I bet Chuck knows all about $%#*& magnets

Sigh.

I really wanted my teepee to look beautiful (can you hear me woefully sniffling?). The whole family did, I think. My six-year-old even told his kindergartner teacher about it—and she let him work on a special art project for it.

I can just imagine their conversation:

Everett: My mom is making a teepee. In our yard. We can't go in it.

Teacher: A teepee? Why?

Everett: I'm not sure. She mentioned vodka and needing to run away...

Teacher: Hmmm. Nothing a homemade butterfly can't fix. Grab your markers!

My plan on Saturday was to prepare the sheets, adorn the floor with pillows, and hang flowers from the top. I even dragged some old tree stumps to the front for alcoholic beverages, cheese and crackers and more flowers.

As you can see, things didn't go exactly as planned. I wrapped two sheets around the sticks and used pushpins to keep them in place, but as Chuck so snickering-ly informed me, my teepee suffered from improper construction at the top and no amount of pushpins, flowers or alcohol would fix it.

I blame the Girl Scouts. Remember, I once wrote that "the Girl Scouts failed me in my youth by making us knit Jesus crosses while the Boy Scouts learned practical, fundamental skills," and I stand by that! How else can I explain my snooty Boy Scout of a husband's smugness?

Waaaaahh.

While I am disappointed, a funny thing happened as I stood looking at the teepee. I had an internal debate, which is pretty typical for me, between my Type A side and the Other Side (I'm not sure I actually have a Type B side, so I'll just call it that) but for once, it didn't end as it usually does.

It went like this:

Type A: Put more moxie into it you ass! With enough hard work it can still be amazing.

Other Side: Look at your kids jumping on the trampoline in the sunshine. They want you to jump.

Type A: No thanks. It's not good for my bladder. We need to fix the teepee! You wanted to run away from them, remember? Not spend more time with them.

Other Side: Look at them. When did they get so big?

Type A: We constructed a structure to get away from them! Roll up your sleeves and get to it.

Other Side: Maybe some other time. Now I just want to jump.

So I jumped. Not for long, but long enough to feel the sun and tickle the kids and trip them and launch them and huck beach balls at them. And when I climbed down, I felt a sense of contentment (mixed with nausea and bladder failure, of course).

Sometimes, the stars align and my time with my kids is free of bickering and badgering and it's just good, clean fun—and I fall in love with them all over again. Somehow the Universe knows when I need a dose of that. Maybe it saw me building the teepee and knew. Or maybe it saw me buying a case of vodka. Whatever tipped it off, just watching the sheets of my teepee blow in the wind was enough. Just knowing I can escape if I want to.

Until I became a parent, I was never simultaneously so repelled by and attracted to someone as I was to my children. It's as if you embody both sides of a magnet and your kids are magnets too. Wait. Does every magnet have both sides? Maybe it's like you only have the opposing side and your kids have just opposing. No, that's not right either. Do attracting sides attract or do you need an opposing?

Curses! I bet the Boy Scouts covered magnets! I told you the fucking Girl Scouts fucked me. 

A scandalous discovery the day after Mother's Day

Chuck is cheating. The slimy RAT. I was on Facebook when I saw this exchange:

There's a good reason I'm not going to strangle him. A very good reason: The Facebook account belongs to me—or rather, Helen Mullet, my angry alter ego.

Myah, sorry. I guess that's not very scandalous. 

I had to create a NEW account because my last Frogs in My Formula Facebook account was hacked by some chick, and it's really pissing me off. I tried contacting Facebook about it but—shocking—because I had registered the original account under a fictitious name and with a cartoon drawing for a profile photo, they couldn't verify it and so they locked the account.

If my cartoon version of myself ever finds the hacker I'll give her a big piece of my cartoon mind and you know I will. Just look at Helen—propositioning a married man!

I'm, um, sorry if you were looking for something more salacious than that. Chuck did send Helen Mullet a photo of himself...blowing a kiss, but it's tame, I know, and you came here looking for scandal.

Hey, I know: Maybe a drunk neighborhood dad will wander into my backyard tent this weekend. Maybe he'll be inebriated and we'll wake up to find him splayed across our air mattress buck naked!

I know, I know, improbable.

Hmmm, where can you find scandal. Where oh where is there something scandalous going on....

Oh I know. Read the news. Any news source. Left, right, balanced, objective. Really doesn't matter these days.

You're welcome (or not).

A little yellow dress...for the woods?

I went to the mall with my mother on Saturday. That might sound banal, but the most important detail is that I went without any children.

I was able to touch the clothing. To wander around stores. To not have an agenda. To not stop and shove a granola bar in anyone's mouth to keep anyone quiet. I tried clothes on—for myself. I got the most gorgeous dress at Anthropologie (for the first time in my lifetime, everything in the store was 20% off):

I have no idea where or when I'm going to wear it, but it is soft, swishy and flattering. If I have to invent an occasion I will.

There's more: My mother and I went to a restaurant, where I sat down and chewed my food. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to chew and swallow without jumping up to get water or seconds for someone or to answer questions with a mouth half-full of food. It was glorious.

When I got home, it was pouring. The kids were standing by the door.

"Come on! Come on!" they yelled. "We've been waiting for you!"

There, in the backyard, was our camping tent, set up just for me for Mother's Day. They'd decorated the outside of the tent with pink pinwheels.

"We couldn't make you a teepee because it was raining," Junior said. "So we made you this."

