Both Madalyn and John-Zachary have been delivered to their third-grade and kindergarten classrooms, respectively. They were fine. I, not so much. Oh, I'm not in the depths of despair or anything but I will admit to feeling a bit blue. Part of this is due to the plain fact of summer being over. I, as I have often stated, hate the school-year routine. I dislike all the work we have to do every night to be ready for school the next morning. Getting up early is the pits, as is rushing around trying to get ready and get to school on time. Plus I resent being at the mercy of the public school system when it comes to my schedule.

Besides that, though, I am a little sad for another reason. The summer went by so fast and, somehow, it has suddenly struck me how few summers we have left with the kids being little. Sure, on paper it may seem like a lot -- Madalyn isn't even eight yet. But these three months blew by in a flash, and last school year went by very quickly, as well. I have no reason to believe this year won't be the same (especially with the busyness of having all three attending at least part of the time). Before I know it, it will be summer again and that summer, too, will be over in a heartbeat. And so it will continue on down the line until we only have two kids home during the summer....then one....then none. Not to mention that, sure, we may have another nine summers before the first one leaves the nest, but how many more of those will she actually want to spend the entire time with her family? We have very few years left before Madalyn starts branching out and leaving us behind, at least for part of the summer. JZ won't be too far behind.

Ah, but perhaps I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. After all, I'm sitting here, right now, with a small toddler next to me, who's trying to put on a pair of shorts and squawking in frustration because she can't quite figure it out. Just an hour ago I was worrying that JZ would be too bashful to ask his teacher to go to the bathroom when needed. So maybe we've got a little more time than I'm so pessimistically projecting. Still, though, it does remind me that we need to savor each day and not wish our lives away by rushing time to get to some far-off point in the future.

Enough philosophy. How about a couple first-day-of-school pictures?

Funny for the rest of us, though.

He got home late last night because he had court this morning. Then his dad was receiving a service award tonight and Robert stayed to go to the ceremony. He came back afterward to get his things and leave. It was late and the kids had already been put to bed but heard him and got up again. As he was saying goodbye to Madalyn she started to cry. He let both kids get up and follow him around while he got the rest of his stuff together. They walked him to the door, said goodbye and gave hugs again, watched him walk to the car....and then ran out the door to hug him some more and wave as he backed down the driveway. As I tucked them into bed a second time, she cried a little more.

It has been a while since there were tears from either one when their daddy left. They're mostly used to it; or, at least, that's been my perception. Perhaps they aren't quite as at peace with it as I've been thinking. I think Madalyn was tired; she'd cried two times already today over other things. I'm sure that put her in a sensitive state of mind and weakened her ability to deal with his leaving as well as she usually does. Additionally I think maybe having him come home midweek, for such a short amount of time, disrupted the schedule to which they are accustomed and made his leaving tougher. Usually when he comes home he's here for the next three days.

Whatever the reason, it drives home to me, once again, that this (Robert's job situation) was just a temporary solution to one set of problems, and brought with it an entirely different set of issues. I distracted Madalyn by talking about all the fun stuff we'll be doing in the next month or two, focusing especially on the State Fair. Once we got to talking about rides, she cheered up. But it was just a Band-Aid, and Band-Aids only hold for so long. We really need for Robert to find a comparable job here so he can be home every day as he used to be. Our prayers are that it will happen before the year is out.

(Link lifted from List of the Day)

2) I really cannot get over the cuteness of Eliza with her dolls. She has now appropriated Madalyn's American Girl Bitty Baby to add to her collection (Mad's never played with the darned thing, anyway). When she wraps her fat little arms around one of the "babies" and carries it around the room I just want to grab her and nibble on her.

3) Speaking of toys, this? Best investment EVAH. (Though the price reflected there is nowhere near what I paid; it was much less.) I can't count the number of times a day she goes in and out of that little door. She'll take toys or her cup in there and sit, playing happily, for quite a while. I don't know how much I've spent on toddler toys over the years, only to have most of the purchases hold little interest, so it's great when I actually hit one out of the park.

4) I went to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 this evening. I've read all the books so I felt an obligation. It was good but it made me kind of sad, because I'll never have friends like that. Friends, sure; I don't mean to invalidate the people who are nice to me. The four-way friendship portrayed in the books/movies, though...it's way beyond your standard fare. And due to my reclusiveness and general inability to network, I doubt any of my kids will grow up with that type of friend, too. Which kinda sucks of me.

5) We are now at T-minus eight days and counting until the start of the new school year. I am bewildered and baffled by the rapid disappearance of our summer break. Frankly, and I think this is a testament to the extremity of my laziness and distaste for authority, I wish we could home school so I could avoid the nine months of rushing and running that comes when one has three children going to three different schools.

