the modernity ward

Dude, What Day Is It Again?

The past five days have involved:

• black widow hiding in recycle bin (huge)
• Sophia perforated eardrum (awful)
• Daphne cold same night (seriously, I got like three hours of sleep max)
• Sean out of town (see above) (also, now back)
• House hunting (frantic flailing about as market dead in pre-holiday period)
• MY house, THE house, the one we made an offer on and didn't get, having an open house
• BUT nobody has bought it yet
• SO we're resubmitting the offer
• Apocalyptic flea infestation (Advantage in the mail)
• Dad in a holding pattern
• Toilet requiring plunging
• Cat barfed off edge of desk
• Freelance articles here and there (yay)
• Some other things I am forgetting, because
• All I can think about is houses.

Seriously, I am ready to have the deed in hand, because then I can stop thinking about it! But right now all I can think is, my god, who would let US have a HOUSE? Because we're a couple of nine-year-olds! We don't own property! You should see our car! It looks like a moose kicked it!

I try to imagine us as homeowners and it inevitably devolves into some scenario involving us running in circles shrieking and going out to poop in the yard. I mean, sure, we're taking good care of our kids, up to code if you will, and seem to be managing our affairs sensibly enough. No credit card debt or anything. But...

When Sean is out of town, I keep the house together pretty well up until the last day. I feed the kids well and make sure all the little needs are met. The whole time, though, I eat like a 19-year-old boy who is alternating between uppers and weed. Nothing for long stretches, then an entire tub of Oatmeal Cranberry Dunkers and half a case of Diet Coke. Couple apple slices for breakfast, then six bowls of cereal and a cheeseburger at lunch. What if it turns out I'm like that with house maintenance?

I never worried once about my ability to take care of a newborn baby, but a house? Whole different ballgame, that.

Armed and Dangerous

If you have little kids, you're used to the hefting: baby up, baby down, preschooler out of immediate harm's way, groceries, laundry. I was standing in a parking lot yesterday hefting the stroller out of the trunk for the nine frillionth time when I heard, in an approving tone, "Hey, strong arms!"

My admirer was a young man in the next car over. He was either a college football player or a model who plays a college football player in cologne ads, and he was clearly not hitting on me -- just genuinely admiring my massive guns -- so I smiled and pointed to the twenty-five pound baby I was then hefting into the hefty stroller. "Best upper-body workout in the world," I said, or something equally dumb, making sure to flash my braces and maybe a tantalizing sliver of stretchmarked belly from beneath my applesauce-encrusted t-shirt.

"Well, have a good day!" he said, smiling, and drove off. I leaned down to kiss my baby as I buckled her in.

Then I made sure to kiss each bicep.

* * * *

So I've got these mighty arms, like that green cartoon flea with the twirly mustache, and I've got all this barely suppressed anger and rage, and I was thinking that maybe, instead of periodically getting frustrated that the baby is awake again for the fourth time in two hours and karate-chopping the top of the ancient seagrass hamper until it breaks last night, I could harness my powers for good.

I was thinking I could beat up some child molesters or something. Maybe put up an ad on late night TV: "Do you have BAD PEOPLE in your life or possibly your neighborhood? Did you read a disturbing news story about a HORRIBLE PERSON? Do you want a MAD LADY to BEAT THEM UP?" And then there'd be a frame of me standing very still (we couldn't afford a real freeze frame) posing in a muscular, aggressive position. "Five foot four inches of compressed fury, ready to unleash an ARM-ageddon of hurt on whomever is troubling your peace of mind!"

And then I could beat up some wicker furniture or something. To show the extent of my fury.

Of course I'd have to review the evidence in every case, but I was thinking it would be a free service.

The Dashboard Melted, but We Still Have the Radio

The housing search continues unabated. And I'm sorry, nice people with the pretty Victorian, but I am just not going to pay you $300K for a two-bedroom house. I'm just not. Also, Nashville home owners in general, please see the following list of Things That Are Not Other Things:

-room tucked under hipped roof with maximum height of six feet but only right in the middle, and no windows: NOT A BEDROOM.

-stall with sink you can wash your hands in while you sit on the toilet AND soak your feet in an infant tub, all without stretching: NOT A FULL BATHROOM.

-living room bounded on one side by the front door and on the other by glass French doors: NOT A MASTER SUITE.

-concrete-floored basement with open stairway and door to garage: ALSO NOT A MASTER SUITE.

