Twins do the weirdest things

Took Logan's temperature rectally this morning. He sat perfectly still while Cyrus, unpenetrated, stood nearby and wailed at the top of his lungs.

I quit! Oh, but I can't

It has been one of those weeks. It started with the snot. Lots and lots of snot. And fever. Magnus was the first to come down with a cold. He was warm, clingy and snotty. Then Logan got it. Logan is always whiny so it wasn't a huge adjustment. And then Cyrus, the World's Most Perfect baby, was the last to contract the cold. He was hot and unhappy and not his usual adorable self. I suppose, in retrospect, I should have been grateful that they didn't come down with it at the same time.  I guess they spared me. But the mister was traveling, my mother didn't show up because she was unwell, and I woke up one day, exhausted and spent and just said it aloud. I QUIT.

It felt nice to say it. Cathartic, at least for a few minutes. But reality hit. Babies fussing in their cribs, Magnus needing help with his Batman socks, and a sense of dread took hold. I can't quit. I can't ever quit this job.

I appreciate what an ingrate I must sound like. As my mother tells me all too frequently, I wanted this. (Technically, I wanted another child, a sibling for Mags, but hell, twins sounded cool.) You should be grateful, she tells me as we drive with the kids to a park and pass a field with rows of migrant workers stooped over in the unforgiving heat. You get to stay home and be with them, do you know how many people would kill to be in your position? To stay home and not work?

No, I don't. I want to work, sometimes. At a different job. At a different job that doesn't involve rounds of tush cleaning, breaking up baby fights, pulling tiny objects out of clenched fists, smashing peas into edible mush and fingers pulling at me constantly, fingers creeping under the door to the bathroom when I dash to pee because I've been holding it so long. I want a break. I want to sit on a beach for a week while someone fills my endless margarita glass and applies sunscreen to my face because I slather it on everyone else and don't have the willpower to do it for me.

But I can't quit this job. And ultimately, as hard as it is, it is the best job I will ever have. I get to raise three beautiful, healthy children. Me, I get to do it! And on days when I want to give up and head back to an office building, I look at Logan with his round cheeks, blonde curls, and he smiles at me with milk on his chin.

Can't leave him. Can't do it. I have got to survive this job, one dirty diaper at a time.

Duh

Reading Push (the book that the film "Precious" was based on) days before I am due to get my period = Dumbest Idea Ever.

Downton Altey

Like millions of Americans, I am besotted by the English period drama that is Downton Abbey. I came into it a bit late but technology, bless you!, enabled me to catch up on the life on the landed gentry in the early 20th Century. And I stand corrected on one thing.

I am an unabashed liberal with a soft spot for the working class. However, I realize I would be an unbelievably awesome Countess Crawley. I would excel at having servants bring me breakfast in bed, attend to my hair and make-up, hand deliver my correspondence and set out my wardrobe for weekly social engagements. I would lay my head on an 800-thread count pillow and sleep with an obnoxious smile on my mug every night. I would vacation in Scotland, Paris, America, throw fabulous dinner parties with other well-coiffed snobs, judge the annual spring floral show and during the holidays, ask my maid to coordinate a delivery of goods to the poor. Of course, time allowing, I would set up a foundation to assist those less fortunate, perhaps young women who desired training to land non-domestic jobs or get an occasional manicure. But mostly I would sip champagne, eat low-carb delicacies and be so fucking happy about being a well-heeled aristocrat.

And don't act like you wouldn't do the same, faithful readers. Have you seen the amount of laundry the maids had to do, BY HAND? And they never seemed to take vacations, have sex or read a good book. Forget it, dahlings. Being overly pampered and utterly useless is my new calling in life.

Not another Holocaust movie??

The mister and I were settling in, after a long day of caring for the kiddos, when the mood suddenly hit.

Netflix!

We dusted off the DVD that had been sitting on the dining room table for almost two weeks. While wading through the previews, which we view because we are pathetic individuals who never know what films are coming out anymore, we sat through a trailer for a foreign film about the Holocaust.

I like Holocaust movies. I am fairly certain I have seen just about every Holocaust film ever made, even old ones like The Sorrow and the Pity. I have also watched an array of documentaries and sought out films that chronicle the stories of lesser-known victims, like gay men and people who were deemed mentally or physically unfit.

However, while watching the preview for this latest Holocaust film, all I could think was....really? Another Holocaust movie?

Don't start preaching. I am not saying we should abandon all memory of the Holocaust and never address what happened again in film or art. I simply think it is time there are other stories about genocide that should be told.

For example, the extermination of Native Americans or the Armenian genocide. There have got to be SOME story lines there that people would be riveted by. There is a mass assault taking place right now against Syrian citizens and untold numbers of people have died. Human beings outside Europe
have been put through the worst of human misery but we don't get the opportunity to hear their 
voices.

I am sure there are reasons why other atrocities are not featured as prominently in film or are 
otherwise not made, so I won't drag this out any longer than is necessary. The end result is that I will 
probably bypass this latest Holocaust movie and hope I come across a film with a new story to be experienced.

But not a genocide musical, please please no.

Loving our local crime scene

I happened to pick up a copy of the local newspaper while waiting for Magnus during his weekly art class. I am not someone who relishes checking out the weekly crime blotter nor do I bother to open the community paper that is left each week on our driveway. But this week, with time on my hands and the smell of crazy glue in the air, I found myself sifting through the pages of the Camarillo Acorn, ultimately ending up on the crime page.

And the criminals, they did not disappoint. These menaces to society were up to no damn good. For example: on March 1, a 33-year-old man was arrested for public intoxication outside the local CVS.

Wait. It gets worse.

An underage lout was cited FOUR blocks from where we live for driving a car in a cul-de-sac without a permit.

Hang on, I need to make sure I locked the front door.

I am back. An unidentified, godless woman was arrested near the outlet mall for carrying a controlled substance on March 3.

And a homeowner was cited for violating local ordinances by throwing a loud party on March 4. I know! It wasn't even a holiday.

I am as shocked and disgusted as you, faithful readers. How could the mister move his family from Los Angeles, home of televised car chases and home invasion robberies, to a crime-laden community like this one? Partiers and unlicensed drivers lurk among us, trying to blend in, catch us with our guard down. What is next? Pulling the lids off our recycling bins? Riding motorcycles without helmets?

Shudder to think.

Magnusism #5

Magnus: "Mommy, gold teeth are COOL."