Earlier this week, it was warm enough that I had the kids in the backyard in t-shirts. Two days ago, the temperature dropped 61 degrees in 24 hours and it has been snowing all day. The oldest won’t have school tomorrow- snow days are so not fun as a parent- and the local emergency rooms are packed with flu and whooping cough victims so even if the roads were clear,  I’m not taking the triplets anywhere. I’m a snow bound germaphobe (you would be too if a cold sent your daughter to the hospital- a fate we narrowly avoided again last week by inundating her with antibiotics.) and spring seems so far away. Maybe I’ll draws daffodils and tuplips on the walls and make a fake palm tree.

Dear Daughter;

Honey, if you don’t stop taking your clothes off and peeing on the table? I may run away.

Sincerely,

Mommy

(I found this comedy routine about being a parent on sweetney yesterday and Mike and I laughed until we cried because it is SO TRUE)

this is so great

this supports what i said in the last post about how shiny happy parents who pretend being a parent is easy makes things harder on the rest of us. my dad suggests reading fatherhood by bill cosby for a true, hilarious perspective on what parenting is really like. erma bombeck too- go pick up one of her paperbacks at a used book store. she knew.

i cannot stop listening to the juno soundtrack. i love the movie and music, michael cera, ellen page, diablo cody (writer) and kimya dawson (singer/songwriter of many of the songs on the soundtrack). i want to go drinking with all of them. in canada since the actors aren’t legal drinking age in the U.S. i am fascinated by diablo cody- she’s a hipster, post modern cinderella whose first screen play turned into this huge, perfect movie and now she’s traveling the world promoting it. and she started as a blogger. i want to come back in my next life as diablo cody.

rsm posted this video of misunderstood pearl jam lyrics- check it out. i know, you heard the song daughter ad nauseum and that last kiss song was awful but put that aside because it is funny. between this and last night’s simpsons episode about homer and his early 90′s grunge band- sadgasm- i’ve been all nostalgic for the nineties.  i get in a loop of “aw, that was so great. wait, i’m nostalgic for the 90′s? but didn’t they just happen. oh shit, that was 15 years ago when i saw eddie vedder jump from the ampitheatre’s rafters. damn. where the hell is the time going?” and go look at pictures of myself in flannel.

When they were born, my only preparation for dealing with more than one baby at once was obsessively scouring a message board. I waded through the zealots and freaks’ messages to find women like me who were also blessed/cursed with three spawn at once.  I say cursed because I had greater than average chances of going into an extremely early labor and losing all of them. My oldest son was born at 29 weeks and we knew I had a high likelyhood of very premature babies. Luckily, I went into extremely early labor and eventually wound up with three infants at home. Someone once said, “I wouldn’t ever adopt three puppies at once let alone three babies.” These three are difficult, messy, medically fragile, climbers, clothes strippers and sometimes non-sleepers. Of course, they are loving, adorable, precious little snowflakes from heaven as well but let’s be real here. Humans were not meant to deal with three babies at once.

I was very anxious when pregnant and would spend hours on that message board but I never contacted a real organization. During my last week of at-home pregnancy (24 weeks), I called a local group of moms like me. The day after the emergency “classic” c-section, I was in so much physical and mental anguish that I was thinking dying couldn’t be any worse. I couldn’t walk or even turn over in bed and I struggled to talk. The idea of them removing the catheter and making me get up out of bed made me cry- I have never hurt more in my entire life.

As I was suffering while my children were intensively being cared for, the phone rang. I feebly answered and a very cheerful woman started talking about the group I had inquired about. In a morphined up but still agonized state, I managed to tell her I was in the hospital and the babies were very small and sick. I had only seen them for five minutes and couldn’t get in a wheelchair to go see them. She probably posted about it on the message board so every one could ooh and aaahh. Usually women join the group while they are still expecting so I was already an oddity for showing up so late in the game. Most of them had to struggle to conceive so their journies had been completely different. Many of them were older, more financially sound and had very different lives than me.

The following weeks sucked. Oldest started kindergarten and I went to the hospital every day. All three kids were on ventilators and couldn’t tolerate milk. Lily was in the corner of the back room – the place where they put the babies that may not make it so it is easier on the rest of the parents if they go. I started to get messages from other moms  in the group and notes appeared for me at the kids’ bedsides. It was all meant to be reassuring and comforting but I didn’t like it. The voice mails carried a tone that said, “I’m going out of my way to talk to you so call me back even though you don’t want to. I know your daughter may be dying, let’s talk about coordinating cribs.” They made me feel better sometimes and I’m sure I’m slightly less traumatized for talking to them but it still let me unsettled. If you lose your legs, does being around other legless people make you feel better? Am I being over dramatic? Did I just compare having my babies to being a double amputee? Yes. You have to understand that I didn’t know if they were going to make it and I would have rather dealt with that than losing them.

