Where did he come from???

So, one of the great mysteries of science to me is how can a female body produces a male child. And how those boy children can come out and look not one iota like their mother and be pod people of their father. In the big picture I am really grateful because managing my daughter/twin is going to be emotionally exhausting enough, and taking care of the boys is simply a source of amusement.

Every child is special. Every mother loves every child equally. However, every child does not serve the same purpose in a family. Monkey Boy is my primary source of entertainment. Literally, since the moment I saw his little jewels on the ultrasound screen, I have been walking around saying, "How did that happen?" Before and shortly after his birth, I had 3 different situations from 3 unique cultures which told me he was special. First of all, before we knew who he was, a woman from India put her hands on my stomach and said, "Oh, this is a very special little boy." Then when he was born, the water never broke. In old-fashioned times, this is called being "born under the caul" and in Celtic traditions meant he was a blessed child. Finally, a Chinese friend of mine did his horoscope which involved spinning a book, flipping a bunch of pages, making "HMMMM" noises, and ultimately declaring Monkey's future the best he has ever seen. He was born under all the right stars. I firmly believe that he is special, mainly because he is still alive. This is because through no effort of my own, but it is because he has a Grade A, high ranking guardian angel.

You know how you read about children in the paper and you think, "Well, what kind of parent doesn't notice their child is on top of the china cabinet?" The answer to that is that person is me. If you don't know your child can climb vertical surfaces and has suction toes, you don't expect to find them hiding on closet shelves, or looking in your second floor windows from a tree at age THREE. You expect there to be a learning curve. Nope, Monkey Boy has never, ever injured himself beyond a single bandaid injury despite glorious feats of stupidity.

Classic example. We see a stunt rider on a bicycle. I know things are over. Monkey is not yet five, but he is riding his bike everywhere. One day the doorbell rings. I had no idea M.B. was outside, but he was there standing on my doorstep crying with bloody knees and a bike lying in the yard. I scoop up my injured little boy and ask him what happened. His reply, "I rode down the front (brick) steps." "Well, what did you learn?" "I don't have the right kind of bike." He has also managed to climb up the stairs of our jungle gym set with his bike so he can ride down the bumpy slide. (Mom: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Boy child: I HAVE ON MY HELMET!) We have had to pass rules like you can't climb higher than a second floor window. I have personally been to every neighbor on my street to tell them that if my child injures himself on their property or rides into his/her car, I know they didn't do it.

He thinks school, religion, and girls are all jokes and a waste of his time. School is when you doodle, religion is something he can't wait to quit, and girls are not even worth thinking about. Hair is only something you deal with twice a year, and washing it is silly since it just gets dirty again. I see dreadlocks in his future. His dream job changes, but right now it is be a professional soccer star for awhile before going to graduate school and becoming a scientist that wins a Nobel prize.

I am pretty much the only female that is infallible. His father has the information he actually wants, but Mama is the source of joy. All other people are just a waste of his time. He doesn't mind them, but they don't really serve a purpose and so he can be very rude and ingore them. He is sweet to little kids, but he probably won't notice if they are male or female. He can tell you the score of some random World Cup game from 4 years ago, but he has no idea when he last changed his underwear. (His sister just asked him, and his reply: I don't know. I haven't worn underwear for a month.) He is a glorious pile of farts, facts, cuddles and elbows. Every day for Monkey Boy is a day full of promise, and every day for me WITH Monkey Boy is a day full of sunshine.

