When you get your car detailed, they do a good job of vacuuming.

When you get the extra-special insanely-expensive detailing package, they actually remove the seats from the car. If you have toddlers, this is what is lurking underneath your back seat.

The cheerios and crackers don’t really decay, oddly enough. The bread? Ewwwww. The detailing was worth every penny.

A prize to the person who most closely guesses how long we can last until we crack and let Burrito and Tamale resume eating in the car.

Welcome to the January Intelligentsia, the people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post in December.

#27: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#23: A from Are You Kidding Me?
#23: Lost In Translation from We Say IVF, They Say FIV
#19: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#11: Tara from Turkey In My Oven
#10: Ana
#9: St. Elsewhere
#8: Lori Lavender Luz from Write Mind Open Heart
#2: Sara from Aryanhwy

Last week during Thoughtful Thursday we talked about the many lies of our nanny. First, you should know that she is now our former nanny — precipitated by the theme of today’s post, theft.

It all started with Mini Eggs. Last year around Easter, I bought a big bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs in Canada, because most foods are slightly better in Canada. When I got home, there were some other perishable sweets I needed to eat first, so I put the bag in the sweets drawer for later. Day by day, the bag got smaller and smaller. Eventually, it was totally empty, and I’d never eaten a single one. DH doesn’t eat Mini Eggs, and Burrito and Tamale never went near the kitchen, so the only remaining culprit was the nanny. I don’t really care if someone eats my food, except when I have specifically imported it from another country. Back then, we were very happy with our nanny in every other way, so I let it go and never mentioned it.

As a nanny, she was really great, up until she wasn’t. Aside from the lying I talked about in the last post, over time she became a crappier and crappier employee (good with the kids, but bad as an employee — late, lazy, didn’t improve in response to feedback), and the lies accumulated, and we got increasingly sick of her shit but felt trapped, not wanting to take a chance on hiring a new nanny who might be a better employee but not as good with the children. The devil I know is better than the devil I don’t know.

Then, last week, we figured out that our nanny had stolen more than Mini Eggs. As in, a lot of money. Equivalent to 1/3 of an IVF — or maybe more here and there from our wallets, but that’s how much we can prove on our credit cards. At that point, we could no longer look the other way, and even though losing our childcare a few weeks before we move far far away really screws things up, we had no choice but to fire her. And then we called the police.

I asked DH about his own history as a thief. After 4 minutes of contemplation, he came up with his grandest larceny: a chocolate bar, at age 8.

I stole something even smaller as a child: at age 7, I would take a single pinto bean from the bulk bin every time I went to the market. I thought they were pretty. I bet the store would have objected much more to a kid’s grubby hands fishing around in the bulk bin than to the loss of a whopping 5 pinto beans over the course of several months. As an adult, I decidedly do not steal. If a store clerk accidentally gives me too much change, I am likely to go back into the store — or drive across town the next day — to return it. I don’t steal, I just don’t. The only thing, aside from pinto beans, I can think of that I ever stole was, uh, my friend’s boyfriend. But that was more than 20 years ago. I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that, looking back, he totally wasn’t worth it. I’d much rather have 5 pinto beans than that loser.

Our friend Mr. OH (mentioned last week as a nonstop fibber) also stole something 20 years ago: half of an IVF, in cash. He felt that he had it coming to him from an employer who was stiffing him, so he skimmed from the cash register over the course of several months. He absolutely thought he was morally justified. I absolutely thought that he was not justified, and told him so, many times. DH agreed with me that it was wrong, and he would break Mr. OH’s balls about it now and then, but he fundamentally doesn’t like to judge anyone, particularly his friends.

After The Nanny Situation, though, DH saw it from a new perspective. Even though it’s not true, our nanny could make the same argument as early 1990s Mr. OH did, that we didn’t pay her enough and she worked so hard and she had it coming to her and we would barely miss it. When DH called Mr. OH to fill him in on The Nanny Situation, it all came together in DH’s mind. Mr. OH commented that 1/3 of an IVF was a lot of money; DH replied without even thinking, “Yeah, but not as much as you stole from your bosses.” DH and I have had fun breaking Mr. OH’s balls about his crime for the past 20 years but now, having been on the other side, it’s not so funny.

