Ever have one of those days when everything goes wrong? That would be yesterday. Boy oh boy. There isn’t enough space on wordpress to list all the things that went wrong, I’ll have to stick to the highlights. More like lowlights. The babies were up all night. Its a mystery why. Maybe the moon. Maybe the volcano goddess. Hmmm, that’s probably it. The volcano goddess is a huge dealio here. She rules the active volcanoes. You do not want to displease her. When we moved here we were warned constantly to never never take lava rocks. The goddess considers the lava to be her flesh, and therefore finds snatching them wildly offensive. The active volcanoes that the tourists visit have visitors centers with bulletin boards plastered with letters of apology to the goddess from wayward tourists who took lava rocks home then felt her wraith big time. They sent the rocks back, but I don’t know if she forgave them. I’d be peeved if a stranger made off with my skin too.
The other goddess thing the locals always warn about is that if she shows up in the form of an old lady asking for water, you better damn well give her water.
Actually, that did happen to me. An old lady did show up at our house and ask for water. She said she lived up the road and her plumbing was kaput and she tried to use the pump at the park near my house but it didn’t work and we said sure, use the hose, fill the buckets, go for it. She was extremely grateful and brought me a bag of apples and a cheesecake the next day. The goddess can be most benevolent when she wants to be.
She wasn’t yesterday.
We woke up exhausted after the twins nighttime reign of terror, and everyone was grouchy and I went to the laundry room to change over a load of baby jammies and found the room flooded with 3 inches of water. Nice! Even better, not all the water drained out of the washer so the jams were still soaked. After a lot of groaning and course language I proceeded to wring them out by hand (pioneer woman style) because its the jungle, and things go moldy in a jungleminute if you let them. I had to balance on about an inch of concrete the juts out from the platform that holds the washer (now I know why the previous owners built that platform!) while the twins were screaming, and let me tell ya sisters, I was not happy.
Anyway, then the cat broke my baby gate (don’t ask) which caused all kinds of chaos, but I thought ‘alls well that ends well’ and all that jazz because yesterday was Mommy Movie night and I was due for beer and popcorn with the girls, yea! Jungledad left work early to see to flooding situation and buy diapers because we were out. What a sweetie! I jumped in the shower during the babies very brief but still existent nap and started to get ready for movie night. I could feel the day turning around.
Then the phone rang…
It was Jungledad from the payphone in the grocery store parking lot. He had forgotten his cell phone and debit card, and used all his cash on diapers, so this was the only phone call he could make (like prison?), the purpose of which to tell me the car had died and would not be resuscitated. Aghhhhh. After the twins were born we traded in our beloved Jeep Wrangler, which had never once broken or let us down in any way, for a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, which seems to be breaking all the bloody time. Anyway, I managed to get someone to drive out the jump the Jeep. Jungledad drove to the repair shop to get a new battery that we can’t afford and I missed Mommy Movie night. Boo hoo to me.
Things did start looking up, however, when Jungledad came home. He made us massive G and Ts and a yummy dinner and delish lemon sugar crepes like they make in vendor carts on the streets of Paris. My hero! Our brains were totally fried, so we just settled in and watched the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares on youtube (I’m still angry with Gordon but I just can’t stay away).
Afterward we had lots of silly conversation fueled by exhaustion and gin. It started out talking about how its really hard to carry the twins at the same time now, since their big and heavy and squirmy. Then we thought about how it must be way harder with triplets and wondered how or if parents carry them at once. Then we stumbled upon the answer: velcro suits. If you dressed each infant in a velcro suit they would stick together in a big cluster, and surely that would be easier to carry. Of course, you couldn’t put one baby in hooks, one baby in loops, etc, because they could squirm and make the cluster unstable. The key would be a baby velcro suit constructed of a patchwork of hooks and loops. That would make for the greatest adhesion. Then we wondered, if we dressed loads of babies in velcro patchwork suits, how many could we carry at once? A quint cluster? Septuplets even? Why have Jon and Kate not tried this? Is there a youtube video that addresses this? If so I’d really like to watch it the next time I have a rotten day.
