The fabulous Gleemonex asked me this question:

What is your nighttime routine with the boys, and baths, dinner, your & Lare's dinner? Like, step by step with approximate times? I need guidance -- I'm failing (& getting later by the week) with just the one kid & Mr. Gleemonex.

Funny you should ask this question on this of all weeks, Gleem. It just so happens Larry and I posted our schedule on the refrigerator Sunday night after seeing our routine (and our kids) sliding off the rails. I’m hardly one to be doling out parenting advice—but the schedule below really works for us.  

5:30-6:30 
Larry makes and feeds the boys dinner, while I go for a run.

6:30-7:30 
Larry gives the boys a tub while I shower and get my nails done (I have to have a fresh manicure every day for work. It’s one of my things).

7:30- 8:30 
Larry is muttering something from the other room, but I can’t hear him over the sound of Sven massaging my tired, tired, muscles. (Sven is one of my guilty pleasures! He is not actually Swedish. He is from Cleveland.) One of the kids is scratching on the door (very distracting, but I try to be patient and ignore) Oh! They want to kiss me good night. Is it that time already?! 

8:30-8:31 
I kiss the  boys good night and tell them how much I love them. I really try to make this a quiet, special time with NO interruptions. (They soak up my affection like little sponges. So cute!)  

8:31-9:00 
I sip a glass of wine and unwind with a magazine or a book while Larry finishes reading the boys their bedtime stories (HE IS TAKING FOREVER. AS USUAL. I try to have patience with this man, but it is hard. HELLO! HUNGRY FOR DINNER DOWN HERE! I RAN LIKE SIX MILES TONIGHT). 

9:00-10:00 
Finally Larry comes down and starts cooking my special vegetarian dinner. It is late, but I try not to make him feel bad about it. He works hard too. And it’s important that we have this time together after rushing around all evening. We don’t even have to talk (for some reason he doesn’t ever seem to want to talk … ?). 

10:00 
EXHAUSTED. Get pajamas on while Larry cleans the kitchen. 

10:15 
Even though I am very tired, I sit down with Larry and tell him all about my day. (Communication is SO SO important in a marriage! Can’t stress this enough!) 

10:45 Lights out. Reflect on how wonderful it is to be married to a man who understands that we are EQUALS.

Now I just need some of Suburban Turmoil’s trolls to come over here and take that seriously. In fact, our summer schedule in the evenings goes more like this:

5:30-6:30 I go for a run while Larry feeds the boys.

6:30-7:15 I handle dessert negotiations, clean up the kitchen and hang out with the boys while Larry works out or practices guitar. 

7:15 The boys and I take Sean for his walk. Larry performs some kind of outside magic to make vegetables and things grow there. 

7:30-8:00 I give the boys a bath, get their PJs on, brush teeth, and lay out their clothes for the next morning. Larry starts dinner for the two of us.

8:00-8:30/8:45 I read to the boys in their room.
8:45 Larry and I eat dinner. Talk. Clean up. Retreat to the living room and read until we go to bed (around 10:30).

Because Larry is home with the boys much of the day (he teaches summer school in the mornings), he can throw in a load of laundry or straighten up--things we usually have to cram into the evenings during the school year, along with homework and paying bills and recycling the mounds of worksheets Gus brings home in his backpack. So the summer routine is a lot more comfortable and leisurely than the other 10 months of this year. 

Ask me this question again in September and it'll be a whole new ball game.

I must be getting crotchety in my old age, because I don’t like things. I don’t like things more than I used to not like them. And I’ve been experiencing these large internal eye rolls lately, when people—adult people—do innocent (but ANNOYING!) things, like mispronounce pillow “pellow.”

It’s not a pellow.

And you are not four years old. I know for sure it’s not a pellow, because Microsoft Word won’t allow me to write “pellow.” I type “pellow” and Microsoft Word underlines it in red and says GROW THE FUCK UP. IT’S A PILLOW FOR GOD SAKES. 

So! 

Pillow.

Also? 

It’s so-SHUL-security; not so-SULL-security. 

(I feel like we’ve been over this before.)

Just because Bill Clinton pronounced it so-SULL-security, doesn’t make it right. YES, the man has charisma. YES he is taller than he looks on TV. And YES, he would probably let you have sex with him. And yet! The security is still SO-SHUL. SO-SHUL. Write it down.

And in conclusion … God help me if I ever meet the clowning ass hat who put the “cha cha cha” in the Happy Birthday song. 

