It's a dramedy, Part 1

Sunday night on our way home from my Mom's, I snapped.

Audrey and Ben both, at the same time:  "Mooom..."  (insert request)

Mr W barely raised an eyebrow as I started, hand motions like a stewardess and all, "Okay, listen.  Get all your requests in now, because I am quickly approaching the last "MOO-OOOM" of the day.  After this happens, I won't hear you anymore, got it?  No.  More.  "MOO-OOM".  Do we understand each other?" 

Ten thousand "Moo-ooom"s a day is plenty, don't you think?

I jumped out of the van in the driveway, noticing the amount of dirt, watermarks, etc. and smirking a little about it, on Mr W's car.  His cop car.  The marked vehicle he has been bringing home.  It's a long story, but he is supposed to have a take-home car.   He got this marked one last week.  Oh, yeah, it's subtle, having a marked black and white in your driveway.  As subtle as painting a target on your roof.  

Far be it for me to steal his thunder, though.   He was really happy about having a car again, so I just buried my trepidations and looked on the bright side.  Afterall, he's a big boy, and he is fully aware of what the implications and complications having a cop car in your driveway can entail.  So I consoled myself with the thought that maybe the sight of it in our driveway would be a good thing.  Maybe it would make our neighbors feel safer.  The stars would align.  It would be thirty degrees cooler...sorry.  I'm a wee delirious in this heat.

Of course, I should have known better. 

Sometime after we got home late Sunday night, and Monday morning, the cop car got egged.

It makes you feel all warm in fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

Mr W washed the car and it's no longer at our house.  As he told me that he could still get a whiff of eau de huevo on his hands yesterday afternoon, all I could do was smile consolingly. 

There's no way I'd pat his hand. 

"I didn't get that from me."

All families have their shared inside jokes.   In a houseful of boys, a lot of shared inside jokes in my house involve gas.  Burping and farting, whether pretend or all too real, are the subjects of many a laugh.

Ryan is on to this, and being the littlest, hasn't quite figured out what is funny for family might not be so funny out in public.  

We were in Winslow over the weekend, for my niece's birthday.  She's two.  Adorable.  There's nothing like a chubby two year old, standing on the ice chest in her bathing suit, precariously perched and leaning forward to the table, reaching for her birthday cake.  I caught her just in time...

On Sunday, we took the kids to the creek.  We were sitting in one of the picnic tables, eating lunch, when I hear someone let it rip across the table from me.

Ryan and my nephew are sitting there.  And Ryan, without missing a beat, without saying a word, grins and jerks his thumb at my nephew.  It was funny.

His brothers have taught him well.  

But it's his father who is really in trouble. 

Because he's never around when 'funny at home' becomes 'embarrassing in public.'

Monday evening, I took the kids to a coworker's house.   We're friends, I've known her a long time, but she only recently began working with us again.  She's invited me over tons, but this is the first time I'd been able to make it.   She has horses, and lots of dogs, so the kids were excited to come.

We were standing outside, chatting, letting the dogs get used to all of us.  Ryan pipes up that he has to pee.  She lives in one of those spreads where it's desert all around the house, so we joked to him to pick a tree, any tree.

I didn't notice Ryan leave us.  I didn't notice Ryanuntil I looked up and saw his back to us, assuming the position. 

You know seven year olds.  They take you literally sometimes. 

My friend took it in stride.  "Well, that's what we told him to do."

I found it harder to take in stride what my boy did next, though. 

He came back up to us, and started heading for her front door, asking where the bathroom was...because "now, I need to ...."  and he very slightly squatted, placed both his hands out in front of him bent at his elbows but still at his sides, made a motion backwards with his hands, and said "huurrrrrnnnggggh."

Surely he's didn't just indicate...I stood there, incredulous, plotting my husband's death. 

He did it again, just to erase any doubt.

"Inside, to the right,"  my friend said.  She laughed.  I blushed.  I couldn't even explain, other than to stammer out:

"He gets that from his Dad."   

My fourth boy.

Insight

On our way home from swimming lessons, I couldn't resist calling my husband.

"Ball-and-chain,"  I said when he answered.  "You couldn't even leave me a note?  No Post-it declaration of love?"

"I tried to wake you up.  You were snoring."

"A likely story." 

Ben is looking a little quizzically at me, as I hang up, so I explain to him about "ball-and-chain."

"You know, how in the old days, they would put a ball and chain around a prisoner's ankle so they couldn't go anywhere, or not go anywhere quickly?  Well, you can tease your spouse by calling them your ball-and-chain.  Because..."

Nolan interjects at this point: "...because you're trapped."  He didn't beat an eyelash or look up from his game.  He just silently held his hand up to me for the high-five.

It was pretty funny.  And insightful, even for a twelve year old.

I'm hoping he has picked up on some of the more positive aspects of marriage too, but I think it's important that he also see it's not always a picnic. 

Because we all know it's not.  It's better to know that sometimes the little things like dishes in the sink make you snap; that you don't go through life always holding hands all googly-eyed. 

Sometimes, you look at your significant other, and the years melt away, that flip-flop in your stomach makes you pause.

Sometimes, you can't even look at your significant other without feeling homicidal and needing to leave the room.

It's like anything else in life, it has its good points and its bad points, and all points in between.

