PHOMSITHI'S PLAYGROUND

Cory is curled up in a ball in my lap right now, hidden under a blanket topped with two pillows.  As soon as she realizes that I’m typing on my laptop, she’ll jump on the keyboard and rub her face against my hand.

Every morning Cory sits by the front door, where the sun rays shine in, illuminating her place atop the leather couch. She takes long baths using her tongue.  Her favorite toys are aluminum balls and a red laser light.  We often find Cory on the kitchen counter, and she can jump from the counter-top to the floor in one graceful move.  Cory is rarely eager to go outside.  When we let her out, she chases birds.  When we wake Cory up, she takes several long seconds to stretch her legs and spread her paws before slowly standing on all fours.  And Cory hates canines with a vengeance.

Cory is a dog.  Actually, Cory is a cat trapped in a dog’s body.  And we love her little personality deeply.  In fact, I’m a skinny girl who walks around in a fat woman’s body, and my family still loves me, too.  For what it’s worth, I’m also a cat lover in a world of dog lovers. And my family and friends don’t care.

There are a lot of norms that Cory and I don’t conform to.  We’re different in a world where that often leads to bullying and chastisement.

What a wonderful world it would be if we were all free to sit in the sunlight, our chins held high as we soaked up the warmth of the world.

My kids have taught me some awesome stuff.  If you’re lucky enough to be a mommy, then I know you understand when I say that our kids teach us to love deeply, to grow up quickly, and to see the world anew.  And all that stuff is really, really great.  Really.

But they teach us more than that.  And, while not on the same tug-at-your-heart-strings level, some of the other stuff is pretty eye-opening, too.

Take, for instance, the time that my thirteen-year-old son stood up in math class and said, “Can I call my mom?  I need new underwear before the football game.”  Tyler taught me that there’s no shame in asking for new underwear.  And, also, that silk boxer shorts aren’t the best choice for game day.

While we’re on the subject of underwear, mine recently went missing for a week.  Like, all of it.  It was later returned to my dresser drawer.  While it was an uncomfortable few days of wearing old maternity panties, I did learn something from the case of the missing knickers:  Family Dollar underwear conforms to no reasonable size guidelines.  It’s like buying a variety pack.

We’re new to pet ownership, and I was recently privy to the knowledge that, if you don’t want to clean up dog puke, you can just wait until the dog eats it.  Little known fact, right there, folks.

I learned how to play Alien Fart this week, thanks to my beautiful first-grader.  Regarding the game rules, Ava said, “Well, you’re going to need a partner.”  Apparently you fart on your neighbor and then cross your eyes.

When Tyler was two, I was introduced to the term “crossing t’s” in reference to two little boys sharing a bathroom.  When he was three, I learned that the daycare owner didn’t care for organized playground pee-outs.  When he was four, I was told that while the daycare welcomed kids bringing movies to the facility, that Freddie vs. Jason wasn’t on the approved list of films.

I learned a few years ago that there’s an up-side to carsickness and long road trips.  It’s called Dramamine.  It makes my babies feel better … and sleep from here to Dallas.

I’ve learned that freckles pop up on my precious babies’ faces over the years, not the moment they’re born.  I’ve learned to call them angel kisses, because this makes them smile.  I’ve learned that my oldest baby still likes tickled, even at 5’7″, and my youngest’s favorite place to be kissed is her hand.  I’ve learned that fart jokes can be appreciated from ages 6 to 37, and that it’s never too early to have a great inside joke with your kids.  I’ve learned that what’s important to them is what’s important.

This will likely surprise everyone I’ve ever met, but I spend a lot of time decorating for Halloween. I start months, sometimes years, in advance of the holiday, as I prefer an authentic approach to the scary season.

Outdoor decorating started this summer when I failed to weed the flower bed or water the mums, thus ensuring dead and overgrown foliage. Others pay for and then spend time and sweat constructing scenes that include fake spiderwebs, but not me. Nope, mine are real.

I’ve spent hours this year burning candles on my mantle — and not just because they fill my home with a heavenly hazelnut experience. Nope, I burn them in order to trap and mummify tiny little insect home intruders. Don’t blame me; I wasn’t the one stupid enough to take a swim in a lake of fiery wax.