Uses for Old Boyfriends

I haven't been writing in awhile because I have been trying to live a dull life. It has gone really well, except for my obsession with Facebook. Frequently you hear all about how the computer and on-line communities have caused real relationships to fail to develop. I am the counterargument. At this point in my life, I have the attention span of a guinea pig and zero time for meaningful conversations. My whole life I have been blessed with an excess of friends, most of whom never have managed to escape my Christmas card list. I have tons of people I want to be in touch with but I don't have any time to do so. Enter Facebook. Through it, I have managed to stay in touch with more people with less time. I have refound elementary school friends, archrivals, sorority sisters, people to whom I taught TV theme songs, a couple of folks I didn't realize were as strange as they are... I can quickly scan a friend's page and find out if anything interesting has happened to them and move on without discussing any details. Facebook is perfect for those seeking shallow encounters. But there is one problem. Ex-boyfriends

My whole life I have liked boys. I remember my PRESCHOOL favorite boy, my first grade, second grade, etc. My poor first-grade boyfriend I managed to find in a cotton field at a Blues Festival, and all I can say is I am glad he is unlikely to remember that encounter because he was so much worse off than I was. Liking boys and having a boyfriend are two entirely different things, and I didn't manage to acquire one of my very own until 10th grade, but after that I had a fairly steady supply until my husband. Once I acquired him, I had to stop collecting obviously. But I do have a strict ex-boyfriend rule: We can break up, but you can never leave. I have just lovely relationships with almost any boy I have ever dated/had a crush on/talked to for a long time. One of my favorite ex-boyfriends is providing the future spouse for my child. He has three gorgeous boys, and I have generously told Bunny she can have any one of them. Another ex-boyfriend is actually responsible for explaining stock markets and world news to me. Another ex-boyfriend is the source of all musical suggestions. Yet another is the science go-to guy. Each of these was lacking in some essential quality that my husband possesses, so even though I am fondly attached to all of them, it is sort of like the way you feel about your grandmother's furniture. Sure, it was good for a nap when you were little, but you don't actually want that furniture in the house. However, like I said, they can't leave. The main reason for this is my childhood hobby, funeral planning.

Like most little girls from Mississippi, I grew up playing wedding. Imagine the cutest boy from Leland Middle School or Sean Cassidy, draw an elaborate picture of your dress, winnow down the list of friends worth enough for bridesmaid status, and play pretend wedding. It was fun and satisfactory to a degree, but not nearly as much fun as what I really liked to do, playing funeral. I have been writing my wills since I was in third grade, making lists of who gets what stuffed animal. My actual will has a codicil where my best friend, Shelley, gets my pink rotary phone with the glow-in-the-dark funeral advertisement on the handset. She was determined it not be a family heirloom. Anyway, back to funerals. I am ashamed to admit it, but I would love to attend my actual funeral. Shortly into my marriage, I explained to my beloved what exactly my funeral would entail. Detailed explanations. However, it is now time to revisit those decisions.

I always thought I wanted to be cremated and dumped into a volcano, thrown into the Mississippi River, or something. I also wanted everyone to sit around and tell stupid stories about me and write them all down for my children, just in case they remember me as some saintly figure. HA. Now, however, I want a green funeral. You know where you become fodder for trees? I love the idea of being buried somewhere in some crappy, non-hermetically sealed box and having a Christmas tree farm planted on top of me. No, I am from Mississippi, so I want a pecan farm. And, the part that I want my ex-boyfriends for is I want them to be pall bearers. Several of them have failed to inform their wives of the central role I played in their lives, so they would probably have to mention coming to the funeral, but I just love the symbolism of them dumping me in the ground. Just like they dumped me (or, occasionally, visa versa). That way all my relatives will be free to wail and throw roses in the hole and comfort my little angels and my distraught husband who will probably still be trying to figure out where I stored Daniel's socks and how to turn on the dryer and who will, if he truly loved me, be unable to focus on getting me in the ground and other such funeral details (hence, the detailed to do list). Wouldn't you love to be there for that? Which is, again, why I love Facebook. I only had four ex-boyfriends that I was confident I could beg to help me (I want to do it like Camille in the opera - slow, drawn-out, dramatic, then boom, I am dead, so I can have time to explain my plans but die before I have to comfort anyone), but Facebook has helped me acquire at least one more and a couple I can possible call on for backup. I haven't cleared this with my husband, so he might not actually like the drama of it all, but it definitely appeals to me. But if the show gets scheduled anytime soon, which I am NOT hoping for, I will let you know so you can beg an invite.

