My Birthday Resolution

This weekend marked the anniversary of the dawning of my life and with this, the realization that I look really really old. Not like I look my age, but that rigorous abuse and hours of bottom-clenching driving in traffic have left me looking and feeling like something out of that Benjamin Button movie. So, being gifted with family and friends who sent me monetary expressions of affection, I have begun my quest to at least regain some of the minimal hygiene habits that have been lost in the mayhem of motherhood.

My college roommates used to tease me mercilessly, because I would not be seen by anybody (especially not members of the opposite sex) without my face fully adorned with cosmetics. There were an alarming number of times when I had already showered, curled my hair in spongy pink rollers, and removed my war paint in anticipation of a going to bed. Only to have an unexpected late night visitor, and I would remove the curlers and reapply the war paint to conduct my business with unannounced company. Then reremove and recurl upon my company's departure. I admit that this is a little bit extreme, but when did I go from make-up and shower twice a night to barely being able to find time for either activity twice a WEEK? I see magazine ads about the “five-minute face” and tee hee to myself, because I have barely had five minutes to empty my bladder.

I once went to school wearing one brown sandal and one brown loafer. I was trying to accessorize my outfit and while having a visual comparison, I forgot to match the winning choice before rushing out the door. This conundrum seems ridiculous when presented this week with the fact that I have one shoe of seven different pairs. Being of diminished stature, my feet structurally match my height. My daughter minion is eight-years-old, and much to her delight, she can now wear the same size of shoes that I do. This has meant that I have NO shoes. I went to play soccer in my three-inch wedges yesterday, because BOTH pairs of tennis shoes have disappeared into the pink swamp that is her bedroom floor. Matching shoes to an outfit? I feel accomplished if I match shoes to each other.

As I prepared for our weekly worship service on Sunday, the day after my new resolution to revisit the glamor of my youth, I decided to invest time in actually coordinating an outfit. My usual physical preparation for church takes me about fifteen minutes, and that includes, shower, dressing, make-up, and gathering supplies for minions. During my closet excavations for fashionable clothing, I came to the conclusion that being fashionable is time consuming and I value sleep over beauty. I tried on outfit combinations and debated the cut of shirts and how they compliment my rapidly expanding waistline. Usually, I figure if I have the strategic parts covered, I am doing great!

With my newfound birthday wealth, I invested in two new blouses, two new belts, and a new skirt. It used to be that I would MATCH my outfits, meaning that my blouse, pants, socks, jewelry, etc. was in the same or a complimentary color family. I had numerous pairs of earrings for the perfect match of sporty vs. elegant, silver vs. gold. As the money burned a hole in my pocket and I browsed through the thick forest of clothing racks in my local department store, I came to a realization. I mentioned in a previous post that the motto is our house was “If it covers, it is capitol.” I am just a short trip from wearing a batman cape and a Walmart bag. My SUPERMOM pajamas, that are supposed to be my daily pep talk, end up being worn to the grocery store with whatever shirt (usually my husband's) doesn't smell when I lift it from the laundry basket and take a whiff. I bought my two blouses, put on a pair of jeans and immediately lost 15 lbs. It was the easiest and best weight loss plan ever!

I had a friend complain that she only ever does her hair in a ponytail anymore, it is all she has time for. I found myself secretly envious, because I often cannot even find the time to run a brush through my tangled tresses. The truth actually is that I usually cannot find my hairbrush at all, it has been used to beautify Barbie and been sucked into the same abyss that apparently ate the other half of every pair of my shoes. I look at the beautiful women in my area, the ones that don't look like they are pushing a million years old. They go to the beauty shop and have their hair styled and colored. Are you kidding me? I haven't been to a Dollarcuts in 12 years! Since my mop of dark auburn hair is lapping at my waistline, perhaps it is about time that I at least reined in the chaos with an elastic and a comb on a daily basis.

I am going to get on a sensitive subject for a second, so those who are faint of heart should skip this paragraph. I also purchased, as a gift to myself, some foundational garments. I don't know when it happened, but suddenly not only did I wear “Granny Panties” (bras actually), but I don't remember when safety pins and duct tape began becoming part of my lingerie fashion statement. I guess when “the girls” became functional, I stopped worrying about fashionable. The funniest part of the whole operation was buying an athletic top to wear to the gym. I wasn't even in the “intimate” section of my local buy-everything-here-store, and my eldest minion was blushing. Makes me want to take an extra trip to Victoria's Secret just for spite.

I am going to skip the subjects of jewelry, coordinated hair accessories, or lotions and perfumes, as fully recovering from my slothful binger is going to be a multi-step process and these two seem like the icing on the cake. But, if you don't see me on the streets around my home....GREAT! I have achieved my goal of sluffing off the air of defeat and dementia and putting on a convincing facade of hygienic normalcy.