-hot plate balanced on the back of a toilet: NOT A KITCHEN.

I only made up the last one.

* * * *

My dad, well, I just don't even know where to start. As long as he's in the hospital he's okay. When he's out, he declines. He's in inpatient rehab right now (the physical kind of rehab) and he's mighty pissed about it, because they make him feed himself and walk and things like that. And he can't demand Neosporin and baby powder and soda and hot blankets all night long like he did at the hospital. I am dead serious when I say that I am markedly more gracious and accommodating when I am nine centimeters dilated and vomiting onto my Birkenstocks.

I get my information from my aunt and uncle. Sometimes I get three pages of positivity and happy stories; when I call to discuss the good news, things have taken a turn for the worse. Soon as my feelings are all lined up and mournful and resigned about that, suddenly everything is amazing again.

It's exhausting. And I'm not even there in the trenches.

On top of this is the expectation that I'll go visit while he's in the facility (for the next week or so). Which I was all ready to do until I remembered that Sean has yet another conference this week, meaning the only way to leave town is to find a petsitter and drag both kids along, which won't go over too well with the no-children-allowed facility. Oh, and airfare for just me would be around $400 on such short notice.

So that's not happening. Which means that I am unsupportive and neglectful, and probably to blame for all this misery in the first place.

Gosh, I kind of feel like I could use...a drink.

(Oh my god I am kidding.)

* * * *

The stress is beginning to literally erupt from my body. In addition to some seriously sexy pimples (really, universe? Right on my nose? What am I, a seventh grader?) I am suffering a bout of episcleritis, which I haven't seen since the days of infertility stress. The whole Rudolph the Red-Nosed and Also Red-Eyed Reindeer look is set off nicely by my new halo of white hair. Yes, every new hair growing in along my forehead and temples is white. Which brings me up to maybe 10% gray in patches. I'm down with the grays, but not so much with the patches of flaming red on the face. Anyway my point is that I am totally at the peak of hotness, and trying to keep my stress eating to things in the microwave popcorn-flavored seltzer family. 

* * * *

The free cable is back on (yay! and we are not stealing it!)so I'm watching Roseanne whenever possible, and very much enjoying it from the perspective of Married Adult Mother-Type Person, even more than I did the first time around (I was almost the same age as Becky). I am realizing that whenever my firsthand role modeling for various adult situations like, oh, money troubles and whatall was lacking, I took my coping mechanisms from Roseanne. I can't decide whether that's awesome, unfortunate, or a goddamned shame*. Thoughts?

*Those are the three categories of things.

Zzzzzzzzzttt!

Why, that's the sound of my brain shorting out, is all. No need to be alarmed. Maybe I dragged the kids to the ped for shots to update the form for daycare and then left without the form; maybe I can't remember what day it is. If you squint real hard, you can still make out a greenish form the approximate shape of Uncle Jesse and maybe Bob Saget. Yeah, all that's left in my head are reruns of Full House. Not least because I wonder what that townhouse would cost today.

House things, dad things, blah blah blah. I'll write when I have anything to report.

At Least I Have My Hands Free Now

Well, we heard back from the landlords, who are proposing a grand total of $500 plus security deposit as an incentive. Because of the tax credit, you see.

And the owners of the house we're interested in sent a "final-for-now" counter that's about $5,000 below asking, and about $12,000 above where we want to end up.

I've looked at EVERY house in our price range in three sections of town, and not one is The One. Unless we are talking about The One that Smells Like Sewer Gas and Has Suspicious Paint Bubbling Beneath the Upstairs Toilet, or The One Where Someone Clearly Smoked a Pack of Cigarettes Immediately Before You Arrived at Nine A.M and Every Morning Before For the Last Twelve Years., or The One That Is Not a Duplex But Nonetheless Boasts Two Kitchens (And No, Is Not Kosher).

So all those balls I had in the air are going thunk thunk thunk around me. And frankly all I feel is relief. Well, there's some minor irritation but nothing a soothing ointment won't fix (hey, the tax credit was extended!). So without ado, my recipe for the finest soothing ointment of all:

Cheaper Dairy-Free Vegan Low-Carb Pumpkin Spice Latte

Brew up a cup of coffee, very strong. While it's going, take the following ingredients:

3-4 TB coconut milk (regular or light)

1-2 TB unsweetened vanilla almond milk

2-3 TB canned pumpkin

pumpkin pie spice to taste (clove, cinnamon, ginger)

stevia to taste (I use English Toffee flavor)

...and mix them all up in a giant mug. Heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so, and taste it -- should be kind of like pumpkin pie batter.

