I have said this a few times in the past couple of days and I think maybe I should just get it all out there.

I am afraid of numbers.

Not phone numbers, bank accounts or sizes, but geometry, calculus, advanced algebra.

Why? I really don’t know. When I was in school I did well in math with the basics. Addition, subtraction, division and multiplication were fun for me. I enjoyed learning how to put these things together. I can balance a checkbook down to the penny. I can go shopping-knowing I have only $300 in my pocket- and have the cashier tell me that my total is $298.99. (Seriously–I have witnesses!) All without the aid of a calculator.

But something changed. I don’t really remember where. Maybe it was long division. Maybe it was square roots or that 0010010101110101 crap. I still don’t get it. I still don’t need it. (Even though countless math teachers assured me that “someday, you’ll need it!”) All I know is that once in high school, I would freeze. My mind would go blank. My mouth would suddenly go dry. My palms and pits would get flopsweat. It wasn’t just test anxiety. It happened in class. It happened while being tutored. It happened while dad tried over and over to tell me how the numbers meshed.

As my kids grew up, they would ask me for help. My eyeballs would burn and my heart would begin to pound. So I’d pass them on to my dad who could solve damn near any number problem thrown at him. Why didn’t I inherit that gene?

Then, they learned a new math. IMP. This is when the teachers in all of their infinite wisdom want a ten year old to explain why 4 + 5 = 9. ?  WHY? BECAUSE THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS DECIDED SO!! Isn’t that good enough? My kids could do the problem. They could show the work. They could get the answer right. But they couldn’t explain why it was right. And they were penalized for it. (Because each was considered a separate part of solving the problem. Don’t know one part? Lose points)

I think it was a conspiracy cooked up by mathematicians who feared that with the advent of calculators and computers, their jobs as math teachers was becoming obsolete.

Who needs to learn math? I have a calculator on my phone!

Ring,  ring!

Mom? I went straight to Shenanigan’s house after the softball game. I won’t be home until later. Maybe much later.

Ooookay…It’s strange for you to call and tell me that. What’s up?

I think my nose is broken.

Yes, this is the phone call I got about an hour ago. No, it isn’t Son2 again. This time it is Son1. Why do they have to mess up their faces?

He was playing softball. A pop-fly was falling between him and a teammate. Both looked to the sky. Son2 looked down to see where he was going and took a shoulder to the face.

Now, he is sitting at his girlfriend’s house, taking Tylenol and holding ice on the bridge of his nose. He is watching the Eagles play football (which everyone knows is more important than sitting in the emergency room!)

Is it a genetic thing with men? No matter how sick or in pain they are, they would rather watch sports than go see a doctor! I tried to explain that the ER would most likely have the game on. Not only that, but if everyone is home watching the game, there will be less of a wait in the ER! It’s a statistical fact!

Why can’t my boys break a finger or dislocate a shoulder? Why the face? They used to be so pretty!

*I never did find out if anyone caught the ball and made the out!

Being busy with the babies is really throwing off my groove. I have them on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and that is really cool because after a day of picking up the baby or just rolling around playing with them, I have a day to recuperate.

But it also has it’s drawbacks. My housework is falling by the wayside. I don’t care. My house is far from being a pigsty but I’m beginning to see dust. Oh well. I just don’t have it in me today to do anything about it.

My boys have gone to the Flyer’s game (Hockey for those in the dark) Babygirl is hating me for making her clean her room, and Hubs is just tired. (He just got home from work.) I myself have a raging headache and I am just praying to God, Allah, Buddha, and Satan (Hey, ya never know which is gonna come through for me!) that this doesn’t turn into a migraine. It’s overcast and drizzling outside. It’s miserable outside and it’s rubbing off on me.

I’ll get around to the blogs tomorrow. I may stop in to facebook here and there, but I think that mostly I’ll just watch a few movies, snuggle on the couch with my dog and my man and order pizza for dinner.

Saturdays are for going with the flow and that’s what I intend to do today.

Once upon a time, there was a happily married young couple. They had two boys, five and ten years old. The boys were rambunctious and well loved by their parents. Yes, it was a happy family…..

but something was missing.

The woman felt outnumbered. Raised toilet seats were commonplace as were the ‘puddles’. The shoes were smelly and the laundry very dirty. She longed for a daughter. She wanted pony tails and dollbabies. She wanted dresses and tea parties. ”Let’s have another baby.” she proposed to her husband.”Are you stupid?” He exclaimed. “ Both of the boys will be in school soon and you will have your life back! Besides, work is getting slow and I have to find a new job.”

“Our grandparents raised their families during the Depression. We’ll find a way.”

So the man breathed near the fertile woman and nine months later, they found themselves in the delivery room. The man was excited, for even though he had two boys, he had never seen his wife give birth! He was here! It would happen soon!  He was holding her hand!

