The baptism of the Bible...OR... "How I discovered the Holy Writ of YHWH is all wet"

Last night I spent over an hour blow-drying the Bible. Kevin had to do the Zone at Tim's house because his office isn't inhabitable yet. After supper the girls went up to their room and played quietly together for nearly an hour. During this time Quentin was also playing quietly....in the bathroom. Somehow he managed to get nearly a 1/4 inch of water to stand on the bathroom counter. I don't understand the physics of it, but it happened. Also on the bathroom counter for God only knows what reason was Zoe's baby dedication bible with toilet paper tucked randomly in the pages for bookmarks. The toilet paper soaked up the water and drenched the bible from the inside out.

Oh, and in the background of this picture is yet another member of our "pinkie" (flamingo) collection. This one is the candy jar in the kitchen.

"On bended (right) knee I come"

These are the right knees of my jeans. Only the right, never the left. You figure it out, I've got too many fish to fry to contemplate the deeper meaning of one-sided holey britches. (Quite frankly, I've had enough of "one-sided holy" anything to last a lifetime.) I have 2 more pair in the same condition that would have made this picture, I'm sure, more compelling, but they went AWOL for the photo shoot. Swallowed up in the belly of the house monster (you know you have one, too) there to live until it sees something so vile and disgusting it will regurgitate them in a most inexplicable place. I expect that to be by the end of the week based on the condition of my kitchen counter as we speak.

I apparently spend quite of bit of time on my hands and knees. Make no assumptions about my piety, as I certainly make no assumptions about yours (and, I might add, love you just the same). It's more likely from washing the kitchen floor with 409 and a rag as yet another incident of "oops, sorry mommy, I may or may not have just placed an entire gallon of orange juice somewhere other than my 8 ounce Dora cup" is going to make my socks stick to the floor and I'll be stuck in the kitchen forever (which is my second worst nightmare) if I don't get this cleaned up. I would buy more jeans, but the size on the tag needed to adequately cover my back porch frightens me almost as much as the house monster.

TITLE: A trip to Wal-mart gone very, very wrong

CHARACTERS: Me, Zoe, Quentin, and the manager of the local walmart.

INTRODUCTION:
Unfortunately, the following story happens more than I care to admit.

PART I:
We had playgroup this morning at the park. Quentin spent the entire hour lying on the merry-go-round screaming any time any of the children came within 10 feet of him. What was he screaming? "mawmee, nobody will pway wif me, day all are a-ga-wee at me!!!" (angry, incase you've lost the knack of interpreting 4 yr old-ease somewhere along the way). Really, Quentin, I can't imagine why a bunch of little kids wouldn't want to play with a screaming banshee who frightens the crap out them. As the hour went on, Quentin had more and more snot and dirt mixing on his face. By the time we were done, he looked like someone whose mother should know better than to leave the house. (She does, she just ignores what she knows and goes anyway)

PART II:
We had no milk at home and needed to go to walmart to get some after playgroup. I was going to have gone last night after the kids went to bed, but I decided that if I was about to take off to Arkansas in the event that my father would have had a bypass, I might buy different groceries than just a regular trip (oh, by the way, Daddy is fine, no need for stints or bypass or anything, sorry to have left you in suspense). So I put it off until today. Both Zoe and Quentin we tired and hungry, but I gave Quentin his blankie (which makes him suck his thumb) and gave them both granola bars and chex mix and reassured them I just had about 20 things to rush in a get "real quick". When I read back over that, I do realize it sounds like a disaster in the making, but I chanced it anyway.

CLIMAX:
Things went fine until the check out when Zoe decided for some unknown reason to mule kick Quentin in the head. I think her reasoning was that she thought Quentin was looking at her. Who knows. I removed her from the little bench cart where they were sitting together and placed her back in the basket while I tried to hold her down with one hand. She was jumping up and down and clawing at me to get out and SCREAMING loud enough to wake the very long dead. With the other hand I was trying to put the groceries up on the belt and put the checked out ones back in the cart strategically positioned so that the human jumping bean wouldn't crush or puncture anything.

CONCLUSION:
THEN the manager of the store comes over to ask me "Is everything all right?" When I assured him that it was, he said "Is there anyone I can call for you?". I SO wanted to think of a quick smart aleck come back, but none came to mind! Any suggestions? There will be a "next time".

EPILOUGE:
Unfortunately, this is the THIRD store manager whose attention we have attracted in the past year. Sheesh. I swear this can not be normal.

Leppu, Leppu, Leppu

I just found leppu, leppu, leppu with Dolly Kirtstin's underpants on his head. When questioned about this, Quentin said "he need to take a sow-er" (shower)

Quentin loves to make up his own songs. One is about this animal, his most beloved. It's name is lepard (leppu) and Quentin sings "leppu, leppu, leppu, can't stop singin' 'bout it, leppu, leppu, leppu, can't stop singin' 'bout it".

Keep your eyes open, you never know what's around the next corner.

Daddy

I just got off the phone with Mama. Daddy has to have a heart cath on Wednesday morning. Daddy had a massive heart attack last July. 100% blockage in the left descending ventricle. Known as "the widow-maker". Mama drove him to the hospital. He went in to asystole 3 times on the table. He had 2 stints put in piggy backed. Now something is wrong and they don't know what until they get in there with the cath. Maybe the stints (which can not be removed) aren't working right. Maybe there is further blockage above or below the stints. He's 57 years old.

Depending on what they find, he may have to have by-pass surgery Thursday or Friday.

My Daddy. It's too much for words.

Oh, to be naked in peace!

I need a shower. Seriously. It's not pretty. You wouldn't want to be within 5 feet of me right now. I don't.

