Jachin got out of the shower yesterday morning and said this:

“My hair smells like dad’s deodorant… which smells like sweaty diapers.”

To which my mind stumbled all over itself trying to figure out several things.

1) Why do I spend so much money on name brand deodorant when it smells like sweaty diapers?

2) Why, when I change 99% of diapers in this house, have I not had an occasion to smell a “sweaty” one?

and perhaps most confounding

3) Exactly what the crap did Jachin use to wash his hair?

Ok, so I’m starting to think that it’s me. Am I a little smelly? Do I consistently have something in my teeth? Are my jokes annoying? (I know the answer to that last question…)

Why is it that all of my best friends are moving far away from me??

It’s now been over a year since Diana moved back to the east coast. And if you ask her, she will tell you that her life has never been better since our separation. Diana is the person that I’d known the longest here in Utah. I met her while I was pregnant with Jachin.That means that I’ve known her for about 11 years or so.

The next oldest friend I have out here is Heidi. We used to be neighbors. I’ve known her for about 8 or 9 years. And guess what? She’s moving to Portland, Oregon today. Portland is also on a coast, though it’s the west coast. It’s like both of them went as far away as they could before going, “Crap, an ocean… I guess we can’t get any further away from Suz without actually living under water”.

Heidi’s family is moving because her husband took a job opportunity in Portland. He is what I used to call a financial planner , but he’s actually more than that. Heidi calls him a wealth manager. All I know is that by moving to Portland, he will basically be over all the money in the state of Oregon. Read: they will be lots richer.  She told me about the house on the lake that they will be renting. She said it’s a good house for entertaining. Now, I know all about entertaining. I entertain my neighbors by weeding my yard while wearing my reindeer-print pajama pants and screaming at my kids at the top of my lungs. (It’s quite entertaining… ask them.) Heidi is in a whole different sphere of entertaining, though. Her entertaining includes things like shmoozing and catered dinners and people wearing pants with high-heels. In truth, she is way too classy to be my friend. I’m scared she’ll figure this out one day. Okay, okay, I’m actually pretty sure she already knows. I’ve shown up a few times to these entertaining deals in my Target clothes and flip-flops, laughing like a drunk mule at my own jokes, scarfing down hors d’oeuvres like I’m scared someone else will have some. And she’s still been my friend the next day. (Though she did stop inviting me to so many things where other people would be.)

(Here we are golfing a couple of years ago… trust me, I am embarrassing to golf with, but she did it anyway.)

For our last outing  before her move, we went to have pedicures. We both got Glitter Toes. (It was my first time.) Mine are done in Celery, and hers are in Vegas Pink. We chatted about things, mostly the move. She was still freaking out a little because the whole thing was happening so fast. I was freaking out a little because there goes another of my friends. And while I have lots of “friends” as far as people I know and talk to (if you ask Facebook ,I have over a 150 friends!) I am dwindling on “friends” that are actually in physical proximity. Friends that I do more than just check the “Like” button for their comments. Friends that I know and trust. That I’m comfortable with. That I can be ugly in front of. That know that I’m not actually all that funny in person… and who are okay with that.

So I’m holding interviews. Wanna be my friend? What if I mentioned that there would be a salary involved?

I miss you, Diana.

And I’ll miss you, too, Heidi.

(inquire for applications)

Deacon doesn’t like shirts lately. In fact, sometimes he hates them.

The other night I was tucking Jachin in, sitting on the side of his bed, talking about the day. I held his hand and scratched his back. Then, just before I stood up, I lift his hand and kissed it.

“Ugg,” he said, wiping his hand on his blanket. “Don’t kiss me romantically.”

“That’s romantically?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s how fancy men kiss women.”

“Umm…Ok.”

And I pictured myself as a fancy man helping Jachin (pictured here are a fair maiden) dismount from his sidesaddle perch atop a tall horse. Before romantically kissing his gloved hand.

I guess he had a point.

So now everything in this house (pertaining to Jachin) is threatened to be done in a romantic fashion. Such as “Go do your homework or else I’ll hug you romantically”,  or “Stop teasing your sister before I punch you romantically”. And without fail, these romantic threats are met with a frightened yelp by Jachin, followed by swift compliance.

Who knew that being romantic could get such results?

I am wandering in circles, entering rooms and wondering what I came in for. I have a To Do list longer than my leg. (And though my legs are shorter than the average adult’s, the list is still long. Whatever.) I don’t know where to start, so I’m kinda just flopping around the house, being rather unproductive.

