fetus-on-toddler violence

so dramaqueen and trogdor (which is what i will be calling this fetus until sometime after he's born, when i can give him a real fake name based on his personality... not that this kid hasn't already given us a pretty good idea of what his personality is) had their first real fistfight today (that's your cue... all together now: "AWWWWWWWW!")

i am terrified to report that trogdor won, despite the fact that he is blind and outweighed by a factor of about 25.

dramaqueen climbed up into my lap for a hug, and plastered himself across my belly to compensate for the fact that i don't really have a lap to speak of these days. trogdor thumped at him. dramaqueen looked confused and squirmed away. trogdor followed him and kept bopping at him. dramaqueen, looking rather confused, sat back on his knees to see what the hell was going on. when he saw the fists and feet popping out of my belly, he pushed back at them. this turned into a game of "whack-a-fetus." just as dramaqueen decided this was pretty damned funny, trogdor apparently decided it was definitely *not* funny, and a kick that felt like it was on the verge of turning into a scene from Alien sent dramaqueen from his precarious perch on my lap to flat on his ass on the floor.

yep.

da wocks an da wadder!

an da boats!

so, being avid fly-fishers, we've been trying to bring the boys up right and teach them to love fly-fishing. baby-steps... we start with traditional fishing, since it's pretty tought to get toddlers to carefully arc a fly-line over the water and make a nice presentation for a fish. actually, even with a traditional spinner rod-and-reel, it's pretty tough to get a toddler to cast toward the water, hang on to the rod, and not get distracted. actually, we kinda gave up on even bring rods with us after the last couple of outings. so our "fishing trips" are actually trips to see "the rocks and the water." and by "see," i mean "throw the rocks in the water, thus killing any hope of anyone catching a fish." but hey. breakin em in slow. it'll work eventually.

so positiverolemodel's dad, grandpamoose, had a couple of dinghies (dinghys?) that he brought with him, and we floated the boys around on the water. and nobody fell in! i was expecting them to be scared, but they had a great time. evilgremlin was hesitant to step into one until we ran through some calculations of how many butts it would take to sink one of those boats, but once he was satisfied by the math, he hopped in, too. and now the pictures will tell the rest of the story...

i did not get my ass kicked!

so. last monday, i left the twits at home napping with positiverolemodel, and went to pick evilgremlin up from school. as i'm getting out of the van to walk to the front door of the school to wait for the boy, i notice that a car about 10 feet away from mine is not only blaring crappy music out of crappy speakers, it's blocking the only exit to the parking lot. annoying. there are two women in the front seat, a couple of two-year-olds in the back.

so i get the boy, return to the van. as he's hopping into the van, i notice one of the women, the driver, has gotten out of the car and is leaning into one of the back windows, yelling "SHET YO MUTHAFUCKIN MOUTH!" damn. okay. maybe she's having a really bad day; who am i to judge? but she doesn't look like she's frazzled and at the end of her rope; she looks and sounds completely bored. the volume of her voice seems to be completely voluntary - the hallmark of a trailer park diva. she's so impressed by her own attitude that she says everything as loud as she can, because she's sure you'll be impressed with her, too!

apparently, she's not done lighting into the 2-year-old, who as far as i can tell hasn't moved or made a peep, and is blinking at her owlishly with a look of resignation. "STUPID LITTLE UGLY-ASS BOY! PIECE OF SHIT!" okay. and my ability to be non-judgemental ended right there. she's still not the least bit upset; this just seems to be business as usual for her. i guess when stupid gets bored, belittling a toddler in the ugliest way you can manage is a good way to pass the time. the woman in the passenger seat looks as bored as her friend.

i realize that i'm giving this woman a pretty good "what the hell is wrong with you?" look just as she looks over and makes eye contact with me. being a trailer park diva, she can't let that go; any affront to her pride, real or imagined, must be met head-on! her honor is at stake!

just as EG was shutting the van door behind himself, she looks at me, her eyes narrow, one hand goes to her hip, and she leans toward me and asks, "You got somethin to say?"