They did make it and they are doing something destructive and loud in the next room. Two and a half years later, it all seems like a nightmare that I didn’t live through. I continued to get daily emails from this support group. I attended a few sales and bought some things from other parents. I never went to their constant dinners but read about how fun it was for them to get away for the evening and bitch about their husbands. Every time I saw one of their emails, my stomach slightly knotted. The emails, the group, the need for support, it all made me uncomfortable.  I should have been grateful for a support group but it felt like another obligation and a reminder of a bad time.

Yesterday, I quit the group. I turned off the email notification and walked away. I’m done and it feels better. Next up, purging my flickr groups and consider deleting certain social networking profiles. I like being a quitter.

(i am trying to avoid phrases that will bring this up in a search engine. i don’t want to be flamed by right-wing, bush loving, homeschooling, bible-bashing, uterus guarding oddities. no offense right-wing, homeschooling, bible-bashing, bush loving, uterus guarding oddities. and yes, homeschoolers can be very normal but ya’ll know there are homeschoolers that are very not normal.)

I am trying to avoid the gossip sites because the constant updates about Heath Ledger’s death are awful. I don’t understand how a person can die and within hours, the internet is reporting there was a rolled up $20 found next to your body. The police doing the investigation, the coroner, the cleaning lady– who ran to the media to tell them about the items surrounding his dead body? Why the hell are we reading about this? Shouldn’t it be private? I understand that he was a celebrity but he was also a young person with a family who didn’t act like a celebuwhore seeking paparazzi attention. The gossip sites were flitting back and forth about possible illegal drugs and the twenty connection until tests came back that it was clean. Why do we even know about evidence from an ongoing investigation and what its tests revealed? I am disgusted.

Why do I have lots of photos and lots of frames but very few photos in frames and even fewer hanging on the walls?

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.

Rhi came to my rescue with a Meme 

MOUTHOLOGY

Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant? McDonalds (cheeseburgers mmmm) but I also love Del Taco.

Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? I do not know- it has been so long since we were able to go to a sit down restaurant without having to corral children every few bites. Kids really put a damper on fine dining.

Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant? Generally, 20%

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? Chocolate or cereal

Q. What are your pizza toppings of choice? I actually like cheese pizza without toppings

Q. What do you like to put on your toast? Peanut Butter/Jelly/Butter /Apple Butter/Cheese

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer? A picture of my kids with my nieces and nephews from Christmas

Q. How many televisions are in your house? Three but one is only for video games

BIOLOGY

Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body? Four kids

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted? Both toddler boys at once yesterday (50 + lbs) 

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious? No but I have passed out from low blood sugar a few times

BULLSHITOLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? No

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to? Randy McBooty Pantz

Q. What color do you think looks best on you? Blue

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake? I don’t swallow 

Q. Have you ever saved some one’s life? I haven’t killed my husband, does that count?

Q. Has someone ever saved yours? I suppose after the triplets were born and I was sick with an infection I could have died if I wasn’t given antibiotics.

 DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100? Probably not

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000? Maybe  

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000? No, probably not Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000? Not with this body

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? Yes

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000? No

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket? Nada

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie? Yes. GOSH! Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house? Carpet

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower? I stand but have sat before

Q: Could you live with roommates? Yes

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own? 4

Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops? There were two cops following me this morning but I don’t think they were after me. 

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up? A professional photographer

LASTOLOGY

Q: Last Friend you talked to? The Divine Miss D who trimmed my hair and the hair of my unruly toddlers

Q: Last person who called you? Stupid nursing agency asking for the 3rd time if a nurse left her wireless card here last weekend after I keep  telling them that she didn’t

Q: Person you saw? My Dad and D. since she cut our hair at my parents’ house. She does house calls if you are a VIP 

FAVORITOLOGY

Q: Number? 7

Q. Season? Summer

CURRENTOLOGY

Q: Missing someone? Yes, my former self

Q: Mood? Lazy

Q: Listening to? Lily’s oxygen humidifier 

Q: Watching? My computer screen

Q: Worrying about? Getting all the paperwork ready to apply for a home renovation grant Saturday morning. Mike is going to stand in line at midnight to hand it in Saturday morning because that is the only way we can get it (based on someone we know who got it last year). It is a free $5000 grant so hours in the cold will be worth it. For me anyway, maybe not for him when he’s freezing his balls off.  

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning? To the bathroom

Q: What can you not wait to do? Go out of town with my husband  Q: What’s the last movie you saw? Juno <3

Q: Do you smile often? Sure?

Q: Are you a friendly person? Yep, I even talk to random strangers

I have nothing to write about. I may need a meme. Someone meme me. If you don’t know what a meme is? You are much cooler than me.