Whoooo Are You, Who, Who, Who-who?

Getting a phone call after I have finally got Kiddo 1 and 2 sleeping will usually send me into a rage reserved for people trying to sell me things at 8am on a Saturday.  However, I got a phone call about 20 minutes into afternoon naps that did quicken my pulse, but not in a rageful way.  It was the bank calling to let me know that my "debit card has been used at a facility where [they] are monitoring fraudulent charges."  I was requested to come in immediately to change my PIN.  

(I almost wrote PIN number, which is stupid because PIN stands for Personal Identification Number. It'd be like writing "Please RSVP" on something. Please respond, please? Who are you, Paula Abdul?  Straight up, now tell me.  

Random.)

At first, I thought I'd go in after the kiddos awoke from their naps.  I mean, what's the rush-- the bank was on it, they called me.  But then, as I tried to pretend I wasn't freaking out, I starting thinking that maybe if I didn't change my PIN and the thief decided to try my card again, like a frickin' slot machine in Vegas, then maybe the bank would be off the hook since they called me to change my number and I hadn't and I'd then be liable for any charges from that time forward.

I was at the bank before my kids' beds noticed we'd left.   

Changing my PIN was no big deal, and I felt surprisingly strong and virile after I left there. I almost didn't bother putting the keys in the car; I was sure I could simply carry the car home. Yes. It's funny how I got all "take back the night" about changing my PIN, but I did.  I felt like the person had tried to hack me, but because of the quickness of the bank, and my speedy awesomeness, we'd defeated the nasty thief before he could even try.  I sang that song for the credits of CSI: Miami and then realized I don't know that song after the screechy "Yeaaaaaaaah," and switched to the "Whooo are you, who who who who" of CSI: Las Vegas. And then when I realized I didn't know that song either, I sang that other song, Song 2 by Blur. It's 2 minutes long. I can fake 2 minutes. 

That night, I told Husband of my narrow victory over crime in our fair town, and he, less enthused than I was, said he'd check the card in the morning. I said "Just order us new cheques, ok?" and that was the whole conversation. I considered ordering a cape with a giant SB on it (for Super Badass, if you care to know) but mostly fell asleep about 3 minutes after the baby settled.  Such is the life of a crime-fighting momma. 

When I awoke the next morning, I leapt from bed in my new lycra crime-fighting suit (think Wonder Woman, but even frickin' badassed-er. Yes.) and fought the Killers in the backyard (not the band, rather, some thugs and ninjas) and came back in to make breakfast for the kiddos. 

I got Kiddo #1 off to school AND packed her a healthy lunch and felt pretty good about my new persona.  Elizabeth by day, and Super Badass by night (and sometimes during the day, if the occassion were to warrant it).  Then I got a phone call from my husband. 

"Elizabeth?" he asked.

"Ahem?" I replied. 

"Oh. Uh.  Um. Super Badass, uh, can I ask you a question?" (I was already digging this new name)

"Certainly, mortal Husband."

"Uh, did you spend $1500 yesterday in the span of 3 minutes at the same store in three different transactions?"

Even Super Badass can't spend money THAT fast. My heart leapt back in my throat.  How? What? When? Husband told me to get my Super self to the bank and make sure everything was ok. I was shaking. 

Luckily the bank was Super Wonderful about the whole thing. They've given me a new debit card, (The old one was a chip card, btw. You know, those super safe ones?) While they can't tell me who exactly is the person with my old bank card number and PIN, I can narrow it down to a place I'd never been before, and will never go again. The charges all appeared within an hour of using my card in this new store, and some strange things happened while I was there that make me doubt the vendor's honesty. 

No, I won't tell you who I think it is. Charges to a person's record (say, Libel, for example) can render a person unable to ever leave the country. Shopping in the USA is far too good to risk losing. :)

But the ironic part of this whole thing is that I spent almost 10 years living in America where I shredded everything that came into our house, bills, invoices, credit card applications, you name it. I was so terrified of Identity Theft that I was super careful. I only used websites with "https:" on them to make sure my information was secure.  

And here I am, back in Canada, and the theft came from someone I met, someone I saw in person, who chatted with me for almost an hour, who let Kiddo #1 play with the store pet, in my podunk town in Canada, where I never would have guessed such things occur.  

My Super Badass cape should arrive within the week, hopefully with my new bank card; I had to send payment via Paypal to double up on my security. In the meantime, I will have to fight the Killers in my yoga pants and nursing top. It's what a good mom does. 

Patience is Not Screaming While Dogs Weave In and Out of Your Legs and Your Toddler Sings Lady Gaga to The Music of the Baby Wailing.

