And this is how road rage starts

Jensen got kind of bored during that week he was quarantined and missed 157 days of school. In order to keep him from passing time by tattooing "love" and "hate" on his knuckles, we allowed him to play some video games.

So, there he sat, playing some kind of driving game. (Harrowing, by the way. Based on this demonstration, he may be allowed to drive when he's, like, 31.) He was wearing plastic Halloween vampire teeth, because what self-respecting seven-year-old boy doesn't wear vampire dentures while playing video games? I don't remember what I was doing, but for the sake of argument, let's say I was cleaning. Or pretending to clean. Whatever.

Oh, and before I go any further, let me just offer some self-defense: I have never (I don't think) dropped an F-bomb on another driver. Maybe some other charming stuff, but not that. At least not with kids in the car.

So, Jensen, driving like a maniac, suddenly cut loose with an explosive "Buck you!" Remember, vampire teeth: the "B" was pretty fuzzy. Not unlike an "F."

This, understandably, caught my attention. "Excuse me?" I politely inquired.

Jensen repeated, "Buck you!" Again with the fuzzy "B."

I icily asked to whom he was speaking.

"That other car! Buck you!"

Because I thought good parenting skills would dictate that I clarify before yelling, I asked, "Would you kindly remove the teeth and spell that?"

He removed the prosthetic teeth. And with enormous eye-rolling and sighing and condescension implying that I was quite possibly the stupidest creature to ever take in air, he enunciated:
"B. U. C. K. Y. O. U."

"Oh," I said, my mind temporarily dulled by his dramatically anticlimactic answer.

"What did you think I said, Mom? Gee-eez."

When he uses questionable vocabularial (?!) acquisitions, I'm usually pretty quick to go into full Boring Mom Mode: do you know what that means, is that really what you want to say, respect, blah, blah, blahhh-ahh-ahhh....

But I totally copped out on this one. Because: 1) I didn't really know what this meant; and 2) after the whole Wheat Thins Incident, I wasn't really sure I wanted to get into it.

My husband, the technology buff

Despite all the contagion around here, Jeff managed to have a birthday. We got him a {gasp} digital camera. (A Nikon D-90, if you're a camera nerd like he is.) He was a little reluctant to give up the ol' film, but I forced him.

And now he's cuddling the owner's manual at night and won't quit talking about his new camera. He's all like, "Do you know how awesome this is?!" and I'm all like, "Um, yeah, honey, there's a reason you're the last person in the lower 48 to get one of these things."

He's all about the nature photography. He's taken exactly 29172650 photographs of leaves, trees, twigs, sunrises, acorns, bird poop, ponds, sunsets, insects, branches, clouds, and dead grass. (Okay, I'm joking about the bird poop. But not about the other stuff.)

And, I'll admit, they're pretty:

But I can only look at maybe 764 of those before I get a little bored. To redeem himself, though, he's been taking the kids on his photography hikes. So I have a whole bunch (like 200, without even exaggerating) of pictures like this:

And this:

And this:

I think next I'll introduce him to the internet. That'll really blow his mind.

When creme brulee goes bad

Having survived Halloween and CNN's totally stupid holographic coverage of the election, I can get back to writing about significant, news-worthy issues. Like vomit.

I cannot stand throw-up. It makes me limp and quivery. With division of labor, I'm the poop-parent, and Jeff's the puke-parent. He takes care of any mess that comes out the top end, and I take care of the bottom-end disasters.

Most of the time.

Sunday night, we were safely tucked into bed and I was peacefully not having nightmares about Sarah Palin being our president, but was awakened by the creepy feeling that someone was watching me.

Jensen was hovering over me. "Mom, my stomach hurts." Great. Evan had been throwing up (so. many. times.) for 24 hours, so this only made sense. And with a silent, decisive nod, he clapped his hand over his mouth, turned and bolted into our bathroom. Then, just as abruptly, he stopped running. And I heard a loud splat.

Jeff (who had also awakened by now) yelled, "Run!!!" So Jensen recommenced running to our toilet to finish the job.

Jeff took him upstairs to clean up, and I just lay in bed and waited for Jeff to return and clean up the carnage. But he didn't come back. For ages.

Finally, because I couldn't stand the stench anymore, I ventured into the bathroom to survey the damage. Jensen had puked creme brulee from Jeff's birthday dinner all over the place. Floor, toilet, walls, bathtub, door: everywhere.

Holy hell.

Creme brulee: heavy cream, egg yolks, sugar. (Definitely not for those with weak coronary-artery constitutions. But sooo good.) It was like cleaning up an oil slick (thankfully, there were no waterfowl in our bathroom, because it would have been an enormous pain to get them cleaned up). I used an entire roll of paper towels, and a lot of chemicals (I had to use something to cut the fat), but I got it done. I weakly made my way into the laundry room, where, to my happy surprise, a mountain of stinking bed linens awaited me. Gawd.

When Jeff had gone upstairs to help Jensen clean up, he found Evan in a dead sleep, entirely encrusted in dried vomit. He had thrown up in his sleep. And then Jensen threw up again. So I was forced to wash out two beds' worth of disgusting sheets. I cannot describe the depth of my disappointment. Between the bathroom and the chunky sheets, it took an hour and a half to clean up.

We threw open the windows, scrubbed grout, and cleaned floors multiple times. After about 36 hours, the nose-hair-singeing, lingering reek of vomit no longer permeated the air and our bathroom floor was no longer slippery and greasy. And while I'm tempted to say we've emerged from the puke-ocalypse, I really don't want to jinx anything.

