News Update from Babyland

New details are now available concerning yesterday's Key Lime Pie disaster at The Bakery on Main Street in Babyland. Contrary to popular belief, Baby Trudy did not instigate the attack on unsuspecting mean babies dining at the next table. It was, in fact, a mean baby who stuck her tongue out at Baby Judith who was dining with Trudy and their nurse Elise. Evidently, Baby Judith was struck dumb at the obvious insult to her honor by this mean baby who goes by the name Luanne. Baby Trudy realized immediately that the appropriate response would be up to her. She grabbed a Key Lime pie from the bakery counter and hurled it at Luanne. Trudy has not been reached for comment yet, but our experts agreee that this action probably stemmed from the fact that babies lack impulse control.

As our readership has probably surmized, Luanne quickly retaliated with a Bannana Cream Pie. Which was followed by a volley of pies from unknown assailants throughout the bakery. The baker has declined to comment, pending negotiations with Trudy's attorney, Horowitz.

Mean baby Luanne has chosen to represent herself. (Our investigations have revealed that Babies Trudy and Judith have had Horowitz on retainer for the last year, during which they have allegedly been involved in several food, water balloon and non-verbal insult incidents.) As yet, charges have not been filed.

Please Knock.

Perhaps you are aware of the saying: "My door is always open."
After years of marriage and children I have realized that it doesn't work for me. In the same way that I realized that just because a line rhymes, that doesn't make it true. For example, "If you spot it, you got it!" as applied to unfortunate character traits. Sooooo, I say "Hitler is an asshole." Does that mean that I, because I noticed it, am also an asshole? Maybe. But not like him.

With that off my chest, I have decided that in order to preserve my sanity, I need to lock my doors. Not just shut them, lock them. I now lock the bathroom door when I am on the john and also when I am bathing and getting ready for the day. If I don't, I get unwanted "help". The dog decides that whilst I am toweling off my upper half, he will lick my knees for me. As I reach for my toothbrush, deoderant, face cream, or Q-tip, little hands will grab them "for me" and take them just beyond arms' length. I end up thwarted in every thing that I try to do before I've even come downstairs.

I also have begun locking the children's door when I put my youngest to bed. Otherwise, I get unwanted input from my 5 year old and sometimes my spouse and always the dog. Though in all fairness, the dog doesn't interupt the bedtime story by giving away the ending. The dog also doesn't question my technique in the middle of my calming process. Ok. So I'll let the dog in before I lock the door. I suspect he's also seeking a brief respite from the clamour and clatter of our home.

The results of this new habit are extraordinary! I am calmer, happier, and more efficient. Oh Happy Day!

Happy Birthday.

I am afraid I behaved rather badly yesterday. You see, it was my birthday.
Let me preface this tale by informing you that there are two days in a year that I count on - I mean really count on - to be able to sleep in a little. Perhaps to have an entire cup of coffee at one sitting. To have someone else answer the relentless questions of my children. Those two days are Mother's Day and my birthday. I have mentioned this many times, out loud, when discussing what I would like for my birthday or what I would like to do on my birthday. "You know," I mused, "The thing I would really like is to be able to just sleep until I wake up, have a cup of coffee... do my morning readings in the morning..." Then I would take a deep breath, smile, and wait. Knowing, in the way that you know that the Tylenol you just took will eventually help your pounding tension headache, that a morning off was coming.
So the night before my birthday, when my husband had fallen asleep early, I sat up and watched some television. I admit I felt giddy with the knowledge that the following morning I would not be woken up by a whining beagle, a hungry 5 year old climbing on my shoulders, and a 2 year old with a number two diaper before 7am. It happens every morning, it happens all at once, and it happens early.

I crawled into bed. I was actually smiling. I didn't sleep until about 2am. But it didn't matter.

The next morning I awoke to a gentle kiss from my spouse. "Happy Birthday!" he said and showered my face with kisses. My daughter then wished me a happy birthday and gave me kisses too. The curtains and windows were open to reveal a beautiful fresh sunny morning. What a day! "Mmmmmm..." I stretched and smiled. "Thank you both so much. What time is it?"
"7 o'clock."
"What?"
"It's 7 o'clock." he repeated. "I thought you'd want to get up early to enjoy all of your birthday day."

He then continued: "I have a couple of things to do before we leave, so I want you to get up and take a shower and then we'll be ready to go by the time I'm finished with my e-mails."
"But... I don't want to get up yet." I protested.
"Ok. You can sleep in until 7:30."


I am afraid I did not behave very well yesterday. In fact, I was distinctly ungracious.

