Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

He was done with his run before I even got out of bed.

Today is Family Health and Fitness day, so I'm buzzing about how I keep my family active, especially given my disdain for all forms of exercise.

"Since we're approaching our fitness goals from very different starting points (I just want it over, my husband wants to live in a hamster wheel, just so he can run more) I hope we're giving our kids healthy attitudes toward exercise somewhere in the middle of the two of us."

I'd really like you to read this column, if for no other reason than I have linked to a video of the very best exercise show ever. Mousercise!

The other day I was discussing with my sister how much I hate exercise and what I'm looking for is an activity I can do in the least amount of time possible. I followed that statement with, "And listen, don't tell me I just haven't found the right activity."

She replied, "Okay. It's just too bad Mousercise isn't on the air anymore."

She's so right.

My little lizards.

As requested I made dinner for the three of us last night (Logan had an annual drink-fest golf outing).

Madison complained about this meal as you can imagine since it was made up of all the things she enjoys eating...just in one bowl. Max cemented his undying love for sausage (take that as you will you sick, sick person).

I asked, to get the conversation away from how much Madison hates this dinner, "What animal would you be if you could be any animal?"

Max said, "What animals eat sausage?"

I said, "I'm not sure."

He said, "What about bacon?"

This is why you need two parents....because I couldn't even make up anything to give him as an answer.

Madison said, "I would want to be a house pet, because I don't want to have any predators."

I nodded thoughtfully, because that's such a fitting answer for my daughter.

She went on, "I'm not sure though if I want fur because I really hate to brush my hair. Maybe I'll be a lizard."

Max said, "Do they eat bacon?"

I said, "Yes, yes they do."

Dinner Time:

Today is National Family Day, "A day to eat dinner with your family."

My piece about National Family Day is up at AlphaMom and for you should read it, thank you, please?

"....let's say for a minute family meals don't even give your kids all these benefits, can sitting down to a meal and talking with your family really hurt? This is where my daughter would chime in with, "If you make that meat loaf again it could really hurt."

Also I would like it very much if you took a picture of your family enjoying dinner together tonight and posted a link to your photo in the comments of that post.

Like a baby bird.

Max walks up to me and hugs me.

Me: "Why do you love me so much?"

Max: "I don't know. Maybe because you fed me so much when I was a baby."

Definitely.

At least I'm not dressed in a fur suit.

I have a nice morning with Max. I think how I'm not feeling bad about myself and I'm looking forward to meeting Logan for lunch. I'm thinking how the day is going well and how I'm going to focus on how the day is going well and not think about anything else (as recommended by my therapist who is getting positively exasperated with me. Just like the Internet does.) I get dressed in my flattering sweater and pants and new necklace and I'm thinking, this is good. I am having a good day. (See, therapist? I'm listening. Self talk!)

I email Logan, "What time for lunch?"

He replies, "I forgot something. Lunch isn't going to work."

"Why?" I ask.

"You don't want to know," he cringes through the computer. "I have a hair appointment."

Considering my post earlier this week, this, this is annoying.

Okay, fine, Max and I will go to lunch before I take him to school. I'm not going to let this bother me.

We have a nice lunch and Max dazzles me with his missing front tooth and the way he rubs the top of his head and his hair while he talks.

I drop him off for school and decide to work at the coffee shop, where there are less distractions. At home the dishes, the laundry, the sofa call my name and suck my will to think.

At the coffee shop I sit down at the only open 'comfortable' chair, I slowly sit because every muscle in my body aches from pilates. Sitting down in that particular chair proves fatal.

A mother has brought her son to this coffee shop to 'play'. This woman is the reason non-breeders hate breeders. I am a breeder and I hated her.

While watching this woman ignoring (or conversely saying, 'no no nononoooonononoono' but never moving to follow up on the 'noononononononoo') her son dumping: a bottle of apple juice, three card games, a board game and a bagel my headache takes over so I decide to go home and take a rest before I pick up the kids.

On the drive home, someone makes a sharp, slow and unexpected right hand turn near some road construction. I have to brake hard to avoid hitting him. I'm rear ended, sending my computer hurtling through the air, my ashtray/change jar shooting out, my neck whipping into my head rest and hey! There's that case from Finding Nemo we never found after our trip to Indy.

