A Mom, A Boy, and A Carpenter Ant

A carpenter ant as big as a lobster crawled across my kitchen floor.

"Ack!" I said  "Ack, ack!  Get it!  Kill it! Stomp on it!"  I don't like carpenter ants.  Regular ants, no problem.  I'll sweep them up and brush them out the door with nary a shiver or screech.  But those carpenter ants are so huge they make my palms sweat.

So my big strapping teenager, hearing my cries and instantly not caring, insouciantly looked down at Antzilla, stepped over him and started to walk away.

"Ack!" I reiterated.  "He's coming toward me! Step on him! Why didn't you step on him?"

C. Peevie looked at me like I was over-reacting.  Which I totally was not.  "I don't want to step on him with my new flip flops," he said.  "I don't want ant guts sticking to the bottom of my shoe."

I backed up slowly, but the gerbil-sized monster ant kept coming toward me, the ground shaking each time one of his six feet took a step.  I could feel the malice rolling off his tripartite torso in waves.

"Quick, C. Peevie!" I said urgently, "Before he gets away or goes under something!"

C. Peevie looked around for an appropriate ant-disemboweling weapon.  He opened the cabinet and pulled out a melamine dinner plate.  My eyebrows joined together in confusion. 

"You wouldn't step on him because it's too gross, but you can use a dinner plate to squish him?" I asked.

"Sure," he said, unconcerned.  "I'll wash it off."  He smacked the ant with the plate, and left the carcass quivering on the Pergo.  He then WIPED THE PLATE ON HIS SHIRT and started to put it back into the cabinet.

"You are NOT going to put that plate back in the cabinet!" I said in my most horrified tone, and I wasn't even hyperbolizing.  If that's even a word.

"What?" he said, "I wiped it off first."

"On your DIRTY SHIRT that you've been wearing all day!" I pointed out in a slightly less- than- calm voice.  "And without actually washing the ANT GUTS off it first!"

"What do you want me to do with it?" he asked.

"Either wash it, or put it in the dishwasher," I said logically.  Sheesh.  What do they teach kids these days?  I mean, I am THE WORST housekeeper ever, but even I know that if you use a dinner plate to squish a carpenter ant, you have to wash it before you eat off it again.

C. Peevie shrugged, put the plate on the counter, and started to walk out of the kitchen.  

"You're forgetting something," I said.  "Please don't forget to perform your aftermath clean-up."

He walked over to the insect remains and drew his foot back -- "Wait!  Don't!" I hollered -- and kicked them under the refrigerator.

"Oh, gross," I moaned.  "That is just wrong."  C. Peevie just laughed evilly as he walked through the doorway.

Clearly, I need to trade him in for a new son.

Toothless

My tooth fell out when I was chomping a piece of Red Vines licorice. I was all, chomp chomp, and then something hard was rolling around in my mouth, and then I was like, hey! what's this? and then I tongued it away from the masticated Red Vines and pulled it out, and it was a tooth! Weird. I felt like an Appalachian.

So I called my dentist, Dr. Frank (the one I love because she is very understanding about my complete lack of tolerance for even minor discomfort) and left a message.

"Should I put it under my pillow?" I asked her. "Maybe the tooth fairy will bring me the thousand bucks it's probably going to cost to fix it!"

"Where is it?" she asked, when she called me back.

"Well, that's kind of a weird question," I thought to myself, but out loud I answered, "Upstairs on my dresser."

"No," she said patiently, "where in your mouth did the tooth come from?"

Aha. That made a lot more sense. From my description she was medium confident that the tooth was actually an old crown which could be re-cemented without too much trouble.

"Put the tooth in a zip-lock bag and bring it in," she instructed. "We'll take care of it." I made an appointment for the next day, and obediently put my tooth in my purse.

The next day I got ready to head out, checked my purse one last time to make sure the crown was in there--and suddenly, I couldn't find the damn thing. Gone! My tooth was gone! I checked every pocket of my shiny green purse. Then I checked every pocket one more time. Then I turned the shiny green purse upside down and dumped everything out.

