Are you there, God? It's me...

Just a follow-up to let you know that Evan remains at the top of his game.

Over the weekend, he was curious about punctuation marks. Being the English-degree-type that I am, I was more than happy to embark on this thrilling discussion. I figured the question marks and exclamation points would be his favorites. They're dramatic! Fun!! Expressive!!!

But, no, he liked the periods.

He liked them so much that he began decorating his drawings with periods.

"Hey, Evan, tell me about your picture," I said. Innocently.

More than a little condescendingly, he answered, "Well, Mom, it's a girl. With a period."

I swear, I cannot make this stuff up.

Good morning, sunshine

I'll admit it: I'm not a morning person.

But every once in a while, a morning comes along that reminds me how much I hate mornings. Take today, for instance.

1) At 5:45 this morning, Jeff comes to the sofa and wakes me up and I have a stiff neck from hell. (Here's something fun: Jeff snores like a friggin' bear. And is self-righteous about it. So last night, for the very first time ever, I got pissed off and slept on the sofa and fell asleep to a decidedly un-funny Conan O'Brian rerun and got about five hours of sleep and woke up even more pissed off. I swear to God that if Jeff does not address this snoring issue, things will get nuclear around here. Dude had better bring me flowers tonight. He won't. Maybe you should call him and tell him it would be a damn good idea. But I digress.)

2) Before I am out of the shower (where I plan my husband's untimely demise, because I do my best thinking in the shower), before I have a cup of coffee in my irrational self, Caleb wakes up screaming. Perfect. He screams for two hours. Perfecter. Evan then wakes up and whines at me for an hour. Perfectest.

3) Cue thunderstorm. Jensen is petrified of thunderstorms and plasters himself to my side.

(Backstory: our family has some collective post-traumatic stress disorder regarding thunderstorms. A few years ago we had something pretty awful happen during a storm and, turns out, we're all a little freaky about it. We need therapy.)

So here's where we are so far: I am homicidal, Caleb is screaming, Evan is whining, and Jensen has reverted to age three. Okay, on with the story.

4) Because the children have secretly decided they hate me and want me to move out, my breakfast consists of lukewarm coffee and stale rocky road brownies that I shove in my face as I stand over the sink while three children attempt to climb my legs.

5) I decide to take Jensen to school. Seems wise. As much as I am tempted, I choose not to make him wait at the bus stop in the hail and lightning. 'Cause I'm nice like that.

6) I indulge Evan and tell him he doesn't have to wear shoes in the car. And to play along I wear my slippers. After all, we're just dropping Jensen off and don't have to get out of the car.

7) About a mile down the winding road in the pouring rain in morning traffic, Evan yells, "I'm sick! I'm going to throw up!!!" I yell, "NO!!! Hold it! Don't let it out!!!" And I do not know what to do because we are not wearing shoes. I pull over on a country road and frantically look for something-- anything!-- to use as a barf bucket. Fortunately, yesterday I bought an enormous pink Rubbermaid container (for Valentine's decorations, because I like my storeroom to be color-coded, no joke) and left it in the van. (Some might call that being lazy. I call it planning ahead.) And that's all I have for him. So there he sits, crying and compliantly puking into this pink box that is bigger than he is. And from the back of the van Jensen is yelling, "This is just great! I'm going to be late to school!"

8) We drive to school in a van that reeks of throw-up. But: Jensen wasn't late! (And I have to cling to that fact because it's the only damn thing that went right all morning.)

9) We get home and I think the hell must be over. I decide I'm going to pick up the pieces and get on with my day. I take the Rubbermaid box to the sink to wash it out. And as I am rinsing it out with the sprayer, the sprayer explodes and shoots water and vomit everywhere. All over me. All over the ceiling. (Did I mention that Evan ate blackberries for breakfast?)

And that's where we are so far. Caleb's napping. Evan's curled up on the sofa (you know, the place I slept last night...) with an old trash can and a baby blanket, watching Sesame Street. And I'm wondering what kind of cocktail is acceptable at 9:50 am. Scotch seems a little heavy for this time of day. Tequila shots? Gin? Beer? I'll let you know what I decide.

Update: As I prepared to hit "Publish" about five minutes ago, our brand-new bazillion-dollar television just quit working and won't turn on. And Evan is still sick on the sofa and can't go to school today. And Caleb woke up screaming from his nap. And I've decided on tequila. Just so you know.

This post is absolutely not brought to you by the letter "S"

This is just one example of why four-year-olds shouldn't be elected president or perform brain surgery. Or a lot of other things.

Two things you should know:

1. We don't watch a lot of tv. But Evan does kind-of-semi-regularly watch Sesame Street. On public television (ie, PBS).
2. He is going through this thing where he constantly asks us to spell words. 273 times a day. (254 of those words are "dinosaur," by the way.) I'll be ready for Scripps any day now.

So the other day:

Evan: "Mommy, how do you spell 'PBS?'"

Me: "Well, let me think about that...."

Evan: "P! B!... But what's the last letter?"

Me: "Hmmm. S, maybe?"

Evan: "No!!! It's not S! You're wrong!"

Me: "What letter is it?"

Evan: "L."

And that was the end of the discussion.

Any questions? I'm sure Evan will be happy to answer them for you.

