Surely you remember last year when I tried to get a halfway decent picture of my children that could be used for our Christmas card?  I ended up paying someone to Photoshop my kids into one picture that I could somehow fathom being shown to the public.  This year I was determined to do better and I refuse to have our family photo technologically tampered with.  I figured that the combination of them being a year older and starting our sessions a month earlier was a clear formula for success.  I should have started this process at like, Easter.  Do you now understand how absolutely impossible my children are when there is a camera in their faces?  I am truly So. Screwed.

Christmas.  Sigh.  All Aspie wants is the Lego Death Star.  And I want to get it for him because this is the child who never asks for anything all year long and also, this is the child who withstands a huge amount of abuse from two very heathen-like little trolls.  We can go into any toy department and he’ll long for things and wish that he could have “stuff” the way normal kids do, but he never asks.  Ever.  So when a child like that asks for a $400.00 — and no, I’m not kidding — Christmas gift, you just want to buy it for him.  I explained to him that it would be his only gift and on Christmas morning he’s going to be depressed to just open up one present.  He insists that this Death Star is his heart’s desire, but I just don’t know.  It’s so much money.  Decisions.

I’m one of those obnoxious people who gets all my Christmas shopping and wrapping done in one hit.  My goal is to have it done by Sunday — I’ll keep you posted on my progress and Death Star decision.  I asked the children for Christmas lists — Aspie reiterated that he wants nothing other than the Lego Death Star, but if he couldn’t have that he wants like, a couple of ten dollar Lego guys and socks — which they were happy to provide.  Aspie’s was in a categorized format with an attached spreadsheet of estimated price ranges of each item based on his research (and again, not kidding), Veruca’s was in the form of a personal letter written to Santa and DD’s request was three words long.  I realize how much their lists reflect their personalities:

Aspie

Legos

*****Lego Death Star*****

Lego Darth Maul

Lego Dooku

Lego Emperor

Vitamins

Resuce Remedy-2 packages

Rescue Remedy Sleep Formula-1 package

No candy please!  Sometimes candy makes me sick.

Clothing

Pants

Shirts

Underwear

Socks

Veruca

Dear Santa,

Will you give me a crown for Christmas?  Santa, may you please give me a big hug?  I think that will be it.

Santa, I really want you to kiss me someday.  I think that will be it for my writing.

Love,

Veruca

Devil Dog

“a pet dragon”

I know I sound unappreciative sometimes and I probably complain about my kids too much.  In response to that, I promise to publish some sort of sappy post that could possibly, or possibly not, be accompanied by a sappy, set-to-music video that focuses on nothing but the undying love I feel for my children.  Today is not that day.

I have a confession to make.  It’s embarrassing, a secret that I’ve tried to keep under wraps, but to no avail.  My kids don’t eat.  Well, if you’ve seen Devil Dog’s cankles, you know that’s a lie.  But they don’t eat much.  They only partake in a very narrow selection of food, most of which is wholly unhealthy.  If one of my kids eats a piece of cheese, I feel like the Bill Clinton Goes to North Korea and Gets Imprisoned Journalists Back of motherhood.  Really.  It’s a mammoth victory.

It started with Aspie.  That’s another lie.  It started with me.  I’ve always had food and more specifically, texture issues.  I like foods that are dense, not mushy and either really cold or really hot.  Warm was never okay for my palate.  As I have progressed through my years, I think I’ve recited my “food issues” even though I’m not sure they still truly exist or if it’s more of a habitual mantra.  And I’ve used my food issues to excuse my way out of sampling everything from crepes to blow jobs.  Incidentally, using the “My father used to force feed my baby food and I’ve had a gag reflex ever since” is an excellent way to dodge oral.  I know, moms aren’t supposed to talk about blow jobs, but since I’m really talking about the avoidance of blow jobs I think it’s okay.

Where was I?  Oh, so I had aversions and then I had Aspie.  He had really severe reflux as a baby — thus began his limited selection of foods he’d tolerate.  Food issues are also a common issue among kids with Asperger’s Syndrome.  Because food was and still is a huge source of anxiety for me, I think I allowed A to walk the same path.  Or, I made it easier for him to give into his fear of certain food groups and textures because I suffer the same angst.  Veruca and DD aren’t as picky, but they too need to broaden their culinary horizons.

