My Dear Watson

Words! Words Coming Soon, I Promise!

I swear to CHRIST you better look at  that camera and smile or I will squeeze the very life from you!       

Hmmmmmm...I finally have some hair and they insist in sticking this totally stupid-looking bow thing on my head.  What trouble can I get into to punish them?

If I close my eyes and wish hard enough I will devise the perfect plan to aggravate and terrify my Mommy while also inflicting some kind of pain on my brother. Mwah hah hah....

No photos please, I refuse to sign a release...give me that camera you damn paparazzo!

I could eat fresh strawberries and bask in the sunlight streaming in through the window all day long, until, that is, my sister sneaks up behind me and bashes me in the head with some heavy object, scratches me with her freakishly long nails, runs over my feet with her push cart or ALL of the above! 

(All Mommas out there, HOLLAH.  Have you, like, been here a million times or what??)

OHJESUSCHRIST just forget the goddamn photo and get me a glass of Sangria already!

I'm Back, Bitches

JESUS CHRIST I've missed you people!

I have to be honest, I never intended that suck-ass excuse for a post I wrote in February to be my last.

I swear!

I was going to be all, oh waaaa, I can't be a Mommy blogger, no time, blah blah blah (which I did) and then you would be all, No! We can tolerate your crazy stories and often eye-searingly poor grammar (which you did) and I'd be all, OH SHUCKS, okay. I'll keep writing!  (Which I did not.)

Holy fuck where does the time go?

Who's out there?  Has everyone deserted me to log on to Twitter and Facebook all day? 

Don't you want to hear how I cut my hair off? (Not, like, ALL of it.  I just decided to opt for the Mom Bob.)

What about the fact that BeBop STILL hasn't found a job?  And now I have to distinguish him (the au pair I'm married to) from the au pair we hired to move in with us and watch the twins? OH!  I now have an au pair!

How about updates from the Wild and Crazy World of Jackson and Parker? Huh?

WHAT ABOUT THE BABIES?  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PEOPLE. Don't you care ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!?!?

Hello?  Is this thing on?

I Think We Should Just Put A Fork In This...

I might be done. Blogging, that is.

I mean, I don't really WANT to stop blogging. I love it. Really, I do.

But I just don't seem to have the time to sit down and compose an even somewhat cogent piece.  After the holidays, I promised myself I would be a better, more frequent blogger. "It's not the quality," I told myself. (SNORT. Like that's ever been a concern of mine.)  "But the quantity!  I should post shorter items, but more often."

Well.  We all know how that's worked out.

Work is so busy I don't have the luxury I once had of sitting at my computer, pretending I'm being productive while really writing my silly posts and Googling that Napoleon Dynamite quote I just can't quite remember.

Those were the good old days. Now I'm busy all day and rush home to feed the twins and put them to bed.

Speaking of those babies, here's one of my (many) issues:  I can't seem to get into the groove of Mommy Blogging.  I was an okay IF blogger, and then a fine pregnant blogger.  But writing about the twins just seems...I don't know...like who cares?

Now you might be wondering: WHY in the fricking hell does Watson think we preferred her posts detailing what cycle day she was on, what her cervical mucous was looking like and what all those pesky areola hairs courtesy of the PCOS were up to over talk of her scrumptious wee li'l ones??

Good question.

And friends, I just don't have an answer for you. I just know I feel like the lamest blogger who ever blogged a blog.

So I'm thinking of just hanging the "I quit" sign on this site, but the thought makes me so sad. This community is so awesome and I've received so much support and guidance and moments of outrageous humor and true friendship that I just can't seem to pull the plug.

But, for example, how am I supposed to write about the OHIDON'TKNOW two months since I last sat my ass down to compose a post?!? 

So.Many.Boring.Detai...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...SEE!  I'm even boring myself!

But in no particular order whatsoever here's what's been going on Chez Watson:

*I am the suckiest, most sucktastic Mommy ever when it comes to the monthly letters I was going to write to the babies. My grandiose scheme was to settle in at the close of each month with my LL Bean slippers on, a cup of hot tea at the ready and compose the most sentimental, witty-yet-hauntingly earnest summation of what the last month had brought us.  Each new morsel of food that passed the lips of Jackson and Parker, each sigh, giggle, new word and activity was to be documented for posterity.