Selfish needs and motorized transport

When I started this blog, I intended it to be a place where I wrote about funny stuff that happened to me and to nurture the illusion that I would actually write something "real" someday. All I can say to that now is "bleh." I can't even remember the last really funny thing that happened to me. I am pretty sure that funny stuff HAS happened, but I think there is a good chance I would not notice. All I want to do lately is bolt and run. Not just from caring for all the crippled folks around (wait, watching a four year old with a full leg cast run is funny, maybe I should make a video), but from anything that vaguely resembles responsibility. I am so overcome with selfish desires right now. Now, I am not talking about standard desires (a clean house, obedient children), I want really selfish stuff that I have never had ANY interest in. All-inclusive vacations, shiny stuff that supports genoicide in Africa, pretty things that look good in Vogue on anorexic people, foods with the first three ingredients to be: butter, cream, sugar. All of this stuff is so foreign to me, yet I want, want, want. I am going to use that as my gauge of when I am happy again, when my desires return to normal: olive bar purchases, a bubble bath, new houseshoes, a complete collection of Bare Naked Ladies CDs.

We are off on a trip again, this time to see my Aunt Becky who I generally refer to as "the family member I have never disliked." This is a good thing since it is my daughter's first name. She married a man named "Boots" who is loved almost as much as she is by my children, and they have a dachshund named Spike who could get work as a footbal lineman. He can take down a full grown person once he hits full speed and he can get Boo airborne. Today Boo was crying after a Spike flight, and when I went outside he was saying, "My leg, my leg!" I had this moment of terror that I was going to have a two cast kid (now THAT would be a funny video), but once I picked the magnolia pod out of his knee he was mobile once more. There is a precedent for this because when I was in high school I had surgery on my right foot for which I needed crutches. Being a stupid teenager, I decided it was a perfect time to learn to ride a motorbike. Unfortunately, I did not get adequate steering directions so I immediately drove into a freshly plowed cotton field, where I went airborne, had the bike land on my good ankle resulting in a massive sprain and making it impossible to walk for a couple of days. And Bunny, true to form, yanked out a couple of teeth when I was in a situation where I could do nothing about it since searching for kleenex at high speeds is probably up there with texting on the list of stupid ideas. She still believes in the tooth fairy (or claims to) and she looked at me and said, "This is a MOLAR. I think it is worth more, DON'T YOU THINK SO, MOMMY?" Five bucks for two. How was that for a run-on paragraph?

Today we went to the "Little White House" where FDR died. I was very impressed with the interpreter's ability to keep a straight face when she said that FDR had not had an affair. Yeah, whatever, she had a bedroom and Eleanor didn't? Figure that one out, ranger lady. I also learned that it would be a very, very bad idea to ever give my mother a motorized wheelchair because once she gets a little speed going, I think she becomes Bo Duke behind the wheel of General Lee. Things like curbs and feet were just soooooo irrelevant. Not that she has tortured me enough or anything, but she now has a torn rotator cuff which may mean surgery. Did no one get the memo that I am NOT GOOD AT NURSING CARE? On the other hand, it would mean a night off while she was in the hospital. This isn't outpatient, right?

I Must Change My Reading Habits!

I think my life must have really begun the day I learned to read. It is what I do to make me happy, put me to sleep, pass time in the bathroom, and get me through long trips. However, I have always had a problem with reading right before bed because most times whatever is the last thing I read before sleep will somehow appear in my very vivid dreams. I can't tell you how many times in my dreams I have been kidnapped or shown up for school in a Victorian gown as opposed to the normal naked.

Lately, in a vain attempt to keep up with popular culture, I have been reading novels popular with the teenage set. The whole Twilight series was consumed in a little over a week. Now, I am trying to catch up on the zombie phase a couple of years after its popularity peak. I have been reading a book called World War Z, An Oral History of the Zombie Wars. This was not a good plan. Last night I actually laid in my bed and looked around my room and thought, "Hmmm, what could I crush a zombie skull with?" Back in the old days, zombies supposedly could be stopped with salt, but according to the new theories, their brains must be destroyed. Decapitation isn't enough unless you also burn their heads. You can't drown zombies, or stab zombies or even pull them apart. A bullet through the brain is what is required.

