The weather today was seductive- high 70′s, light breeze, clear blue sky and brown leaves forming a crunchy carpet on the ground. The weather was so perfect, we debated taking the kids to the zoo but chickened out with excuses of “it will probably be too crowded”. mike doesn’t like the zoo and convinced himself three 4 year olds wouldn’t like it today because they’ve been there before. right. as if all little kids don’t believe the zoo is freakin amazing and go insane at the very word. we can’t even say or spell the word around them or they go apeshit (pun intended). after much debate, i decided we were taking the kids to a newish park on the edge of the county. i didn’t tell mike where we were heading because if i mention a schedule, he thinks it has been etched in granite and must not be deviated from because it will make the universe implode. i told him i am a river, flowing from one idea to the next and he should go with the current and stop being so prussian. he says i’m whimsical. i say the whimsical river shall take ye where you want to go. he rolled his eyes at me but agreed he would rather not know if there is a chance i’ll change my mind. compromise! in the end, the kids played, the dog ran, we had a burger king picnic and a lovely day even if it was spur of the moment and whimsical.

today, i lorded over SEVEN kids under the age of 5 in my backyard. it is a good thing the weather turned mild and they were able to run around playing in the leaves. of course, after someone commented in my flickr stream about being scared of spiders in leaf piles, i’ve started triple checking the kids for hitchhiking insects. to further the paranoia, i found a funky bug crawling along our back fence and must consult my zoo insect keeper amiga for identification (she’s handy).

speaking of animals, i’m sitting at our dining room table typing away on my laptop. i looked up to notice the beautiful bird feeder my husband filled and hung outside the window for my birthday two months ago had an actual, living cardinal eating seed from it. i heard rumors there was a blue jay pecking around it yesterday but now i have visual confirmation that the birds have finally found the feeder. i was beginning to wonder if we either had really stupid birds or a defective feeder. it didn’t help that i found a dead sparrow laying underneath it a few weeks ago and started wondering if the feed came from china laced with melamine. my dad told me the birds would find the feeder as it got colder and they probably didn’t notice it because it wasn’t attached to a tree. the weather has turned cold and we have birds eating outside the window- dad was right again.

our backyard is also home to dozens of incredibly fat squirrels scampering through the leaves holding two more nuts than fit in their mouths or squirrely little paws (squirrels have paws, right? claws? hands?). with four trees in a small yard and no dogs or cats to chase them off, our yard is small animal heaven. i haven’t seen any possums this year but i’m sure they are lurking around.  i am pretty sure i’ve told this story before but i can’t find it after an extensive search of my archives (i.e. googling kimblahg + possum. why don’t i have a marsupial tag?) so i’ll recount one of our most bizarre suburban animal experiences.

when the triplets were still in the NICU, i began collecting strollers. i didn’t have my babies at home so my maternal instinct turned towards procuring infant transportation – never mind that they were too small to sit in standard strollers for months, they needed wheels! the first triplet stroller i bought was a peg perego behemoth triplet transporter. it was a nice stroller but giant, unwieldly and hard to push. after forcing mike to put it together the instant i brought it home (still sans babies), we realized there was no way we could get it in and out of the van and it was relegated to the garage. later, i bought a triple runabout which was just about the best damn thing ever. it had stadium seating so the kids could all see over each other, bicycle wheels for easy navigation and a sunshade to protect their precious little heads. i added it to our collection. later, i bought a double back to back stroller for the boys and a single conventional stroller for lily and her traveling respiratory unit. eventually, i added a double and single umbrella stroller to our arsenal and ended up using that combo more than anything. the triplet strollers, while nice, were massive and drew too much attention to our already noticeable brood. we usually only used them when walking around the block so they spent most of the time garaged.

one winter evening, after the triplets were home from the NICU and i was asleep, mike was in the garage. he sat on the garage couch (what, you don’t have garage furniture?) reading a book when he heard a scratching noise. he looked everywhere before he realized it was coming from the mammoth peg triplet stroller which hadn’t been touched since assembly. he slowly crept towards it and peeked inside the middle seat where he noticed a curled up, furry animal.

