“She is a great phone talker.  She could call me every day.  And I would answer.”

-Hubby, after his grandma very sweetly wished me a happy birthday then got off the phone without any small talk.

In Saturday’s column I mentioned that somewhere an easy solution exists to our morning troubles but right now the answer continues to allude [edit: elude me.  why did nobody yell at me over this?  sometimes you're allowed to call me out.] me.  For the past two school mornings I’ve let them watch the clock; they know what time breakfast needs to be over and what time we need to walk out the door.  Friday we were early to school but today they were late.  My husband is worried that they’ll get used to being late and it will no longer be an issue, but right now I don’t care.  I’m tackling one obstacle at a time and the current obstacle is trying not to gripe at my children while they’re griping at each other.  I just want everyone to be serene on the way out the door.  Shiny and happy would be extra nice.

Here’s Saturday’s column, where I tell you about my solution–that really can only happen once in a very rare while–to the morning frustrations: playing hooky.

#1: “I stayed until the kids were in bed before I left.  Actually, I PUT THE KIDS TO BED.  And how many times have they woken up since I left?  I thought so.” -Hubby, upon returning home Saturday night and me telling him about the previous blog post.

#2: “I’ve been thinking, and how many times do I go out?  Once a month, on a good month?  And you get to go to Bible study every Monday night.” -Hubby, upon returning home from work today.

TOUCHÉ, Hubby, touché.

Hubby is out with his friends, “out” meaning hanging at our friends’ house (sans wives, of course) to watch a new 3-D TV.  The boys get together at night, without spouses or children, and the girls get together during the day, without husbands but WITH children.  And when the boys go out at night without the kids, we still have the kids.  I’m not complaining because the husbands are good about letting us girls go out together at night, but we never do.  The last time was maybe February or March?  So basically never.  Again, I’m not stomping my foot and pouting “That’s not fair,” just saying maybe us girls should change it up sometimes. [edit: Of course, they are at Mr. Y's house while his kids are upstairs, but I'm betting MRS. Y is the one taking care of the kiddos as they wake up and need a drink of water.]

So I made chocolate mug cake, topped it with ice cream and walnuts, and watched “Harold and Maude.”  Now, that movie has been on our Netflix queue for quite a while, probably even before I went out with my girlfriends sans children (Which, now that I think about it, has been well over a year.  One of us keeps having a nursing baby that we have to bring along.), but I’ve never watched it.  I’ve always been too worried about the creepy factor.  Just how far would they push the romance of a young (college age?) boy and a 79-year-old woman?  There were some creepy parts, but I think for the most part it was a sweet movie.  In case you ever decide to watch it, let me know, and I’ll warn you about the parts you should skip through.

Now I’m googling pictures of Alexa Chung because I want to copy her wavy messy hair.  If you look at my most-used board on Pinterest you’ll see lots and lots of bobs, as in haircuts.  Bob haircuts.  And they all look pretty much the same.  I just want my haircut to not look like the hair of a 30-year-old mom who gave up, you know?  So I’ve been staring at people’s hair and trying to decide how to make mine match theirs.  Once, after our weekly date at the bakery (with kids, of course), I came home and cut swoopy bangs to look like Chrissa’s.  But my hair still doesn’t look like hers.  Hers is shinier and try as I might, I cannot get my double-processed, bleached hair to shine like hers.  I’d like to do the blunt bangs of Ellen Barkin or Scarlett Johansson or Katie Holmes, but that’s scary.  Jayme cut them on her long hair and I can’t wait to see them.  Anyway, Alexa Chung has blunt bangs, so I’ve been looking at the pictures that some people creepier than me have put on their blogs that are totally devoted to her.

Every time I hear Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” I think of Estella from Great Expectations and I’m sad for her.  Then I want to read more Dickens.  Have you guys read Great Expectations yet?  Do.  It is such a wonderful book.  If you’re not laughing out loud in the first chapter then put it down, get yourself a cup of coffee and a clear head, then sit down and try it again.  If you’re still not laughing out loud in the first chapter then you’re reading it wrong.  That’s okay, because I did the first time, too.  But Dickens is so incredible at making you laugh while feeling the fear of a six-year-old boy all at once.  Then you grow up with Pip and love him and you love Joe and that whole world and then, 496 pages later it’s suddenly finished and you have to find another book that will be as satisfying to spend your time on.  Probably I should try Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol but I fear it’s too late in the Christmas season for the latter and I don’t want to be sad with the previous.