What is the biggest thing you ever stole? Do you have categorical rules about stealing, or is it justifiable in certain circumstances?

January: Smiling
February: Bridesmaid
March: Emotion
April: Audit
May: Mothers
June: Mailbox
July: Limbo
August: Satisficing
September: Zen
October: Kiln
November: Yaaaaaay!
December: Transition

Why no link for December? Because I’m telling you about it right now.

Fittingly, December’s events bring me full circle to the encounter with Lori that started the year. In January, her family came to my region of the country. In December, I visited her house as part of a reconnaissance trip, because… this coming January, I will become her neighbor.

I got a job! A better job than any of the four for which I’ve been the runner-up in the past year and a half! We are moving to Loriland!

I am temporarily in transition, but I am finally out of Limbo.

Uhhhh… anybody want to buy a really cool house? I’ll throw in some pottery!

Happy New Year!

A coworker of mine says that he is honest all the time not for moral reasons but because he has a bad memory. If he were to lie, he’d have to keep track of who knew what. So, he stays honest.

One of my sisters-in-law, Murphy’s mother, only lies when it comes to compliments. Do you really look great? Is she actually happy for you? You’ll never know, because she says the same things, in the same over-the-top syrupy voice, no matter what. It has served her well at times, such as when she worked the front desk at a day spa and told the customers how fabulous their skin looked after their facials. Some people see through it, though — like my mother, who once remarked that DH’s sister was “a little too nice” and “kind of fake.”

The flip side of the easy compliments, though, is that DH’s sister expects them from other people. Last week she flat-out asked me whether a parenting choice she had made with Murphy would be bad for him long-term. She is currently very unhappy with the results of her actions and she desperately wants her baby to stop doing what he’s doing, and I don’t foresee what she’s doing turning out well. So, I told her that. I was matter-of-fact but truthful. I wasn’t harsh, but I didn’t soften it. I would never have said anything about it at all, except that she specifically asked me. But, even though she asked, I don’t think she expected me to tell her the truth. Although we email each other often, I haven’t heard a peep from her in over a week since I told her the truth.

DH’s buddy Mr. OH is such a fibber. I never realized the extent until we went on a road trip with him a few years ago. He made all sorts of personal and business calls on his bluetooth while he drove, and to every single person he lied about something. He is pretty convincing when he lies because he is kind of sleazy whether he’s lying or telling the truth. Usually it was something unimportant which would never come up again. Sometimes the lie did benefit him, which I don’t agree with but I can understand, but usually the lie did not benefit him at all. The most bothersome to me was when he lied to his wife, who had stayed home; it was a pointless lie which didn’t benefit him and wouldn’t hurt him. If you’re going to lie to your spouse to protect their feelings, or because you’re having an affair, or whatever, fine, I get it. But lying for no reason, just for the sake of lying? Bizarre.

Which brings us to our current nanny. I posted a couple of months ago about the tremendous tolerance I have shown for her lies, some of which she has been caught in and some of which I have detected without letting her know. In most cases, I wouldn’t have had any objection to the truth; in almost all cases, I would have been willing to go along with it or work something out if she’d just asked. A few weeks ago, I discovered a lie that was particularly annoying. She took my car to the supermarket while Burrito and Tamale were napping to stock up our groceries, which she does several times a week. The market is about a mile away. She came back 2.5 hours later, long after they had woken up from their nap. She had a convoluted story about getting pulled over by a cop and having him lecture her about her driving for an hour. Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain the huge block of missing time. Because she’d taken so long, I couldn’t run an errand I’d scheduled to pick up my finished pottery, nor could I go to my office. That night, on the dashboard I found a parking meter slip from a town 20 minutes away — 5 minutes away from my pottery studio. If she had just asked me, I would have driven her and dropped her off to do whatever she was doing (more on what that was next week) while I did what I’d planned to do; an extra-long, with-my-compliments lunch hour. But she didn’t ask, so I sat around the house for 2 hours waiting for her to come back. But, the part that annoyed me the most: she didn’t even cover her tracks and remove the parking meter slip. She is never very detail-oriented, and it obviously slipped her mind to remove the incriminating evidence. If you’re going to lie, at least be good at it.