I'm shaking, loud sounds like this always freak me out. Just like the window explosion scared me last week. I pull over and a very large man gets out of his car. He's a close talker and he starts to swear about the asshole who was turning so slowly. Who turns that slowly? What the fuck was he doing? And all the sudden I feel 13 and I don't want him to be upset. I'm shaking.

He tells me he'll give me his number and we don't need to call the police do we? Why don't you ask your boyfriend if we need to turn this into our insurance companies. I'm shaking. I'm agreeable and I don't know why I'm agreeing with this. It's just a small dent but I am keeping this car for, forever. I don't want it to be dented. But no, it's fine we don't need to call the police.

My head is pounding, I drive home and as I pull in the driveway I feel so incredibly stupid I can barely walk. I'm thinking I should just stay home on Thursdays.

The best thing is, at 5:30 we're going to a birthday party for one of our favorite little girls at one of our (my) least favorite places on earth: Chuck E. Cheese. My head is still pounding and this is the Chuck E. Cheese which does not serve beer. When we pull into the parking lot it looks awfully crowded for a Thursday evening. It's a school fundraiser night! Which means it's even more like Hell On Earth than normal. Like HOE210: Advanced Hell (prerequisite: HOE101).

To say I was in a bad mood was an understatement. I'm sure my friends love when they see me and the first thing out of my mouth is, "BLAH BLAH BLAH MY LIFE SUCKS!!!!" (I know my therapist loves it.)

But then something happened.

As I sat having epileptic seizures from all the flashing lights and the music and the screaming children: I saw the guy dressed as Chuck E Cheese.

There he was, crouched down to greet all the kids, all the wired, hyper children coated in pizza grease. It must be hot in that full fur outfit, I thought, because it's kind of warm not in a full fur suit what with all the manic energy in this room.

And I watched him crouched down with kids lurching themselves at him and he almost fell over. Then I watched my friend's little girl trying to shove her tickets in Chuck E Cheese's mouth, thinking he was a ride? And the arms on his costume were too short so he couldn't block the tickets from being rammed into his mouth.

I watched him struggle and I thought, with a sinister laugh, "That guy hates his life way more than I will ever hate mine."

And for a moment, I felt a lot better.

Warning: germs are bad.

Yesterday I took the plunge back into my private teacher-led pilates class. I dropped out at some point last winter and started going to the gym and doing a dvd at home instead to save myself some time. At that time every moment I was breathing air I needed to be finding something to post at Flogging Baby. I didn't have a full hour to focus on my abs, 30 minutes was all I could give.

But now I'm trying to be more balanced in my life, so I'm giving a full hour over to my abs and the most ridiculous faces I make when trying to make my abs perform as they're supposed to in pilates.

I bring up pilates because I have had a little cold since Monday and now I'm left with a dry hacking cough. If you get a dry hacking cough and you just did your first pilates class after a long break, you're going to cough and it will feel like someone's punching you all over your ribs and stomach. And it hurts.

While you're coughing you might be thinking how all of this could have been prevented if your kids would just wash their hands already.

Ironically, it's also National Handwashing Week, what better way to celebrate? Hacking up a lung while clutching your torso and cursing kids and their inability to keep their germs to themselves. Heh.

Don't let this be you.

I'm a lesbian....except if I want you to cheat on your wife.

I vaguely mentioned some Logan Branded Jackassery™ last week on my birthday. It kind of ruined my birthday and not for the reason I first thought.

A few weeks ago Logan met with Mr. Handsome for a night out. Mr. Handsome is single, Logan is not. They were at a local bar and Mr. Handsome struck up a conversation with a woman he may have been interested in. With her was a friend, so Logan began chatting with her too. I'm not sure how it came up but he mentioned he was married and this 'lady' (though I use the term loosely) replied, "That's fine, I'm a lesbian."

Logan told me this story and I thought nothing of it, except something along the lines of: "Right...you're a lesbian. Right." Because I'm a skeptical bitch, who thinks sometimes girls like to act as if they like to make out with other women as a way to pique male interest in them. (As evidence: please see all shows on MTV.)

As they chatted they found they had something in common as she is an editor at some publication Logan thought may be of interest to me. He mentioned his freelance work as a graphic designer and my freelance work as a writer and so, they exchanged business cards.

He told me all of this that night and I teased Logan about not knowing when he's being picked up and he laughed it off.

On my birthday Logan and I met for lunch (a lovely perk of the kids being in school...midday private lunches!) and he told me about a really funny email he got from his 'lesbian' friend. Gee Whiz! It turns out she's not a lesbian but is bisexual so maybe they could get together.