And I think it's safe to say it'll be a while before I eat creme brulee again.

Joy

I did not vote for Barack Obama because of the color of his skin. I voted for Barack Obama because I am a Democrat, and his ideology most closely matched mine in this election. Because he has a singular blend of superior intellect, insight, and charisma that give him leadership skills this nation sorely needs. Because I believe that "change" means something much deeper than simply putting a different body in the Oval Office. And probably some other reasons, too.

But last night: last night my tears of joy were because of the color of his skin.

Last night my tears of joy were for the millions of people in this nation who have never felt part of the national dialogue, who have been marginalized and disenfranchised and ignored by a country which only occasionally has a painfully honest discussion about race. The people who finally felt like they are valued threads in the fabric of our history, our democracy. People who have been hurt, and whose hurt has left them, and me, feeling powerless. But last night our country banded together to fight the pain.

I am not naive. I do not for a moment believe that this rights all wrongs, real or perceived, or that there will be no more wrongs. Nor do I believe that Obama is any sort of saviour or revolutionary. And of course there is still a nation to be governed, with wars and crises and many dysfuctional groups of various skin colors, various socioeconomic classes, various religious beliefs. The sheen will wear off this humbling election and the very real work will remain.

But last night, the world shifted just a bit.

Late last night I awoke Jensen to tell him that Obama had won. Through a sleepy, satisfied smile he murmured, "America elected its first brown president."

Yes, baby. Yes we did.

Put away the hate

You know what we do today: we choose.

Spirits are running high (myself included). That's great: that's how it should be. Get out there, cheer for your candidate, (more importantly) vote for your candidate, tell the world how you feel. It's become a bit tedious of late, and the campaign has seemed to last far too long, but for the first time I can remember in a presidential election, the air is sizzling. Awesome.

You know what we need to do tomorrow? Put away the hate.

Tomorrow (or tonight, depending on how sleep-deprived you are and how late you can stay up, so you where I fall) we'll know. Tomorrow it will be time to put away the spiteful accusations and underhanded dealings and the ludicrous hyperbole. It won't be easy; lots of things have been said, fires of fear and uncertainty have been stoked relentlessly. It won't necessarily be easy to extinguish those flames, but we really must.

You don't need to abandon your principles. By all means, hold your convictions. I just happen to feel very strongly that we should all hold fairness and respect as part of those convictions. Dissent plays an important role in politics. Unfortunately it's sometimes difficult to negotiate the line between dissent and disrespect. As happens every campaign, negotiation of that line has failed miserably. It's fair to say that "civility" has melted a bit in the heat of campaign rhetoric. Please help me reclaim it.

Today it is our responsibility to vote.

Tomorrow it is our responsibility to give congratulations and respect to the winner, to pour a big bucket of decency on the hateful embers of this long campaign.

He may just be presidential material

Here are a few special Evan moments from the past week:

• On human rights: He drew a picture of a guy on a surfboard. (Surprisingly good detail.) He told me it was a "waterboarder" and that he was wearing a special suit so he didn't get hurt.
• On politics: He has a t-shirt that says "Future President" on the front, a gift from a proud grandparent convinced of great things ahead. He wore it last week. Backwards.
• On self-regulation: I found him plundering his Halloween candy Saturday morning. Told him he really needed to ask before gorging on sugar. He replied, "Well, I was by myself. So I asked myself. And myself said okay."
• On fashion: We ran errands on Saturday. It took several hours. He insisted on wearing white socks on his hands the entire time. We got a few strange looks.
• On bodily integrity: After vomiting for the fourth time the other night, he started crying. Because he was worried that his skeleton might get hurt.

He's a lot of fun to live with. When he's not puking or making us crazy, anyway.

Trick or (cough, sniffle) treat (barf)

We are in the midst of a Week of Pestilence at our house. However, the infectious disease gods smiled on us on Friday, and granted us a 24-hour reprieve from all things febrile, snotty, and vomitous. (I don't care if it's not a word. You know what I mean.) We were able to trick-or-treat with a minimum of tuberculosis-like hacking, so the other parents out with their little non-crusty-nosed-cuties didn't look at us like we were criminals. This is good, since the kids were up at 6:15 Friday morning, jumping on my bed, yelling, "It's Halloween! It's Halloween!!!" We'd have had outright mutiny if they hadn't been able to go.

This is as good a group photo as we could get, and even this involved Grandpa Bill wrestling with Caleb. Calm, smiley, all-together-now-kids photo? Not gonna happen.



And: here it is! The Wall-E costume. It was pretty awesome, and a couple of people told me it was the best costume they saw all night. Which made the roughly 239 hours I spent on it almost worthwhile. In honor of all those hours (and Evan's insistence that he was going to be Wall-E), I'm totally entering this photo in Blurb's Halloween photo contest in the Best Handmade Costume Category:



And here's Jensen, looking creepier than I imagined he could. ("Cute" is soooo passe.... Even though he's still adorable.) (And, I know, the eye make-up's not so great, but he was done holding still. We had to make it quick.) As long as I'm at it, I'm entering this one in the same contest for the Best Photo:

Don't worry, things have returned to their sickly baseline here. After the Halloween break from all things infectious, the kids are back at it. Evan's been throwing up since last night. (And no, it's not from too much candy. I don't think.) Jensen suggested that we just dress them all in fluorescent green and they could go as germs. Which isn't a half-bad idea....

Thanks to Blurb/Parent Bloggers Network for sponsoring the photo contest.