Toilet Bowl Blunders
In researching images for this article, I stumbled upon this jewel of the internet called "Adventures in Toilet Flushing." http://m.pandawhale.com/post/6374/adventures-in-toilet-flushing This website left me howling with laughter and tears streaming down my cheeks. After this highly scientific video evidence, I have concluded...I bought the WRONG toilet. This also includes the cartoon from my youth that leaps to mind every time I have to rigorously plunge.

I reseated my toilet for the third time since the dawning of this new year. I am starting to wonder if I shouldn't get a contractor's discount and just buy wax ring kits in bulk, because we have to completely dismantle the commode on a fairly regular basis in search of whatever object has blocked the escaping of unwanted materials. Unfortunately, the culprit is usually not of an organic nature. I would like to be able to accuse our toilet woes on overenthusiastic wipers, but alas some children need to be reminded to perform that operation altogether, and others of them choose to bypass taking it off the roll in double ply streamers and just drop the unused cylinders in whole.

I have had three different mothers this week pose the inexplicable question of where the spoons from their homes went. One mother actually wondered if they went the same place that single socks do. I do not really venture to guess where spoons go when they disappear from this realm of existence, but I will tell you that this most recent occurrence, when the toilet vomited its undesirable contents all over the floor, a lone spoon sat glimmering in the depths— daring my germophobic self to extricate it from the murky waters. I plucked it like a hot coal from its odorous resting place and flung it into the bathtub behind me. I covered the offending utensil in bleach, cleansed it with scalding hot water, and threw it in the garbage just to be safe. If you also are finding a notable lack of food-shoveling implements, perhaps you should check the plumbing.

Our toilet began protesting our family's abuses about two years ago when the first IFO (identifiable flushed object) strangled our plumbing. Due to chronic skin maladies and my unhealthy obsessive need for overachieving, I have always made my own soap from scratch. Yes, I know....totally weird, but decadent and effective. During one of my frequent bouts of being overextended and exhausted, I chose to buy a case of green-hued soap that claimed, once upon a time on television, to make Irish people sing under waterfalls. My eldest minion is very particular about....well....everything. I unsheathed the rectangle of emerald perfumey goodness and placed it gingerly on the dish built into our tub. When I went to shower, the rectangle was inexplicably missing. So, I unwrapped another and placed it in its place of honor. The next day it also had been sucked into a vacuum. On my third attempt, my toilet began mysteriously cascading over the shiny barriers of the rim. I plunged until I could plunge no more. I purchased a toilet snake (I had never heard of such a thing before), but to no avail. I finally hired a plumber. He removed my toilet and retrieved from the depths beneath my tile, a vaguely rectangular not exactly green object that I recognized immediately. I was amazed. Apparently soap gets gummy and squishy during a ten minute shower, but can last several days under a constant barrage of flushing without softening or passing through to freedom.

 

I was comforted a few short weeks later when my dear neighbor called and reported that her porcelain throne had suffered a similar fate. Her well-intentioned, but bored, seven-year-old child had decided to play “flush the Hotwheels car.” Apparently Hotwheels made their cars wonderfully flushable, but not parentally steppable (see our January 9, 2013 post about Parental Pain Scales.) After exhausting his die-cast supply of vehicles he decided that writing implements seemed innocuous enough to make the journey through the pipes. After flushing one plastic pen, the toilet gave up the battle and began its watery protest. When confronted about the incident, the child responded with “It said it was disposable on the side.” His mother, though slightly soggy, had to accept that as a relatively logical defense.

So, I now begin listing things that through my scientific study and a plethora of rubber gloves and hand sanitizer I have found to be non-flushable. (How is it that non-flushable is rejected by my spell-check, but non-uncrushable is an acceptable replacement?) Toilet paper rolls if stocked with more than a quarter of a roll of product are rejected by most lavatories. Marbles though small, are too dense to be carried away with the current and then either sit glinting and decorative in the bottom of the privy or require unpleasant retrieval by someone other than myself. Toothbrushes make about half the journey before proving too rigid and may take some muscle to extract. Baby wipes, single paper towels, plastic Easter eggs, make-up brushes, cotton swabs, toothpicks, marshmallows in small groups are all fairly benign in descending down the catacombs of the W.C. Don't ask me how I know, but through familial proof, dentures are amazingly flushable and truly difficult to retrieve. (The family resemblance is extremely shaky after that, as the wearer of these chompers washed them and continued using them after sending her hubby to retrieve them from the septic system. I may be frugal, but I don't think even I am that frugal. The moral of this crappy tale is to remove your dentures BEFORE you toss your cookies).