YEAH.

I think I managed that, what...once?  Maybe?

*I work all day and then head home to two, hungry, tired babies.  If you were to, say, drop by unexpectedly one night around 5:30-5:45 PM, you might get the door slammed in your face. But if you came equipped with a nice bottle of alcohol I might let you in and you'd see me in the same disgusting yoga pants I wear every night, hair pulled into a disheveled ponytail, trying to step over the baby-gate from the living room into the kitchen.  Leaving two distraught, baying creatures on the other side.  The gate is so high (actually I'm so short) that it grazes the lady parts in an uncomfortable way which makes me 1) nervous; 2) fearful I'm going to break something else and 3) grateful I'm not planning on having anymore kids.

My extremely ungraceful leap over the gate is greeted with a sound that is virtually inhuman. THE SCREAMING, people, DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN THE SCREAMING. The babies act as if I've hopped on a raft made from palm fronds and left them behind on a deserted island with only a disgusting volleyball for companionship.

They wail and fling themselves on to the floor and I (being the calm, loving Mom that I am) usually scream "HOLD ON!!!  I AM COMING. I AM TRYING MAKE YOUR DINNER!"  or perhaps this old chestnut, "GAWD YOUR WHINING IS MAKING MOMMY WANT TO PUNCTURE HER OWN EARDRUMS WITH A MOLDY CHOPSTICK!!

And then I usually let them into the kitchen where Parker tries to eat the dog's food and Jackson opens and slams the antique wooden door to my deceased grandmother's corner cabinet that's been in the family since the early 1800s.

And then?

Then when the milk is warm (don't even GET ME STARTED on SippyGate when we transitioned from bottles to cups.  JE-SUS. Parker went on a milk strike and cried so hard she acted as if I was trying to coax her into drinking a plastic cup full of dish washing liquid for fuck's sake) and the little bites of turkey meatballs have been readied, I attempt to place two whining, squirming toddlers into their highchairs.

Oh what?  What's that?  I'm tricking you into sitting on a torture device that will soon tighten its 'safety' straps around you and squeeze the very breath from your body while shooting poison darts through your appendages?  Is THAT why you're screaming and flailing about like a ferret trying to free himself from a rusty trap?  Well. THAT explains it.

You might then see Jackson SLAM his head into the back of the high chair. SLAM SLAM SLAM. And there's a good chance you would also hear me yell, "Don't DO THAT!  Your head is already flat from you sleeping funny as a baby so KNOCKITOFF!!!"

And you would also see the twins eat for about 10 minutes before deciding that flinging each morsel of food on to the dog's head is SO much more fun than eating it.  

This presents more problems that can you imagine.  Bosco is a rescue dog and was undoubtedly treated very poorly in his previous home. And this dog has issues. Any object that comes at him from above, even a perfectly good bite of turkey meatball, is seen as a threat.  So while two babies try to fling their food (and cups of water and the dreaded sippy cups and their new plastic, brightly-colored sporks) onto the ground, Bosco is weaving and diving and retreating and crawling and backing up and back and forth and back and forth as fast as he possibly can.  He looks like a soldier trying to avoid being hit with shrapnel for crissakes.

It would not be the most relaxing place you've been in, that's for sure.

*The babies are both finally walking, thank Goodness.  Jackson usually walks with his little arms outstretched like FrankenBaby and Parkie likes to hold her arms in, focusing on her core (I guess) with her little hands tucked in by her chest. She toddles  back and forth and looks remarkably like Charlie Chaplin. She's a total dare devil and while Jax might be sitting quietly in the corner 'reading' a book, she's probably getting up on the couch (her new trick), crawling gleefully across the giant sectional cushions to the end and then propelling herself, head first, on to the Glider rocking chair we have next to the couch.  And because this thrill got old fast, man, she now tries to stand up on the chair and rock it back and forth, perilously close to flying off said chair onto the hardwood floor.

*I am finally making headway on my quest to lose the Baby Toddler Weight From Hell. I started a whole new (and crazy, natch) program and I've lost about 15 pounds. No humiliating, death camp jump rope torture in sight, thank God. No Blond Mom Gang to conjure up the traumatic devastation known as Middle School P.E. Class.

