The Eve Show

What a difference two years off-treatment makes.  (I mean, besides not having cancer.)  I'm talking about hair long enough to put up in a ballerina bun.  And when you compare that to cancer, it sounds pretty shallow.  But dude, have you ever tried to put the last three strands of hair that your daughter didn't lose into a bun?  Trust me, buns are serious business.  My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hun.

I'm kidding.  My anaconda would love you even if you were completely bald.

The theme of this year's recital is "Passion for Fashion" and after we were seated, some older girls from the dance studio walked around and gave audience members prizes for being fashionable.  Daniel's yellow glasses scored again.  The Germans have nothing on his yellow glasses.  Always the yellow glasses for the win.

That girl thinks I'm good looking, Mommy.  I think it's probably because I'm so good looking.

Eve's main concern was that she always return to the piece of tape on the stage that signified her position.  I think I'm going to start bringing masking tape with me wherever I go- Eve, don't move from this tape until I renew my driver's license/Eve, don't move from this tape until I finish my strangely exciting hobby of shopping for meat that has been marked down/Eve, don't move from this tape until I finish up this last order of nachos supreme.

And yes, I realize that last sentence implies that I have ordered more than one nachos supreme at a time.  You are astute.

Here you can see Eve in all her glory, or "The Eve Show" as she referred to the entire afternoon:

She does the YAAA, the YACA, the YAMA, and the YCAA.  That's a lot of capslocked dances to learn.

And here, you can see me with my amazing baby ballerina and my amazing baby arm.  I only post this picture because I am such a huge Lawrence Welk Show fan.  And I'm Dooneese.

Eve got flowers, so she was stoked.  The child loves flowers.  She will smell just about anything, so I tend to steer her toward flowers and away from trashcans.

And Dum Dums.  Dum Dums keep the cancer away, but only if you eat the mystery flavor.  Which is almost always cream soda.

And sorry to keep starting sentences with and, but one thing you will notice when you put mascara on a four-year-old is that it is really strange to put mascara on a four-year-old if you're not going to be filmed by a TLC crew and that her eyelashes seriously came back much longer than they had before they fell out.  "They" being the eyelashes, not the camera crew.  Being bald could mean anything (like, I really look up to Mr. Clean/I'm a big Kojak fan/I shave my head to hide my receding hairline) but having no eyelashes means you have cancer.  Unless you singed your eyelashes off when you were trying to light the grill.

Which we will probably do before this summer comes to an end because we're running out of hair to singe  when lighting the grill.

And now that the recital is over, sure, you can go out back and do whatever you want in that costume.  Thank you for keeping it clean for that whole hour.

Although I suspect it makes an appearance on a future trip to Duke or Taco Bell.  Because that's how Eve rolls.  Taco rolls.

Although I think that's technically a taquito.

The only thing less useful than a comprehensive overview of the Franco-American War.

With quiet threats muttered under Daniel's breath the days leading up to his birthday celebration (Don't ruin my day), I did my best to come up with something that would pass as a Pac-Man party.  And believe it or not, there's not a lot of Pac-Man themed items in the party aisles.  It's almost like we were throwing this particular party thirty years too late or something.

He begged for a pinata.  The closest I could find looked like a nine-year-old girl's fantasy: Smiley face!  Rainbow!  Hibiscus!  OMG, all in one!  Fortunately for me, we were dealing with a character who is pixelated enough to be rendered fairly accurately with cut-up napkins.

The next challenge was kicking the people out of the picnic shelter that we clearly reserved for Daniel's birthday.

As in, the people who looked like they were tailgating while we were trying to set up for my 6-year-old's birthday party.  But maybe the giant napkin'd Pac-Man threw them off and they thought surely it was for someone much older who could handle some pre-gaming, if you know what I mean. And if you don't know what I mean, there's a good chance that you are even older than Pac-Man.  Do you need us to move?  Yes, actually. We're setting up for a birthday party that's going to start in a few minutes.  Oh, did you expect me to invite you to a kindergarten birthday party?  I guess we'll pack up our crap and go.  And several dirty looks later, they packed up their crap and left, but I could tell they were eyeing our potato salad.

Once all the party crashers were gone, we hurriedly got things into place.  (And that is the first time I've ever typed hurriedly, with which I initially failed the red squiggly line test.  But we were totally hurrying, just in adverb form.  I think.  I don't know, kids, but I grew up with a mediocre understanding of both the English language AND trigonometry and LOOK AT ME NOW!  Stay in school but don't sweat the small stuff, like trig.  Or adverbs.  Or spelling.)

