Monthly Archives: October 2007

Breastfeeding One is Enough

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Every morning my little Sushi cat likes to hang out in the bathroom sink while I apply my makeup and brush my teeth.  She’s been quite patinet lately, what with the baby making it difficult for me to give Sushi the level of attention she is used to, and the normal morning schedule sometimes being pushed back until afternoon.
I’ve always enjoyed my “Sushi time”, and it’s nice to have a lovey purry kitty that doesn’t ask too much from you (unlike the older kids or the baby constantly hanging off your boob).
Still, my kitties are my furry babies – though I don’t mean that literally.  Which is why it was that more shocking when this morning, as I was leaning over the sink to apply eye liner, sushi bit my boob.
I don’t get it either.

An Open Letter to Mike Rowe

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Dear Mike,
Though in all likelihood you will never see this letter, I want you to know I watch your show regularly.  Your perfect comic timing and self deprecation provide me endless amusement.
This amusement is something I need desperately for, you see, I find myself stressed out by dirty situations on a fairly continual basis.
Examples from my week have been:
Dog poo and pee on the rug in my living room (she squatted right in front of me, and when I yelled, she ran, but the poop kept coming.  So it wound up in more than one “neat” little spot.
Half a container of mandarin oranges in the bathroom sink, along with poo smeared on the toilet seat, shredded toilet paper all over the floor and pee and poo encrusted toddler sized panties on the floor (this would be my filthy 4 year old, Neve at her not quite grossest.  She also specializes in destruction – like after she swiped her older sister’s school scisssors and my blue sharpie last night and had a grand old time with them in her bedroom)
Makeup manufactured specifically for children (I still don’t quite understand that) that is neither discreet in color nor “washable” as it is labeled – my 8 year old’s bright, horrendous “whore blue” eyeshadow all over the upstairs bathroom’s
floor, along with her “streetwalker red” lipstick smeared on the sink.  And more pee soaked 4 year old panties.  The only reason there wasn’t also huge dried globs of toothpaste all over the sink (and mirror, for some reason) is that I took their toothpaste away.
A sink full of dirty dishes that no one has bothered to scrape the food from, allowing them to emit quite a lovely and appetizing odor for the fruit flies, which have set up camp in my kitchen drains.
An overflowing garbage can that both older girls decided was too much trouble to be bothered with, and that the floor next to was better suited for their old tissues and napkins.
Dog poo all over the gravel driveway, because the damn dog has decided she’d rather go there than in the grass where she’s supposed to go.
Kitty litter in the shower – it gets caught in their paws, and they like to go in the shower when I am done so they can drink the water around the drain.
Some sort of liquified vegetable in the fridge.  I didn’t try too hard to identify it.
Huge piles of used coffee single serve “K-cups”, because my husband likes to cut them open and dump out the used coffee grounds for compost, except that he lets them pile up to mammoth proportions all over the counter until they are moldy first.
That’s all in the last 4 days or so.  And keep in mind that does not include the poopy diapers the baby produces daily.  Have I tried to keep my house clean and sanitized?  Yes.  Diligently.  Am I still afraid of what it looks like under my couch cushions and even worse, under the couch?  Definitely.  I have all but given up on ever having a clean house again.  I can spend an entire day and barely scratch the surface of it.  And then they’ll make an even grander mess once I am done anyway.
I am, more or less, a mother at her wit’s end, because taking care of my family? It’s a dirty job.

No Dust Bunnies Here, Thank You Very Much

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I will have you all know, I do not have dust bunnies in my home.
Now now, don’t hate me.  I just happen to have a superior cleaning
method which allows for the lack of these small bundles of dust and fur.
I must give credit for this situation where it is due:  the 3 pets which constantly
shed, and the 3 children who make it impossible for me to do any
cleaning so that what should be a dust bunny in fact becomes a herd of large
dust buffaloes.
I know – you’re so jealous.
(Tip: You are almost guaranteed to have only dust bunnies if you lack pets
or if you vacuum or sweep regularly).

Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

More Fun With the S Word

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Now that I am thoroughly freaked out by Neve’s brown recluse incident, it seems fitting that I should be bombarded with more spider fun.

Incident 1:
There I was, in my bathroom, brushing my teeth, innocently preparing for bed. There was Sushi, hangin’ out in the sink, getting in my way. And there, as I leaned close to the wall and looked in the mirror to check my flossing, was a big ol’ spider. Right on the wall, not far from my head.
Sidebar: If you don’t already know, I am terrified of vermin of the 8 legged variety. We’re talking full-on phobia here. I can’t even get close enough to kill them. If I am home alone, I try to get one of the animals to dispatch said creature. Failing that, it takes a whole lot of working myself up to
squash it, accompanied by some major adrenaline, goosebumps, and cold sweat. And screaming. I must look like some tribal warrior heading to an inevitable death, shouting a war chant. And then I have trouble
disposing of the carcass. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. They still suck.
Anyway, back to the story. I see this spider hanging out on my bathroom wall and after I jump back and cry out, I do what comes naturally in those situations: I grab the cat out of the sink and hold her out toward the wall, hoping she’ll spot it. She does. I set her down on the tub and jump back away. She looks
at the spider, looks at me, yawns, and nonchalantly exits the room. Crap!!!!
Now I am frantically looking around for something I can smash it with. I don’t want to call Paul upstairs now because it’s on the move and I don’t want it to get away before he is able to come to the rescue. There’s an empty perfume box…..it’s the only thing close at hand that will do the trick. So with a loud scream and an even louder smack, Mr. Spider met his doom. Even better, he stuck to the perfume box so I didn’t have to worry about wiping him up with a tissue.