When do you lie? When do you tell hard truths? Why do you tell the truth — because you should, or because you aren’t good at lying (can’t remember, can’t be convincing, can’t cover your tracks…)?

In the past, with these types of lists, address books, or birthday calendars, I would delete people who had become obsolete — either because they’d moved out of our lives, or because they died.

This year, I instead hid those lines on the spreadsheet. I did this for a couple of reasons: first, there are a couple of people whom DH has had me remove from the list at some point only to request that they be added in a subsequent year; hiding allows me to restore their address rather than having to contact them. Second, it’s hard to know what to do with people who have died. I remember reading a blog post from Mel several years saying that when people die, she leaves them in her address book untouched. At that point in life, her approach was very different from mine: I made a dramatic point of deleting them, a symbolic goodbye. But, I don’t think deleting works for me anymore, nor do I want to look at a potentially painful entry without warning. Hence, hiding the row.

Past deletion has come back to bite me: for example, a relative died last year, and I deleted his birthday from my list. Now, I couldn’t tell you his exact birthday. I know the month, but not the date. And so, when his daughter was suddenly sad on that day, I had no idea why, and I didn’t treat her as gently as I would have until someone else filled me in. Even if the deceased person can’t celebrate anymore, others might want to honor them — or mourn them — on that day, and it’s handy to have some kind of reminder.

There are some entries that I won’t forget, whether or not they appear on a list. I will never forget my mother’s birthday, for example, nor her address, nor the fact that she used to be at the top of my list and she isn’t there any more.

What do you do with obsolete entries in your address book, birthday calendar, etc.?

Some of you have seen recent news stories about a woman who recently died from childbirth complications. I was particularly interested not only because of the many parallels to my experiences — infertile for 7 years, boy-girl twins from IF treatments, planned c-section because one baby was breech, severe hemorrhaging after delivery — but also because I actually am separated from her by only one degree, through a common friend.

When our friend passed along the horrible news, I scoured the website and the news articles, curious about the extent of the parallels between our lives and wanting to know more about this truly special person. And yes, some degree of lookie-loo motivation too, there but for the grace of G-d go I.

When I told DH about her and the parallels, his reaction was to refuse to listen to another word about her, horrified at the parallels, there but for the grace…

DH can stop me from talking to him about this family, but he cannot stop me from donating to help a bereaved husband and overwhelmed father of newborn twins take care of those beautiful babies.

When you see someone just like you befall a terrible fate, do you want to know more or shut your eyes and pretend it never happened?

Welcome to the December Intelligentsia, the people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post in November (not as hard this month, since I only managed two Thoughtful Thursday posts).

#26: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#18: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#15: Ernessa from Fierce and Nerdy
#10: Tara from Turkey In My Oven
#9: Ana
#8: St. Elsewhere
#7: Lori Lavender Luz from Write Mind Open Heart

and new member Sara!

I just spent several hundred dollars on new bras. I’ve had the same bra size all of my adult life (38F), but I was near a top-notch bra store and thought I’d get fitted. I don’t know if it’s because of pregnancy and nursing or because my past fittings have been good but not great, but the size at which they measured me was pretty different: 34G-H.

Unlike most shops, which have slim pickings in my size, this shop had piles. Once the clerk had fitted me, she literally brought in everything in my size, and then I worked my way through about 30 bras.

Among the selections were a couple that I’d never encountered in my size: deep cleavage bras. I don’t ever wear anything that would require such a low-cut bra — with a chest like mine, at least at my age, showing a lot of cleavage would be overkill — but even so, it was pretty fun to try them on.

Burrito seems to have even more conservative views. Both he and Tamale rarely have opinions on others’ clothing, good or bad (though they are huge fans of DH’s bear sweatshirt), but Burrito has very strong opinions about my shirts. Normally I wear crewnecks or high v-necks, but every time I wear a lower v-neck or scoop-neck, he freaks out. He starts patting my exposed chest frantically and chatters in a very concerned way, “mama shirt mama chest mama shirt!”

What’s your stance on cleavage?

My sister has twins too. Everyone asks me if twins run in the family. I say, “No, but infertility does!”