I’ve thought about it and Special K and I have discussed it many times.  What it really boils down to is this:  They need to eat healthier and we, the adults, are sick and tired of taking on a short order cook role every night at 6 p.m.  So last night, I made a meal. One meal.  One gorgeous, picture-worthy, homemade, from scratch meal.  Chicken pot pie.  My children need to be grateful for this as children in other countries don’t get their chicken served to them in fancy pastry with a homemade roux-based sauce.  I’m sorry, but that’s just damn impressive and I even glutened myself by cooking with flour (I didn’t eat it, but sometimes I’ll get glutened from accidentally inhaling flour.  Note to self:  Stop doing lines of King Arthur — it doesn’t get me high enough and the after-effect of itching is just insane).  I want them to be grateful because I was so exhausted after a day of grocery shopping at two different stores with three kids and a husband.  That may not sound like all that much, but let me assure you — it’s like a marathon without the benefit of water-weight loss.  I was tired and the thought of cooking anything was determined to be about as appealing as last weekend when I pulled about 8,549 petrified, year-old or older french fries out of the crevices of my car.

On some level, I knew that getting my kids on a healthier track took precedence over laying on the couch, whimpering and losing myself in my Kindle.  If you’re child-free and thinking about kids, let this be a lesson.  You will never, ever be fully relaxed again.  ”Me time” is a joke unless you physically impose an adult time-out on yourself.

So, I put down the Kindle and made the pie.  Did I mention it was from scratch?  My vent was heart-shaped, people.  Yet the little twits wouldn’t eat it.  Another lie, actually.  (I really need to see someone about that.)  DD ate most of his after a lot of threatening and bribery and promises of a one-on-one grocery store trip with Special K.  Really, any reward that involves traveling to an establishment that has mass-quantities of food on shelves is like a red cape to my little bull.

Veruca ate nothing.  She sat and sulked and pouted and told me my dinner was disgusting.  I told her that she could take disrespectful self to bed.  And she did.  If nothing else, I learned that homemade cooking is the way to get my kids into bed hours before their actual bed time.

Aspie tried.  He ate about a tenth of an ounce of chicken and called it a successful venture.  I struggle with being as tough with him on the food, because I know what that feels like.  I also know that I need to push on with this whole “new food” voyage we’ve begun.

The bottom line is this:  There was a whole lot of complaining because I consciously chose to serve my children a meal that contained elements found in three of the major food groups, one of those elements actually had the nerve to be — Gasp!  Wait for it! — green.

Tonight was a different story.  I know I’ll rally tomorrow and be back to completely ruining their lives and detonating all their little expectations of what dinner is supposed to be about, but for today my ungrateful little heathens made their own dinner.  I enjoyed the break.

I'M

ON

STRIKE

I foolishly, foolishly decided that we should go on a family outing today.  Everyone was up and fed and fashionably dressed at a decent hour and we got out of here by 10:30.  I don’t know how the Duggars go to church.  Do they?  They must go at night.  There is no way they go to 8:00 a.m. mass.  Shit, they’re so goddamned efficient — they probably just built their own church at home that the kids staff.  C’mon kids!  Everyone gets a pew to clean!

We headed out to a town festival called Norwood Day.  It’s a bit of a hike for us, but my mother was there representing the Norwood-based company she works for and it was a beautiful day.  We arrived and I’m not sure if the exact numbers are in yet, but there were approximately 17 billion people milling around.  We located my mom and visited for a few.  Veruca and DD got their faces painted.  Aspie — uh, no face paint.  V immediately regretted her decision and spent the better part of the afternoon sulking, whining and begging me wash her face.  Apparently, the face painter can’t get butterfly wings perfect either.

While we were waiting in line for Veruca’s face to be graffitied, I got attacked by a rabid teenager with a clipboard.  You don’t want to screw with those chicks.  While she tempted V with shiny pretty stones that were totally free giveaways, she thrust a raffle contest form into my face.  That’s when the worst tragedy ever to hit my life except for when Maurice Gibb died and the Brothers Gibb were officially cut by 50% — Yeah.  Just look at the picture, because I don’t know if I can actually say the words yet.