Speaking of Joe Gargery, let’s name some of our favorite characters from literature.  Off the top of my head: Joe Gargery from Great Expectations, John Jarndyce from Bleak House (I’ve never read the book but did see the BBC Miniseries with the adorable Carey Mulligan, and I love John Jarndyce)(also, Bleak House is another Dickens novel, so of course I’d love it if I read it), and John Ames from Gilead.  Now, my favorites are stacked with characters from books I’ve just read, but I think it goes along with the fact that I refuse to read anything that’s not encouraging.  I want to have the love and forgiveness these characters have.  Also, I love the narrator in Sonny’s Blues.  Not that he’s as altruistic as the others, but that short story has been one of my favorites since I discovered short stories, so I should probably name him as a favorite character in literature.

Who is your favorite person from the Bible?  You are not allowed to say Jesus.  Mine is Peter because that man was a mess.  He was impulsive and lost his faith as quickly as he got it, spoke out of turn and was heartily reprimanded but still stayed close to Jesus, denied his Lord three times during his precious friend’s greatest need, and yet Jesus built His church upon him.  Through all his weakness he loved Jesus.  Really, really, really loved Him.  I can get behind that.  Paul is too sure of himself; that is nothing like me.  I think if we hung out he would look at me sideways and call me out on my stuff.  Daniel would be interesting.  He was a smarty and I admire his resolve.

[Another edit, for you guys who are up at 11:08 on a Saturday night and reading my blog as quickly as it posts: that guy from Cracked appears to have been totally right about the next Batman.  Behold.]

Okay, I’m going to wrap it up now.  I’m going to re-read Sonny’s Blues and continue listening to the “erin’s faves” playlist on our iTunes.  You guys have a good night.

It was probably after The Machinist that Hubby and I decided we’d watch almost anything with Christian Bale in it.  That man completely became a character in a quiet movie–one that didn’t “garner him Oscar buzz”–and did so just because it was interesting.  We decided he’d probably choose other roles for the exact same reason, whether or not they were big Hollywood movie-makers.  So we watched Equilibrium and The Prestige and 3:10 to Yuma and that dragon movie with Matthew McConaughey (which is actually a better movie than you’d think) but I have never finished American Psycho.  Hubby and I started it way back when and the part with the business cards is pretty amazing, but the nakedness and terrorizing people was too much so we turned it off.

When we found out he was the new Batman we were stoked.  When we found out he was going to be in the new Terminator movies we looked at each other and thought, “Well… if Christian Bale’s in it then it must be good, right?”  But we’ve never gotten around to watching it.  Not that we’re boycotting it or anything, it’s just that we forget about it.

And the newest Batman movie, the final in the trilogy with Christopher Nolan, comes out next summer.  Last night I read a theory for this movie’s plot that I’d never considered and I’m totally flustered and wondering if it could be true.  Go read it here (sorry about the naughty words).

Seriously, GO READ IT.  If you’re a movie fan you’ll find it totally interesting.  And then come back and read the rest of my post because we must discuss.

Back when Hubby and I watched Brick we almost gave the same credibility to Joseph-Gordon Levitt as we do to Christian Bale.  If he’s in a movie then we’ll probably watch it, just because we trust his choices.  Of course he could have been the totally adorable Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck and Raising Arizona, only to irreparably nosedive and end up in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but so far that has not been his fate.  He’s appeared in precious few movies since his 3rd Rock from the Sun days, but the movies he’s chosen have been really good.  Brick, The Lookout, then onto (500) Days of Summer and Inception.  The boy has done well.

My sister and I always hoped the same for Shia LaBeouf because he was totally adorable in Even Stevens.  But that boy has made some very poor movie choices.  Don’t worry, Shia!  Hayley and I are still rooting for you!

Anyway.

When I read that Cracked.com article last night (WHICH YOU BETTER HAVE READ BY NOW) I was so sad.  I could see the writer’s logic and OH NO DO NOT KILL BRUCE WAYNE.  Bale is such an excellent Bruce Wayne.  But when he hypothesized that Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be the new Batman I got so excited.

This could be a really interesting movie.  Killing off Bruce Wayne?  Just… whoa.

In a new every-other-year tradition that my husband probably hasn’t yet realized, Hubby goes duck hunting the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  When he told the kids his plans Little Missy looked at me with wide eyes before turning back to her father.  “No!” she squealed. “You can’t kill the baby ducks!”  She never cried, though, not like she did two years ago when Hubby told her his killing plans.  That’s improvement.