I had another instance of getting the wind knocked out of me this week. Burrito and Tamale both love technology (despite not being allowed near any electronic gizmos). They discovered the answering machine that is part of the cordless phone base. We switched to machineless voicemail a year and a half ago, so the answering machine has just been sitting there, idle. At the time of the switch, we happened to have saved a few messages, then never deleted them.

Burrito and Tamale decided to press all of the buttons. They played the messages.

1. Work thing for DH which is now very much moot.
2. “How are the babies?” message from former coworker.
3. Random message from my mother.

It was such a shock to suddenly hear her voice, out of nowhere.

I can still hear her voice in my head, but I don’t really have any good audio or video samples of her.

There were a few videos my dad shot when she was sick, in the hospital or in a rehab facility, to show me her condition. Not an accurate representation of her usual self.

During better times, whenever my mother was in front of the camera, she became decidedly unnatural. Still camera: bizarre, stilted pose with fake smile. Always the same one, but not a body position or face that she ever made off camera. Video camera: the most talkative person in the world suddenly clammed up.

DH is totally himself on video. With a still camera, he psychs himself out sometimes, and either smiles too much or not enough. When we just had professional photos taken, out of 300 photos, the only ones where he looks natural are a few where he forgot about the camera and focused on interacting with one of us. He does look good in many of them, but it’s just not quite him.

I like to think that I act and look pretty natural in front of the still camera. When a video camera is pointed at me putting me on the spot to say something, like the videographer at a wedding, I have nothing to say (sorry about your wedding videos, everyone). With everyday videos, though, like the ones we take of Burrito and Tamale, I am absolutely myself. For good or for bad, that’s me.

How natural are you in front of the camera?

Welcome to the November Intelligentsia, the people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post in October.

#25: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#22: A from Are You Kidding Me?
#22: Lost In Translation from We Say IVF, They Say FIV
#17: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#9: Tara from Turkey In My Oven
#9: Rebecca from Get Lost With Me, Darling
#7: St. Elsewhere
#6: Lori Lavender Luz from Write Mind Open Heart
#3: Heather from Joys in My Life

I just visited a Happy Place. Not my Happy Place, but Mel’s. I’ve written before about how it brings me peace to walk through kitchen stores, but this particular place is much more than that.

While I was there, aside from the regular thoughts (“Can I get them to eat this lentil salad?” “Aaaah stop running, Burrito! Please don’t knock over any displays!” “Mmmmmm frosting.”) I kept thinking, “This is Mel’s Happy Place. She has driven many hours out of her way just to come here.” Being so special made it more special to me.

My Happy Place is sometimes the pottery studio, particularly when I’m alone there, but this new place (which is otherwise far better than the old, in so many ways starting with the impossibility of disasters or calamities destroying all of my work) doesn’t have open studio time, so I’m always there with the teacher and other students.

I enjoy consignment shopping — I never pay retail for kids’ clothes — but I really enjoy the semi-annual consignment sale at my local multiples club. That is absolutely a Happy Place for me.

Last week, I was in a city about which I have mixed feelings (in large part because DH’s mother lives there; otherwise it has a lot going for it). There are many wonderful things in that city, but we usually end up staying in the suburbs and only spending time with people. I do have a Happy Place there, though. A city block that has three of my favorite places anywhere. I suggested going there during this trip, but DH poopoo’d it. He was right. This particular Happy Place wouldn’t be so happy while juggling toddlers.

Then, today, a new Happy Place when I came home from work. As soon as I walked in the door, Burrito and Tamale each burst into applause accompanied by joyous exclamations of “Yay! Mama! Yay! Mama! Yaaaaaay!”

The happiest Happy Place ever.

What is your Happy Place?

Different people get affected by different things. Some people can stomach any human injustice but get their heart broken by cruelty to animals. Some people feel a protective urge toward children, or anxiety about illness, or a fear of accidents. Some people are touched by the personal, and some people are most affected by large-scale calamities.

Bloggy friend and Intelligentsia member Strong Blonde just posted about how she can’t stop thinking about the tragedy that happened this week in her family. Her husband’s cousin killed himself… after murdering his toddler.

