Wednesday

Off to get Lilly at preschool. She's dressed in a Snow White outfit and packed several bags to take to school. The house smells like pulled pork, sweet barbecue cooking. I'm going to zoom there on the bike, and be late. But the sky is so blue. I have to take the bike.

Chickzilla Lives On

I gave away a chicken (Kitty Bigfoot) because she was old and wasn't laying much and I can't feed all these chickens, man. I thought the people would eat her, because they said they would. I tried not to think about it. I tried to think like a prarie mom, and wipe my hands on my apron. But then I find out they like her so much they just let her eat in their garden and now she's laying every other day!

And they renamed her Chickzilla.

Here's some pics. Plus, how I had to write this blog while Lilly was sitting on my head.

Kids Under Construction

I was making Nathan's bed and thinking about the time when there won't be all these (semi) little people's messes to clean up after - then I thought, hey wow these people are only staying here for awhile - they only stumbled on my house through my vagina, they stay awhile, eat alot of food, get a car and leave for college.

Luckily I'm somewhere between food and getting a car, there's still a fat chunk of years with them, except years go so fast that Christmasses can touch each other if they stretch their hands out far enough.

In the meantime, I will try not to kill Nathan's teachers for not preparing him for tests, and I'll try to limit Lilly's tv watching while I'm preparing Nathan for his test instead, and Emma, she is swept up in the wasteland between the two. I have to throw her a life preserver, and hope she bobs my way quick enough to know her before she's taller than me. Thank God she knows how to dress well and has a strong sense of herself.

Can't imagine if I was working at another job and they were floating along with LESS of me - it's hard enough with all my time. Okay, gotta go get Dolphin Bessie at preschool. Wearing basically clothes you would paint a house in.

Bess Predicts the Future

This morning while eating Cream of Wheat, and wearing a dotty dog shirt, Lilly says to me, "Can me and Luke get married when we grow up?" I said, "If you want to." She says, "Cause I really want to be a tattoo artist and I think he wants to be a truck driver."

I believe all my hopes have been met.

But here's how she looks in her rain boots.

Virtual Realilly

Lilly's sitting at my feet in a dog costume singing.

The Candyman Can

A friend of mine from school brought me 5 gigantic bags of candy. I'm really bad with guessing numbers, but I'm guessing there are a TRILLION pieces of candy in these bags.

I set them on the washer so I could close the doors and not see the candy and eat it all, and then I turned the washer on to do a load. One of the bags vibrated open, spilling candy in a nice happy design on top of the washer before vibrating OFF the washer and falling down the side of the washing machine, leaving candy TRAPPED and STRANDED in that skinny nowhere between washer and wall.

Of course I panicked. I removed the spilled design candy, the survivors, if you will, from the top of the washer along with the other bags to a safer location.

Then I tried to move the washer even though I didn't try too hard cause I didn't want water pipes to come loose and start spraying everywhere. The washer wouldn't budge. Oh my god, I thought. There's a half a bag of candy TRAPPED down there. I could hear their delicious chocolatey screams.

I reached as far down as I could and pulled the half-dumped out candy bag up as far as I could toward the top of the washer. There was this rack in the way of getting it all the way to the top. I know how the hikers on Everest feel at this point. If I can ONLY GET IT TO THE TOP. I start pulling pieces of candy out, airlifting them to the safety of the washer top. The bag is getting skinnier. Ooh, look, physics - reduce the mass of the bag so all candy can be free. (It's an unknown physics law. The eqaution is something like Fat Girl + Wants More Candy = You're a Disgusting Pig.)

The bag empties enough and I am able to pull the dwindled bag to safety.

But alas, I see the remaining five pieces stranded at the bottom, on the floor in the crack, nestled amongst dryer lint dust. Plaintively. They are looking at me. My heart swells. No candy left behind. I need a broom, I think, panicked. I see a back scratcher on my desk. Perfect arm extension for candy in crack rescue.

It's 9 a.m. on a Friday, I'm huddled by the side of the washer, sticking in my back scratcher and thinking, "I'm doing this for my stepmom." She, yes, she would do this. What candy would you leave behind? These were five good candies. Almond Joy, Tootsie Pop, Snickers, for GOD'S SAKE. Dots. Butterfinger.

