Five

Today my sweet firstborn is five. I love S-phie's birthday because I think back to the day she was born and replay every minute of it in my mind. The moment they handed her to me, all cheesy and bloody and wide-eyed, was the single happiest moment of my life. That moment was so magical, so transcedent, that it has sustained me ever since. I think it gave me enough happiness to last me the rest of my life. And it was only the beginning of many more magical moments, of falling deeper and deeper in love with this girl over and over and over.

It's especially sweet this year because she has been really sick lately - running a fever for 15+ days and counting, w/no explanation for most of those days and w/glands as big as, dare I say it, golfballs. Even the doctors were starting to worry. But, alas, she just has CMV, which is basically a form of mono and she'll be fine. Even though I don't love Jesus, I do love Anne Lamott, and I've been saying her favorite prayers, "help me help me help me," and now, luckily, "Thank you thank you thank you."

Happy Birthday, my big girl.

Roosting chickens?

For about 10 years I cut my own hair, and got progressively better at it - it can be self-taught if you're willing to endure some really bad haircuts. So, of course, I cut S-phie's hair when we started cutting it. In fact, I pride myself on being a little hippie, punk-rock DIY mama. I started getting my own hair cut professionally when I graduated from law school - I just didn't think the NC legal community was ready for my home-do. But it can only be insanity, vanity, and some sort of latent desire to sell out that made me decide that S-phie should go profesh. Or maybe it was just boredom that made me do it. Or the devil. I don't know. But I asked one of S-phie's friend's moms where her child, who always has a sassy little 'do, gets her hair cut and made an appointment with this "stylist."

S-phie's hair was a bob that had grown out to almost shoulder length, w/overgrown bangs. I asked the woman to cut the bangs and leave the rest of the length, w/just a little layering, hoping it would lighten up her thick hair and bring back some of her glorious toddler curls (greedy greedy greedy). I'm not sure where in that request she heard "give her hideous 70's-style layers close to her face and leave the back long and then make it all curl under and in toward her face like Kate Jackson from days of yore." Or did she hear me say, "give her a dorky, femmey pseudo-mullet?" Or was it something broader that she thought I said under the drone of the blow dryers, like, "break my heart." My pulse quickened as I realized what this psycho stylist was doing. At one point she asked if she should make it shorter in the back, which admittedly would have been less hideous, but I said no because I just wanted to get the hell out of there before she fucked up my sweet girl's lovely locks any further. I had a lump in my throat. Who knew I was so vain by proxy? The so-called stylist even said, "I've given her a bi-level and framed the face." A bi-level? Doesn't she know that's just a euphemism for mullet!?!? Of course I told S-phie how great it looked, etc., knowing all the while that I would cut it all off when we got home. In the car I told her how sometimes you have to adjust your haircut after you get home.

I got home about 4:50. I was going to wait until J-sh came home at 6:30 before I cut it, just to let him see the carnage. But what good does rubber-necking really do anyone anyway? I also thought of taking a picture to show him, but I didn't want it memorialized in any fashion. By 5:00 she had an ultra-short bob. It's been like that before and I like it, but she likes it longer, so as to be more "princess-y." I'm still having PTSD symtpoms over the "haircut" (I would call it a butcher-job, but I've never seen a piece of meat so inartfully cut as S-phie's bi-level) and S-phie is a little sad it's so short. I could attribute this whole incident to karma, since I seem to be convinced that all of these meaningless unpleasantries in my life have meaning, but I think this one falls under chickens coming home to roost, which is similar to karma, but more appropriate where there is a more definite nexus between the bad act (getting greedy and thinking S-phie should go profesh) and the bad result (see aforementioned "haircut.") My chickens have roosted before, so I know what I'm talking about (last 4th of July we took all the kids, including the 7 week-old twins, to a 4th celebration and concert in suburban hell and got caught in a deluge, which soaked everyone to the bone, and resulted in massive crying and hysteria, followed by an hour of trying to get out of the parking lot, during which time the babies screamed and we thought we were going to run out of gas, and my friend Anna commented, "That's what you get for celebrating your country.")