*I finally decided to join Facebook. GAWD.  How boring! Not to be all snotty but geez, someone (someone who, incidentally, 'friended' me recently, someone I knew about 25 years ago from a summer in DC and can't remember for the freaking life of me thanks to a Greek restaurant on the outskirts of Georgetown that would serve us wine coolers) tagged me for some list of 25 Interesting Things About Me.

HA!  That's like so 2006!  Us bloggers did a list of ONE HUNDRED things like three years ago.  Take that.  That would be the FACE in Facebook, loser.  (Okay, that actually was snotty, wasn't it?) Anyway, I don't love hearing how one friend is having Earl Grey tea with honey and another is looking forward to watching the Grammys and how another  friend isn't sore after skiing for the first time all season and having people write on my wall. I guess I'm just a late adopter.  And unusually cranky. But maybe I'll get the hang of it (she says doubtfully).

*Work, although busy, is fine for me.  For BeBop? Not so much.  He just found out yesterday he's getting laid off.

*HOLY. SHIT. Laid off?!?  In this time of global economic crisis the likes of which haven't been seen since the 1930s?!?

WHERE ARE YOU PEOPLE WITH THAT WINE?!?!?

*Anyway. I'll close now by saying I just don't know what to do with this blog. Any suggestions are most welcome. And so is Merlot.

Merlot = VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

CHAIR OF DEATH:

Parker:  Me likey stab Mommy with half-eaten pretzel

Jackson:  Do de do de do...me no see sister threaten to puncture Mommy's carotid artery with pretzel. Mmmmmm...pretzel...wheee!!!

Bring It, 2009. BRING IT.

Clearly, I am the worst blogger in the entire world.  I really am.

I have not posted in so long, if I were to really detail what's happened since my last post it would take you  until Valentine's Day to get through everything, and really?  

WHO'S GOT THE TIME?

To sum up, just in the last few weeks, I have had my sister and nephew come for Thanksgiving, contracted a horrific case of laryngitis (otherwise known as Husband's Dream Come True) on Thanksgiving Day when I was hosting thirteen people for dinner, celebrated the twins' first birthday, celebrated my seventh wedding anniversary, had my 41st birthday, gotten ready for Christmas, finally been freed from my clomping walking boot, started physical therapy twice a week, been told my Crazy-Walk (sort of a drag-foot, limp kind of thing) was 'mostly in my head' (i.e. YOU CRAZY, LADY!) and let's see...what else?

I think that about covers it. 

Oh yeah. Not blogged once.  Not even Twittered, for Chrissakes.  And that takes a total of .00001 seconds.

So....highlights?  And, because it's ME, some lowlights as well:

Thanksgiving was fun, in that this is frigging insane kind of way.  In that good news/bad news kind of way that often defines life.

The good news is I managed to make a fairly decent Butternut Squash soup the day before I got sick, the bad news is my sister and I decided to 'garnish' the bowls of soup with a candied walnut and some unsweetened whipped cream to rock it all Top Chef Style.  This was NOT a good plan.  In the past I've used sour cream, and let's just say whipped cream cannot carry a walnut. So everyone's bowls had an odd looking smear on the top, plus a surprise what in God's name is THIS walnut that was lurking at the bottom of their bowl.

Thankfully, no one mentioned it.  Which was good because by the time we served dinner I literally had no voice.  AT ALL. Part of the problem was for some reason the Universe thought it would be funny to give me a terrible case of laryngitis on the day to give thanks.  The day I am having tons of people over for my very first Thanksgiving ever. (I mean, I've celebrated the holiday before.  I just mean, this was the first year I've hosted.  But you knew that. Moving on.)

Anyhoo, part of the problem is that my Mother is deaf as a door knell (which I think is supposed to be DEAD as a door knell but my sister and I have always said "deaf" and "dead" is much grimmer and who knows what that means anyway?) and so I literally had to repeat EVERYTHING AT LEAST TWICE.  EVERY SINGLE DINGLE THING.  ALL DAY LONG.

"When do we start the stuffing"

"What?"

"WHEN DO WE START THE STUFFING??"

"Where is the bowl for the cranberry sauce?"

"What?"

"WHERE IS THE BOWL FOR THE CRANBERRY SAUCE??"

All day long.

So you can imagine how by about 3:00 PM my voice was totally gone and I was using hand signals to ask if people wanted cream and sugar with their coffee.

