Titty Twist Tuesday

My experience has shown that a "day in the life" can suddenly or unexpectedly evolve from the mundane to one of the most extraordinary and diverse plots if orchestrated with the help of a 4 year old or by a twist of raw-embarrassing-real life-comedy. Such was my experience on a recent Tuesday. The day began ordinarily. 6:30 wake-up by the human alarms, maybe Zayne slept until 7. Sleep is a precious commodity at our house, for the adults at least. Our children don't seem to grasp its value. Nor do they grasp the desperate futility in my attempts to extend my morning "snooze", using questionable methods including Baby Einstein Dvd's and chocolate chip cookies.

After a few failed attempts at "snoozing", I reconcile myself to the reality of morning. As my bleary eyes adjust, I focus in on two of the most bright eyed, lively, smiling, happy faces and can't help but push away my exhaustion to hug my little boys. I perform all necessary & obligatory efforts for the baby, and then begin supervising and dictating the basics for Zayne (aka. repeating myself for the next 30 minutes.) Breakfast is next. I shield my eyes from the havoc wreaked in a matter of 15 minutes by what I thought were two small children eating, but by the remnants strewn everywhere it appears a pack of wild animals have pillaged through the dining room. Two hours into the morning and I situate the boys with some puzzles, books, and toys to attempt my first P90X workout. I make it 15 min, barely through the warm up, and Pender is voicing his displeasure with my diverted attention, simultaneously alerting me that he is now ready for his morning nap. 30 minutes later, with Pender asleep, I resume the weights and watch & listen to the plot unfold around me involving The Green Lantern & Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, complete with nun-chucks constructed from 2 baby rattles and the baby ring clips.



As I'm still glistening with sweat post workout, I get Zayne settled with some projects and paper to practice writing letters. I speed clean the kitchen, dining room, & family room from the breakfast & workout upheaval. Pender wakes up (after 35 minutes), so we get us all ready to head to the pool. Towels check. Grapes, water, & Diet Coke, check. Sunscreen, check. Pool bag, check. An hour of sun and swimming, Ahhhh. I enjoy watching my Zayne break into a group of 5 kids to join in their play. It took a little longer than usual about 10 minutes till he had them all involved in some sort of plot regarding water lasers and Batman. By comparison It took me almost 45 min to engage in a conversation with the other moms. About noon, we head back home. A semi helpful snake assists me in getting lunch together and then Pender is ready to nap. I get him down, and I give Zayne the go ahead to play some Lego Starwars on the Wii while I take my 15 minutes of solitary rejuvenation (aka. A "real shower", you know one complete with exfoliating, shaving, lotion, etc... opposed to a 3 min Mom shower (aka. the basics). I throw on my SAHM uniform of cut off jean shorts, concert t-shirt, and a hat. Then speed clean my bathroom & bedroom just before Pender wakes up.

Next I rearrange furniture in the boys room, both boys help me move books back to the book shelf. Pender mainly plays with the board books on the floor (I mean suck and chew on them.) After everything is in place, we get cozy on the floor with books and blankets. We make it through The Little Engine That Could, That's Not My Car, and a few others until we find The Giving Tree. Had I known what trauma lay in wait, we would have disbanded our cozy little reading circle and turned on one of Zayne's "comfort" movies such as Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, or something equally dark. But instead we opened up that Shel Silverstien classic and began to read. For those of you not familiar with The Giving Tree it is a story of love, friendship, sacrificing ourselves for someone elses happiness. We made it to the part where the tree tells the boy to cut him down to use his trunk for a boat. That is when all hell broke loose. My tender hearted 4 year old just lost it. Sobbing hysterically and inconsolably about the loss of the tree friend. So I'm hugging a boy shaking with tears, and thinking "so much for lovely stories about trees & friendship, where are the zombie stories when you need them!?"

Hot chocolate at our "kitchen cafe" is also appropriate for overcoming the trauma induced by The Giving Tree. I'm the barista and Zayne is the customer. He decided that the "cafe" was so nice, that he wanted to move in and live there. Crisis averted...temporarily. Soon enough, I was to introduce another form of the Arts to accost the senses of my children. As I'm preparing to start making dinner, I begin an impromptu dance party in the family room. We sway & dance, twist & turn to Guns n Roses "Patience", and Led Zepplins "Stairway to Heaven". But several chords into AC/DC " You Shook me All Night" and Pender gets completely bent out of shape. He complains even louder about Motley Crue. So I switch the Pandora station to something more mellow. Instant smile and calm, my 7 month old has his Dads taste in music. Vetoed my hard rock, and approved Frightened Rabbit.