it took a moment before he realized it was a large possum curled like a cat and sleeping in our babies’ stroller. i would have screamed but if he did, he won’t admit it. he pushed the button activating the loud garage door opener hoping to wake the thing up. it didn’t move. he jostled the stroller and woke mr. possum up. it looked at him and went back to sleep. it wasn’t even scared enough to “play” possum and go to sleep, it was just irritated to be woken up so it curled back up and closed its eyes. he finally wheeled the huge stroller out to the driveway and tried to dump the possum out. that woke it up but it didn’t vacate the baby seat. instead, it started hissing  and baring its teeth at him while he attempted to dislodge it without touching it. finally, he grabbed a stick and poked at it while it stood hissing away until it finally jumped out and ran off. he stared at the now empty stroller and wheeled it back in the garage.

we never put the babies in the possum stroller and eventually sold it to another family. we didn’t tell them it attracts the only native marsupial to north america but we did disinfect it first.

p.s. speaking (writing) of animals, check out this barred owl that lives in my parents’ back yard. he was heard hooting for weeks before spotted one morning on a small branch ten feet from the driveway.

My husband is a weird, weird, weirdo. Every night when he is falling asleep, he jerks his entire body and shouts “AH” while loudly sucking in air then wakes up again, rinses and repeats. Some nights he does it three or four times before he finally falls asleep and I know it sucks for him but it also means he scares the shit out of me while I’m trying to fall asleep. He says it feels like he is falling off a building and is sometimes dreaming but usually it is within a minute of him dozing off and is not dreaming. It doesn’t seem to happen when he is soundly asleep, only when drifting off. apparently, it is called a hypnic jerk or hypnagogic myoclonic twitch. I’ve had this sensation before as well (particularly if falling asleep in class which I used to do all the time) but my goodness, he does it every. single. night. I wish there was a pill he could take to stop the damn twitches and stop freaking him out because no one should have to feel like they are a monkey falling out of a tree every night.

The husband got in line at midnight and stood in the f-f-f-freezing cold (it was 9 degrees) at city hall to turn in our home improvement grant application. He is officially number one for sticking it out in the cold and literally number one of the grant applicants, of which 25 will be accepted on a first come, first serve basis. There were five people in line right after him, including one woman named Mary. Mary jokingly asked what she was doing outside in the middle of the night with four strange men. Another man in line told them all not to worry because he never left home without protection. I hope he meant condoms but I think he meant a gun which didn’t make any of them feel safer. Later, he asked Mike if he was reading the bible when in fact he was reading a science fiction novel. NRA and the bible- that says a lot about where we live.

By the time they were collecting the applications at 7:30, there were 37 people in line so I am very grateful for him shivering in the dark with odd strangers to ensure we were eligible for the $5000. Wouldn’t you stay outside in the cold for five grand in cash? It isn’t cash but it is that amount towards improving the exterior of our home. We will hopefully be doing some very boring home improvements this spring (replacing rotten fascia boards! ripping down the rotten wood of the porch overhang! repairing gutters!) on the city. I think his waiting in line for the grant cancels out the multitude of home improvements tasks he has blown off for years. Remind me of that when I’m irritated about something being broken in my home.

My Dad is very good at home improvements and could pretty much do anything before his back pain started limiting him. Unfortunately for Mike, my Dad’s fix it abilities are a hard act to follow since he never did home repairs in his rented homes (our house is the first house he has ever lived in that is not rented) and he is a busy guy. He can do repairs when he has to but he is also a perfectionist who will take a looong time to fix something because he has to do research, go to the hardware store 6.7 billion times, smoke a pack of cigarettes out of frustration and finally perfectly repair it in an untimely fashion. When I was pregnant with the triplets, we had multiple projects going on at once and I wept daily at the construction mayhem. I wanted to kill him because I was hormonal, my kitchen and bathroom were in disarray plus he had knocked me up and the walls down at the same time.

I believe we will do better paying someone to make improvements and he will be happy because I won’t walk around sighing at the lack of progress (well, I BETTER NOT BE). Money may not buy happiness but it sure as hell prevents fights when doing it yourself.

