Double, Double Toil and Trouble; the House Will Burn, the Toilet Bubble

Eldest child has been in a weird mischievous funk.

For instance, in the span of the last two weeks he’s taken to licking things---the carpet, the walls, the baby’s head.

Yep.

The baby's head.

I’m talking full on droolage all over little brother’s slightly misshapen noggin. Not that it matters much I guess, since the baby’s always wet from his unending string of spittle, but still…it’s unnerving, you know.

Like he’s tasting him.

Now, I’m fully aware that Jake’s head looks slightly like a giant lollipop on a stick, but I’d still rather not have my three-year-old trying to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center.

In other news, the mysterious funk that has encapsulated my son has also put him on the track to having “Felony Arson” attached to his name forevermore. About the time the licking weirdness began, I started finding a variety of highly flammable objects in my oven --- a kitchen towel, a pie tin full of soft plastic baby toys, the LINT from my dryer screen. Can you say FLAMING. BALL. OF. DEATH? Fortunately, I haven’t had occasion to use the oven because my gourmet cereal dinner doesn’t involve any actual cooking.

And to top it all off, what mischievous child is void of toilet curiosity?

Luke’s had a little fascination with trying to see how much TP will actually go down the toilet all at once. The other day I overheard him in the bathroom cheering, “C’mon! Go down! C’mon! Go down!” I ran in and found him staring down into a bowl brimming with an entire roll of unrolled toilet paper.

On separate occasions I’ve also had to fish out an entire roll of TP still on the roll, his underwear, and a hand towel from the depths of toilet-dom. Who knows what might have actually made it through? The baby does happen to be missing a conspicuous amount of pacifiers. Maybe he'll do me a favor and flush the dirty laundry down the toilet.

Sigh.

I think I need a job transfer.

3 Seconds

Do you ever get distracted?

Turns out, I have the attention span of a goldfish. Shiny objects and other such things tend to make me….

Ooooh, a quarter!

Anyway, so I couldn’t remember if I put conditioner in my hair yesterday while I was showering…it’s also possible that I don’t remember if I did it twice. Then I put face scrub in my hair. I have very clean hair.

See, I spend almost the entire day of most days in my own mind. That amount of time spent in the fantasy land of my brain is liable to distract me from reality….a lot.

It wouldn’t be such a problem if I were solving the great mysteries of the universe, but more often than not I’ve got a song playing in my head like some movie theme while I imagine all sorts of situations that could possibly….maybe….probably not….happen. But seriously, you never know when you might end up as a character on LOST (only for reals, because we all know that could totally happen) and have to run away from the smoke monster.

This trait isn’t something new. When I was little I knew exactly what sort of super-human fighting moves I’d do if a robber ever came into our home. And I could fly.

Chris hasn’t learned his lesson yet. He still asks all the time, “What are you thinking about right now?”

I got tired of making up fake normal thoughts so I started telling him the truth.

“I was just thinking that if I killed someone and I had to hide the body, I would put it back in those trees. I mean, that area looks like no one’s been in there in months.”

“Really? That’s pretty creepy.”

“Yeah, haven’t you ever thought about stuff like that?”

“Never.”

Awkward silence.

(Darting eyes around furtively) “Oh…me neither.”

So, what do I do in the rare moments when reality comes knocking? I shut the door in its face and continue washing my hair with my face scrub while mentally practicing my “hi-ya” moves on ninja monkeys.

Chris the Patron Saint of Patience

After a two month sabbatical, I'd like to announce to the world that I'm back, and in mostly good form...just a little heavier...and a little bit pregnant. And, now that first and second breakfasts are staying down, I'll try and be a better blogger. In the meantime I'd like to leave you with something funny or insightful, but I'm capable of neither of those so you just get weird.

The other night Chris and I were lying in bed. As with most nights, he was reading and I was trying to clear my mind of all the crazy so that I could drift off into a peaceful sleep.

(10 minutes of the aforementioned quiet reading and mind clearing)

(turning to face him) "So, I read this article on CNN today about how all these human feet keep washing up on shore in Canada."

(keeps reading)

"It got me thinking about WHERE all these feet are coming from. I mean, these so called 'authorities' just said it was a mystery and they don't seem very concerned about WHO they are coming from and WHY. Wouldn't you want to know why? There could be a serial killer out there who just hacks off people's feet as his SIGNATURE...you know."

(sighs loudly) "Maybe they're fake."

"No. There were six feet found and only one was fake. It turned out to be a dog paw in a shoe wrapped in seaweed. They said they knew it was fake because they did DNA testing on it and they were mad because of all the time it took, but don't you think that they could have just LOOKED at the bones and known they weren't human. I mean, c'mon...even I could look at a dog paw and know it wasn't a human foot."

(silence for a minute)

"And, four of the feet were right feet and only one was a left foot. Maybe the killer was trying to throw us off the scent..."

(looks at me) "I promise to never talk to you when you are reading."

"Oh, thanks."

(starts reading again)

"...but they also said it could be from the dead bodies of the people in a plane crash three years ago that were never recovered. But it's only FEET....why not hands or heads??? Weird huh?"

(sighs again)

"Sorry."

(silence)

"But what if you FOUND one of the feet. What would you DO...."

Whatever Rubs Your Buddha

Luke got some new shoes the other day…lime green Crocs. He loves them. He frequently wears them around the house with nothing else on but his diaper. When we first brought them home, he wore them all day and could intermittently be heard repeating as he looked lovingly down at them, “piddy coot” (that’s ‘pretty cute’ for those of you who don’t speak Luke). Though he is pretty cute in his new shoes, his choice of words got me thinking about the things we say (and the things oft echoed back by little ones).

Adults sometimes don’t realize just how much kiddos pick up. When we play the Wii, Luke will often shout out in frustration, “Shoot!” or “Dang it!” and though it is hilarious to hear, in the back of my head I know he only says those things because Chris and I have said them too commonly. I still remember from my childhood, my dad saying every time we pulled into the driveway, “Home again, home again, jiggity jig”. Yeah, I have no idea, but it has stuck with me. That and the moment my sweet and mostly proper Grandmother swore in disgust about my stepmother’s brief stint in our family. My mouth gaped open, but she never apologized for it and it still makes me snort to this day.

High school seemed to be the time when the weirdest phraseology would crop up. Words would circulate around for a few months and then go off and die in the graveyard of idiotic things people say. For a time I could spasmodically be heard uttering things like ‘Holy Moly!’ and ‘Whatever rubs your Buddha’. And, courtesy of my cousin Ashton and my long-time friend Jason respectively, ‘Go suck an elf’ and ‘Boo for you’ also made their rounds. Second-rate Spanish insults were a favorite too. If you can’t tell, we didn’t make it into the cool crowd.

Conversations would sometimes go like this:

Me (in mock disgust): Holy Moly! No me gusta tu cara! Es muy feo. (Holy Moly! I don’t like your face. It is very ugly.)

Ashton (smiling): Ah, go suck an elf.

Me: I’m just messin’ with ya cuz.

Ashton: Yeah, well, boo for you.

What can I say, we were Einsteins in the making. I’d like to think that my vocabulary has improved as of late, but sometimes I’ll still pay occasional homage to simpler times with a jiggity jig or some elf suckage. So what sort of phrases have you all sent to the grave? Or was I the only one with such an amazing capacity for awesomeness?