This year Gideon even got to go, and he maturedly handled the wind and rain with nary a complaint.  Somewhere deep inside his little body his boy DNA told him that is what you must endure in order to shoot ducks with your daddy and uncles.  It’s hard for me to understand the appeal but he loved it.

When my two very cold men got home Gideon walked right up to me.  “Mommy, I need to talk to you but Mia can’t hear.”

I walked into the kitchen, sat down on a stool and looked him in the eye.  “Okay, what’s going on.”

“Well, we shot a duck but it didn’t die, so uncle Shane had to pull it’s head off and then it’s body still moved after it was dead.”

He looked at me with his serious face and slightly excited big eyes and I tried not to show him my freaked-out face.  I (calmly, I think) said the best thing I could think of.  “Whoa.  That is pretty crazy.”

“Yeah.”

Who knows what Gideon will experience next time.

Two weeks ago I completed my first-ever 5k.  Hubby and I are currently on the lookout for more races to run.

The poem that I referenced in my column:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

–e.e. cummings

The middle of last week Hubby asked me if I minded him taking a guys’ night Saturday night.  He figured that if I was at a ladies’ retreat all day and he was home with the kids then he might like to hang out with his friends after that.  I didn’t mind so he set the plan in motion.

Friday night our friends Matt and Chrissa stopped by for a little while after watching a movie at the theatre down the street.  I told them how funny it was to me that Hubby would need a chance to unwind after a day at home with his kids, because being with his kids is just so stinkin’ hard.

Hubby quickly spoke up.  “Now I never said that.”  Which he didn’t.  But I like to read between the lines.

Matt jumped to Hubby’s defense, and really to the defense of fathers everywhere.  “You see, you girls do it all the time and so you KNOW what you’re doing.  We don’t do it as often and so we’re just not as good at it as you are.”  To which Chrissa and I laughed and rolled our eyes and congratulated him on his attempt to butter us up.

Saturday morning came and I rushed to get out the door.  At the same time I was leaving, the rest of my family was also leaving, they for Gideon’s flag football game.  I saw poor little Daphne being carried to the car in the exact same clothes she’d worn the entire day before and then slept in.  But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to have to change her.  And really, pick your battles.  The little dirty baby was at least being loved on.

The retreat was supposed to end at 5 but ended ahead of schedule at 4:15.  The other girls at my table  and I  sat and chatted for a while.  Then a lady there giggled and pointed out that it was all the young moms who were staying around til 5 when the rest of the moms had scattered.  I looked around and she was right.  But by golly, we all had until 5 before our husbands expected us to leave, and why rush home to dirty noses and dirty bottoms and being hung all over when we could sit and drink coffee in our own personal space, surrounded by good conversation?

I walked in the door of my house at 5:05 and found the toys cleaned up in the living room, the clean dishes put away and the dirty ones in the dishwasher, dinner cooking in the Crock-Pot, the floor swept.  Upstairs I found Mia and Daphne’s bedroom rearranged (After we got the big kids’ loft beds I rearranged Gideon’s room completely but only the girls’ room to a point.  I was stuck with where to place their furniture, and as a result their room was constantly dirty.  Poor girls.), cleaned, and decorated.

My husband had a Rock Star Day.

Hubby, Gideon, Mia and Daphne came home about ten minutes after I did, happily holding Sonic drinks in hand and telling me about riding bikes at the park.  Yes, Hubby’s Rock Star Day did not end at home, but he trudged three kids and two bikes to the park after the football game, showers, cleaning and cooking.

But Daphne was in hour 36 of wearing the same clothes, so he’s not perfect.  Just close to it.

Things I don’t want to forget:

• At dinner the other night I was telling my family about this MONSTER fountain drink you can get from the Presto station for only $.99.  The kids were like, “Get it!” And I was like, “Not without Daddy, cuz there’s no way I could drink that much pop.”  Gideon said, “I could!  And Mia could, too!  Come on, Mommy, you can buy it for us.  It’d only be one dollar and ninety-eight cents.”  (Emphasis mine.)  I looked at Hubby as he looked at me with a shushing hand movement.  After dinner he said that he refused to be astounded by him anymore.
• After we got up from dinner, Hubby and Daphne played in the living room when she took a tiny tea cup and gave some to her baby, because she loves to share her food with those she loves.
• A couple days later Mia didn’t come down from her bedroom after she woke up.  Usually she sits on the couch and stares at the TV as her body slowly adjusts to no longer being unconscious.  That morning she blasted tunes from her re-discovered bedroom CD player.