shut up shut up shut up

People often ask me however I manage ‘all those children’.

In their minds is usually stuff like, getting them dressed in the morning, bath time, laundry – you know, the overall maintenance of house and Denizens.

You know the one thing that actually does make me occasionally want to lock myself in the closet pretending I’m still sexy and single?

The constant yammering. When all of them are in chatty moods at the same time, all of them are needy, all of them are pissy and/or bored and/or demanding.

That’s when I start finding myself coming up with complicated ways to fake my own death and disappear to a fabulous new life as Bambi, the Super Waitress. I’ll go into my bathroom and regard myself in the mirror…a little hairspray, a nice beehive, some bright pink lipstick…I’ll practice saying, “You want gravy with them, hon?” and “Sure, but I’ll hafta charge you full price, hon,” just as the real life Bambi (swear to Dog, her name was Bambi) used to do at a Lyon’s restaurant I frequented in college.

Yeah. Today is that kind of day.

You want some cheese to go with the whine, hon?

My husband is off at an Irish session in Stockton and not due home for quite a while, and ever since he left a few hours ago, guess what the kids have been doing?

“Mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy!”

It’s one thing to be verbally body-slammed once or twice in a day. Three little people rushing into a room in a rush to tattle on each other, or to demand juice / soda / cookies / crepes / chocolate tortes, three little voices shrieking desperately, eight little hands tugging at the hem of my shorts, one little voice babbling in toddler-speak and then screaming like someone is driving bamboo under his toenails because I’m not understanding the non-language he is using…whether you’ve got one kid or ten, I suspect this happens at least once a day to most parents.

But it has literally not stopped for five minutes since 10:30 this morning.

I am developing a disturbing twitch over one eye, and the other eye has been staring fixedly at the vodka bottle for the last twenty minutes.

I have cranberry juice, triple sec, and KettleOne, people; no lime juice BUT I’M ADAPTABLE!

Using my keen psychic powers, I am seeing one or two or possibly a round dozen or so Cosmopolitan martinis in my future. Also, even though I just made cupcakes for the Denizens (it is Eldest’s birthday-birthday today, and because I am THAT GOOD A MOTHER {ahem} I decided to make cupcakes today even though we had a party for her yesterday, so that after I’ve cooked the dinner she has requested I can make frosting and let the Denizens decorate their own cupcakes) (no, I don’t know what I was thinking), I have a hankering for chocolate meringue pie – dark chocolate.

Of course, I’d have to scrape Boo Bug off me for a minute, because she is eager to help in the kitchen. While I love her dedication to the cause, occasionally I just want to git-er-done in there, and a five year old underfoot is not conducive to same.

But in the process of scraping her off me, there will be wailing and tears and lamentations and cries of, “But I love you! And I wanna help you!”, which is emotional blackmail and ought to be illegal but oddly when you write the FBI telling them about it, they really don’t feel any sense of urgency around the issue.

Since I started writing this, I have driven the Denizens in whole or in part from this room five times. Captain Adventure has been jumping up and down in his crib yelling, “DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!”

But he isn’t getting down. You know why? Because his mommy is not emotionally prepared to deal with him, too, right now.

His mumsy-wumsy is about four seconds from running away from home. Breaking into their piggy banks, stealing all their cash, and just walking away, into the night, to begin her new life at Joe’s Diner and Gift Shoppe.

I slept like @*^&@ last night and my arthritis is killing me today AND YET my options around housework are limited to doing it this weekend or spending the whole week wishing I had done it this weekend because there will be no time whatsoever for it next week.

And the girls…have not stopped yammering…for four solid hours…

They’re good kids. And I adore them. And I wouldn’t trade them for all the peace and quiet and cleanliness in the world.

Well. Not usually, anyway. I mean, never. Of course, never. Never even crosses my mind, not for a moment.

Not even when I’m cleaning up the glitter glue off the kitchen table, the glitter glue I took away because it is way more mess than it is worth but then they found a tube hidden in the bottom of the crayon tub and used it anyway and then they tried to hide the evidence themselves but in the process instead spread it over every single surface in the house and also it turns out that by ‘washable’ the manufacturer means, ‘can be spread via water onto every single thing you touch for the rest of your life’.

Seriously. Selling them on eBay would never even cross my mind.

Well. At least, it wouldn’t cross my mind as, you know, an actual plan. More of an idle speculation…I mean, if I were to offer free shipping, surely I’d get a bid or two, right…?