6) I just took a micro-nap that was disguised as a really long blink. I guess that's my signal to head for bed (the blurred vision and dark gray shadows under my eyes weren't indicative enough, I guess).

April 2006: Bought 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 Van. Has less than 35k miles on it and was in excellent condition. We're thrilled.

November 2006: Ran over object in road which punctures the gas tank, resulting in over $1500-worth in repairs to replace said gas tank. On the surface, this wouldn't appear to be Dodge's fault. However, the object was a small one -- it was flat, in fact. Apparently it bounced up when I nicked it with the tire and did the damage, which leads to a question: what kind of idiot designs a vehicle with the gas tank placed in a position where it can be punctured by random small objects?

January 2007: I attempt to start the van and find the key will not turn. No amount of muscle or wiggling or reinserting does any good. It is late at night so I can't call anyone. It occurs to me to Google the problem and I discover that this is a well-known and widespread issue with Dodge vehicles. The only "solution" is to replace the ignition shaft to the tune of several hundred dollars, and the problem is equally likely to recur with the new shaft as with the old one. I read about a quick fix, which is to whack the key firmly into the ignition with a solid object, after which it will turn. As of 8/7/08, I have gone from having to whack the key once every few weeks to get it to turn to now having to pound it a number of times nearly every time I want to start the van.

Date unknown, 2007: Van won't start at random times and needs to be jumped. Turns out to be a bad battery cable. Fixed, but after two visits to mechanic.

Date unknown, 2007: Check engine light comes on. There's a leak in the evap line. It's fixed fairly quickly, but at our expense and inconvenience. Also fixed while we were there: the back seat seatbelt which, inexplicably, has become unscrewed from its lower mooring.

October 2007: The long and horrific Computer Saga begins and drags on until January 2008. During these three months, I have use of the van for less than 24 hours, total. Thinking about it makes me vair, vair tired so I will just provide links: Dodge Wars Episode I: The Saga Begins, Dodge Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo, I Fought the Dodge and the Dodge Won, The Resolution.

Spring 2008: Brakes begin making godawful noise which sounds like metal-on-metal grinding. ("Tonight on the Auto Fetish Network: Naked Brake Grinding! Hot metal-on-metal action!") Take it in for repairs (NOT at local Dodge dealership); never quite sure what it is that is wrong, as they didn't explain it and I, frankly, am SO over it. I'm just thrilled to get out of there in under 24 hours and for less than 200 bucks.

July 2008: Robert arrives in California with the van and says, "Oh, by the way, it started making a clunking/banging noise on the drive out here." (Robert: "We should have it looked at." Me: "F**********ck!!!") When parked, one front wheel is tilted inward. Parents' mechanic neighbor takes it to his garage and finds the entire front wheel apparatus is hanging on by a thread. As in, we should be happy that the whole damned thing didn't fall off while Robert was driving down the highway. This is #2 on the list of Things About This Van That Could Potentially Have Killed Us. Neighbor reattaches appendage properly and we have the wheels aligned the next day. Begin wondering if I can hire a hitman to kill van and make it look like an accident.

August 2008: Effing check engine light on again. I take the thing to the guys in Norman again. There's another leak in the evap line. Either the previous mechanics did a crappy job fixing it the first time or it's just poorly made. Knowing what I now know about all the elements involved, I'd say the odds are split about 50/50 in favor of either explanation. One of the horde of salesmen who are circling the repair lounge, vulture-like, says they quit making Ram vans a few years ago, to which I reply, "Really? I can't imagine why."

Same day: After the Norman Dodge guys told me to come back at 1:00 so they could look at the van, I take the kids to lunch. When we come out of the restaurant, the van starts and we drive away. A half-mile down the road I realize that none of the lights on the instrument panel (blinkers included) nor the stereo are working. It's completely dead. I report this when I give the keys to the associate. A few minutes later he comes in and says that everything worked just fine when he started it to move it inside, and that is must've just been that the key didn't click back after I turned it all the way to start the engine. Whatever. Everything is normal the rest of the day and this morning. However, as I'm driving home around noon, I hit a bump -- and the instrument panel goes dark. Stereo shuts off. Blinkers dead. When I get home I turn off and restart and everything comes on.

Keep in mind, folks, that the odometer just turned over to 70k miles yesterday. We shouldn't be having all these issues. And, yet, I see another trip to Norman Dodge in our future. They can fix whatever the bloody flipping hell it is that's wrong with it THIS time, plus the damned thing needs new shocks, too. Then maybe I'll have them take it out to the parking lot, strap five hundred pounds of TNT to it, and blow it into a million itty-bitty chunks of scrap metal. I wonder if that's covered under the warranty?

