CCDM - EXPIRED MILK

She was too old for this shit.

Babies are for people young enough to be delighted by hats shaped like produce and diapers with jeans pockets printed on them. She was tired, her stitches were showing, and she just wanted a glass of red and 2 minutes in the toilet without being screamed at.

But that 2 minutes was 20 seconds, and that glass was a bottle.

Thank goodness for the pump-and-dump.

a weekend

Waioka is a riverbed of tall white rock and broken boulders, cutting away into a cliff overlooking a large pool by the ocean. The waterfall only runs after hard rain, leaving warm basins of green water in the dips and cracks. Young people leap from the edge of the cliff into the brackish water, their families shouting abusive encouragement from the sidelines.

This place, only with heckling dads waving beer bottles.

 

Gavin jumped from the lowest rocks into the water with his friends, paddling to the edge and floating in the shallow parts with giant goggles strapped to his head. Leif and I sat on the rocks, dipping our legs into the water and watching tadpoles nibble the bubbles on our skin.

Leif slid into the pool while I mentally considered the bacterial bouquet of the stagnant water, then grinned, "Help, mom! I can't get out!" and pawed at the loose gravel helplessly, sending tadpoles fleeing. I lifted him out of the water, and he said, "Thanks, mom, you're my superhero." My kids don't often express themselves in cute clichés, but it charmed the hell out of me.

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Paia is a small tourist town with a beachy bohemian vibe; two intersecting streets lined with imports, hemp clothing, coffee shops, swimwear, and restaurants with lots of beer on tap. College kids with dreadlocks and flowing skirts walk around finding their spirits and eating gelato.

Leif and I had breakfast at an outdoor cafe, browsed shops to look at crystal jewelry, and wandered the health food store for obscure menu ingredients.

Children who go on solo excursions with their parent enjoy indulgence, and we filled the basket with  organic cheesy poofs, socially responsible chocolate, and rabbit-shaped mac and cheese.

Walking around with Leif is fun, because it is like walking around with Cindel, from the Ewok movies.

Everywhere we go, people stop to squeal at him about his hair. And I puff up like a proud thing because I was SO IN LOVE with Cindel as a child, I totally understand the urge to grab fistfuls of those curls and boing them. I do it constantly - it's amazing the child has any hair left.

The local radio stations haven't had any new music since 2006. As we drove to Kahului, the radio played a string of songs on my quarantine list, like punching me in the face repeatedly. Welcome to the Black Parade. Creep. Right Here.

I didn't switch them, because old familiar heartache is a comfortable place to take refuge when a new, scary one is looming over and around you. Black Parade played twice more before the afternoon was out, and I eyed the radio suspiciously.

Back home in the evening, my stomach rising up into my throat. I let my hair down and combed my fingers through, looking balefully at the strands lying in my hand. It's nothing, and everything.

But it was a good, sunny day with my boy, and Gavin curled up against me on the couch to watch Farscape in the evening and read The Search for Wondla before bed. These are the bits I pare off and eat.

This life, I tell you.

all the fails

Things are derailing, as they do when you get pulled along by someone because you don't want to hurt them by yanking your hand away and staying on safe ground. I once found myself trapped for a week at vacation bible camp because my high school boyfriend snowballed me into signing up, even though the roster of other campers looked suspicious. I suppose the good thing that can be said about this type of gullibility is that it almost always results in an adventure. The party you shouldn't have been at, the nudity that should have been avoided, the vehicle you shouldn't have tried to operate, the masseur you shouldn't have trusted, the drink concoction you were volunteered to taste test - adventure! Adventures are usually no fun when they're happening, though.

So I have done what I did at vacation bible camp; called my mom and cried to come home. I've also sent a whole bunch of flaily, hysterical emails to sarahapple, who mustered the forces and cried DEATH MATCH!

So next Friday TUESDAY (because I still can't count), we will be posting a new death match challenge. The theme: SPOILED EXPIRED MILK. Here's hoping it doesn't end up in a pile of torn scraps like all my other recent projects. I've already broken my sewing machine and taken to stitching the whole thing by hand. Can do this.

I fail at fake parenting

Things are not going well. There is no way to explain all the particular reasons why without hurting someone more than I already need to, so I will use "I statements".

I have been unhappy since combining households, despite the architectural excitement of the new place.

I am allergic to smoke.

I do not want 4 children. 

I don't like my hair falling out from stress. I'm going to look like Dobby soon.