Still no tooth.

OK, ok, ok. Calm down. Think. I put in in my purse, right? I know I did. I checked the lost purse again, but it was still empty.

Aha! I know! When my tooth fell out, M. Peevie asked me, "Mom, can I put your tooth under my pillow tonight, and see if the Tooth Fairy gives me money for it?" I'll bet that little stinker took it out of my purse and put it under her pillow! I raced upstairs and checked her bed. Nothing. I checked under A. Peevie's pillow for good measure. Nothing.

Think. Think. Aha! I remember! I took it out and showed it to C. Peevie when I was in the kitchen! I ran downstairs and rifled through the three-foot pile of crap on the kitchen counter. Nothing! I checked in the office: Nothing. The bathroom: Nothing.

I called the dentist and cancelled my appointment, and then I started looking again. I called Mr. Peevie, who said he saw the zip-lock bag on the bed the night before--so I ran upstairs and started tearing apart the bed. Nothing. Under the bed? Nothing. (Well, nothing, if by "nothing" you mean two-and-a-half pairs of shoes, three socks, lots of used dryer sheets, and a coffee-table-size book of Bruegel prints and commentary in German, published in 1932. But no tooth.)

Frustrated to point of Resorting to Colorful Language, I jammed my hands into my pockets. Lo and behold--there was my tooth! Right in the zip-lock baggie and stuffed down into the linty bottom of my pocket where I had put it THAT VERY MORNING.

I'm an idiot.

So then I called the dentist back, and she still had time to re-attach my crown.

"At least you didn't swallow it," she said.

"What then?" I asked, joking, "I'd have to wait until I pooped it out?"

"Yes," she said--and she WAS NOT JOKING. Apparently this is a not-uncommon occurrence in the disgusting world of dentistry.

But now my tooth is back where she belongs, and all is well again with the world.

Annoying TV Commercials

There are certain TV commercials that make me wonder if the intern that wrote them had a hangover, grew up on Pluto, or was intentionally trying to sabotage his client. Or maybe all three.

1. Charmin' Ultra Strong--I just do not want to think about "the pieces left behind," thank you very much. That's just...nas-tay.

2. Six Flags/Great America. "Six Flags! More Flags, More Fun!" says the loud, annoying, creepy guy in the Harry Caray glasses. I know I'm not the target demographic for these ads, but I am the likely source of funding and transportation--and these ads make me want to run, not walk, in the opposite direction.

3. The Eddie and Jobo United Auto Insurance commercials that air here in Chicago. Who the hell are Eddie and Jobo? I realize that these two knuckleheads have--had--a radio following on B96 (Chicago) for 20 years; but seriously. The non-E&J demographic--and I believe I'm speaking for all five million of us--just doesn't get it. When Eddie (or Jobo) show up on my little blue screen saying, "Eddie and Jobo here!", I just mutter, "Not any more!"--and change the channel.

4. Every single lawyer commercial ever made, or at least those that air in my town.

"Hi, I'm Roni DEUTCH. I don't own a hairbrush, but I will help you fix your taxes!"

"Hi, I'm Peter Francis Geracy. I have the most annoying Chi-keeah-go accent in history, but if you can stand to listen to my nasally blended soft a vowel sounds, I will help you declare bankruptcy! It's the answer to all your problems! Call for my free info tapes NOW!"

5. The Scooter Store TV ads that say, "Call for your pow'r churr today!" What the heck is a churr? Why can't Mr. Scooter say the word "chair"?

6. The new Steak-Umms pitch that frames the frozen alleged steak slices as your ticket to keeping up with the Joneses: "It's time to tell the neighbors you're eating steak again."

Apparently, I'm not the only one (nor the first one) to comment on the stupidity of this totally unpersuasive line of advertising.In his critique of the ad, Moons in Leo recently observed that Steak-Umms may not even count as meat because they're "about as thick as two-ply toilet paper." Heh.

