Scatter

Terrible Two, times Two

To be fair, the terrible two’s really started around 18 months and just get, um, better.  Well, okay, everyone knows they don’t get better, but they certainly get more interesting.  That is, the boys find more interesting ways of getting into trouble. 

Just when I think things are evening out, getting better, life getting a bit calmer, the AC tries to die again.  Now, I have a suspicion that it was one of the boys who stuck a stick or something into the AC unit near their sandbox, but I have no way of being certain.  Needless to say, most days and evenings of the year in Florida require AC, or at least some sort of forced air–a serious necessity for me, who likes my air in its dry and air-like state, rather than like water. 

The AC quit, I freaked out, and was seriously in a state of total near-losing-it derangement when I had to open the windows.  The reason being that it requires the sunroom to be open, as well as windows in the front of the house, which means a much more difficult time policing the activities of small petulant boys.  Finn is always much cleverer than I think he is…and is way too observant for my comfort.  He snuck off after he figured I had forgotten that the nursery window was open.  I had indeed forgotten that.  In fact, had Liam not also disappeared, it is likely that I would not have noticed Finn had escaped until I saw him run past the doors or windows, or maybe not at all. 

Liam missing from my sight, my super-mom-hearing kicked in and I could hear a sound that I hadn’t heard since I was a child…  The sound of a window screen being relieved of its station…  Both boys were standing on the ledge of the window, actually chanting, “Push!”  and by the time I got to them, the screen had been popped out and completely mangled.

That wasn’t the worst part.  The worst part came when I had to decide how to catch them and  bring them to justice.  Was I supposed to climb out of the window too?  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to set an example like that, and in all likelihood, they would simply have been overly amused to see it (though, I cannot blame them).  It would have been a quicker way to catch them, and I would also feel like a ditzy, old, mom going all the way around to the back of the house and out the proper door.  By the time I reached them, had I gone out the door, they could have quit the yard altogether and gotten half way down the street (and they don’t use sidewalks).  

So, I went out the window after them, and what a game that was.  They are smart kids, and well versed in going their separate ways, wisely figuring that I cannot reach both of them before they split paths.  The problem is that now that they are two, they are considerably larger than they were before, hence, much harder to hold onto while scooping up the other one.  They are deviously, fiendishly clever, and have developed a no-fail wriggle to impede my progress when such a feat is attempted.

Justice?  No.  There was none.  I feel for my own mother now, because I fully understand how she felt.  It just becomes a game, where your children are laughing at you, you are running after them, and they can get into the small spaces that you can’t, or don’t care to.   It’s sort of like watching Finn climb everything that he can in my house.  He is gooood at it.  Really good at it.  Never falls, never fails in his attempts or goals.  By the muscle/ability standards of a normal human worm-baby two-year old, he should not be able to open our DVD cabinet, much less climb to the top of it to retrieve a pined for DVD.  The DVDs he pines for (I am also convinced that he can read) are needless to say, rather odd choices for a child of his age as well.  Rather than hating the cartoons/children’s movies, I find myself never ever wanting to see most of the movies that I liked before these guys showed up.

This isn’t to say that Liam isn’t as mischeivious or devious in his own ways.  He is charming, possibly psycopathically  sociopathically so.  He has the ability to completely make you forget what you were doing, if you were angry, what he did that was bad, or what Finn is currently working on.  You see, they make a fabulous team.  One couldn’t exist well without the other.  It makes me curious what mothers of singletons do, and how their children manage to learn about stuff like language, gravity, shame, and fear. 

I suddenly feel a great need to lie on somebody’s couch, and have tons of therapists and child psychologists/childcare professionals talk to me about what to do when they become teenagers, because I am now even more frightened of what that day (and all following it) will bring.

Terror-ized,

Pru

Happy Saints?

Really.  Who would be happy to have been decapitated, and have their remains purchased by noblemen wishing to escape their rightful sentence in Hell?  Also, the name “Valentine” was apparently quite the rage for Christian martyrs.   Maybe someone at the earliest version of “Hallmark” purchased some relics and couldn’t turn them for a profit, so he decided to make a buck anyway and create his own holiday of pure marketing genius. 

Everyone wants to feel like love is romantic and special, right?  Like their lover sees through their eyes, and feels through their skin…Yich.  With the skull above, and that line of thought, all I can think about is serial killers and psychopaths.  Enjoy your chocolates.

I have a discussion-lead/presentation due for Monday, so maybe that is more the red I am seeing…bleary-eyed, bloody-eared (you know, from Finn screaming at me), and stuck.

G. De la Smarme

Dangerous hobbies…

I am adding beermaking to my list.  I came home from class a month ago, to find two grown men hovering over the stove with ladles and looking quite suspicious.  Not only did they enjoy my very favorite drink without me (a raspberry lambic, which I was promised), they were obviously responsible for the sticky brown-black goo that was covering my stove and leaking down the front of my oven.  It was also clear that their intention was to do something nefarious with permanently staining cans of berries. 

Tonight, appears to be bottling night.  I get home from class, and immediately torn from Rousseau and Foucault to become an accomplice. I have begun a bandaid/beer spillage count.  So far so good.  One bandaid, one nosebleed, no beer lost.

Observation #1:  It would seem a very good idea to make certain that the tap on the bucket, into which one is going to pour all of the beer, be closed. 

#2: Make sure to have plenty of bandaids on hand, as well as kleenex. 

#3.  Though I understand that it is superstition that causes the brewer to drink while brewing, I suggest that one might wish to drink something with no alcohol during the process.

Ooops..bottling apparently requires I do more than simply type…I’ll get back to this…