the pieces of my life

Hey, guys, how do you like my new iPhone 5? What? You can’t see it? That’s because my freak of a husband left for a business trip last week and FORGOT TO ORDER MY PHONE! Of course, I’m probably one of those morons who would have fallen for this:

But really I’m just cranky because my smoke alarm system HATES me (yes, it’s an all-caps kind of day). Adam was–again–on a business trip (who knew someone working for a travel company would have to travel so much?) and the smoke alarms decided to f*ck with me right at bedtime. One of them would beep. Which one? I couldn’t tell. Because when I ran to look, nothing would happen. So I’d leave. And it would beep again. Sometimes it beeped at 15 minute intervals. Sometimes at 3. Once it was about 25 minutes, luring me into believing it had stopped. So I frantically chased beeps. I finally figured it was the hall smoke alarm, so I took it down. I went to replace the batteries, only to discover we are out of batteries. So I took the old batteries out and left it on the table, and finally went back to sleep. Ah, sweet sleep. BEEP! @@%$##@! It was the wrong detector. It was the one not one foot away from the hall detector in the guest room. Back out, put one on table back up, take out new one. Back to bed. Ah, sweet sleep. “Mommy, my throat hurts!” And in crawls the little one.

This morning was the eternal debate: Is my child healthy enough to go to school? Do we factor in that her class picture is being taken at 8:30 a.m.? But… But… Ah, but what if it’s strep? My guilt gets the better of me, and I make Adam swear he won’t let Doodles out of the house on picture day with crazy hair and I run Pie to the doctor for the 8 a.m. walk-in hours, making sure we’re 5 minutes early so we’re first, and I get her a strep test, and we find out she’s fine, and I haul her butt to school, arriving 3 minutes before it’s class picture time and before I’m on duty volunteering for picture day. Yes, that was a run-on sentence. Because it is a run-on sentence kind of day. I guess I’ve moved on from all caps.

But now Pie is chipper and fine and running around the playground last I saw her. Doodles’s hair was almost laying flat. I got to work with a photographer who really didn’t seem to like kids very much. And now I’ve got one hour to figure out our back-to-school picnic dinner, what we’ll be bringing to tomorrow’s block party, finish up the work I’m supposed to get done for a committee meeting on Sunday, and, oh, write a novel.

People wonder why I eat so much sugar. Thank goodness it’s Halloween time! I wonder if the Switch Witch will bring me an iPhone 5 this year. Damn, I want an iPhone 5!

Every year I’ve had a really pitiful little garden that I spend an ungodly amount of money on to try and coax out a tomato or two. Seriously, do you know how much compost costs?

This year, I realized it was actually cheaper to have someone who knows what he is doing install my garden. So in the beginning of June, I had someone come and plant for me. Let me say: Wow. Someone who knows what he’s doing can really make a garden that can produce food!

For fun, let’s look at a comparison. This was my garden in 2010:

Nice, huh? Some lettuce, some tomato, some basil in nice neat rows. I put down organic compost, used organic fertilizer. That stuff ain’t cheap.

This year, having someone else put in my garden, this is what it looks like:

I’ve vowed to eat a salad a day to use even a portion of the lettuce. We have tomatoes, peppers, radishes, cucumbers, zucchinis, beets, collards, kale, basil, cilantro, oregano, and lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce (I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but that’s a start).

So now that I have this beautiful lush garden, I have discovered something.

I hate organic gardening.

Actually, more specifically, I am afraid of organic gardening. I’m afraid of my garden.

Because it turns out that “organic” part? The part that includes “no pesticides”? Well, that’s a big old invitation to every bug and critter out there. And the bugs and critters that live in a garden truly gross me out. To be fair, most of them are fine. Bees, no worries. Slugs? Flick them away without a second’s thought. Ladybugs? Well, those are downright cute. The rabbits? Yes, they may like my veggies, but they’re bunnies for goodness sake! How can anyone say anything bad about bunnies?

It’s the earwigs. I. Hate. Earwigs. I don’t mean I kind of dislike them. I mean I hate them with such a ravishing passion that they appear in my nightmares with those stupid pincher claws and that nasty roach-colored back. And did you know that earwigs like to hang out in-between lettuce leaves? It’s true!

I’m at the point where I refuse to go pick lettuce unless I have Beetle standing there for moral support. In fact, I need to pick lettuce now. But Beetle isn’t home. So I’ll just do without lettuce until she returns.

