Sadly, you’ll have to click the link twice to hear all the magic.  I don’t know why.

Listen here and prepare to have your mind blown.

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”

This weekend the kid started out feeling pretty optimistic …

but soon things took a turn for the worse.  DD followed his heart and touched a lightbulb.  It blistered him, he didn’t cry.  He did tell everyone what happened though.  We put my mother’s world-famous comfrey salve on it, coupled with a Dora Band-Aid.  He felt better.

I made cake.  Lots of cake to compensate for not cooking dinner.  I just ordered pizza for dinner so penance had to be done for dessert.

DD wanted a Little Einstein cake.  I’m not creative.  Aspie had the great idea to take one of DD’s Little Einstein toys and stick it on top of the cake.  He is a genius and despite the fact that DD looks like he’s about to be beamed up by the mothership, he was very thrilled.

I made a rainbow cake for DD’s birthday, but I think it would also be appropriate to serve if you are coming out of the closet and want to find a creative way to let everyone know.

I also made a carrot cake (from scratch) in celebration of my friend’s shiny new marriage.  Rumor has it that it was pretty sensational — my cake, that is.  Though I imagine their shiny new marriage is sensational too.  I just added nuts and raisins (again, to the cake, not to their marriage) until it looked pretty.  As far as the wording is concerned, they met through their mutual love of the Dave Matthews Band.  Yes, it cost me my very soul to acknowledge it in icing.  I’d like you to know that I toasted those fucking walnuts before slapping them on the sides of the cake.

DD received some nice gifts …

but his favorite was a Darth Vader Star Wars figurine.  It’s the first Star Wars thing that belongs solely to him.  Veruca immediately stole it.

He quickly reclaimed it and it hasn’t been out of his sight since.

Not even in the middle of the night when he woke up with a nightmare and not even this morning at breakfast.

She found other things to taunt him with.

He spent a good portion of the day ignoring his sister and being read to by his brother.

It is now 6:40.  In exactly five minutes DD will be officially three years old.  He’s the last of my babies, which is so wonderful and so sad.

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.