It is 5:30pm here (forget the little time stamp at the top of my posts… it’s never correct). I have been asking Zoe since 1:00 this afternoon to clean her room. Plain old asking didn’t work, so I tried a few other things… cajoling, pleading, bribing, and writing up a fancy check list for her, complete with boxes to check. Normally this check list thing really gets her psyched into stuff. But not today, today she’s giving me nothing. And I want to scream. Actually, I kind of was screaming. Well, I wouldn’t really say screaming, but my voice was definitely raised and higher pitched than usual, and I had visions of spanking her ever-lovin hiney. After 4 and a half hours of dodging my requests, and stalling, and more stalling, and five thousand of her “oh-mom-I-just-want-to-ask-you-one-more-thing-before-I-start-cleaning”’s…

I was done, people. Done with it. I told her I didn’t want to hear one more thing, I wasn’t going to answer one more question, I wasn’t going to talk about snacks, or her taking any “breaks” from the cleaning when she got too tired to put away her clean socks. I wanted her to go clean her room. NOW.

So yeah, there was lots of crying. Crying about there was just one more really important thing that she had to tell me. *sob* But I wasn’t buying it, the bee-yotch that I am to my daughter. I told her that she was grounded from TV for the rest of the day and her butt better not leave her room until it was clean.

She slowly walked back the hallway, tears streaming, tiny sobs still chocked up in her throat. Her sweet-head brother walked up to her in the hallway and handed her a note. It said: Here Zoe, I did this 4 you. He opened her bedroom door and ushered her in, and showed her that he had cleaned up nearly half of it while she was out in the family room trying to tell me just one more thing.

“I felt bad that you were crying, Zoe,” he said sweetly.

“I just wanted to tell mommy that I love her….” Zoe said, her voice raising to a squeal.

Yep. Total. Bee-yotch.

(but ps.- her room is still not completely clean.)

My eight year old’s astute observation this evening… out of the blue.

“Everyone has 4 cheeks.”

So true.

Let us all look for the things we have in common as butt-having human beings. For humanity’s sake.

Jachin is at that age; 8 1/2.  Third grade. His peers are telling him stories; stories of parents who sneakily place presents under the Christmas tree, all under a shroud of merry deceit.

“Do you really believe in Santa?” he asked me, hoping for a truthful answer from his wise, all-knowing mother.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s an old myth.”

“An old myth?” Jon asked.

“Well, yeah,” Jachin said seriously. “Like, he used to be real — in, like, the 80’s — but then he did what all old people do; he’s dead.”

“What if Santa is like the Dread Pirate Roberts?” Jon posed thoughtfully. “Like, before Santa dies, he appoints someone else to be the next Santa.”

“Nahh,” said Jachin, shrugging off Jon’s logic. “He’s just an old myth.”

Later Jachin tells me of his wise friend, Rachel, who sits at his table at school and often wears headbands with reindeer antlers attached. She covertly set up camp behind her couch last year and caught her parents red-handed as they came out to the Christmas tree at two in the morning, arms filled with presents labeled “from Santa”.

“Maybe she was naughty and Santa wasn’t going to bring her anything. Maybe the only way she was going to get any presents was if her parents gave them to her,” I said, grasping for straws.

Jachin gave me a look like are you freakin kidding me, mom? “Mom, please,” he said seriously. “Rachel is a responsible woman.” And she is; I’ve seen her. She wears her reindeer antlers in a very responsible fashion.

But I had to question myself about why I was trying so hard to fight the inevitable. It happens. Kids talk, and you learn things. I don’t remember how old I was exactly, but I do remember when I asked my mom straight up “is Santa real?” and she gave me the mysterious “I don’t know, what do you think?”, and I just about went nuts because no one would give me a straight answer when I really wanted to know. And here I am, doing the same thing to my oldest kid. Moms just don’t like to see that bridge crossed, I guess. I have to admit that this Santa thing is harder on me than him losing his first tooth.

Zoe, on the other hand, had her belief solidified last night when Santa showed up at the church Christmas party (looking oddly like our next door neighbor, Chuck, in a red suit and fake beard), calling Zoe by name and asking her to open the big present for all of the kids.

“Mom,” she said, coming up to me excitedly, “I forgot that Santa knows everyone’s name, but he knew my name! He said ‘Zoe’ and pointed to me!”

“Wow,” said Jachin sarcastically. “Or else it’s someone who knows you, and they’re dressed up like Santa.” I covertly kicked him in the shin, but it wasn’t necessary. Zoe looked at him like that was the dumbest thing in the world. “Someone I know? Give me a break.”

Jachin, however, has his heart set on camping out behind the couch to see who really puts the presents under the tree in the middle of the night. And he’s asked me to camp out with him to nab the gift-leaver.