I want to be with my family. My mother developed problems with the electrical systems of her heart over the summer, another of my aunts has moved to Oahu, the kids should be near their father, and I don't want to lose any more years with them all. 

I am making plans.

The party - posterity post

Top on my list of hateful jobs I never want to have is Wedding Planner. Followed by Event Coordinator. Followed by Performer of Any Sort. I hate entertaining. This is not to say I hate celebrating - I flip right the fuck out for holidays, and spend entire days cleaning and decorating and cooking and drinking. Family traditions are my favorite; party games are my natural enemies.

So I took the whole day off to tackle Leif's party. One hot plate and one toaster oven vs. 10 lbs of chicken, potato salad, and a birthday cake. Got up at 5:30am, rolled out the brioche dough I had made the night before, set cinnamon buns to rise, and managed to get them cooked and stuffed into the kids by the time Gavin had to get to school*.

This was a good start, and I organized an assault on the rest of the menu items, searing and simmering and broiling with my ridiculously inadequate appliances. By lunch, one of the part-time kids arrived home from school, because kindergarten lets out early in the first week.

Being an only child to a single mother, the dynamics of large families are confusing to me. And these boys in particular are difficult for me to relate to - they do things like deliberately break their toys, play games that involve crashing and throwing, and they hurt each other, then cry because they were caught, not because they realize what complete dicks they were. On Sunday our friends came back from vacation with their daughters, and when the boys chased the youngest up a tree to pelt him with hard projectiles like something from the Hunger Games, the girls felt so bad about it that they organized everyone into making flower crowns for the kid and dragging him around in a laundry basket like a sled to make him feel better. The girls have empathy. The boys have a sense of justice - and it is not yet in tune AT ALL.

This is all to say that I have not been dealing very well with suddenly having 4 boys around half the time. The volume and crashing and stampeding of feet makes me want to run away to Ontario. The  kindergartner in particular has been making my hair fall out (or it is falling out anyway, maybe because at this point I am about 70% hair) and so I brought out the mixer and made the two small boys help me assemble cakes - determined to be the model of serene matronly love and comfort, damn it. And it worked. They helped me stir, licked the beaters, ate the cake tops I cut away to level the layers, and tested the ice cream to make sure it wasn't poisoned. I WIN AT FAKE PARENTING. Or real parenting, not sure.

When stuffing the piñata, I made sure to only pack it with toys and chocolate, because hard candies are the turds of the devil. Conveniently, not all of it fit, and I put aside a pile of mini kit-kats as a grown-up tax. Gavin got home from school, found my stash, and helpfully crammed it all into the piñata. I was thwarted.

By mid-afternoon I had won the battle against the hot plate and toaster oven, so we packed the car and hauled everyone over to the ball park. Here I collapsed under a plate of potato salad and wings and let the party take care of itself. The guests arrived, the children played, the adults drank prohibited beverages from plastic cups, the men strung up the piñata, I lit the cake and made everyone sing, the boys went into a frenzy over the presents, and DONE. Home by bedtime. May secretly be a natural party-thrower. A skill which I never plan to hone or cultivate. Unless it involves panty-hose potpourri or cakes on fire like Amy Sedaris.

 

I like you, too, Amy.

 

* Oh yeah, and school has started ALREADY. I made him pose for a picture on his first day of 4th grade, and he slumped and made lemur face. I tried. 

Leif turns 4

Today, I have one of these.

He's stubborn and loving, smart and straight-forward. He twines his fingers in my hair at night when we read stories, grabs my face with both hands and kisses me in the mornings, runs across the house to hug me when I get home from work, lays on the floor with his brother for hours playing with Legos and building dragon houses on my iPhone, and watches Futurama with us after helping make the popcorn. I love him so much.

Happy Birthday, Leif.

This time for sure

I am making a thing. I am tired and mangling it and can't seem to count to 10 consistently, but I am making a thing.

More of this thing later.

Have finished reading 11/22/63 (fantastic) and The Wind Through the Keyhole (chilling and excellent and gave me supremely messed up dreams) and am working through Blood Sucking Fiends (fun), and have just chucked The Wolf Gift into my bag. My mother would remind me that I am supposed to be ILLUSTRATING HER DAMNED BOOK, but I am crippled by not-wanting-to-do-anything-ness. I think I am a bit depressed, but I will ignore it and read things and rip out all my knitting instead of addressing it at all.