apparently, i did, because my mouth opened, and what came out was, "i think that boy's just fine; the only ugly-ass thing i see here is your mouth." yep. i said that out loud.

this is the scene in the movie where the needle scratched across the record! as i'm thinking ooooooh, yep, i really did say that out loud, didn't i?, she takes a step toward me, both hands on her hips, head wagging like it's on a spring, and her equally large friend gets out of the car and takes the same stance. "WHAT did you just say to me?"

apparently, there was no point in trying to lie now, because what i said next was "i'm pretty sure i just told you to shut your ugly-ass mouth!" yep. out loud and everything. and with that, i was pretty sure that my stupid pregnant ass was going to get kicked ... on the grade school playground. ooooooooh, not good.

however, it seems that, if you're five foot one, skinny, and massively pregnant, and yet you're completely comfortable lipping off to two huge angry trailer park divas, there's a reasonable chance that you have a firearm hidden somewhere on your person, because these two, after looking at me for a long moment, just sucked their teeth, said "whatEVA!" and drove off, squealing their tires and cranking their music even louder.

by all rights, i should have gotten my ass kicked. i had it coming. but as i've said before, god loves happy retards, and sometimes he tosses a get-out-of-jail-free card your way!

i told nodamnsense about it on the phone later, and after a long moment of uncomfortable silence, he finally said, "tartlette, will you PLEASE just buy yourself a pepper-spray for your keychain?" not a bad idea, except that i think that's kind like having a firearm in the house; it's probably 30 times more likely to be used against a member of your household than against an attacker. and the last thing i need is my future navy seals running training drills with each other and learning how to fight through a cloud of pepper spray. i mean, think about it... once they outweigh me (you know, by age 11 or so,) i'm going to need some means of keeping their butts in line; it would hardly be prudent to allow them to rob that avenue of discipline of its effectiveness. can't you see it now? "GO AHEAD AND SPRAY SOME MORE, MOM! ONLY MAKES ME MEANER!" yep.

why settle for four penises in your house...

when you could have five? yep, it's a boy. little turd. after checking out the skull, kidneys, heart, etc, the sonographer finally moved down low and asked, "do you want to know what you're having?" looking at the screen, i saw a smooth expanse of skin with a cleft. apparently, positiverolemodel saw it the same way i did, because he said, "it's a girl, right?" the sonographer said, "uuuh, see that there? that's umbilical cord.... and so's that... and that isn't." ah. so we were just checking out our son's chode. a bit forward of that, the jumbly bits were clearly visible. i shall remain hopelessly outnumbered. oh well.

i told evilgremlin when i picked him up from school.

me: so, i went to the doctor today, and they took some more pictures of the baby, and guess what they saw?

EG: what?

me: it's a boy!

EG: WHAT? AWWWWWW MAN! when are we going to have a sister?!?!?

me: uh, never.

EG: WHAT? ARE YOU CRAZY?

me: uh, no.

EG: but we don't HAVE a sister yet! you can't stop now!

possible replies that occured to me at that point: "watch me, dude." or, "your uncle nodamnsense seems to think that's impossible, since my eggs are probably the only ones on earth that all carry Y chromosomes." or, "start saving your money now, and in a few years you can buy a chinese or guatamalan sister."

the twits' reactions were a little less volatile, probably because they not only barely know the difference between boys and girls, but also because they strongly suspect something has broken inside my head every time i start talking about a baby and pointing to my belly. the closest either of them came to commenting on the situation was when spazmonkey popped his head up over the exam table and looked at the blue gel the sonographer had spread on my belly.

SM: WHASSISSAT?

me: lotion.

SM: DAT'S NOT WOTION. DAT'S EEEEEEVIL WOTION.

PRM: dude, evil lotion would be red. that lotion's blue.

SM: OKAY! EEEEWWWWWW! GEDDITOFF! *smacka* *smacka*

me: don't hit the baby.