The other critters aren’t making me much happier. I had rows and rows of gorgeous blueberries and raspberries just waiting to ripen. The birds enjoyed them all. We got one raspberry. The blackberries barely made it. It’s a race to get the tomatoes when they’re ripe enough to pick but before they’ve been eaten by the squirrels.

And let me tell you, we have vicious squirrels. Think I’m kidding? Adam had to rig the garbage can with bungee cords to keep them out, and they still chew through the plastic. I pride myself on my composting. I have two decent looking wooden compost bins. Which just scream to the squirrels, “Come and get it!” I couldn’t figure out why rotten vegetables were all over the ground until I noticed the hole chewed in the sides and back of the bins. Adam pushed the bins together, stuck weeding cloth between them, and nailed chicken wire on the back. So the squirrels gave us a big “F**k you,” and just gnawed through the front.

I refuse to use pesticides. But I also refuse to deal with earwigs and losing my fruit. I see a battle lines being drawn. I’m putting on my armor. If you don’t hear from me in a while, send in reinforcements!

Adam is having dinner on what is arguably the world’s largest yacht (and apparently it is up for debate). This is the life he now apparently leads.

The life I lead involves leftover pasta, an iPhone on rice, the girl’s multiple nightmares, and the week-old dirty socks I just found in the boy’s backpack. Minutes ago I e-mailed Beetle, asking her, “Who the f**k is playing such loud music in the neighborhood at this hour? And classical music at that?”

And then I went upstairs to put away yet more stray books only to discover that it’s us. We’re the ones playing such loud f**king music at this hour. When the girl had her third “I’m having a nightmare even though I haven’t yet closed my eyes,” I told her, “Turn on your light, read a book, listen to music… I don’t care! Just go the freak to sleep and leave me alone!” And so she turned on the Nutcracker. At top volume.

Good thing I didn’t call the cops. To think I had thought I’d skip the wine tonight. Ha!

I so heart my podiatrist. I had my third visit with him today. My petroneus longus tendon has been giving me problems. Bad petroneus longus tendon! My podiatrist gave me a brace to wear and some exercises to do. It helped significantly. I can walk without pain. But the running is still an issue.

At the appointment today, I told him, “I know the no-brainer answer to my problem, but I don’t want to do it. My foot only hurts on long runs.”

He shrugs. “The no brainer being, ‘Don’t run long.’ How badly does it hurt?”

“I’m fine during the runs. But I’m totally hobbled after my runs.”

He nodded. “Well, I’ll give you a stronger brace to wear during your runs.”

I was elated. “You’re not going to tell me to not run?”

He asked, “Would you listen to me?”

Me: “Um, probably not.”

Doc: “So I’ll give you a stronger brace. But the minute that marathon is over, you’re coming back in for an MRI so we can see what kind of damage you did to yourself.”

He did assure me that because my foot is improving and that I’m fine on my non-long running days that my foot is recovering and I’m not exacerbating anything. So I’m probably not doing any permanent damage. Which is good enough for me right now, surprisingly so, as I’ve not really been into my runs and looking for excuses to get out of them. But I’ve hit that point where I’m far enough along in my training that there’s no point in backing out now. I did 16 mile last Saturday and I’ll do 18 this weekend, which is pretty much there, so why bother bailing now? It’s just two months till Chicago, which means just six weeks till tapering, which means I better get my plane ticket soon.

Another thing I like:

En garde!

When I signed the boy up for an intro to fencing class, I had to call and manually register him because he missed the cutoff of age seven and the web site rejected him. But he got in. When I took him to his first class, the teacher asked if anyone else wanted to fence. Not-even-five-year-old Pie jumped right in as did another little girl. The teacher immediately nicknamed the two of them Giggles One and Giggles Two. She loves it. They’re both so darn cute out there!

And now, for the things I don’t like:

G.E. My oven is still broken. Yes, people, we are on to six weeks now and the appliance company is getting tired of hearing from me, but not so tired that they’ll fix the damn oven! The part that was supposed to take 3 to 5 business days is now on its 11th business day of travel. If I can’t bake a cake in my own oven for my babies’ birthdays, G.E. is going to understand the meaning of a Mad Housewife.

Running. Yeah, I really don’t like it anymore. And yet… And yet. Ugh.