I crawled into the tent to find this, drawn on the back of a pizza box (I especially like the phallic tree hovering over my drawn tent—a subtle reminded that I am perpetually surrounded by male parts):

The cooler next to the air mattress was stocked with vodka and cups. I hugged them—the boys I mean. Thanked them. I curled up with the three boys and we listened to the rain. It was lovely. I poured myself a cocktail and snuggled deeper under the blankets. Something was missing though. I looked around. What was it?

Aha.

"Junior? Where's your father?"

"He, uh, hurt his back putting the tent up. He's on the couch with the heating pad."

Of course he was. Although mentally Chuck was prepared to give me a weekend of relaxation, his passive aggressive body had other intentions. If you don't believe me, this post from 2008 entitled, "I've had it with his damn organs!" proves my point nicely.

But whatever.

I had a tent—and I did sit in it. We might even sleep in it this weekend. I'm not giving up on my teepee either. Our backyard could soon be an oasis of repose and seclusion, decorated with twinkling lights, flowers, floral sheets, vodka bottles and decorated pizza boxes.

The perfect locale for a pretty yellow dress.

Smother's Day update: Building the escape pod

See! I was telling the truth. I've started to "build" my teepee's structure in our yard:

If there's one thing my family knows it's that when I set out to do something, I do it. If you remember, I'm going for this:

I've been wanting a teepee for a long time—actually, I've just been wanting a structure to hide in since I became a parent. I've attempted several igloos over the years, but the roof eludes me. The igloo becomes a large outdoor icebox for beer and vodka, which suits me fine, but it's harder to drink incognito while the kids are sledding if they can see you.

Actually, it's impossible.

Back to the teepee. I've had a secret stash of wood I've been stockpiling on the side of the yard. All (**all**) I had to yesterday after work was drag the long sticks across the yard and fashion them to the tree while the kids watched.

"Mom! What are you doing?"

"What are you building?"

"Can I go in it?"

"Building a teepee. A teepee. No."

Now I just need:

• a tarp for the teepee bottom (it's supposed to rain Sunday)
• decorative throw pillows
• bug spray and tweezers (to pull off ticks)
•  a cooler and ice
• flowers to dangle above my head while I repose with vodka and a good book
• a pretty sheet to wrap around the sticks

I'm not going to get weird about affixing the sheet properly. I'll staple gun or hot glue gun the sheet to the wood if I have to. One condition: I am not using one of my bed sheets. A) They're all solids and I'm not doing all this work to achieve a drab effect and B) that would remind me of my bed, which would remind me of laundry and if there's one thing I am not thinking about on Smother's Day, it's goddamn laundry. 

So, off to the store I go. Right after I finish working, dropping items off at the kids' school, making dinner, cleaning up and...

Sigh. Can someone FedEx me a pretty sheet?

Just because it's made with love doesn't mean it's edible: Smother's Day is coming!

Someone moved the Spock ear. I feel cheated yet somewhat relieved. Chuck and I barely have time for bedroom breaks these days, never mind complicated intergalactic rituals. Still...

I keep having flashbacks to a bowling trip I took around this time last year. I went with a single mom friend of mine who brought her five year old and toddler; I took Junior and Everett. Cam, who had just started walking, stayed at home with Chuck.

I spent most of the time watching my friend's toddler try to stick his fingers into and around the bowling balls. He would climb the stairs when she wasn't looking and race toward the arcade. He pushed all of the buttons on the vending machines.

He even managed to make it all the way to the end of one of the alleys—to the pins!—despite the fact that we were both watching him. Constantly.

I kept thinking, This is coming. Next year at this time, when Cam is two, this is going to be me. It made me sweat. It made my heart and head hurt because I knew from experience that it meant I wouldn't sit down for a long time. Nor would I have a chance to chew my food or actually converse with friends if we had a play date.

Simply put, I knew toddlerhood and I knew it would eat me alive.

It has. There's no other way to put it. Cam is hardly the easy-breezy-because-he-has-to-be third child. Rather, our family is the china shop and he is the bull that stormed through the door. We love him—obligatory blah blah blah—but sometimes after he goes to bed, the four of us sit down and slip into a shell- shocked daze. Like, What the hell just happened?

Cam is defiant. He's rambunctious. If he wants something, he helps himself to it—this includes beautifully decorated cupcakes that were lovingly arranged in the shape of a heart on a tabletop at a wedding we just attended (I'm sorry! Again!). If he doesn't like what you're saying he holds up a hand and yells DOP! DOP! (Stop!)

And he wants ONLY ME.

This is where I'm at the week before Mother's Day: frazzled and frantic. My energy reserves are on low—oh fuck, they're on E—and to be honest, I'm a little traumatized by some of our previous Mother's Day "celebrations" (if you're interested, search "crying in car" on this blog).

But wait!

I found this picture a month ago in an old issue of Country Living magazine (the British edition) and I've been thinking, THIS is where I want to spend Mother's Day. 

Alone in a pretty teepee. In my yard.

I've come up with some conditions: The kids can wave to me from the window of the house, but other than that I don't want any company. No, wait, let me clarify: I don't want any adolescent company.

I also don't want any kid-prepared food. Just because it's made with love doesn't mean it's edible. In fact, it probably contains bodily fluids of some kind. I'll take something store-bought or restaurant-made thank you very much.

And alcohol. I'll take a pitcher of vodka, some fresh limes and a big bucket of ice.

It's perfect, right? I'm home for Mother's Day but not really. I can accept gifts and trinkets but the children can be whisked away. If I drink too much I can walk home, and I have access to running water should I want to shower away all those ticks and mosquitoes.

You think I jest.

Tomorrow I'll take pictures of the teepee I've started to build.