There's probably more, but that's all I can come up with at the moment. But how about it--you got some? I'd love to hear about them.

Tibial Fractures and Monkey Carcasses

C. Peevie's hard cast came off on Tuesday. The X-ray of the tibia in question showed that his body was hard at work generating new bone around the spiral fracture. Time to put the saw to the fiberglass and slice that baby right off--so buzz, buzz, and off it came.

The smell was palpable. It mushroomed into the office atmosphere like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, and the doctor and I both collapsed, unconscious. When we came to, C. Peevie and his mushroom cloud were isolated behind yellow crime scene tape, and men in white suits and gas masks were stuffing the pieces of cast and lumps of cotton padding into Hefty bags marked with the yellow and black universal symbol of Yikes!

C. Peevie was happily scraping layers of cheesy epidermis off, exposing patches of tender, pink skin dotted with manly black hairs. He groaned with the ecstasy of delayed scratching gratification that only the recently de-casted can truly appreciate. Even after the haz-mat team hurled the steaming pile of cast remnants into the incinerator, the smell of decaying monkey carcasses still wafted up from C. Peevie's newly liberated calf.

But we're not done with Broken Leg Drama yet. Now he's wearing a removable velcro knee-high boot. He can place as much weight on his leg as he feels comfortable with, but he's still got to have his crutches with him for the next four weeks. That puts us at December 15 before he's cast- and crutch-free, adding up to a total of three-and-a-half months of limited mobility and limited chore-doing.

C. Peevie has developed an unattractive victimy dependence and sense of entitlement that reaches far beyond his actual medical needs. On cast removal morning, I got him up to get ready to leave with me to take A. Peevie and M. Peevie to school. I was running around, making breakfasts, making lunches, helping kids find missing shoes, reminding them about various books and homework assignments, and doing my best to get the four of us out the door on time.

Meanwhile, C. Peevie was sitting on the couch in his PJs, video game remote control in his hand, hollering, "I need a tissue! I need a tissue!" I ignored him the first few times, but his insistent demands finally broke through my calm and patient exterior; and I started leaking a bit of (justifiable) homicidal rage.

I walked into the living room, smacked the off button on the TV, and squarely confronted Captain IHaveABrokenLegCanYouPleaseWipeMyAss.

"C. Peevie," I said grimly. "Get up off your butt and get your own tissue."

"But there aren't any on this floor," he said, pulling his I Have a Broken Leg card for the 80 jillionth time.

"Then you can walk to the bathroom and use toilet paper like the rest of us do," I said, pointing out the obvious-to-everyone-but-him solution.

"Oh," he said.

I feel like we have regressed about two years in the training of this man-child, who's first sentence was "Me do it!" He has always wanted to do things himself, learn, and take responsibility, and he was growing into an independent, responsible, helpful member of the family. He was making his own oatmeal at age four--and now he has to be reminded to get his own damn Kleenex.

My friend Q said I'm being too hard on him; that I should just let him heal, and let the chores and responsibilities go for now. But she is the parent of one compliant child, and you know what Bill Cosby had to say about that: You're not really a parent until you have more than one child. I figure she doesn't really know jack.

[Note: I searched and googled for a link to the actual Cosby quote, but could only find anecdotal references to it. I know I read it myself, probably in his book Fatherhood.]

Flarp, Luigi and Smelly Cheese

"How will I know what's going on if you don't post?"

This from Mr. Peevie, who actually lives in this household. The rest of you, who live several zip codes away AT LEAST are probably FREAKING OUT by now.

So, in a lame attempt to jump-start my blogging mojo, and in order to get everyone up to speed on the Peevies, life in the Windy City, and Everything Else That Matters--here's what's been going on lately:

1. C. Peevie got his giant cast sliced off and replaced with an adorable, below-the-knee red cast. When I drove him to school that morning, I noticed that the car had an odor of old, smelly CHEESE. It was his leg. Gross.

