YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

we set some new ground rules with the kids before we moved into the new digs with regard to authorized entry.  i got the idea from another couple who has 4 kids – they told me their kids are NOT ALLOWED into their bedroom for any reason…ever.  huh.  when you think about it, it’s only fair that we should have at least one place to hide hang out alone, without fear of screaming smackdowns or flying projectiles. i should be able to sit on this one toilet seat without marinating in urine from backside to feet.  with three other functioning televisions in the house, i should be able to watch hbo instead of iCarly alone, in my own bedroom.  i think that's not so much to ask. 

so far so good...they're keeping the hell out.  and i know that for sure because despite the fact that the new house is twice the size, the kids still continue to follow us around everywhere we go.  really?  you'd rather stand in the kitchen asking for shit you can't have or making inane observations than be up in the playroom watching cartoons and playing with the 19,000 plus toys up there?  i knew we should've looked for a dungeon bonus room instead of a playroom. 

but i can tell the curiosity is killing them.  what is in there that they don't want us to see????  did they get a pony?  is there a portal in their closet that leads to a fantastic world made out of candy and toys?  they have a bounce house in there - i just know it.  and a clown making balloon animals.  do you think they're pooping right now?  what about now?  wait...now?  dammit i need to SEE this and comment and ask more questions! how will i know for sure they've pooped unless i ASK...and then COMMENT?????  oooh...my world is spinning out of control...

heh heh...suckers.

not that we hadn't already made up our mind on the new rules, but our decision was further supported as sound by what we found under our bed when the movers lifted up the box springs to reveal the following inventory- (9) ea fruit snack packages, empty; (3) ea petrified fruit snacks, flavor unidentifiable; (2) ea bastard socks, kid size; (7) ea matchbox cars, assorted varieties; (1) ea pair of kid underpants, dirty; (2) ea pencils, unsharpened; (3) ea pokemon cards, assorted; (4) ea tissues, used; (1) ea nerf dart, broken; (72) cents, american; (1) ea wad of chewing gum, used, red (affixed to back of headboard); (1) ea drinking straw; (1) ea happy meal toy, broken; (1) ea donut hunk, petrified; (1) ea sandwich crust, furry; (5) ea balls, assorted. 

it's like we put up our bed over a landfill.  it's like there was an vortex of power underneath our bed that sucked random things out of our children's hands and into its evil clutches.  it's like we shared a home with 4 rabid zombie monkeys who knew nothing but destruction and chaos.  and CLEARLY this is why we can't have nice things. 

sigh...

so i've been told twice in the past week that my blog habits have begun to smell like the dumpster behind a bad chinese buffet.  typically i don't respond well to criticism attempts to make me feel guilty, but here i am anyway.  are you happy?  huh?  are you?  let the record show that this post was created with deep-seated feelings of resentment.  furthermore, you'll all be sorry when i'm dead.

now that we have THAT out of the way, onward and upward (?) to my random life experiences.

we're moving to a bigger house at the end of the month that will hopefully have a place where i can effectively hide from the kids. i hate moving - why do i have so much shit? furthermore, what would have ever possessed me to open a box containing the shoes i got married in from 1994 and tell myself - oh yeah, i need these as a keepsake. why? because that marriage was so awesome or because the ugly things damn near crippled me when i wore them or because they cause me to fondly recall that my hairdo on the day of my wedding looked like it belonged on a lesbian basketball player?

charlie has a new friend named potato. 

potato? 

yeah, mom - you know, potato. 

potato? the child's name is potato? 

you know mom - we played with him on monday and he rode his bike over... remember? 

matteo? 

YES! potato. that's what i said.

i had my kids parent/teacher conferences on monday and both teachers told me my children were well-adjusted.  i don't even think i can add anything to that in order to make it funnier or more ironic.

my parents came over last weekend and my mom gave me this shirt she bought for herself and ended up not liking on her. and she gave me a purse she thought was too big for her to carry. as she handed over the items, henry observed - man, you two are all about fashion.  since i've explained to him what gay means, think i shoulda said something?

and, in closing, henry told me this morning that the donuts that he'd been begging for were "not gonna buy themselves."  see...i have enough problems without all the blog nagging.  leave britney alone!

it's running as fast as it can

i had the misfortune of ending up in line behind the crazy coupon lady at target last week. tragically, i didn’t notice her organizer full of coupons until i had the entire contents of my cart emptied onto the belt and it was too late to retreat. i opted, instead, for the highly passive-aggressive heavy sighs, hands-on-hips stance and burning stare while she pawed through every coupon ever printed for fully 5 minutes. when she tried to hand over several that were expired, i considered starting a grass-roots movement to make this sort of thing a crime along the lines of fraud. by the time i had finished my citizens arrest fantasy (that involved my wrestling her to the ground, my knee to her back while i proficiently cuffed her and handed her over to security), she was gone. as i watched her go, i fervently wished that she would get a painful and infected paper cut for making me stand in the checkout line an extra 5 minutes with my kids, who, during that time, managed to fondle and beg for every single impulse item and pack of gum. how many times in the span of 5 minutes should a person be required to tell their kid they can’t have any super glue?