He was supposed to be leaving for his first day of his  brand new job!!

The woman said “Go. You need the job. I will be okay. My mother is here with me. Just be sure to rush home to me. Hurry! You need to be at work by 6am!”

She was right. Sadly, he kissed his wife and went to the new job.

Before he had even reached the hospital parking lot, his wife’s labor began in earnest. The doctor gave her an epidural. It seemed as though the labor slowed. She felt no more contractions. So the woman and her mother began making plans to go to lunch.

The doctor returned and lifted the sheet. “Let’s have a looksy and see how you’re progressing…..”

“Hello! Did you know that you had an eavesdropper on your conversation? You have a baby’s head sticking out of your hooha!”

Yes, that was how she arrived. It was a Wednesday morning. 6:31 on October 24, 1991.

At 6:45, the husband returned. It seemed that the boss was furious that the man had left his wife. “Go Home!” He was ordered. “Come back tomorrow!!”

The baby, who was cleaned and swaddled, was handed to her father. He looked at her with tears in his eyes and said “Hey, you.” He had never told his wife, but he had wanted a daughter more than anything in the world. She smiled at him, closed her eyes and they both promptly fell asleep. (A pattern that would repeat itself frequently.)

In the seventeen years since that day, the mother has brushed hair and painted fingernails. She has been there through girlfights, breakups and proms. She will do so until the daughter asks her to stop. (and she will continue long after that too)

The woman may fight with the daughter. She may ground her when necessary. She will tell her to change her clothes or clean her room. They will occasionally hate each other.

But the mother will  always love the girl - with the intensity of a million white hot suns.

Happy Birthday, Babygirl. I love you now and forever. 

I’ve gotten back the oomph! for Halloween. Slowly but surely, (as much as my back will allow anyway) the decorations are being pulled out. One by one, they are making their way around my house.

Babygirl’s birthday is exactly a week before Halloween, so when she saw the boxes out, she was so very happy. She said it just didn’t seem like her birthday was right around the corner because the house wasn’t ‘ready’.

Well, I’m ready….and the house will be too….soon!

I have mentioned before that I love horror movies - all different kinds, from the ones with monsters, to aliens, to slashers, and beyond. But I have never told you where this love came from.

 It began with a night of drinking.  Not me, my parents.

My mom and dad would go out occasionally with Dad’s friend Ray and his wife. The night out usually consisted of dinner somewhere in town (most likely Chinatown) and ended when they returned because of the babysitter. Not wanting the night to end, they would stop at Ray’s and pick up his movie projector.

Dad would whisk the babysitter home, mom would run around looking for a solid white sheet that Ray would hang on the living room wall, and Ray’s wife would order pizza and beer to be delivered.

They would be loud with their plans, and their laughter. Mom would loudly shush them, but they would invariably wake me up.

I was young. Mom says I was only five or six when the movie nights started. I was not allowed up. Once we were sent to bed, there we were supposed to stay and back then, you did what you were told. But I was never told not to sneak!

I would lay on my stomach at the top of the stairs and slowly lower myself down one, two and maybe three steps. Just far enough to see the sheet. Dad would return and then I’d hear the low clatter of the reel-to-reel projector begin.

The sheet would be filled with wonderful images in black and white. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi! The Creature From the Black Lagoon. The Mummy. Frankenstein. Dracula. I was so scared. I would quickly rush back to my room if I heard anyone head to the bathroom. Pretending to sleep, I lay in the dark, impatient  to return to the horror  waiting below.

When I talked to my parents later on about this, they told me that Dad knew every time. He knew and never said a word to Mom. As soon as the movie would end, he would jump from his seat and loudly announce that he was heading to the bathroom. This was to give me a chance to get into bed. It was also a chance for him to find me first in case I had fallen asleep!

This was only the beginning of what was to be one of the best gifts from my Dad. On Saturday afternoons, we would watch Dr. Shock’s Monster Theatre. A different movie every week and I was in heaven as I watched raptly, sitting next to my dad. Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman, The Haunting, and countless others. We enjoyed this ritual until ”Shocky-Doc” retired. I was in my teens by that time.

Do I love horror movies? Oh yeah….but I love the memories that go along with them even more.

**Just curious…Did anyone out there have a similar character to Dr. Shock on their TV networks?

“Mom!! I just got a message from the future! Robyn is in France and they are 6 hours ahead of us, so I got a message from the future!”

Ah, the silliness of sixteen year olds. 

Remember the dorky things that made you laugh at sixteen?

I did lots of laughing. Uncontrollable, gut-wrenching laughter.

I just can’t remember what set us off. If I knew back then that I would forget those gems, I would tell myself to write them down.

Damn.

After a summer-long absence, I had Joslyn today. I never realized how much I missed that kid and her sense of humor. But that’s not what is on my mind.

Her mom came to drop her off this morning and she had noticed a radical change. I do not have up my Halloween decorations.