I scrape them out one by one. Assisting them out of the rubble of the forgotten crevice. You are all worth it, I dust them off. Even as I return them to Mound of Candy mountain, where they mingle in silent glory with their friends, every candy is worth it.

Dumped at Costco

So I have this friend, or I HAD this friend, let's just call her Flake. Flake and I used to meet at Costco every Friday to eat pizza and let our kids play. It was so good, I never thought it would end. It's not that we had so much in common - she's young and fresh, I'm old and much better looking.

Sure, she's been having marital problems. But now she has this Other Interest, a person who fixes her family's computers, and now she's all about IT Guy. In fact, she's so all about him that Costco this Friday (that would be today) was a barren wasteland. There was no call about going to Costco. Me and Costco are standing there in the choking desert breeze, our clothes tattered, our hearts beating a dull sound. Like the sound of no one is shopping here anymore.

I'm just letting you know because it can happen to you. Enjoy your pizza and all the soda you can drink while it is still flowing, and the friends are frolicking amongst you. Someday an IT guy will come along and fix a bunch of loose wires on your friend and then you won't have a friend anymore because she's in Camarillo all the time.

I do know that my friend Flake had many years of a crap relationship. She is so happy to have happy I.T. in her life. She's had 11 years of kids that require medications just so they can eat a sandwich like the rest of us. She is letting loose. I did the same thing this year with a big fat horse, well maybe not the SAME thing. But in case she never comes back, since in our deflated tire circle of friends it's the Year of the One Parent Goes Crazy, I want you to know that that soda was really good, man. Those free sample Fridays were worth it.

I will be crouched over my kitchen table in bad lighting working on a poster comparing Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt while Nathan jiggles his foot and looks out the window, dying to go bike riding. I'll be slumped in the office chair helping Emma write her report on tragic Indians forced to live in Missions for the illustrious California 4th grade history. Yes, those Costco moments, it might not sound like much. I will be running there, in my dreams, in slow motion, as the computer screen gets blurry with my own tears. I will shop alone. Don't worry. I still have my big fat horse, and my treadmill and my pirated copy of "Moneyball." I will paint war paint on my face.

I will go back for more free samples.

Chickens Can't Swim

One of the little chickens fell into the pool and died on our anniversary yesterday. It's okay, we have too many chickens, but of course this was the cool colored black and white one that looked like an Oreo.

Lilly and Bruce and Emma buried the chicken and then said good wishes for it. Lilly told me she wished it would come back. She also said she wished she was a fairy. I said, that's a nice wish for the chicken. She said, no, that wish was for me.

Ode to Anne

If you're ever bummed out, you should read "Anne of Green Gables." She's so happy about everything, and funny. Like the good part of your mind that finds everything a carousel ride, even the truly tragic things. The more tragical, the better. It's all a mosaic, if you see it with the right eyes.

It helps if you peel a tiny orange while you're eating so your fingers smell like oranges. It makes it a little like Christmas

Hooray for Hollywood

A good way to kill people would be to take them to a live taping of "Kippy" for four hours on a Friday near Christmas.

"Kippy" is a Disney show for kids, and we were packed into audience seats with about 200 kids under the age of 11. With a ringleader guy whose job it was to get them to stand up and scream constantly. His job was to actually encourage the kids to FAKE LAUGH at the really bad jokes like they were funny.

I grew up in Hollywood, of course I know that it's all fake, and even the actors are fake and everything they sit on is fake, the elevator's fake, and the cameras are there to record how real it all looks and yet it's all fake.

I must have gotten old because everything just looked bizarre to me. A group of well-paid grown ups were sitting around on the stage, by the monitors actually LAUGHING like the jokes were funny and I thought wait, are they funny? But they're not FUNNY. The kids are just mugging. Well, if I had to pick one, the lead actress was actually physically funny, she looked 40 and she was 18.

I took five kids, two of mine and three extras. None of them had been to a taping before, although my kids have been on soundstages when their dad works, so they are savvy. But they're at this stage like awkward fish - too big to be little, too little to be big. And I had to leave Lilly home with Barry for many hours and I missed putting her to bed (I think only the second time in her life) and my friend (who got us the tickets to the show) kept saying I should get out more and I just stared at her because who the hell would want to be out more, when I have the greatest thing going on at home?