As I have mentioned before, my family suffers from an amazing plethora of skin maladies, so therefore I must purchase make-up that nearly defies budget or face my life as a splotchy ogre. Though I have abandoned beige tubes of foundation that cost as much as one month's insurance on all three of my vehicles, merely because it has vacationed (however briefly) in the bowl of the facilities.

How is it that we have the technology to speak to people face-to-face on other continents, we can carry the entire library of congress in a computer the size of a paperback book, we can clap our hands and turn on a light across the house, we have robots that sweep our floors and torment our house cats, but we cannot have a smart filtering toilet that only allows #1 and #2 to enter its depths? (patent pending) Sounds like a corporate conspiracy among plumbers to me.

Toilet euphamisms rejected for this MoM outburst: Powder room (mostly because mine has been dusted in a variety of powders and the nomenclature is offensive to me), washroom, the restroom (parents all know that there is very little resting that occurs in this room), little boy/girl's room, the can, the John, the privy, the oval office (I rejected this, because too much crap happens in the real geographical location), the loo (which I personally use quite frequently, but it is unrecognized by most Americans), the smallest room in the house, and the comfort station.

A Sprinkling of Karma
This week I am writing in remembrance of my old toilet seat and in salutation of the new. With five little boys, toilet seats are as disposable as.....toilet paper. I just ask myself, “Is this disgusting, disease-infested, vomit-inducing, light-your-body-on-fire-and-extinguish-it-with-bleach-type of cleaning worth the $20 it would take to buy a brand new one?” For this OCD-stricken mom, the answer is generally a resounding, “ HEAVENS NO!”

When I was growing up, my grandmother had a very peculiar sense of interior decorating. This was especially true when it came to her bathroom, This sense of style is likely because of her ten darling grandchildren, a staggering eight of them were male.

One day in our ceramics class, my grandmother was struck with the overwhelming importance of a message engraved on an unpainted plaster plaque. She was immediately compelled to by truth and import of this greeting, purchased it, instructed me to paint it quickly. She proudly posted this plaque on the wall directly opposite the toilet. The plaque was charmingly shaped like a toilet seat, painted (through my artistic vision) a glowing orchid purple and read in gigantic capital letters, “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.” As one of the few females using her facilities, I found this rhetoric disgusting and preferred to carry out my business with my eyes shut to avoid the humiliation of reading about sprinkling or tinkling.

Apparently, karma has a twisted sense of humor. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of parental karma, I will define it. Karma is the cosmic principle that ensures that if you ever used the commode at your grandmother's house with your eyes closed to avoid thinking about boys peeing on the toilet seat, the cosmos will give you FIVE bouncing baby boys as a nagging reminder of this principle. Yes, I have FIVE little sprinklers and tinklers and the thought of that orchid-hued, plaster toilet seat haunts me several times daily.

There have been days of my life that I will use the restroom at our local Walmart because the chances are good that they are less disease-ridden than the one awaiting me at home. I find myself often doing the “tip-toe and levitate maneuver.” I am sure that everyone is familiar with this prim little dance. The one you do on the tops of your tennis shoes when you enter a public toilet that you are sure has hatched more bacteria in the past 20 minutes than Sir Alexander Fleming did in a lifetime. The dance starts with a staccato halt at the doorway and the dramatic realization that you must dance on the tips of your toes like a ballerina to minimize the amount of surface area in contact with the offending facility. Upon reaching your destination, you remove all but the calculated necessary amount of toilet paper from the roll and proceed to wrap (without directly touching) the toilet like a present for Christmas morning. The choreography then calls for you to levitate your body six inches from any surface and finish your biological business quickly. After which, you use only your elbows to wash with scalding hot water (though no soap because these kinds of facilities have a philosophical aversion to the stuff) and exit the room. I personally then use scented hand sanitizers till my pores sting and I smell like I am imbibed with alcohol.

Not wanting to be so crude as to mention the sprinkling and tinkling in my decorating, I chose a more elegant and biblical approach. I called it “The Potty Proclamation.” I actually had a friend think that they were making an amazing revelation when they noted the similarity to the ten commandments. I informed him that it was indeed by design, because the disregard for these commandments may bring down a wrath of biblical proportions. The Proclamation was posted in our home for over a year and the offending behaviors ceased, so it was removed in favor of a beautiful picture of a tulip.

Well folks, the tulip is on hiatus, and The Proclamation is back in its place of honor. I have received great compliments on my commandments, so I will share.

It is prefaced with: “Woe be unto the filthy for they shall be beaten heavily with whatever Mommy deems sufficient until the germ-ridden devil is cleansed from their soul.”