Incident 2:
I was feeling a little edgy after the aforementioned spider smackdown. I threw away the box (holding it out at arm’s length all the while……I wonder if I can burn the box and spider in a fire….). I rinsed my mouth (still had toothpaste in there) and was going for the towel when I spotted yet another big ugly on the wall opposite the one where ugly 1 had met his doom moments ago. Okaaaayyyyy……well my nerves are still shot from the first guy, and since this one was staying put, I yelled for Paul, who made his way upstairs and smooshed it
rather handily, thank you very much. But I wasn’t happy. Two spiders in my bathroom (which is in my bedroom to make matters worse) at the same time. Not cool. Not cool at all. And Paul thinks burning dead spiders is a waste. I really need to break out the vacuum. Get under all the beds and behind all the furniture. Satisfy myself that there are none others lurking in the dark recesses of my home. Sent a chill up my spine just thinking about it. Maybe I’d go down to the kitchen and get a drink.

Incident 3:
On the ceiling. In the kitchen. Mere moments after Incident 2, which was itself mere moments after Incident 1.
WTF??!!!!!
Another job for Paul. Even when I am home alone I don’t attempt a kill while they are above me. They could fall on me, and no amount of anti-crazy meds could bring me back from that. (ok, I exaggerate…..but trust me when they’ve dropped on me in the past it’s not been pretty.)
3 spiders. In one night. Practically at the same time. In my home, my sanctuary. They must totally be out to get me.

Incident 4:
After a fitful night of sleep (spider dreams anyone???) I groggily make my way to the coffee maker and then over to the couch. It’s almost bus stop time, and it’s still somewhat dark out. I don’t have any lights on downstairs but you can see pretty well with the sun starting to come up. So it’s no problem for me to see the spider making his way quickly and creepily past my feet next to the couch and toward the fireplace. Paul’s not home, and even if he were, this guy is too fast. Thankfully I have my hard soled slippers on. I jump on him. It doesn’t kill him. Again, and he’s slowing down. Third time is the charm. Trouble is, I now have spider guts on my slippers and I no longer wish to be associated with them. I fact, I need the fireplace to be working so I can burn them. No, not burn. Incinerate. Damn spiders. Instead I take the dog outside and scrape my slippers hard on the concrete sidewalk outside.
I can burn that later.

Other “not quite incidents, but bad nonetheless”:
In the morning there are hundreds upon hundreds of “sheet webs” all over my lawn. Actually, they are there all the time, but it’s the morning dew that makes them visible. These are created by funnel spiders who trap bugs from the lawn to eat. They are not huge, but neither are they small. I prefer to pretend that I don’t know they are there. In the morning with all the dew, I cannot do that. They are
also all over the gravel driveway. I take perverse pleasure in running over them with my car. Hmmm…..can’t burn that later…….but I can take it through a high powered car wash.There is a giant spider carcass in my garage right now. Paul killed him the other night when coming home from doing van work. I swear, this
thing is big…even dead and all curled up…..still big. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. ANd I certainly can’t walk near it, all squished on the garage floor. If I spent any measurable time in the garage……I’d have to burn the floor.
The girls spotted a big fast spider in the sunroom last night. Paul killed him. I do not like all of these spider sightings all of a sudden.
Now I am jumping at every little dust bunny, every little bit of cat fur.
And what’s worse, I know there are some giants out there. I’ve seen them in the past. They haunt my nightmares. Three, in particular stand out, and I wish I had pictures of them for proof.
The first one was the worst. We had lived in Virginia maybe 5 or 6 months. It was a humid night and we were coming home from the laundry mat.
At the time we lived in an apartment in a house surrounded by huge trees. We didn’t get a lot of light in because of them, and there were a lot of bugs. Perfect for spiders. But up until that night I hadn’t seen anything worse than what I’d seen growing up in NY or NJ. BUt that night……….it was dark, and there was a light on outside the front door. And above the front door……the horror. I swear on all that is holy, I seriously thought someone’s pet tarantula had escaped. I have seen wolf spiders, I have seen dock spiders…..I have Never seen anything like that guy. I swear he was the size of my hand. And he was hanging out right above the doorway. I froze about 20 feet away. There was no way in hell I
was walking through that doorway. Paul had to (bravely) run in and come back out with a propane torch. He had himself a nice spider bbq before I
I could go in the house. Paul thinks live spiders are perfectly fine to burn.
The second one, we named. And we named him for the noise he made when he “jumped” off of our back porch into the leaf pile. “Thud”. He was almost as big
as the first guy, but not as quite. I didn’t go out onto our back porch for weeks after that.
The third one, I can still hardly believe I saw. Thankfully my mother did, too, so I have a witness. I had pulled up to her house in late September to drop something off and by her front door was what I thought, a fake spider. And I said to myself, “It’s kind of early for her to be putting out her Halloween stuff”.
But I did think I’d give her props for finding such a life – like fake widow spider. I mean, obviously it was fake. It was brown, shaped like a widow spider, and
had a giant fat body and long, long legs. I mean a spider that looks like that with a diameter of like 3 or 4 inches just can’t be real. Holy Crap he was real.
He even scared my mother….the master gardener who is totally used to co-existing with giant garden spiders. As I recall, she dispatched him with one of those electrified rackets that are generally used for flies and mosquitoes. And we both learned that there exists a spider called a “brown widow”. Great.
Anyway, that’s enough spider talk for me for today. I am sure I will have more in the future. I hate spiders, I see them way too often, and I like to whine about it.