notice posted outside the bathrooms

To the male tenants of this house who are under 6'2":

Could you aim just a little bit better? I understand that even the male tenant who is over 6'2" from time to time has difficulty getting every last droplet into the bowl. But really, you are taking things too far. There shouldn't be a puddle of pee behind the lid, or a spray of pee on the inside of the lid, or a rivulet of pee running down the wall behind the toilet, or a desiccated patch of pee in that cozy little nook at the base of the toilet that I must have missed the last time.

Is this some sort of game? Do you pretend you are hosing down the front porch on a dusty summer day? Do you pretend you are firemen dousing some raging flames? Do you compete to see who can keep the most pee out of the bowl? Do you pee with your eyes closed? Are you even facing the toilet?

I truly am curious to know how it happens. But mostly, I just wish it would stop.

Sincerely,
The Management

at least the hair will grow back

Last Friday, Sonia discovered that Iris had a case of head lice. Saturday morning, the two of them loaded the car with every towel, sheet, blanket, and article of clothing they have (which, granted, didn't amount to very much, but still). Sonia spent the day camped out at the laundromat, while Iris was under strict instructions to stay inside. (An entire day alone in an empty apartment. It's a wonder this girl isn't totally insane.)

Saturday night, Iris got her first RIT treatment; Sunday she got a second one. (I'm actually surprised Sonia didn't just treat the lice with lavender oil and cleansing breaths and an additional ten rounds of toe-tapping, though she might have used all these as well.)

Iris also got a haircut, poor thing. Her bob-with-bangs is now a kind of pixie-ish boy cut. She looks like Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, very overdue for a trim. Also, with severe bedhead. Also, with a bunch of random longer hairs that got missed. I think I'm going to ground Sonia for doing such a sloppy job.

(Okay, she doesn't really look like Mia Farrow at all. I just told her that to make her feel better. Of course, she had never heard of Mia Farrow, so on one of her secret visits I showed her a film still online. "Did she get really rich and famous?" she asked. She seemed pleased with the comparison.)

Ha ha ha, right? I mean, could the universe have come up with a crueler joke to play on such an unpleasant OCD-bedeviled woman? Sonia's daughter--lice! It's funny!

Except for one thing. I'm not convinced Iris ever had lice in the first place. It's entirely plausible that Sonia imagined the entire thing, after observing Iris scratching her scalp for half a second at dinner time.

The roach colony I let loose in their kitchen while they were away over the break? Now that's for real.

secret boyfriend #1

These are not going to come at you in any particular order, but I did feel I had to put John Krasinski first, since he's my most recent crush, and perhaps my most active.

I've only started watching The Office in the last couple of months, but I'm totally hooked, in large part because my heart melts whenever this guy appears on screen. Conveniently, Stupid Daddy has a crush on Pam, further proof that we are totally a match made in heaven, because when we have sex, we're fantasizing about besherts in an alternate universe.

how low can you go?

Today we went to the mall to get the kids some haircuts. We got there around 11am, and while the mall itself was open, the stores didn't open until noon; nobody wants to interfere with church.

I wandered into the adjoining department store to marvel at how horrible my skin looks under fluorescent lights squeeze my blackheads look at lipsticks while Stupid Daddy watched the brood. When I came back twenty minutes later, all three kids were flat on their stomachs on the skanky carpeted mall floor, each reaching an arm into the darkness under one of those carts that dispense a handful of candy for a quarter, scavenging for pieces that had spilled out--or been spit out--and left there. And their mouths were moving; they were finding enough to keep them busy.

"That's so disgusting," I said to Stupid Daddy, who was sitting not ten feet away, keeping an eye on them.

"Yeah, it is," he agreed amiably. "But look how content they are."

I was kind of conflicted. If you've ever taken three little kids anywhere in public, you know that keeping them quiet and entertained is a challenge. So on the one hand, I could definitely see his point. But on the other hand, Ewww.

I resolved my ambivalence by simply walking away, window shopping through the stores' locked gates, and pretending I was in no way attached to them.

my three scapegoats

I bitch a lot--inside my head and outside, too--about how my kids take up so much of my time and energy that it's simply not possible to do the things I really want to be doing--like working on that novel I started almost three years ago and abandoned when I was in my third trimester with Lilah, like getting my freelance writing career up and running again, like really going for it with the photography.