What astounds me is the number of people searching for "www.incorrigiblenightowl.com". Okay....correct me if I'm missing something blatantly obvious, but if you know the entire URL of the site, why do you need to Google it? Couldn't you just plug the URL into your browser and come straight here? I keep thinking it must have something to do with cookies or trackbacks or spam or something. I had 23 searches for my URL last month. Surely there can't be that many people who just do not get the concept.

Another confusing thing is that one of the searched phrases was "may i just take a moment to say how much i adore the band on the run album? thanks. i feel better now." This is a post from my Beatleblog, in its entirety, and verbatim, at that. Now, I sincerely doubt that someone read the post and remembered it, word-for-word, when they couldn't even remember where they'd seen it. And it's too random a collection of words for someone to have matched accidentally. So what gives, there? More spam activity, perhaps?

My favorite search string for last month, though, has to be "breast suction in s&m". Um...wow. I am racking my brain trying to figure out which combination of my posts yielded a match on that one. One thing I can guarantee is that those three words definitely did not appear together when I posted them!

Every trip to California presents an opportunity for purse-shopping. This most recent one was no exception. And not only did I find some cute bags, I got fabby deals. What's better than cute purses? Cheap cute purses.

Bag #2:
Before I bought bag #1 I found the following bag, marked down, at Target. It was going to be the Eliza bag until I found the one above that worked better. When we got home I started carrying this as a purse and I kind of love it. In fact, I keep wanting to ask my mom to go back up there and check if they have any more in other prints so she can grab another one for me.

Bag #3:
Another Target bag. I love the crochet look. This purse was originally priced at $30 and I got it for $5.87.

Bag #4:
My final purchase; Target, yet again. I forget the exact numbers but this was something along the lines of $38 originally. I paid less than $10. It's rather huge, but that's my preference. I like being able to fit water bottles, books, cinder blocks, half my wardrobe and the occasional midget in my handbag. You know...for emergencies.

Normally I'd quit looking, at least for a few months, but I've already spotted two more at a local store which I feel I simply can't live without. Robert has been put on notice and hopefully I will go get them this weekend. Then I'll stop for the remainder of the year. Well, except for maybe a few Beatles bags for birthday and Christmas presents. But that's all. I swear.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 209 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Even better, here are the results for all three kids:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 1 or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Not much chance of mistaken identity for any of them, then. It helps when only 4023 people in the entire country share your last name.

And also, in case you missed it, I POSTED NEW PICTURES.

[/picture whoring]

Now, before any passersby are tempted to email me with something along the lines of, "ZOMG! R u kidding? ur still showering ur 7 yr old?!!1! Srsly" I should call attention to Madalyn's unbelievably thick hair. When pulled into a ponytail the ponytail measures 5" around. Her hair, more often than not, is to her shoulders or below. I've simply never felt she would do a sufficient job washing the products out of her hair, thereby ending up with hair that looked grungier than when she'd gone in; and, really, what's the point in that? Not to mention she'd never shown any particular keenness to handle the job herself. I'd given her tips and had her try to rinse her own hair a few times, with supervision, but she only ever made a half-hearted attempt and I'd give up and take over to finish.

Then came yesterday. I told Madalyn it was time for her bath. She complained about it when I told her to go get started (she can turn the water on and adjust the temp herself). I only meant for her to turn on the tap, sit in the tub and wash her body and then I'd be in to do her hair. But, somehow, we moved from that scenario to her doing an entire shower herself. By the time I went in to check on her she was already doing the conditioner. So, knowing when I've been usurped, I left her to it. And she actually did a decent job. I had to wait until her hair dried to eyeball it and see if it looked clean and it does. She's thoroughly proud of herself and has already asked if she can take another shower today. Ohhh, it's starting already.

So, between the bathing and the shoe-tying, I was feeling a bit redundant this morning. I pointed out the two big steps she'd taken yesterday and said, "Wow, Madalyn, you can get your own food, dress yourself, read to yourself, wash yourself and tie your shoes. You don't need me around any more." Did I then receive hasty reassurances that it just wasn't true? No, I did not. Instead, with the air of someone being very charitable, she pointed out, "Well, Johnny and Eliza still do." Maybe so, but not for much longer, apparently.

I wonder how Miss Independence plans to get to basketball camp tomorrow, now that she's so self-sufficient?

Also I'd like to invite you to check out the other album I created today. It contains my favorite non-people pictures I've taken over the last few years. If I ever get my scanner working again I will go back into my archives (from prior to my digital days) and add those to the album, as well. As I said in the description of the album, I don't often take really good pictures but, once in a while, I'll come up with one that I think looks pretty well-done. I'll continue to update the album as (if?) I snap any more good shots.

