"So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness."*

Random random:

1. Can I tell you how pleased I am that today didn't turn out to be a snow day?

2. The difference between the first child and the fourth child: Quarto is sitting on my (admittedly filthy) kitchen floor right now, shaking the contents of his morning bottle on the floor and swishing them around the tiles with a grubby little paw. He crawls through the damp mess once in a while for good measure. But he's quiet and smiling and isn't getting stuck in the undersides of the kitchen chairs. So instead of distracting and preventing and clearing up the milk (and probably giving said baby a bath AND mopping the floor, both of which I would have done with Primo), I shrug my shoulders and keep playing WordTwist. Yeah. See how much my mothering skills have...um...improved?

3. I went to see "Twilight" again last night. I haven't seen a movie in a movie theatre since the second Harry Potter, and now twice in two weeks, and THE SAME MOVIE BOTH TIMES. I don't think I need an intervention yet but possibly soon.

4. I will say that "Twilight" is THE sexiest movie without any sex in it I have ever seen. EVER. And Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen makes me swoon like the geeky 13-year-old girl I definitely was and still feel like inside.
(Excuse me as I go hunt for my retainer, which I am pretty sure I left on my lunch tray in the cafeteria. Yeah, I was one of THOSE girls.)

5. Things that amuse me no end:
The way Terzo pronounces Byron the train “Bye-RON.” As in, "Bye-RON wants some ice cream but Thomas won't share."
Which reminds me of another amusing thing: the way he also says “Byronicles” instead of "Bionicles."
Yes, I have the cleverest children on the planet. I know. What?

6. I bought a bunch of yarn yesterday; my local yarn shop was having a bit of a sale. I don't even need to knit anything with it (but I will); I could just sit and run my hands lovingly over it and get my money's worth that way. Suse, darling, this is ALL YOUR FAULT.

7. Badger brought it to my attention that Haven Kimmel has a new novel, Iodine. But according to Amazon, it's a departure from her usual style. And I love her usual style so much that I own everything else she has written. So, I will buy it (because I like giving authors I enjoy my money) and I will read it, but if YOU don't like it? Don't hold it against me.

8. I am also reading Perri Klass's Mercy Rules and think it's a terrific novel. You'd like it.

9. I am shocked and amazed that neither the cats nor the baby have even attempted to dismantle the giant and intricate Hot Wheels structure H and the older boys built in the living room last night (after I went to the movies to feed my vampire jones). Shocked and amazed, I tell you.
The tracks were a Christmas gift I forgot to give them on Christmas, so they unwrapped them last night as we celebrated Ukrainian Christmas. (Drooling over hot, gorgeous vampires is a new Eastern European holiday tradition, didn't you know?)

10. I am awaiting my Beloved Babysitter so I can ostensibly run away to edit a dissertation about...something that adults write dissertations about...but really? I will finish the third Twilight book. Because if Edward doesn't bite Bella SOON, *I* may die.

******************
*Sidney Poitier

"What whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for."

Here we are again: another nasty winter, yet another child to pass his germs along to me, and said child causing even less sleep than I had before thought humanly possible to survive. (Does that sentence make sense? I am not sure, and equally unsure that I care...)

And I would like to announce my annual bout of hurty ears/swollen glands/feels-like-broken-glass-when-I-swallow throat. (See this post. Wow, I was quite a good bit funnier when I only had three children, wasn't I?) Since I seem to have been pregnant for the past eight years (or at least close to it), and since I have had three different primary care physicians run away from the practice I went to, I have no doctor.

I briefly considered, while hauling three of my four children to the pediatrician THREE times in the past two weeks, begging my dear Dr R for antibiotics for ME (I don't care if it tastes like cherry instead of orange, even, see how easy I am? How could he resist?) but I managed to manfully act like an adult and just procure a thousand and one prescriptions for my germy, snotty, cough-y children.

After shivering through the night Sunday, I thought about the new urgent care center that just opened right across the bridge. The one that is on the way to the grocery store, the one with oodles of free parking right outside its door, the one with a doctor in attendance twelve hours a day. And this morning, after self-medicating with Motrin and Excedrin and whiskey-in-tea all last night, I hooked a quick left instead of continuing past Go to the grocery store and handed over my brand spanking new insurance card (MY co-pays went up this year, you?) and was seen by a bona fide doctor (although at this point I don't care if he only played one on TV). He poked around in my ear and said what every doctor who has ever done that says: "Huh. Adults USUALLY don't get ear infections. Oh. But, I see..." and wrote me a lovely scrip for amoxicillin. He also recommended judicious use of Sudafed, but hey, judicious schmudicious...

And know what? The words "Magic Swizzle" NEVER passed his lips.
Must be because he was older than 18, or maybe 'cause he was a REAL doctor.
Or maybe I am scarier than ever.

**********
*Irish proverb (natch)