Rabid Raffle Girl knocked my phone out of my hand.  Or I dropped my phone as I was trying to swat her away.  Either way, it’s totally the phone’s fault.  It plunged to the blocked off street, glass side down.  Straight down, no turn, no tumble.  Like buttered toast — straight down.  Dead.  Cell suicide.  I knew my iPhone didn’t have a will to live as indicated by its recent low battery life.  The signs were there.  I just didn’t want to see them.

I stood and stared.  RRG ran.

As I wandered aimlessly down the streets of Norwood crying out, “Why?  Oh, why?” Aspie begged to climb on this mobile rock climbing wall thingy.  I hate just saying, “No,” so I formulated a plan of singing Miley Cyrus tunes — grief makes you do crazy things — at the top of my lungs every time he opened his mouth to ask me if he could climb.  He eventually asked Special K who regrettably doesn’t know the lyrics to Party in the U.S.A. have my superior parenting skills. and he said, “Yes.”  I tucked into a bar for a couple quick shots — isn’t that what people do when they’ve just witnessed the death of a loved one? –while Aspie did brave and daring, manly outdoor things that I cannot relate to on any level.  We’re going for a DNA test next week.

After shoving some mystery product that posed as a hot dog into my kid’s mouths, we decided to head home for a little R&R or as I like to call it, “Time for me to lay on the couch and whine for three straight hours about my phone”.  As we were walking down the crowded streets and planning our exit, I felt that weird eerie feeling you have when you’re being watched.  I looked all around, but couldn’t see anything unusual.  Still, I could not shake the feeling and it was creeping me the hell out.  After a minute, something caught my eye.  I looked to my right and there was a huge, huge basket of iPhone covers (for sale) staring at me.  They were mocking me and judging me.  No question.  Plastic bastards.

I went home and did some research and my Facebook friends and Twitter friends were awesome enough to send me links to sites that sell glass replacement kits (who knew?) and YouTube videos that explain how to switch out the glass.  It looked pretty complicated, but here’s the math:  New phone = $400.  Refurbished phone = $300.  Replacement kit = $70.00 and about $11.00 for the curse jar.  The only thing that makes me hesitant is that if you replace the glass, it voids the warranty on the phone.  And I really kill things.  All the time.  I need my warranty.  But I also need my money, so what to do?  I learned that Apple will replace the glass, warranty intact, for $200 bucks.  Outrageous.

I called the Apple store in Providence and explained my tragedy.  Brenda, the uber-friendly chick who answered the phone, set up an appointment for me to come in at 6:30.  I said to her, “How much is it going to be?” and she replied, “Oh, don’t worry.  They’ll work with you.”  (Foreshadowing ahead.)  I was a little aggravated and said, “I don’t want to drive 50 miles to find out that this is going to cost me $200 bucks.”  She assured me it wouldn’t be anything so exorbitant.

Can you guess where this is going?  Cut to me in the middle of the Providence Apple store taking a total fucking nutty as my three children and one husband, one Apple Genius — yes, that’s his actual job title — and one Apple Store Manager stand motionless and terrified.  There was talk of my disgust, my inconvenience, my 50 miles driven, my readership — oh yes, I did go there, and “Where the hell is Brenda?”  I left the store with a brand new, not refurbished phone that I paid $100 for.  Surprisingly, I’m not one to really raise holy hell.  I don’t send food back in restaurants, I don’t ask to speak to managers — I didn’t tonight either.  ”Trevor” was just summoned from some back room when my voice started to escalate in equal pace with my blood pressure.  I’m not that customer. Ever. Hardly ever.  You know, the issue wasn’t even the fact that they charge $200 to replace a piece of broken glass that probably has a materials cost of $1.75.  If that’s what it is, I certainly have a choice to decline that service.  What spiked me is that I asked Brenda more than once and she wasn’t straight with me.  I hate that.

The night only improved.  Next on our agenda was 45 minutes of looking for our car in the mall parking lot.  Providence Place has a rather complicated parking garage system and it’s pretty easy to forget where you park.  Special K had us on the wrong fucking end of the mall, I was hungry and DD ripped my arm out of it’s socket when he decided to run while still attached to my hand.  So I’m holding my new phone with a white-knuckle grip, my other hand was getting rug burn because by this point my arm was dragging on the floor, I’m totally starving, and my lovable but sometimes slightly dim-witted spouse has lost our car.  Like, we don’t fight about stuff like that, I just get real passive-aggressive and quiet.  At one point, I vowed that I would not walk one more step and that he could go find our vehicle and then come pick us up.  After all, it’s so much easier to move a caravan of one than a hungry army of five with me as the Bitch in Command.