Pour your extra-dark coffee in there and stir. Sit back, drink it, and count your chickens.

Of course if you want to use cow milk or soy milk or sugar or agave nectar or a nice mild snake venom, it's none of my nevermind.

Well, Bust My Buttons

Youall are just too nice. I really didn't intend it as a please, please compliment me or I'm taking my keyboard and going home, but I guess in retrospect 1) it could have been read as such and 2) I kind of needed the boost. Like a Vivarin for the soul! Or some of that scary asthma-pill speed you used to be able to buy at the Shady Grady!

So here's the deal: I'll keep on keepin' on, and spit-shine the ol' resume so that I can apply for sketchy phishing writer job postings on Craigslist. And then I'll write about that.

Also, I may actually post a picture of one of my grocery lists. They look...well, they look insane. I spell things all crazy to entertain myself (AIGS -- CHEEDAR CHEZ -- CAT FUD --) and then I draw a million tiny little lines all over the list, which has invariably been written on the back of a credit card statement or a note from the gynecologist.

So, let's see: the big things. Right now, my top concerns are as follows:

1. Goddamn Frontline-resistant fleas

2. Keeping up with my dad's activities (seriously, I could just cut and paste from my aunt's emails and call it done; they're rich in both entertainment and shock value)

3. Waiting on counter-offer re: Very Nice House

What's that? I neglected to mention the last one? Yeah, well, we decided things were WAY too boring around here, and we just happened to find a beautiful house for which the owners would like just a smidge more money than we have to give, so, yeah. We're waiting on that.

On the upside, it's a stunner, with a lot of things in really good shape and relatively new. Great block, walking distance to elementary, nice neighbors. On the downside, nobody can promise me we'll get into that school (it's a lottery school, long story if you aren't local), and also, we'd be house-poor. And the water heater is kind of old.

In the Neutral column we have the fact that the house is a hundred years old. Which is very cool and also a little nail-bitey from the perspective of repairs up the road.

I love it, but I'm not going to pine for it if we don't get it.

Eeeeeee.

Joanna Leery Polyp...

is feeling kind of...irrelevant.

For fun I Googled myself with the word "hate" hoping to turn up some nasty trollin' action, but nothin'. And pretty much anything re: Jo Leery Polyp surrounds those halcyon days of infertility, early pregnancy, and finally Sophia's rollicking good time of a birth story. After that, it's all dead air.

I think I may have cashed in my fifteen minutes. Which is a little bit of a relief, as it was utterly painless and largely unremarkable save for the cadre of friends, in-person and online, that now surrounds me. Net gain: neato.

What now, though? What makes an interesting blog? I started in the enviable niche market of infertility blogging, and then I had to go and kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Yes, I'm being flip, because oh my god, those days were torment, and I have no wish to return to them. The blog quite literally kept me sane; it funneled all that energy that, left to its own devices, compelled me to purchase thirty pregnancy tests from the dollar store and then use them...all...in one weekend.

It seems crazy unless you've been there. Then you know it's crazy, and you know exactly how it happened.

Anyway, I'm kind of blundering niche-less through parenting bloggery. I was thinking of making a career of writing insulting letters to local newspaper columnists criticizing their grammar and including a copy of my own resume and a suggestion that I be allowed to replace them, but, you know, meh. There's already a "mom blog" column in our paper (yes, that's right: a print "blog". That is indistinguishable from a "column". A "really dull column". That reads like a retread of the Parents magazine letter from the editor.) and honestly, in this town, if Keith Urban isn't somehow involved, you ain't getting far. I don't know, he kind of has mommy hair. Maybe I could make money off that somehow.

So, internets. What would you suggest? What would you like to read about? Should I shut things down until I hit nursing school and crowbar open some new niche for myself? Keep on keepin' on? I guess Mimi Smartypants blogs about nothing-and-everything and is, like, totally famous and shit now, but she is Mimi Smartypants and I am me. I'm the middle school basketball coach in Hightstown, New Jersey, and she's Shaquille O'Neal. He plays basketball, right?

I guess I really don't want to shut down, if only because I'm not ready to burn up my diary, especially since this diary periodically compliments my writing. It's that aimless time of life, when the ambition starts gearing up again but the babies are too little to do anything sustained. Where's this whole internet thing going, folks? What do you think?