Before I explain more about my zombie obsession, I must tell you about the other attempt I have made to join in with the popular culture. I love Facebook with a crazy passion. It is as good as email, but with pictures and updates. It lets you reconnect with friends without the real responsibility of true friendship. I am a huge fan of shallow relationships. I have found lots of people that I used to like but had lost touch with, acquired some "new" friends, found all my exboyfriends and crushes so they can't sneak up on me, and acutally found a way to connect with the teenagers I volunteer with through my church that doesn't make them feel weird. I guess I am speaking in their language for a change. Anyway, that brings me to John/Hunter.

During college, I had a lovely boyfriend, who is now a facebook friend, of course. His best friend was John, who sort of epitomized my idea of what cool was supposed to be in college. As a result, I rarely talked to him because I was convinced he thought I was a dork. I guess he didn't because I am now his facebook friend, and I take consolation in the fact that he has possibly sold out even more than I did. At graduation, I honestly thought I would go and live on some organic lavender farm and milk goats and have solar panels, etc. Instead, I am happily middle class, a room mom, and drive a minivan. I frequently have periods of discontent about this, but I cope. However, John lives in a gated neighborhood and is a psychiatrist. I would have called you a liar if you had ever told me he would do this twenty years ago. Anyway, I am finally to the point. John has put Hunter S. Thompson's face as his face on his facebook page which he finally posted two days ago.

So, after sending John/Hunter a message, I sat down to read the Zombie Wars (can't drown them, either). Fall asleep. The wars begin! It was a terrifying dream about Hunter and I trying to fight the zombie hordes. I woke up yesterday exhausted. Now, you would THINK this would make me stop reading the zombie book, but, no, I must find out how civilization makes it. Last night, I read again. Again, I dream about zombies, Hunter (who now has a tank), me (I have a shovel), and just when I thought he has left me dreams forever, the President of Iran was back, trying to woo with me his wife-beater t-shirt and his killer zombie skills. I am so grateful that I have no reason to psychoanalyze this dream, but I really would like to know why these two particular people (Hunter/John and Mr. Iran) won't leave my dreams. I am fully confident I don't have a real interest in them while I am awake, yet I am totally enthralled with their zombie destruction skills while asleep. I want to know why I got a shovel and they got tanks and bombs. I even had a dream conversation with Mr. Iran last night about whether nuclear weapons will destroy zombies. The only thing I know for sure is I am returning that book to the library today. If my other dream boyfriends, John Adams and Emperor Claudius show up, I am going to work on developing an addiction to No-Doz and confining myself to Jane Austen novels.

In Praise of the Average Child

One time one of my best friends, Shelley, was doing a project for grad school. She asked, "What are you most afraid of?" I am pretty sure she wanted something like global warming or poverty, but I answered, "Not having kids." Having children has always pretty much summed up what I wanted from life, and every man I ever dated was evaluated LITERALLY on the first date as to whether he had father material. Fortunately, I managed to pick a husband who was oblivious of all the tests he was required to pass, and he has helped me create three amazing small people.

I supposed I should have been more honest with my friend and said my real source of terror was "Not having a daughter." Even though I have two boys who are as necessary to my life as the air I breathe, it is my daughter who was? is? the culmination of my life's goals. Before we found out the gender of the baby, I told Hubby Dear that if it wasn't a girl, we were going to keep going until we had one, stole one, found one on the street corner. He was the opposite of the "Man needs son" stereotype because he was so relieved our daughter came first. The pressure was off him.

When they handed Bunny to us, I remember feeling like I couldn't breathe. I could not believe that I had created this absolutely unattractive, giant, bald baby that looked exactly like my husband's brother at birth. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me, and it was all over. I have always heard people say "he is an old soul," but our daughter had "old eyes." I honestly believed she already knew more than I would ever learn. The first logical thought I had beyond "DANG! THAT IS A HUGE BABY!" was, "I know why Jewish women volunteered to go with their children to gas chambers." What a joyful introduction to motherhood those thoughts were.