Dinnertime at our house can range from two polar ends of the spectrum. One being a fresh, innovative delve into the culinary arts. The other being cereal, canned soup, pbj's, or take-out. That particular Tuesday night was somewhere in between. Penne with pesto, chicken, and green beans. In between each preparatory step, I situate Pender in front of a new cupboard to empty in order to appease his desire to be close to mom, but allow me the use of my limbs. By the time I am finishing up the pasta, it looks as if the cupboards have expelled every possible dish onto the floor (which inevitably means more dishes to wash.) All the while, Zayne makes timely reappearances in order to cast me in my new role & instruct me on the way in which I should "play" the character. While preparing dinner, I am cast as a dragon, a witch, and eventually I am attacked by a snake (which obviously calls for me feigning a fear induced seizure on the floor, while avoiding the tupperware that has been strewn everywhere).

Post dinner clean up is actually one of those predictable serene times of the day that I can count on for a few minutes of uninterrupted calm. Johnathan will usually take the boys and play, wrestle, tease, & be loud and crazy. But it is all muted as I throw on my headphones and Ipod and wash the dishes, load the dishwasher, clean the counters, sweep, wipe, & sanitize to a playlist entitled "Dishes & Laundry". Currently an eclectic sampling of Elton John, Metallica, Jane's Addiction, The Dead Weather, Jenny Lewis, Avenged Sevenfold, Radiohead, and other randomness.

Next is bedtime prep. As a new parent I remember being blind sighted by the amount of preparation, patience, perserverance, and sheer exhaustive effort that is required to prime children for bedtime, & sleep. I have spent hours in this process, at times thinking that I had fallen into an infinite cyclical warp zone of sleepless children. At least now I know I am not alone. I have the "children's book" written by Adam Mansbach and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson to thank for that. (Actually NOT a childrens book but written satirically for parents of sleepless children entitled "Go the F#%@ to Sleep") www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW0A6L9kx4c

With the kids in bed, Johnathan and I collapse and invariably both revert into our Iphones for "20 last minutes" of imperative gaming, surfing, facebooking, & texting (aka "the vortex".) We both ended up retreating to bed about the same time and this was where the day took on the twist of raw-embarrassing-real life-comedy. As all good stories go it started with us fooling around. The light was uncharacteristically off, so visibility was diminished. But that wasn't stopping anything from rapidly progressing. It was then, amidst the heavy breathing, skin slapping sounds of sex, and forceful groping/twisting that the day was brought to an encapsulating climax (though not in the way we would have hoped) when my breastfeeding titties began to expel milk everywhere. Shooting "mommy milk" into Johnathan's face, his eye, the comforter, the wall, the pillow...you get the drift. It's always funny to see opposite responses to the same action. Me, laughing hysterically. John, horrifically traumatized and disgusted, and making it perfectly clear that this day-to-day, climax free Tuesday was "game over".

How to turn cliches & stereotypes into truisms:

Some people aim for individuality. Seeking that which sets them apart from the masses. They shun conformity and attempt to authenticate themselves as an anomaly. I thought I was one of these people, and maybe I do have a streak of that rebel running through me. Honestly though, I think I'm really quite cliche. In a female, blonde, SAHM, rocker chic, bookworm, American middle class, Mormonish, nympho, depressive tendency kind of way.

So when I say cliche, I'm talking in terms of a normal 30 year old, American female who constantly is fighting to stay in the "normal weight" range to keep from crossing over to the "overweight" category on that damn BMI chart. Does this remind you of anything? Such as almost every plot in that "old" Cathy comic strip? You know, the frazzled, body, boy, & clothing obsessed stereotype from the Sunday funnies? Did you know she finally got married? So yeah, dye her hair blonde and throw in 2 kids, and I'm Cathy, wading my way through the "four basic guilt groups" love, food, mom, & work. (Cathy. (2011, August 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:41, August 21, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cathy&oldid=443070617)