Happy Birthday to you,
CHA! CHA! CHA! 
Happy Birthday to you,
CHA! CHA! CHA!
Happy Birthday dear child who is not Mexican and whose candles are now melting because we added the ridiculous and arrhythmic CHA CHA CHA to an already somewhat laborious vocal tradition,
CHA! CHA! CHA!
Happy Birthday to you

Hhhhhhaaaaaaate.

Adding cha cha cha to the birthday song is a museum-quality example of how white people ruin everything.  

Stop it, white people. 

Due to his mental illness, Sean gets groomed only twice a year. The whole process causes him so much anxiety, I have to sign a consent form to have him fully sedated. And when the groomer is through with him, she still can’t resist telling us how c-r-a-z-y he is. 

Hint: WE KNOW.

 
See the tuft of hair on his face that is STILL blocking his line of vision? I can just picture him rising from his drug induced coma to try to bite Groomer Kelly's face off as she attempted to cut that. Sean’s haircuts always have at least one patch of “Okay! Nevermind!”, although it's usually surrounding his anus.  

Lord Sean McKenzie is VERY protective of his anus.

LOVES his anus.

“GET THE RAZOR AWAY FROM MY ANUS!”

(I’m just trying to generate some interesting Google traffic here, folks).

But I must say Groomer Kelly did an excellent job on his nether regions this time, and Sean is enjoying the unobstructed access to his former nutsack IMMENSELY.

He’s all, “Why HELLO there, you! (MLAT MLAT MLAT MLAT MLAT).”

And when I tell him to cut it out, he looks at me like a teenage boy whose mom just found his stash of Playboys. Slightly embarrassed, but mostly just ticked that he’s going to have to hitch a ride to the store to buy new ones. 

If you can watch this without cracking a smile, you have beef jerky where your heart should be. If only I hadn't shut the camera off quite so soon--you would have heard Gus wield the phrase "Ugh, that's EMBARRASSING", but I think you'll get the picture.

The lyrics, in case you missed them are:

Once I had a mother
She was as cute as cheeks
I love her so much
She was living in the north pole

(It's symbolic.)

I found my flip flop!

Actually Gus found it. At the pool the next day, Gus found my flip flop lying under a lounge chair in some other section of the pool I had not even ventured into the day before.

How it got there, we do not know. (Did it travel by foot?)

But it’s come home.

Naughty roving flip flop; how I missed you so.

It occurs to me now, looking at these flip flops, that they are even uglier than I'd previously allowed myself to believe. There's something almost clinical about them. Unbending, serious--and simultaneously humiliating. Like my feet are on their way to participate in a very important "clinical feet trial" wearing a pair of (patent pending!) Sanitary Medi-Flops.

Strip down to your underwear and put these on. Gown closes in the front. The nurse will be in shortly.

There was a story making headlines last week that captured my attention. Perhaps you saw it on the morning news--or read about it in the paper. Alongside Afghanistan and the oil spill and Gaza, it's nothing. Trivial. Tabloid.

But I'm curious to know what you think, nonetheless.

I have issues. 

Exhibit A: Sunday afternoon, at the YMCA pool. It’s Member Appreciation Day! There is pizza! And ice cream! And music! And it’s free! So it’s crowded. There are no chairs available, but that’s okay. We find a nice little space on the pavement by the wall and claim it. We set down our bag. Lay out one towel. We swim, the boys eat, do the cha-cha-slide (sort of), and we all swim some more. It’s a very nice time. It’s a very nice time in spite of the slightly off teenager who keeps swimming up to me under water and popping up with his swim mask asking “Did I scare you?”
(NOT IN THE WAY YOU’RE INTENDING TO.)

I am happy at the pool. 

Happy and relaxed. 

I am also prepared.

I have one change of clothes for each family member, so we can go directly from the pool to our favorite used book store. When it is time to leave, I shift into high efficiency mode, brushing off the I-don’t-wanna-leaves and it-isn’t-fairs and shuttling the boys to the locker room, except--
Except one of my flip flops has gone missing.

I look high. I look low. I look under towels. I look at the bottom of the pool. I empty our pool bag three or four times. Check my purse. Check my feet. Check Patrick’s feet. Check my purse again.

The flip flop is gone.

Someone, I imagine, has absentmindedly tossed it into his or her bag and gone home. 

I should do the same. Toss my remaining flip flop into my bag and get over it. It is a flip flop. A black, rubber, Rite-Aid flip flop. 
I am in denial.

It has to be here somewhere! Keep walking around looking crazy. You'll find it.

Yesterday at the pool a woman lost her wedding ring. NOW I KNOW HOW SHE FEELS.

Perhaps it is the suddenness of its departure?

WAIT! DON’T GO!  I DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO SAY GOODBYE!

And then, I am angry.