Dinner always includes a show at our house. It doesn't matter what I'm making, there will always be entertainment that will include any or all of the following: musical instruments, singing, interpretive dance, dog toenails clicking the floor, fire alarms going off and intermittent 'woahs' as I nearly fall to my death, tripping over yet another thing that has found its way underneath my feet.

I think it's wonderful that my family likes to be close to each other. 

I think it's insane that we all want to be withing a three-square-foot circumference of one another, but hey, what do I know? Oldsters tell me to soak it up, because pretty soon the kids will roll their eyes when I suggest we have dinner together. Friends tell me to be happy Kiddo #1 is singing Lady Gaga because Kiddo #1's kids will be singing the f-bomb in every verse (because every generation gets more in-your-face than the last and hey, I can't argue-- Madonna is my vintage and here we are today).  But, amidst the calamity, I must admit, I have found that taking a breath and being patient is not as easy as TV moms make it look.

How did Claire Huxtable do it with five children, her job as a lawyer and her hilarious Dr husband? How did Carol Seaver manage three kiddos and her (also) hilarious (also) Dr husband? (ok, the dad on Growing Pains wasn't that funny. But he's Canadian, so I give him extra credit) But, after years of difficult research (on my couch), I think the answer comes down to this: they had a laugh track.

It's easy to have patience when someone is there to laugh out loud (not just LOL, but to actually laugh) at a zany misadventure. 

What I learned from my research is: when tripping over a wee dog that is winding itself through your legs, while holding a tray of hot cookies, a laugh track keeps you from dropping the molten lava onto your toddler.  When your teenager takes your car keys and accidentally drives through the garage door, the glad-it's-not-me laughter of the audience keeps you from apoplexy. 

After I realized this, I quickly downloaded a couple different laugh tracks. I keep them on my iPod, which is on my person at all times, ready for use. 

The other day, when I forgot to pay my cell bill, and a whopper arrived, I played the laugh track while my husband's eyes bugged out of his head. It really changed the mood. I played my laugh track when I sneezed, immediately after applying the 47th coat of mascara and, amazingly, it made me feel good about looking like a rained-on hooker. When my daughter got marker on her bedroom walls, I played the laugh track after she told me how it got there; it made giving her the timeout even more fun than usual. I walked into an atom bomb of stink when I entered my son's room, played the laugh track, and the diaper was much more fun to change.

I tell you, try it. If it doesn't make the everyday feel much less ordinary, you should demand your money back. Not from me, of course (insert laugh track). See! It's working already!

Internet, Schminternet.

I feel like I would have a faster Internet connection if I bought 5 hamsters and a guinea pig, hooked their wee wheels up with fodder from our "box of wires" (which is real) thus creating the magic of the internet that way. It would also be cheaper. 

My husband and I are what the internet industry calls "power users."  We don't just email a couple times a day. Both of us send and recieve hundreds of emails everyday. (his are legit, mine are mostly stories that make you cry about a teacher that made a difference, or a soldier that gave his dog up to a shelter, but who's counting?)  We don't use Google to simply win bets or look up recipes for dinner.

We, legally, download music by the bucket full. We, legally, watch all our TV and most of our movies online. He plays video games, I Facebook (and I Farmville, but that's a whole other blog). We finished degrees online, bargain hunt and do the majority of our tasks via the information superhighway. (If indeed it is still called that, I spend too much time USING it to look up the current lingo)

So, when my husband gleefully danced around the kitchen with the information that we can get magically faster internet, at a fraction of the cost, we picked up both our kiddos and skipped around the house laughing like fools. 

Oh yes. Fools we were. Fools to think we could get everything we wanted at a low, low cost. Nuts to think we could get upload and download speeds that rival jet engines. Insane to believe all our dreams were coming true. For, you see, Virginia, you always get what you pay for.  And there is no Santa Claus. Or there is. I can't remember how that movie ends. I'll Netflix it in a sec.

For three days after we switched, our internet was amazing.  We brought people to our computer to marvel at the bitrate. We introduced our parents to our internet, brought it flowers and sang love ballads (the lyrics for which we'd googled faster than lightening; the karaoke version of those songs was downloaded in seconds!) My husband even started thinking about buying a ring. Yes, we were completely enamoured with our new magical internet. Until the fourth day.

The day the internet came to a screeching halt is the stuff of a Gordon Lightfoot song.  Pictures, half uploaded, email programs "checking" for hours, no youtube tomfoolery, nothing. I sat there, wondering what I'd said, what I could've done differently. I reset the router. Nothing. I reset the computer. Zilch. I even tried command prompt. Nada.  And when we called the service provider, their response was a glib, "Oh, sir, that was an introductory promotion. It ended. Sorry."  My husband and I, choking back sobs, closed the ring box and buried it beneath the socks, never to be spoken of again.

Back we went, beaten and bruised, to the extraordinarily expensive, but reliable internet.  Sure we had to give our third child to Internet Service Provider to cover our overages last month, but we're saving money in the long run. That third kid is smart and is definitly going to university. By the time that happens, tuition will be 4.3 million dollars a semester. Bwa haa haa! Take THAT Internet Service Provider!

The Cleaning Fairy beats Fairy Godmother, Blue Fairy and Tinkerbell. Wands down.

There is absolutely nothing I wouldn't give up to keep my cleaning lady coming to my house. Nothing. In fact, I have upgraded Diane (a fitting name-- it means 'divine' and she certainly comes from heaven), from mere cleaning mortal, to Cleaning Fairy.  She appears, with magic and glitter, and makes my house sparkling clean and good-smelling.  

The only problem with having a Cleaning Fairy is that, dang it, there doesn't seem to be a pre-cleaning fairy.  I've wished upon a dozen stars for a second fairy to come and de-clutter, arrange and prepare my house for my Cleaning Fairy's arrival.  I've even left out small plates of cookies and milk; all I got for that one was some fat guy that woke up the baby with his belly laugh, and left soot all over my floor. Nice. Thanks guy.

It's funny, but I think part of trusting someone to come into your home and clean it for you is knowing that person will arrive.  Cleaning Fairies can't be collecting dishes from all over the house or sorting the mail that is strewn across the counter. It's a waste of their glittery time. Plus, I think it would really annoy ME if someone I was working for couldn't even take the time to give me a proper area in which to work. So, in anticipation of her arrival, I spend roughly three hours prepping the house. I clean off the counter she has to scrub, my daughter puts her toys away so Diane can vacuum (and see) the floor.

My husband, who enjoys cleaning as much as I do, grumbles witty things like, "Why do we even have [a cleaning fairy] if I have to do all this cleaning anyway?"  and the answer is so obvious I scoff.  We have a great deal going here. She scrubs toilets, showers, floors, et cetera.  The last thing on earth I want to do is annoy the Cleaning Fairy.  Like I said, there's nothing I wouldn't give up to keep her, and thusly I willingly give up an afternoon of family time for her to spend a morning of her time, doing the stuff I really can't stand. 

What's that you say? I could save that money by adding an hour or two to my pre-clean and just finish everything myself?  Sure. Yes. It is true. But, part of the appeal of this arrangement is that I can walk into my house, perfectly arranged, with vacuum lines and a lovely citrus scent that I had nothing to do with making. It's better than coming home to a meal I didn't have to make, or a closet full of designer shoes I don't have to pay for.  Yes. I said it.  Carrie Bradshaw can keep her closet; my Cleaning Fairy is worth more to me than 10 000 pairs of Louboutins. 

The bright side of two kids bawling at the same time is that they end up in the same rhythm and harmony.

It's almost inspiring me to write a violin concerto. Almost.

Sometimes, no matter how wonderful, and perfect, and angelic my kiddos are, they decide that the only way to end a great day is by having a meltdown. I'm sure this has something to do with the full moon or the galactic pull of Saturn's fifth ring, but it happens and I seem to have no control over what, when, where, why or how. Just the Who is constant. And the howling.

My favourite is when the meldown happens on the 401 (the major highway in Ontario), between destinations. It starts, like any good classical music piece, with the setting of the sun (or the dimming of the house lights).  The string section begins gently plucking away with a gentle, "Mom, how much farther?" and, "I think I have to pee."  Then the baby starts fussing, quietly like the gentle grunt of a hungry oboe.  Once the baby gets loud enough, the drums begin to beat against my seat via my elder child's shoes. Within minutes of kicking, I've got a real, live, concerto happening in my backseat.

Only, this one kind of makes me want to take the exit marked "Gingerbread House" and leave them with the first old lady in a pointy-hat that I see.

At times like these, I remember the old "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" phrase my mother used to say. I think, when I was a kid, that motto meant that since you can't beat your children anymore, you might as well join them in their antics, although I'm not 100% sure that's where the motto comes from originally. The seventies were a strange time.

And so, amidst the chaos reigning in the backseat, I take a deep breath, turn on the radio, and begin singing as loudly as my children.  It takes a lot of practice and inner fortitude to try and out-sing an entire orchestra, but ... well, let's just say they got their musical talent, and stamina, from me. I've both got what it takes, and the will to outlast them.  They're just kids, right? I mean, how long can they possibly cry?

For the record, that length is from London to Guelph.

Of course, my kiddos have orchestrated themselves to sleep, and I'm half-hoarse from singing.  And I still have a half-hour to go before we get to my sister's.  I plug in my iPod and turn on my "Classical Music" playlist and get on my merry way.