1. Thou shalt not forget to flush
   Might I mention that my little group of monsters are certifiably genius. I am not saying that as a proud mother, I am saying that as someone who thwarts their attempts at world domination on a daily basis. I can truthfully say, I have a brilliant group of little minds. So WHY can they not master the function of the LITTLE PLASTIC LEVER!?! (there is that interrobang again, Honey!) I have noticed that the concept of flushing the toilet and the satisfying gurgle and swish that accompany it, is absolutely enthralling to small children. But the function and operation of the device falls out of their heads once they are potty trained, as if there just isn't enough room for both pieces of information.
2. If thou art male, thou shalt SIT to use the facilities.
   My male friends who have read my proclamation are scandalized by this! They believe that I am robbing my boys of some male right of passage or something. I attribute this to my mother-in-law. My darling husband is the oldest of three children, the younger two being sisters. He therefore, was encouraged to abandon his manly right to urinate from the upright position for the greater good. Yup ladies, I married the perfect guy. He cooks, he cleans, and he NEVER leaves the lid up. I am not suppressing my sons' natural instincts or the snow-inspired artistic tendencies, I am merely making them marketable for their future wives.
3. Thou shalt remove all items from the floor before leaving this room.
   This is self-explanatory. If an article of clothing is moist and on the bathroom floor, I don't want to have to question whether the moisture is from splashing or from overzealous sprinkling and tinkling.
4. Thou shalt not waste toilet paper.
   Being a homeschooling family, I have found that there are offensive behaviors inherent in a public school situation that have gratefully skipped my children. Creative uses of toilet paper is not among those lists of elusive behaviors. The worst is when I am perched helplessly on the throne with an empty cardboard cylinder on the sproingy thing to my left and four or five plush wads sneering at me from their cemented home on the ceiling.
5. Thou shalt replace the toilet paper on the roll when the previous is void of product.
   Fairly self-explanatory, but we have all done the solitary dance that is less tip-toeing and more reminiscent of a sumo wrestler in trying to retrieve a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom closet, which is within view, but just out of reach.
6. Thou shalt not part the Red Seas in the bathtub, allowing it to spill its banks.
   Again, I remind you that I have little maniac genius babies, but somehow they can calculate the amount of magnesium needed to light a small fire, but cannot calculate the maximum volume allowed in our bathtub to minimize the spillage. Additionally, my bathroom is tiled in lovely beige tile with grout that acts as aqueducts in carrying any small amount of water through a series of canals all the way out through the outer bathroom and into the wood-floored hallway an impressive ten feet away.
7. Thou shalt use thine own towel and return it promptly to the assigned hook.
   I am repeatedly asked, mostly by my mother when she visits my house, if I actually OWN towels. The answer is a resounding YES! I have a gaggle of towels, a legion, a myriad, quite nearly a googleplex of drying implements. Amazingly, I post the towels at their station each laundry day and within mere seconds, they have been swallowed by the black hole in my bathroom. I am increasingly tired of choosing between the drip-dry method or the hippy-wiggle dance from trying to put on jeans when wet.
8. Thou shalt return the magazines and reading material to the provided receptacle.
   Refer to the above theory on moisture. A mysteriously moist magazine should require incineration, just to be safe.
9. Thou shalt not bathe anything but thyself and thy pet in the bathtub.
   I am also the mother of two beautiful little dogs and although I sanction the use of the bathtub for bathing and grooming our sweet little spaniels, my children suddenly suffer from “explosive amnesia.” However the understanding of the function and purpose of a bathtub swiftly returns whenever a new and dry roll of toilet paper or a freshly laundered bath towel is temptingly stationed in our bathroom.
10. Thou shalt RINSE the residual filth from the bathtub before exiting this room.
    I am a bath taker, or at least I was until I had children. There is nothing more soothing than candles (also notably absent from my house), a book (now replaced by my e-reader which I find a little precarious see previous note about karma for in-bath reading), and a soothing bubble bath. Although, there is something distinctly not soothing about finding UBF in my bathtub, or Unidentified Bathtub Floaties. Therefore I swiftly stopped making “Me Tea” as my sweet hubby coined the phrase. Although come to think of it....that is even less charming than the little rhyme about sprinkling and tinkling. Goodness, what have I become?

Marital Mayhem

 

I am writing this post with great personal risk to my life and marriage. If my husband knew of the delicate nature of the contents, he would likely run off with some tube-top sporting circus freak and change his name to Bubba just to maintain his anonymity. I usually talk about my life among the mayhem caused by my children, but today I am struck by the humor of the mayhem caused by the communication, or lack thereof, between the sexes.

I used to believe that the invisible wall that results in a complete semantic breakdown between my husband and myself was a unique feature to our house that realtor neglected to tell us when he was giving the tour. Can you imagine the dialogue, “And if you are in the kitchen and your spouse is in the living room, be warned that no conversation will ever end in diplomatic unity. This is due to the “Tick Off the Wife Wall. It is invisible, but scientists are working on a means of tracking the energy and locating the phenomenon.” Apparently this is a common geographical anomaly, because I have talked three different women through the process of eliminating vague directions. So, to help minimize the fallout of marital mayhem, I will provide a handy guide to interpreting wife-speak.