SM: I NOT HITTIN, I TICKLE! *smacka* *smacka* holds up hand covered in the bule gel he was trying to smack off my belly and looks at it in horror EEEWWWWWW! wipes it off on his shirt and hops back down to the floor to play cars with dramaqueen.

anyway. my friends all find this hilarious (mostly because almost all of them have penises of their own, and know damn well how funny those things are.) my girlfriend mindy did manage to express some sympathy as she laughed.

so... plan QQ: all the boys can share one room. i get the extra bedroom. i will call it my "office." i will paint it vagina pink, and put a sign on the door that says "no boys allowed."

so the twits have perfected the fine art of going diaperless...

for those of you who would like to fill your toilet twit-style, here's the protocol:

1. loudly announce your intent with either "pee-in-da-potty!" or "poop-a-potty!"

(variation of #1, if your name is, say, spazmonkey: just crap your pants, walk up to the head of the household, and smack at the wad of crap dangling in your underoos while yelling "EEEEWWWWW YUUUUCCK!" then, when the head of the household wipes your ass for you, beat her to the punch by delivering the lecture yourself: "I SHOULDA POOP INNA POTTY! DAT'S YUCK! NO POOP INNA PANTS! NO MORE DIAPERS GOTTA POOP A POTTY NO PANTS!")

2. stand in the place where you live (now face west,) and drop your pants and underoos to your ankles.

3. waddle up the stairs to the potty.

4. locate the "too small for even the smallest ass to plunge into the potty" toilet seat insert, and place it backwards on the seat so a good gap is left on the side for splashes.

5. hop up onto the footstool, sit on the throne, and make your deposit while singing your favorite song at the top of your lungs.

6. stand up, grab a handful of toilet paper, and do nothing with it before tossing it into the toilet.

7. flush.

8. do something with your pants and underwear.

(there are several acceptable variations to step 8. you can simply leave them both on the floor and walk off with your ass hanging out from under your shirt. it's best to avoid cane-bottom chairs if you choose this option. or, you could pull them back up - this is generally not the preferred option, unless you pull the underwear back up so carelessly that it's rolled into a sort of hooker-g-string about midway up your butt, preventing you from pulling your pants all the way up and exposing the top 1/3 of your crack. in one particularly innovative case, dramaqueen came home from school with no underwear at all and his pants on backwards, leading me to think that he may have flushed his underoos. not that i'm asking his teacher, because i don't want to know.)

time for me to acquire a new skill...

so. i just got lego star wars ii for xbox - totally awesome game, especially since you start out as princess leia. in case you didn't know, princess leia's pimp hand is strong: she can bitch-smack a lego storm trooper to pieces. literally!

so the kids have been totally entertained by watching me play it. they also own a few lego star wars figurines: yoda, chewbacca, darth vader, and obi-wan. it didn't take long for my good little consumers to surmise that all the other cool characters from the game - leia, boba fett, c3p0, etc - probably also exist in purchasable form. so they've been asking for them. i'd be happy to buy them! star wars: good. legos: good. totally awesome toys!

here's the problem:

THEY'RE ALL AVAILABLE ON EBAY FOR THE LOW PRICE OF MY LEFT KIDNEY.

i fully understand how cool these things are. i'd be willing to drop a few dollars for them. but add in the price of shipping, and any of the cool ones can not be had for UNDER $10 apiece. wtf? it's a tiny chunk of plastic! and the really cool ones are even more - kit fisto? $50. no shit.

many of them are "custom" lego minifigs. "custom" means "some guy with some paints did a pretty good job of making a $1 generic lego dude it look like a factory-painted jedi." i think this weekend may include a trip to the hobby store for some paints and blank lego dudes. and beer!

foods that i crave... about once per president or so...

1. spam

fried spam sandwich on toasted bread with tomato and lettuce. don't even pretend you don't want one.

2. vienna sausages

3. taco bell pintos and cheese

beans, cheese, and a little spicy tomato product... pretty good stuff - if you make it at home. but somehow taco bell managed to do something to it that puts it in the same category as spam.