You may continue to be shocked to find that "they" do not manufacture Pac-Man tablecloths.  "They" are Wal-Mart.  "They" do sell yellow tablecloths.  And sharpies.  And Pac-Man isn't a complicated shape to draw over and over again in black sharpie on a yellow tablecloth.  And thus it was Pac-Man on tablecloth.  Which was appreciated by precisely no one.  So the lesson is, go ahead and waste your time learning about Cosine (Given a point P(x, y) on the terminal side of an angle θ in standard position, distance d from the origin, cosine(θ)), which you'll never once use in your life, not even on your deathbed with the dude from A Beautiful Mind at your side, and don't waste your time drawing rudimentary pictures of Pac-Man onto a place where people's plates will be covering up your lackluster artwork.  You're welcome, Class of 2012.

The fact that the cake made it across town to the park in one piece is just a testament to not only my awesomeness, but also the fact that trigonometry is useless.  My flippant disregard to proper cake dowel center supports and the turns we were taking on and off the highway should have been enough to topple this baby over.  But trig teaches us nothing but if we stare hard enough at something and will it to not crumble into a million pieces, it will be so.  Like triangles and three-tiered cakes.  And I've never even had a triangle crumble before my eyes, so THERE.

It was most definitely about three times as much cake as we needed, but I can't help myself from slicing up Fred Flintstone-sized servings and giving them to kids when their blood sugar seems to be too normal.  And then sending them home, where their parents will realize trigonometry didn't help them out in this situation at all.

You know what trigonometry helped with?  Not finding Pac-Man goody bags.  Luckily lunch sacks can be fed through a printer with or without tenth grade math.

Thankfully the children were so ready to dive into the sea of pinata candy that they didn't even care that the fifth out of twenty children blew it open.  Next time we won't use a metal bat.  That's life experience.  You don't learn that in trig.

But seriously, they descended upon the pile of Dum-Dums like fire ants from the earth whose mound just got stepped on by the gardener wearing flip-flops.

(I'm the gardener.)

Thankfully another parent stepped in to sprinkle candy over the ants' heads so I could go back for a second hot dog and not once even think about Cotangents.

When dessert time came, I had twenty sugared-up fire ants demanding that they each get a Pac-Man, a ghost, and a cherry on their irresponsibly large slice of cake.  And since I did not make sixty cake cut-outs, I instead brandished the knife and threatened the children.

I did learn that move in trig, from the senior in the back who had already failed the class twice.

And although I am still unsure the names of all the children in Daniel's class who came to the party, I am fairly sure all the Hey, You's had a wonderful time.  Because Daniel said I didn't ruin his day, and that's a pretty good compliment in my book.

But my book is filled with a hatred of trigonometry and cancer, so take it with a grain of Sine.

Yolks: bane or boon for mankind?

Scene:

INT. KITCHEN - MORNING, FOUR DAYS BEFORE BIRTHDAY

Daniel paces around Christy as she tirelessly scrubs the dishes in the sink.  He waves a brightly colored piece of paper in her face, determined to give a paper cut in the eye.

                                        DANIEL

                                   Mommy, look!

                                      CHRISTY

                                 What is it, Daniel?

                                      DANIEL

                              I want this for my birthday- ALL of this!  Except for

                              the parts I scribbled out.  You don't have to do 

                              those.  

Christy takes paper and gives it a good look before going back to trying to scrub dried egg yolk off of Natalie's someone who shall remain nameless's plate.

                                    CHRISTY

                            You want ALL of this?  Do you have any idea how 

                             long this will take?  When am I going to do all of this?

                                    DANIEL

                            You better get started now.

Close-up of paper with cake sketch.

Fairly certain that I have created three unadulterated cake monsters who bare their teeth at birthday season, I nodded and went back to that damn dried-on egg yolk.  I think sunny-side up eggs are the secret behind the pyramids.  I think egg yolks could fix that tourist trap in Pisa.

While Daniel may have intimated that he would prefer fondant figurines of his sketch, including a Mario who was tricky and dressed up in a green plumber's outfit while his crazy brother, Luigi, dressed up in a red plumber's outift while plumbers all over the world unite in harmony We don't wear OUTFITS!, I stuck to the original sketch, trusting that he would forget his crazy demands, much like I forget the agony of both childbirth and dried-on egg yolks.

The night before Daniel's birthday, the girls got out of bed and decorated the downstairs for him.  Then they told me I better have bacon in the house.  I'm not sure if the bacon demand was even related to Daniel's pending birthday.

Nacho Cheese

The kids got into the second school we wanted so...yay.  We didn't get to keep our current schedule so they'll be on a different track so...I'm okay with that.  Seriously, I don't even care when they go to school, as long as I'm not driving across town and I'm not expected to keep them home for three months all at once; I don't know that I could remember how to do that.  I would probably be really smelly because I can never figure out when to shower when my kids are home.  It's not fun when little people keep opening up the shower door and letting out all the heat and then poke you in your fluffy parts and ask how you got those stretch marks there.

