PMS, Canned food, and doing the Monkey…

I went to school today (Sunday) and sat in the 40 degree cold and graded papers, battling my resentment the entire time. But my students deserve some effort too, so I guess I’ll call it good.

Other than that? I’ve got a whole bunch of little to chat about… where to start…where to start…

* Big T asked if he could bring some canned food to his school’s canned food drive. NO problem, I said…and then he asked for more, and then some more and I finally said, “Okay, just make sure we have staples left. You know, soup, tomatoes, that sort of thing….” And so my profound surprise when I went to make something and discovered that there were no tomatoes in the entire freaking house. “How could you!” I ranted, “Didn’t you realize that we don’t have any tomatoes for me to cook?” And then my son smiled, the sweet, sly, rancorless smile. “I know,” he said sweetly. You know, until that moment, I had no idea how much he loathed tomatoes?

*Immediately after her bath, Ladybug went scrambling over to our bed and climbed up, butt-nekkid and dripping wet. I scrambled after her, but the ginormous laundry monster got in the way, and she sat up at the head of the bed, laughing her wet-baby ass off. “What do you think you’re doing!” I asked, exasperated. In answer, she stood up and started dancing, swinging alternate hands over her head and jumping up and down in time. It was quite obvious to all that she knew exactly what she was doing. She was doing the Monkey.

* Chicken has become a woman. Sort of–she started her monthly bleeding ritual, anyway. In response to this, Mate was a wee bit put off. “Oh gees…the hormones,” a haunted look at myself, “the mood swings…how are we going to deal with it?”

“Relax!” I snorted. “She’s been practicing for this moment since she was two years old.” Even Mate had to concede that this was true.

* The Cave Troll has been nuts about Christmas. Every morning when he wakes up he says “Merry Christmas, mom!” Every night, the kid who can’t wait to get home, asks me to take him around the block so we can see who has their lights up. He’s been a terrible pain for most other times, moody, defiant, irritable–you know, Cave-Trollish in the extreme. But that’s okay–because being woken up every morning with a big kiss and a “Merry Christmas” makes all that other stuff worth it.

* I was putting away groceries and trying to figure out when this house got so small when I remembered how big it seemed when T was 5 and Chicken was 3 and we moved in. And then I remembered the two other people that had moved in after that and I tried to imagine how much room we’d have if it were still just the four of us–and how much money as well. And then I got all sad and decided that floor space and refrigerator space and a retirement fund were for the weak and uninspired. (If you have these things, don’t point it out–I will not be able to contain my jealousy and then my tender moment of anti-materialism will be shot to hell.)