Someone who went to graduate school with me had a daughter who was diagnosed with cancer as an infant. The whole department was very concerned, but one good friend of mine, with a daughter almost exactly the same age, was obsessed. She often woke her husband up in the middle of the night to talk about this sick baby she’d never even met (his sleepy automatic response: “Yes, it’s terrible, we are so lucky”). She’d check the baby’s health website for updates every few hours, and for a while she spent literally several hours a day reading back posts and learning about this particular kind of cancer. Her obsession got less intense over the period of this baby’s long illness, which took up almost all of her short life. When the little girl died, my friend became obsessed all over again.

After Hurricane Katrina, a co-worker spent every moment when she wasn’t at work watching news footage of people stranded on their roofs. She told me, “I can’t stop. It’s all so horrible. I can’t stop watching.”

I’ve been obsessed with various things over the years. Like the time during an IVF cycle that I looked up everyone who’d ever cycled on CycleSista to calculate statistics on their success rates, twin rates, type of intervention, total number of cycles before achieving success… It was quite the spreadsheet.

I don’t tend to think much about big disasters, in part because I stay away from news coverage in general. Individual hardship can make me momentarily sad for the people involved, but I tend to move on quickly. At times I’ve worked with issues that didn’t faze me at all but are too much for most people to even hear about; sometimes, when meeting new people, just the mention of what I do has been enough to send people in a beeline across the room with no explanation but, “Oh, uh, that’s great, uh, bye.” I’m notoriously hard to shock. A robot.

But, you know the one thing that really haunts me? The Holocaust. It didn’t resonate until I married a man with several grandparents-in-law and numerous other relatives who are/were survivors (and even more ancestors who were killed). His relatives almost always avoided talking about The War, so it’s not like I heard a lot of details from them. It’s just the idea that entire nations of people could stand by (or join in) while their neighbors and friends were persecuted, imprisoned, and killed. Letting horrible things happen not to enemy combatants but children, little old ladies, everyone, from their own country.

I usually don’t think about the Holocaust, but occasionally I’ve visited memorials or visited the graves of relatives whose headstones also honor the members of their immediate family who were killed in the Holocaust, or encountered other reminders. Then for a moment I mentally put my family in that situation, and it’s too horrible to think about anything bad happening to my husband and babies and I block it out of my mind.

Most recently, I was looking at the website of the Survivor Mitzvah Project to make a donation in memory of a relative who’d survived the Holocaust but recently died. Once again, I am haunted. The people on the website survived a genocide then have spent the subsequent 65 years still suffering. After the war, they went back to their little towns as one of the handful of remaining Jews and have lived in poverty ever since, often facing further persecution under new dictators or oppressive governments or soulless neighbors. Unlike the people whose stories I’ve heard before — relatives, friends of relatives, activists — these people didn’t start new lives in North America or Israel. Their letters tell heartbreaking stories not only about the cruelty of their neighbors and countrymen, not only about war or poverty, but about the ugliness that such situations can bring out in the people you love. Which brings us full circle, back to that baby who will never play with Strong Blonde’s twins at a family reunion, because his father did something that most of us can’t even bring ourselves to imagine.

Yes, it’s terrible, we are so lucky.

What haunts you?

I’ve written over and over about unfortunate pottery incidents that have happened over the years. There are so many things that can go wrong, at every possible point in the process. Even once you bring it home, you never know when a piece, or half a dozen, will tumble and crash.

Every now and then, everything goes right.

Find more perfect moments at Write Mind Open Heart.

We replaced her with a dream-come-true nanny who was everything I could have hoped for and more. She was wonderful enough that I was reluctant to move away and lose her. Then we thought we might move somewhere exciting temporarily and I was totally going to bring her with us to Europe or whatever. And when her housing situation became uncertain, I was going to let her move in with us. When DH and I both went out of town on business, I had no reservations about leaving the twins alone with her for a couple of days. Can’t get better than that.

Our relationship changed a couple of months ago from honeymoon phase to on the rocks, and now I’m strongly considering a breakup.

She used to be on time consistently; I never questioned whether she’d show up. Then, some things in her life went to hell, totally legitimate things that would trip anyone up, and she started being late. And later. And later. It started to become a surprise if she showed up less than half an hour late. Her record is 3 hours. At almost any job you’d get fired for being a little late just a few times, and virtually no boss in the world would let you get away with missing several hours of work per week, but I put up with it. The twins adore her and she is fantastic with them in every way. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like it, especially that week when I missed four appointments including a medical appointment for me and one for Tamale because of her lateness, but I tolerated it. When DH and I had a sit-down with her, the lateness improved. And then it unimproved.