Bunny spent the first hour or two of her life just looking and, in particular, staring at us, and her intense abilities to focus continued for many months. All babies study things intently, especially things like window panes and ceiling fans, but with her it was more like she was watching things we couldn't see. I read somewhere that babies can still see angels, and the more they connect to the world, the more they forget heaven. I truly believed that she was talking to heavenly creatures that I could no longer experience. To this day, she still fervently believes in all things magical, and she has a depth of spirituality that it took me two decades or more to develop.

As she has grown up, I naturally have learned to love her more. Because school was always so easy for me and Hubby was a college professor, I just assumed that my children would find school a piece of cake. Bunny has shown me that you should never assume anything. School was never easy for her, and even now she struggles to make a C in many subjects. Intelligence isn't the question because she already is a true scholar about First Ladies, and I am pretty sure she was the first Eleanor of Aquitaine most people had ever had trick-or treat at their home. Wait until Elizabeth I shows up this year. I imagine she will surprise a few folks this year, too. It is just everything that interests her isn't a part of school or ever evaluated. In addition, she is continuously confronted with the slightly younger brother who thinks school is a joke, plays on a select soccer team, is always faster at understanding and mastering things, and who has never had to struggle for anything in his life.

She is not particularly coordinated, she possesses the artistic skills of her father, and she has the attention span and inability to multitask of her mother. She is just the average kid. She is not the prettiest, tallest, or sweetest. I have always struggled to find a way to communicate to her how absolutely marvelous she is, and how even if all of her friends can swim better, make better grades, draw more elaborately, sing better, and have cuter clothes and cooler parents, she is still the most amazing person I have ever met. She will probably never finish first, play the winning play, or be the star of any show, but she has taught me how to look beyond the flashy, obvious things kids do to find her real worth. She is able to forgive her own flaws in ways I still haven't mastered for myself. She remembers we should call her grandmother to cheer her up. She is the one who notices that the birds are using the dog's dish to take a bath. She can hold a group of toddlers in her thrall when she reads a book. She is never demanding and has more patience with me than I deserve. She is the only one of my children who cares about third world orphans or how to start a laundry machine ("I will need to know this someday, Mom!"). So, as a result of having the blessing of being her mom, I am always going to make an effort to find the kids who never shine the brightest and talk to them. If my daughter is any indication, they will be far more interesting anyway.

Is it possible to have a phobia of buses?

So, I have nothing new to report. Decided to control my ADD by eating an entire bag of York peppermint patties that were also chock full of BRIGHT ORANGE mint filling, so I also got my carcinogenic food colorings in there.

The other day I was thinking, and for once, it was an almost complete thought. It was a thought of how much I hate buses. Not in theory. In theory, I like them. I used them daily the year we live in Sweden, but to get me to use them most other places, I would have to be like Mr. T on the A-team and have to be tranquilized. I have valid reasons for this aversion. During college, I was one of the last people of the previous generation to not have a car. Periodically, my mother would issue edicts declaring that I needed to come home. This did not mean I could count on her to come get me; it simply meant I needed to be in Greenville by Friday night. Most weekends I could find someone to bum a ride with, but on those awful weekends that I couldn't, it meant the bus. The DELTA BUS line. It is really only about a 2 hour drive to Jackson from Greenville, but because it is the only means of public transportation for a vast amount of the state, it is required to stop at every four way intersection or largish gas station in the delta plus an extensive layover in Vicksburg, so generally it took a minimum of 4 hours. I was without one single exception during my many rides, the only "minority" on the bus. I am glad I did it for that reason, but the last trip I went on I woke up to some completely random stranger getting ready to kiss his drunken, drippy lips on me. Some random woman on the bus came to my defense and followed me around the Vicksburg terminal to keep potential molester away from me. I bought her Krystal burgers since she told me she would "protect me."