California, Summer 2008

Favorite Non-Person Photos

1) Madalyn did basketball camp at the college this past week. She went every day from 1-4 and they worked on fundamentals. She said it was essentially the same stuff they did at the camp she went to back in June. I told her, tough titties, kid. If you're going to buy me a house and take care of me in my old age in the manner in which I'd like to become accustomed, you've got to start working now. I expect a return on my investment.

(Ha.)

2) Meanwhile, I had gotten the idea that it would be great to sign up both Madalyn and JZ for a gymnastics camp, also this past week. It was from 9-12 and was at a gym that's about five miles out of town. So Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday looked like this: Myself up by 7:30, kids up by 8:00, give them breakfast, rush them through grooming and dressing, leave the house by 8:40. Drive to gym, drop them off, drive back to town. Hang around the house. Make lunch around 11:40, put it in the fridge, walk out the door. Drive back to the gym, pick them up, drive home and throw lunch on the table immediately so that we can walk out the door again at 12:45 to deliver Madalyn to basketball. Come home and put Eliza down for her (overdue) nap. Wake her up again at 3:45 to leave to retrieve Madalyn. Get home and do dinner, baths, laying out of clothes, and attempt to shoehorn the children into bed at 8:00, even though it's still light out, because they both need about twelve hours' sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.

3) On the plus side, both kids loved the gymnastics camp. I arrived to pick them up slightly early the first day and the first words out of their mouths when I walked in? "We're not done yet!!!" No hi, we missed you, let's have lunch, kiss my butt; just, essentially, "Don't even THINK about asking us to leave right now." They did tumbling, trampoline and obstacle course. We hadn't even gotten home yet Tuesday before I heard that they couldn't wait to go back the next day and make an even harder obstacle course (they got to build it themselves).

4) I really wish I had the energy (and motivation, for that matter) to spend three hours doing gymnastics and then segue directly into another three hours playing basketball. Hell, I'd be happy if I could muster the interest in three minutes.

5) Today Robert is taking the older two to stew in a festering soup of germs and God-knows-what-else, a.k.a. the public swimming pool. I'm going to stay home and enjoy the semi-quiet that comes with having most of them out of the house and the remaining one napping.

6) Alas, above will not be enough to entirely improve the crummy mood in which I woke up this morning. I have explained, numerous times, in the past that Mary without alone time equals a very unhappy camper. I can limp along for quite a while but I eventually reach a point where I start to implode if I haven't gotten to go roam free. And, going back to June, I have not had much opportunity to get out by myself. For a week or maybe two before we left on our trip I had no "me time" because we were busy with other things. During our three-and-a-half weeks in California I only got out alone a few times and mostly it was just to run an errand or two and then come straight back. Unfortunately, dashing to Walgreens for nasal spray doesn't really register on the relaxation meter. I sneaked in a meal a couple of times but it's never very leisurely. I always feel as though I'm under the gun, lest my dad bitch at me for leaving the kids with my mom too long. When Robert was there and could watch the kids I chose to go shopping with my mom instead of going places alone. We did avail ourselves of her babysitting services one night but that was for a (long overdue) date night. Then we returned last weekend and Robert was in the house less than 18 hours before he had to leave for work again. So, yes, it's been way longer than is advisable for me to go without an afternoon to myself, without people whining at me or nagging at me or delivering an unending soliloquy in a really high-pitched voice (which is, apparently, the only way stuffed animals know how to speak), or wanting to eat or just finishing eating or needing to go to sleep or just waking up from being asleep. (Or making a mess which, on the one hand, I'm happy to see is keeping them entertained but, on the other, is just one more thing I have to prod them to clean up.)

7) Happily, I have a husband who totally rocks, so I will be going out for those few, precious hours of solitude later today, after the swimming pool trip. We had planned to do a date night tonight (put kids to bed at 8:00, make dinner, watch new episode of Cinematic Titanic, uninterrupted) but I think, after witnessing my really bad attitude all morning, he's determined it would be in everyone's best interest to do some shuffling of the schedule to get me out of the house. Poor guy.

8) Speaking of pictures (What? I know you were thinking it. Don't lie.) I am planning on putting a bunch of new ones up on Picasa today or tomorrow. When that's done I'll make a new slideshow badge and post it here for everyone to check out. I've been slacking in the photo department lately.

9) Huh. Brain just locked up. Guess I'm done.

Good thoughts, prayers, chants, spells, animal sacrifices, etc. in honor of our safety and sanity would be appreciated. I won't be on again till tomorrow but I'll try to update as early as possible to let everyone know we've made it. (Or, as I've told my parents before, you can just watch the news. If there are no reports of plane crashes, we've made it okay. ;) )

UPDATE: We made it home, in one piece, no less, around 1:00 this morning. We all slept in and are now lazing around, recovering.