To get the show, I had to take the three girls from Emma's school and rush from there where I'm doing a Santa's Workshop, selling stuff for kids to buy for their families, pick up Nathan and his friend at middle school, feed them all cold pizza in the car because there would be no food until 9 at night, drive to Hollywood. Get ushered into the soundstage. Sit down and realize that I have hay all over my sweater and scarf, and my socks had horse pee on them. Watch actors that are 9 years old who probably drive better cars than I do. Who puts their kids in show business? An adult couldn't handle being primped and fussed over and having to act like a grown up, stay on your mark, don't move, stay focused, look cute - and then go home and take out the trash? Very weird world.

Then I had to refill my water at one point and left the audience section to go to the water cooler and had two security guys almost throw me to the ground until I explained, Boys, I'm only going to refill my water. (I pointed to the cooler) It's right there. They had a discussion, she's only going to fill up her water. They thought about it, then they let me do it.

The kids had painted their own Jessie t-shirts (which was very cool), and screaming guy who gets the audience warmed up made sure they were noticed.

But at least the taping went on past 9 p.m. As I slowly disintegrated into myself, the kids had a blast. Because of my friend on the show, they got to meet all the actors, got to try out all the furniture on the set, got to get their posters signed, got to take pictures with the actors. They got the whole thing. And in the car on the way home, they all read the script out loud and played the parts. That was really sweet, actually.

SO loud, it's true, I don't get out much. The yelling up in the audience, and then the action down on stage - it was an 11 year old's dream. It was the first time I realized thank God I didn't have to sit through Britney Spears concerts.

I got home and got in bed with Lilly in her footie pajamas and got my book out (Anne of Green Gables) but then I couldn't even read, I just felt my brain de-fry, the baby's weight on my chest, and I was cured of Hollywood dreams. So glad I've spent the last 11 years with these kids, making a nice solid nest. Sets are fun, but we're only a soundstage wall away from a cold hard Hollywood street out there. I admire those actors for putting their hearts out there and giving everything for the ten minutes they have of fame. But being home with that baby, I couldn't wait. There is such success, passion in that reality. Making a person. That's weighty.

It's a Holly Jolly Christmas

Last night we were trimming the Christmas tree and I had to send the kids to their room three times for fighting. The first time there was so much crying I actually yelled "This is a great memory!" Lilly has a cough like a seal played by Demi Moore, and to her horror she could not go to school today. So now I can't do anything either, in those precious few hours I usually get - so Christmas is cancelled.

But she is sitting here eating a popsicle in her cupcake pajamas and we got to read about 40 books together. Because I decided we were too tv reliant. I miss tv now. Then I had to punish the kids yesterday so I told them only an hour of tv or ipod a day and man does that punish ME. But maybe they'll read. I will have to tie Nathan to the book.

We have the Santa's Workshop at the school in two days, am I ever prepared! There's a reason I'm not in command of an army. There's all these parent volunteer slips that have come back to me and I have to try and return all the slips and tell the parents yes, come help out, but instead I'm drowning in the papers and wishing I could eat alot more kettle corn. With chocolate on it. I'll get it done but really all I like to do is sit and collect the money and see the kids happy because they get to buy something for their families. Usually fart jelly. Every mom's dream.

Okay, back to mini-sicky Demi Moore. Yesterday I said "Come on, woman," to Lilly and she said "I'm not a woman!" I said, "What are you?" She said "I'm Lilly, the kid." I love that nickname. She's a little outlaw, you can see it in her eyes.

By the way, our tree came out beautifully. After I fixed the lights because I told Nathan to put on the Christmas lights and I came back in and he had literally wrapped the tree like we were celebrating an all-bondage Christmas. We could have mailed the tree in a flat package. So I gently told him that maybe he wants to do things a little more carefully and take his time - just like in school, I want him to learn to do things WELL, not just DONE - and he was of course listening with a bright glow in his face at my wisdom, he was not putting on his 3-D glasses and hanging ornaments off of them. While Emma sang rap songs where one of the lyrics is "I got passion in my pants and I'm not afraid to show it."

When she's 20 she's going to say "OHMYGOD, Mom, I did NOT know what that meant, what a terrible mother you were." But maybe she'll buy me ice cream. I have a feeling I'm going to be ice cream deficient, it's just a prediction.

Lilly's done with her popsicle and just said "Mom, can I be a tattoo artist when I grow up?"

I better go turn on the tv.