Cleaning Up Playlist #pandora #adulthits

I love Pandora’s Adult Hits channel. I am not embarrassed about it at all. The kids always want music when we clean up (pick up room, throw out trash, put away toys, sweep, vacuum, repeat again in 24 hours because it’s never truly clean) and I agree if it’s Pandora Adult Hits. We have surround sound and I blast it. Here are my top ten songs.

Before cleaning starts: Over My Head (The Fray). That about sums it up.

While We’re Cleaning:

Rolling in the Deep (Adele)

Keep Your Head Up (Andy Grammar)

Pumped up Kicks (Foster the People)

Dog Days Are Over (Florence + the Machine)

Tik Tok (Ke$ha)

Dynamite (Tao Cruz)

Stacy’s Mom (Fountains of Wayne)

Harder to Breathe (Maroon 5)

We Found Love (Rihanna)

Yes, my taste tends toward pop hits that are years old. I like the 80s channel too. 

Leaving the Museum with Five Kids

I’m lucky to have moved to a very kid-friendly area. There are TONS of parks (and as you have read, it’s my goal to go to each and every park in the county while we live here), museums, fairs and festivals and the like.

Some people ask how I can possible go anywhere with five kids, and the answer is that I have to or I’ll go nuts. Also, my youngest non-baby is four now, so they’re all old enough to be responsible. When we go somewhere, I make sure we have water and if I’m really organized, I bring quesadillas to eat.

Here’s an example of my day at a local kids museum. Getting there is the easy part; keeping track of everyone is another story. I don’t mind if Animal and Mineral run off, since they’re older, and The Informant can usually be found doing arts and crafts. My Masterpiece stays with me (by her choice). Porcelain is usually in the Ergo or another such baby carrier.

Aside: baby carriers have made my life more manageable. Without my carriers, I could not get anything done. Porcelain loves being so close, and I love the use of my hands! I was totally obsessed with baby carriers when I was pregnant and now I know why. I’m considering selling my Becco and buying a Boba. My Ergo is the go-to, but she likes to lean back and nearly fall out.

So, we’re at the museum, everyone is having fun — including me — and it’s a great day. Then it’s time to go home. This is where life gets challenging.  The process of leaving takes about forty-five minutes. First I find My Masterpiece, who has to pee. As I take her to the bathroom, I come across Animal who is running off somewhere. I tell him we’re leaving in five minutes, and ask if he knows where Mineral or The Informant is. He shakes his head and darts off. I have 2/5 children.

After My Masterpiece’s bathroom trip, she wants to go to the baby area for a few minutes while I gather everyone else. I make her promise to stay there. I have 1/5 children (and that’s a given since the one is attached to me).

I find Mineral playing on a replica of a battle ship. I drag him away. He has no idea where Animal is — I’m always like, “You’re an identical twin! Use your twin intuition!” and they both look at me like, “How the eff would I know where he is? You watch way too many Lifetime movies. Twintuition isn’t real.” I have 2/5 children.

Mineral and I find My Masterpiece at the arts/crafts table, away from the baby area where she promised she’d stay. I have 3/5 children.

Mineral has to pee. I tell him to stay in the lobby after he uses the bathroom, and I’ll meet him there when I have everyone. I have 2/5 children.

I look for Animal and The Informant, certain that every time I go upstairs, they’re behind me going downstairs and we’re just missing each other. I cannot find either of them. I still have 2/5 children.

I have officially looked EVERYWHERE for Animal and The Informant. I can only hope that Mineral is staying in the lobby. I still have 2/5 children.

I finally find Animal in the middle of the lobby. He wants to go off while I look for The Informant, swearing that he’ll stay where he says, but I insist he stay with me. He pouts. I have 3/5 children.

We catch up with Mineral, who is not in the lobby like he said he would be, but instead has gone back to the battle ship. Animal shrieks about the unfairness that Mineral gets to play while he has to be dragged around, so I give them both five more minutes on the battle ship while I look for The Informant. I have 2/5 children.