He replied how that was all very interesting except he's still married. He wasn't making that up to add to his mystique as the purpose of her 'lesbian' story seems to have been.

So yes, Logan told me this story and I had a lot of emotions about it and I won't bore you with the full spectrum of those emotions. (There was the "Are you Stupid?" thread I mentioned in my earlier post about my birthday and that was a fun time. Believe me.)

I trust Logan a lot and appreciate who he is so his nights out with friends still don't really bother me. I trust him because if I didn't trust him I wouldn't want to be married to him because I don't see the point. I already explained that before and my feelings on the topic still haven't changed.

He didn't cheat on me, had no intent to cheat on me and was up front about the whole thing. So why was I so upset?

After discussing the whole thing with a few friends, I realized what I'm really upset about. Here is a picture of Logan and I when I was 21 and he was 26.

Yes my hair is rather long and lifeless. But my face is fresh and I am thin and tan and full of life. Logan looks like, frankly, kind of a dork.

Here is a picture of Logan and I on our honeymoon. I am 24 and Logan is 29. You can't see it here but I'm very thin and you can see I am full of joy and tan-ness. Logan is rounding the corner of his awkward 20's and looks better than he did at 26. We both look pretty happy and attractive.

Then we had Madison and I stayed at home and I kept it together pretty well. My body changed a little but I still got my hair done regularly and wore clothes that looked good. Then I had Max and I tried to keep up but things started to be a little more difficult to keep up with, but I still did okay.

Then Logan started working at the agency and I came to his office a few times and it was like a campus, a campus full of girls with long blonde hair, Dana Buchman suits and ominously pointy shoes. The men were no better in their designer denim, artfully untucked button front shirts and body
concious polo shirts in retro colors.

Let's not even get started on the photographers he worked with, with their Prada shoes and "Trying to look like I'm not trying too hard' looks. Logan liked this world he jumped into and he started running and he started buying himself his own 'Trying but trying not to look like I'm trying too hard' looks.

In contrast I started to gain weight and the more weight I gained the less I felt like I could even look okay. I was also at home, not in an office surrounded by designer denim and shoes which will poke your eye out.

Logan kept getting more and more attractive and I, well, kept getting more and more beaten down.

Last week, on my birthday, during yet another of what I'm starting to call 'Ugly Weeks' which I should actually call 'Ugly Years' because I've had at least 52 ugly weeks so far, Logan told me how this lady (again, I'm using the term loosely) found him attractive enough to have an affair with.

I sat there across from him in my one pair of well fitting stylish jeans and a v-neck t-shirt, one of the 10 I have which I've worn everyday for the entire summer, in my one pair of summer shoes, with my hair that's way overdue for a new cut and color, with the sagging circles under my eyes and I felt completely used up.

It was never my intent to be that stereotypical 'Mom'. The mom who just lets it all go and becomes worn out. The one who puts herself last and doesn't bother with herself. But here I am.

I don't know when it got this bad. I'll try to make a hair appointment, but then I think of the dozen other ways to spend that money. But then Logan is sure to make his hair appointment every 4 weeks like clockwork. I think I'll go get a few more pairs of my favorite jeans, so I have more than one pair. But then it's fall, and the kids need new jeans. Logan has, literally, ten pair of jeans alone. I know there's a product out there which will help me with these horrible under eye circles and puffiness. But when I research I feel overwhelmed at the thought of spending money on my eyes of all things.

Over the summer when we visited my sister in law, Logan tried on every single pair of sunglasses she had (she's a sales rep to optometrists). The glasses were cheap for what they were, I could have had a pair, a nice pair of sunglasses I'd love. There Logan sat trying on every pair and looking incredibly hot while doing so. I sat there and tried a couple pair of glasses on and thought, 'Why bother? Look at my hair and my stupid clothes and all this weight. Why am I going to bother with cool sunglasses. I have a pair, it's fine.'

I've become my mother.

I thought about this and thought about this all last week. I wondered what I'm going to do about this, about how awful I feel about myself. And as I explained all the ways Logan takes care of himself and pampers himself and makes himself a priority, I thought, "What? I want him to stop being so attractive?"

Is that what I want? I don't even know. I liked him back then, when he wore sambas and jean shorts and glasses with lenses as big as a baby's head. I've never felt more attracted to him than I was then. I'm happy he's happy with himself, but I've loved him the same forever.