The fact that my Ivy League-educated husband is incapable of flipping a light switch off or closing a cabinet door/drawer. How hard is it to open the cabinet, remove your coffee mug, and then close the cabinet. Every time I walk into the kitchen, it’s like there was some mass rebellion by cabinetry. Today there were two doors open, the utensil drawer open to its fullest, the overhead light on, and the pantry light on. And then when I went upstairs, his sock drawer was lying wide open. Really that hard? Just a little nudge of the hip and it slides closed again! It’s a miracle! They open and close! What will science discover next?

How freakin’ much airlines now charge. We bought our tickets home for our yearly jaunt to Miami Beach, and we have never paid so much money for that trip. I’m pretty sure the tickets to Florida were on par to what we paid to fly to Israel. And according to Farecast, the flight prices are only going up, which I can verify because between when we priced tickets on Wednesday and bought them on Friday, they had already gone up $100 a ticket.

That I wanted to upload video of the armed punks (well, armed with plastic foils), but my videos are too big and I don’t have time to figure out how to shrink them. So instead of a cute note, we’ll end with a cranky note. Freakin’ oven, cabinets, plane tickets, running, video. Grumble grumble.

P.S. Adam just called. I said, “Oh, I was just trashing you in my blog!” He laughed and said, “Oh good! Another usual Monday!” I like that. So we’ll end there instead of with the grumble.

5:37 a.m.

Poke, poke, poke.

Me: What the hell are you people doing in my bed? Why the hell are you people waking me up! Leave me alone!

Little people noisily stomp off and slam the door shut and then proceed to make enough noise that I can’t fall back asleep

8:15 a.m.

The boy: How much longer till I go to camp?

Me: We leave at 8:45 so thirty minutes.

8:22 a.m.

The boy: How much longer till I go to camp?

Me: Look at the clock. You can read the time.

The boy: Yeah. [pause] So how much longer?

Me: [sigh] Twenty-three minutes.

8:30 a.m.

The boy: How much longer till I go to camp?

Me: What does the clock say?

The boy: 8:30.

Me: And what time are we leaving?

The boy: 8:45.

Me: So?

The boy: So? How much longer till we go to camp?

8:41 a.m.

The boy: How much longer till I go to camp?

Me: Sigh. Okay, go ahead. The keys are on the counter. Go get them and and get into the car.

The boy: I can get into the car!

Me: Yes. Grab the keys and get into the car.

The boy: Pie! We can get into the car! Let’s go!

8:47 a.m.

I grab my purse, close the door, and head outside. I open the car door.

Me: Where are the keys?

The boy: Huh?

Me: The keys. The car keys.

The boy: I dunno.

Me: What do you mean you don’t know? How did you get into the car?

The boy: The front door was open so I climbed through and opened the side door.

Me: So no keys?

The boy: Nuh-uh.

Me: So the keys are still inside the house.

The boy: I guess.

Me: And we’re outside the house.

The boy: Yeah.

Me: You realize this means we’re locked out.

The boy: Huh?

8:51 a.m.

Panicked call to the window guy’s voice mail who was supposed to come at 9:30 a.m. to FINALLY put shades up in our front room and family room so our neighbors once and for all don’t have to see me in the pjs in the winter. Call Beetle’s husband to see if, by any chance, he left any doors unlocked because they have a spare key to our house. Beetle is in Vermont and due back later today. Of course, no doors are unlocked. Contemplate how late we’d be if we take the boy to camp by bus. Leave a message for Adam, who is in London, asking him where the hell he’s hidden the extra key.

8:57 a.m.

Pleading call to neighbor to drive the boy to camp. Go with boy and girl with neighbor to camp. Get home. Beetle’s husband calls. He suspects there’s a hidden key. We look. There is a hidden key! Unfortunately it fits none of the locks to their house. I take Pie back to the neighbor’s house to use the bathroom, window guy shows up (didn’t get message in time, but was really nice and it), and Pie and I walk down to Starbucks. I am grateful that it’s Pie I’m with, as she can handle the mile walk without any complaint. Others, who I shall not name, are not as sturdy.

10:11 a.m.

Pie: Mama, we are so lucky to be locked out!

Me: What do you mean?

Pie: Mama, it’s summer!

10:25 a.m.

After one venti iced green tea with one pump of sweetener, one chocolate milk, and one cinnamon-swirl coffee cake, Jasmine and her mom and sister come and rescue us. (I don’t think I’ve ever named Jasmine’s mom before. We’ll call her Laurel.) We head to Laurel’s house for the morning. I text Adam again. I comment on a Facebook post he made and even leave my own Facebook post asking him to contact me. I start calling anyone I know from his local office to see if I can find a number for the London office.  I leave another voice mail. Another text. And another e-mail.

