As I write this, my husband claims that he has had repeated success with our 4-year-old minion, to which I repeat with emphasis, “He was very young and very tired.”

 

Tonight I am in hour two of our nightly bedtime standoff. Everybody is so willing to lend advice about how to best achieve a peaceful trip to dreamland for kiddos, but I can truthfully say that the results are transitive at best. Nanny reality television programs have lent us several suggestions, but I believe that it requires an overweight British women with the rectangular frame of a hockey player, teeth like a jigsaw puzzle and a wart named with its own name and zip code to actually achieve success. Being a slight American woman with straight teeth and very mild dermatological problems, these schemes have fizzled.

Routine! It is a nauseating chant that parenting books have been feeding us for years. I can truthfully say, that with very little deviation, my children have had routine since they emerge from their caves in the morning to when they are tucked in at night. It has often yielded an ease at bedtime, but I have also found that it makes for immoveable children. Being a mother requires a degree of flexibility and having airtight routine has horrifying results where an emergency trip to the grocery store may end in a complete structural collapse of the retail establishment. A trip to the local market literally becomes the addition of my family to the list of homeland security risks. Vacations, road trips, these are completely out of the question, because the resulting behavior makes me ponder the need for exorcism.

Nightlights! My darling daughter has had an abject fear of the dark for more years that I can remember. Heeding more well-intended parental advise, I went to our local Swedish import store, which actually isn't so local, but it seemed like a good idea and the gas money and the price of the light were undoubtedly less than the therapy bills or sedatives available as alternatives. I returned home triumphant with two castle-like torches that dimly flickered to provide comfort for our princess in her princess-themed room. The result was many neighbors who knocked on my door at obscene hours to inform me that there was a candle still alight in my daughter's bedroom and I must extinguish it quickly before they called the fire department. This is not an exaggeration— four neighbors! I have decided that the only people who suggest nightlights are people who own stock in lightbulb companies. Of course these dimly flickering monstrosities only use rare-gold-plated-bulbs with filaments made from extinct dinosaur nasal hair or something, because I have spent as much on replacement bulbs, which can only be purchased at my not-so-local Swedish import store, than I have on milk this year (which is an amazing declaration when I am the mother of six minions). 

Guard duty! This is the suggestion from the notorious nanny program, which my mom insists emphatically that I watch. The idea is that a parent campout in front of the bedroom door as a sort of sentry to discourage the children. I heeded this advise and grabbed the closest reading book to keep myself entertained while at my post. I woke the next morning with a horrible neck cramp, a plastic building block stuck to my right cheek, my book splayed abstractly across the hallway floor, and to find that all the children had daintily tiptoed over my sleeping corpse to watch midnight cartoons anyway.

Bedtime bath lotions and potions! Slather your sweet son or daughter in these magical concoctions and they will instantly feel drowsy, or at least that is the claim. Now I am a firm believer in herbal remedies and find that chamomile and lavender ship me off to dream land, but that may be because by dinner time, I am bordering on a narcolepsy diagnosis. What actually happens, besides spending outrageous amounts of money, is when you finally breakdown and “snuggle” (like something out of the WWE) with your clean and greased child, you are lulled to sleep by the soothing scents and the child is able to slip from your headlock and wreak havoc in your house unimpeded.

Out of desperation I tried a suggestion from a parenting book that my mother-in-law sent as a not-so-subtle Christmas gift. I have the most wonderful mother-in-law that a woman could ask for, but for several weeks following every visit, I receive unsolicited gifts of parenting books (don't get me wrong, I appreciate them because it gives me more things to try). It offered that we should make it uncomfortable for our children to not go to their beds. We attempted making them run laps around the backyard in their pajamas, to make them tired. We even experimented with holding cans. This was done by making our children hold cans of food in their straight and outstretched arms for a prescribed period of time. We started with tuna cans, within a week we had graduated to canned vegetables and the cans kept getting larger and larger until we abandoned the project as a loss. I assert that the only thing that this behavior will achieve is in raising mutant super-strong children who will eventually “snuggle” you in a headlock.

But, after hours of struggle, the house is finally quiet. I sneak in a few minutes of ME time, which usually consists of a token shower (my grandmother calls it a “lick and a promise”) and a quick brush of hair and teeth and off to bed. Within the hour the migration begins. The door to my bedroom opens to a fuzzy silhouette and a child scampering into my bed and snuggling sweetly into my right arm. This process is usually not sweet and involves many knees to the groin and elbows to soft spots in my abdomen and quick checks for internal bleeding. This occurs several more times and I am left lying in bed with a child in the crook of my right arm, my left arm, one child across my feet and one lying like a cherry on top of my head, and one firmly between my legs using my cushy midsection as a pillow. With great effort, I usually extract myself and end up watching television on the couch where the process slowly repeats again. It is like that old game “PONG” where I am bounced staggering back and forth slowly between my room and the living room. My husband, who sleeps so soundly I often watch for the rising and falling of his chest just to make sure I don't need the services of a mortician, awakes the next morning feeling insulted that his wife won't sleep with him. I did...off and on for about half the night.