 

1. “I don't know, Honey. It is a little expensive.” I have found through my own experience that this somehow passes the male brain filter and translates as, “She is okay with my owning this **Fill in the blank here with ludicrous and absurd testosterone-dripping desire** as long as she doesn't have to find the money to pay for it.” What is going through the female brain before this phrase escapes her mouth is, “What the H*** would any human being want with a **Fill in the blank here with ludicrous and absurd testosterone-dripping desire**? Since it is absurdly outside our price range, I can tell him this and close the matter without seeming like a nagging meanie.”

I am currently awaiting a **Fill in the blank here with ludicrous and absurd testosterone-dripping desire** of which I did not successfully circumvent the purchase. My downfall came in not saying, “Honey, NO! I do not want **Fill in the blank here with ludicrous and absurd testosterone-dripping desire** in the same ten mile radius as me or anybody that I love, therefore when it comes, it can enjoy a cozy permanent home in the mailbox.”

 

2. “I would really like a **Fill in the blank with a modestly priced, modestly sized, logical desire**” This does not mean to buy an approximation or variation on said desire in a much larger caliber or with a much larger price tag. A television is still a television even if it doesn't swallow the entire living room and leave no place for the public to view it. A larger vehicle is still larger than your Honda even if it doesn't get a measly 6 MPG and roar like a wild beast. Despite attempts to convince the male population to the contrary by infamous television comedians of eras past who grunt at their bigger and badder mechanical devices, sometimes good enough is just...well, good enough

 

A good friend was complaining to her husband that she loved animals and would really like a modestly sized dog. In response, he purchased her a mildly gigantic dog rather than a behemoth dog that carries brandy in a keg and could carry a small family to safety after an avalanche. Her sweet canine has destroyed and dug up numerous items and always her sweet hubby says, “You said you wanted a dog.” To which I tell him for the sake of avoiding marital mayhem, “Yup, she said she wanted a dog, not a miniature horse crossbred with a tornado.”

 

3. Do what you want, Dear.” This is wife-speak for “Good heavens, don't ever do what you just said you were going to do. Search through the mental log of our previous conversations and do what I vaguely hinted that you should do.” If this phrase is uttered with a heaving sigh, DUCK. All Hell is about to break loose. This enumerated entry is more of a cry for reform to the female population. If you want a modestly sized dog, name the breed. Be specific. If you don't want to move to Siberia tell him that you are happy in your suburban paradise and would rather amputate a limb than follow him into the permafrost.

 

4. "Honey, you need to handle this.” This phrase is often muttered in exasperation with a disciplinary situation. Interpret this very carefully as “Perform a miracle in which the child learns the disciplinary lesson, never repeats the offending behavior, has a tear in his eye for the sin he has committed, and offers apologies and lollipops while planning his life as a missionary in a third world country.” This does NOT mean, “Become a whip-wielding drill sergeant who summers as an Alcatraz prison guard, withhold food and water while shouting insults about their intelligence and their genealogy, and top the whole operation with a sound thumping just so they will never forget it.” All joking aside, there has to be an honest compromise on this front. My husband and I would have a relationship of sunshine and roses if we didn't have to do all that parenting stuff which just causes conflict. Can't the children just live feral in the backyard and be raised by our dogs? The doghouse should be big enough; I requested my little toy-sized beauties by name.

There are so many that I am having a hard time listing them all. “Buy some milk and eggs at the store,” means, “Get the milk and eggs, but add some ice cream and hard liquor without spending any additional money.” “I have too much to do,” sincerely means, “Go do some dishes.” “The children are making me crazy,” means “Break out some tranquilizers and tuck in the minions.” “Leave me alone,” means “Leave me alone,” unless uttered while crying which then means, “Under no circumstances do you leave me alone, you chase me down like a bloodhound until I vent to you about every injustice that has bothered me since the moment that I was born until this exact second.” “Whatever,” secretly means, “Shutup!” “I have a headache,” translates to, “Oh My Gosh, go take a shower. I think something died in your back pocket.”

In truth, ladies. I think the issue here is us...well, maybe just me. I tend to be cryptic about my communicated desires... or undesires. I find myself all too often trapped in unwanted situations merely because I didn't communicate with absolution my expectations to the contrary. I don't buy into the whole Mars/Venus thing, because these personality conflicts are inherent in any relationship. But I am discovering that my partner doesn't have a crystal ball, or at the very least is lousy at reading it and doesn't see the raging anger that is imminent in his immediate future, merely due to his poor education in the intricately bizarre and cryptic language of Wife-speak.

