more photos than you can possibly be interested in...

i fit into my pre-baby jeans today...

not all of them, but most. When I reached into the pocket of the ones I decided to wear, I found five dollars. This is the best day of my life!!! (Besides my wedding day and the days my sons were born...)

ben turns 3

We had a party on Saturday, the day after Ben's actual birthday. It started out pretty damn mellow, but by the end of the day, someone had fallen off of our front porch and sprained their ankle and someone else had pooped in the bath tub (okay, that last one was Ben). His preschool teacher gives him so much milk that by the end of the day he is constipated, and the only way we could get him to go was a combination of Benifiber and warm bath water. The boy who never stopped pooping is now constipated. Is this his teacher's version of passive aggression? Ben had a great time in his own way, which means that he barely acknowledged any of the thousands of children who roamed through our house and back yard. The only one he consistently likes is Isabella, and any time she turned her attention away from him, he looked stricken. Anyway, our house now looks like someone stepped on a land mine full of toys (minus the body parts). Pictures will follow.

i've thought about it

I am sitting here and it is too late and I'm tired, but I can't stop obsessing about Ben's preschool situation...we are talking to the director tomorrow, and I hope everything will be okay, but I don't have the best feeling about it. I want them to love him as much as I do, and to see what a great kid he really is. Why can't they see that?

the rapist of redlands

There is a rapist in Redlands this month. He locked some people in their house and beat and raped them. Am I scared? A little. But more than being scared, I am annoyed. I simply do not have time to fit a rape into my schedule. I'm really overwhelmed with work right now, the house is a mess, and the kids keep me busy all day long. Dealing with a rapist would be the last straw. I simply don't want to waste my energy kicking him in the balls and reporting it to the police; it would just be a nuisance. I imagine myself walking into the living room and the rapist is sitting there silhouetted in the dark, smoking a cigar, waiting to rape me--they are always so dramatic--and I sigh and turn the light on and ruin his ambiance and tell him, Dude, get the fuck out, I'm too busy for this shit, I've got papers to grade.

curse you, woman of costco

A lonely, ugly, poorly dressed woman with two children's outfits cut in line in front of me in Costco. Sure I had a cart full of crap, but she pretended that I did not exist and calmly stood in front of me. She was old, she had two items, so I let it go. But I could not suppress the rage. That old bitch, I thought to myself. All she had to do was ask me to go first, but no, she had to cut. The audacity of it stung more than the act itself. Perhaps one day I will run into her in a dark abandoned alley one day, and on that day, the tables will turn.

www.santriestudios.com

www.santriestudios.com

They tell me on Thursday that they are very concerned about Ben's aggression at preschool, and I am shocked because the last thing I would call him is aggressive. He is the kid who makes a family of the letter I out of Legos, who pulls The Crucible off the the bookshelf and pretends to read it, who shares toys with Elliott and kisses him good night. Intense? Yes. Stubborn? Yes. Mean and aggressive? I was shocked to hear that they think so. I drove away from the school thinking oh my god he has autism or a psychological problem and am I just being defensive of my kid because he's my kid? Well, of course I am. In any case, after this lovely discussion, I take Ben to the ear nose and throat surgeon in Fontana. As I am driving on the freeway, I am stuck behind a monster truck with a web address in a gigantic font that I cannot avoid advertising a really wonderful-sounding clothing company: www.bigtittiescrew.com. Shocking that when I go to check out the website, it doesn't exist or has not been published yet. You'd think with a name like that, that they've got their act together. In any case, onto the surgeon. Ben has now peed all over himself and I do not have an extra pair of shorts, so I take him to the bathroom and he pees in the toilet (yes!) and I change his pull-up and plan on telling anyone who asks about the wet spot that he sat in a puddle. No one asks, thankfully. In the waiting room, a deaf old man complains about the war and says, "Take 'em out, take out his tonsils. I had mine taken out and look at me. I used to be skinny, you know" and when I try to reply to him, he just keeps on talking, a monologue, really, because he can't hear a damn thing I'm saying. The surgeon puts a long scope with a light on the end down Ben's nose and Ben is patient and friendly the entire time, so I promise him a "cake" (aka a muffin) on the way out. Ben needs surgery to remove his adenoids, which may help with the constant, painful coughing and infections during this time of year, and which may also help with his pronunciation of words. So on the way out, I try to buy a muffin, but my one dollar and thirty cents will not cover it and they don't take cards. The kids seem to be laughing at me as I drag Ben over to the ATM, where I am denied because I only have eighteen dollars in my account. What do you have for a dollar thirty? I ask the guys. Nothing, they reply. But then they take pity on me. They ask me what I want. I tell them the lemon muffin and I am flushed with embarrassment and I hope that they are never students in one of my English classes. And the whole way home, Ben eats his muffin and I can't stop thinking about whether or not something is really wrong with him and what I can do to fix it. I still don't know.