Angry, angry, angry because what is wrong with people? EVERY TIME we go to the Y, something gets taken. 

"Every time," I tell Larry.
EVERY FREAKIN' TIME.

Larry gently reminds me it is really only two times.

Yesterday it was Gus’s goggles. Today, it is the flip flop.

But still.

THE CARELESSNESS OF HUMANITY IS MORE THAN I CAN BEAR .

And the locker room floor is slimy and wet and riddled with god knows what kind of diseases oh GOD I WISH I HAD MY FLIP FLOP. 

Gus is bickering with me. 

He has turned this whole thing around in his mind. We are leaving the pool, he thinks, because I am mad that someone took my flip flop. He is squeezing me over this injustice. I am at code yellow, and he squeezes me to code orange, and there is no telling what is on the bottom of my feet. No telling.

We see friends on our way out of the pool. I am being rude. Really rude. I know I should smile and say hello and goodbye and how are you and see you later—but how can I? How can I speak when there is oil spilling into the Gulf AND my flip flop has gone missing? Bad stuff is happening everywhere.  

I am out of my mind over this flip flop. 

We get in the car. Gus is still mad that I'm making him leave because I'm mad and I'm mad because he doesn't understand THAT'S NOT WHY I'M MAD. It's the flip flop! 
THAT’S NO REASON, he says.

But it is reason enough for me!

FLIP FLOP + GONE = 4. 

(That equation will only make sense if you read this.) 

OH my poor flip flop.

Larry really wishes I would get over the flip flop. He really does. I can see him beside me, driving and wishing. And hoping. Hoping I get over this soon.

This flip flop rage. 

And I really try. I try to think about something else. I remove the one flip flop I have stubbornly left on my foot SO PEOPLE CAN SEE MY LOSS, and I try to think about the music. 

About Eric Clapton.

He shot the sheriff. 

But he did not shoot the deputy.

I’d like to shoot the motherfucker who took my flip flop.

My mind is like a CD stuck on repeat. I try to advance to the next song—a song that isn’t about my beloved flip flop—but the button is stuck, jammed, with little bits of grit and lint and potato chips around its edges.  

I Am. Just. So. Mad. About this. %$^#&%Q FLIP FLOP.

Grraaah.

Fifteen minutes have passed since I realized She was gone. 

Still seething.

Larry pulls into the driveway. I go inside and change out of my bathing suit, into my favorite shorts and a t-shirt and a ratty old pair of flip flops. Before heading back to the car, I check myself out in the mirror.

Have I lost weight? 
Could it be?

Hmmmmm. Yes. I think I like what I see here.

A full turn in the mirror. An irrepressible smile. I can't help myself. I step out of one shallow pool of thought and daintily into another. 

Flip.

Flop. 

It was a viru$ all right. In fact my computer was riddled with viru$es. And to make matters worse, little icons of a $exual nature began popping up all over my desktop. ILLUSTRATED icons. With naked cartoon ladies poll dancing, if you must know. And instead of being embarrassed about it, I marched my laptop into work to show anyone who wanted to take a stab at fixing it. Naturally our computer programmer blamed Larry for the malware until I explained that Larry has his OWN laptop with which to enjoy naked cartoon poll dancers if he so wishes. So then he blamed me. 

And I was all “think what you want about me, as long as you can get this girl’s cartoon rack out of my face.” 

“All I’m saying is you don’t just catch a virus out of nowhere,” he said.
“So you’re saying my laptop has been whoring around?"

(He smirks.)

"No way, man! TriXXXi is SO  not like that.”

Anyway, he performed a bunch of magic over my laptop and installed a bunch of herbs and spells and whatnot and it seems to be running beautifully. (FREE! Guinness for you, sir! Is it rude to buy a Scottish computer programmer Guinness? Am I stereotyping?) The little message (which WAS a virus masquerading as virus protection I AM SO SMART) has ceased to pop up in the corner of my eye like a goddamn sty every fifteen seconds, so that makes my morning writing routine significantly more pleasant.

Also, I learned that if you use Comcast Internet service, you get all of the Norton anti-virus protection tools FREE! (When you've written for direct mail as long as I have, you can not write the word FREE! without it being in all caps. It’s physically impossible. Even if you’re writing a history paper. And it’s about slaves. Who are now FREE!) I did not know this about the FREE! software. (Also did not know my other anti-virus software had expired). So I’m passing that along for your convenience. All zero of you who use Comcast for Internet service.