Skree! Blaaah! Raaah!

Those are Daphne's big words right now. She sounds like a pterodactyl having a chat with Godzilla. I forgot how nine months is kind of the zenith of cuteness for babies. It also happens to be the nadir of Personal Baby Safety, which means she spends most of her waking hours attempting to backdive off the bed, stick one hand in the dog's water and the other in a socket, and eat tiny poisonous chokeable things, preferably all at once. Because the nasty, it wasn't enough -- why stop at a wad of cat hair and dead leaves when you can also have something that is either a pill or a mint? While you are rolling down a flight of stairs?

As I recall, it's all downhill from here.

Anyway, so what's new with you guys? Nothing much here. Just, you know, trying to process the whole Terrible Illness of Parent thing while simultaneously absorbing the news that Your House, It Is To Be Sold and Torn Down and looking for a new house. And, look, I know that it's a sensible investment and blah blah equity but Holy The Prophet Elijah in a Rhinestone Golf Cart, that is a LOT of money. And if you don't pay it, well, then you end up on the news in the financial version of the Headless Fatty, with close-ups of your big old Foreclosure sign and a rain barrel with suspenders where your pants used to be. 

The good news is, I stand to win a sizable cash prize in the secret blogger contest of How Many Stressful Life Changes Can You Undergo in Six Months Without Anybody Actually Dying?. If my horrifying face surgery goes as scheduled, I'm just laps and laps ahead of the competition.

BOO!

Yesterday: a very lovely birthday courtesy of many, many people, both near and far

Today: Halloween!

Tomorrow: a real post.

Back. And, A Question for You

I just don't even know where to begin. The default setting seems to be eating toast and watching Pomplamoose videos on YouTube, so...yeah. I guess I should start with the overdue library books and the baskets of clean folded laundry, the diapers waiting to go in the dryer, the breakfast dishes. I should start with the real estate agent who's waiting for me to schedule viewings (on which subject more below). I should start with getting some things together to send to the people who were so generous while we conducted our whirlwind tour of Tornado Alley. But all I really want to do is sit in a quiet tidy place and not do much of anything at all.

Visiting a gravely ill parent is sort of unspeakably difficult, especially if you missed out on a lot of the intervening decline. Emotional tectonic shifts combined with the riptide drag of a bunch of little kids who want you right in the here and now, providing crackers and strawberries and little plastic toys, they cause you to kind of lose your train of thought permanently. That train derailed and rolled down an embankment and took out a rusted old water tower on the way down.

It was way harder because Sean was away until the day before we left -- I've been on solo parenting duty for nine of the past eleven days, I think. Boo frickin' hoo, I know, but it contributes to the overall...wha? (Although there was a high point: Jenn came to visit, and Sophia has requested her immediate return.)

So that's what's going on. My tether to the right-now is pretty thin, so I have to do just one thing at a time: put a dish in the dishwasher. One folded shirt in a drawer. One email. One library book in the car. Making the choice to be here, to stay here, that's the thing that can keep you alive.

* * * *

In other news: I need your wise consult, internets. We recently learned from our landlords that the house we live in is going to be sold to someone who will most likely tear it down and build new on the site. Our lease will be honored through its end in July, but not renewed. There is also, the landlord mentioned, the possibility of the buyer providing some sort of financial incentive for leaving before the lease runs out.

Hmm.

What kind of incentive, we asked -- and got back "Well, what were you thinking?" as a response. And what I'm thinking is that the buyer is hoping that we'll open the bidding pretty low. And I want to make sure we get as much as is fair out of this, because we were really not as ready to buy now as we were going to be in a year (we'd thought about renting for 2 years to save up a down payment).

So we're wondering what to ask for. One suggestion was to ask for the amount of our rent per month, for each month that we leave early. So if we left six months early, six months' worth of rent money goes to us. No, it's not entirely logical, but it's a starting point. Clearly we'd want to prorate it so that the sooner we leave, the more we get, but how much per month is fair? 

For reference purposes, if someone is buying a house in this neighborhood for a teardown, the lot alone will run you upwards of $200K, and probably closer to $300K. Our rent is $1350 a month (and we will NOT be buying in this neighborhood, as much as I love it -- gentrification hath progressed too far). Would $1350 per month early be too much? $1000? What do you think?