The next day was the babies' first birthday, and my sister and BeBop and I bundled everyone up and took them to the San Francisco Zoo.

This was funny because I was still in The Boot and had to rent an Old Lady Scooter to, well, scoot around the zoo.  Also funny?  The speed controller was a dial with two pictures on either end:  a tortoise and a jack rabbit.

I know!  Zoo humor is so damn funny.  It's HARE-larious.  You can BEARly stand it. I'm not LION, it's that funny. 

SOMEONE STOP ME.

So my sister was constantly yelling, "Come on slowpoke!  Gun that mother up to jack rabbit and let's go!"  But even on jack rabbit, I could barely keep up with the strollers she and BeBop were pushing.

And don't even get me started on what happened when I came tooling around a blind corner and BANG!  Right in front of me is a loose peacock standing in the middle of the road, all 'oh look at me and my pretty tail feathers' and how I came THIS close to running said peacock over. I'm still having nightmares.

And then just to add a little extra drama to the outing, because Lord knows three kids under two, two strollers and an Old Lady Scooter aren't dramatic enough, there was The Incident from last year.  On Christmas Day a Siberian tiger escaped from her enclosure and mauled three people, killing one young man.  (DUDE. Watson gets all GRIM all of a sudden.) 

But now the tiger area is all enclosed in a high-tech,James Bond-y, USSR prior to 1990 crazy wire and lights type deal.  And tons of tourists stand around saying, "Is this where that Tiger ate that boy?"  and "Yep, I think it was right here" and why am I relaying this part of the zoo tour?  God, I have no idea.  

Let's just say I cranked my scooter up all the way from tortoise to jack rabbit and got the hell away from there. Later a friend told me I was taking an unnecessary risk just being in the vicinity, given that on my scooter I was a veritable Meal on Wheels for any escaped vicious beasts.

Later, for their birthday, we subjected the babies to more cupcakes and more photos of them stuffing the aforementioned cupcakes into their cry-holes.  Because really, can anyone ever get enough of babies shoving cupcakes into their faces?

Didn't think so.

To recap:  We had Thanksgiving, guests galore, laryngitis, babies' birthday, zoo trip, narrowly-avoided incident with both peacock and large vicious cat AND our anniversary, all on the same weekend.

Followed in quick succession by my birthday. 

My 41st BIRTHDAY, can you friggin' believe it?!

I cannot. 

Except when I get eight hours of sleep and STILL wake up tired. Then I can believe it.  Or how when I barely step on a speed bump in a parking lot and my foot snaps in two like a dried twig, THEN I can believe I am forty-one.

But I'm determined to make this the best year yet.  And I wish the same for all of you.




We got crap-ass cupcakes on our birthday, Thanksgiving-themed cupcakes with crappy Pilgrims on top that my crap-ass cheap Dad got ON SALE.  The nerve.





Screw that Dude!  I just shoved that chocolate masterpiece in my mouth and was all, YEAH! Chocolate is the BOMB!





We made sure our Mommy couldn't, for the life of her, take one good photo of the two of us together.  One of us was either moving, closing our eyes, trying to fall head first off the couch or shooting mucus out our nostrils down the front of our face.  GOOD TIMES.


 


Well, okay.  This one was pretty cute. We guess. 





This is the whole gang at the zoo.  I (Parker) am crying because this hat is not fierce, like AT ALL.  And my bro bro looks like a tiny little lumberjack in his hat, so overall not a great fashion day for the Watson twins.  But Mommy and Daddy are just beside themselves with joy because here we are, celebrating our 1st birthday!  What could better?

(Ok, so Mommy not getting mauled by a tiger while on her scooter. That was also nice. Good point.)

I have barely recovered from all the election hype. 

On Wednesday the 5th I was so happy and thrilled and hopped up on carbs and sugar from our post-election pizza party (which included copious amounts of Yes We Can Fruit Punch. Don't ask) but also so terribly heartbroken over the passage of Proposition 8.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything (quite possibly a dead horse because he or she just couldn't face life alone on the farm because he or she was prohibited from marrying his or her same-sex horsey partner!) but really, is this the best we can do?

IS IT?

It is not.

We can do better.  And we should do better. If you care, you can head over here and take a looksy.