So I have decided that today was my birthday. This morning I slept in until 10am. I had a full cup of coffee. I read a little, I enjoyed my family and our back patio, and I did no chores.
Happy Birthday.

Flap Metaphor

The news is in: there is a flap to prevent vermin from coming up into your toilet. But you have to install it yourself.

...And it strikes me that this is a powerful metaphor for our modern lives: how much anxiety we live with during our most vulnerable moments, and how we push that fear away in order to function. So we tell ourselves that we're protected by any number of devices - from government to God - which may or may not exist. (Or which may exist but be unavailable or in-operational when we need them.) We choose to believe in these mythical "flaps" that are supposed to keep the "vermin" out, in order to leave the house or even use the toilet. Because if we really stop and think about what does happen every day it doesn't matter what the probability is that it will happen to us. In fact, I don't even have to leave the house in order to have a statistical probability of getting dead - as my daughter puts it. So I pray (and take medication) to help me believe the illusion that everything will probably be alright today.

Here's the good news: there is a "flap" that you can install yourself to protect you from unwanted rodent and reptilian visitations. You have to take off your toilet and install it in the hole in your floor. And you'll never guess: it's a tube with a flap in it that only flaps one way!!
Now I shall strive to make the metaphor complete by tying in the do-it-yourself protection plan for your life beyond the john:

As I see it, there are two options:
1. Physical defense - eg/ carrying a firearm, learning to fight really really well, being able to run very fast, always having a getaway car at the ready, hiring a body guard, living in a rubber walled bomb shelter stocked with lead free canned food and a fresh water supply.

2. Spiritual or Psychological defense (known by some as the delusional defense)- eg/ separating your mind and body so that nothing that hurts or kills you can really hurt or kill the essential you, and studying the original Star Wars Trilogy in order to truly understand what it means to become stonger than they can possibly imagine if they do kill you and possibly learning how to disappear before the light saber hits you.


...It is at this point that you need to ask yourself if you have the necessary time, energy, and inclination to install a flap guard against, well, LIFE. That's completely up to you.

bad news gets even worse

I've been doing some investigation into this whole snakes in the toilet thing and it turns out that my feeling of safety was an illusion. There is a whole world of snakes in the bathroom! I found it on YouTube. I showed my husband video after video and he pointed out that we have seen snakes in the toilet and snakes in the drains and snakes coming out of bathtub drains, have not seen the snakes enter the toilet bowl from the bottom. Then he took the time to explain to me again about the flap. The mystical flap that guards against reptilian intrustion. The story of the flap told to him by his brother! I don't know man! I've now got some wickedly spine icking images slithering around in the back of my brain.
So then he says,"But why don't you go look for a video of a snake coming up through the toilet drain? If anyone can find it, I'm sure you can."

So I turn my focus to toilet structure. There's no flap.
Right this minute, my spouse is on the phone with his brother, who has confirmed that it is possible for snakes to come up into the toilet. He is currently confirming that there is in fact ... NO FLAP! There is only an S curve. "So there's nothing stopping a snake from coming up through the toilet..." my husband is currently saying to his brother.
Oh. My. God.
Now he's apologizing to me for giving me a decade of false comfort and lack of toilet anxiety.

I feel sick.

...

Now they are discussing how horrible it would be if RATS came up and tickled or bit their bums! Who cares about rates? Snakes ... oh god.

"Yeah, I just made it up I guess... " he's telling me now. "I may have dreamed it. Somehow I got the idea. Maybe I just assumed..."

Now he's asking, "It's never happened to you though, has it?"


Not.
Yet.

rats in the toilet

Evidently there are rats coming into people's houses through their toilets. This is happening in the city where I live. We are being advised to keep our toilet seats down. This "epidemic" for lack of a better word, is ticking me off. The reason for my ire is rather personal, but I'm willing to share it in the hope that it will help someone.

