Posts from — February 2010

Ex Her Size

The Shred, I have started it once more.  And by “started it” I mean “did it for the first time in a month of Sundays yesterday afternoon.” I want to tell you that it was not that bad, but oh. Oh no. No no no. When I was finished, I lay on the floor like a weak, hairless baby kitten.  In my defense, though, it was not totally because of my lack of fitness that I was in such a state.  I did every move Natalie-(Amazon woman on the back left)-style, including every single count of push ups in the Hardcore position, ohyesIdid.  And the ONLY reason for this chowderheaded move was the pair of five-year-old eyes locked onto me the whole time, which were connected to the five-year-old MOUTH chattering at me the whole time, like a channeling of old Jillian M. herself.  YOU AREN’T JUMPING AS HIGH AS THAT LADY, MOM. NO MOM, YOU’RE NOT DOING IT THE SAME. MOM, WHY DO YOU LOOK SO FUNNY. MOM YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO STOP BECAUSE THOSE LADIES ARE NOT STOPPING. MOM I CAN LIFT THESE WEIGHTS EASY THEY’RE NOT EVEN HEAVY. MOM WHY IS THE HOUSE SHAKING. MOM ARE YOU EVER GOING TO DO ANY LEVELS BESIDES LEVEL ONE. MOM WHY AREN’T THOSE LADIES BREATHING HARD LIKE YOU ARE. COME ON MOM, YOU CAN PROBABLY DO IT IF YOU TRY REALLY HARD.

And to think some people pay to get this kind of personal trainer abuse.

Ex Sell Ant

Check it:

Graduation to the clown cart!
Also, who is so awesome that she holds up the front door traffic of the Kroger on a busy afternoon just for the purposes of photographing her children in a grocery store shopping cart?  THIS GIRL RIGHT HERE!

You know you wish I were your mom.

Ex Or Schism

I don’t know if the full credit for this should go to the beautiful, magical bottle of bright pink antibiotic goodness, or if some of it has to do with developmental shenanigans giving it a rest already, but the little girl that lives in my house has turned into the most delightful and charming and adorable being on the whole of the earth. I cannot get enough of her.  In fact, I have been struck so dumb with affection towards her that I have had to stop myself from going to wake her up when she’s asleep because I miss her. That is whacked out, you guys. This is the same girl I was considering selling on eBay last week.

Her communication skills have rocketed to a whole new level, and she can tell us pretty much what she wants when she wants it with some sort of wordage or gesture that (and this is key) does not involve A.) my eardrums exploding or B.) the need for full body armor.  The hugeness of this development cannot be overstated. It’s huge. Huge. HUGE. And I can keep stating that, because it cannot be overstated!  HUUUUUGE!

She eats her lunch every day, happily bopping along to whatever ringtone Noah is messing around with on my phone, (every day. every single day with the ringtones.) and once she’s finished eating she says AW-WIGHT to signal that she’s ready to get down. As I clean her hands and face she says “Rah-rah? Beh. Mama. Rah-rah,” to tell me that she’s ready to go rock and take a nap. I read her one book in the rocking chair and then she says, “Suz? Beh?” as she cranes her neck to her bed and her sleepmate Baby Suzie. After I lay her down in her crib she tucks her legs up under her body like a balled up baby hedgehog and singsongs to me as I walk out the door, “Nigh-nigh….”  Then she sleeps for two and a half or three hours. (!!!!) (!!!!!!)

(!!!!!!!)

(Toddler-sized Noah was not a fan of sleeping.)

(!!!!!)

She reacts to my re-entering a room as if we have been apart for ages, yelling MAAAMAAAAA! and running to smile into my knees. She has started saying all of her friends’ names at school, and she walks up to each one of them as they arrive to stroke their cheeks or kiss them on the shoulder.

Also, she has started calling Noah “Buddy.”

“Hey buddy!  Hey buddy!” she says, peering into his face from an inch away.

So freaking adorable, it kills me. I am dead. R.I.P. me.

Thursday night I was set to go out with my good friend Anjie for a little tête à tête over a plate of pad see ew, when she called me up to say that she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to make it.  From the minute the words left her mouth, I was formulating a plan to do something, anything else to get out of the house. I was already half dressed, the responsibility of washing the grime from my children’s necks and feet had been delegated elsewhere, and most importantly, I had showered. And by God, I wasn’t going to waste the five minutes I spent with that hairdryer on sitting around watching downloaded episodes of Big Love.  Huh-uh, I was going OUT. I was mentally running through a list of who might be available on short notice for a bite to eat/cup of coffee/drive around the block, when Anjie cryptically said “…so just get in the car with your sister at 6:40 and go where she takes you.” First: what? Second: Right. This is a girl I once convinced that the way to cure a bad headache was to ram the fleshy part of your palm straight into the center of your forehead. Get in a car and do whatever she says? FAT CHANCE, SISTER VENDETTA.