So seriously, I'm overjoyed by the recent turn of events.  Year-round school + close[r] to home = less stinky Christy.  The kids go to school through the end of June, have a week off, and then start the next grade.  Normally we'd have the whole month of July off (which is always a reeeeeeeeeeeally long month, and you know I mean really long because of all those extra vowels), but now the kids will be off the first three weeks in August.  Which is totally rad because you get out of peak season at the beach.  Which means the first thing I did as soon as we got our track assignment was to book a place at the beach with a swimming pool so I could take a dip in case I started to get ripe.  Because chlorine is the answer to everything.  Get a cut?  Jump in the pool.  Pee in the pool?  Add more chlorine.  Covered in sand but pretending you didn't read the sign that says to shower before getting in the pool?  Get in the pool fast before anyone sees you.  Don't want your stretch marks examined in the shower?  Jump on in.

The smell of chlorine and sunscreen only rivals the smell of nacho cheese.

I'm not even sure how I got to nacho cheese right there.  Maybe someone can make a drinking game out of this blog and nacho cheese references.  You'd be sauced by March 2010!

The Wake County Hunger Games

I'm fairly sure he did it just because I sounded the five-minute bell.  It's usually when I tell him we have to leave in five minutes that he does something ridiculous that would take five hours to undo.

This is after ten minutes of scrubbing red lipstick off his face.  I got tired of trying to clean him up so I let him go around town the rest of the day with red eyebrows and a pink five o'clock shadow.

Some days I just don't care.  I'm thisclose from being the mom who goes grocery shopping in her Isotoners. Now that would be heaven.  I mean, I've already gone shopping in mismatched shoes.  Matching slippers would have to be an improvement, no?

Since I can't blame much on cancer anymore, I'll shift the blame to the school system.  They are why my son wants to paint his face red with lipstick and paint his belly button black with Sharpies.

(Have you ever tried cleaning a belly button that's been Sharpied?  Don't waste your time. Make sure the kid's shirt is long enough to cover the offense and immediately proceed to your wine stash.)

So the school system...where do I start?  It's a fustercluck even if you live here, so I'm not sure how easy it will be to explain it to those who don't have the fortune to live in a county that sends its kids to schools based on where the drunken, blind monkey's dart lands on the map.  Things are so brilliant here that Stephen Colbert even painted us out to look like the drunken, blind monkey's entourage.

Let me try to explain what's been going on.

Under the old plan, we were assigned to a base school.  We got to choose if we wanted to send our kids to that base school or choose another school with a different calendar option.  Your kid can go to school on the traditional schedule, you know, because they need to have the summers off to do their farming and whatnot, or they can go to school year-round.  We chose year-round.  Why?

1.  Because I do not like to sweat.  I did not think having my kids out of school for the three hottest months of the year would be fun for me.  A very selfish reason but then again, I never claimed not to be selfish.
2.  Because the thought of having to provide quality entertainment for my kids three months straight doesn't sound fun. Again with the selfishness.  I am not the good kind of mom who can home school.  I can donate to PBS and feel less guilty about how long the kids are watching it, though.
3.  Because we like to travel all throughout the year.  Again, not big on the sweating.  I like my fall/winter/spring vacations.  I would take a summer vacation to Alaska if the airfare were not so prohibitive. I hear you can see Russia from there.
4.  And then there are some less selfish reasons, like the kids don't get burned out and they retain more and yadda yadda yadda Christy's not sweating for three months.

Anyway, that's the kind of school we wanted to send our kids to.  The closest school to our house is a year-round school.  The year-round school that we are allowed to send our kids to is not close.  But we did it because that's what we had to do.

The school board decided that parents should CHOOSE where we want to send our kids!  That sounds nice.  I'll go for that.  I would like to CHOOSE that my kid go to the closest school to our house.

My first concern is that one of my kids will get into a school and the other will not.  Why is this a concern?  Because as soon as you are placed in a new school, you lose your seat at your current school.  And that's that.  When I email the school system, I am told that if that happened, the child that was not placed would be moved to the top of the waitlist.  But, what if my kid never moves off the waitlist?  I mean, someone has to be at the top of the list and not get in.  I would really prefer my children attend the same school.  Their response?  Oh, we would let you know before that happened.

Yes, because I'm sure that the person writing that email just took a Post-It note that said "Call Christy Griffith before we screw up her kids' school assignments" and stuck it to her computer monitor.

We get five schools to choose from based on our address.  Two out of the five are year-round.  Our current school is so far away that it's not even on the list.

Let me say that again for dramatic effect: Our current school is so far away that it's not even on the list.

We do have the option of grandfathering our kids into their current school if we're happy with it.  I am happy with everything with our current school, except how long it takes to drive there.

So I go ahead and try out this "choice" process.  There will be two rounds to try and choose what schools you want your kids to attend.  And the school board says about three-quarters of kids will be placed in their first choice.  And they try to make that sound like it's awesome.

But, come on.  Childhood cancer has a 78% cure rate.  Surely the school board can do better than that.

The choice process turns out to be a glorified lottery.  Your child is assigned a random number, and that's how you get placed on the list to get into a school.  Your number can get higher if you have a sibling in that school already, or are less than 1.5 miles away from the school, or if the school is the closest school to your home.  But if you got a crappy lottery number and any of these applied to you, I'm not sure how they could compete with someone who got a much higher lottery number.