Today, it's 15 years for us.  If you count our dating, it's 24. 

The good points are there, and the bad points suck, but it's the points in between that I like the best.

The everyday things.

Like when I wake up just enough to tell him to have a good day. 

Like when he sneaks up behind me, puts his head on my shoulder, and tries to get in the way of what I'm doing.

Like when I stand out of his line of view, and watch him playing with the kids.

Like when we exchange the secret code; things I say that seem innocent but aren't, and he knows it.  ("I shaved my legs today." = you are so getting lucky)

Like he can look at me, know something is wrong, and get me to spill it with just the right way of asking me "what's up?".

All of the day to day adds up, and eventually, years go by.

In the blink of an eye.

A swimsuit, I can do

Miss Audrey has been a tad overscheduled for the last month. 

As the summer opened, I was happy to be out of the Mom-taxi mode.  But the downward spiral into laziness, once I enter it, is really hard to get out of, so I signed Audrey (at least) up for a few classes.  This way, I figured, I'd have a reason to get out of my pjs earlier than the 30 minutes before hubby got home that I was previously managing.

Swimming lessons (every day), preschool (3 days a week), and a ballet class (it's only one night!)...throw in aikido for the boys (twice a week, as always) and the taxi is back in service.  In and out all day, in this heat, and I wonder why I'm wiped out at/by bedtime? 

This past Monday, Ben and Ryan started swimming lessons too.  Nolan, being too cool for swimming lessons, is hanging on to his pjs as long as possible.

Last week, I was getting Audrey ready to go.   She has (cough cough) 3 two-pieces that are just adorable.  She was with me when I bought them, she wanted to match one of the little girls we know who favors tankinis.  However she has since grown, so where the top once met the bottom is now her tummy.  It's cute, and not inappropriate at all.

She was on my bed, looking at herself in the mirror on my dresser.   She turned to her side, turned forward, patted herself on the tummy, and announced she would like a suit that "covers my belly." 

Aww.  "But your belly, it's perfect,"  I told her.  Surely, she's a little young for the body image thing.  Surely.  I'm not taking any chances:  "Perfect, perfect, perfect,"  I tickle her.  (I think she is more comfortable, given the activity of the lesson, to not feel like she's losing her top or bottom.)

We found a yellow Spongebob one (which I discovered too late is only lined in front, and once wet, from the back is a disaster--it's gotta go) and a pink polka dotted one.  

I love it when I can fulfill easy requests like that. 

Unlike her poor father.  Not that he doesn't fulfill requests, it's just that he just couldn't okay this one.  Weekend before last, while I was at work, she popped up into his lap:

"Daddy, I want a tattoo."

Copsmosis

A good friend of mine is in town, and she invited us to come over to her sister-in-law's house on Friday night for a surprise party.  Her husband turned 40 in April, and his family decided better late than never, I guess.

We had a good time, getting caught up and just enjoying the company. 

I watched Nolan gamely try to not be upset that my friend's daughter was playing it cool and avoiding him at all costs.   She was once so enchanted by him, and now, poof.  Ouwwwwch.

The kids behaved, and we left at a decent hour. That alone would warrant the evening a success, but then on the way to the freeway, Mr W saw this truck.  A truck that he said was "begging to be pulled over."

At which point I somewhat jokingly reeled off about five things I thought he'd cite them for, just to see if I could come close to his train of thought. 

He was impressed.  Oh, yeah, he was. 

Why whisper x-rated things in his ear when "unsafe lane change" will do the trick? lol

I guess I've absorbed more than I thought I had via copsmosis.

Does that mean I get my own handcuffs?

While I wait for the answer, I'll stick to the Six.

Saturday Six - Episode 116

1. If you had the chance to vote for a law that would ban flag burning, would you vote in favor of it?

Nope.  It's the way you dispose of a flag properly.  The other more dramatic reasons people burn flags for are allowed via the auspices of living in a 'free' country where you are able to, in essence, do whatever you want.

2. Which of the following did you walk through most recently: a zoo, a garden, a beach, a cemetary?

Cemetary.  I think about Rob everyday. 

3. If you could create a new scent for a candle, which one would you select and why?

Hmm.  With three boys in the house, I'd come up with something like, oh, I don't know...  Ass-b-gone ?  (self explanatory) 

Non-toxic Child?  (I've seen the bottom of the hamper.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.)

Eau de New ? (I forget what 'new' smells like.)

And Princess.  For Audrey, of course.

4. Take the quiz: What soda are you? (Thanks, Anna.)

Yet another quiz telling me how mediocre and boring I am:   I am Coke.  The quiz says I should try something new for a change. 

Don't they know that Coke goes well with everything?  Mmmm.  Jack and Coke.  Rum and Coke.  Did I mention, my personal favorite, Jack and Coke?  Everyone sheds their capacity to be boring with Jack and Coke. (There is anecdotal evidence that given enough of it, I shed more than that.  Ahem.

5. How often do you drink this flavor of soda?

Love it.  I drink it at least once a day.

6. Do you have any plans for the July 4th holiday weekend?

I didn't have any plans.  I worked Sat, Sun, and the 4th, too.  We just hung out at home once I got in today.  It's too hot to do anything else celebratory other than lay on the bed under the a/c vent and pretend it's November. 

Gobble, gobble.