Domestic Psychology

I’m a dog toy

// September 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // animals, me

Our washing machine is tucked underneath a staircase. At least half a dozen times a day, I am standing at that washing machine to sort, spray, load or unload laundry. At least half a dozen times a day, one or two dogs stand on the stairs with their head poking between the railings to watch me playing with the laundry. One of the dogs, I’m not saying which, drools on me every single time. Apparently, shrieking “Oh, yuck!” is a positive reinforcement to the droolly dog. Does that mean that I am the bell?ikoni

Fright Night ramblings

// August 21st, 2011 // 3 Comments » // me

Friday night, we left the sleepy small children in the care of girl teen and went to see Fright Night. Anyone who saw the original Fright Night knows that it was not a sleep with the lights on afterwards or a nausea inducing festival of escalating grossness that defines most horror flicks. The original Fright Night was more of a comedy than a fright. The remake is extremely loyal to its predecessor with a cameo appearance from an original cast member just for the geezers in the audience. Go see Fright Night.

I was too busy braiding and making knots with my Twizzlers to jot down all the movie previews before Fright Night. There was something with Daniel Radcliffe in a haunted house that doesn’t look very challenging for his acting talents. Harold and Kumar made a Christmas movie that should go directly to Netflix for late night, tv in bed viewing. I’ve been anticipating the John Carter on Mars ever since it was just a rumor and even though it looks like Disney has added an extra layer of cheese that an adult studio wouldn’t have done, I’ll still be going to see it.

My only problem with Fright Night was the absence of any filler scenes that are really just bathroom intermissions. When we watched the last Harry Potter, everyone knew to race to the bathroom while Harry was in the empty train station. When I am at a guy movie, I know that if I leave at the beginning if a battle scene, they will finish fighting just as I return. I need an app that alerts when scenes that add nothing to the plot are beginning so that I can take a potty break.

I suppose I could just skip the giant bucket of beverage that I sip the entire movie.

SuperMe

// July 18th, 2011 // No Comments » // me

No cape, but my super powers include:
Camouflage
Spectrum vision
Identifying post-CABG patients
Choosing the shopping cart that should be retired
Obscure song lyric memory
Embarrassing my teenagers
Breaking my toes on anything and everything

It’s a short list. Very short.

My Geoff says:

// June 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // me, parenting

1. Scoot back.
2. Brush.
3. Bathe.
4. Show me your homework.
5. Unplug now.
6. Clean up this mess.
7. I love you.

How to: dust houseplants

// June 6th, 2011 // No Comments » // me

1. While moving furniture to sweep, notice the dust on the leaves of a houseplant.
2. Spray furniture polish on an old shirt/new dust rag.
3. Beginning at the top of the plant, gently wipe the top surface of each leaf.
4. Discover dried splash of what appears to be the children’s gogurt.
5. Gently rub the glob for five minutes.
6. Snip off yogurt leaf.
7. Fail at attempt to explain to sassy teen why you are cleaning leaves.
8. Gently rub several leaves at once.
9. Carelessly swipe entire branches of leaves.
10. Run outside to rescue a child with a skinned knee.
11. Come back inside and declare plant “clean enough.”
12. Make mental note to begin step three in a different location every time in the hope that eventually the entire plant might actually be clean.

Buggy

// May 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // Doug, me

“How do they ship ladybugs?”
“Frozen, I think.”
“Cryogenic aphid management system?”
“No. High tech pest control.”
“I dont think you can get more low tech than ladybugs. Especially if they are frozen and dead.”

In addition to gray hair*

// May 12th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // me

Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t think anyone warned me that aging:

