Hello all! It's me, Jen or Fern from Diagnosis: Urine! Jodie is on vacation and has almost no cell phone or internet access. She sent me a brief email and said she had to stand on one leg leaning against the wall in the hallway to steal someone's wireless signal. She wanted me to post that she will be back Monday to start replying to voicemails and emails.
Now onto making you miss her even more... When she asked me to post, I rubbed my hands together with glee at the opportunity to reach an audience many, many times my normal readership. I thought, "What could I post that would be Jodie-rific?" I was stumped. Finally, I decided the best tribute to Jodie would be one of my classic, "I try to copy Jodie and fail" posts.
Tonight, I made the foil river Jodie made here. Let me just tell you a bit about how that went. I used cheap foil, and I might caution you against that. I did it at the end of the day, when the children were tired and I was tired of their shenanigans. Again, not good planning. I did it when neighbor children were over, so I couldn't snap at my children in the way we're all accustomed to communicating. Sigh.
I made my tin foil river prototype out of one-ply foil. It was a sad failure, and shredded even before I'd attracted all the kids' attention. Then, the kids bickered and sprayed each other while I made an improved, two-ply prototype.
The two-ply prototype worked better. At first. Until the kids started "experimenting." I would call it experimenting or exploring if I were attempting Montessori-style home-learning. Instead, I am attempting "just make it through the day" parenting, so I thought of their explorations as a major pain in the ass. And I am not just being mean -- some kids didn't want to explore destroying the river at this point, so I thought we should hold off on that. It's a metaphor for the Alaskan oil drilling debate.
Eventually everyone was having a great time. Well, I wasn't, but I was thinking of how my misery could make a great blog post.
I videotaped a major tantrum by my 2-year-old, interspersed with me instructing each of my boys to put down the hose, repeatedly. The video also shows me trying to be polite for the benefit of the neighbor boy, and I believe it had my 7-year-old screaming instructions at all the other kids. It also had a segment featuring the chemical burn on my upper lip from trying to wax, missing a spot, then trying a Sally Hansen cream. (Bad idea. I look like I have herpes.) Unfortunately, because I am not Jodie, I cannot get the video into a reasonable format. HOW DOES JODIE DO IT????
Our evening on the river ended in an explosion of water, tears and tempers. There is soggy foil all over the backyard, and I don't even care! I plan to blame it on the raccoons getting into someone's trash. And now, I am going to go drown my sorrows in a glass of milk and some Oreos. Jodie, please, don't ever leave us again.