**I must note that in researching and writing this piece, I found a newspaper article from a reputable source that suggested that video games are a good way for children to explore the world around them. Ummmmmm....I have a good suggestion for a way children can explore the world around them. How about going outside and (dramatic pause) exploring. Weird huh?**

I apologize for the lack of post last week, but I ran into a snag while trying to publish my rantings. The irony is that the reason for the snag was the exact offense that I was railing against. I completed the typing and cursory editing of my textual tantrum and when I tried to post it for the consumption of the entire world wide web, my computer had a electronic brain fart and began vomiting error messages about “invisible” somethings and “unable to display” thats. The culprit was clear, my minions' glassy-eyed and insatiable addiction to an evil and seductive medium.....

As a homeschooling family of the modern age, we inevitably spend a great deal of our time huddled around computerized curriculum. Before committing to a life of perpetual parenting insanity, I precluded starvation through employment at a news desk AND doing desktop publishing, so I am no slouch when it comes to navigating my electronics, BUT I have been thwarted from innumerable tasks by bizarre alterations that my preschooler has proudly inflicted on my computer. Last week he changed my instant messaging program from Italian (which I read) to Korean (which I don't). It took two hours of random guesswork to locate the correct toolbar and revert the settings to a legible language. I do apologize profusely to those that received video calls of my pajama-clad and cursing visage, and if you used to be my friend and notice that you are no longer, please don't take it personally.

I am not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories. I do not believe that any one politican is the Anti-Christ (I have adopted a more two-party and three-branch composite theory, but....), I do not believe that food coloring is a mind control agent or that public schools are trying to brainwash our children, at least not all at once. I do however believe that Voldemort, Satan, Maleficent, Doctor Octopus, The Galactic Alliance, Daleks, Death Eaters, and The Legion of Doom have teamed up to puree the gray matter of our young and remove their ability to resist the siren calls of (duh, duh, duh) VIDEO GAMES.

Indeed, my superpowers of bladder control have become superhuman because I know that the moment my heinie leaves the chair, which perches in front of my computer desk, another tiny minion bottom will be there to make sure it is good and warm. I always emerge from any task to see a child with their little button nose nearly pressed to the screen in the avid and frantic attempt to sneak to the next level before mom can finish peeing. (My daughter wants it noted that she doesn't do any of these sneaky video game techniques, which is miraculous since her Spa Day makeover website was the one that imbibed my hard drive with parasites LAST time we had to reformat. It was kind of a sick game actually that had me reacting with a combination of humor and horror. In this “game” there is an animated face and a very obvious unibrow that required plucking or pimples that required exfoliating. I really couldn't make this stuff up.)

The sad thing is that literally every moment that I am not glued to the chair or hovering like a vulture over their shoulders, my minions are playing video games. Note that I said games in the plural sense, it doesn't seem to matter what game it is as long as they have a vague sense that they are controlling something and there is a goal at the end. Oh, and it has to be completely void of social value. I have already tried introducing educational games to hopefully satisfy this arbitrary need to play superfluous electronics. But alas, unless it is completely mind melting, the appeal is limited or non-existent.

 

As I complained about before, I recently dragged my six maniacal minions on a trip to California. In an attempt to maximize our time and resources, we downloaded maps, apps., and GPS directions on our fruit-related telephone. Each day we inexplicably only made it two hours or so before the phone sighed in exhaustion and collapsed into a black-screened coma. We were beginning to wonder if there were flaws with the battery when I started observing the quiet absence of my six-year-old minion during the lag time between activities. Employing my inner bloodhound, I sniffed him out in his little Fortress of Solitude hidden behind the veil of tablecloths in the dining room. He might as well have had a hot plate and a coffee maker, because he had squirreled away snacks and there he sat unblinkingly playing any random free application that he could sneak in before anybody noticed his absence. This truly has me gasping in horror. We had PACKED this excursion with roller coasters, ghost towns, museums, surfing, fuzzy woodland creatures singing Zippety Doo Dah; what possible NEED was there to fill the vacant seconds with superfluous time-wasters? I mean, there wasn't that much time to waste. The only answer I could pluck from the chaos was plain old fashioned addiction. The heroine that they lace those fruit-labeled consoles with is inescapable.

What is worse than the constant barrage of IQ-sucking time-wasters is the vile phrase, “What else am I going to do? I am bored.” I tell my children constantly that, “Only boring people are bored.” I am horrified to say that by this criteria, I have spawned six of the most bland people in existence. What else are they going to do? Read, draw, sing, play an instrument, go outside, socialize with friends, build something, invent something, color a picture, play with play dough, knit, sew, crochet, sing, listen to music, bake, plot world domination....or heaven forbid we actually dig the floor out from the carpet of toys and debris that give our entire home a protective coating.