Vacation. We went on vacation, friends of the internets. It was a spur of the moment thing. We just up and took off. And though I like to be all, “Hey, we fly by the seat of our pants! That’s how we roll!”, well, when we fly by the seat of our pants, it makes me all jumbled and ADD-like for the next week. I’d like to think that I’m wild and crazy, but I’m not really. I’m starting to become very much like an old lady, with a strict schedule and routine. And when you mess that up for me, I get all kerjumblenated. (Spell check doesn’t think that’s a word, but I beg to differ… cuz I’m totally feeling it right now.) So yeah, old lady. If I start eating dinner at 4 in the afternoon, come shoot me.

So, what was I saying? Oh, vacation… Right. Photos have been uploaded, and a post is coming shortly… but first I have to put a dent in my To Do list.

But for right now? I leave you with this thought:

I have a 5th grader and a 3rd grader. Again, old lady. How did this happen?

First day of school today. Because in Utah we like to start school in the middle of the summer and call it fall.  It isn’t fall, let’s not kid ourselves. It’s going to be 96 degrees today. That ain’t fall, people.

They picked out their outfits for the first day. When I was a kid, my mom made us wear nearly full-on formal wear the first day of school. We dressed to impress. What we as kids lacked in brains and overall classroom decorum, we totally made up for with tights and clip-on ties. If we would have had enough money to buy a tux for my brother, he would have had to of worn that. Probably with tails.

Me? I don’t think kids need to necessarily look like they are going to prom when they show up for the first day of school. So yeah, they picked out their own clothes. Zoe chose to wear a skirt. The weird thing is, I think if I had a prom dress for Zoe, that’s totally the outfit she would have chosen.

They are so cute. So big. So grown up.

So… mature…

A 5th grader and a 3rd grader… excuse me while I stop wandering in circles long enough to have a total freak out.

Vacation post soon…

(A rather hilarious post-script: it took me three hours after writing this to realize that Zoe isn’t in 3rd grade. She’s in 2nd. Yeah… so what was I saying about my brain not functioning??)

Raise your hand if you have a mythical creature living in the playroom of your house.

You can’t see me, but I am raising my hand. I seriously doubt that you are raising yours.

Meet Dave:

Dave is a centaur … a word of Greek origin meaning “winged horse with a Ken doll head”.

The kids named him. “Dave” is about the least mythical-sounding name I can think of, but whatever. Apparently in the magical forest from whence Dave hails, the creatures are less hoity-toity  with their names than those creatures from, say, Middle Earth.

Until just recently, Dave has been great. He eats very little, he’s quiet, mostly keeps to himself. He never poops on the green shag carpet.  If he throws parties late at night, we never know about it… he cleans the place up. The dishes in the Barbie house are always done, and the brightly colored doll furniture is never broken.

Recently, though, Dave has been “exploring” outside of the playroom. I found him rummaging through my wallet, trying to get my Amex number.

When I asked him what he was doing, he explained that he ran out of shampoo and needed to go out for some Mane ‘n Tail. I pointed out that he doesn’t have a mane. He has a plastic head. And his tail is made of fake hair; plastic, as well. He laughed nervously and replaced my card.

Only an hour later I found him back in my wallet, this time with my library card.

Mama don’t play that.

Credit cards are one thing, but rackin’ up fines on my library card? Um, no. I hid my wallet at that point.

Then I caught him passing on some very un-gentlemanly behavior to some of the other toys.

Barbies are one thing. They’re of age. (Some of them are actually quite the Cougars.) But leering at underage toys? That’s just yucky. And Little Ducky had always been such an innocent little thing. Not with Dave around…

The real kicker, though, was this morning when I found Dave with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. And by hand in the cookie jar, I really mean face in the Diet Coke.

Not cool, Dave. (We all know how I feel about my Diet Coke.) He claimed, of course, that he’d been flying and fell in accidentally. Except that my glass had been full when I left it.  A point to which Dave had no response other than to belch. A really, really loud carbonated belch. It was a gross yet mythical sound.

Dave has been grounded. He is not allowed out of the playroom. These mythical creatures, man, you give them an inch, they take a Dwarf-ish mile…. which sounds like it might be a shortish mile, but it’s really a regular sized mile…

We’ll see how he behaves in the coming days.

On a very nostalgic note: Dave’s head hails from my very first Ken doll, Dream Date Ken. I got him for Christmas the year I was 6 or 7. It should be noted that Dream Date Ken was always very well-mannered. This tells me that all of these recent shinanigans must originate from the Dave’s horsey parts…

I mean, seriously… what attention hounds, these kids of mine. They were wanting three meals a day. Almost every day. And some days? Snacks, too.

