Edgy Mama

My girl read about Chinese astrology at school the other day.

“Did you know I’m a tiger, Mom?” she said.

“I did. That’s an appropriate animal for you,” I replied.

My boy asked which “animal” he’s represented by in the Chinese zodiac.

“You’re the year of the snake,” I said, because for some reason I retain arcane knowledge like this about stuff that has no true meaning for my daily existence.

“What are you and Dad?” he asked.

“I’m a dragon, and I think your Dad’s a sheep,” I said.

There was a silence, then the boy said: “So you, me and sister could eat Daddy.”

I’m sure the poor guy feels like he’s being gnawed on sometimes.

“Mommy, I know what a glitch is,” said my boy today. “A glitch is when your eyes turn green and you go wild.”

I’m not sure my blue eyes could turn green, but they do turn a rather stormy blue-gray when I’m going wild.

Conversation overheard between the boy and his best friend:

BF: Do you have anything cool in your car?
Boy: No. Except for the driving stuff.
BF: Let’s go see if we can drive it!

Yowza!

I was going to write a post about Schoolhouse Rock and The Great American Melting Pot and immigration and race relations, but I’m not ready to compete with Obama. Maybe later this week.

My 6-year-old son wandered into my room as I was changing after a Christmas party tonight.

“Mommy, you have leg socks,” he said.

“Those are called stockings,” I said.

He looked at my legs dubiously. “They aren’t filled with candy though.”

When I told my boy to clean up his room the other day, he replied: “Sorry, dude. I don’t feel like cleaning up.”

Later, as I was walking him home from the bus stop, he said, “Mom, why can’t you run up the hill?”

Me: “Because I’m old.”

Him: “You’re not old. Old people are smushy.”

It’s been one of those weeks. Which, if I ever get the time, I’ll tell you about. Yesterday, out of the blue, my boy said, “Mom, trust your heart, and you’ll know who the bad guys are.”

I’m just glad I’m not smushy yet.

Boy and best friend, both 5, sitting on the stairs, just out of sight of my desk.

BF: Is there anything cool to play with in your car?

Boy: No. (pause). Except for the driving stuff.

BF: Cool. Let’s go play in your car!

Edgy witch mama, coming around the corner, glowering: There will be NO playing in multi-ton vehicles with engines by five-year-old spazs.

Boy: Well, I guess we can go jump off the roof of the treehouse.

According to my girl, root canals rock. The procedure was no problemo. The girl bounced back into the endodontist’s examination room, leaving me in the waiting room. I was not prepared to be left in the waiting room, but the assistant told me I had to stay there, which kind of freaked me out, because it made it seem like REAL surgery. The only times I have not been in the room with my kids when they’ve had ANY kind of examination or procedure was when they had one of their several ENT surgeries (ear, nose, and throat, for those of you who aren’t parents or doctors).

So, while I chewed on Lifesavers and ripped recipes out of old copies of Food & Wine, the girl giggled with her endodontist. Half an hour later, the endo, an attractive young woman, comes to tell me that the procedure was successful and the girl was a star patient.

Then the girl appears and says: “I mastered root canals.” Though she pronounces “canals” like “ca-nalllls.” Which is damn cute.

We headed home and she ate a soft dinner of mac & cheese and then went to softball practice. No pain. No fear. She’s slept in the T-shirt the endo gave her every night since. She rocks.

It was bound to happen.

Saturday night. I’d just turned out the light in the kids’ room. I heard a crash from downstairs. I assumed it was E-spouse throwing around laundry baskets, as he is wont to do after our Saturday mega laundry party.

A few minutes later, I heard said spouse going downstairs. Hmmmmmm. Then I heard him yell for me with that “we’ve got a problem” voice. I ran downstairs and saw the fish tank, overturned, two gallons of water all over the kitchen, and Houdini staring intently at something that seemed to blend into the front hall oriental.

“Here’s Scratch,” I said, hissing at Houd.

E-spouse ran over and popped the fish into a glass of water. The fish swam. I applauded. For a few seconds. Then he floated, nose up, gills moving, but not much else. I started mopping up water. E went to the basement to mop up what had soaked through the floor boards. Sometimes, no sub-floor is a blessing. I watched Scratch closely. Still breathing, but clearly damaged. In fact, I noticed that he seemed to have lost a small fin.

The next morning, he was doing the upside-down float. No Easter day resurrections in this house. Guess the big guy doesn’t grant miracles to Unitarians.

The kids, intent on the pagan bunny’s gifts of chocolate, didn’t noticed that the fish had perished. Of course, I’d also moved the tank so the damn cat couldn’t slide it off the edge of the counter again.

We waited until after lunch to tell the kids. Both responded age-appropriately. The girl cried for a few minutes. The boy said, “I guess we need to get a new fish.”

E and the boy buried Scratch in my back flower bed. At that point, the boy expressed proper gravitas.

“I liked it when he ate well,” he said. “I loved him very much.”

I knew something was wrong last night when my 5-year-old boy came upstairs at 6:45 and said he was tired and wanted to go to bed. He was asleep about 15 minutes later. Typically, he’s bouncing on the bed, pestering his sister, yelling boisterously, and generally bursting with pre-bed spaz energy from about 6:00 p.m. until he passes out.

He is the original wind-up toy–one of those little tin monkeys that claps it’s cymbals together spasmodically until it stops completely in mid-crash. My boy is like that–crash to comatose in 1.2 seconds.

Sure enough, 11 hours later, he crawled into the bed with me and said, “Mommy, I’m so tired.” His little body radiated heat. “You’re not tired. You have a fever,” I said.

I put him on the Motrain (greatest kid drug ever). It helped initially, but his fever came soaring back after a few hours, at which point, he wanted to snuggle in the bed with Mommy.

As I warmed my cold nose against the frying pan of his neck, he asked if he could go back to school tomorrow. “I don’t think so,” I said.

There was a pause. “If I don’t go to school, are they going to put you in jail, like those guys told me?”

I guess the truant officers have been putting the fear of God and prison into the pre-Kindergarteners.