I would like to conclude with some finality in purpose or some resolution for change, but frankly I am nearly reaching the point of complete resignation. I have embraced my position in this world as the weird Amish lady at the end of the street who sits on her porch and slurps lemonade intermittently while spinning yarn on my spinning wheel. (Truly my favorite summer afternoon relaxation activity) Apparently my minions are in denial of their inevitable eccentric status. Either way, I am afraid that mind-melting video games are here to stay, I just hope that I am not the unwitting observer of a gruesome scene alla Indiana Jones where I watch my six little investments of love and time, melt into a puddle of liquid stupidity.

Negotiating with My Terrorists
MoM warning: rants recorded while under the influence of medication may result in nonsensical tyrades that only make the author giggle and are generally packed full of grammatical and spelling atrocities. If this post is not entertaining, call a prescribing physician, or check in next week when MoM is sober.

I am debating a name change for this collection of published rantings. I chose the title of my blog with great care and heed to the fact that when properly abbreviated, Mistress of Mayhem spelled MoM. (A fact that I am sure is not lost on my brilliant and growing readership.) I have decided however, that a change to be the Mistress of Mayhem and her Maniacal Mercenaries would be a more accurate reflection of my daily struggles since the word “minion” implies a certain degree of obedience and cooperation toward a common goal, and my offspring in no way exude that commonality in purpose.

I will preface this prolonged parental whine with the confession that I am a diagnosed sufferer of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Many people believe that this affliction has to do with humorous situations involving alphabetizing and light switches, but it is truly the nagging discomfort of realizing that my world is absolute chaos and I am helpless to abate the confusion.

This being said, I have voluntarily accepted about three weeks of situationally-inherent chaos. I am not one of those people who inflicts their mental disorders on the people around them. My expectations are modest and require only the most minimal of participation from my family. I merely expect to be able to conceive, plan, and execute my vision with the utmost organization and minimum of forgetfulness. These perfectly executed plans generally involve several alphabetized, laminated, and color-coded lists that sit smilingly atop neatly stacked piles. See...completely modest, if you stay the HECK out of my WAY! The past three weeks I have subjected myself to packing six kids for a major vacation, only to be topped with major surgery.

I often read my friends' social statuses about being sick or injured and the sudden outpouring of assistance from their charitable offspring that brings a tear to a grateful mother's eye. As I sit here this unearthly hour of the morn, I realize that the concept of charity is completely lost on my band of cutthroats. Wrestling my children into doing altruistic housework is like hustling at a poker table in Vegas. My eldest minion is the mob-boss of disciplinary hustling. Our conversations of late have progressed like this:

Eldest minion:I will see your selflessly doing dishes and raise you an hour of video games.

Me (moaning incoherently through pain and pain killers): Haaaalf hour and wiiiiiipe the counters.

Eldest Minion (menacingly handling a lead pipe): Listen to me, old lady. The video games are not up for negotiation, the question is whether or not I pretend to do the dishes as a show of good faith. (Cracking his knuckles and practicing his Pacino impression.)

Okay, so maybe some of this is fictionalized or an exaggeration of the pain meds, but still. The result of my weak powers of negotiation or my negligible skill at Jedi mind tricks, has resulted in a much celebrated four days of mind-melting video games, peppered with inane and non-socially redemptive television programming. The whole week of gluttony has been nutritionally void except for the random traces of calcium in the milk that made the cheese on their pizza or that washed down their cookies. The house is still erect, so I am going to count this as one in my win column.

I am finding that this same mercenary sensibility has resulted in the odd infestation of Migrating
Minutia. In an attempt to pre-empt the complete psychological meltdown that my husband knew was evident post-surgery, he purchased a gigantic push broom. His brainstorm was that he would push the chaos into one concentrated pile of insanity in the middle of the room and the minions/mercenaries would then pluck the salvageable items from the pile and the rest would be round filed, a phrase I have found to mean heedlessly thrown in the general area of the trash can with some acceptable spillage. What has resulted is that salvageable items migrate an approximate two feet away from the original pile and mysteriously hide. As work on the pile continues, the concentrated clutter is subject to the scientific process of diffusion and migrates to new locations, still not the correct ones might I note, throughout the house. The process begins anew, like some sort of hoarding circle of life without the inspiring Elton John crooning. I am trying to adopt the “out of sight out of mind” philosophy, but being that I am bed-ridden, it is completely IN SIGHT and therefore the peanut butter and jelly sandwich grinning stickily from inside the school desk is nagging at me.

Sponges

I apologize to the faithful readers of my superfluous rants (apparently I have some because my statistics say that some of you have checked in for my installment. THANK YOU!). I have been delayed in posting my weekly outburst. I arrived on my own doorstep at about 7 this brisk morning after a 22-hour scenic tour of each bathroom along the corridor of the interstate highway. This week's rantings will be short, due to the brain fog from driving-in-the-car-with-six-minions lag (akin to jet lag with much more symptomatic swearing).