Do you think this fun night is over now?  No!  We have to eat.  My totally brills husband informed me that his GPS lists local restaurants.  We couldn’t eat too locally because all the Providence eateries were booked hours out.  There was a Waterfire in town and that’s a big deal around here.  What’s a Waterfire?  Um, copper bowls that are placed in a river and then lit on fire.  Don’t ask … I don’t really get it either.

I put our location into the piece of shit GPS — forevermore will be referred to as POSGPS — that I bought K for his birthday, and it gives directions to a Chili’s.  Fine.  Within moments, the POSGPS has led us into the dark, unlit slums of Rhode Island.  Sure, RI may seem like a pretty tame little state where “crime” means “banking scandals”, but I’m here to tell you that there are some scary-ass sections and we were in them.  Because I’m especially adept at stating the obvious, I told Special K that I felt pretty sure that there was no Chili’s or any other over-priced, mediocre chain restaurants in the area.  Businesses don’t pick these parts of town to set up shop.  Mobile Methadone clinics?  Yes.  TGIFriday’s?  No.  ’Round and around the same crack house we went.  Our POSGPS has a sense of humor, apparently.

Finally, we cheated death and were back on a major highway.  Close to home, we stopped at an over-priced, mediocre chain restaurant and had an over-priced, mediocre meal.  DD had basically lost his mind by this point.  Fellow patrons looked at him — our seizing, special needs child — with their sympathetic smiles.  It made me realize, if he was a seizing, special needs child, that would just be our life.  But since he isn’t a seizing, special needs child, he was pissing me off.

The drive home was pretty quiet.  Once we are fed, we are a kinder people.  I had my shiny phone, all beautiful and not “spider-webbed” — Thank you DD for your valid and artistic observation of what a smashed iPhone looks like — the children were silent and exhausted.  It was one of those crazy days that you really couldn’t predict what would happen next.  I was glad it was over.

We were almost home when I heard Veruca’s sweet sing-songy voice in the backseat.  ”Daddy?  I’m so happy tomorrow is Sunday.  I can’t wait for my friggin’ pancakes.”  K and I just looked at each other with blank stares.  We let that “teachable moment” pass.  I suspect there will be so many more.

I need a drink.  Not even a drink.  An IV of margaritas that go straight into my veins.  Oh, I’m all talk.  Did I tell you that I’ve given up drinking?  For the past few months, I’ve noticed that whenever I drink I want to die.  My muscles ache, and it’s like I have to choke down the drink to begin with.  If I’m going to choke on something it should be broccoli or some other essential, life-affirming vegetable … not Malibu Rum.  Do you know how much porn spam I’m going to get with all this choke talk?  So, yeah, doing this fucking life sober.  The good news is that I’m not an alcoholic so I can jump head first off this wagon at any given moment.

Speaking of wanting to mainline — this will get me all the international pharmacy spam — Veruca has been sick.  After an auspicious beginning, she’s been home all fucking week with this cough fever combo.  I’m amazed that it only took me 96 hours to really, really get used to her being away for a few hours a day.  Needless to say, the illness hasn’t dimmed her personality.  Tomorrow, I don’t care if I have to put ice cubes in her drawers, she is going.  DD is ready to see her go.  I am ready to see her go.  And her school is ready to see her.  They haven’t called, but I know in my heart that they miss her terribly.  I’m sure of it.  This is my mantra.

Can I talk about my site for a minute?  Really, who could stop me?  There’s been a weird trend that has happened as my traffic has increased.  There is this amazing group of people that either silently or outwardly lend support.  Amazing coming from a big crop of strangers.  Thank you.  I’m also starting to get the comments that cut.  Someone said something nasty about Veruca today (that didn’t get published and they got one of my special, custom-made banned IP messages, too).  I know it just goes with the territory and you cannot take these things personally.  People really need a venue in which to release their aggressions and why the fuck not launch their crap at an innocent four-year-old?  But I question where to draw the line.  The other day a couple people implied that DD was starting to get better looking which, as a mother just translates into, “DD was ugly and now he’s not as ugly.”  In cases like that, I just close comments.  I knew those people didn’t come from a place of ill will and it’s more about my sensitivities as a mother who thinks all her kids are part of this huge constellation called Awesome.  Anyway, this morning I emailed Heather Armstrong aka Dooce to ask for her advice.  She’s running a successful site on a grand scale and I know she’s been faced with these same challenges.  She didn’t reply to my email, but she did post this today.  You know that I make all things in the universe about me, so I think it’s clear that she wrote it just for me.  She talks about hatemail and how she created a whored-out page of ads and puts all her hate mail there.  It’s pretty brilliant and an idea that I’m totally stealing … since she wrote it just for me.