“How will that work,” I asked, “if I supposedly have to get up at two in the morning to put the presents under the tree?”

“Oh, yeah…”

That one made his head spin for a moment.

The kids have been in swimming lessons on and off for the last several years. They’re both pretty dang good at it now. I think that they’ll actually both be good enough for swim team this coming summer. Jachin has it in his mind that he wants to be a lifeguard when he grows up. Well, actually, he wants to become a “Jr. Lifeguard” when he turns 12, and then continue on making $6 an hour until the day he dies. But he loves it and I encourage it. So last night during the ride home after lessons he asked me “So what else do I need to do to become a lifeguard?” I told him that he’d have to take a swimming test and a CPR course. He and Zoe both asked me what CPR is. I told him about how if someone isn’t breathing or their heart isn’t beating you puff into their mouth really hard and pump on their chest a few times (I was actually a little more medical in my description to them than I was to you just now) and they said that, yeah, they’d seen that on TV. So there I was feeling all proud of myself for taking that moment to teach my children something of great importance. I hadn’t turned on a movie in that car on the way home; I had taught my children how to save someone’s life! Yay me! I’m the mother of the year!

Cut away to two hours later. The four of us (daddy included) were driving up to Thanksgiving Point to see the Christmas lights. Jon was telling me all about how he’d been working on his Will and Living Will all afternoon. I said that I had to do the same. He then told me about his wishes, should he be incapacitated. He wasn’t being all that serious… he was just kind of jerking my chain.

He said, “I don’t want a feeding tube. And no paddles. DNR, babe. Do. Not. Resuscitate. I’ve lived a good life… just let me die.”

I was ticked. “So, if you have a heart attack, we’re not even supposed to TRY to bring you back?”

“Nope.”

 ”Well, that’s selfish.”

“DNR, babe.”

“Well, too bad. Because I taught the kids how to do CPR today.” And here it was! My chance to show how great of a mom I am because I taught my kids something worthwhile today!

“Guys,” I said to the kids, “tell Daddy what CPR is!”

“CPR?” Zoe asked quizzically, like she had never heard the term before in her life… let alone a short two hours ago.

“Yes,” I said, a little frustrated. “What do you do if you find someone who isn’t breathing or whose heart isn’t beating?”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Ummm,” Jachin said questioningly, “shuffle through their pockets and look for loose change?”

Yep, mother of the year.

Jachin is addicted to video games. If we let him, he would play from the time he woke up until his body finally crashed 36 hours later. Because of this, I told him flat out several years ago that he would never have a Nintendo DS, or any other hand held computer gaming system that he could hide in his closet with and secretly play until his heart gave out.

However, this doesn’t stop him from asking over and over for one anyway.

This morning there was a commercial on (strategically placed between stupid Saturday morning cartoons) portraying children sitting outside together on a bright, sunshiny day, all holding their Nintendo DSes, their glazed over faces each playing a game on a tiny screen. This commercial drives me crazy; I want to yell to the children in TV “The sun is shining! Have your idiot parents buy you a ball!” But  no, the children just sit there, oblivious of the other children around them, each playing their own game on their own tiny screen. And this, of course, is marketed as fun.

“Mom, I really want one of those!” Jachin says.

“I know you do,” I say.

“Please? For Christmas?”

“Jachin, if you had one of those, you would be just like those kids sitting there in a gaming coma. You would never do anything else.”

He formed a plan in his mind. “I would take a nice break every time the batteries died.”

Zoe jumped in with an assist for her brother. “Yeah, and since he would be playing it all of the time, the batteries would die pretty often.”

“Hmm, that’s true…” I agreed. “Hey, wait! I mean… no, you are not getting a DS!”

“Crap, Zoe,” Jachin whispered to his sister. “We tried.”

They are two diabolical masterminds, I’m telling ya.

The kids wore their costumes to school today. Jachin, however, also packed a pair of regular clothes, in case his plastic stormtrooper costume got too hot. And indeed, he came home this afternoon in plain clothes. When the time came to get redressed for trick or treating tonight, he didn’t want to do it.

“Mom, that costume is too hot!”

“Really? Because it will be cold tonight. Were you really that hot at school today?”

“Yes! You know when dad goes running and he gets a big sweat spot between his boobs…?”

*doing my darndest not to laugh* “Umm, on his chest, yes. Daddy doesn’t really have boobs.”

“…well, when I took off my costume, I had a sweat spot like that on my shirt… only mine was HUGE.”

How could I argue about the sweat spot between the boobs? Tonight he went out in his stormtrooper helmet… and a lightweight cotton shirt and jeans. (Cotton breathes.)