I have really really looked EVERYWHERE for The Informant. She is not at the arts/crafts area. She is not in the dress up area. She is not in the bathroom. She is not in the baby area. She is not in the stuffed animal area. She is obviously just behind me, going upstairs when I go down, and vice-versa. I head back to the battle ship. I have 2/5 children.

Porcelain needs a diaper change. My Masterpiece wants to wait in the lobby while I change her. I have 1/5 children.

After the diaper change, I catch up with My Masterpiece, and we pick up Animal and Mineral at the battle ship. It’s a damn miracle. I have 4/5 children. The most unfortunate part of this scenario is that we’re at the very back of the museum, which means we have to walk through the entire museum to get to the entrance/exit, and my chances of keeping track of all four children while walking through the entire museum with its enticing exhibits and fun stations are not good.

We manage to make it to the lobby without incident, and with promises of coming back in the next couple weeks (we have a membership). The Informant is still missing. The museum isn’t THAT big. I literally have no idea where she is, so I sit and wait in the lobby, sure that eventually she’ll show up.

Five minutes later we’re still waiting, and I make my children swear upon pain of drinking baking soda and Floradix that they will stay there while I go find The Informant. I ask them all to look me in the eye while they promise. (Will it work? Maybe. When I get serious and it’s time to go, they usually understand.)

I finally find The Informant at the giant chess and checkers station. She has 234523525 pieces of artwork she wants to bring home. She makes a pile and carries it, and we walk to the lobby, where — it’s a miracle! — my three other children are waiting somewhat patiently. I treat them each to a candy bar from the gift shop.

Now we just have to go outside and walk to the car, crossing several main streets, and we’ll officially be on our way home.

It’s like I’m a celebrity. Except without any of the perks.

Right now I’m fighting off either strep throat or mono, so here are my recent thoughts on this move, which may or may not be affected by my illness:

I’M LIKE A CELEBRITY.

I unabashedly love celebrity gossip. Love it. I skim all the websites and blogs daily. When I can, I listen to TMZ live on the radio, although I find Harvey Levin really obnoxious. He’s so self-important.

Here’s how I’m like a celebrity — take Beyonce, for instance. I see a lot of pictures of her on various vacations with Jay-Z, in exotic locations, on a yacht or a beach, rocking a bikini. When Beyonce goes on tour, or goes into the studio, or makes a movie, she has to leave her home, her friends, her family, and go to work for a few months. Probably somewhere new, where she doesn’t know anyone — although everyone she meets is nice and helpful (this has been my experience here). She probably has her husband with her, and she probably uses her iPad or whatever to keep in touch with everyone, but she’s alone in a new place.

That’s me.

To keep myself sane, I’m trying to imagine that this is a temporary interruption of my real life, and that as soon as this situation is over, I’ll be back home. It might not be true, it might not be healthy, but it keeps me from curling up into a ball and crying 24/7 because it seems like the best part of my adult life is over and I’ll never get it back again and I didn’t appreciate it enough and UGH HERE I GO CRYING AGAIN.

I totally bet Beyonce feels this way.