But like I said, I was desperate to leave, and curiosity got the better of me, so I let my sister take me (LIKE A LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER) to an undisclosed location for an undisclosed event involving an undisclosed number of undisclosed people.  It was a lot of undisclosure.

I do want to pause and say right here that of course my brain went into overdrive trying to figure out why the hell there would even be a secret event occurring right now. It’s not my birthday, L was up to his elbows in neck and toe grimed suds when we left with no obvious relief team in sight, so Valentine’s day was not looking like the probable cause, and beyond that, all I could think of that warranted any celebrating was the fact that I returned all our nine-gazillion Snoozefest Facts About Dinosaurs books back to the library on time. Although, no, our fines are keeping the lights on over there, so they were probably pretty bummed when I showed up and crammed all that mess in the slot right on the due date.

And also, pause from the pause, let it be known that in my lifetime I have been surprised with no less than SEVEN PARTIES, holy cow. Which always made me feel really special and loved until I mentioned it to a friend who said, “Whoa. Your friends must think you’re really gullible and unobservant.” Which I hadn’t considered until then THANKS FOR KILLING THE DREAM.

And to top it all off, as I was fretting over what to wear to Who Knows What with Who Knows Who, my other good friend Rebekah called me, and let me tell you, if my life were some movie where I killed someone and served them up as barbecue in my restaurant to hide the body and I had to pick one of my friends to lie for me convincingly enough on the stand so that I might escape capital punishment, before this phone call I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have picked Rebekah. Because in all the time I’ve known her, which is over half my life, it does not seem to me that she has been sufficiently devious and or deceitful to be up to the task. (No hard feelings Rebekah, I know you’d help me hide the body) But ho ho HO, do I retract that decision now! She was all casual and cool, chatting me up about her day and what she was going to be doing that evening, and did not once mention that she was in fact at that very moment AT the Party of Undisclosure! What chicanery! Later, after the jig was up and I had a bit of margarita (hell yes the Party of Undisclosure included margaritas…but I’ll get to that in a minute) I may or may not have drunkenly told her that now I questioned everything she’d ever told me.  Because I know how to thank a friend!

So! The big reveal was that Undisclosed Place was one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, and Undisclosed People were seven of my friends who had been secretly planning a celebration for me for weeks because of Undisclosed Reason: my column in Ruckus comes out in two weeks. HOW AWESOME IS THAT.

Answer: so totally, totally awesome.

There was a giant margarita sitting at my place when I walked in, ready for swilling, and I was given several gifts, including chocolate from Jill, and tiny writing tablets and some pencils from Suzanne, so that I can scrawl down whatever asinine thoughts I have whenever I have them and be able to reference them later when I want to transcribe them here. Posts are about to reach a whole new level of random, thanks to Suzanne.

And of course (OF COURSE) I had to go and post this the day before my party (that I didn’t know about!) in which I moaned and complained about being tired of being around women all the freaking time, which then all seven of my women friends who had “Girl’s Night Out for Rachel!!” on their calendars read. But they didn’t even cancel it! That’s how awesome they are!

Instead, they manned up:

…and threw me a great celebration.  Which I thoroughly enjoyed, down to the very last lime-flavored drop.

I pondered aloud several times how I could possibly deserve a night like this, until finally my girl Allen shut me up with what I consider now to be the theme of the night: “Look, we wouldn’t be here if you sucked.”

So, to Anjie (one of the main masterminds), Rebekah, Allen, Suzanne, Jill, Morgan, Kara, and ok, fine, Sister Sarah Vendetta (kidding! smooches!): thanks for making me feel incredibly celebrated. It was an honor to have such amazing, lovely, generous women tell me with margaritas in their hands and mustaches on their upper lips that I don’t suck.

Right back atcha, ladies.

I have things to say here, yes I do, but I’m working on meeting a deadline for my column, and have used up all my words. Oh noes!

So instead, I’ll give you a thousand proverbial ones as my way of saying I hope you had a nice Valentine’s Day. Or Chinese New Year. Or both! Or neither! Look, I just hope you had a nice day yesterday, is all.  More tomorrow.