I only selected the year-round school that is closest to our home.  I figured if my kids didn't get in, they could stay at their current school for another year and we could try it all again later.  When I looked at the numbers before I decided to participate, it said that the school we wanted had less than five seats available for each grade level we needed.  Less than five to me meant zero to four open seats.

When my kids were placed on a waitlist for that school and I logged in to check out the numbers again, it said that Natalie's grade had negative 14 seats and Daniel's had negative 24 seats.

I guess, if we're being technical about it, -14 and -24 are less than five.

So I called up the school with negative seats and asked to speak with their data manager.  What do these negative numbers mean?  Are you overcrowded?  Oh, we're not overcrowded...those numbers just mean we'd like to have less kids ideally, but it's not like we feel overcrowded.  The kids are so small, you can't even tell.  So my kids both have a waitlist position of 3, what does the negative number do to that position?  I have no idea what the negative number means.


In the midst of all of this, the school board has added two more schools to our choices for the second round.  One is a school I would have actually considered in the first round.  But the rules are, if you participate in the second round, you lose your waitlist position from the first round.  So, if this new addition had been around the first time, I would have selected it as #2, and my kids could have gotten into this other school that shows open seats, and even kept their names on the waitlist for our first choice.  But now I am wondering if we might have to ditch that plan on waiting on a waitlist for a school that has negative capacity, if only someone might know what negative capacity truly means.

Sorry.  I even lost myself right there.

I call up the new addition and ask to speak to their data manager.  What do these negative numbers mean?  They are just the number of kids on the waitlist.  But I see a column on the website that has the number of kids on the waitlist, and they are not matching up.  If you only had 34 seats open and 58 kids applied, it should say negative 24 on the capacity.  I thank her and hang up.

I call up our current school and ask to speak to their data manager.  What do these negative numbers mean?  It sounds like they are overcrowded and aren't going to touch the waitlist until 24 kids leave Daniel's grade.

This sounds reasonable.  But I wonder why I have to call three different schools and get three different answers and decide which one might be right.  So I call the school system.

The last data manager was correct in her guess.  She describes schools with negative capacity not as overcrowded but oversubscribed.  Which is much classier than overcrowded.  Natalie would have to wait for 14 kids to leave and Daniel would have to wait for 24 kids to leave before they would start cracking on the waitlist.  So my kids' true waitlist positions are really 17 and 27.

I wonder why I have to act like I'm at the doctor getting second and third opinions.  These should be facts that the data managers should know.  There should be no room for interpretation or guesswork.  And when I bring this to the school system's attention and tell them they still have time to send out a blast email to all their data managers so this confusion about the mysterious negative numbers can be cleared up, I get a Oh, I already emailed everyone the other day.  Sorry you had confusion.

Well, I guess that lady did all she possibly could to ensure parents are getting correct information from the county's data managers as we decide which school we want to "choose."

It's all starting to feel like we're in The Hunger Games but with slightly more vicious opponents.  I might shoot a bedazzled arrow through someone's briefcase before this is all said and done.  Looking back, it certainly would have been easier had we just bought a house next to the school my kids currently attend.  But, hindsight is 20/20, or even 20/80 in this case.

I participated in the second round since it was clear my kids would not be going to the school closest to our house.  It seems Natalie's grade had plenty of room for her based on the available seats and the number of kids who had applied.  Daniel's grade has eight open seats and nine applicants.  I am hoping we don't have test out the Post-It note theory and he gets a high enough lottery number to get in.

I probably lost half of you two paragraphs into this manifesto.  Cancer was a lot less stressful than this.

We find out tomorrow where my kids go to school next year.  If they don't get into a new school, we'll know we're on the same schedule as we have been.  If they do get in, there's no telling which of the four calendar tracks they'll be assigned to.  I'll just be happy if my kids get assigned to the same school.  As long as that Post-It note hasn't fallen off.

It must have been all this that drove me to sing Kumbaya to my kids.  They got all "peaceful, calm" on me.  Dan even broke out some yoga.

It was either Kumbaya, downward-facing dog, or cuss.  And I'll leave the cussing to Matt, who is currently downstairs trying to fix our gas oven.  There's some cussing, there's some more cussing, there's some groaning, and then there's Our family is going to explode.  I'm not going to be lighting any farts downstairs tonight.

If we don't die violent, fiery deaths tonight, I get to finally finish my favorite books at the speech therapist's office tomorrow morning.

Because, let's face it: there is no excuse for a fat baby.  And give your poor dog a break.

I think all moms have ADHD.  At least, that's what I call it when I come downstairs and can't remember why I came downstairs.  But I always check the fridge, because there's hope that the answer is in the fridge. And then I flit away to go do something with some kid who I can't even remember what name I gave them at birth.