She also started watching TV. Burrito and Tamale are not allowed to watch TV or any other screens, ever, and the only TV in the house is in a room where they don’t go. She started watching TV during their naps, ostensibly when eating her lunch and when folding their laundry, but there have been plenty of times that DH or I has had to inform her that they had been awake and talking — or crying — for a while, because apparently when you watch Glee you need to turn up the volume really loud during the musical numbers. Except that I went downstairs yesterday when Burrito and Tamale should already have been napping and she was watching TV on her computer while they sat playing… in poopy diapers. Seriously not cool. I told her firmly how seriously not cool that was, I reiterated my stance on screens around my children, and I banned her computer. Okay, so she made a mistake, but the problem is solved, maybe.

She doesn’t have a car so I lend her our car once or twice a week to be helpful and kind. I don’t mind her putting on a hundred miles sometimes, and I don’t mind paying for the gas, as long as I don’t end up with a totally empty tank, which doesn’t happen, usually. I didn’t even mind that time she got a parking ticket and didn’t pay it and didn’t tell us and we got a notice in the mail a month later. She was very apologetic and paid the ticket — or rather, I paid the ticket and took it out of her salary, because I wanted to make sure it got paid. Fine.

Then there’s the lying. I caught her in a silly lie not long after she’d started; she was embarrassed to say that she’d done something that I didn’t even care about in the first place, and she lied to cover it up, and the truth came out. I told her that I didn’t care, and that we were delighted she was with us, and that she should just be honest. That was fine. Lately, there have been a bunch more little silly lies which are annoying but not dealbreakers. Then I discovered that she falsified her work history, which is far more than just annoying. She had the experience she said she had, except that it was for her mother instead of a stranger. I would have hired her if she’d applied with her true background, but she presumably thought that she needed to “boost” her experience to get anyone to take her seriously. She doesn’t know I know, because if I confronted her I’d presumably have to fire her on the spot. That one is bad, but not enough to push me over the edge.

The last straw? She has taken up smoking. She swears that she hasn’t, but several times after she’s borrowed the car it’s been totally smoky — each time she has an excuse about giving a different friend a ride who lit up before she could stop them — and also she smells totally smoky and also she has started randomly going outside. The other day she locked herself out of the house and I had to come home from work and let her in while my children sat inside crying, then she had a bizarre excuse as to why she had gone outside. That was totally not okay. But, I don’t expect it to come up again because she’s actually rarely home alone, but c’mon, do I really have to babysit the nanny? I object to the lying and I object to leaving my children alone but really, I mostly object to the smoking. I would never, ever, ever hire someone who smoked, so it stands to reason that I should fire someone who starts smoking. That’s it. That’s the last straw.

And then I see Burrito gleefully kiss the nanny, or I see Tamale throw her arms around the nanny’s neck in a big hug, or I hear her singing to them with her incredible professional-caliber voice while the twins sit in her lap enraptured, or I hear Tamale ask hourly every Saturday and Sunday when the nanny is coming back, and I mentally un-fire her.

How tolerant are you? How far do you let yourself be pushed?

Welcome to the October Intelligentsia, the people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post in September.

#24: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#21: A from Are You Kidding Me?
#21: Lost In Translation from We Say IVF, They Say FIV
#16: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#8: Tara from Turkey In My Oven
#6: St. Elsewhere
#5: Lori Lavender Luz from Write Mind Open Heart

Oh man, this morning, I was no fun at all.

I’d slept 3 hours. (Working late the night before.)

The nanny was 3 hours late. (She called and had a good excuse, but still.)

I had to make an incredibly important work phone call but I couldn’t do it with toddlers screaming in the background. (Not that they scream nonstop all day long, but they raise objections if I talk on the phone, plus if you leave them unattended for more than 3 minutes, someone will push someone else down or take someone’s toy or try to hug someone too aggressively or something.)