4. celery with peanut butter

so wrong, yet you got it fed to you early enough that it became part of the "warm fuzzy childhood memories" package. peanut butter: meant for fruit. and some thai dishes. not vegetables. ever. okay... maybe once or twice per decade.

and i bet y'all can think of a dozen more foods that should be on this list... and they're not here, probably because it's stuff i eat a lot more often than every few years. like mac and reconstituted powdered cheez-food product... ramen noodles... fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches... fuck yes. speaking of the elvis special, it's lunchtime, bitches!

i realized something yesterday...

(what follows is a literary technique known as "fucking with the timeline." see, if you write the exciting ending first, it gets people hooked so that they actually sit through the confusing and/or boring beginning.)

so, my plans have gotten a little fucked with lately. 5 months ago, i weighed 110 lbs, i bought a bikini, i had a few beers with my friends several nights a week, and i was looking forward to my youngest kids going to school so i could get back to writing - something i haven't done a heck of a lot of since the twins were born - possibly even in my own office, if we could manage a 4-bedroom house when we move next summer.

then i got knocked up. there will be no office, no free time, and no bikini. no beer either, and on top of that, all of my best friends just moved away. my plans could not be more trashed if i came home to find my husband in bed with two strippers (which is really more along the lines of incipient hot foursome than major marital upheaval, anyway.) and life is good. i mean REALLY good. not even in the shock of learning of the existence of a baby i was trying pretty hard not to have was i anything other than happy. as i was thinking about it yesterday, i realized that whether or not your plans work out has absolutely nothing to do with how happy you are. ever. at all.

i know people who have had most of their major plans not work out, who have not gotten most of the big things they wanted to achieve, and they are happy people. my sister got denied about every major academic path she wanted to take - the study abroad program, the grad school. she once worked as a maid in a scary roadside motel for a summer because she had gotten so jerked around by school that by the time they told her they weren't letting her into the academic path she wanted, after all, all the good jobs were taken. i mean, she didn't just not get what she wanted, she got the rug actively pulled out from under her feet multiple times on some really big things... and guess what - none of it made her unhappy. she eventually carved an extremely satisfying path for herself through what life handed her. no dwelling on what might have been, no bitching about things that couldn't be changed.

i know some people who get everything they want and then some handed to them on a silver platter - the perfect child exactly when they wanted him, the career that magically stays on track no matter how hard they try to fuck it up, the greatest spouse in the world, a beautiful place to live with opportunities for fun at every turn - who can't seem to help but bitch and moan about it all every minute of the day. what's great isn't good enough, what's happening isn't happening fast enough (nevermind the fact that actually doing something instead of wasting time bitching might speed things up,) what's fun they don't make time for, and most importantly, it's all SOMEBODY ELSE'S FAULT. dwelling on what might have been and on how other people seem to have the gall to be happy near them is a major pastime.

so. nodamnsense's mom once said that you have to *choose* happiness. wiser words were never spoken. so i was sitting out at a sidewalk cafe table at the new starbucks in campustown, having just dropped evilgremlin off at first grade, and the twits at their very first day of morning preschool. it was a gorgeous day, the pumpkin cream cheese muffin totally rocked, and i was having a great time doing some quality work on my long-neglected novel. it occured to me that my plans for the next 5 years had just evaporated completely. see, i was going to work about 6-10 hours a week on my manuscript over the summer, get it off to publishers at the end of the summer, then get back to work on my second novel in the fall, upping my writing time to 12+ hours a week once all three of my kids were in school. then when we moved, i'd have my own office, and in two more years, my youngest would be in all day school, and i'd be back to writing pretty much full time at the respectably young age of 32.

instead, i spent this summer taking long naps through the first trimester, even as the twits gave up their naps. i worked all of 2 hours a week on my manuscript, if that. the twits are in preschool, mwf mornings, giving me a total of 9 hours a week...temporarily. the first manuscript is still in need of an overhaul, the clock is ticking, and by the end of january, it's back to sleepless nights, diaper changes, and more puke than i will ever be able to scrub off the walls. it's going to be 6 years from now when my youngest goes to school full-time, putting off my hopeful career another 4+ years.