So, do I want him to be less attractive? That's a silly thing to want, it makes no sense. "Be less attractive for me honey. Please?" Besides I can't put my happiness on someone else and their actions.

What I'm realizing is that I've built up a lot of resentment toward my husband for making himself a priority, while I continue to be pulled down by my own martyrdom and weight. It's not fair and it's not kind and I'm not happy I've allowed that to happen. But there it is and our lunch conversation about his 'Lesbian' (though she uses the term loosely) friend, forced me to pull it out and look at it a little closer.

I realized maybe the answer isn't asking Logan to sacrifice his designer jeans or regular haircuts for the kids. Maybe the answer is not asking myself to sacrifice those things in the name of motherhood or because I'm too fat so I don't deserve to look good.

This weight isn't going anywhere. I've written and thought a lot about my weight and over time I've come to the conclusion that in life there are priorities and being a size 6 isn't one of my priorities any longer. I'd like to be that weight again, but my body and life have changed and what it would take to be that thin is no longer worth the end result.

I've been trying very hard not to hate myself for making that choice and I've been trying really hard to look at myself after I go to the gym and say, 'You're fine just as you are.' I'm going to have to learn what looks good on this new shape I have and stop dressing as if I have the same body I've had for most of my life.

I have to make myself feel good and I know that buying lots of things will never give you inner happiness. But I do know that caring for myself and treating myself as valuable can only help me be the person I want to be.

At Blogher I eyed these necklaces and I thought how beautiful they are and how I would love one. I asked someone how much Andrea was selling them for and that inner voice said, "No, you don't need a necklace. Not when you could get the kids at least 4 outfits with that money. You'd have a nice necklace but the same stupid hair and the same stupid clothes."

So I didn't buy it.

But then, after my birthday, I changed my mind.

(I can almost hear the click-click-click of frantically created TypeKey accounts with usernames like, "Just Saying!" or "Here's A Thought" or "Duh! Money Doesn't Buy Happiness" or "I'll Say I'm A Lesbian If It Gets Me Into Your Husband's Pants". And I can hardly wait. Though I use the term loosely.)

Why are W and Q so close on the keyboard?

I promised myself this would be a better week than the last one. We spent the weekend seeing fun people, some of them we even saw twice. We put our house back together and generally got organized. I wanted to wait until the bathroom was entirely finished to even attempt to reassemble the house, but since we used TrafficMaster Stainproof Grout, I'm starting to think the bathroom will never really be done.

Last week a huge part of my lacklustre mood was specifically caused by the thin coating of dust covering my house and my soul. So it felt good to clear things out and put furniture back in place and get rid of the mammoth hairballs tumbling across the floor. Nothing says, "Today is going to be a good day" like hairballs passing you in the morning.

Logan also put the bathroom door back up so that one might use the bathroom without the constant threat of uninvited and often unintended spectators. "Oh, I didn't know you were in here. Sorry."

The biggest reason we got the house clean though were our dinner plans with friends and I've decided this is likely the best way to keep a fire lit under Logan to complete this project: Invite friends over at two week intervals. We can live with filth and our toiletries on the kitchen counter and barely even notice it after a while, but your filth looks a lot different through outsider's eyes. We've got another dinner planned for the last weekend in September and then we'll host Family Pizza Night with my playgroup (which is now not to so much a playgroup but a warm and comfortable hug to run to as I face the prospect of being more involved at the elementary school). So that puts us at the last weekend in October. Do you want to come for dinner? Maybe we'll even have an exhaust fan by then!

So yes, Sunday saw me optimistic and hopeful for a good week. A better week than the last one with the bad birthday and follow-up self image crisis and the shattered rear view mirror and the sick kid home from school. For about 12 hours, it all looked so promising.

Then I woke up at 3, 4 and 6 am with a runny nose and burning painful throat and I spent all morning willing the throbbing headache to go away. I managed to get Max to school and myself to the coffee shop.

I sat at the coffee shop uploading all the hat pictures you sent me and trying to be sure I didn't miss anyone's hats. Then, as I finished, I hit ctrl+q instead of ctrl+w to shut an upload image window and voila! Over half my post was gone.

All the joy drained from my life.

But now it's 9:03pm and I just took a glorious dose of Nyquil and tomorrow will be better.

Tomorrow will be better.