• shows up first in your hands. As children, we must spend large quantities of time staring at our parents’ hands, because every so often I find myself staring at my hand in amazement at how much it looks like my mother’s.
• eventually causes conversations with that same parent to become schizophrenic as you stare at the face which is rapidly becoming yours and wonder if this will be the year that people sincerely mistake you for sisters instead of mother and child while the other person wonders why, on the inside, they still feel like they did when they had the younger version of the face.
• would make cramps move from the logical area of the body where reproductive organs are to the silly and slightly embarrassing inner thigh area. Perhaps my uterus went down there to hide after my last child was born.
• makes your feet become unreasonable. They feel uncomfortable in any shoe that is the least bit cute. Instead of relaxing during pedicures, I have to tell the technician that I am going to cry if he rubs the top of my foot again. I strongly suspect that a time lapse camera would show aging toes changing shape.
• plays games with your memory that make you constantly wonder if it’s time to start taking Alzheimer’s meds. I can recite every line and lyric to Hair, but I still find myself calling my children by the wrong name. I know which child I am talking to, but maybe because I am worrying about another child or perhaps the chemicals the body produces during childbirth caused brain damage that let the wrong name escape my lips. It doesn’t matter why it happens, because I know it wounds that child’s tender soul every time I do it and I don’t know how to fix it.
• is ignored by the fashion industry who make cute clothing for the young, ugly polyester for the very old and nothing for the years between young and old.
• makes you develop allergies. I wore a specific brand of deodorant for two decades and then, without warning, it suddenly makes me break out in red welps whenever it touches my skin. I do NOT want to be allergic to deodorants.
• is not the worst thing in the world, but I miss feeling like I look good even when I probably just looked mediocre. Now, I know I look mediocre. If I’ve dropped below mediocre, don’t tell me. I need more time to embrace that horror.

*Your mileage may vary.

Missing: one day

// April 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // me

Wednesday was a busy, errand filled day that ended with freaky weather. At a time of night when the children are normally tucked in bed and Doug and I are using Netflix to catch up on something the rest of the world watched a year ago, we were multitasking ourselves to exhaustion. Three children, two adults, two German Shepherds, a cat and a snake were piled in our basement bedroom. We watched cartoons on DVD, listened to the police scanner on a laptop, tweeted, facebooked, ran up and down the stairs for snacks and peeked at the damage outside in between the waves of hail, wind and lightning. I know what I accomplished on Wednesday.

A few hours after we finally got everyone settled, it was time to get up and have a normal Thursday. Instead of spending the morning on dishes and laundry, I stared at images of damage. Instead of getting dressed and running errands, I wandered our street, talking to all my neighbors who were also wandering the street. I managed to do the afternoon school pickups, but I don’t remember how. I know there was a lot of very slow driving past trees that were no longer vertical. There were trees on roads, trees on signs, trees on power lines, trees on houses, trees on cars and trees on lawns.

I don’t know how I managed it, but I lost an entire day. Thursday was spent stumbling about in a brainless, zombie daze. Nothing got done. The lawn is solid leaves and broken branches, but I stared at it instead of cleaning the mess. The cars are pitted and covered in filth, but I didn’t even pick the branches out of the windshield wipers. The roof of the house looks like a forest floor, but I didn’t do anything to make it better. My vegetables and house plants are completely crushed and the flower pots that held them are shattered. I know I need to sort it into compost and trash, but I haven’t.

Our family is unharmed and our damage is minimal, but I lost an entire day on what? I wasn’t pouting or weeping. I was just… nothing. Maybe it was the thoughts of what could have happened that shut my brain down. Those thoughts are too horrible to allow for even a second. Today, I started the cleanup that is going to take forever. I swept the deck and found it covered in hail dimples, like the cars. Then, I sat down and stared blankly. The sound of chainsaws in every direction makes my stomach hurt.

I would have been a terrible pioneer.

Practice SAT questions

// April 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // me

1. If a bottle of 100 Tylenol caplets has one broken caplet, what are the odds that you will get one half of the broken caplet every single time you try to get two whole caplets?

2. If patting a hand rhythmically against anything results in a very large dog crawling in your lap for attention, how many times will the driver of a car mistakenly air drum on the steering wheel with the dogs in the car?

3. How many times will a carpenter bee slam into a window before it moves to a more porous surface?

Smells like work

// April 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Doug, me

I spent the weekend painting doors. Taking doors off hinges, carrying them outside, sanding, priming, painting and rehanging until the sunlight was no longer available to guide my brush. When the children were tucked in bed and the morning outfits were neatly organized, I collapsed in bed. Doug sat with his laptop while I tapped on the iPad. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Doug sniffing his armpit. I turned to watch him just as he sniffed his other armpit.

Me: “Is there a problem?”
Doug: “I thought I smelled funky, but I don’t.”