You know you've lost it when you're four inches from a child's face yelling, NatalieDanielEve! because you just can't place which name might belong to that familiar little boy who will just not stop trying to shove M&Ms into that oscillating fan.

So when you aren't getting pelted in the face by flying chocolate discs and you remember that what you were looking for is NOT in the fridge (because cheap red wine should never be chilled), you might decide to go out for a night on the town that does not involve flying chocolate discs coming at your face or an disappointingly empty bottle of cheap red wine.

Matt and I went to Striving For More's Striving in the City Soiree, which was a casino night fundraiser for an organization that focuses on psycho- and social care for kids and families dealing with pediatric cancer.  It was a completely awesome night.  There was a sushi buffet.  Read that again and be jealous.  ALL YOU CAN EAT SUSHI.  If it weren't for cancer, we'd never have been able to get dressed up, hang with awesome people, and enjoy a sushi buffet.  So, I guess there's a silver lining in everything if you're just the right touch demented.

I've never gambled before.  I tried blackjack and failed miserably.  Natalie is good at blackjack.  She can count cards.  I can just lose lots of chips.  I tried craps for a half-second before I realized I did not have enough brain cells left after childbirth, cancer, and the school system to fully, or even partially, understand what was going on.  Then I moved to the roulette table and found that it was kind of addicting.  And I finally understood how someone may one day need to call the gambler's hotline.  Because if I had any money, I would happily lose it playing roulette.  But I did end up winning enough chips to trade them in for raffle tickets at the end of the night, which I gave to Matt to put into the raffle boxes.

I heard one of our ticket numbers called.  He didn't put it in the jewelry raffle.  He didn't put it in the weekend getaway raffle.  He put it in the pizza for a year raffle.

I understand a man's excitement over the prospect of pizza for a year may cause him to not check out where  the pizzeria is, particularly if it is almost an hour's drive away.  But we are the proud owners of a punch-card that let us indulge every month if we choose to make the trek.  It is a good raffle prize that goes with our earlier prize of three gift certificates to another pizzeria.  We could make it more epic if we remade Walkabout starring us, traveling from Apex to North Raleigh on foot, in search of pizza.  Of course, there would still be the creepy 1970s instrumental music that reeks of both soft porn and film adaptations of forgettable novels you were required to read in the seventh grade.

And since dogs are not the only ones who have ADHD, I am reminded that we went to the NC State Spring Football game this past weekend.

It was a very warm day.  The gates opened at 2:30.  We got in line at 2:19.  The rain started to pour at 2:20.  The gates did remain closed until 2:30 because clearly the Tin Man, who does not have a heart, was on gate duty.  As soon as the gates opened, the skies were clear and we dried up with a quickness.  And about two seconds before we decided it was time to leave at halftime, the sky opened up.  We were stuck waiting for everyone in the stands to move.  It wasn't too bad, though, because I issued myself a free pass to skip bathing the kids because we obviously all just had two showers.  We could go green the next day, provided we were liberal with the deodorant.  Which I think I was, since no one told me I smelled bad.  I smelled of winning.  And maybe some attention deficit disorder.

I did shower in time for our anniversary, but that was more for Matt's benefit than mine.  I wanted to remind him of the days that I used to groom myself.  Although, the point would have been better made had I not put on sweatpants and a bathrobe before asking that he go get some take-out before we watched British soap operas all night long.

I'm totally bringing sexy back.

Let's get physical!

Though we were in town for the Centennial Cherry Blossom Festival, we didn't venture downtown until it was time for fireworks.  I will never pass up the opportunity to see fireworks, unless they are being set off by rednecks in their driveways.  Rednecks and explosives make me nervous.  Rednecks will light their farts on fire if you hold their beer.

What I want to know is what kind of fertilizer the Japanese use on those trees. If the tree in our front yard can make it another 93 years, I'll give permission from beyond to let a whole mess of rednecks shoot fireworks off in front of our house.

Doubt it could wake this lot up, though.

Sleep hard, party harder!  But seriously, kids, sleep hard.  Tomorrow is Easter and you need your sleep before you get all jacked up on...

Garden supplies??!?

Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha...the Easter Bunny collaborates with the dentist to ruin another good holiday AGAIN!  But really, kids, this is a holy day that we celebrate because it is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring when Jesus came back to tell us that if you don't like Cadbury Creme Eggs then you can go to youknowwhere in an Easter basket.  Either that, or you can just give me your Cadbury Creme Eggs and I'll tell Jesus you're cool.

Natalie fell out of a tree the day before and rolled her ankle.  She acquired a slight limp until her grandmother told her she could have a head start at the egg hunt because she couldn't possibly run.  Couldn't possibly, Nana.

Praise be!  She's healed!  On this holiest of days, no less.  Jesus wants her to show Nana that Nana should never assume there is a real injury unless you do the jelly bean test.  Which is when you drop a jelly bean on the floor and see how quick the injured sprint to get it.  It doesn't have to be a clean floor, since you will be smacking it out of their injured little hand before it gets to their mouth.