and it's good. i couldn't be happier. my plans working out couldn't make me happier. that doesn't work for anybody. if you've made a habit of moping and blaming, getting your dream job isn't going to make your life better. getting that baby you've been trying to have for years isn't going to make you happy. i've seen people get all that and more and continue to be the same miserable sacks of crap they've always been. take the axiom "money can't buy happiness," and widen the scope to an epic scale. NOTHING can get happiness for you. not money, not a baby, not a location, not a job, not fame, not a successful personality surgery on your spouse, nothing. either you find it in yourself or you'll never have it. when i assess the people i know, i see that how well things have worked out for them has aboslutely no correlation with how happy they are.

so. here's my plan B. actually, at this point, it's plan QQ or so (i'm trying to think of a plan i had that worked out for me, and i'm kind of drawing a blank here.) i have 5 months of MWF mornings before the new baby arrives. since the twits' preschool is only about 5 minutes from our house, i can squeeze a full 2:45 of manuscript work out of each of those three mornings - in that time, i don't clean, i don't shower, i don't answer the phone, i don't screw around, i just write. and that's more than enough to get this last major editing overhaul done. and THAT sets me up perfectly for writing a cover letter every couple of months or so to send it off, one at a time, to the twenty or so mid-level fantasy publishers out there. getting a rejection is an opportunity to send it to the next publisher (and also to get stinking drunk!) my second novel will continue to stay stuck at about 60 pages of first-draft material for a few more years. what i had in mind? nope. but it works. for all the joking i do about how many street drugs i'll have to turn to when i have 4 kids, about how by the time i'm skinny again i'll be too old to care, about how i'll never have my own office... it's all crap. i didn't plan it, it just kinda came out of nowhere and took me by surprise (okay, yes, i do know how that happens, thank you; you know what i mean) i would rather have this beautiful little baby than anything else i might (or might not!) have to do without. every time i feel it move, or a free baby cereal sample shows up in the mail, i can't help but smile. at the end of the day, it's all just funny. and good.

anyway, since i was telling this story from end to beginning, here's the beginning: i dropped EG off at 8:15, the twits off at 8:30, and decided to treat myself on my first day of freedom by burning 20 minutes on driving and $2 on parking, to take my laptop ("laptop" being a glossy euphemism for "spongebob gameboy with second-rate hack cartridge in it") to starbucks. the breeze was cool, the sun was warm, the coffee rocked, and this goofy-ass baby was assing around like nobody's business, rolling and stretching and pushing but very rarely kicking, which is exactly how my mom describes my in utero movements (in sharp contrast to those of my sister or any of my three boys.) it felt good to work on my book, it felt good to imagine what kind of a person this baby is going to be. at the table next to me, some grad student was bitching about her job with more venom than the actual problem seemed to be worth, and it hit me: she's one of THOSE people. a list of things she wanted and didn't get, and of things people have done to wrong her, and things she wants to change but can't (or won't, because she's too busy bitching), has taken up permanent residence in her head. people who try to cheer her up, or worse, suggest ways to fix her problems, get indignantly rebuffed ("nooooo, that won't help becaaaaaaause..."), and then become targets of her spewed misery; the more she can get to stick to them, the more satisfied she is. someday she'll be screaming at her husband that he's having too much fun and he needs to stay home with her on saturday night so they can "talk about us." she's the woman who is going to bemoan the fact that raising children is sooooo hard (mostly so she can feel justified in resenting others for not fixing it for her,) and that she just feels like she's LOST HER TRUE SELF in becoming a mother (and it's her husband's fault, of course.) right. i know women who act like that, and trust me, nothing will fix it; not the perfect obedience she will try to get out of her husband, not the perfect daycare, not the diet, not staying at home, not working outside the home, not a balance of both. (and no, i'm not just knockin women here... men are just as prone to being a bitch about this stuff, just in a slightly different form. there's always the guy who wants to blame his responsibilities - that is, wife and children - for keeping him from fulfilling his dreams - for example, being a professional golf player, nevermind the fact that he's always been spectacularly mediocre, which is why he didn't pursue it in the ten years of adulthood BEFORE he got married.) misery loves company, and unless she takes a good look at herself and decides to change, the closest she's ever going to come to happy is in being satisfied at making other people as miserable as she is. and from what i've seen, that's a cold, hollow, and very temporary satisfaction that only leaves you hungry for more. empty happiness calories, so to speak, and the people who take a steady diet of them can never get enough. to continue the food metaphor, maybe i'm like the skinny bitch who feels smugly superior to the fat people out there, but damn am i happy that's not me. i'm happy in general. i don't see any sense in being anything else.