Some creepy decorations have adorned my home for years. Take, for instance, the Buddha on the mantle. Buddha was purchased at a Bombay Outlet many years ago. When we got him home, his head fell off. I glued it back on. It’s fallen off a couple of times since then, too. I should probably invest in some stronger glue. Bombay Buddha is holding a sign that says “God Loves Me” that my daughter made at kid’s church. I love irony. Additionally, he holds Lucky the teddy bear’s amputated right arm, and someone recently stuck a plastic skeleton necklace in his paws. This is really a year-round decoration, because nothing says welcome like a random appendage.

Buddha isn’t the only thing privy to the skeleton treatment either, as both of my lovely children have chosen to place them on their bedroom doors.

There are a couple of pieces crafted recently on display, too. (And by “recently,” I mean a couple of weekends ago when I promised Ava that she could do crafts if she’d take a nap afterwards. Ava’s a liar. Don’t ever bargain with that kid.)

Someone left a couple of Popsicle sticks on the end table, a la The Blair Witch Project.

And Daphne, our shih tzu, has been walking around dressed up as a regular ole mutt for months!

Also, someone has been eating baked goods while the kids are away …

With all of the months of authentic preparation I do, I don’t want to mislead you. I have, in fact, outfitted our home with one plastic pumpkin. While trying to pull a box of photos from the top of my closet in late September, I somehow dislodged this fellow. Because I didn’t want him to fall on my head again, I re-homed him. He’s sitting on a ledge that, fittingly, needs dusted.

10. The Snizard Monster of 2009 has been missing for five years. Chances are she’s either escaped or dead. Of course there’s also chance she’s hiding in the attic, breeding tiny hybrid snake-lizards.

 
9. I chose really pretty mirrors for the bathrooms, and I’ll leave them for you. I want you to look at your beautiful mug every morning. I mean, you look really great when you first wake up.

 
8. We’ve only had one scorpion in our house. I killed it. It was plastic. Thanks for the heart attack, tiny humans.

 
7. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, and always 6:20 at my house. The big clock on the family room wall always says 6:20, because I put the batteries in backwards and haven’t had enough energy to change them in the past four years. You don’t get the clock, though. I’m taking it with.

 
6.  It’s not haunted.

5. You can pee off the deck without much of an audience, so say the male members of my household. Apparently men think this is a selling point?

 
4. Two lawn mowers convey. Just so we’re clear, I’m talking about the two that don’t work.

 
3. I’m sure my children haven’t peed in the pool. They can hold their bladders for hours, just ask them. Also, it’s never their fault when they get in trouble at school, the wet towel in the bathroom is a mystery, and my kids are never to blame when I receive crippling injuries trying to maneuver a Lego-scattered hallway in the middle of the night.

 
2. I’m leaving the blinds. You’ll thank me some dark evening when you decide to watch 30 Days of Night in your isolated country home.

 
1. Our home is on the free, neighborhood pest control rotation. We call it Stray Guineas, Inc.

10.  I don’t want to live here anymore.  (The Husband says this isn’t a selling point.  To that I say, I was an English major.)

9.  We’ll actually take a little less than our asking price.  (Shut up, Husband.)

8.  We have shutters.  Granted they’re unopened and in the living room, they’re shutters nonetheless.  And if you buy the house and they’re still uninstalled, I’ll spend an afternoon with the hot glue gun trying to get them to adhere to the exterior brick.  Either that or I’ll just give you the shutters and drill bit.  Your choice.

7.  Horses are our neighbors to the north and west.  We used to have cows to the east, and we’d shoot them with water guns while we cooked hamburgers on the deck.  Now we have Mennonites to the east, and my husband won’t let us play that game any more.

6.  I’m fairly sure you could put up a petting zoo sign and charge admission.

5.  The stainless steel appliances convey.

4.  So do Tyler’s bunk beds.

3.  And the chickens.

2.  There’s a pool, and Arkansas summers are hot.

1.  The number one reason you should buy my house is so that you’ll have a front row seat to the Chicken Love Story.  (Add that to Mennonite watching, and it’s like TLC right outside your door.)

