Clean your closets

This is a public service message from your local beat down, put upon, stuck in hell mommy of 4 to those of you finding yourself similarly mired in some sort of muck that makes any progress on any front impossible.

Clean your closet. Your closet reflects your state of mind and your state of  your life. That is my firm opinion. I cleaned my closet today, and you know what? My house was set free from eternal escrow bondage, my children were well, I'm making better eating choices (yes just one day) and I feel like a million bucks and I bet it's going to continue.

Next I need to clean my car, my purse and my dining room table. And then my life will be free flowing and successful as it can be. I just know it. Too bad it's another holiday weekend and I don't get another morning child free for a week. I'll figure it out. A few minutes a day will make progress. I'll see signs of change. I'm excited. Because I have been stuck stuck stuck for so long. I couldn't see what I was doing to stay stuck and I couldn't see any way out. I am not going to be stuck anymore. The house will sell, my new house will be found and purchased and I will find myself again.

I even found some sense of humor in the back of the closet while I was cleaning.

No, really, I don't think it's a coincidence. We'd been waiting on the results of a re-appraisal of our house for sale for 3 days. Suddenly we get it and it's better news than we had even hoped for. We will be getting a reasonable amount for our house and we will be free by the end of next week. Free to find our dream home and start a life where my kids have room, privacy, good sleep options, freedom to do crafts, run in and out of a house, and even help mommy in the kitchen.

I can't wait. It's going to be great, with the usual spots of pain in the butt. Moving is never easy. Finding a home is never easy, negotiating sucks, and we will have to spend more than we want to but it'll all work out.

I'm on my way! Oh I'm relentlessly cheery today aren't I? Hard to even recognize me.

Trapped.

Today I feel trapped. Trapped in this house for one. It seems that the idea I had to blow this town for a bigger better but cheaper house is at a stalling point. To get out of this dreary foggy city for some suburbs with more sun and the critical part, a house where the kids can play in and outside all at once instead of having to make a decision to either play in the back yard or inside because we all have to relocate in order for it to happen.

I'm mad. I suppose I'm mad at the economy. First, finding a house in a price range that matches our borrowing ability? And let's talk about that borrowing ability. We could borrow fully 1/3 more 3 years ago. 3 years ago! Thanks market. So now we need more house for waaaay less money, because we happen to live in the kind of place where a 4 br house is a million dollars. Were we still living in Maryland? I could get a house for 400k. Back in Illinois where we grew up? 100k, maybe 200k. This sucks. And naturally, since we're mortgaged up to our eyeballs currently, we need this house to sell to get the downpayment. Only selling it at what we paid for it? Unlikely. Have we managed to pay down the principal even a wee bit? No.

So mad. So trapped. All I wanted was a house more functional for 4 kids and me to survive in. And being a little closer to the grandparents would be nice. And, all the things I dreamed about while sitting in their house where the weather is warmer and the outside is right outside instead of down a steep set of stairs that the kids can't be trusted on alone.

I also sometimes feel trapped in this life. I wake up and the reality of having 3 kids and being pregnant with another? Overwhelming. It's not like I can give them back. I'm going to be tired for YEARS. I think about the nice condo downtown that we used to rent, the freedom, the views, the ease of life, walking to the farmer's market and walking to any of a dozen restaurants in the area. Ugh. I know I didn't appreciate it at the time because there were no trees, no grass, no kids laughing in the next room. But sometimes I really do wish I could ditch it all and go back to then. When I could have a full uninterrupted day of peace, reading or doing whatever. Unless the husband wanted attention. Which was usual, so let's say a half day of uninterrupted peace at least. But so little to do! So much me time!

Hard to not wish one's self back there sometimes. I know it wasn't necessarily a happier time, but its almost like now I'd appreciate it more. Kind of like your teen years, or maybe even college years. Oh how we didn't appreciate the freedom, the fun, the closeness, the lack of responsibilities, until it was all over.

So, today the word is trapped. Not happy obviously. But not morbidly depressed. Just bleah. Someone win the lottery dammit. In my family that is. Me in particular. I want a new home!

Day one: a rousing success

Day one has been accomplished, and all went well. Except that I didn't get to sit down but once for 20 min the whole stinking day. But we have established that one kid loves the water, one thinks it's ok but she's going to keep to the shallows and the third is not going to have anything more to do with it after one false landing including water in the face.

I'm exhausted. Nice place if you could find a house without an interstate running past your bedroom window. Definitely worth exploring if there is a better house to rent.

Appearances may be deceiving

Well so far I am totally impressed with the way they took photos to make this place look huge. I mean, the photographer? Should be a professional real estate photographer. Made this place look like a mansion. And it is not quite how I imagined what with the back yard with 2 foot tall grass and down a set of stairs instead of something the kids could just run out to.