It's quite handy having them around. The truth is, even if my kids were easy, even if they were older and way more self-sufficient, even if I were not chronically sleep-deprived (six years and counting) because of their various nighttime traumas, even if I didn't have any kids at all, I don't think I'd have the motivation or courage to do any of those things anyway.

So: Sorry, kids. It's really not your fault. But you're Jewish and genetically predisposed to being scapegoated anyway. It's in your blood. If anyone can handle it, you can.

post mortem

There's this picture Stacy took of herself (um, I think that's called a self-portrait?) that's so worth clicking to I'm not going to let you off the hook by describing it here.

When I first came upon that photo (see, I'm giving you a second chance) a few months ago, I thought to myself, There is no way that is humanly possible; she'd never done this except for right at that moment, for the benefit of the camera. After spending a couple of days with her, all I think when looking at it is, Why did she not also show herself crocheting with her toes?

My god, this woman can multi-task. For example: Yesterday, at the very craziest time of day in what I'm sure she now agrees is a very crazy household, there she was, an island of focus and follow-through amid the crashing seas of 6pm ADHD chaos--dogs barking for their dinner, kids barking for their dinner, dogs barking for the kids' dinner, spilled milk, mischief, tears, foot races, fist fights. In this milieu, she managed to do the following all at once:

1. sit with her laptop up at our counter, tweaking a short story she had been working on for her MFA program, apparently making progress;
2. keep Lilah in check, gently redirecting her as she stood on a box of cat litter in the pantry, holding the dish of cat food and attempting to hand-feed Ramona, Eloise, and herself;
3. grab her camera, which was within arm's reach, and shoot something that had caught her eye; and
4. respond more or less appropriately to my various sighs, grunts, and Oh, shits in the kitchen while I attempted to do the following all at once:

1. get my kids fed (which, all right, in the interest of maintaining my standards of truth-telling and never exaggerating about anything, I'll admit I managed to do);
2. tidy up in the kitchen, instead shuffling things from here to there on the counter top, incapable of deciding what to do with the half-eaten sandwich, the box of granola that had about a tablespoon left, the three crackers, the almost-dry plastic containers, the possibly relevant/possibly irrelevant post card from preschool about an upcoming family dinner, and pretty much everything else I came across;
3. prepare the kids' lunches (in Ezra's case, a wasted effort, since today turned out to be ANOTHER GODDAMN SNOW DAY), instead simply inventorying the contents of the fridge, then the pantry (oh, hi, Lilah!), then the fridge again; and
4. decide which calls of distress from the playroom were worth tending to and which I could responsibly ignore, and in the case of the former, completely forgetting what it was I had been attempting to accomplish before the interruption.

It was a remarkable study in contrasts.

butterflies

I'm all excited today, because this evening, I will be picking up Stacy at the airport, and then she'll be staying with me for a couple of days until her MFA program starts at Warren Wilson College.

(At least, that's the plan. It's pretty gusty right now, and the Asheville airport is a pussy of an wee and sensitive airport that shuts down if somebody farts in Guam.)

I'm kind of nervous too, since I've never actually met Stacy. We only found each other in the blogging universe, sometime over the summer; I can't even remember how. (I do recall that she made the first move, commenting on my blog before I knew about hers.)

No, I'm not worried she's going to steal my small collection of knotted up necklaces and tacky bejeweled pins my grandmother gave me diamonds and pearls (but just in case, I'm hiding my jewelry box), or that she'll mow us all down with the machine gun she's tucked away in that suspiciously heavy piece of luggage, or even that she'll just be unpleasant.

I just know she's an awesome lady. What I'm worried about is that in person, I won't live up to that dazzling online persona that has so entertained and beguiled her these past several months. I mean, it takes me minutes to compose one sentence; translate that into the spoken word, and you've got yourself some pretty slow conversation.

Mostly I've been channeling my anxiety into cleaning the house, with Stupid Daddy's help and Lilah's interference, in anticipation of Stacy's arrival. At least she won't be able to say the sheets weren't clean.