Things I have done since I moved

• Cried every day. Usually it’s every morning, for a few minutes, when I wake up and see the boxes in my room and think of my Jugs.
• Thought, “… however, I do really enjoy this house.” Seriously, I **really** like this house. I like how it’s made (sturdy), I like the floors (fake hardwood), I like how all the bedrooms are upstairs, and I like the lack-of east- and west-facing windows.
• Attended some homeschool group-wide activities. There’s a large, active homeschool umbrella group here and I’ve been to some events. I’ve met some moms.
• Cursed the fact that I’m totally STARTING OVER with making friends. People here don’t know that they like me yet. When I lived in Charlotte, I used to joke that I offered “mercy invites” to lunch with women at La Leche League or My Chemical Romance’s friends’ wives — women who looked like they could use a friend. And now, of course, I am the mercy invitee. Seriously, I nearly wept with joy when a lovely homeschool mom invited me to eat lunch with her at a picnic. I could feel a panic attack beginning when I went through the lunch line and realized I’d have to sit alone (alone = with “just” my five kids).
• Annoyed the hell out of My Chemical Romance. I chalk it up to the stress of moving. I alternate between morose and hyperactively insisting that I WANT TO PARK MY CAR IN THE GARAGE RIGHT NOW, SO CLEAR OUT ALL THESE FREAKIN’ BOXES! NOW! RIGHT NOW! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!?!?!?
• Found several Harris Teeters. Ah, yes, I’m still in North Carolina. There’s a HT on every third block, I tell you.
• Panicked about the hurricane — I’m a lot closer to the coast here — and then found it was nothing more than a wind-and-rain storm.
• Got a library card. Watch out, evil library witches! Your newest least-favorite-patron-ever has arrived!
• Gawked at the library hours: They’re open EVERY DAY. Every single day. In Charlotte, the library budget was cut every third week, to the point where my closest local library was open four days per week, for a total of 32 hours.
• Went to Costco and brought up their stock level by re-stocking my house.

My (last) Pregnancy Belly Cast Update

When I did a belly cast with My Masterpiece, I had some inspiration: Arizona. Specifically the state flag. We were living in Arizona at the time, and yet I knew it wasn’t going to be our permanent residence. Maybe it was because I lived among a lot of military families, so it just felt like a transitory place. (Besides, you would not want to spend your entire life in this particular small town, which is right on the border of Mexico and California.) For my belly cast, I came up with this:

Why, yes, it bears a strong resemblance to Wonder Woman. Which also fits, because after having a homebirth I totally thought I was Wonder Woman. My Chemical Romance actually gave me a medal.

For my belly cast with Porcelain, I’ve been struggling to find a theme. She was born on Christmas day but we’re not Christian so I didn’t really feel like anything nativity-related. I thought about trying to include trees and presents and maybe tinsel, but that doesn’t really say anything about my  experience. We got our tree and decorated everything the day after Thanksgiving,  because I was just SO SURE that Porcelain would be born before Christmas and I wanted to have everything ready. I thought I might even labor around near the tree and lights, but that room was so cold — near the attic, just above the garage — that I avoided it completely. Plus, she wasn’t born for nearly a month.

I’ve been asking my Jugs for ideas, “Something that encompasses things like ‘horrified that I was pregnant again’ and ‘acting like a complete psycho” and ‘two weeks past my due date’ and ‘driving everyone crazy.’ Is there something like that, that I can put on there?” I asked Lady Beaver of the Syllables, who works at a museum. She didn’t know.

Tonight, it came to me: The Scream, by Edvard Munch. I will somehow incorporate it into my belly cast.

The Library Diaries: Oops I did it again!

Recently My Chemical Romance trotted off to work on a Monday morning, happy to be escaping the insane asylum/zoo, and about an hour after he left the flooding began.

Something flooded near the toilet, so much so that the water was dripping through to the ceiling of our kitchen (and, ironically, INTO THE SINK. Which was very thoughtful of the water, right?)

Luckily the toilet itself wasn’t flooding. Unluckily, at least that was a scenario I could have explained to My Chemical Romance; instead the conversation went like this

Me, trying to be calm: “Omg. Omfg. ZOMFG! There’s water! It’s like Noah’s Ark in our bathroom!”

My Chemical Romance, trying to suppress a yawn: “Okay. Where’s it coming from?”

Me: “I cannot and will not answer any question which ends in a preposition.”

My Chemical Romance: **crickets**

Me: “FINE. The bathroom. Somewhere in the vicinity of the toilet.”

My Chemical Romance: “Turn off the water. I’ll deal with it when I get home.”

Me: “But… I haven’t showered since Saturday. I haven’t washed my hair since Friday.”