The nanny being late I can handle — it happens almost every day (though almost never that late). Work stress I can handle — plenty of that. But I could not handle them in combination, plus toddlers throwing food on the floor and hurling cups of milk across the room and bashing each other and biting me and kicking me, on 3 hours sleep. Hence, cranky.

I do fine when I’m hungry, and I do fine when I’m sick (except for tummy problems), and I even do fine when I’m sleep deprived for one day, but cumulative sleep deprivation does me in. By the afternoon, my urgent work thing still hadn’t been resolved and my work day had still been hijacked by the nanny’s absence, but I had taken a nap, and all was right with the world.

My husband is crankiest when he he has gone too long without eating, which only happens once a month or so. The problem is that he doesn’t realize that’s why he’s cranky. His stomach doesn’t grumble, he doesn’t notice how long it’s been since the last meal, he doesn’t put two and two together. Every single time, he becomes off-kilter, deeply dissatisfied with life. I ask if he’s hungry. He says he’s not. I ask how long it’s been since he’s eaten. He gets flustered and says he doesn’t know. I tell him to eat. He says no. I tell him to eat. He begrudgingly eats something. Three bites in, all is right with the world.

What physical state makes you the crankiest? Sleepy? Hungry? Sick? Something else?

Me, talking about me: “I’m a pretty consistent subject.”

It seems that people are not allowed to say they’re photogenic.

Most people think I am very photogenic, but a large part of that is that I am very skilled at selecting photos. If I’m sending out a photo that involves me, you’d better believe I will look good in it.

Part of being photogenic seems to be that you look like yourself, and since I look like myself almost all of the time — and have genuinely not changed in over 20 years, just ask people at my high school (or elementary school!) reunion — I am therefore photogenic.

Part of being photogenic also seems to be that you don’t make weird expressions. Having an unexpressive face, I’ve got that one down. My husband and son are both very expressive, facially and emotionally, and so they both get caught by the camera with weird expressions fairly often.

So yes, I’m pretty photogenic — at least in the face, and the hair. My stomach, though, is wildly inconsistent on film. Thank goodness for cropping.

Are you photogenic?

My perfect moment started with a non-perfect moment, one that harkens back to a post in 2008 and another one in 2008 and another in 2009. Pottery is a fragile endeavor, whether through my own error in the creation process, someone else’s error in the pottery studio, or a butterfingers accident at home.

Before Burrito and Tamale were born, I’d reached a pleasant pottery homeostasis. I’d made pretty much all of the projects I’d had in mind: a full set of dinner plates in three sizes, all sorts of bowls, cups, mugs, garlic pot, vases, even a couple of serving dishes. Then, a few months ago, I opened the kitchen cabinet, and every berry bowl I’ve ever made came crashing down.

(Sorry about the takeout containers, and the avocado pit, and the granola bar wrapper, and — uh — the dirty diapers.)

These demolished berry bowls had been some of my very best creations, and they were all gone. To make it even worse, I would have to live indefinitely without any berry bowls, because who knows when I’d get back into the pottery studio again. It would be years, right?

Wrong!

I’m back!

Oh, how I missed you.

Head over to Write Mind Open Heart for the triumphant return of Perfect Moment Mondays.

Best case scenario is that the house is already tidy and clean, and a few things need to be staged. This has never happened.

2nd best case scenario is that the house is moderately messy and moderately dirty, and we must scramble to tidy and clean and stage. This has happened sometimes.

3rd best case scenario is that the house is a disaster area and we must scramble hard to tidy and clean and stage. This has been the most common.

The tidying and cleaning are things that should be done anyway, and the house showing is a nice excuse to make them happen, just as we used to throw parties to force us to make the house presentable. I don’t consider this a waste of time.

The staging is not stuff that needs to be done anyway. For example, I move furniture, hide all of the toys, and put back dangerous objects like fireplace implements to convert the living room from toddler paradise into adult living room. As soon as the showing is over, I have to put everything back. That room alone takes about an hour. This is a waste of time in the sense that it does not need to be done for me, though I understand that it is the cost of doing business when selling a house.

Then, there’s the stuff that may or may not need to be done, depending on who you ask, such as making the bed. We sometimes put the blanket and comforter back into position in the morning, sometimes not. If we don’t fix the blankets in the morning, we end up needing to do it at night before we get into bed, so it’s not really wasted time. The big time waster: decorative pillows. We never position the shams unless someone is coming over. DH has such disdain for shams. He openly mocks people like his stepmother who have a dozen decorative pillows on their bed, all of which must be displaced and replaced every single day.