For years I was nervous about using the toilet. You see, I had heard about giant snakes making their way up from the sewer system through the plumbing pipes into peoples' homes through their toilets. Snakes that had been flushed when they were smaller and the owners realized that they'd inadvertantly purchased an anaconda instead of a ... garter snake? (I don't know what they thought they'd be buying. I don't know the names of non-venomous small snakes.) So, when the urge would strike to use the facilities, I would always carefully peer into the toilet bowl and scan for reptilian intruders. And at night, I would have to turn on the light to see the toilet and floor clearly - in case the snake had already slithered out of the comode and was coiled in the shadows behind the tank. This fear was something I lived with. Not a huge deal. Not something I talked about.
Let me add here that it did not help my state of mind when I would have my snake dreams: dreams of snakes, warm heavy snakes with dry scales, chasing me or lurking in my bed (ok, dial back the Freudian analysis people - sometimes a snake is just a snake). Dreams so real that I would wake up and know that if I stretched my toes I would touch the snake underneath my duvet. So I'd carefully withdraw my feet and scooch up onto my pillow and turn on the light, before whipping off the covers to make sure I was alone.
When I began living with my soon to be husband, he questioned me about my pre-toilet precautions. So I told him. He assured me that toilets didn't work that way. He told me, with the authority of someone whose brother is a plumber, that there is a flap of some kind that prevents things from making their way up from the pipes. He said that the flap only flaps one way. And I believed him!
Slowly I let go of my snake invasion visions.
Many years passed.
I felt proud that I could relieve my bladder in the middle of the night without turning on the light, secure in the knowledge that the flap only flapped one way and there was no way a snake, a huge sewer snake with abandonment issues, would raise it's head from the coil of it's slumber in my toilet bowl.
Then, I hear from some people that rats are coming up through the toilets!!
How come rats can do it and snakes can't? Has it all been a lie? Have I just been supremely lucky to have avoided a reptilian standoff thus far?!

Can I trust my husband?

So, yeah. I'm pretty ticked off.

Oh well, I had hoped that this anecdote might help someone. But I honestly don't think it can. I think in order to help, you pretty much have to end on an optimistic note, a plan of action, or a lesson you've learned... OK. Here's the lesson: when discussing possible bathroom incursions, I've learned that it's best to get the blueprints directly from the plumber.

Fare well friends. Keep those seats down.

in recovery

I have a confession: I am a recovering drama whore.
Not you! You may say upon reading this. But yes, it's true.

It is I who appear seemingly out of nowhere at the scene of any disruption asking - as if I could help - what transpired. It is I who knows, or will shortly know, who was weilding what when and what the police had to say about it.

I drudge through my life which sometimes feels more like Cinderella before the ball than a happily ever after, until I hear a siren. And then a little thrill surges through the marrow of my bones and I think "At last! Something's happening! Something exciting is happening." And if, perchance, the siren stops near our building... what luck!

Now, I am trying to abstain from drama. Just today I heard a siren and it stopped nearby and when I was leaving our parking lot for a legitimate errand, it turns out that there was an ambulance. Just down the street. But I did not give in to temptation. I turned the steering wheel away from whatever issue was happening and went to where I was supposed to go.

Once I got there... well... it turns out that some guy with a lot of tatoos had lost his phone. He'd set it down on a table next to his bag of Cheetos and then it was gone. Obviously someone had jacked it. I took him aside and told him exactly who I thought did it. He had been thinking the same thing! He decided that he was going to prevent her from leaving the scene, and frankly I concurred. I was starting to feel kind of shakey. I wasn't sure how we were going to tackle the situation. I didn't think I should physically restrain this woman, even though we both knew she was the perp. Damn it! I needed to get my husband involved. Unfortunately, he was more concerned about the possibility of falsely accusing someone than stopping her from getting away with it. The tatooed victim was getting more and more agitated. So was I. Thank goodness another guy got involved too. The girl was getting antsy. I informed the guys that she was going to make a break for it. My spouse didn't seem upset about that. It was at that point that I made an announcement to all present that a phone had been lost and if we could all take a moment to check around us, that would be very helpful. Then the victim decided to confront the thief. She backed away from him nervously. I turned to another friend for support. "Something's about to go down." I said tersely. "I'm not involved in this." she replied.

What?!

Slowly, clarity began to filter into my adrenaline infused brain.

It dawned on me how close I had come to tackling an allegedly innocent young woman over an allegedly stolen phone which was not even mine. Which belonged to a man who I did not actually know before we started talking about his phone.

And as I watched the scene unfolding, I began to wonder if I'd backed the wrong horse. Because by now the guy's shirt was off. I don't know why he took off his shirt. My husband asked me if I knew why he took off his shirt and I really don't know.

Anywhoooo...
turns out the girl didn't have the phone on her. The police arrived. I quietly made my way to my car. And as I watched the shirtless man gesticulating ardently to a taciturn cop, I drove demurely out of the parking lot.

Oh well. Tomorrow's another day.
Tomorrow I won't get involved in a drama.
One day at a time, starting Tuesday.
(You have to take into account that it's Memorial Day weekend and I can't control the shit that goes down on a holiday weekend.)