2. It's three days before Halloween, and my kids don't know what costumes they're going to wear yet. This happens every year. I start trying to get everyone going on costumes in mid-September, we plan to get great deals on Ebay, the kids change their minds, we go shopping at the costume stores, we don't find anything, and here we are--three days to go, and no costumes.

One year A. Peevie employed his vivid imagination and his apparent lack of peer influence, and came up with a homemade costume he cleverly called Box Head With Knife and Gun. He cut a narrow slit in a regular cardboard box and put it on his head; and he held a rubber Bowie knife in one hand and a gun-looking sort of metal thing in the other hand--and that was his costume.

Lately he's been wearing Flarp on his hands and arms for no apparent reason, and I suggested that he could be Blob Boy, with Flarp covering his exposed skin. Of course that suggestion was met with much ridicule, and A. Peevie is back to wanting to be Luigi, his first choice. But of course it's too late to buy the costume on-line, and the stores are out. Anyone have any size 12 overalls, green turtleneck, and a green beret?

M. Peevie has gone from wanting to be a karate girl, to a ninja, to a detective. So now I have to find a Sherlock Holmes hat, brown pants, a trench coat, and a "real magnifying glass."

3. Tonight I saw my first preview for Season 8 of 24, that train wreck of a TV show that I love nonetheless, with its hot mess of a main character. I will be posting my predictions soon for S8, but just to titillate your TV taste-buds, here's the first one: Spawn (Kim) will be in DANGER sometime during the season.

And here's a bonus prediction: Spawn of Spawn (SoS)--Jack's granddaughter--(I KNOW!) will be in DANGER sometime during S8 also.

4. Someone stole one of our pumpkins right off our front steps last week. I mean, come ON. We live in one of the most densely-cop-populated (ooh, ouch--that almost came out wrong!) neighborhoods in the city of Chicago, and my PUMPKIN is not even safe on my stoop? SERIOUSLY? People are just rude.

27 Socks and a Headless Stag Beetle

Today, under A. Peevie's bed, I found:

27 socks
8 shirts
4 pairs of pants
19 stuffed animals, including 4 manatees, assorted sizes
1 full box of colored pencils
3 army guys
7 pens and pencils
7 drawings
2 plastic cups
3 candy wrappers
1 spoon
small change
a colored easter egg with the shell mostly intact except for a ragged-edged, dime-sized hole through which you can see the petrified yolk.

It's kind of like what I found IN another kid's bed not too long ago.

In related news, when I took A. Peevie to see HeartDoc last week, they had a conversation that went like this:

A. Peevie: Wanna see what I have in my pocket?

HeartDoc: Sure.

AP: (shoving his hand deep into his sweatpants pocket and trying to extricate something delicately) Just a minute...just a minute...Here!

HD: (Looking at a decapitated stag beetle) Wow! Cool!

AP: It's a stag beetle.

HD's nurse: Ack! Get it away from me!

HD: Where is its head?

AP: Oh, hold on a sec. (Shoves his hand into his pants pocket again.) Here it is!

HD's nurse: Ack! Ack!

HD: Wow, look at those horns. Where'dja get it?

AP: On the playground during recess. My friend BiF found three of them, and he gave me one.

HD: Nice friend.

The deceased, headless stag beetle currently resides in our living room, in a place of honor on the speaker. Until the next time I remember it's there, and THROW IT OUT.

Ack.

Sleeping With the Enemy and Other Fun Vacation Tales

Dateline: South Haven. I went to sleep on my side, with my arm lying near the edge of the bed. About a half-hour after I dozed off, I felt a tiny but definitely discernible pinch on the inside of my arm, just above my wrist. I brushed my arm off and turned on the light.

There was a PINCHBUG, otherwise known as an EARWIG, strolling across the hardwood floor where I had flicked it after it BIT ME while I was SLEEPING in my BED! I am not even kidding. I am still so grossed out and horrified that I must go and pour myself a glass of wine right this minute.

...

OK, I'm back. When I spotted that bugger, I flung the covers off and leaped out of bed, straight toward the ceiling.

"THAT IS NOT RIGHT!" I almost hollered, waking up poor Mr. Peevie who groggily said, "Whu-wha?"

I grabbed Mr. Peevie's sandal and started whacking at the earwig, who was scuttling, earwig-like, across the floor. It took me three or four whaps before I was confident that he was not going to be creating any additional post-midnight insect drama.

This unsettling event was the low-light of my week-long beach-and-pool slice of vacation heaven last month.

Remember last year, when I wrote a poem called 80 Steps, about the long, arduous climb that faced us every time we left the beach?

Well, this year the steps were just as arduous. Maybe more arduous.

But it's totally worth it. One morning my SIL and I stood at the top of the steps, looking out over the lake. It was like glass: smooth, waveless, twinkling in the sun. It took my breath away.

The kids were already down on the beach, starting to build sand castles and chasing minnows in the shallow water. When we joined them, we relaxed on beach chairs, sipped beverages, and I started on one of the four books I tackled during my vacation reading frenzy.

"Mom!" our little cousin hollered, "When are the really big waves coming?!" He was ready for some wild wave action. As the day went on, the breeze started to pick up, and the lake started producing waves, which made R-Cuz and the rest of the kids happy.

Jump to the last day of vacation. We were back at the beach, and the lake waves were like Jersey-Shore-wannabe-waves, too rough to let the smaller kids go out too far by themselves. So we went out there with them, with the kids hanging on to inner tubes, letting the waves carry us effortlessly up and drop us down again. We laughed, we floated, we splashed, we bobbed. Life was perfect.

"Mommy," M. Peevie said, "This is the best last day in the history of last days."

Misogynistic Music

I was listening to a popular radio station in Chicago last week, and the female DJ played a song that was so sexually explicit, misogynistic, and profane that I almost threw up my Target cafe nachos. I reached over to punch the knob to change the station after the first line of lyrics, and instead decided I would give the song a chance.

The whole thing was disgusting, gross, inappropriate, and offensive. I mentioned it to Mr. Peevie later, and he said, "Welcome to the world of popular contemporary music." Seriously? The same world that brings us Lucky and Delilah and Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf?

And what is a female DJ doing playing shit that disses her own stupid self? Don't these people use their brains? Does she really want people singing along with a song that glorifies getting turned on by sexual assault?

I talked to C. Peevie about the station and the song, and told him in no uncertain terms that I did not want him listening to that station or songs like that.

"You wouldn't want someone saying things like that about your sister or your mother," I said, "so you don't want to people to gain from you listening to their music." He agreed; or at least, he claimed to agree. I take him at his word, because he's always been straight with me.

Meanwhile, here are my music and parenting questions for you: Do you pay attention to lyrics? Do you boycott stations that play music that you find offensive, or do you figure, well, it's just one song? How do you monitor the music your kids listen to: intensively, moderately, minimally, or not at all?

Ten Things I Just Don't Understand

10. A trillion of anything.

9. How a person can justify taking a bonus of any amount, let alone a million dollars, when they've run a company into the ground instead of making it better.

8. Why small business owners think it's a good idea to go on camera in their own TV ads. Don't their production companies advise them against this? Lawyers and car dealers are the worst offenders. People--it just doesn't work. Your ads are obnoxious and annoying! Hire professional actors!

7. Why Adam Sandler is so popular.

6. Why Arrested Development was cancelled.

5. Why people make a big deal out of graduation...from preschool. Or kindergarten. Or elementary school. Or 8th grade. Isn't that setting the bar pretty low, to act like it's a major accomplishment? Stop it, people! Just say no to preschoolers wearing caps and gowns.

4. How anyone can resist bacon; and on a related note: how can bacon be so delicious and also, so useful. I believe the more bacon you eat, the lower your chances of getting swine flu. (Props to J.Ro.)

3. The Twitter craze. Can you explain it to me?

2. How an airplane that weighs 187,000 pounds can fly.

1. And the number one thing I just don't understand: How all the actions of Evil-Good-Evil-Again Tony make any sense at all if he was really Evil Tony all along. This point is moot, of course, now that we know that Evil-Good-Evil-Good Tony was out to avenge Michelle's death throughout the course of Day Seven. I guess he was just cackling insane, like Rush Limbaugh.

Good News, Bad News

Good news! I'm working on five different projects this week.

Well, actually, two of them are somewhat inactive, but technically still in progress. The other three are all on tight deadlines.

I am so very grateful to be working. Me--the Player! Grateful to be working. Must be a sign of the apocalypse.

Bad news! I had this tender red lump on my neck which I thought was probably a baby alien, a la Sigourney Weaver. The surgeon took one look at it and disagreed with my diagnosis (so ridiculously arrogant, these surgeons).

"It's an infected cebaceous cyst," he said confidently. "It needs to come out now."

[I want you to know that on purpose I did not make the words "infected cebaceous cyst" a hot link because the pictures are kind of gross. I'm not a little proud of myself for having that kind of self-control and respect for my readers TMI boundaries. Feel free to look it up on your own if you want...Bucky.]

Um, now? I have my busiest work week in eight months, and you're telling me I must have surgery?

"Yes, now," he reiterated. "I'll squeeze you into my schedule tomorrow, first thing in the morning. You don't want to mess around with that thing."

"That thing"? Here I was fondly thinking up names for it, and imagining it's four tiny arms and six tiny eyes--and he rudely calls it a "thing." Surgeons--they're so artless and businesslike.

Good news! I had the surgery yesterday (well, it's late, so technically it was the day before yesterday) and was back in the Green Room saddle by 10:30 a.m. The surgery took 15 minutes, I was told--all I remember is the anesthesiologist, Dr. Mayer, telling me he'd be giving me something to help me relax, and then I felt all happy, and I said, "Aaahhhh, I like that." Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the recovery room, wanting to propose to Dr. Mayer.

I did end up crashing for a three-hour nap shortly thereafter because the general anesthesia and the extremely short night of sleep the night before wiped every last ounce of energy and alertness right out of me--but now I'm back to my perky and cheerful self.

Wait. Perky and cheerful? They must have performed a personality transplant while they were at it.

OK, this is meandering and completely unprofessional, as blog posts go. Chalk it up to the pain meds. Lovely, lovely pain meds.

I'll be back tomorrow to talk about National Poetry Month. You can get prepared by pulling a copy of The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson off your bookshelf and reading a couple of poems to yourself. Out loud, of course.

Special Ingredient

I was starting to cook dinner for my family plus three guests. On the menu: corn and wild rice chowder with smoked sausage. I've written about the corny, smokey goodness of that soup before, but this time, I added a special new ingredient: my fingertip!

I started chopping the first ingredient of the first course, the sausage. I'm generally very careful with knives, and I teach my children proper knife-handling techniques in the kitchen because I want to avoid trips to the emergency room. I was in a teensy bit of a hurry because I had gotten a late start on the soup. I was hurrying--and yet, oddly, the slicing of my finger seemed to happen in slow motion.

I could see the knife approaching my finger-tip, and I almost had time to scream at my finger to get out of the way before the skin fileted. A bright red stripe opened up above the first joint on my left pointer, and then blood started flowing in real time.

"Aaaahhhh!" I hollered, because it rilly, rilly hurt. I quickly made a field bandage from a paper towel, and applied pressure, while walking in circles and grunting. Meanwhile, C. Peevie arrived on the scene.

"Mom," he said, all sweet and worried, "Are you OK? What happened? What did you do to your face?" My face? I was holding a bloody bandage around my finger, and he was asking about my face?