Faux Bun, Faux Pas (and rude bitches)

We took the kids to the beach this weekend, which was fun, except for when the babies didn't sleep, S-phie got gum stuck to the hotel bedspread, and when S-phie woke up this morning with a fever and vomiting. But anyway, what I really want to talk about is the rude bitches I met there. And about my fat ass. Or, more precisely, my fat belly. Let me just say that I was feeling pretty proud of myself on Friday because I've lost 12 painstaking pounds since March. It's been awful. Okay, so I've lost the 12, need to lose as much again. Cut to the chase: arrive on Friday and the innkeeper remarks that I have three kids and, "I see you have another one on the way." I tell her no, I don't, and she is completley unfazed. Personally, I would die of embarassment if I made that mistake. Maybe she figured I was the one who needs to be embarassed, what with my faux bun in the oven and all. Anyway, I didn't like it, but I took it in stride, telling myself that the empire-waist dress I was wearing just made it look that way. Then Saturday evening I'm in my swimsuit, and another guest starts talking to me about the kids and says, "And that's great you're expecting again." I wanted to tell her I was expecting to kick her rude ass. Instead, I just smiled and said, "No, I'm just FAT." She also did not seem to care about what I considered to be quite a blunder, and just kind of laughed it off and drove away in her ginormous (a S-phie word) SUV. I was not happy after the second comment. I told my mom about the whole debacle, to which she sympathetically(??) said, "but think about what you looked like when you were 9 months pregnant!!!" At present, I seriously cannot look more than 6 or 7 months pregnant, at worst; I look more or less like I looked when I was 4 months pg w/the twins - a definite bump, if I were a celebrity there would be speculation about my gestational status in People, but I personally wouldn't feel safe asking.

Maybe this is my bad karma again. The worst part is - well the worst part is that my babies are 13 months old and I look 6 months pregnant - but the other worst part, about the rude bitches, is that I just can't stand the thought of them re-telling the story, although they seem so unembarassed that perhaps they won't repeat it, but I can't stand them telling someone and then saying, "bless her heart," the way crazy Southern women do when they insult someone they feel sorry for. I wish I could just learn to embrace my faux bun and flaunt it proudly in a bikini, like lots of fatties I saw this weekend - more power to them, bless their hearts.

Bad karma

is the only explanation I can think of. Or perhaps hubris, related to my recent brag about our maggot-free lifestyle (see post from 22 May, "Golf Balls"). That's right, more maggots. But this time they were in the Shark. It would seem that when you vacuum up wet food from under the babies' high-chairs, in an apparently futile attempt to reduce the overall filth level, but then don't empty out the Shark in a timely fashion, the overall filth level actually increases. Did I mention that I'm a slow learner? But on the Shark website it even says you can sweep up "soggy pieces of food". . . .

I am so depressed about this. I have been trying so hard to be cleaner, to stay more on top of things. Now this. It really is a blow. I am going to take pictures later of my house and post them, without cleaning up first, b/c while it's admittedly cluttered, I really don't think it's maggot-worthy. That's why I'm convinced that it is karma. So, I'm going to make a list like Earl and try to make amends. Here are 10 bad things I've done, in no particular order:

1. told S-phie I don't like Disney princesses, thus giving her a serious complex b/c she does like them so much
2. don't recycle peanut-butter jars b/c I'm too lazy to wash out the old peanut butter
3. forgot my mother and brother's b-day, which they share, in 1991
4. euthanized S-phie's pet fish, Sea, b/c its tank was too dirty and it seemed sick and its pitiful existence tortured me too much
5. told my twin infants to "remember Andrea Yates" when they were waking me up every hour
6. bought S-phie's Halloween costume at Wal-Mart in 2004 (this should count for two bad acts)
7. see above
8. followed the evil wisdom of Dr. Richard Ferber
9. let my babies' diapers get so wet that they drag on the floor and fall off
10. bit my defenseless baby brother in 1972

Water and booty

So, as I mentioned, we took the kids on an outing on Memorial Day, so as not to have to discuss war and death and politics w/S-phie again. These are some pics from our journey to the Eno River, a local river which was stinky and had a low-expectation-having crowd, but S-phie loved it. J-sh and I later observed that perhaps if you haven't ever lived in Oregon, as we did for many years, that one's expectations for a local river may be sated by a stagnant stream. Not much else noteworthy has happened this week - no maggots or mold! I need to think of a celebratory rhyme for this, a la "today was a good day, didn't even have to use my A.K.." I'll work on it.

The mystique of the H20 bottle:

And the rapture of the Booty: