Tonight I found out what happens when you try and spend 8 minutes alone in your room accomplishing shit. You get 3 minutes and then James calls out:

“Ummmmm…….Sarah? Your son is in the backyard naked trying to catch butterflies with a net……”

Fucking excellent. That’s what I get for trying to do anything, ever.

Am now on the way home with the children who cranked the begging up to maximum in order to get a bag of extreme goldfish for the ride back. I agreed under the express clarification that I was not purchasing drinks on the way home EVEN though I was personally guaranteeing that they would be dying of thirst approximately 9 seconds after they opened the bag.

Pulling into Staples parking lot when Rhyme suddenly becomes aware that she is, in fact, dying of thirst. I advised her that there is water at home and that this just proves that I am, in fact, a genius.

The fact that I have had to say “Stop licking each other” more than once in my entire life, let alone 6 times at increasing volumes in a ferry line up in the last 7 minutes is causing me to seriously rethink my life choices.

The following is exactly why playing a game of “Guess which animal I am?” with my 5 year old is essentially the same process as taking calls from the general public…

Me: Okay, I have one. Guess which animal I am.

5 year old: It is an animal????

Just about pulled over to rescue a poor stray lost dog…..Who was a fucking coyote.

And by “just about pulled over”, I mean I was pulled over, had my hazards on and was about to open the door when the stupid undercover coyote looked at me and we both realized what was happening at the same time. The coyote was decidedly less alarmed.

Sigh. Stupid night shifts.

This is how “bedtime” works with my 5 year old.

I put him to bed around 7:30. Then the following sequence of events takes place:

1) He needs some water
2) The temperature of his room becomes suddenly and inexplicably unbearable
3) His sister remembers she has to go the bathroom
4) He remembers he has to go to the bathroom.
5) He loses some random object that must be found immediately or we are in crisis mode
6) Crisis mode
7) His sister suddenly becomes invested in knowing the schedule for the next day
8) He yells at his sister for talking because he is “trying to sleep”
9) He comes out of bed to ask if a shark could eat a dinosaur
10) He needs more water
11) Mommy screams from the couch “THAT IS ENOUGH!!!!! SHUT THE HELL UP AND GO TO SLEEEP RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR TO GOD SOMEONE WILL DIE.”
12) Momentary silence. Repeat.

So basically. My kids go to bed at any point from 7:30pm until the wine runs out and I stop realizing that they are still awake.

Today I went to the passport office to get passports for Emily and Escher. Waited in line for 20 minutes. Was then informed that Emily can’t get one because she is 16 (and has been for all of five minutes) and her old passport is a child passport and now she is an “adult” and that the 12 pieces of ID we have for her, including the old passport are basically moot and that she needs a drivers license. So now, I have to go get her a drivers license. Swell.

Then they process Escher’s. Verify all the ID and completeness of the application and give me a number that they will call whenever a) I win the lottery; b) Jesus comes back c) Jesus comes back and wins the lottery or d) never.

So I sit there for two hours watching people who have drivers licenses skip gleefully in fields of rainbows, holding hands and getting passports in front of me (Oprah style… “You get a passport and YOU get a passport and you get a PASSPORT!!!!)

I finally get called to the counter (Jesus came back and won the lottery and I didn’t make the money rapture. Mom was right), and the woman looks at Escher’s application and says he cannot have a passport because he only has the birth certificate issued to me by the province of British Columbia and not the magical secret birth certificate that has my name on it that I should have spontaneously decided that I HAD to have for no reason at all. So I said “Are you fucking kidding me?” At which point she said that there was no reason to swear (agree to disagree). At which point I said “WHY wouldn’t you have told me that two hours ago so I didn’t sit here?!?!” And she said “I guess we missed it”. Which I can totally understand because there were TWO whole pieces of paper to review. TWO.

So THEN I said that the normal birth certificate had been fine for my daughter’s passport and that there was nothing anywhere that suggested that I would need anything other than his legal Canadian birth certificate and she cheerfully replied “Oh ya, we changed it.”

So now, I am officially stabby, and I say “Why in the actual fuck would you not have that written somewhere and why would you not EXPRESSLY check to make sure that what I have is exactly what I need in the first fucking line up?!?!? I have ID, it’s in the same name as my son, I have every piece of information possible about him, I have his nexus card, I have his baby photos, are you seriously denying him a Canadian passport?!?!?” And she replied that there is no way to know if he is my son. So I lost my barely restrained shit and hollered at her “That’s the most fucking ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my goddamn life, he is my son, he came out of MY fucking vagina, (strictly speaking this is a lie, but I didn’t feel as if uterus would have the effect I was going for) Would you like a picture of that???? FUCK. Give me my fucking shit right now.” And then I grabbed my insufficient proof off the counter and marched out of the office with as much dignity as is possible once you have yelled the word vagina across a government office.

Sooo yeah. Once I get the proper documents, I may just submit this in the mail.

Escher has finally hit the toilet humour stage….anything bum or fart related just kills him. And, ever on the ball mommy that I am, I’m having fun trying to tailor all the kids’ stockings to their current level of amusement.

You know what’s not a good idea to google……?

“Bum toys”

Came home from work this morning and had the following conversation with a 3 year old (who happened to be the only person awake in the house)
Child: “Hi. I had a pretty good sleep.”
Me: “Great!”
Child: “But I had bad dreams.”
Me: “Oh dear. About what?”
Child: “About a giant banana.”
Me: (in a delighted voice)”Well that doesn’t sound bad! That sounds funny!!”
Child: (with a look on his face that can only be described as reproach mixed with mild disgust) “The banana threw me off the deck and I was dead.”