I'm still in the stage of life where my showers have to be scheduled at everyone else's convience. I am however, past the stage of life where I have to have company while attending to my cleanliness needs. (This stage of life ended when Quentin and Kevin where watching TV one night and a Victoria's Secret commercial came on. Quentin said "wook, see (she) got boobies like mawmee's!". After that, Kevin decided no one should come in and just sit and watch me shower. Thank you Jesus.)

I couldn't take one this morning because Kevin was working upstairs. We're having construction work done in his office and he's been totally displaced for a couple of weeks. If I had left the munchkins to their own devices while he was trying to work, I'm sure they would have done, said, screamed, or broken something that would have seriously hindered him trying to work. I feel bad for him being displaced and am trying to be sensitive to this.

Right now the kids are watching "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". One would think this is the oportune time to sneak out and scrub-a-dub, but then again, one has not met my kids. The current fights are over Elmo's underpants. Quentin is holding Elmo, Elmo has on underpants. Quentin is across the room from Zoe, but somehow Zoe "made" Elmo's underpants fall down. Quentin got up, went across the room and hit Zoe with Elmo, Zoe drop kicked Quentin and Olivia tattled (in Zoe's favor this time). ......Quentin, Zoe, and Olivia are the real children in this story, Elmo is the inanimate toy ( just in case you Sesame Street fans got confused with us naming one of our children after an orange monster puppet).

Soooo...do I chance it? I'm going to have to. I've got library books overdue and I don't think they let vagrants in. I could easily pass for one right now!

Prom

These are the pictures of Tara's prom dress. The dress that refused to get done. It should have taken me about 10 total hours. It ended up taking close to 20. Got it done at 1 am the night before prom. These pics I took of Tara around 9 am, she came over in her pj's! I'm hoping she'll get me some better pics this week. It was fun to collaborate with someone with her own sense of style. If you sew at all, I'll be posting on this on Atelier with more details about the process of this dress.

Baby Pinkie Don't Leave Me!

As I write this, I'm having serious concerns about being blown away to Kansas. I only driven through Kansas (unless you count that one night we stayed at a motel when Tim and B.J. helped us move ourselves, our 9 billon pounds of crap and our 3 kids across the country) but I don't think I really like Kansas. Batten down the hatches, me maties!

O.K. It's just a litte rain coming, maybe some snow. But the wind really is kicking it up out there. We have all our windows open due to the paint guy coming and starting the laquering (sp?, I can't figure out how to get the spell check to work on this blogspot thing) and the fumes in here are thick enough to cut with a knife.

Zoe and Kevin just left for the store to get precious Milk (without which our children are reduced to drivelling lumps of whine). Olivia had drawn this awesome chalk picture of a pinkie (flamingo in Beck jargon) for Zoe the other day and before Zoe left she wanted me to snap a picture of it before the rain washes it away. Zoe's latest obsession is pink flamingos. Here's a picture of a small portion of her stash.

Sadly, the driveway pinkie will have left us by morning. Good thing we have these guys to get us through the trauma.

I'm off

Tuesday was my birthday. (34 for all you nosy-rosies) Today Kevin is going to watch the munchkins all day and let me go out by myself. I've mapped out several local shops that I've never gotten a chance to go to (it's usually a bit too risky to assume taking Quentin and Zoe in public will work out) and I'm having a pedicure. Yum. I hope I remember to come back.

What I just said:

Pull you pants up and get your butt out of your sisters' face. You don't ask people to smell your butt.

Knot Again

What is this, you ask? Olivia has been doing some sort of weird knot ritual with her laundry. Not that this in any way helps her put it IN the laundry hamper. I found these under her bed. Perhaps there's some bit of Zen quality to taking off your clothes and tying them up. Maybe I should try it.

p.s. please excuse the nasty dirt smudges on the washing machine. I know the actual place where you put your clothes to make them clean is an odd place to be filthy dirty. If you come to my house expecting that whole cleanliness/godliness thing, you are in for a RUDE awakening. ... (but come by anyway, we can chat on the couch in the midst of the 57 stuffed animals and other toys that my children seem to believe live there and we'll have tea. I'll give you the one coffee cup that doesn't have permanant smudges on the bottom)

When you can say Penis and when you can't

We've been trying to teach our children that there are no "bad words". We teach them that there are times when it is not appropriate to use certain words, but the words are not "bad" in and of themselves. This is a difficult message. Society says there ARE bad words. But really, words have only the meaning we give them. The next time you meet someone who speaks a foreign (to you) language, ask them to cuss you out. They might just think you are severely whacked in the head and will actually cuss you out (asking to be cussed out in many cultures can be somewhat taboo). It means nothing if you don't understand it.

The other day I took the little ones out to see "Miz No-well-a" (Navella King). I really love Navella and try to see her when I can. She's a very dear lady, but she's also 76 and typical of her generation, Old School about language. This is not a bad thing, it just is what it is. Visiting Navella is a time to use discresion in chosing language.

Quentin loves all things "potty":
"Poop"
"Butt"
"Booty"
"Penis"
"Testicals"
"Pee"
"Butthole"
"Buttpoop" (his own invented word)

This is probably extremely typical of a just-turned-four year old boy. (Not having ever been a just-turned-four year old boy myself, this is just a guess, but Kevin tells me I'm on the right track.) During our visit to Miz No-well-a, Quentin brought out each of these words and paraded them around the red carpet. Discresion is a difficult incumberment to a 4 yr old, I'm sure, but I really did try my best to explain the "no potty talk" rule to him. There's just no stopping Quentin when he gets started talking about his penis. Sorry Navella.