I love how Daniel sneaks up on eggs.  That's why he's so good at finding things filled with jelly beans.  Finding his glasses in the morning?  Finding clean underwear before school?  Maybe he needs to go all Elmer Fudd on those bad boys, too.  Either that, or I should just fill his underwear with jelly beans.

This is how Eve reaches everything.  On her toes and blindly grasping for whatever is almost beyond her reach.  Like eggs or open bottles of nail polish.

And here I demonstrate how to fly a kite two feet in the air, with style.  The secret is to run fast as you throw the kite behind you and keep running, with style.  Wind is not necessary.  Be the change you want to see in the world; make your own wind.  Do not light your own wind on fire.

But really I was just chasing after the kids because I wanted some of those fat pills jelly beans.

The kids really worked together to make a beautiful severed Easter Bunny head cake.

The next morning, I woke up with a migraine.  I think the excitement of the decapitated rabbit was just too much for my head.  My brain has short arms and can't wrap itself around but so much.

I didn't plan on a migraine when I promised the kids we could go back to King's Dominion that day.  I popped lots and lots and lots of pills until it was bearable.  I even tried a few sips of Diet Coke, hoping the caffeine would help.  Know what drinking a shot of a caffeinated beverage feels like when you haven't had it in three years?

YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR HEART IS GOING TO BURST IN YOUR CHEST AND THEN YOU THROW UP.  Yet ice cold cola coming up through my nose wasn't as unpleasant as coffee may have been.

When we arrived at King's Dominion, I told Natalie and Daniel that they would have to buddy-up because Mommy wasn't going to ride anything that day.  I was just going to watch out for Rastafarians.  They went to the height station to get their bracelets and what do you know?

Natalie had a growth spurt over the weekend and moved up to the next height category.  The last one.  The one that she can ride whatever she wants without a responsible adult.

Daniel, of course, expects that he will be moving up to that next category the next time we come back to the park.

Eve was more my speed for the day.  She's still down with the rides that go around in a circle at 1 mph.  She is so adorable that I just want to stow her away in a large handbag like a little lap dog and take her out when I need something cute to snuggle with.  Like, when you go to a 3D Dinosaur show.

"Oh...it IS 3D!" she exclaims.  And you know she exclaimed because I used an exclamation point.  Then she's the only person in the middle of the theater standing up, trying to swat away the giant Argentinosaur that was coming straight for her.

I know I am a mommy because I was content to watch my kids have fun all day without doing more than standing in line with them.  For instance, they loved the Joe Cool's Driving School ride, where they got to drive cars around on a road complete with lanes and stop signs.  I guess it's called a driving school because you are expected to obey American traffic laws.

Eve spent the entire time on the wrong side of the road.  

But both hands are on the wheel!  Which is more than I can say for Daniel.

And Natalie just kept driving around with a you know what-eating grin on her face (and why anyone would eat you know what and then smile about it is beyond me) while yelling, "I had a growth spurt!"  But she managed to stay on the road for the most part, even if she was never looking where she was going.

Even though my head had some residual throbbing, I did manage to go on two rides that day; the first was the smallest roller coaster I have ever seen that is as long as my kitchen to my living room.  It goes in one little loop and the hills are as high as my dining room table.  It's something that Eve decided she wanted to ride.  The child who hates roller coasters.  She begged to ride it, but she needed a responsible adult to ride with her.  I tried to talk her out of it several times, but my little lap dog was insistent that this is something she wanted to do.

As we ascended to five feet in the air and then moderately descended to an altitude of three feet, she buried her face in my armpit and began to sob, which is an unfortunate place to sob because it makes you look like you're really sweaty.  And that sixteen second ride should be the only reminder she needs that she hates roller coasters this year.

Eve's in for a rude awakening one day when she has her big growth spurt and is too big to fit into the rides that go in circles at 1 mph.

What is amazing to me is that she loves the Flying Eagles ride, which is way more vomit-inducing than the baby coaster.  It's the ride with all those green adults with their eyes closed flying in it, while their evil kids are smiling maniacally as they move the birds to and fro with violent abandon.

If you look up the ride online, you'll see this bit of quick info:

Location: Old Virginia (okay, Old Virginia must be close to Hell, because that is where I go when I ride this ride with Eve.)
Duration: 3 minutes (3 minutes?  Feels like ten.  Good gravy, I'm feeling nauseous.)
Height Requirement: Under 48 inches must be accompanied by a responsible adult (No, please.  What if I just taped all my kids together and added them up?)
-An attraction that families enjoy riding together. (No.)
-Riders steer their course during the 3-minute ride experience. (Are you sure it's only three minutes?)
-The intensity of the rider's experience is determined by their piloting skills.  (So does the intensity of my throw up.)
-This attraction is so much fun you'll want to ride it more than once!  (Who exactly is writing this?)