Apparently, somehow I had smeared some sooty black gunk from I-don't-even-know-where on my face, along with a gory swath of blood. I looked like an extra from the set of The Towering Inferno. (Ooo--remember that movie?! I LOVED that movie! And talk about a towering cast! "Don't you think you're suffering from an edifice complex?" Heh.)

Anyway, I gave C. Peevie the short version, and he went running for Mr. Peevie, who immediately started panicking. Not because of my mortal wound, mind you, or because my finger was hemorrhaging, but because we had people coming over and WHO WAS GOING TO COOK NOW?

Mr. Peevie leapt into action, madly typing away on the computer.

"Um, sweetie?" I said, checking my wound, which immediately started gushing again. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to find the Amishes phone number," he said. "I need to call them and tell them not to come over." It was 4 p.m., and the Amishes were set to arrive in about an hour and a half. He dialed their number, but got no answer. (Even though they're practically Amish, they do have a phone--but apparently they're still using dial-up internet access.) The third guest did not have a listed phone number.

Not being able to reach the dinner guests pushed Mr. Peevie's anxiety into overdrive. "What are we going to do?" he moaned, "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know, Mr. P," I said, "But do you think maybe I should go to the ER?"

He paused and considered. "I don't know. But what am I going to do about dinner? People are going to be here in an hour and half, and nothing will be ready!" He started hyperventilating. "You'll go to the ER, and you won't be back until 10:00!"

I think his main concern, besides the food, was how to make small talk with dinner guests without me in the room to monopolize the conversation. But my feeling is, what good is a liberal arts education if you can't even carry on casual dinner conversation?

Meanwhile, C. Peevie was hovering around me while I continued to apply pressure to my stub. I checked it a couple of times, and both times it grinned a cheerful red grin at me before the blood started gushing like that SNL skit where Julia Child slices her artery during a cooking show.

The irony of Mr. Peevie's misplaced concern was not lost on C. Peevie. "I don't know why Daddy is the one who's all panicky when you're the one who's injured!" he said loudly, his arm around my shoulder.

In the end, I drove myself to the ER at Lutheran General Hospital, driving past at least two other closer hospitals on the way. I'm giving them a plug because even though there were 50 people in the waiting room, and ten more people came in the door behind me, I was in and out of there in less than an hour.

Here's what my finger looked like while Nurse Practitioner Pat was putting three stitches in.

When I arrived home with my finger stitched and splinted, soup was bubbling fragrantly on the stove, the corn casserole was hot out of the oven, and best of all, there was a glass of wine waiting for me. There was no anxiety or distress in the air. Somehow, Mr. Peevie had pulled himself together, because, he told me later, I had picked out recipes "that a monkey could follow."

Mr. Peevie might lack all sense of proportion in the anxiety-response department, but he always comes through in the end.

Butterfly Poop and Other Inquiries

Conversations with my kids cover an amazing variety of topics.

When I was getting into the car one morning last week, some water from the tree above my head dripped down on me, and M. Peevie said happily, "Mommy, a bird pooped on you!"

I wiped my hair and looked at my hand--but it was only water. Nevertheless, it gave me the opportunity to tell a story about a hapless mommy getting bird-shat-upon.

M. Peevie was a babe-in-arms, and I had taken her with me to the zoo on a field trip with C. Peevie's kindergarten class. We were walking through the tropical bird sanctuary, where colorful birds fly free above your head and monkeys jabber in the trees. I was holding M. Peevie in my arms and just as I looked up, a really rude bird took a dump right onto my face.

I was wearing glasses instead of contacts, and the glasses were completely covered in white, gluey birdshit. I was holding M. Peevie, and I couldn't see a thing. It was oh, so amusing. I handed M. Peevie off to another kindergarten mom so I could hose down my face and wipe off my glasses. M.P. was oblivious back then--but today, she enjoyed the story.