i think everybody should have a rap name. mine is quickie-d, which i earned for the landspeed record i set in finalizing my divorce. henry’s is h-dogg, for the obvious reasons, and charlie’s is c-money, for no apparent reason. i don’t have rap names for the newest editions to my family yet. beau could easily be beau-diggity. and now that i read that, he shall henceforth be known as such. what to do with cameron? it’s such a white name. i’d probably have to name him after his red hair and just ignore the name completely. redman? meh. ginger-bread man? better, but not great. i’m open to suggestions on that. and of course the best rap name for someone named chris is already taken by luda. so i have two white members left in my family – please leave your suggestions in the comments section. this racial divide cannot continue.

my idea of a dream home has changed after living under the same roof with four young boys. while before i envisioned floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ocean, i now dream of bulletproof and smudgeproof surfaces that can’t be gazed out of during naptime when little eyes should be closed and mouths shut. i used to crave rich hardwood floors, but now i’m thinking more along the lines of concrete flooring with a drain in the center of each room for easy hosing down. in fact, ideally the house would be more of a boxcar shape, and each room would have a door on each side so that the house could be hosed out completely, floor to ceiling, room by room, and culminating in the gutter system outside the back door. and when i say “hose”, i mean FIREhose. how else are you gonna get up gum? so basically, it’s a cell block of sorts without the bars. or…WITH the bars. jury’s still out on that one.

the following questions should require no response as you are OBSERVING the action in question at the time you are asking it. however, the responses i would LIKE very much to give follow in parentheses:

you take a shower? (no, i just stood out in the sprinklers and then ran back into the bathroom and put on a towel)
you wake up? (i hope i’m still very much asleep because being asked that question yet again is a nightmare.)
you eating dinner? (great question. how did you guess? you’re so perceptive! nothing gets by you.)
you get dressed? (you’d think so, but i actually painted my naked body to look as though i’m wearing clothes. clever, no?)

the following comments should require no response as they are obvious statements of fact, and repeating them incessantly until such time as my head explodes does not make them any more noteworthy. my internal response to each follows in parentheses.

i go to sleep (duh!)
i wake up (the hell you say!)
i have my bear (duh!)
i have my clothes on (no shit!)
i eating dinner (DUH!)

sadly, sarcasm is wasted on the young.

my (sub)urban dictionary

i have two new favorite turns of phrase, and they both contain the word "shit", which is pretty cool.  i've moved away from "assload" to describe a great quantity of whatever and gotten on board with "shit-ton."  for whatever reason, when i want to really exaggerate, "shit" says more to me than "ass" as a descriptor, and everybody knows a "ton" is a shit-ton more than a "load."

i'm also really enjoying "bat-shit crazy".  i've never truly experienced bat shit all live and in person, but i have a strong feeling that it's crazier than most other shits.  i wish i could use this one in a sentence, because i have SO many examples of bat-shit crazy people in my life, but farbeit from me to point fingers.

speaking of bat-shit crazy, i have another special needs story on charlie.  we passed a really bad accident on the highway last weekend, and he looked back at us with wide eyes and exclaimed, "M. O. G.!!!!"  we laughed like a bastard.  (the use of "bastard" in this way is not new for me, but i still do enjoy it frequently.  see the film Outside Providence and you'll understand.)

that's it for now.  i have a shit-ton of stuff in my netflix queue that i can now stream with my brand new hd roku, and i need to GET ON IT.  i feel a tv marathon coming on.  if i ever clear away the pizza boxes and empty food wrappers and reemerge from the bedroom, unwashed and bleary, looking totally bat-shit crazy, i'll write a new blog about the greatness that is roku.  MOG!

the short bus plays the backstreet boys

as much as it "grieves me" (as my 7th grade teacher said when he caught me talking in class) to admit it, my precious 4-year old lacks some of the basic 4-year old skills.  god love him, where do i start?

okay, for a starter, he puts his shoes on the wrong feet like 97% of the time.  considering he has a 50/50 chance of getting it right each time, the odds are in his favor and YET...more days than not i look down and say, "charlie, your shoes are on the wrong feet."  how do you f**k that up so consistently?  seriously.  it's unnatural.

secondly, he's started dressing himself on a regular basis and this "learned skill" has not developed well.  he ends up looking like a homeless child way too much of the time.  um, honey, i'm pretty sure those red plaid shorts don't go very well with that orange print shirt.  yes...i'm almost positive.  honey...please...let me help you.

also...and i am loathe to admit it...he tends to put his pants on backwards.  and when i say "tends", i mean frequently.  and it's not at all in a retro criss-cross way.  it's in a heinous, embarrassing way.