In completely NOT keeping with the tradition of the “leather year” (but thank you for all of your fabulous leather gift ideas), I got my husband something plastic, kitschy, and radical. Perhaps you’ve seen the commercial for the Perfect Pushup, or perhaps you haven’t. Maybe the Perfect Pushup is one of those commercials you channel-flip through. But when I saw it a few months back, I knew that my husband had to have this revolutionary product. You see, Jon does a ton of sit-ups and push-ups every single night before bed, and frankly regular push-ups seem too easy for him and his buff guns as of late. So when I couldn’t really think of anything classy and leathery, I went directly to Amazon and ordered the Perfect Pushup. It arrived Tuesday, and Zoe and I tried them out. I did one push-up and fell over. And I’m not kidding. Zoe did about five or six. But in my defense, her push-up form was pretty crappy, and I was all trying to keep my butt down and back straight like a board, grasshopper. Anyhoo… I presented the Perfect Pushup to Jon yesterday when he got home work. At first he kind of gave me that look like great, you ordered something else from an infomercial… I told you to stop doing that. But I told him how it had great customer reviews on Amazon, and how when I tried it I could only do one, at which point he gave me another look that said well, that’s because you’re a pansy. But then he tried it, and he caught the vision. It’s freakin hard, dude.

Here’s a short video tutorial that we made last night with the kids demonstrating the Perfect Pushup. Ignore the fact that they are wearing bright, festively colored witch hats. (The hats I bought yesterday for Diana and I to wear to “Witchapalooza” on Saturday. Hey Diana: make your colored hat choice now!) 

(Jon is the one who pointed out to Jachin that the push-up things resemble the paddles of a cardio resuscitator.) 

Jon, very much in keeping with the spirit of the “leather year”, bought me a sweet new bag. It’s brown, and perfect, and has just the right number of compartments for all of my crap… err, I mean, “daily necessities”. He then told me the cute story of going out shopping with Zoe to pick out my bag. They went to Macy’s. Zoe noticed that items with a red tag meant that they were on sale. So Jon told her to look around for purses with a red tag at which point Zoe found a certain purse with a red tag, read it, and announced loudly “What? This purse is $119 on sale! These are the sale prices?!?” (You can tell that we are used to the cheap-o prices of Target.) She then proceeded to go around to each and every purse, shouting out the indignity of it’s price. The sales chick wasn’t amused.  But Jon was. They finally decided on an outrageously priced Fossil bag; the one I spoke of earlier.

 Last night Jon and I — both smartly dressed and sporting buff guns, because, y’know, I did one push-up and all – headed to Salt Lake to eat dinner at Fleming’s. It was the first time we’d been there, but it came highly recommended by some friends. It was fandamntastic. We had some crab cakes (which I love, love, love) that almost made me cry, and I normally don’t get that way over food. I mean, I’m the person who thinks movie theater nachos are fine cuisine… especially if you happen upon a theater that puts jalapenos in the cheese. Jon had some tender, juicy slaughtered baby lamb… err, I mean “fillet mignon”. He gave me a bite and I felt the slightest twinge of guilt about eating a baby lamb before thinking Holy crap, that’s tender!! I had some crab and shrimp scampi. For dessert we had creme brule and chocolate lava cake. The molten core burnt my tongue… oh, the sweet, sweet pain.

Here we are in a self-taken pic because I chickened out when attempting to ask the waitress to take our picture. (Hello, it’s a fancy restaurant! They don’t DO picture-taking.)

Today for math we did “regrouping”, which is not a new concept to Jachin. Telling him that 13 ones is the same as 1 ten and 3 ones is old hat. Nevertheless, it was our lesson outlined for the day. So there we were, sitting at the kitchen table, counting out numbers on his blocks kit. His mind was wandering everywhere, as it usually does when he is bored.

“Okay, Jachin,” I said, “show me 18 in two different ways with these blocks. First, using only the ‘ones’ blocks, and then using ‘ones’ and ‘tens’ blocks.”

His eyes scanned my face, then he looked me in the eye and said, “Wow, none of your zits have gone away. That face stuff you’re using sure doesn’t work.”

*sigh*

“As true as that may be,” I said, “please show me two ways to represent 18.”

“There’s one,” he said, pointing to my chin. “And there, and there, and there. Oh, and right there. And there. And there.”

“Yes, yes. I get it. I’m hideous. Show me 18.”

“You have, like, 18 zits.”

“Okay, fine. Tell me two different ways we can group my zits. First with all ‘ones’ and then using ‘tens’…”

So he did.

Sometimes I am brilliant as well as hideous.

Tonight was one of those nights that was just perfect. Calm. Peaceful. Lovely. We all went to Jachin’s monthly pack meeting, where we shot off some homemade rockets until it became too dark to retrieve them from the near-black parking lot of the church. Jachin’s rocket was lost, a casualty of the dusk. We’ll go back in the morning and search the parking lot and nearby field to see if we can salvage the foam and construction paper-made wonder.