Today is the huband’s birthday. He doesn’t like cake (weirdo) so I made him a birthday lasagna.

It is almost the end of November! No more NoBloPoMoeShowDough! Just a few more days of keeping on keeping on.

I went to Hallmark yesterday to buy my husband a birthday card because he’ll be 28 on Thursday! I don’t sound like as much of a cougar being with a 28 year old- that’s a respectable age. When we met the first time he was really young- I think he was 19 and that was too much cradle robbing. We didn’t start dating until four years later and I forgot I ever met him when he was 19 until my trusty mental archivist Anna remembered. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t know much about my twenties. Now, we are aged to the point where I don’t feel like the old lady as much as I did when he was younger. Plus, he smokes a lot and I don’t so I’ll age slower. So I’ve got that going for me.

I was at Hallmark perusing the cards but when I ended up at the romantic cards? I don’t think I gave the desired response for my demographic. I read them to myself but could not stop audibly gagging, groaning and eye rolling. I could not stop- I tried. They were so cheesy and luvy-wuvy but the only time in my life I’ve given that type of card was when I was in the midst of a break up. Why am I only cutsie wutsie when everything is falling apart?I do love him in those ways but I would rather say it in a different, non-cliched, more peronal way. I’m sure a shrink would have a field day with that one.  I had to walk away from the “I love you so much that my heart will burst into ashes if we are apart but I will look back fondly on our sweet love through the haze of the years and when you’re dead i’ll pine for you like the earth pines for the sun” cards. I ended up buying him a card with a ham on the front and he’ll love it.

You know, I wish my husband would get a tattoo but he never will. That is all.

“Jack is stting on the changing table singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, W-X-Y-and Z”

 ”Yeah, it is the same tune. So is Bah-Bah-Blacksheep.”

“Huh, I never thought of that. You are right.”

“You know what bugs me about Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? The end, “How I wonder what you are” I know what you are. You are a star.”

“Well, when they wrote it, they didn’t know it was a ball of flaming gases.”

“Up above the world so high, a flaming ball of gases in the sky. Yeah, it doesn’t have much ring to it.”

After eating a chocolate custard turtle sundae and watching the husband dance for the kids as the teenage custard slingers stared in disdain, we walked away and noticed a grand opening sign in the neighboring strip mall.

“Hey look, a new! metaphysical! shop!”

“Ooh, right next door to the dog groomer. All that fur is probably bad for the chi.”

“Wanna go in? I bet they have crystals, batiked wall hangings commonly found in college dorm room walls, essential oils and tarot cards.”

“No way they have tarot cards. Not in this town.”

“What? Why? There are two sex shops and a place that sells bongs right down the street.”

“Nope, still say no Tarot Cards.”

“I’ll bet you one dollar. I’m going in.”

Five minutes later…

“Gimme my dollar sucka. Tarot cards galore. And how could I possibly forget incense and little Buddha figurines?”

“Fine, here’s a dollar (shoves it down my shirt).  I’m gonna get all physical on your meta. Did you see any tie-dye?”

“Oooh yeah.”

We watched 28 Weeks Later last night because apparently, my husband wants me to have nightmares. Last week, we watced 1408 and that one freaked me out a bit more since ghosts trump zombies in my mind. Maybe this is because ghosts seem more reasonable or possible than zombies but I would rather not meet either one in a dark alley.

I never finished 28 Days Later but read the synapsis online (I often read movie spoilers online because I know I won’t get a chance to see them or because if I’m going to watch a scary movie, I want to know how it ends so it isn’t too scary. I’m a big baby that is still haunted by Witchboard and Pet Cemetary.) I give this movie 2-3 stars as it wasn’t overly terrifying but sad. I hate movies where kids are put in scary or morose situations and that was a big theme in this film.

I give 1408 3-4 stars because Jon Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are two of my favorite actors. The movie was frightening but I was not as terrified as I expected. I hate when people or creatures jump out to surprise me and have been known to jump and toss my popcorn through the air when this happens. Luckily, I had no popcorn while watching 1408 because I was laying in my own bed and don’t have a clean up crew that sweeps up afterwards.

Next week, I’m forcing him to watch a chick flick.