Have you ever heard the phrase about children being sponges and absorbing information whether or not we want them to? I have decided that the absorption rate is disproportionately quick when the behavior or information is of a negative nature. This week, my children have discovered a few behaviors that I will probably spend the next month wringing from their little minds and others that have been absorbed and are being used for evil purposes. Perhaps these are the circumstances that my husband refers to that require, "Brain Bleach."

My youngest minion is nearing his 18-month benchmark. Due to the overwhelming voluntary assistance in communicating, his speech is limited to a primitive language of clicks and grunts. As if the clicks and grunts were not difficult enough to interpret, he has found the art of glass-breakingly-shrill screeching as an effective form of communication. He sponged this delightful behavior by watching another toddler and observing the favorable results. So, my nearly full day of vehicular travel was peppered with ear-splitting serenades. I am going to have to wring the dreadful behavior out of the spongy mind of my minion before I have to build him a sound-proof room.

In an attempt to circumvent the squealing, I told him that he would receive immediate assistance if he simply made the request, “Help me.” I have made this plea before and it fell on deaf toddler ears, but apparently the absorption was merely delayed. The part that I ceased to mention to him was the “help me” didn't need to be repeated innumerable times in succession and ad nauseum. In addition, he has chosen another choice phrase to absorb from one of is new friends, “I'm stuck!” Anytime he is restrained from full range of motion, he again repeats ad nauseum, “I tuck, I tuck!” He has combined this with the high-decibel and high-pitched skills described in the previous paragraph. I finally resigned myself to a lack of audible entertainment on our trek and listened to “Elp me! Elp me! Elp me! I tuck, I tuck, I tuck, I tuck!” Being screamed like a barn owl. On my to do list for this week is to wring this headache-inducing behavior from his spongy little gray matter.

We have also collectively adopted several British adages from watching Harry Potter continuously on our vehicular entertainment system. Being rather innately comical by nature, my minions have become followers of Ronald Weasley complete with colorful words and phrases. These exchanges between myself and my children progress somewhat like this: (this is a true story, all characters are not fictional and have been quoted for maximum application of humor. All of this of course uttered in polite company for the ultimate in embarrassment.)

4-year-old minion to toddler: What the bloody hell is that? (Complete with inflection and consonant dropping)

Me: 4-year-old minion, that is not polite to say.

4-year-old-minion: Mom, I shouldn't say, 'What the bloody hell is that?'

Me: No, dear!

4-year-old minion to toddler: Hey, did you know that you shouldn't say, 'What the bloo.....'. Hey Mom, I stopped myself and didn't say, 'What the bloody hell is that?'

Me with a heaving sigh: Good job, 4-year-old minion.

4-year-old-minion to toddler: Because saying, 'What the bloody hell is that' is naughty.

We have had similar exchanges about not calling your brother a “git,” not teasing a sibling about the desire to “snog” someone or something, not sticking things in nostrils to retrieve “bogeys,” most especially the nasal cavities of other individuals. If they want to lobotomize themselves while we drive, I guess I am remiss to stop them. The list of sponged menacing British colloquialisms continues to expand.

 

I am amazed at the sudden absorption of information that has been lovingly crammed into their little craniums for weeks and miraculously surfaces at inopportune times. My 4-year-old minion has been learning to subtract with limited success and profuse distractability until he has the desire to complain about the disproportionate number of amusement park attractions that he has ridden in comparison to his older siblings. (With arms folded, lower lip protruding, and brows knit together in disgust) “Moooooom, Grumpy Minion has ridden 15 roller coasters today and I have only ridden on 11. That means that he has ridden 4 more times than I have and that isn't fair.” My eyelids flew open at the correct application of a concept that I figured was lost to this child. I was convinced that he was going to be a successful millionaire who still didn't know how many children remained on a school bus when three walked away. He couldn't have absorbed this special skill when discussing apples or schoolbooks in his textbook, he had to use it as empirical evidence to support a temper tantrum?

During our vacation, we had the opportunity of meeting a friend's delightful daughter. She was sweet, kind, brilliant, fun, and beautiful. What did my little spongy minions absorb from their interactions? The correct and most painful application of “the noogy”...oh, and how to escape a headlock. I am hoping to wring the noogies out of their porous recollections so we can go back to sporting fashionable hairstyles.

Lastly, my youngest minion has absorbed the desire of using the toilet. This information would normally bring celebration, but he chose to absorb this useful skill DURING our ride home from our vacation. The drive that started at 9:30 a.m., Sunday progressed at an excruciating pace to be finally concluded at 7 a.m. the following day. I have decided that perhaps my writing career has gone astray and I should invest time in writing a lucrative restroom guide, having visited every single facility for research on what should have been a 14-hour journey.