PS: This has been bothering me for a while but I didn't know how to bring it up. It's just that I took this picture of Max back in July that makes him look a little, I don't know, full of 'wonderment' let's say. And so I added this note and Logan and I laughed about it for almost an hour. To this day, Logan will call out, (with a British accent) "I want to touch the fairy daddy!", from the other room and it sends me into at the very least a hearty giggle every time.

And people have looked at this picture but no one thought it was funny. So maybe it's not funny but I'd really like it if you looked again and read the little note with a British accent and see if that makes it any funnier.

If anything happens to me...talk to Home Depot.

I had a bad day yesterday. A day where I exchanged lots of emails with friends and through those emails things got clearer. I'm feeling a lot better but still not perfect and still under a bit of pressure. I didn't realize how much pressure until I was driving to the gym and the rear window my car exploded. 

I'd just dropped Max off and was on my way to the gym, because part of my plan to feel better and release this pressure is to make more time for myself. On the way my phone rang but I didn't pick it up in time. When I heard there was a message I called my voice mail and passed by the street 'The House' is on. I thought it might perk my spirits to drive by and make sure it's still waiting for us.

As I turned onto the street, I heard the secretary at Maddie's school telling me Madison wasn't feeling well and wanted to come home. Before I could even react to the annoyingness which is my daughter faking illness so she doesn't have to stay at school, I heard this horrible explosion and my rear window shattered.

So maybe I exploded the window with my irritation a la Carrie. Look at the pictures, doesn't it look like the glass is bowing out?

I mean, I'm annoyed that Maddie's sitting next to me on the sofa letting out well-placed faux moans, but I wasn't so mad I wanted the window of my car to explode all over the street.

I didn't really know what to do so I called the police, I have the non-emergency number programmed in my phone thanks to my loud neighbor Ed and his shrill girlfriend. He came and commented on the way all the glass is missing around the edge and we don't really know what happened.

There was no branch or stone we could find. I dropped a lot of glass on the street when it happened. There's a lot in the car as well. We didn't thoroughly search the car, for fear of dropping more glass, but since there was glass sprayed as far as the middle of the car, the officer suggested I take everything out when we clean it and look for a BB. I don't remember if anyone was behind me or who was passing me when it happened because I was on the phone getting ready to say, "What the hell Madison!"

When I called Logan to tell him what happened I said, "The policeman asked me if I had any enemies and so I told him, 'Well, TrafficMaster Stainproof Grout is pretty pissed off at me.'"

And Logan said, "Seriously? He asked you if you have any enemies? What the fuck?"

And I said, "No, not really. But I wish he did."

So either I've become Carrie or God is trying to tell me not to move to The House or TrafficMaster is out for vengeance. These are the only possible answers. Okay, or maybe it's the Presbyterians.
 

It was my spechl day.

Madison made this card for me. She let Max add the little orange smiley face, but that was it.

She was right, it was my spechl day. Real, real spechl.

Logan unleashed a bit of Jackassery™ on me yesterday and well, it made my birthday full of comments like, "Are you stupid? Seriously, are you stupid? Just answer the question okay?"

But as a friend pointed out, everyone can perform acts of Jackassery™, except Jesus. He performs a lot of acts but Jackassery™? Not really.

I'm mostly over it.

We had a wee cake because when we buy a cake at the store, we always throw away over half of it. And though we get twice as much for the same price as this wee cake, those cakes taste like candle wax and kitchen sponge. This cake was amazing.

Here I am blowing out my candles. I made a wish.

I wished that someday soon we wouldn't be eating off a card table in the dining room because our dining room table is packed full of toiletries and various home remodeling items.

Also I wished that TrafficMaster Stainproof Grout never entered our lives.

Amen.

The best part about having a not-so-good birthday is that the year can only get better from here.

PS: I also wished you'd send me pictures of your favorite hats.

Now serving Awkward Cocktails™

Still, no bathroom sink.

You might look at this picture, of my toiletries in my kitchen and inside a ceramic naked lady cup and you might think, "Wow, Logan is a pig."

Logan is not the type of guy who looks at porn late at night on the computer. He doesn't go to strip clubs. I mean, he has, but he doesn't choose that as his main form of entertainment. However, Logan is the type of guy who walks through the Royal Oak Farmer's Market and sees a pair (yes, there are two of these) of naked lady glasses and says, "I need one of these!"

