"...now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." *

We had a delay this morning, and I don’t mean the fact that none of us woke up till 9:30.

I wouldn’t know, having slept through it, but apparently at 6:30 this morning, it was snowing and blowing rather fiercely, causing public schools to call a two-hour delay.

Good thing. (And I sincerely mean that, a statement which would have been met with incredulous stares and raised eyebrows not twenty-four hours ago.)

A child perpetually aware of his physical limitations, Segundo ate a hearty dinner at Grandma’s last night, had two small cookies, and immediately crumpled into my arms sobbing, “I want to go home RIGHT NOW!” Don’t need to tell ME twice – I bundled him into the car, got him home, upstairs, changed into pjs, and teeth brushed in record time, and in bed ASLEEP by 6:50 pm. In which state he remained until 9:30 this morning.

Ah, if only the other two were that simple.

In the twenty minutes it took me to accomplish the above, Primo smashed the back of his head into his grandmother’s coffee table and H had to bundle him up and drive him to Children’s to get stitches. They were home in an astounding hour and a half, complete with three staples in his scalp, some sort of numbing gel all over his hair, and blood spattered on his hockey jersey. (Is there anything cooler to have all over your hockey jersey, I ask?) By the time I got him settled and in bed, it was close to 10:00, and then he asked me to stay with him till he fell asleep. My response to that one is usually, “No WAY,” but seeing as the poor kid had just been unbelievably stoic about his head wound, I complied. (Can I just tell you, confidentially, dear ‘netties, that every time someone called to reassure me that he was fine, I found myself inappropriately wanting to warble in a really bad British accent, “It’s only a flesh wound!” See, this is what happens when you let totally ill-suited people become parents of small children…)

During the hour and a half while Primo et al. were at the hospital, Uncle D drove Terzo home and deposited him, crying and stinky, into my arms. I got him ready for bed, read him a couple of books, and got him to sleep in record time, only to have him wake up sobbing and screaming for me at 4 am-ish. He was simultaneously dripping huge amounts of snot AND completely stuffed up, plus coughing up lungs. Like the Grinch, I got him a drink and sent him (back) to bed, where he alternately slept, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead, and whimpered “Mommy, Mommy, MommyMommyMommyMommyMommyMommy” until I thought my head would explode. He finally truly fell asleep about 5:30 or so and slept till 9:30.

When *I* finally awoke at around 9:30 myself, I had one thought:

I should have eaten more of that damn Good Luck Pretzel. That’ll learn me to be rude to my mother-in-law.

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* Mark Twain

"They call you Lady Luck, but there is room for doubt. At times you have a very unladylike way of running out." *

This is why I hate New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and any festivities associated therewith:

Doug Savage has hit the New Year's nail squarely on its insufferable head.

And while I'm at it, I also hate the goddamn Good Luck Pretzel and snapped at my MIL tonight when she insisted I had to eat a piece, "I don't HAVE to do anything, I'm pregnant."

2007 book roundup/2008 incoming-books posts coming soon.

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* "Luck Be a Lady," from "Guys and Dolls." Comp., Frank Loesser

"By far the most common craving of pregnant women is not to be pregnant." *

We have been painting the room that was the office and will be the boys' room, you know, the one with the cable modem and the wireless router in it, which have been unplugged for three days now. I am a very fast and good painter, but alas, *I* am pregnant and not permitted to paint. So H has undertaken the ordeal and it will look lovely but sweet Jesus, I could do three rooms in the time it takes him to do one.

How many of you thought I'd gone into labor?
Yeah, well, I have been contracting all over the place, so it wouldn't have surprised me either...I am at thirty-four weeks, so anything is possible now. And now that Christmas is survived, I don't care when it happens. Especially if it means the god-awful heartburn goes away. I was wondering if traipsing through the damn zoo lights display tonight with the boys would trigger something, but alas, no, other than some whining (on their part, mostly).

I've been mostly doing laundry and cooking nonstop. I am sick UNTO DEATH of both feeding and clothing my family.

I escaped for an hour or so this afternoon to the bookstore, where I bought Haven Kimmel's She Got Up Off the Couch because I cruised through her enjoyable The Used World last week and decided I need to give her more of my money...well, actually, more of H's money, since he gave me a VERY generous B&N gift card for Christmas (along with some smelly (nice-smelly) lotions and stuff from Bath & Body Works, and a very pretty necklace). (I gave him two ties and a George Carlin book - such inequity. It's a wonder he stays married to me. It's probably just because he keeps knocking me up.)

In other news I am reading (still) Terra Incognita, and Jennifer Neisslein's Practically Perfect in Every Way, which is pretty entertaining. I also started R8chard Russo's Bridge of Sighs, so far, so good, but not blowing me away (not that Russo writes blow-you-away sorts of books...)

So that's it. Once the room is finished, we move all the furniture out of their current bedroom and into that one, and then all the crap out of MY bedroom into what will be the office. And I will be happy once again. Connected and happy.

More later, then....

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*Phyllis Diller

"The others were all brought up to be polite. I wasn't." *

You know, when we moved into this house, I thought, with its solid, double-brick-walled construction and metal-lath plaster walls, that I would not be able to hear anything between floors.

I thought that were I in the kitchen, I would not hear the boys screaming at each other in their third-floor playroom. Or if I were in the shower, I wouldn’t hear H practicing the Same. Goddamn. Guitar. Riff. over and over and over again, in the dining room. Alas, I was WRONG. Due either to the layout of the house, or the lack of insulation, or perhaps both, I can hear EVERYTHING -- EVERYWHERE.

Except, marginally, in the basement, which is where I hide, ostensibly doing laundry, when I can’t take one more minute of three-thousand-decibel level noise. Or the whining.

But Santa obligingly brought Primo a REAL, junior-size drum kit. (I know I am a fucking moron, you don't need to point that out, thankyouverymuch.) And Primo’s parents realized the most logical place for it to live, to survive the maulings of younger brothers, is IN THE BASEMENT. My sanctuary.

The kid is really talented. Like, blow-your-socks-off talented, for a seven-year-old. And I like music as much as the next person. I even like most of the music THEY like (although I could do without this new Radiohead album, frankly. Thom, darling, you disappoint).

But oh my god, WHO or WHAT did I piss off in a former life, to be condemned to life in a household of hardcore musicians? (And don’t kid yourself, they may be only 4 and 7 (and 44), but they ARE hardcore.)

And then there’s me, as tone-deaf and rhythm-less as they come.
And with serious sensory-overload issues.

Why am I being punished like this? Was I a slaveholder? The tyrannical dictator of an oppressed nation? An amoral prostitute without the heart of gold? A greedy, consuming despot’s wife with nary a care for her poor countrymen?

Whatever it is, I am SO SORRY.
I didn’t mean ANY of it.
I’ll NEVER do it again, whatever IT is.
FORGIVE ME.

Or have Santa bring me some heavy-duty industrial earplugs.


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*Thom Yorke, Radiohead