After pack meeting, we rode our bikes home in the dark, chilly air. There was a bright, full moon rising over the mountain. I’d take a picture of it, but my cruddy photography skills would do it little justice. At home we made hot cocoa and pulled the dining room chairs out onto the deck to chat and watch the stars. We found the big dipper, and the little dipper, and something that may have been Mars or Venus, and we discussed whether a wish is null and void if you accidentally wish upon a blinking airplane.

I looked down the row of dining room chairs at my awesome family: my sweet hubby beside me; Jachin, in his adorable cub scout shirt, huddling over his steaming mug; and Zoe, shivering because she thought her 80 degree mug was too hot to hold… so she set it down on the deck to chill.

Our chatter grew quiet and we gazed out at the stars and our beautiful, newly grown grass, and I think the same thought came into all of our heads at once. Jachin was the first to speak up.

He sighed and said, “Life. Is. Good.”

I sighed and said, “Yeah, life is good.”

Zoe sighed and said, “Life is warm and cold.”

Jachin gave her a weird look through the dark and said, “Life is good even if that made sense.”

Oh, the wisdom of five year olds, because life is warm and cold. But man, when it’s warm, it’s good.

A few years ago there was a news story about a little boy whose mother died in their apartment. The little boy, being scared of getting placed in foster care, continued to go to school, cooked meals for himself, and even paid the power bill. He was only 7 or 8, but he knew what to do to take care of himself. A week or so went by before anyone realized that the mom was dead. I felt incredibly sad for this little boy, but I was also so impressed that his mom had done an obviously phenomenal job at teaching him to be self-sufficient.  (He also sprayed the dead body with Lysol so the neighbors wouldn’t suspect anything, which was very icky… but still kinda impressive.)

What would happen if I died, I wondered. Would my kids know what to do? In actuality, if I died, my husband would come home at dinner time and they would continue to be raised with adult supervision. There would be no reason for them to have to pay a power bill by themselves. But still, I resolved to teach my kids to be self-sufficient. Therefore, my kids can: 1) cook a hotdog in the microwave (so they won’t starve), 2) dial 911 (so actual assistance will come), and 3) use a debit card (because money fixes everything…)

Today Zoe and I went to WalMart at lunchtime to do some grocery shopping. Being September 18th, it was also the release date of the most recent Barbie movie: Barbie as the Island Princess. We picked that up, too. By the time we got to the checkout, I was aggravated (as I always am when going grocery shopping). I moved all of the items from the cart to the belt, including the Barbie movie. Zoe screeched that she wanted to put the Barbie movie on the belt, so I moved the movie from the belt back into the cart, at which point she took it out of the cart and placed it back on the belt. In the very same spot where I had originally put it. She then climbed back into the cart to be higher in the air so that she could reach the debit pad… because once you have taught your children to use a debit card, you have relinquished any and all future rights to carry out any transactions on said card. I removed my debit card from my wallet and she snatched it from me. The screen on the pad asked: Was your cashier friendly today? Zoe pressed “No”, even though the cashier guy had made it a point to say hi and asked if we had found everything ok. In my mind I said a little prayer that the guy wouldn’t be written up for being unfriendly. Then Zoe slid the card through the card reader. It beeped at her because she slid it too fast.

“Do it a little slower,” I said.

“I know!!” she screeched. “Don’t tell me! I know!” If I instruct her, it lessens the amazingness of her being able to do it herself.

Next, it asked for the pin number. She knows this number, but sometimes she forgets. I started telling her the numbers.

“I know!” she yelled. She put in three numbers and hit “enter”. The pad told her that a pin has four numbers. She was mad. She hit “cancel”.

The screen on the pad then asked her “Was the store clean today?” Zoe pressed “No”, even though the store had been pretty ok, even by WalMart standards.  She slid the card again and then — again — put in three numbers. The screen told her — again — that a pin has four numbers. She gave an exasperated “Ugh!” She pressed “cancel” again. At that point, she somehow selected Spanish instead of English. The screen asked her “Was your cashier friendly today?”… only in Spanish.

She yelled at the top of her lungs: “NOW IT’S IN STUPID SPANISH!” and hit “cancel”.

I turned and smiled at the Hispanic lady standing behind us in line. She smiled back, but I believe she wanted to punch me and spank my daughter. She turned and said something to her friend, in Spanish, which I didn’t understand…  but it was probably something about how I was rewarding my bratty daughter for her racist remarks by buying her a new Barbie movie.

Finally, Zoe slid the card, managed to put in four correct numbers… in their correct order, and completed the transaction without offending any other gender, racial, or socio-economic classes.

If I ever really do die, I hope Jon makes it home from work before the kids have to take themselves grocery shopping.