That picture even makes me sick.  But I rode it with Eve, since Nat and Dan were on a giant roller coaster that I was absolutely not getting on.  Although looking back, I may have felt less sick afterward if I had just gone with them.

The rest of the day, my kids collected inchworms.  They are so desperate for pets that they'll grab whatever is crawling around.

This is just the desperation I am looking for.  Next time they ask for a pet, the are going to be over the moon with the Sea Monkeys I give them.


I don't think their pets could hang on for this ride, though.  The inchworms obviously weren't with responsible riders.

There are lots of interesting things to see when you do nothing but wait in line for your kids.  The weather was nice so there were a lot of ladies showing more skin than they probably should have.  I saw a lot of back boobs.  Each and every set were bigger than my front boobs.

I saw two brothers in line, one probably 8, the other about 10.  The ten-year-old was wearing a Corona shirt.  His brother was double-fisting mega-sized Mountain Dews.  While wearing a Livestrong shirt.  The girl who came up behind them was wearing a shirt that had Snoopy lifting weights and said in bold print, Let's Get Physical!  She was gnawing on a gallon-sized bucket of Boardwalk Fries, which are the only soggy fries that people are willing to pay good money.

Migraines and inchworms?  I'm already writing my acceptance speech for Mom of the Year 2013.  I'm going to get a cool MOTY shirt made up, too, so maybe someday someone will see me and the kids in line at Taco Bell and feature my character in a blog post about irony.  But, of course, they won't even notice the shirt because they'll be too distracted by the dreadlocks coming out of my Rasta hat.

Alive with pleasure

The days before April Fool's were normal in all accounts in that I packed up some supplies to make a bit of tricky-up'd food before we headed to Matt's mom's house for the weekend.  The only thing I forgot was the lemon Jello, so I could make "lemonade" for the kids.

Upon arrival to Small Town, NC, I popped into a convenience store and picked up three boxes of gelatin.  Once at the front, the girl behind the register rings up my purchase and says, "Mmm...Jello shots," at two in the afternoon.

No...kids.

A genuine look of shock appears on her face as she picks up a box, flips it over, and is surprised to learn that you do not have to add vodka to the powder to get it to set.

After that, Matt and I bought some lotto tickets.  We only play the lottery when the jackpot is over $600 million.  Because we don't waste our time with that $200 million BS.

We didn't win, but I did bet that we wouldn't win, and won two jelly beans from Daniel.  Sucka.

While in Small Town, I finally got around to hitting up a Taco Bell to try that Doritos taco.  I had to do it because it was getting embarrassing how many people were posting on my Facebook page about this crazy-ass taco and asking what I thought of it.  I felt like a fraud that I hadn't gone out and shoved one in my mouth yet!

So basically, y'all, this is just a plain ol' taco with a Doritos shell.  It did not come in a Doritos bag like the advertising would have you believe.  The only way I can describe it is that it tasted exactly like it looked like it would taste.  Like taco meat and Doritos.  While it wasn't bad, I wouldn't order it again.  What I would do is passionately lobby for the return of the Beefy Crunch Burrito, which features red Fritos that make my mouth much more happy since they are wrapped inside a tortilla that is oozing with nacho cheese.

(When in doubt, add nacho cheese.)

I asked the girl taking my order at Taco Bell if they still had it on the menu.  She was as upset as I was about it.  That stuff was $0.99 of heaven!  Well, can you get someone back there to crush up one of those Doritos shells and try to make me a knock-off version?  No, I don't think they'd have the brains to pull it off.

That's not what I want the person who has just admitted to eating two Beefy Crunch Burritos for snack every afternoon while it was on the menu saying about me when I'm hard at work in the Taco Bell kitchen throwing together the same ingredients in new combinations day after day.  That's rough.  You have to have brains to differentiate between the Crispy Potato Soft Taco and the Cheesy Potato Burrito!

Anyway, what was delicious that weekend were the cupcakes.

Sad looking, I know.  I would never claim to have frost these. Which is why I said my sister-in-law iced them.  And I *almost* felt bad about getting the kids all excited for cupcakes and lemonade, but Mom of the Year does so little wrong that she has so few reasons to feel bad.

You can only suck up lemon Jello so fast from a straw.  Then you go cross-eyed.  And expecting chocolate cupcakes but biting into meatloaf and mashed potato icing?  It's almost evil if you think about it.  So maybe you should stop barging in on me in the bathroom next time I'm in the shower.  You never do it until I'm about to towel off and then you let out all my heat.  Do you have a timer built into your little heads that knows when to make Mommy freezing cold?  Is it when I'm heading into the chorus of Don't Stop Believin'?  Mommy is not impressed.  Eat the damn cupcake.  I know it's a disappointment for you.  There will be bigger disappointments in life.  Like the Doritos taco.

But wait!  There's take-out!  Which I would have hoped the kids would have mistaken for lo mein with mystery meat but turns out you can only really fool them once a meal.  They knew it was sugar.