Also, the lack of air conditioning? Apparently is a problem. The heat is stifling in the house around 6 pm. What happens around 6 pm you might ask? Um, bedtime for triplets. So open a window you say? Um, apparently River Road, a most unassuming road winding through several small towns and villages between Santa Rosa and the coast is the busiest highway this side of the Mississippi. Especially at bedtime.

Yay. But, thanks to an eventful day full of shots (2, and not as painful because I insisted on some topical anesthetic I'd read about so they were much happier), a great pediatrician check up, visiting grandma's house for 3 seconds, a nap, and then 3 more seconds, and then arriving at a strange place full of sharp brick corners and kitchens with easily reachable household chemicals, we were exhausted. All of us.

They are asleep and I head that way too. We are not miserable, but things are not quite the rosy picture painted in the Russian River Rentals e-brochure. Oh no they are not. Because the housekeeper? Apparently doesn't do floors.

On the road again

This house just isn't working anymore. 800 stairs up to get the kids out of bed, 800 stairs up every time someone needs to be helped back to sleep, 800 stairs up for every nap. 800 stairs down to take a walk to the park, drive to the Dr.'s office, go to the zoo, go to the grandparents house.

When we thought we were only having one kid at a time, this seemed reasonable. And, truth be told, you are not going to find a house in SF without the 800 stairs. But I'm getting old. And I have three kids at once. Early on, I could carry two at a time to reduce my stair running by one trip. Heck, in an emergency I had a laundry basket plan for all three. I often contemplated installing some sort of rope and pulley system though, because when they were taking 3 naps a day that meant running the stairs with them 4 times a day minimum. Too bad I don't have a tight ass to show for it. I guess the sitting on the sofa every other possible second of the day kind of counteracted the stairs.

So our beautiful 1914 house, with custom paint on the inside, a mural to beat all in the nursery and neighbors I've bonded with over the last couple of years? Going to have to be sold. We are going to have to move to the 'burbs. Not only to find a house with fewer stairs but to afford a bigger house with enough bedrooms. A house with an office for my husband so our marriage can survive another decade. A house with a yard and kids playing in the street and schools you don't have to play a lottery system to get into. Well it does sound good in a lot of ways.

But I had intended on living here forever. Everyone but me bought that one. I thought that mural would be painted over maybe when the kids were 9. Maybe. It is the hardest thing to let go of.

That and moving away from my BFF. Sniff.

Smile yourself happy

I've finally bitten the bullet and plunked down a lot of cash to book a house for a 'vacation' with the triplets. I picked a lovely 5 bedroom house on the Russian River, which is only about an hour and a half from here. It's also only 30 min north of the grandparent's house in Petaluma, so I'm not stretching too much. All hell breaks loose and we can come scurrying home with our tail between our legs. Being only 30 from the in-laws also means if we forget things we are easily in reach of it or a walmart at any time. And if they fall and crack their fool heads, we are 15-30 from the nearest big town with a hospital.

Now where the nearest mental ward is I am not sure.

Triplets preparing their lounge chair act

In any case, I am trying to put a positive attitude on for this, since it scares me silly to be 10 days without a nanny to help out. I am contemplating ways to have help come but other than conscripting friends, I'm not sure. But I'm certain I have to be the positive one or it will go to heck for sure. If momma ain't happy....you know? So I'm going to try an experiment. This might shock some of you who know me well, but I'm going to try not to think of everything that could go wrong and I'm going to put a smile on and arrive like we're going to have the best time ever.

Think it'll work, this brain transplant idea? Because I never think of my worst case scenario thinking as a truly bad thing. Just know I'm always prepared for the worst and if the best happens, how great. Is it really worse to think the worst and then truly enjoy when you're wrong or than to think the best will happen and sometimes be disappointed? I don't know. In high school I was voted most pessimistic. So I believed I was. But in recent years I figured out it's not actually true. I am quite the optimist in most situations. What people misunderstand about me is that my sarcasm and dry sense of humor picks out the terrible things, the possible nightmares, the dark stuff, and uses that as fodder. So my jokes are negative, dark or possibly pessimistic. I'm not.

There are a few people in my life who have just not gotten this. They are not my friends ever if for long. If you think I'm just a complainer and griper, why would you want to be my friend? But is it their lack of sense of humor that is the problem or am I sometimes too much to take? Hard to say. Sure it annoys me when someone tells me I'm too negative or to lighten up. But I usually am just shocked. I'm sitting there at a wedding saying I hope the bride doesn't notice that the waiters just screwed up and someone thinks I'm being negative. Um, I'm empathizing with the bride? Or possibly I'm having a little fun making fun of the waiter? Or possibly I'm just making conversation? Or, heck, maybe I'm being a little snarky, but that's not a crime.