They were wanting clean clothes. Again, every day! And not just wiped off with a washcloth and heavily Fabreezed… no, actually washed. In that machine that washes clothes. Something about “some kids’ parents don’t think we have a mom when we wear the same ketchup-stained shirt three days in a row… and no underwear”. And something about “mom, we aren’t allowed to drive ourselves to our friends’ houses in your car”. Pshaw.

And the tiny kid… y’know, the baby one? He is the worst about it. He wants food put directly into his mouth for him. And clothes put directly on his body.  And his tush wiped for him! Something about “dude, I’m a baby and can’t even get my hands to go into my mouth when I want them to”.

Again, pshaw.

Yep, these kids were getting way too needy and stuff. They needed a lesson in self-sufficiency. Needed to learn to stand a little on their own two feet! (Except the baby one… he can’t stand yet.)

And to them I said: Quit being so needy! Do some stuff for yourselves, tiny people!

So I signed up with Twitter.

Because between my blog and Facebook and Flickr, I was being left with, like, 15 minutes of free time every day. Time I was using to cook meals and wash clothes and wipe tiny tushies.

But no more!!

From now on, my kids may look a little more homeless. A little less like kids who have parents. But they are learning to do things for themselves! Especially the baby one… I am teaching him to  hold a baby wipe and reach his own tush as we speak. (Seriously, I can write a blog post and teach a baby to wipe his own butt at the same time. I am frickin awesome like that.)

Because, TWITTER!

Follow me…

y’know, after you’ve put in that call to Children’s Services…

Three guesses as to what I’ll be purchasing this afternoon…

Mama wasn’t ready for all this.

(Also, do you like how my first instinct is to reach for the camera, and my second instinct is to pull him away… Best. Mother. Ever.)

So Jon is a stud. Or an idiot — depending on how you look at it. (I prefer to think of him as a stud… it makes me want to nag him less.) He broke his rib a couple of weeks back during a rousing game of office basketball. I didn’t mention it before because if I were to report every injury my accident-prone husband incurs, when he incurs it, that would be my blog. Its title would be “The World According to Suz: My husband tries really hard to break himself all the time”.

Anyhoo, he has a broken rib. To go along with his faulty heart, and his permanently crooked finger (broken twice, both in Turkey Bowls), and his Bowler’s Knee, and his sore IT band, and his skin cancer, and his fake swine flu, and his stuffy sinuses… am I forgetting anything?

So of course when the ULCER bike race came around again this year, he registered immediately. U.L.C.E.R. stands for Utah Lake Century Epic Ride. Because any time you have a broken rib, you want to break it more by doing something epic !

Whatever. I don’t get it. Men are weird. (Any time you can’t decide on “stud” or “idiot”, it’s always safe to defer to “weird”.)

While he was registering online, I reminded him that after last year’s epic ride he told me never to let him do ULCER again.

“Remember how bad you hated it last year?”

“Yeah.” But he continued to type in his name and address.

“Remember how you said for me to never let you do that again?”

“Yeah.” But he typed in the Amex number for the registration fee anyway.

“Remember how you have a broken rib?”

“Yeah, but it’s not so bad.” And he hits the Submit Registration button.

“Babe,” he says closing his laptop and grimacing, “can you go get me a drink? My rib hurts too bad to get up right now.”

“Sure, stud.”

And that is when I washed my hands of his epic desire to kill himself by being physically fit.

So yesterday he showed up at 6:30am at the starting line with his co-workers (not the ones who broke his rib… different ones… ones that could potentially injure him with bicycles traveling at high velocities).  Their team name? “Say Hi to your mom”. Epic-ly juvenile. (But I still giggled the first time I heard it.) He had his stash of GU packets and nasty electrolite water and energy jelly things… and pain killers. About half way into the ride (the 111 mile ride, in case you didn’t get what the “century” part of the ride was) his broken rib started hurting. Which, y’know, odd. I don’t know why that would be. So he popped a pain killer. And then I guess that’s when the swerving really commenced. I wasn’t there to see it. Or nag him.

Nope, I was at the finish line. To cheer him. And take pictures. And call him a stud. And have mixed feelings of both pride for him and a desire to beat the crap out of him.

And he kissed me. And the kids cheered and hugged him.

And last night as we were lying in bed, watching Star Trek re-runs, I refilled his ice-packs and brought him food and drinks and listened as he moaned.

“Dude, do NOT let me do that again next year.”

“Yep.”

“I’m SERIOUS.”

“Ok, stud.”