12:15 p.m.

My husband doesn’t call, but Beetle’s husband checks in. Beetle will be home by 3:30.

1:12 p.m.

Adam calls! He hasn’t received a single one of my messages and is therefore surprised to find that I’m frazzled. He tells me where the key is. Yes! I leave Pie with Jasmine and, in 92 degree weather, walk home (not a long walk, but still a hot walk).

1:35 p.m.

Find key exactly where he described it would be. Hmm, key looks a little odd.

1:37 p.m.

Try key on front door. Curse Adam.

1:38 p.m.

Try key on kitchen door. Curse Adam.

1:39 p.m.

Try key on basement door. Curse Adam.

1:40 p.m.

Try key on playroom door. Curse Adam.

1:41 p.m.

Realize the key is the front door key… from before the locks were changed, oh, about a year ago.

1:45 p.m.

Walk the mile to the bus stop.

3:07 p.m.

Get the boy from camp and take the bus back home.

3:17 p.m.

Walk the mile back up the hill to our house. (“How much longer till we’re there? How much longer now?”)

3:37 p.m.

Beetle is home! She has our key! We enter the house!

3:38 p.m.

Hide a key that works in a location that only I know.

Hurry and get Doodles into his swimsuit, pick Pie up from Jasmine’s, and get to the Y in time for swim class with mere minutes to spare.

5:15 p.m.

Pie is monstrous. She wants to stay at the Y, but we have to hurry home for her piano lesson at 6:15.

5:45 p.m.

Feed kids dinner. Pie is rebellious. Pie loses her TV for the night.

6:10 p.m.

Pie: How much longer till my piano teacher comes?

Me: Five more minutes.

I notice there’s a voice mail. Piano teacher double booked. We lose.

I cave. Kids get TV. I get wine. I am so all done with today.

I’m dealing with GE and my oven. My lovely oven that I miss oh-so-very much. The oven for which I have now twice been stood up for by an appliance repair person.

My phone options?

To schedule a repair press 1.

To extend your warranty press 2.

For billing, press 3.

All those are inadequate options. The only option I want?

To go apeshit on our customer service reps, press #$&%*#@.

Thank you for calling GE.

(A note after the fact: Lest you think I’m one of those evil entitled suburban haus fraus, I do recognize it is not the customer service reps fault. And I did not go apeshit on him. But I promise you, as I calmly asked for a sooner appointment–which I did not receive–I was all apeshit on the inside.)

I sent Adam off to the pool with the kids so I can get a grip on the disarray in this house. I got some awesome birthday gifts, but they’re scattered all over the house. Doodles came home with packets of papers that are piled in precarious pyramids all over our counter. Adam found shelves that fit the stairways! So they are sitting empty in Doodles’s room. This is my get-things-done morning.

I’ll do a shopping trip at some point, so I asked the kids what they’ll want in their camp lunches.

Pie: What can I have?

Me: Well, this is dance camp. So no peanut butter.

For three years now, Pie has been at a Jewish preschool and camp (which she’ll attend in a couple of weeks), which for reasons of kashrut (kosher) require a vegetarian lunch. In deference to the restrictions placed on the lunches, they do allow peanut products, as long as they are labeled. The kids with peanut products sit away from those with allergies. Most other places around here other ban or “strongly discourage” peanut products in lunches.

Pie: So this isn’t a Jewish camp?

Me: No.

Pie: Then I want meat! Every day! Meat, meat, meat! Give me lots of meat in my lunch!

My slow introduction of vegetarian ways seems to be making little headway here….

Doodles is in that in-between stage. He’s well beyond little kid. But he’s not yet fully a big kid. And his room reflects this shambles. Books teeter precariously on his bedside shelf. Robotic pieces pile on the table, next to a motorized dog and his now-neglected Bakugan. His closet is still brimming with dress-up clothes but his magic set and Star Wars figures are in frequent rotation. I decided his room needed help. We had to organize. To start, he needs a bookshelf. A real bookshelf.

Adam: Shall we go to Ikea and get one?

Me: Those are crap. They fall apart so quickly. He needs a quality shelf that will last him a while.

Adam does some research. He finds a place nearby that has nice quality unfinished bookshelves.

Adam: What size should we get him?

Me: I dunno. What will work.

Adam measures the space. He jots down notes. He looks at the space again.

Adam: Do you want to get him a six foot one or a five foot one?

Me: Six feet seems too big. Will a five foot fit? I think we should do that.