He's the type of guy who sees these mugs marked 2/$8 and asks the vendor if he can have one for $4. When the vendor says, "I'll give you both for $4," Logan's the type of guy who just can't refuse. So, if you're married to Logan, you get to watch many awkward drinks consumed in these naked lady glasses.

The awkward drinks make it all worthwhile.

Saturday we went to Detroit to see my sister's band and 2 minutes before we made it to the alley stage the skies opened and unleashed the kind of rain you remember being caught in and vowing to never be caught in again. Add to that, the fact that I was hoping to spend time with my favorite new Detroiters and show them how great the city is.

Luckily they're from San Francisco where it rains all the time and you end up drenched whenever you walk out of your house. Or maybe they were just saying that to make us feel better.

Here is a very washed out photograph of Miss Juniper, but the only one I managed to take because I always think there will be time for pictures later. And then the day is over and I have one poorly executed photograph.

I told the kids we were going to a street fair in Detroit on Saturday. I warned them we were meeting new people, because, like their lunatic mother, they can be odd about meeting new people. As we walked up to Dutch and Wood's new house I realized how few times my family has collided with my internet life.

I know a lot of people think Logan is really handsome, but I have a confession to make. I photoshop the hell out of Logan to make him presentable to all of you. In real life he looks a little like, Ernest Borgnine.

You can imagine how I felt facing the crumbling of my lie, the lie that I have a husband who is way hotter than me.

It was weird though to introduce my family to people from the internet, because I've mainly met people from the internet all by myself. Thankfully Logan didn't embarass me and my kids were well behaved at the table. I held myself back from telling Dutch and Wood the reason they're well behaved is because of all the Walmart shopping we do and all the tv they watch.

The Juniper family is great and little Juniper really liked Max once she was told he was that Max, from the books. This might have been stretching the truth a little but it made her want his attention so badly. At one point, Juniper ran up to Max and Max touched her stomach in an attempt to tickle her. This is huge because in the past Max has been known to stick his tongue out at babies who smile at him in restaurants. I think Juniper's Hummer from McDonald's sold Max on her, 'She must be cool if she likes the Hummer!'

Neither of my kids are particularly interested in babies but Juniper has piqued their interest. Max wanted to "squinch" her and Maddie started weeding through her toys for some things she could give to her. I told her Juniper's dad is wild about mass produced plastic toys, especially Disney Princesses.

I'm so pleased to have new blood around here and can't wait until our bathroom is fully functional, or at least has a door, so we can have them over to our house so that Juniper can see more plastic toys than she's ever seen in her life. I also can't wait to serve Dutch an Awkward Cocktail™ in the naked lady glass.

Tomorrow is my birthday (the day after the darkest day in America!). It is also the night of my therapy appointment. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson after the last special occasion I scheduled a therapy session for. Special occasions and therapy don't mix all that well really.

I didn't really want Logan to spend any money on my birthday this year because although we're not in financial trouble from the bathroom, we've spent a lot and I'd like some time to catch up. Since I didn't want him to buy anything I didn't tell him what I wanted for my birthday and I didn't ask him to make any birthday plans with friends so we wouldn't have to pay for another night out.

Of course now, about two hours before my birthday starts, I'm wishing I'd dropped a lot more hints about what I wanted for my birthday.

This weekend though, I did mention how I might like an ice sculpture shaped into a giant '33' with roses around it.

I hope he comes through.

The Most Beautiful Sound In The World.

We put the toilet in place yesterday. I've become so used to walking outside to use 'the office' I kept catching myself walking past the bathroom going toward the driveway.

But now we can urinate in our house like civilized people. Or in a flushable toilet which is housed in our house anyway.

After the toilet was in place, I embarked the another phase of hell which is called 'Grouting The Everloving Tub Walls". Alternate title: "Maybe golf courses of the world weren't so bad." Also known as, "The One Thing I'm Better At Than Logan, And It Turns Out I'm Better At Something Which Totally Sucks Ass."

But it's beautiful. Wooo!

Finally, Max's tooth has been incredibly loose for the last week or so. Today at lunch, he decided his cheeseburger wasn't enough. He had a hankering for tooth, so he ate it. It has calcium right? The amusing thing is Madison swallowed her first lost tooth as well. Calcium deprivation?

Grout is the devil in sandy sticky form.

Wednesday night Logan grouted the tiles surrounding the bathtub because as much fun as it's been to shower at the YMCA and various friend's houses, we're ready to shower at our own house now.