The Dog
Sean reads my blog. Clearly. Because as soon as I wrote about him keeping us up all night with his crazy antics, he started sleeping through the night. A reader pointed this out to me, saying it’s a common phenomenon. Her neighbor’s dogs actually follow her on Twitter. And when she tweets about how annoying they are, they stop barking and settle down. We’ve also added a vigorous pre-bedtime walk to Sean’s routine, which might have something to do with his improved sleep (maybe a little), but I think it was more the shame of being outed in a public forum. 
The Vegetarianism
Is fine, thank you. I am enjoying not gnawing on farm animals very much. But I’m not really a vegetarian. I still enjoy fish, and I won’t shy away from a soup made from chicken broth. And I may go HOG wild and eat a ham sand--no. Probably not. Blech. The less meat I eat, the less I want to eat. But it’s not about "BEING A VEGETARIAN". It’s about eating the foods that work for me. And eliminating the ones that don’t. (See also: SUGAR.) Though that's a conversation we haven't had yet. I'm sloooowly drawing you into my world of CRAZY FOOD ELIMINATIONS.

The Weekend
We weren’t talking about the weekend? Well we are now! With Larry home with the boys all summer, I cherish the weekends more than ever. It’s my chance to get in on the action and enjoy all the things that make summer SUH AWESUM. The swimming and sun and gardens and deck parties … I love this time of year. In a giddy nutty way that suggests I might be manic depressive.

What are your plans for the weekend? (That is not a question to bait you into leaving comments. I was just thinking about inviting myself over. If you don't have anything going on.)
 

On Saturday night, Larry and I took seven boys to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate Gus's birthday. Per Gus's request, the boys were dropped off at our house one hour prior to our scheduled Chuck E. time, so they would "have some time to play" before getting down to birthday business.

Within ninety seconds, they'd located every plastic machine gun in our house and were shooting each other up in the back yard. 

Within ten minutes, one child had half a cup of Elmer's glue in his hair and announced that Gus had put it there.

"Why did Gus put glue in your hair?"

"It's okay; I asked him to."

Well, in that case.

I washed the glue out of his hair. Or at least I tried. It turns out thereare some things that will stick together with Elmer's Glue. And hair is one of them.

On the way to the party, one boy asked me to put on 107.5 the River. He knew every lyric to every song, and sweetly chirped Ke$ha's latest hit from the passenger seat behind me.

What you've got boy

is hard to find

think about it all about it all the time

I'm all strung up my heart is fried

I just can't get you off my mind

because your love, your love, your love is my drug

your love, your love, your love is my drug

This is what first grade looks like now.

And then Chuck E. Cheese itself was ... INVIGORATING.

For some reason it had never occurred to me that the place would be slam packed with people on a Saturday night. Or any night, for that matter. And these weren't parents throwing birthday parties, these were people who have freedom of choice. And they were exercising their right to choose by spending a gorgeous Saturday night, on a holiday weekend, playing Skee Ball and video games, eating mediocre pizza, and trying to con my kid out of his birthday tokens.

An older boy strolled right up to Gus and said "give me your tokens." Had Larry not been standing there, Gus would probably have handed them right over. Then another of our boys set his tokens down to play a game, and those got stolen, and we were all, THIS IZ THE KLASSIEST BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER! 

Can't wait to do this again! Perhaps for my birthday.

But Gus?

LOVED. IT.

He's all about the trappings and the accessories and the attention. And Chuck E. Cheese delivered these things in spades. With our attentive dedicated party host (a 50-50 cross between Tracy Morgan and Kenneth on 30 Rock), and all the singing and clapping, and the Birthday Star Musical Revue ...

And the birthday boy medallion and inflatable crown filled with tokens.

And the personal visit from Chuck E. himself ...

And the games, and the tickets, and the ability to exchange those tickets for valuable, valuable prizes ...




It was everything a six year old boy could want. 
And so much more.

Would someone please explain to me how it got to be June? I have vague memories of March, no recollection of participating in April, then all of a sudden school let out, Gus turned six, and the AARP keeps sending me membership information in the mail.

The universe is so subtle.

Also, I think my computer may have a virus that is masquerading as anti-virus software. I don't know who to trust. A pop-up message keeps saying DANGER! UNAUTHORIZED PERSON TRIES TO STEAL YOUR PASSWORDS AND PRIVATE INFORMATION! CLICK THE MESSAGE TO PREVENT IDENTITY THEFT!

What tense is that? Unauthorized person TRIES  ...

When will this person tries? Right after I "enable him transfer to my bank account a confidential sum in amount of $21,320,000 from Nigerian moneys"?

So I don't know what to do about that.

But I do have a new column in Her Nashville, and a new blog postthere this week as well, if you're having trouble easing back into the work week (which apparently I am too, as I should be dressed and ready to walk out the door right now.)