preachy? yeah. i know. this was mostly meant to be a celebration of what's good in my life, but i just couldn't do it without commenting on how some people who get what they want so often don't even try to turn that success into happiness. i'm not bitching really, but i'm confounded. i don't get it. if i'm describing you, consider this your wakeup call. nobody's going to hand you happiness. it's kind of like laying there in bed pissed off waiting for someone to give you an orgasm. not gonna happen, okay? it's on you.

so, to wrap this up: as i'm sitting there enjoying the morning, i notice a smell of butter and vanilla wafting over from somewhere behind me. as i'm thinking, damn, whatever that is, i need to get me some of it, i turn around and see that it's coming from a brand new coldstone creamery. holy shit, the best ice cream on earth, which previously had not a single location within 100 miles, which i have been dreaming about ever since having it in denver (i'm pregnant, remember? stop laughing; it's not my fault). talk about making a perfect day orgasmic; i went back later with the kids and got my cake batter ice cream, chocolate for EG, and pistachio ice cream with m&m's and gummi bears for the twits. then, making the perfect day absolutely complete (and literally orgasmic!) it finished up with a scrabble game, a phone call with my best friend, a good movie in bed, and really hot sex (mostly in bed.) now, i can imagine PRM cringing and imagining my mother reading this, at which point i would remind him of the time my mom was giving him some shit about knocking me up ("aren't you supposed to be a doctor?"), and he responded that it was a medical fact that really rough sex can blow out a vasectomy. all i'm sayin is that i'm not exactly blowing the needle off the shock-o-meter here.

moral of the story: life is good. and god loves happy retards. which means he may hate you, but i'm shittin in tall cotton!

okay, sorry for the pontificating. next post will be back to sarcastic inappropriate humor. and, just to make sure you get at least one laugh out of this post, i must show you the most recent naughty tomato from prm's garden:

positiverolemodel would like to proudly announce...

that he took a fat crap in frank lloyd wright's personal bathroom (a national monument.)

so my sister, evilbigmouth, got married. i guess i need to make up a name for her husband now, since he's apparently sticking around. i'm completely uninspired right now, though, so he's nameless til further notice. anyway, ignore the fact that the photo sucks; you can still tell it was a beautiful wedding:



and a better picture of the dress on the bride (i didn't take it):



the wedding was at taliesin, the home and architecture school of frank lloyd wright. my sister and her husband both graduated from taliesin last year. tour groups pay like $65 apiece to wander through taliesin, speaking in reverent tones, wearing surgical booties over their shoes so as not to damage the national monument, and gawking at the statuary, the furniture, and the people who actually live there as they eat breakfast in their pajamas. i don't know how those two survived three years of being a zoo exhibit, as tours seem to run about 6 times a day.