"charlie, you have your shorts on backwards."  he looks down blankly..."no i don't".  and then he feels around to his backside where his butt is protruding through his open fly.  "oh, my bad."  REALLY?  holy crap.  he came home from his dad's two weeks ago with his underwear on backwards and his shoes on the wrong feet.

okay okay okay...so we've established that my precious angel is "special".  let's put the icing on the cake. this afternoon i had my ipod on in the car and "i want it that way" by the backstreet boys came on.  and if you're waiting for an apology for the boy band music on my ipod, you will probably wither and die before you get it. he started to object when it started because it's all slow and he loves the loud pop stuff.  and then he got quiet.  oddly quiet.

when it was about halfway through, he goes, "who is this anyway?"  i said, " it's the backstreet boys," like that's any sort of definitive answer to a 4-year old.  he was silent and contemplative through the end, even tolerating my vocal contributions, which are loud and bad.  then it's over and he demands, "I WANNA HEAR IT AGAIN."  and i oblige.  who am i to question what soothes the short-bus rider.  nobody.  that's who.

i'm really hoping he develops as an athlete because i fear that academics will never be his strong suit.  hey, he has a great personality...sigh.

lamont?

ok so we're having an effing garage effing sale tomorrow.  um, yeah.  i know i'm bluff-cursing and i don't effing care.  if my (super awesome wonderful perfect) parents didn't read this, i totally would be bringing it old skool (you know it's white-person hard core if they spell school with a k.  enough said.)  i hate garage sales with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.  and i come by it honest.  i totally witnessed my mother, during a garage sale, do the following:

garage sale shopper:  this is marked ten cents.  will you take a nickel for it?

my mom:  NO! IT'S NOT FOR SALE! she snatches the item from the table and performs a perfect "spin and storm" into the house with said item that is clearly worth 10 cents and NOT 5 cents.

and here's the problem.  this shit makes perfect sense to me.  okay NO.  it's a freaking dime! what sort of personal high do you hope to achieve by talking me down to a nickel?  really?  is that the person you really want to be? and the sad answer is that they want to be the holy super super awesome garage sale shopper that they already are.  yes, please take my $350 coach bag for $3 when i marked it $15.  i know it's totally dated and kinda icky now but still...for the love of pete...i paid $350 for it back in the day.   i don't want it now for shizzle.  but still...i wouldn't carry it now for a million bucks but STILL. IT WAS EXPENSIVE AS A MOFO. so somebody still should want it, yes?

bottom line is the same as always: i hate people.  but yes...i'll take their money. i'll even take the predicted $3 for the $350 purse.  i just want to get rid of it, truth be told.  at the end of the day, i might even seriously consider paying someone to take the crap that doesn't sell.  i hate it THAT much.  LAMONT?

deep dark depression...excessive misery

so it hasn't been all shits and giggles at the brooks/hart household of late.  let me try and break it down for simplicity's sake...

1.  chris got sick
2.  i got sick
3.  chris didn't go to the doctor.  i went to the doctor - got a zpack.  got better.
4.  chris got sort of better.
5.  chris got sick again.
6.  chris got real sick.
7.  chris got pneumonia.
8.  chris went into the hospital to have his chest drained with a tube.
9.  the fluid in chris' chest had turned to gel, ergo the chest tube was no use.
10.  chris underwent surgery during which his lungs were SCRAPED of the gunk.
11.  chris spent 24 hours with a ventilator down his throat in intensive care.  during this time, he attempted to get out of his bed to pee at least 47 times despite the fact that he was catheterized.
12.  chris was restrained in his hospital bed and shot up with enough morphine to kill a horse.
13.  chris described to me the things he saw when he got a shot of morphine - "a multi-level aztec waterfall."
14.  i commented, "well, that's very specific, honey."
15.  chris ended up spending 8 days in the hospital, during which his mother lived with us helping with all the heathens.  it was a LONG week.

daddy's back now, thank you GOD.  this has been the murphy's law 6 weeks from H-E-doublehockeysticks.  yeah, that's right.  doublehockeysticks.  i said it.  and i meant it.  apologies.  i'm stressed.

i did have the opportunity during this time to remember what my life was like before mr. wonderful came into my life, and i have to say without any doubt...I DON'T LIKE IT.  the kids were belligerent and disrespectful.  and i'm talking about MY kids.  i had totally forgotten (blissfully) how it was without a strong man in the house and it came rushing back to me in the most horrifying way.

so...if there is anything good to come of this awful experience, it is that i fully appreciate chris and what he's done for my family in less than a year.  i am very lucky.

sorry this post isn't more snarky.  getting your chest scraped out is serious shit, so roll with it.  love you mean it.