Aspie had his counseling appointment today.  Oh, wait — before I talk about that, HUGE NEWS:  Aspie got in trouble for talking in school!  You may have no idea what great news this is unless you have an Aspie in your life!  He was talking in the lunch line when the kids were supposed to be quiet.  He had a recess taken away, though his sentence was drastically reduced by the teacher and he ended up getting off with a warning.  My kid, the one who couldn’t carry a conversation if it came with a handle, is now an obnoxious, hard to contain, chatterbox.  Can juvie be far behind?  I. Am. Thrilled.  Okay, back to the doc.  A hadn’t seen his doctor in about 18 months.  It’s hard to describe this dude.  He’s completely disheveled and I’m always struck by the fact that he wears white tube socks with dark brown dress shoes.  And plaid … always plaid.  He looks like the love child of that hamburger guy from Popeye — Wimpy? — and Mr. Magoo who got an additional DNA download from the Absentminded Professor.

Absentminded or not, he remembered so much about Aspie.  I mean, I know he takes notes, but he remembered what my kid wore — that was a really fun phase we went through when Aspie was completely fixated on velvet blazers and neckties — the first time they met.  He remembered their secret handshake (sure, he probably does the same handshake with all the kids, but this is my fantasy where my child is just so memorable), and A’s love of all things train-related.

Even as an underage child, Aspie is protected by doctor-patient confidentiality.  Does it bug me that he goes behind closed doors and talks about God only knows what with someone not a parent?  You betcha.  I sit in the waiting room and flip through Family Circle, pondering turkey-shaped cookie place card holders and all the magic I could create if I actually used my label-maker (Family Circle just makes me feel like I’m not doing enough), and I look at the clock — a lot.  I strain my ears and hear nothing other than Dr. Wimpy’s booming laugh and imagine that Aspie is telling all the bad ME stories.  Like the time I went to add cold water to his bath and instead added scalding hot … WHILE HE WAS IN IT.  I still haven’t forgiven myself for that.  Or I imagine that he’s telling the good doctor that I serve too much processed food and he just longs for asparagus.  I check the door often to see if CPS is coming up the hall for me.  And if they do take me away, can I take my Family Circle with me?  Since Martha Stewart got sprung, the female prison population has been missing special somethings like turkey-shaped cookie place card holders.

Dr. Wimpy was so thrilled with the changes in Aspie over the past year-and-a-half.  We — Special K and my mother and I — certainly remember what he used to be like versus now, but it’s so nice to hear it from an outside, and for that matter paid-professional, party.  Aspie no longer needs to be dressed like Hef to feel conversant.  He can handle a handshake; hell, he can handle a hug.  He gets the joke where he used to be so wholly and unwaveringly literal … you can imagine the fun we had with idioms.  He has the ability to shift from one topic to another, even if his full range of topics is still pretty limited.  Dr. Wimpy said it and I’ve said it too; he is a different child.

As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I said to A, “You know, I think it was so amazing the way Dr. W remembered so much about you.  Your likes, your dislikes, your clothes and your school and things that you’ve struggled with.”  Without missing a beat, Aspie replied, serving up his usual sigh-eye roll combination, “Uh, yes, Mother.  Dr. W is what’s called a “Child Psychologist”.  He’s supposed to remember all these things.  It’s his job and he obviously does it well.  It’s why I wanted to see him.”

Sigh.  Looks like I might be jumping off that wagon sooner rather than later.

It’s been a fairly busy weekend.  Yesterday was just your basic, run-of-the-mill Saturday.  Oh, except for the flood that dumped six inches of water in one hour.  