It all started when a rooster named Dinner stepped out on his wife, Lunch, with the hen next door, Midnight Snack.  Lunch found out about it, took her Nuggets, and moved across the street.  Dinner and Midnight still get freaky in the front yard, sometimes within eyesight of Lunch and the Nuggets.  It’s a sordid tale of poultry tail.

Here are some actual home pictures.  (Taken at random times because I’m an awful housekeeper who barely manages to keep one room at a time presentable.)  If you want to take a look, we’re asking $142,500, and you can call my husband at 479-393-9029 to talk to him about it.  I think we’ve already established that I’m not the family salesperson.  Also, you have to give me a day’s notice so that I can do stuff like shove all of the dirty dishes in the oven. 

Spring Break breaks me every year.  I’m not talking financially … we rarely ever head anywhere for more than a day or two this time of year.  No, mentally.  I’m quite likely the only teacher in the world who looks forward to the end of Spring Break, who wants to get back to school. 

It depresses me, all this sitting around the house in yoga pants and damp, puppy-kissed house shoes.  I overeat and play too much Candy Crush and drink too much water, which results in too many trips to the bathroom.  I use too much toilet paper during Spring Break.  

Okay, so I’m likely to do all of that year-round.  

The difference in Spring Break and every other day is all the daytime television.  Inevitably the kids begin playing with other kids and don’t want to entertain me.  I birthed them, and they won’t take a couple of hours to play Scrabble with me.  And I turn to Rachel, and Ellen, and Phil.  I look at Let’s Make a Deal and then Facebook and back again.  I contemplate drinking wine alongside Kathie Lee and Hoda, and then I remember I don’t drink wine and that makes me sad because it’s much classier than drinking Five Alive screwdriver slushies from a plastic cup.  And then I mourn the loss of Five Alive.

And those aren’t even the consuming thoughts.  Nope.  I worry endlessly while watching Rachel Ray that I’ll someday be on her show and she’ll make something with cabbage and I’ll have to eat it and not barf.  Or that she’ll say, “Jenni, will you add a tablespoon of flax seeds?” and I’ll throw in a teaspoon of quinoa instead because I don’t know the difference in any of that.  I don’t even know how to pronounce the q-word.  

And when Ellen  comes on, I wonder what I’ll say to politely decline an invitation to be on her show, because there’s no way that I’m dancing on television.  Or anywhere.  And her guests are expected to do that!  Oh, the terror.  I can’t breathe.  Yes, I’d have to say no.

And what if I laugh so hard during my appearance on The Talk that I snort?  It happens.  Daily, if I’m being honest.  Or what if I laugh so hard I nearly pee and have to run to the bathroom?  I am closing in on my late thirties.  Things are starting to fall apart.  Sheryl Underwood is hilarious!  I can’t stand the pressure.  

Sometime around four in the afternoon, I can calm my self temporarily.  You’ll never have to worry about getting asked to make an appearance on those shows, I tell myself.  I take a deep breath and smile.  

And then I realize that it’s because I’m not famous, and I become depressed all over again.

Once upon a time, I dated the perfect man.  

We were madly in love with one another.  We wanted to spend every minute of our lives together.  I often wrote him notes, and he frequently drew me little pictures.  I was often surprised with flowers, and song dedications, and gifts.  Sometimes the gifts were costly, like the jewelry he had to save months to buy.  Other times the gifts were simple but let me know that he paid attention to my likes — my favorite Tic-Tacs picked up on his way out of the gas station, for example.  

We were married on February 13, 1999.  That morning he sent me flowers and a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring.  I was quite certain I’d been swept into a fairy tale.

And then we had a couple of these.

I get flowers once a year now, on our wedding anniversary.  They arrive at my place of work with two balloons — one says “Happy Anniversary,” and the other — due to the proximity to Valentine’s Day — reads “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Unexpected gifts are a notion that make me giggle.  When someone brags that she’s received something unexpected, I think, “She must be single.”

Birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day gifts are fairly prescribed now, too.  The man who once so carefully chose gifts for his young girlfriend bought me an air filter for the family minivan for Christmas.  More saddening than that, he’s yet to replace the old one with it.  I’m fully expecting another flower delivery for our upcoming anniversary, and, if I’m lucky, Valentine’s Day will bring another robe I won’t wear, another last minute purchase from Bath and Body Works, or a gift certificate for a massage I’ll never have time to get.

And, honestly, I don’t really miss the flowers or jewelry.  Practicality overtook both of us at some point, and I’m not upset that he doesn’t spend money on things I don’t want.  As much as I love him, though, I do sometimes miss the days when he had time to listen to what I wanted.  

This year I want shutters.  Actually, I really want to sell our house, but he’s adamant that we continue to live in the land of unchained animals, so my compromise is shutters.  

You see, houses without shutters tend to look a bit like this:

(from the-reaction.blogspot.com)

And houses with shutters look a little more like this:

(from longisland.about.com)

I’ve asked for shutters for every gift-giving occasion for the past two years.  In my estimation, it’ll take roughly five more years to get them here, and then I’ll have to wait roughly four hundred years for them to be installed.  I could go ahead and order them, but they’d linger on the Dining Room Table of Uninstalled Dreams alongside the air filter, three-year-old toilet seat, four-year-old mirror, and a television that Santa dropped off this December.  

Sometimes I miss the days when my husband was my boyfriend — when he was able to concentrate his attention and time only on me.  And then I look at our babies, and it’s easy to forgive not being his number one.  He already gave me the two best presents a girl could ask for.  

This morning I made pancakes.  They looked like this.

The smoke detector went off, and my husband had to take out the batteries.  Again.  I sent my five-year-old daughter to open the doors and turn on the fans.  Again.  And as my twelve-year-old son and his friend ambled out of his bedroom, I thought, This happened the last time this friend spent the night.  I worried briefly that this is what Tyler’s friends would remember about me when they were adults.  And then I realized that this is what my own kids will likely remember.  And,  because my brain never shuts up, I quickly began to worry about all the other things my kids will remember about their childhoods.

1.  I’m afraid my kids will remember that every time their friends spent the night, they awoke to the smoke detector screeching because I was burning breakfast.  I hope they remember that our home was always open to friends and family, a place where sleepovers were commonplace.

2.  I’m afraid that my kids will remember that our country home had some less than desirable stray animals.

I hope they remember that, when Daddy was at work, we would sometimes sneak the cuter animals indoors and kept it our secret.

3.  I’m afraid they’ll remember me as a fat mom, because that’s all I’ve ever been.  I hope they’ll remember my attempts to get healthy and how much fun we all had Sweating to the Oldies.

4.  I’m afraid they’ll remember the long lines their Dad pulled them into to buy a turkey leg at every theme park and state fair we ever visited.  I hope they’ll remember that his favorite part of the turkey leg was sharing.

5.  I’m afraid they’ll remember that sometimes I made them shut off the television and put away the iPads in favor of playing a board game.  I hope they remember how much we laughed as we played and how much I loved to see them win.

6.  I’m afraid they’ll remember that there was seldom a day when our house wouldn’t qualify as “a bit messy.”  I hope they’ll remember that it was always acceptable to pull out blankets and rearrange furniture to make fort in the living room.

7.  I’m afraid they’ll remember me as the mom who made them participate in household chores.  I hope they’ll remember that we were a family who could laugh as we worked together.

8.  I’m afraid they’ll remember all the times their Dad stuck his foot in their faces or told them to pull off his sweaty socks.

I hope they remember that they were so in love with their Dad that they sat on top of him every time he was home.

9.  I’m afraid my kids will remember being dragged, hot and sweaty, to some historical marker or museum on vacation.  I hope they remember that we tried to show them a little piece of the world.

10.  I’m afraid they’ll remember me as a mom who didn’t know what she was doing, who fumbled her way through parenthood and said “no” too much and “yes” at the wrong times.  I hope they remember that they have always been my entire world; I hope they know that I always tried to make the right decision — tried to balance character-building, responsibility, safety, and fun.  

I hope they never question how much they were loved.