Last night Logan had a well deserved (he's worked every single day since last Tuesday on either the bathroom, freelance, or his regular job) happy hour, so I decided to take on the bathroom floor grouting. Because if I didn't do the grouting, Logan would have to do it Friday night, which means we wouldn't have a toilet or shower until Monday or maybe even Tuesday.

When the port-a-john was delivered 9 days ago, I held my breath each time I used it. I had an aversion to the stench of the port-a-johns I've endured at various concerts and so I assumed this port-a-john would smell the same.

After about 10 visits to the port-a-john, I took a deep breath. It smelled a little like a scratch and sniff sticker. A strawberry one! This port-a-john wasn't so bad after all. In fact, I started to mosey out to the port-a-john in my pajamas with toothbrush in hand. In the dark, I didn't even need a flashlight to check for mice or snakes anymore. The port-a-john and I got casual with each other. I started to think, "Maybe we'll just leave this thing here and let the boys use it. Then Maddie and I can have a nice pristine girl's bathroom."

If you ever wondered how many visits it takes to make a Port-A-John smell disgusting the answer is: just over 9 days of The Summers (though I pooped away for the first, 7 or so days). It's not quite rancid yet but it's starting to be unpleasant and I'm starting to feel a little desperate for the God Damn Fucking Grout to cure so we can put the Stupid Fucking Toilet back in place.

This makes an interesting math problem: "If it takes one Summers family of four 9 days to make a Port-a-John unpleasant, how many days would it take two Summers families to make a Port-a-John unpleasant?" Answer: 4.5! Bring on the third grade math!

Today I went to my friend Leslie's to take a shower (she's out of town, take that YMCA!), took Max to visit his kindergarten teacher and then we went to Architectural Salvage Warehouse in Detroit to look for a sink to replace the Sink Which Tried To Kill Me.

Thank you to Emily who suggested a salvage place in the comments of my post about nearly Dying At The Hands Of My Sink. Since I live in a bubble I thought the places around me would be far too expensive, so I didn't think of anywhere outside of 'around me'. You see I live in Royal Oak, which is just 20 or so miles from Detroit. When the rich people in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills want a bargain, they come to Royal Oak which is 'slumming it' for them. Therefore all the antiques and salvage here are way overpriced, unless you're at the Flea Market on Sunday after 11am or if you're from Birmingham or Bloomfield Hills.

Detroit, I know you scare the shit out of me (wow, that's an old post, look how far Detroit and I have come) sometimes, but you really came through with the sink. $40, an amazing warehouse with friendly shopkeepers where I will be going back again and again. But hopefully not for a bathroom sink.

We had a relatively busy day, since I've been storing my energy for the last month to maintain my endurance for the bull shit which is the final week of summer vacation. But then, I needed to grout the bathroom floor.

At first, in that first upper corner of the bathroom floor, I thought, "Gee, why don't I do more home improvement projects while Logan's at work? This is FUN!"

By the middle of the floor I was giving myself pep talks, "What the hell? Chris has SEVEN kids and she refinished a claw foot tub. Keep it together Melissa."

By the end of the floor my entire body was coated in grout and I wanted to take that stupid grout float and smear grout on the entire house. I wanted to grout the entire house for no other reason than: I was deranged with the grout.

(Kids: "What's for dinner?" Me, covered in grout: "Grout's for dinner! What do you think is for dinner?" Kids: "Is Daddy coming home soon?")

This is why I don't do home improvement projects while Logan's at work.

But then today as I drove home from Showering At Leslie's (is that not a porn movie waiting to happen?) we drove by The Other House, not The House, but a similarly appealing one a block away. As we passed, I noticed a sign, a metal sign usually used as a 'For Sale' sign, but this sign had been rigged with a homemade sign.

It read, "Neighborhood Happy Hour. Here. Tonight 6-9pm."

At first I wanted to cry, because I want a neighborhood happy hour so bad I've created cocktails named after the streets I'd like to live on. But then I realized this is why I'm Crazy Crabby Grout Lady With The Port-A-John in her driveway. I'm working towards a goal. I'm working towards not just Neighborhood Happy Hour, but also having neighbors I would like to have happy hour with.

But still, if I have to do another coat of grout, I'm going to throw that Port-A-John into the middle of the street and I'm going to run over it with the car repeatedly.