Adam: Yeah, that will fit.

Me: Are you sure? Five feet seems really big.

Adam: No, it’ll be fine.

Me: I dunno. Maybe measure again?

Adam: It’ll fit. I promise you, it’ll work.

Me: Okay. Go for it.

Adam calls. The five foot one is not available. They’ll order it. It’ll take five long weeks. When I get my head wrapped around a project, I want it to happen now. But now is not possible. But this is one of the many reasons I’m in therapy so I agree to wait the five weeks.

Finally, it arrives at the store!

Me: How will you get it home?

Adam: In the van.

Me: It won’t fit in the van.

Adam: Of course it’ll fit in the van.

Beetle was nearby. I say to her: Adam thinks it’s going to fit in the van.

Beetle: Oh, it totally will. You won’t believe how much will fit in those things.

Adam and the kids go to pick up the bookshelf. He comes home. With the bookshelf on top of the van.

Adam: It didn’t fit.

My cousins come to town. I have my strapping young seventeen-year-old cousin help Adam carry the bookshelf up the stairs. Up our narrow stairs. Up our not-up-to-code unbelievably tight stairs. Because Doodles’s room is upstairs.

I’m not saying a word. Not a peep. I won’t mention a thing. But I will mention that our expensive, not-Ikea bookshelf looks highly okay in the basement. And Adam is now supposed to be researching bookshelves. Narrow bookshelves. And the books in Doodles’s room are still teetering.

I always walk into the Container Store thinking, “This is going to change my life!” and then I walk out the same old me but with one under-the-bed container for wrapping paper, and it’s just so sad.

I hate shopping. Have I mentioned that before? I just hate shopping.

We’ve been in the “new” house for just over a year now. The front room needs a chair and a reading lamp. Right now it has a computer and some Flor tiles. I even hired a decorator last year. She told me I needed a chair and a reading lamp. So we’re all in agreement.

Last March, Adam and I spent a day going to Crate and Barrel and Arhaus looking for a chair and a reading lamp. We didn’t find what we wanted. We said we’d look again. We didn’t.

Now it’s March again. Adam got his yearly bonus last week. So we decided it was time to buy that chair and lamp. Adam’s parents came over and Adam and I headed for our yearly date to the store. We went to Jordan’s. We went back to Crate and Barrel. We did not buy a chair. Adam was game to try more stores, but those two had already tested my shopping limits. I get in the stores. The chairs all look basically the same. I don’t like the way they look. Or I do like the way they look but they’re uncomfortable. The music is thumping. People have glazed eyes. Kids (and the worst kind of kids–other people’s kids!) are screaming. I. Must. Get. Out.

Shopping sucks. Which means the front room is going to stay empty. At least until next March. Next March? I’m sure we’ll actually get something then. Yeah. Definitely.

That’s it. After almost eight years of marriage, for the first time ever, Adam is sleeping on the couch (for the night; everyone knows he naps there regularly). Booted out of the bed. Sleeping solo.

Don’t fear. Our marriage isn’t in trouble. Just our basement. Adam’s camping out on the couch so he can get up every few hours to make sure the waters haven’t reached epic Gilgamesh levels (because, let’s face it, all the Noah references are getting a bit… draining).

(And I can’t get “Rise and Shine” out of my head. Aaaaaggg!)

It’s not so dire, as long as someone stays on top of it. Adam stayed home from work today to keep the levels down, and our playroom is still water free (well, except for the water we’ve tracked through it). It’s just the back room and his office. And the waters are at low levels; they just need to be monitored and vacuumed. We’ve got three sump pumps going–my father-in-law brought the only one he could find in all the New Hampshire hardware stores he checked; Adam waited in line at our local hardware store for their 12:30 shipment; and a neighbor saw my Facebook posting and called to offer me one of hers–so we’re better off than most of this town (the local e-mail list is filled with folks trying to find sump pumps and wet vacs. A number of folks are waiting for the fire department to bail them out.)

Adam is only worried about his office, as there’s a subfloor than can get moldy. But as I pointed out, he’s allergic to mold, so we can just wait till he gets sick and then we’ll know there’s mold. For some reason, he didn’t love that idea.

Tomorrow, Adam seems to think he’s returning to work. So I go from a day with Pie to a day with the sump pump. Sump pump. At least it’s fun to say. Well, not as fun as “Bombay Sapphire martini with extra olive,” but we all must find our fun where we can. Sump pump. Tee hee.