Amid the din of ark building, I headed to Newport to attend my friend’s bachelorette party.  KKS is marrying a great guy — I call him MBB — in Aruba on Friday so we gathered ’round to drink good wine, eat fancy food, and rejoice that our lives no longer suck as bad as they once did.  We did the math last night and I realized that I’ve known KKS for 26 years.  We’ve grown up together, grown apart and then back together.  A couple of times.  We are resilient if nothing else.  And stubborn … yes, she is very stubborn.  What’s so interesting to me is to observe the cross-section of friends KKS has.  She has friends that are married, single, straight, gay, nice, bitchy.  She really is the UN of human connection as opposed to me — I’m proud of myself when I tell the bank teller that she should have a nice day too.  I’d like to show you a pic of the very beautiful KKS.  Unfortunately, none of the pics I took passed her editorial approval — a privilege I extend to my nearest and dearest friends.  She’s nutz.  Edited to add:  Oh, here she is!  Beautiful, right?

Oh, and here’s me last night.  Bitch, right?  I’m okay with it.  We can’t all look like we’re posing for a feminine protection toothpaste ad campaign.

Anyway, I had risotto — it was really, really firm.  Like “I hope my dental work is going to be okay” firm and I silently wondered if Chef Ramsay would approve.  Despite that, it was a really nice night.  Oh, except the one person at our table who repeatedly asked me why I wasn’t eating any bread, any of the pasta appetizer, any dessert.  Six reminders of my gluten allergy obviously weren’t enough.  I was about to explain that I was also recently diagnosed with a deadly allergy to fuckwits, but thought better of it.  I did everyone a favor and went home after dinner.  I’ve aged and I feel it.  I was embarassed to have penis-shaped confetti — cockfetti — strewn all over the table and tried to wear my penis necklace as a fashionable bracelet.  Nothing says “old” like an inability to appreciate novelty dicks.

On the drive home, I called my mom and chatted with her for a few minutes.  I asked if she had any drywall holes that needed repairing because I had just the risotto to fix it.  She suggested that Chef Ramsay would never have let that fuckery leave the kitchen.  She gets me.

Then I talked to Special K.  He reported that our children are hellions and two-thirds of them were still awake.  That man still hasn’t learned to lie to me and tell me that they’re asleep … at least when I’m behind the wheel of a car.  The exit to Boston was looking so tempting, but I did go home to be greeted by a hungry Aspie and a pissed off Veruca.  Apparently V doesn’t appreciate when Mommy goes out to an establishment that doesn’t have placemats you can write on.  I spent a little bit more time bitching about my risotto.  Special K suggested that Gordon Ramsay would have told the chef to piss off.  Another person in my life who totally understands how my brain works.

Today was a beautiful day and I was happy to greet it without a hangover.  Veruca went fairy hunting with my mother today.  And if you aren’t familiar with fairy hunting, it’s exactly as it sounds.  They are in search of woodland fairies and will not stop until they find one.  This is where I shrug and just feel happy that it got her out of the house for a few hours.  They also went to some sort of festival and I am delighted to report that three different vendors told my mother that Veruca was the most well-behaved child that had walked through their booth.  Of course, the place had probably only been open for like, five minutes.  But, yeah, she was pointing instead of touching and lots of fantastic manners.  Veruca shook down The vendors all bestowed her with free stuff and she came home with quite a stash of goodies that she plans to add to her collections.  A bit of an odd aside, today was the first day someone recognized Veruca from my site.  I went to high school with her and I’m glad to report that she doesn’t have dead cats in her freezer (that I know of), but she has never seen V and completely recognized her from here.  

Aspie spent the day finishing a project that he started at the beginning of the summer.  I could swear that I already wrote about this, but Aspie and I had this insane bet regarding his report card.  I set completely unrealistic academic stakes — higher than I knew he could achieve, because quite frankly, the reward was some $120 Lego Star Wars Republican Gunship thing that I had no intention of buying.  He won.  I bought.

He spent a good portion of June assembling it and then ran out of steam around the halfway mark.  It has been sitting and staring at me ever since.  A couple of weeks ago he thought that maybe he should disassemble it and put it away.  I discouraged him.  I spent a hundred bucks on extruded plastic , I want to see it do more than make me scream, “Fuuuuuuuck” every time I step on a piece of it.  He started back on it today and finished.  He’s totally amazing and I cannot express how happy I am to not have 62,453 pieces of gun ship taunting me any longer.