People always ask how I get so much done, and I usually answer that it is because I suffer from insomnia. I would like to make a slight change. I get so much done because I suffer from child-induced insomnia which came on suddenly twelve years ago, although I should have seen it coming because it followed nine-months of uncomfortable tossing and turning.

Driving in the Car With Minions

When I was brainstorming this week, I said to hubby that I needed to write an entry about driving. He agreed, but believed that the trauma/drama of driving with children is worthy of at least two, if not more rants, so I will narrow my topic.(Side note: our van can contain 15 passengers, not because we anticipated ever transporting 13 people, but because then when we loaded our cantankerous minions in the car, they don't TOUCH each other in their assigned seating. Hubby notes that it was this vehicular option or handcuffs and belly chains like the state penitentiary.)

I live in a geographic region with a meteorological identity crisis. I guess I should preface that this region is not my native climate, I yield from a temperate city in the Northwestern part of the country. I grew up close enough to the ocean to walk to the beach; the weather has a permeating and comfortable dankness that imparts the slight musk of mildew and ensures a generalized follicle dampness that prevents curling (this was a bane for me as a child.) With that aside, I am agog at the fact that I have put down roots in a place where I swelter in the summer and shiver all winter. In fact, this area seems to completely forget the fact that there is a spring or fall altogether. My husband chides that I am comfortable for 15 minutes out of the ENTIRE year.

Nearly two months ago, Mother Nature had one of her common mood swings. It is not at all unheard of to use the furnace for a comfortable breakfast and have to switch to air conditioning by lunchtime. On my way back from my tri-weekly trek to ballet class, our van (often thought to be able to be seen from space) hit a patch of black ice and began pirouhetting across oncoming freeway traffic. My entire life flashed before my eyes, it was brief and gratefully so, because it was extremely dry viewing. Our guardian angels must have watched us that evening because there was enough delay in the onset of traffic that we were unscathed and the van finished her graceful rotations facing forward so we could continue along our way, creeping tearfully and shaking at 30 mph, but none the worse for wear.

Since that day, with the slightest sign of precipitation, I retreat to my little hole and hibernate until the storm front passes. So yesterday, when it began vomiting snow from the sky in obscene amounts, I proclaimed ballet a lost cause and began hunkering down till the undesirable weather passed. As I began preparing hot chocolate, I came to the shocking realization that my husband had rode his motorcycle to work that morning and I was going to have to put on my big girl panties and brave the weather-induced stupidity if I was going to avoid being a widow.

I quickly bundled the children and left with a half hour to spare for my seven-mile journey through this frozen hell that invaded my otherwise quiet suburban wonderland. Something about the added tension wafting in the air when a parent is confronted with inclimate weather and the looming threat of vehicular demise, brings out the insanity in young children. After my fourth tire-spinning, fish-tailing, swear-word inducing episode, my middle two sons (who are usually the best of pals, but occasionally the worst of enemies) decided that this moment was the time to air ALL dirty laundry of the past two weeks.

“You ate the last cookie on Monday!”

“Your breath stinks when he give me good night kisses!”

“Maaaww-om, Grouchy Minion says that my breath stinks. (In that sing-songing, lilting whine reserved for only the most trivial of tattling.) That is okay, Grouchy, because I wouldn't want to kiss a POOPHEAD anyway.”

“Maaaw-om, he called me a poophead!”

And then the wrestling match ensued. From my white-knuckled, ulcer-inducing, buttocks-clenching seat three rows up (I told you, it was a gigantic van), I see a pair of Lightning McQueen tennis shoes leap over the seat. It was like watching a throwback to Tom and Jerry cartoons of my youth. A non-specific sphere of limbs with an occasional head peeking out to breathe, and all this with a muffled soundtrack of blows landing and ending abruptly with the ear-piercing wail of defeat and injury. (In writing this post, I have found out that cartoon critics have coined the phrase “Ball of Violence” for this phenomenon. This moniker begs to be integrated into daily speech.) “Maaaaw-om, he hit me! Come back here and make him stop!” Huh? Why do children think that cars drive themselves?