Tis true. For the first time EVER in my life, I do not have Halloween decorations from one end of the house to the other. The bleeding skull face is not on my door. The 3 foot spider web is not in my window. The movie monster figures are not on the window sill for the postman to enjoy every day as he makes his delivery. Nary a pumpkin adorns my doorstep.

Her mouth hung open in disbelief and she said “Oh my God! What’s wrong??”

I’m not feeling it.

Last year was a disappointment beyond words. A handful of children came to my door. The neighborhood was quiet and devoid of children by eight o’clock. I sat with my huge bowls of full-sized candy bars and waited…..and waited….

This year, I have a two year old and a puppy who love to stand on my couch and look out the windows for hours. This means that the decorations have to be altered. I had a large entertainment center last year that had six lit curio shelves on each side.  I would cover them with haunted house figurines, skull candles, and snow globes. I had a headstone that was a motion detector that screamed and howled. Without the entertainment center, I have nowhere to put my treasures. Between 2yearold  and her 8 month old brother, there would be too many ‘touchy’ temptations. There would be too many things that would scare them and cause them to resist being dropped off every day.

I have a lone door knocker that sings for crying out loud! “I hear you knockin’ but you can’t come in!”

Oh, how humiliating!

I look at the decoration box and sigh. I can’t help but feel like there is no point in devilish revelry. Why bother? No kids will show up to see them. Why knock myself out? It will only make 2yo cry and I will have to deal with that headache everyday that she comes.

Maybe I will change my mind. I have a feeling that I won’t. I can’t remember ever feeling so disheartened about my favorite holiday.

But I will always sit in the dark, in the middle of night and watch the bloody, freak-filled, sadistic horror movies that I have grown to love.

As Sinatra used to sing “They can’t take that away from me..”

I couldn’t escape smells today. I’m not talking about the freshness of clean laundry or freshly mown grass.

I’m talking about stink.

Last night I went into the basement and I was hit in the face with a smell of concentrated cat urine. We don’t own a cat!! I can smell lots of things (and as a mom I have-trust me!) Some things are gross but I don’t gag easily. Cat urine makes me cry. I hate it and once smelled, it takes forever to leave my nostrils. Since Son1 was the only person to enter the basement all day long, I called hm up and asked him what it was. He blamed his softball equipment. I smelled the bag but nope, that wasn’t it. I went to bed thnking that it would have to wait until he came home to take care of it.

Today, I passed the basement door and guess what was coming under the door? You got it. Rather than cry, I tried to ignore it.

I went outside with the dog and stepped in poop. Unknowingly, I tracked it into the house and into the kitchen. Lovely. I had to clean it. Not just from the floor but from the bottom of my shoe and from the step outside the door. Ugh!

Two year old wanted some juice. I opened the fridge and was assaulted with the smell of something rotten. I searched and searched. The other day, I noticed that some meat I had thawing had leaked some blood onto the fridge shelf. I cleaned that up but failed to notice that some had dripped down the back and puddled under the vegetable drawer. Well, today it made itself known. I cleaned that too.

While was occupied with the kitchen, 8 month old made a stinky in his diaper. Let me tell ya, big smells come out of small butts! I cleaned him too.

I needed to wash the rags I used for all the cleaning, so I held my breath and quickly threw in a load of laundry which included a pair of sport socks belonging to guess who? Son1. It seems that the hideous stench that was permeating my basement belonged to the socks. Not the bag. Not the cleats. When he came home, he seemed to think it was funny.

He showered, ate his dinner and left for the evening.

He left his gear unattended.

I am tempted to throw his shit away for the laughter. I wonder if I have the balls to do it?

Time is not a very good diet buddy.

I haven’t gained weight but I seem to be stuck at only having lost 10 pounds. I have started watching two new kids and they keep me busy. I thought I would be burning extra calories just chasing after them but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Now, instead of sitting down to a fully balanced breakfast, I am barely remembering to eat a bowl of cereal. Instead of taking my time and eating a large salad, I am only grabbing a banana or an apple for lunch. By dinner time I am starving. But I still try to eat well.

Exercise-wise, I’m not walking as much as I hoped. The 2 year old doesn’t want to walk or share the stroller with her 8 month old brother. He still naps alot so that also puts a crimp in things. By the end of the day, I am so exhausted that even though I may want to walk on the treadmill, I can’t even muster the energy to pull it out. My days off consist of piled up laundry, housework, cooking substantial dinners for the men and giving my dog his neglected attention-time.

Something has got to give. It is certainly not the fault of the Alli. That is working well, given the circumstances. I’m still not having any “distress episodes” but without being as diligent as I was before, I’m afraid that I will be stuck with only 10 pounds lost.

*sigh*

But I’m not quitting! I intend to keep trying. I just have to figure out how to fit the exercise in!