When I was telling her about the bird sanctuary where the birds fly free, she said, "Oh! Like the butterfly garden!" which Brookfield Zoo opens during the warm months. Yes, I told her, like that, only the birds don't fly down and light on your hand if you hold still, like the butterflies do.

"I wonder if butterflies poop," M. Peevie segued. "And what does butterfly poop look like? I wonder if it smells bad." We enjoyed an entire car ride's worth of speculation about butterfly poop.

Another excellent conversational moment took place just this morning. A. Peevie had crawled into bed in between Mr. Peevie and me. He was cuddling close to his daddy, cheek-to-cheek, enjoying some tender daddy-cuddling. He lifted up his head from Mr. Peevie's shoulder and looked with gentle love and trust at the man who donated his DNA to make this moment possible.

A. Peevie looked into his daddy's eyes, smiled his sweet, curvy smile, and said, "Dad, is there such a thing as an eyebrow barbershop?" Not that he was suggesting anything, of course.

And finally, sometimes our sweet short-people interactions take a turn to the dark side. I went in to give M. Peevie her first wake-up call. I'm like a snooze alarm: I shake her gently, and pat her round bottom until she grunts or otherwise sleepily acknowledges my existence. She inevitably asks for five more minutes, which I generously grant.

But this morning, I peeked into a little gap in the covers and whispered baby-girl's name. Out came a chubby, waggling finger, inch-worming its way toward my face. I guided it to my nose, pressed it, and said, "Beep!" The finger waggled some more, so this time, being a friendly and playful mommy, I guided it into my mouth and gave it a gentle nip with my teeth.

M. Peevie threw off her covers and sat up in bed, screaming with gigglicious laughter. "Mommy!" she said with huge delight, "I just poked my finger up my butt!"

I was not amused, but Mr. Peevie doubled over laughing while I scraped a layer of tastebuds off my tongue with a grill brush.

Insect Revenge

Remember last summer when we were having the intractable problem with the fruit flies?

Well. The insect world has apparently decided that it is time to exact revenge for the senseless slaughter of those tiny innocents. They sent a couple of battalions of carpenter ants to invade my kitchen, and I just about got eaten alive.

I walked out to the kitchen to see about getting some birthday lunch. I was considering a plate of leftover burgers and brats, when suddenly an ant as big as a hamster sauntered across the kitchen counter right in front of me. I am not normally one to take the Lord's name in vain, but I screamed, "OHMYGOD!" and knocked it on the floor and stomped on it with my faux-croc.

Then I saw two more big-ass ants advancing on me across the Pergo. "OHMYGOD!" I screeched again, and stomped them dead. As soon as I stomped, I saw more steroidal ants headed my way from the screen door, and as my gaze went up from the floor to the top of the screen door, the view started to look like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Thousands of ants swarmed around the inside of the screen.

"OMIGOD, OMIGOD, OMIGOD!!" I said, calling on the Lord to take away this plague. I slammed the back door shut, trapping the ants between the screen door and the main door, that possibly was not strong enough to hold back the pullulating legion. I raced to the front door, ran around the house to the deck, and pulled open the screen door. There were so many winged creatures that lifted off the screen that the sky turned black for a minute. I felt like Pharoah arguing with Moses about Letting His People Go.

I ducked away from the swarm and ran back around the house. Back in the kitchen, I started to notice that ants had broken away from the herd before I slammed the door. They were crawling across the walls and floor, and I attacked them with the fly swatter. Almost all of them had wings, but none were flying, and they made slow-moving targets.

Eventually I had a pile of about 20 ant carcasses; and eventually, my heart stopped pounding at NASCAR speed.

Now comes the hard part: finding out where the nest is, destroying it, and fixing the problem that attracted the ants in the first place.

I love being a homeowner.

(Top photo credit: PCS Gulf Islands. If you're reading this from the southern Gulf islands, and you have a pest problem, give them a call.)