“Maaaaw-om, did you see what he did?” I want to reply with, “Oh darn, I missed it! I was mistakenly paying attention to the life-threatening driving conditions and the strenuous responsibility of keeping you little demons, miraculously born without the desire for self-preservation, ALIVE!” Instead I settle for the self-editing feature that miraculously appeared after having my second child. It usually starts with the first consonant sound of the curse word that is threatening to escape my lips and ends with something much more pre-meditated and constructive. “What the He...aave you made sure that your seat belts are fastened? Sh---ouldn't we all just remember to forgive and forget, you bunch of braaaa...angels.” (My eldest minion, in listening to my post for editing and suggestions, declares that he has rarely heard quotes like these. Apparently, usually I just say the curse word.)

I am always amazed at the timing of the aggressive scuffles in my car. I swear that my children wait until the road has less traction than a sheet of glass, or when the freeway is an unpredictable parking lot of irate and indecisive drivers, or when the car starts making those odd whining sounds again, or when the baby has continued his two-hour serenade of terror and my right eye feels like it is about to explode from the socket just to escape the unceasing and shrill screaming.

I was discussing mommy survival skills with another friend who has six little minions of her own. I was narrating the instance when my mother (admittedly an empty-nesting mother of two), and her tension while riding in my car. Mom questioned how I keep my sanity through repeated journeys to different classes and obligations when I have a constant soundtrack of bickering and the siren song of my youngest minion. The answer is a very finely tuned filtration system. This filtration system, through years of honed apathy, is able to decipher the screams of pain (which require attention) from the screeches of irritation (which require inaction.) Example: “Mom, he keeps touching my armrest!”= completely unheard by the trained and filtering mommy ear. “Mom, cool! I can watch my tendons move through this cut in my foot!” (an actual quote uttered by one of my minions while in the throws of seeking medical treatment)=alert, listening, doing triage and en route to the ER.

Parental Pain Scale

Today I continue the decontamination and decluttering from our Christmas “glut of greed.” I am completely aware that a fortnight has passed, but the surplus insanity combines with my penny-pinching refusal to pay the city for more than one garbage can. The paper shrouds from the merry mountain of madness therefore have to be shuffled off in measured increments.

Because my childrens' rooms are blanketed in a thick carpet of non-descript clutter, I have commanded that all new Christmas toys remain under guard in the living room until accommodations are made in the bedrooms, so currently my house resembles more of a minefield than a family living establishment.

In my enthusiasm to complete all my Christmas shopping in one pre-calculated and strategized attack (See Thanksgiving post on my acrid repulsion for shopping), I neglected several rules that have been in place since the establishment of our household. To warn other parents and guide future purchases, my husband and I have compiled our “pain scale”--developed after years of extensive research and colorful obscenities. This scale is an approximate measure (on a scale from 1-10) of the number of sailor-worthy curse words which escape a parent's lips when they are confronted with one of these toys at 3 a.m., in the soft arch of their foot.

1- Stuffed toys. Stuffed toys are mostly benign in their steppability (If Shakespeare can invent words, so can I, and any parent who has suffered from attack from an unsteppable toy will agree on the addition of the word to English vernacular). I really only include them because they generally are bedazzled with beady little eyes and noses which when marched on squarely are indeed painful, even if only slightly.

2- Balls. This is largely dependent on the size and density of the ball. Soccer balls and basketballs are generally a low pain factor due to their ability to be seen from great distances. Rubber “super” balls rise in their ability to produce colorful metaphors, and marbles (which are just balls in miniature) reach nearly a solid 3. The score on this scale immediately skyrockets to a six if ankle-rolling or bodily surrender to gravity is involved.

 

3- Fisher Price Little People. I refer to the newer design which is soft and squishy as opposed to the marble-headed Little People of my youth. As a parent, I am forever grateful for the forward thinking of toy designers at Fisher Price, who had doubtlessly stepped on several of the old kind, deemed to be nearly unsteppable, and felt compelled to rethink the materials. Stepping on the newer toys usually only prompts one to three ear-covering exclamations, which despite minimal pain, can often be edited to “Bible swears.” I can firmly declare that a marble-headed counterpart measures on a 4-5 on our scale, which may or may not be isolated to those found in Biblical verses.

With the introduction of #3, I bring up the crushability factor which is a dependent variable in this experiment in agony. If the material has some sort of flexibility, it dramatically decreases the amount of profanity that ensues. When I say crushability, I do not mean BREAKABILITY, being broken only means more pieces to become lodged in the fleshy soles of feet.

These next two can almost be interchangeable depending on the quantity and quality of the toys involved.
 