now, taking three little boys to a wedding is always fun. first, there's the whole "convincing them that suits and ties are cool" thing. evilgremlin went along with it when he figured out that if you show up to a black tie formal in a spongebob shirt, it is legal for the hosts to withhold cake. spazmonkey, the kid i figured i'd NEVER get into that get-up, went along with it and then some... he beamed at himself in the mirror, chest puffed out, and actually refused to take the damned thing off until he puked on it later - the next night. at which point i tried to get him into his favorite spiderman t-shirt, and he howled til we put him in dramaqueen's suit, which dramaqueen - normally my confused-yet-happy boy who will generally agree to anything so long as you suggest it with a big smile - had worn for all of about 10 minutes before having a complete banshee breakdown and getting back into his superman t-shirt.



i should mention at this point that, at some point after the ceremony, spazmonkey - the kid whose fashion statements include ski masks, ladybug boots, and christmas socks on feet and hands - decided that his clip-on tie looked much better hung from the front of his pants instead of his shirt. he walked around proudly showing people his no-issa-PANTStie-notta-necktie. also, EG, ever the comedian, told people that "i LOVE weddings! you know why? because they're all blah blah BLAH bleah BLEEEEAAAAAHHH..." (imagine his voice getting louder and more warped with each "blah." then imagine me heading toward him with my lips pursed and hand up in spanky mode. and him running off to do something deceptively civilized until i'm not looking again...)

then we spent two nights in a row staying up and getting really drunk. i actually just stayed up late and watched others get really drunk, which was not as bad as it can be when the company sucks. my husband and an old friend of mine from germany, vetresident (a stupid name choice, since she's about 6 months from finishing her residency, but again, i'm uninspired right now) drank all the fat squirrel and local yokel beer we had in the room, and also did a credible job of helping our parents kill the leftover keg of spotted cow.

notice the cool beer names? they're all from the new glarus brewing co., which is about half an hour away from taliesin. WE WENT INSIDE THE BREWERY. this may not seem worthy of all-caps. let me explain. for the last ten years, maybe 12, i have gone to southern wisconsin for fishing trips, camping trips, visits to taliesin, etc... and every time, i've stopped by new glarus to check out the brewery. and every time i've stopped, it was closed. i was willing to chalk this up to bad luck, until last year, on about my 6th stop in new glarus, the damned thing was closed IN THE MIDDLE OF OKTOBERFEST. now, new glarus is one of those scary tourist towns that is so proud of its swiss heritage that all the houses are half-timbered cottages, all the souvenir stores sell "uff-da" t-shirts and swiss knickknacks, and all the waitresses wear totally spankable swiss miss outfits (i offered prm $50 to offer our waitress $50 to spank her, but he figured that would just end with him losing $50 one way or the other.) so oktoberfest was a huge deal... totally drunken street festival! brats and beer! spotted cow was available on every street corner, but the GODDAMNED BREWERY WAS CLOSED. i think nodamnsense has been in once, on some trip that neither prm nor i went along on, so i know it *is open* sometimes, just not for me.

so now i feel as if i just completed a major life quest. i'm feeling quite powerful from the sudden bolus of experience points, and should take a moment to level up (if you don't get the d&d reference, shame on you. you obviously weren't as cool as i was in high school. or last week!) we went on the brewery tour, hung out in the tasting room, got new glarus tasting glasses, and a spotted cow t-shirt for nodamnsense. their lambics are to die for - i have one raspberry and one cherry hidden safely in my office, and ain't nobody touchin them til i am no longer sharing body fluids with this stupid fetus.

anyway. hotel rooms seem to inspire children to insist that they're not sleepy (especially hotel rooms full of wide-awake adults):



EG is about 5 minutes from falling over on top of his gameboy (though upon being carried to bed, he will insist that he's "not that tired.")



note the lack of bedspread on this bed! night #2, SM puked on it, which was apparently the signal for everyone to stop falling asleep and get back on the partying:



eventually, they conked out.



they slept so hard, in fact, that even getting vetresident to bang on the banjo did not rouse them (thank goodness for the extendo-room, which had 3 queen beds, one behind its own door that we could shut on the sleeping children... only to kick them back out into the main room with my parents at 3 AM, so prm and i could sleep in the next morning. awesome how that works, isn't it?)