My Chemical Romance: “Turn off the water.”

I told the kids I was turning off the water and immediately they all needed to wash their hands and pee 2352532 times in a row. I ended up turning it off and on several times. Also, although I promised MCR that I would turn it off immediately, I did take a quick shower, because I was gross.

So what does this have to do with the library, you’re asking? Well. In the bathroom was, of course, lots of reading material, including a library book. Which, by that time, had turned drenched and soggy.

(Someday I’ll blog about getting water damage on a book from the library in Arizona; it’s a good story.)

The librarians still give me stink eye because of that small issue with ROOM, earlier this year. Emma Donoghue, the author of ROOM, should really thank me for getting about twenty more people to read it thanks to my blog. Anyway, I am not looking forward to explaining this new issue to the librarians, and having to pay for the book. I ended up tossing it (along with some magazines) because it was just that wet and gross, but I’m sure it sounds like an excuse to them.

My bathroom flooded and the book was in it and now I owe you $40 even though it’s a trade paperback, right?

I will probably skip the detailed explanation altogether and just tell them that a book was accidentally destroyed and I need to pay for it. The upside is I’ll get to “keep” the book. However, this particular book kind of sucked and was the kind of the book I totally would return on time. I hate that. I would much rather “keep” a book that I actually enjoyed.

Facebook: Proving I’m an idiot since 2009.

Lately My Chemical Romance has been traveling a lot for work. And inevitably as soon as he walks out the door, something in the house starts leaking, falling down, breaking or bleeding. I’m not a huge fan of solo parenting; the only reason we have so many kids is that we made a deal early in our marriage: as long as he let me sleep in every weekend helped me as much as possible, we could have a large family. Usually My Chemical Romance is very helpful. But that’s when he’s here.

Last week, it was the air conditioner.

You may have heard me mention that our a/c kind of sucks? It’s weak, especially after living in Arizona for three years, in a ranch style house that I kept like a sub-zero freezer. That place got frigid. Here, I usually can’t get the temperature below 78* or 77*, and I sleep with the overhead fan on and an oscillating fan pointed directly at me. Meanwhile, the day My Chemical Romance left, I noticed the downstairs was 82*. I tried my usual tricks of turning off every light, unplugging everything and turning on all the overhead fans. 81*. Finally I posted on Facebook.

Everyone on FB was really helpful, including my uncle who gave a lengthy explanation about the difference between leaving the fan on “auto” versus leaving the fan on “on,” and most people suggested I turn my house into a cave with all the shades drawn, and reminded me that a/c isn’t really made to get the temperature more than 20* lower than the outside temp, which was right around 100*, so really, NOTHING WAS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE. Ha. Am I the only person who sweats when she gets up off the couch to get something to eat?

Eventually, I went outside to check on the units (one sucky upstairs unit, one sucky downstairs unit), and noticed that one wasn’t spinning at all. At which point I realized that for as helpful as My Chemical Romance is, he’s really totally not helpful when he’s NOT HOME and isn’t planning to return home before 7pm. So I called a HVAC company and explained the situation, mostly like, “Hi, my a/c isn’t working. Please help me.”

The HVAC company threw around a lot of big words like broken and frozen and 20 to 40 minute response time before we’re in your area until the really nice receptionist asked me about the breaker. The what-huh-now? The breaker? The thing in the garage above the deep freezer full of breastmilk, that My Chemical Romance sometimes flips on and off after the vacuum cleaner stops working? That thing? Yes, we have one in the garage above the deep freezer full of breastmilk, the My Chemical Romance sometimes flips on and off after the vacuum cleaner stops working. Can I go flip it on and off? Well, okay. Sure.

And it was like god herself said, let their be air. And let it be cold, and be fruitful and multiply, and bring down the temperature of the downstairs…

So I went back to Facebook, where my many “friends” had assumed that just because I have a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Michigan, that means I will check if something is plugged in before I turn it on. I will not, clearly.