And I let them eat that for dinner without any fruits or veggies because, duh, there was broccoli on the cake. And they were still pissed about the cupcakes.

We came home long enough to get some clean underwear before the kids and I headed up to my parents' house for a visit.  Because you don't want to get in an accident with dirty underwear, since the very first thing first responders do is strip you naked and turn your drawers inside out to see if you qualify for treatment.

It was an unusually successful drive up in that we only had to stop once for a potty break.  And I wonder how much longer I will still call it a "potty break."  In fact, I can't even remember what adults without kids call it.

I went pee-pee, too.

And I only turned on the TV for fifteen minutes!  Just to distract the kids from thinking about their over-filled bladders.  The rest of the time, we were so American Academy of Pediatrics-approved, with the kids reading books and doing puzzles and writing letters about their track-out.  And Eve finally learned how to draw a heart.  With an ink pen.  On her arms and legs.  Sixty times over.

But no one cried so whatevs.  Tattoo away!

Matt met us at King's Dominion a few days later.  The kids got measured at the height station and got colored bracelets to show which rides they could go on.  Eve doesn't ever want to ride anything that does not go around in a circle at 1 mph, so she could care less what color wristband she gets.  Dan, on the other hand, wants desperately to ride whatever Nat can ride, and was over the moon when he got the same color band as she did.  Just a year ago, he had to watch her ride the big coasters from the sidelines.  Now, he was all set.

I don't know how it happened.  The very first coaster must have been a pretty wild ride- he broke his glasses.  The look of excitement and grief was so apparent on his small face.  It reminded me of that Doritos taco.

We had lots of fun, sans glasses, the rest of the day.

We did not play to win any Winnie Jah Poohs, though.

Those nutters will put a rasta hat on anything.  Pooh, bananas, cigars, monkeys.  You name it, it's dreaded.  Now we know why Pooh couldn't get enough of dat sweet honey, mon.

Poor Snoopy Bunny.  No dreads for him.

Dan was alive with pleasure when he spotted craft tables set up in the park.

I was, too.  That meant I could watch other people get paid to craft with my kids.

(I am currently in the market for someone who will accept either minimum wage or partially used Taco Bell gift cards to come do crafts with the kids.)  The only thing they forgot to make was some sort of bag for all the rabbit and lamb hand print-cutouts and decorated eggs that I ended up carrying around the park in my front jacket pockets, only accentuating my lite-beer belly with what must have looked like small tumors.  And then I left a trail of cotton balls no matter where I went, which served as further proof that the Easter Bunny was indeed stalking us so you better behave, kids, because he sees all.  ALLLLLLL.  No, I'm totally serious, Eve.  We're the only family he's following, so what does that say about us?

What Daniel was perhaps the most interested in was the haunted house, because it includes such awesomeness as strobe lights and laser guns.  And what else screams Good Friday than STROBE LIGHTS AND LASER GUNS?  Oh yeah, how about Daniel walking around in his best zombie voice saying, "I'm hungry.  I'm hungry.  I'm hungry.  Feed me.  Must have food."  Which also happens to sound pretty similar to his robot and general bad guy voices.  He's a one-trick pony, that kid.  Can't fool me, Mr. Walking Dead Roboto!

Bad day for Jesus, hungry day for zombies, I guess.  No, Dan.  Jesus wasn't a zombie.

Eve did not like the haunted house.  I know this because of key context clues at the scene: screams, red face, tears, snot, and she wasn't at a Justin Bieber concert.  Mostly she didn't like it because it did not go around in a circle at 1 mph.

The ride that she seemed to very much enjoy was a kiddie version of the Flying Swings.  This particular version has a max height, one which Nat just smidged in under.  She and Eve shared a swing and Dan rode by himself behind them.  When the ride started, it appeared that it would perhaps pick up some speed.  But, it turned out it was just a very slow swing ride.  That never lifted off the ground.  My feet are dragging, Mommy!  Sorry, Nat, you've just gotta work those quads.  Daniel was bored out of his mind and banging into the middle part of the ride that does the actual swinging.  Every other kid on the swings looked bewildered, except for Eve, who had her arms in the air screaming Whee! as she went around in a circle at 1 mph.

I had to get on the roller coasters with Nat and Dan.  I really do enjoy thrill rides, but I've found out that as you get older, you can really start to feel nauseous on them.  It may be another thing I can blame my kids for, since this is something that developed after child birth.

I don't know how my mom it all those years she would take me on rides.  I always wanted to go on the craziest things and my poor mom would accompany me and probably turn a lovely shade of green that I never noticed because I was too busy trying to figure out how I could loosen all the belt straps so I could really fly out of the seat.  She won't admit to being medicated but I'm wondering how she did it over and over and over again.  I do one ride and there's never going to be a "YES!  We can certainly get right back in line for that one!"  It will always be a, "Mommy might vomit.  I need french fries."