But I digress. I am a positive person or I would not be surviving triplets. I am a positive person or my mom would have me in the psych ward right along side her sometimes. I am a positive person because despite my misgivings, in three weeks I am packing up my entire house into a minivan and heading north for a week. Wish me luck.

Funkariffic

So this weekend I got into a pretty good funk about the whole vacation thing. I looked up Disney Cruises, as if I could afford one, and found out that basically you need the kids to be 3 and potty trained, which, with two boys means at least 4. Which, with the proper math skills I can deduce to mean we are not going on a family vacation that I will enjoy for approximately 2 and 1/2 more years.

Kind of depressing. I put out a sad call to my multiples parents in the SF area to see if this was really true. I am craving a change of scenery. Dying for it. And yet, if it's just more work and I have to give up my morning help, then why would I do it? Is it really that refreshing to sit on a different balcony, perhaps staring at waves or a river, after the kids go to bed than staring at my tv at home? And if they sleep badly because they're in a new place? And if I can't keep them from escaping into the woods and so never get to sit down is that worth it?

I don't know. I'm trying to find a solution in some house I could rent on the Russian River or in Tahoe that has a fenced back yard, a different climate (anything different than cold foggy SF might be nice) and perhaps a beach, park or playground nearby or even better, a pool. There must be a way for me to 'get away' and feel ok about it. There must...

On sleep

Speaking of evolutionary principles, what is the point of fighting one's bedtime till all hours when you know perfectly well you will be up at 6 am no matter when you fell asleep? It seems mighty counterintuitive seeing as how doctors have shown that inadequate sleep will affect you negatively in many ways. So why do toddlers fight their parents, sometimes for hours each night, about falling asleep in their beds and then spend the next day all bleary eyed and crabby for all to enjoy?

Of course it's not just the toddlers is it? How many of you adults out there fight your bedtime constantly? I say almost every day 'today I'm going to go to bed early because I feel like crap.' Does it happen? Oh no. Despite the fact that I know that my impatient, tired toddlers will be rattling their cages loudly and screaming starting as early as 6, I watch one more crappy show, read one more magazine, send one more email. I know I feel like my justification these days is that once the kids finally go to sleep I need a couple of hours to decompress but really? I'd feel better in the morning with less decompression and more sleep. And honestly? I didn't go to bed on time before I had kids.

So what is this about human nature? I'm a morning person and I still can't get into bed on time. So I spend my days dragging around trying to find the energy to play with three wildcats and rueing the lack of sleep I got last night, because in addition to my stupidity one or more babies may have had a bad night and awakened me 3 or 4 times for comforting, and I think to myself that there must be a reason we do this to ourselves? Perhaps the saber toothed tiger was on the prowl in early evening and we needed to be up to watch for it?

In contemplation of the noble tantrum

What is the evolutionary principle behind tantrums? Can you imagine, just imagine, cave mamma Ugg with child #1 standing just outside cave mouth #43 on Cave Mouth Street grinding corn or preparing to go out and gather and little cave kid Ugg Jr throws himself to the ground and pounds his tiny fists and kicks his tiny legs and screams like a bear to get what he wants? Do you suppose she rolls her cavelady eyes and hands it to him? Because I don't. I see cave mamma taking her club out and giving him a good whack.

Imagine, again, Mayan momma standing in the hot sun after harvesting corn (oh I'm not an indigenous tribe specialist get off my back) watching Mayan girl baby screaming to be allowed to play with that last ear of corn, because it had become her toy, and not giving it to Mayan momma immediately upon being asked. Do you think she might be tempting the Mayan god to select her for the heart sacrifice? I think I'd tread a bit more carefully if I were that kid.

And imagine, if you will, prairie settler family Miller just put prairie kid Joseph to bed and he throws a tantrum to the point of barfing on his bedcovers. Do you think that in an era of no washing machines and no multiple sheet sets he was allowed to do this time and time again for no apparent reason and not end up sleeping amidst his barf particles? I think not. I think he'd be washing his own sheets pretty soon in the river with bloody knuckles of his own. I think he'd learn pretty stinking fast not to barf in his bed. His mom wouldn't be running with his barfing self out of the nursery to try to stop the inevitable sheet change one stinking time. I don't think so. Heck, he'd be lucky to have a bed. And if he barfed in mom and pop's bed? I think he'd be hoeing a row of crops before he was 2.

I mean how did tantrums achieve anything until the current parental administration where we overindulge such children? In the last, what, 50 years there's been a sea change from children being a necessary production of help mates for the household to children being our entire reason for the sun coming up in the morning and goodness knows you better not wake/upset/scold/deny/deprive them. So I see how it's evolutionarily useful now. It works like a charm to lay your tiny little body down in the middle of a packed grocery store and go to town with tears and snot because you bet your mom is going to scoop your butt up and get you anything to shut you up so she can finish shopping because this is the one stupid chance she gets all week to get groceries and if she can't now you'll all starve.