Do you make your bed every day? What’s your stance on decorative pillows?

This year, I miss it already.

So does Stevie.

And Frank.

And Belle and Sebastian.

And Dar.

And The Beach Boys.

And Joni.

And The Decemberists.

And Elvis.

And The Magnetic Fields.

And The Doors.

And Dusty.

On the flip side, toddlers + adorable outerwear = hooray for fall!

The last time the wind literally got knocked out of me, I was 7 years old in gymnastics class.

The last time the wind figuratively got knocked out of me, I was in the car, last week.

About a mile and a half from my house, there is a retirement home. I very rarely drive in that direction, so in 5 years I’ve probably passed it only half a dozen times. Aside from driving by, the only time I’ve ever heard it mentioned was last year, when the town parents’ group was organizing the children to visit the home for Halloween in their costumes to amuse the residents. I didn’t bring Burrito and Tamale, mainly because it seemed wrong that my mother should be in a similar assisted living facility thousands of miles away but that Burrito and Tamale would be oohed and aahed at in their costumes by other kids’ grandparents but not her.

Sometime between last Halloween and now, the home, which was formerly independent, was bought by a national chain of assisted living facilities. The same chain that owned the facility where my mother spent most of the last year of her life.

I didn’t know this until I drove by last week, when Burrito and Tamale started daycare on that side of town. When I saw the new sign with its too-familiar name, its too-familiar font, its too-familiar color scheme, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. The wind got knocked out of me.

I will be driving by several times a week now, so I suppose I’ll have to get used to it. So far, the punches haven’t been as hard and the wind is no longer being totally knocked out of me, but I’m torn between averting my eyes and stopping the car to stare at the sign.

I have no idea if I’ll bring them there for the Halloween parade this year.

When was the last time the wind got knocked out of you, literally or figuratively?

Welcome to the September Intelligentsia, the people who have commented on every Thoughtful Thursday post in August.

#23: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#20: A from Are You Kidding Me?
#15: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#14: Ernessa from Fierce and Nerdy
#8: Ana
#7: Tara from Turkey In My Oven
#5: St. Elsewhere

This week we’ll talk about urgency. No, not the urinary urgency we talked about last week. Instead, we’ll talk about having a sense of time.

Last week, some relatives visited. We had plans to go on an outing. I said that we’d leave at 10:00. As of 10:00, I was dressed and ready. Burrito and Tamale were dressed and ready (thanks to me, not their own desire to get ready, as evidenced by the moment when I was chasing an almost-naked toddler around the room trying to put on pants). There were three other adults in the house. At 10:00, one had showered but not finished getting dressed. One was in the shower. One was wearing pajamas, not having yet showered.

I exclaimed, “We are supposed to be in the car now! Am I the only person here with a sense of urgency?!?”

I’ll admit, I can get too riled up against a deadline. In the face of true emergencies, like the car wreck that I narrowly avoided last week when a car in front of me on the highway suddenly hit the railing and flipped over, I am calm. If I’m trying to get out of the house to make a playdate, I become a lunatic. My mother wasn’t a big fan of words of wisdom, but there was one aphorism she used occasionally. When I really start flapping around like a chicken, I can hear her voice in my head: “Haste makes waste.” And then I breathe, and go about my activities a little more calmly.

Our nanny is wonderful in many ways, and one of those is that she is laid back and calm even when two toddlers are screaming. But she also has no sense of urgency. When a toddler is freaking out, I go running; she finishes what she was doing or the conversation she was having. If I know that we need to leave at a certain time to take Burrito and Tamale to an appointment, I adjust meals and other activities accordingly; she just follows the regular schedule.

I absolutely do miss important deadlines and certainly show up late much of the time (though the majority of my lateness is due to other adults, and most of the rest is due to toddler shenanigans). But even when I’m late, I know I’m late, and I fret about it. So many people around me not only don’t hurry, but don’t worry.

How is your sense of urgency? When you need to go somewhere or meet a deadline, how much do you hurry? How much do you worry?