My most recent "Cathy" struggle was yesterday. In retrospect I could probably pull up an actual comic strip from the archives that would frame by frame my experience of getting dressed yesterday. After coming back from my vacation at my moms house and eating too much zucchini bread & chocolate, even the new outfit of pressed chambray bermuda shorts & a white crocheted vest over top a graphic tee that she bought me had lost its flattering thinning power, and I was forced to accept the obvious conclusion that I really am as wide as the reflection in the mirror. In an attempt to use a little love & logic on myself my inner self retorted "but at least you are smart and aren't dull as cardboard"...that got me as far as the closet, where I tried on one more pair of shorts and slumped down in a teary eyed heap. Surrounded by discarded "non-options", I blended into a cliche turned stereotype. My favorite though, is the male response to this cliched scenario. They try, they really do, and I think they know that in our crazy female heads we misconstrue even the most well intentioned comment on this front. For instance, "What you don't cover in raw beauty, you make up for in personality & intelligence"...in which my female "mental hilarity/insanity" interperets as "That is a stereotypical fat girl statement (but... you are smart & funny). Great, I"m now THAT stereotypical fat girl with wit & brains." And just a side note guys, it is NOT a good idea at the juncture when your wife is having a "closet melt down", to suggest watching both The Biggest Loser and Hoarders to make you feel better about yourself. All she will hear is, "Really!? I've sunk so low on the spectrum that the only people worse off than myself are the morbidly obese, and people living amongst dead cats? Really!?"

My recent experience with a stereotype occurred at an intersection. My little boys and I were stopped at a light with a few cars in front of us. I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a yellow sports car barreling towards us. Crash. Rear ended with some force. So we pull over and out of the car jumps a woman about 40 (blonde, fingernails, it's Texas), she immediately begins apologizing profusely and helping me check my scared but unharmed boys. After walking to the rear of my car to survey the damage and seeing only some gauges, & scrapes she grabs my arm, stares me with pleading tearing eyes and says "It's my husbands brand new Camaro, we are going through a messy divorce, he's going to kill me." At this point she leans in to hug me and starts apologizing again. I tell her we are all okay, we will be fine. At this point she hugs me and says "Will you come look with me? I can't look at the front of my car." So we all walk over to the front of the bright new shiny Camaro and see the front end completely smashed, crack, & broken. She hugs me again and cries (trying to shield her tears from my kids). After composure is reestablished we exchange the necessary information and part ways. Once again with the image of a bright yellow Camaro and the classic blonde, emotional, woman driver stereotype blending into a truism in our rear view mirror.

Disclaimer

This is my first attempt at developing into a literary humorist. Perhaps ambitious, but eventually I'm aspiring to be the female, heterosexual, modern momma, suburbanite version of David Sedaris ;-)

If that statement right there didn't encapsulate my "tongue in cheek" humor approach, I don't know how else to say it, except, don't take what I say too literally. Remember in High School English when we would have "journals" that we would have to freewrite in for 5 minutes, about some random topic? I'm expecting that some posts will be exactly that. Random, garbled, & rant like, inspired by anything from my children to some atrociously amusing victim of my ever constant people watching.

I've never been a photographer. Although, I see life through pictures, they flow more like stories through my mind. Short vignettes, that capture the gist of the scene. I've realized that if I want any trace of documenting my children's life, this will be the only way I will salvage those now poignant & precious memories. I've never been a scrapbook-er. I don't have anything against it, it is just that the few times in which I attempted to create a page (cutting, gluing, sticking...) I felt as if I was having an internal experience of 'nails on the chalkboard'. If it is your joy, serenity, therapy, and/or outlet, I applaud you! We all need them (I have some of those of my own, like sex, sex has never conjured up that 'nails on the chalkboard' feeling for me.) And as for the digital scrap-booking, you need some picture taking skills. Johnathan put it best when Zayne was born as he was looking through the digital camera at shots I'd taken of our newborn. "Now Janelle, I let your lack of photography skills slide the last 7 years, but now we have a son. These are terrible. Do I need to sign you up for a photography class!?"

Which brings me to my next disclaimer. I take liberties with direct quotations. The integrity of the statement is always maintained, but seriously, it's not as if I walk around constantly using one of those microphone apps. Although, maybe I should. I could suddenly whip out my phone mid-conversation, to begin dictating quotes verbatim in a sexy, sultry voice, like the author/ mother/character in the movie "Troop Beverly Hills". Now if you don't get that 80's movie reference then you need to go to Netflix immediately. Unless you are a guy, because that would just be a little "Lolita" type creepy (adolescent girl scouts... you get my drift). What am I saying, I'm the one that recently rescued my old girl scout vest from a box of 'keepsakes' and put it with my "Halloween costumes". Like I said, random, garbled, rant.