4- Lincoln Logs. These usually produce a higher level of colorful metaphors due to the fact that they are like a crude form of roller skates. Those that have awkwardly rolled/skidded/stumbled their way through their house on a couple of these little cylinders of joy, will completely agree with this assessment. The logs are also kindly designed with little corners to bite any fleshy arches unfortunate enough to cross their path. The level of maintenance on this toy also becomes a noteworthy variable, because splinters add a whole different level for justified profanity.

5- Wooden blocks. (See the above mentioned splinter factor for alterations) this also is dependent on whether the foot lands on a corner or one of the flat faces of the block. The average number of expletives also depends on the age of the blocks involved. New shiny blocks have lethally sharp corners, whereas blocks that have been abused through months and years of construction and deconstruction tend to have a more rounded aesthetic.

6.- Galactic Heroes. My eldest minion LOVES these little action figures, which unlike their “big boy” counterparts have very few little parts to break and remove. The oldest of the minions, is well beyond the recommended age for these loveable cartooned alternative to action figures, but he grew tired of stretching his skilled imagination by pretending that Anakin Skywalker lived during the years of the French Revolution and amazingly is still animated despite facing the guillotine. Or that his clone troopers were equipped with bazookas fused directly through the ulna and thus hands were superfluous. Although reminiscent to Little People, these have no squishability, hence no steppability, and therefore induce more censor-worthy tyrades.

7- Mega blocks. Not the large kind, which fall somewhere between Little People and Lincoln Logs. These are the medium-sized ones that have smaller hollow protuberances to nip at unshoed feet. There is an indulgence in the number of swear words uttered when the Mega-blocks project is incomplete because it generally involves stepping on a large population of the blocks in a small radius.

8- Action Figures. The largest culprit of achieving an eight-word-string of four-letter-words is a space-related franchise which cannot be named due to intellectual property infringements to some guy on some ranch in California (although it might be Disney now). These marauders are equipped with, for sidestepping copyright lawsuits, what we will call “glow cutlasses.” These “glow cutlasses” are generously cast by toy manufacturers in unforgiving and uncrushable plastic. Being impaled by a “glow cutlass” in the middle of an otherwise peaceful night may skyrocket your language to an immediate R or NC-17 rating.

9- Green army men. Again my eldest minion LOVES to recreate historic battles using small soldiers. If soldiers are unavailable, he is very flexible and improvises using anything available. One dark night, I went to power up the DVD player and realized that the remote control had been raided of batteries. I investigated to find that ALL of the remote controls, radio-controlled cars, cameras, book lights, flashlights, even alarm clocks had been deprived of all power. I stumbled down the toy mine-field of my hallway and painfully staggered over the thick carpet of child-created debris that blankets the back bedroom. There they stood, copper top helmets obediently glinting in the scarce light of the hallway. The next day, I bought a cubic ton of new batteries and a bucket of green army men. Unfortunately, green army men have little pointy guns, that though deprived of combustible ammunition, pack a punch during drowsy 4 a.m. trips to the toilet.

10-Hot wheels cars. This rating is entirely awarded on the lack of crushability factor. These cars are famous for the collectable and heirloomable durability, but with this durability comes the completely unforgiving die cast metal. By employing superhuman methods of metal tempering, these toys can be used to draw blood! There is nearly nothing more excrutiating than a rearview mirror to the foot!

I am aware and not a complete mathematical idiot, but there is one more addition to our scale of pain. A toy that, though cleverly designed and coveted above gold or sanity, induces a steady stream of words that I am ashamed to even have listed in my vocabulary, let alone actually use. Again, I reiterate that I am the mother of FIVE boys, FIVE very creative boys, FIVE boys who are all aiming to attend MIT to design and build weapons and vehicles of the future, FIVE boys who all want to study engineering and therefore, I am subject to FIVE boys worth of LEGOS. FIVE boys with of miniature turntably Legos, stabbing spearlike Legos, space-franchised indescribable and uncrushable blob shaped Legos, Legos with little yellow faces that seemingly smile and mock the agony of an unsuspecting parent.

Yup, measuring firmly at a 26 (on our scale from 1-10) are LEGOS. I have actually had to dislodge a LEGO from my foot at heaven-forbidden hours of the morn using a pair of tweezers and numerous colorful expletives. I have actually had to ponder whether or not my Lego-created injury might require anesthetics and stitches (REALLY not joking). That is a pain that no number of “Oh My Hecks,” “FUDGES!” or “Froggins” is going to alleviate and usually justifies if not requires immediate linguistic escalation.