I was going to take the babies to a march last weekend but then the sad realization that I cannot march - or walk, for that matter - dawned on me.

I am still firmly ensconced in this goddamn walking boot. And I am so over it.  A friend referred to it as my Iron Man boot which made me feel cool for about five seconds and then I just went back to complaining about how hard it is to be clomping around with this thing on all day, all out of balance, in every sense of the word.

I feel like I am in the weeds. 

And since I wasn't sure what that meant exactly, I decided to look it up on Wikipedia and was shocked to learn it might be diner lingo. DINER LINGO!  Honestly, besides a stiff drink and a cheap hooker WHAT IS BETTER THAN DINER LINGO?!

Why...legal gay marriage, Watson.

Good one.

Okay, BESIDES legal gay marriage what is better than diner lingo?

[crickets]

Thought so.

Anyhoo, 'in the weeds' could refer to "a waitress/cook that can't keep up with the tables."  Well, that's somewhat vague and confusing I thought.  And then I read on: "Refers back to chefs' military roots, where being in the weeds would cause your army to be slaughtered."

Hmmmmmm...slaughtered?  That's a bit melodramatic even for ME and I'm known for histrionics.

So perhaps I'm not exactly in the weeds, but I'm not in a great place at the moment.

I'm so tired of hobbling around everywhere and not being able to carry the babies from one room to another. When I feed them dinner, I'm forced to implement a complicated strategy that includes retrieving the single stroller from the garage, placing Baby 1 in said stroller and bringing him/her to the kitchen, to his/her highchair, and strapping him/her into said highchair while he/she screams bloody murder.  Then, it's pushing the empty stroller back out to the living room where Baby 2 is in the process of licking the dog's toy or possibly the sole of BeBop's shoe which he left out for the 17th trillion time.  Baby 2 then goes into single stroller and being the daring Momma that I am, I DON'T EVEN STRAP HIM/HER IN.  (Fuck yeah!)  Then Baby 2 gets strolled into the kitchen while Baby 1 is in the process of gnawing his/her arm off because it's taking me so long to get Baby 2 into his/her highchair.

And the clomping. 

SWEET MOTHER OF CHRIST THE CLOMPING.

Back and forth, clomp clomp clomp.  From the kitchen back to the highchairs again and again. Ooops, forgot the 12th spoon because the little brats darlings have thrown 11 over the side onto the dog's head.  Ooops, forgot the water.  Ooops, forgot the second water.  Ooops, time for yogurt and applesauce.  Ooops, time for the warm washcloth which must be WARMED with WARM WATER or Baby 1 and Baby 2 will howl when I'm trying to wash the dried food off their hands and faces. Howl like a howling Howler Monkey being eaten alive by a liger AND a vicious, bloodthirsty Unicorn and believe you me, that's NOT a sound you want to hear.

And then it's time for Operation Single Stroller to commence again, as I try to get both babies into their room for bedtime.

Operation Bedtime has degenerated into Operation Just Kill Me Now because the babies have decided that in order to be ready for when I sell them to the traveling carnival, they must practice their skills for hours upon hours.

What skills, you ask? Nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills?

Errrrr, well, no.  More like their juggling skills.  They totally think sweet juggling skills will come in handy once they're on the circuit. You know! The traveling carnival circuit.

If you were to peer into their room at about 7:00 PM on any given night, you'd just see a blur of fast moving arms and things flying out of the crib faster than I put them back in.  It's just a giant dust cloud of pacifiers and arms and loveys and other loveys and arms and then the monkey and then the elephant and then more arms and then ME trying to catch things as they hit the floor and roll under the cribs or fly into the dirty clothes basket (which is Parkie's favorite target) and more things just FLYING ALL THROUGH THE AIR. 

God, I'm tired just thinking about it.

I'm going to find myself a diner and order me up some dough well done with cow to cover to start with and then have two cows, make them cry, walk 'em through the garden if you please. Burn 'em both, add wax and don't forget the fries, on a rail!

And bring me a Creep. Or twenty.

It will be hard to choose between a bucket of cold mud and a white cow for dessert or an order of Eve with a moldy lid and a cup of mud so maybe I'll just order all of it.

Care to join? 

I know, my mood is so STELLAR these days, but really?  I could use the company.