I recovered from this somewhat, except I noticed that I refused to ride the buses in NYC when I was a nanny. This was in the height of the crack/ice addictions time, and I would rather (and I did) sit near a man talking to his fingers and smoking crack on the subway than get on a bus. However, once again I was required to conquer the Greyhound Demon. When I was a nanny, I temporarily lost my mind (recurring pattern for the next 18 years) and got engaged to my best friend. Not Hubby, my best friend now, a previous best friend. Anyway, I decided that I would go from North Carolina to see him in Tennessee via Greyhound. It literally took 23 hours to get from Roanoke, Virginia to Clarksville, Tennessee. In the intervening hours, I visited towns I have still not found on the map- Brigadoon, Virginia, Butt Crack, North Carolina, and my personal favorite, Knoxville, Tennessee. I was dumped in Knoxville's bus station at 3 a.m. I had been entertained during the trip by the little boy who's mother fell asleep immediately after her butt hit the cushion. Everytime my head would fall forward, he would literally stick his finger between the seats and into my ear. He pulled out enough hair to stuff a voodoo doll. Finally, a soldier who had just been dishonorably discharged and was going home to confront his girlfriend who was sleeping with another man sat beside me, and I got to get my hair pulled out while advising this man that killing the man who was boinking his girl was just a bad plan. If I asked the little boy to stop, his mother would wake up and slap him, which would make him cry, which induced guilt.

So, we are dumped into Knoxville. Knoxville's bus station is not charming. It is even less charming when all the homeless people are using it for their bedroom and bathing facility. I decide that I will go to the bathroom since I had been holding it awhile so I wouldn't have to go in the bus bathroom that clearly had not been cleaned or aired out since the person vomited in it.

So, as I am hovering over the toilet seat (can't sit - this is pre the age of enlightenment about AIDS), I realize that there is literally a crazy (not PC - a mentally ill person not receiving proper care) person is in the stall next to me. She is getting increasingly irate over the fact someone had broken the 13th Commandment and gotten AN ORANGE COMMUNIST MEDAL for it. And she COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS COULD HAPPEN IN AMERICA. I am terrified to leave the stall. Finally, I bolt. I climb on the bus, only to have my friend, the con sailor, decide that I am right. He doesn't need his cheating ho, he is going to try to charm me for the next three hours. Yank - there goes another hunk of my hair. Then, I realize that the woman who is worried about the negative effects of Communism is sitting in front of me and she is still unhappy about it. She begins to cry, which makes me completely unafraid of her. And I realized that she was wearing an Andy Warhol wig, and it made me sad and sympathetic, too. It was the bus ride from hell. It was Knoxville's first nail in the coffin and I am still not convinced that this town isn't full of homeless, mentally ill right-wingers. I am starting to move away from the homeless belief, but the rest is still there. And I won't ride buses unless they have the word "tour" painted on their sides.

Stupid Computer Stalkers

I took a test today to see what my problem is. Not that it is caring for a house and 4 people, or anything, but it really must be an "outside" problem. And, the diagnosis is...I am suffering from adult ADD. Now this is based completely on a 20 question survey on the internet, but it wasn't like it was a waffling answer, it was a "yeah, you are an unfocused, undisciplined, needs to be medicated person. Seek help immediately" and a tiny little stick figure of me. Of course, I was horrified and I went and asked my mother and husband, and they were both like, "Yeah, obviously." Hubby made it worse by pointing out he told me this a year ago, but I thought he was being sarcastic then. I have always defined myself through academics, and I had no idea you could read well and have ADD. However, the "symptoms" do match what I have better than the gall bladder ones. So, if it turns out that I am not mentally ill but chemically challenged, I will be happy. Two years ago on Desperate Housewives, one of the wives started taking Ritalin because it let her get stuff done and at the time I thought, "Gimme, gimme, gimme." So, if it turns out that I am ADD, I will view Lynnette from DH as my personal Oracle of Delphi.