Taking stock

I have no idea why I even bothered to get up yesterday. It pretty much seemed like I failed at every single thing I touched. Here's a list. Read it: you'll feel better about yourself.

1. I was being all efficient and got to Lowe's bright and early-- did you know all their Christmas stuff is 50% off?! You know what else? It really sucks when you lock your keys in your car. I had to call my in-laws and totally admit what an idiot I am and they drove to my house and got my spare keys and came to bail me out, while I strolled around Lowe's with a whining four-year-old and a screaming baby. The guys in Lumber looked at me like I had an arm growing out of my head. This episode should have served as warning that the rest of my day would be best spent drinking Bailey's on the rocks, rather than trying to be productive.
2. Turns out that at least half of what I bought was wrong and has to be returned.
3. I left one of my bags in the store.
4. I tried to get gas but couldn't make the pump work.
5. I couldn't write a blog post to save my life.
6. Hell, I couldn't even write a coherent grocery list.
7. As a direct result of Failure #5, we had no usable food in the house. Unless you count whole wheat flour, two eggs, apple cider, an overripe banana, moldy sour cream, and Velveeta. Oh, and Bailey's. And plenty of beer. For some reason I was having trouble whipping that up into a meal.
8. I ate ice cream. Twice.
9. When I finally managed to scavenge some food it took 45 minutes longer to cook than I had anticipated, making my son and husband late for The Meeting of the Venerable Cub Scouts.
10. Somewhere in the haze, Evan had a monster temper tantrum. Enormous.

Perhaps for the sake of comparison I should make a list of everything that went well yesterday:

1. No one got arrested.
2. No one got food poisoning.
3. I got to watch "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" with Evan. (The Burger Meister Meister Burger rocks.)
4. I went to bed at 8:30. Such mediocre ineptitude (or is it inept mediocrity? a question for the ages) is exhausting.

Told ya.

TGIF

Ooo, a weekend! I'm so excited. I'm a little hesitant to tell you what we're doing, because I don't want to make anybody jealous. But I can tell you're dying to find out, so read on:

Friday
No school. God, I hate no-school days. This morning will be tolerable. It's the afternoon that's a bitch. However! Because I'll still harbor some fantasy that I'm borderline-competent, maybe when Caleb is napping we'll do something fun! and together! that good moms do with their kids, like make cookies!!! Which will be really fun for, like, two minutes and 29 seconds until Evan starts whining about how he wants a cookie before the oven is even heated and Jensen starts telling him to shut up and then they argue about who gets to help and somebody drops an egg on the floor and then I discover we're out of flour and Evan is still whining and Jensen thumps him on the back of the head and I start yelling which wakes up the baby who then screams for the next 45 minutes and I can get nothing else done and when Jeff (finally!) gets home the kitchen is a disaster, I'm a stark-raving bitch and two-thirds of the kids are crying and Jensen is big-kid surly and there are no cookies and I'm cracking open a beer.

Okay. So much for Friday. Let's move on.

Saturday
I already hate Saturday. This morning Jeff leaves at 5:45am and won't return until Sunday. This day? Is the reason that God invented television and McDonald's. I will wake up Saturday morning already having abandoned any thoughts of competency. I suck. This is the day that I probably won't even take a shower. Doesn't matter, though, because I won't see another human being besides the children, who don't notice whether I get to eat, much less groom. My only adult interaction will occur on Facebook, which I will check compulsively but will have me in a total funk by about 12:30 pm because nobody is sending me messages because everyone else has a life.

And because I'm the sole parent here I won't even be able to drink. I'll have to self-medicate with large amounts of Doritos and left-over Halloween candy.

The only things that could make Saturday any worse would be a trip to Super WalMart, an outbreak of explosive diarrhea, or maybe a traumatic amputation.

Bleh.

Sunday
Soon after breakfast, Jeff comes home. Yea! Today has to be better, right?

Hell, no. Because you know what I get to do this afternoon? Accompany Evan to a preschool birthday party. Betcha can't guess where? Oh, all, right: Chuck E. Cheese's. Which was invented by a germ-loving, parent-hating, bioterrorist crackhead who makes the worst pizza in the world. I don't even think the place has a liquor license, which means I'll have to take a flask. I think if I fill it with peppermint schnapps the other moms probably will just think I'm chewing gum to make my breath so minty-fresh and won't suspect it's because I'm hiding out behind the whack-a-mole game doing shots. I'll try to make it behind the ski-jump-thing to curl up and pass out.

So, yeah, that's the plan. I feel a little better, having gotten this off my chest. But still: it's gonna be a long-ass weekend. Feel free to send prayers. Condolences. Benzodiazepines. Whatever.

Quit copying me!

The little boys and I stand at the front door every morning to see Jensen off to the bus stop. He has made it very clear that we are not to walk to the bus stop with him. Nor are we to display any sort of affection outside the confines of our home. So we must be content with hollering un-embarrassing things at him.

Yesterday (and note how I artfully violate the no-public-display-of-affection mandate):
Me: "Good-bye Jensen! Have a wonderful day!!!"
Evan:" Good-bye Jensen! Have a wonderful day!!!"
Me: "Your shoelace is untied!"
Evan: "Your shoelace is untied!"
Me: "We love you sweetheart!"
Evan: "We love you sweetheart!"
Evan: [peevishly] "Mommy, will you quit copying everything I say?"
Me: "Good point, Evan."