Well not this mom. That kid and I will either be standing there annoying the rest of you until he's done with his theatrics or we leave and we starve. I know it looks bad to the other judging eyes and I've been them too, but you know once you're the parent that the difference between a tantrum and a true cry is so obvious to you at some point early on in getting to know this kid that you can not allow yourself to indulge the former. Because that only means more in the future. And those judging eyes? They can go have triplets of their own and then judge me. Well, maybe not even then. Because this is my kid, and for some unexplainable reason tantrums are there in the animal brain, even though I'm pretty sure that our ancestor apes used them to better effect and they should have been extinguished as a useful strategy somewhere around the 1300s, BC, and there is NOTHING. I. CAN. DO. ABOUT. IT. So smile sweetly and move on rubberneckers. Nothing to see here.

Holiday shmoliday

Long holiday weekends annoy me. Particularly because here I am exhausted at the end of one and everyone else is all fresh and, well, perhaps hung over. Fine, exhausted for a different reason. All sunburned and overfed and smokey throated from cookouts and sitting by pools and watching fireworks. See, I'm a holiday lover. Before I had kids who, for the first years of their lives, are keeping me from having any. Because what is a holiday if I lose my usual childcare for the day? That seems like NOT a holiday to me.

And I want to laugh about the idiot hooligans who set off firecrackers in my neighborhood half the night but I'm trying to sleep here. Why? Because my molar teething daughter has kept me up for 3 nights straight waking every hour or two to complain about it loudly. Because in the morning I have to get up, dress, feed and clean them and take the to the park singlehandedly. While at the park I have to monitor them on a jungle gym, catch B as he slides down the slide head first, A as she eats sand, C as he finds a step to just sit on and cry for no reason. But I also apparently have to monitor the 8 year old daughter of a dad playing basketball in the nearby courts for some reason?

First of all, this park is divided into two play areas with fences. The one we're in, for very young kids, and the other one for kids her age. Where does she choose to play? Here. How many times to I have to remind her that she has to close the stinking door behind her on the way in and out because I have THREE running toddlers trying to escape at every minute? And why does she have to bring in a cup of water to play in the sand with, leaving two wet sandy spots for my kid to sit in and walk in after she's abandoned them? No, I don't bring a change of clothing to the park with me, why would I? And how bad of a mom am I to have to let my daughter run around with a big wet behind on a 60 degree day?

Dad? Whomever you are? I don't think your wife's idea for you to take your daughter to the park was this exactly. I don't think she was supposed to entertain herself completely, do you see this as father/daughter bonding time? Do you think she'll look back on these days fondly? Oh, remember dad, how you used to take me to the park and abandon me so you could pretend you were still single and play with those loud sweaty men a testosterone laden game of basketball? Right.

So, I leave the Independence weekend a little crabbier than before. Shocking I know, but I think my transition to grouchy old lady may be completing. I'm the one at the window looking out at the neighborhood fireworks (and I'm not talking little tiny fireworks, I'm talking they got the kind that shoot up over their 3 story houses and explode, lighting up the neighborhood and echoing for miles) grumbling and moaning about kids and hooligans and where are the police. I'm the one sending dirty looks to the dad on the b-ball court ignoring his lonely daughter. I'm the one who can't wait until next year when the kids are old enough to take to a fireworks display and maybe spend the day cooking out and baking ourselves in the sun. Wait, what? That doesn't fit. Ok, fine, I have a little holiday spirit left in me. Even if it is all in future fantasy land.

This old house

Oh my poor house. First it has to suffer the indignities of three cats. Peeing in closets, barfing on stairs and under beds, pooping just slightly out of the litter box on the bathroom floor. What a life. This beautiful 1914 sophisticated house with original wood floors and doors and plaster walls. It was not built for a cat loving woman who lets animals be animals and presumes that if a cat is misbehaving it is the human's fault. How horribly unfitting for a grande dame of a house to have furballs ruling the roost.

But then it gets worse. Babies arrive. Not just one cute manageable tug with some misplaced drooling and smelly diapers but three. Three drooling, running, pooping, eating, food throwing, tissue scattering, cat chasing, garbage eating, sticky fingered children. Unmanageable. Except by the rule of gates and bars on the windows and locks and catches screwed into the original wood work on each door. Plaster drilled into and abused for the cause of children not falling down stairs, climbing up stairs, sticking fingers into kitchen appliances, touching breakables, opening windows, cracking open heads or generally not getting into places they are not allowed.

So here I sit in the prison that has been made out of a beautiful home. Gate after gate in door after door and stairwells as well. Latches made for smarter people than I, window gates, doorknob protectors and so on wondering, how the heck am I ever going to sell this house to anyone else with all these holes in it?