The Family Cast The Diva: my 8-year-old drama queen. She has eaten noodles every single day for the past five years, loves her new iPod and hopes to be famous one day. She likes wedge heels and lipstick and Taylor Swift.
The Pterodactyl: he's five. He loves trains, volcanoes, tomatoes, and talking about my boobs. His younger sister's mere existence has ruined his life.
The Tyrant: she's a very bossy three. She curses, throws things, hates wearing underpants and refuses to brush her hair. She knows the words to most Lady Gaga songs.
Hot Firefighter Husband: he loves sports, politics, clean floors and me. He gets really annoyed by laundry, Ann Curry, tapas restaurants and me. He edited this.
Damn Gem: the dog. She eats paper which I end up pulling out of her butt.
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I have some incredible news.
This morning I peeled a clementine, and the peeling came off in the shape of a Fleur de Lis! And a clementine, as you know, is orange, which is very close to the color gold, and only 35 calories if you’re looking for a healthy snack.
Then I turned the peeling upside down, and it exactly resembled the shape of the crucifixion. These are clear signs that Jesus Christ will make sure the Saints win the Super Bowl tomorrow.
I could not be more pleased.
I’m sure many people think Jesus has better things to do than slip into the helmet of Drew Brees and whisper brilliant plays in his ear. But I’m not sure that’s the case. He obviously has given up on the Haiti situation, as the only decent thing happening there is that more people are having their limbs chopped off rather than dying of infection. I’m pretty sure He’s not interested in answering any of Pat Robertson’s prayers because Pat Robertson is a douchebag. In addition I suspect Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit all feel pretty guilty about how they handled the whole Hurricane Katrina debacle. A Saints win wouldn’t exactly make it even, but it would certainly help morale, at least until everyone is sufficiently buzzed for Mardi Gras.
Many people are wondering whether God actually answers prayers, and I am not going to be sucked into that debate right now because I’m anxious to make a new cole slaw recipe for the Big Game tomorrow night. But I can tell you that if God was a better listener, my son would have foregone his obsession with trains, ice cream sandwiches and bras in favor of a propensity for, say, bathing, and he would not at this very minute be using his aircraft carrier to scrape long visible scratches on the bamboo flooring.
It makes sense for God to interfere in this particular Superbowl because — duh, it’s the Saints. And what with the NFL trying to claim ownership of the Fleur de Lis symbol, which Joan of Arc carried on a flag as she led the French to victory over the English more than 400 years ago, it’s clear that God has reason to flex his Holy Muscles and kick some booty.
So while it has been many years since I’ve believed in signs from God, I am hellbent on the power of this clementine prophecy. Obviously I have an alternative motive because the clementine peel will be worth quite a bit of money after the Saints beat the Colts, and I’m excited to use the proceeds from the sale to redesign my backyard. It may seem sacrilegious to sell such an artifact, but it’s actually quite generous on my part because I’m anxious for other people to recognize its significance.
Rest assured, though, that before I auction it off, I will hold it to the heads of my adorable children to imbue them with any residual Holy Spirit. If nothing else, it will make their skin smell good. Geaux Saints.
On one of the 40,000 trips to Guatemala City that I took while waiting for an underpaid clerk to sign a piece of paper saying I could bring my daughter home, I popped into a pharmacy to buy some formula. On the way out, I spotted a curly-furred brown Teddy Bear with a plaid ribbon around its neck and the softest, squishiest body ever.
I paid 80 Quetzales for it, about $12, and snuggled it next to the Tyrant that night when I put her to sleep.
That was nearly three years ago, and Teddy remains with us. It might be more accurate to say that Teddy’s remains are still with us. She – and the Tyrant has made it clear that Teddy is a she – she looks like a playroom war veteran, with pieces of tape stuck to her fur, the tattered ribbon hanging in shreds, and a half-eaten tag attached to her booty. Once the Tyrant covered an imaginary ouchie on Teddy’s belly with a waterproof Band-Aid, and I accidentally cut a hole in her belly while trying to remove it. That led to very successful involuntary gastric bypass surgery, and Teddy is not nearly as squishy as she once was.
Teddy has been laundered many, many times, but not even OxyClean can cover her distinct odor, a musky combination of pee, sour milk, vomit and Cheetos. And dog. And drool. It’s revolting, but in a sweet, reassuring sort of way.
Teddy is a very versatile toy. She can snuggle, of course, but she can also be cooked in a pot, used to play catch with the dog, swung like a club at marauders, and kidnapped by enemies. I have often thought that if Teddy could talk she would beg me to put her out of her misery. But there have been good times, too. Teddy has picked blueberries, flown on a plane, and ridden a bike.
 She even has a couple of friends/relatives named Teddy’s Mama and Teddy’s Dada.
But what a gift she is, worth more to the Tyrant than her tutu and lipstick combined. During last summer’s Vacation Odyssey, we were in a Knoxville, Tennessee hotel room ready to go to sleep when we realized Teddy was missing. As the Tyrant wailed, I convinced Hot Firefighter Husband that we had left Teddy in the organic vegetarian pizza parlor where we’d eaten dinner, and sent him off to find her. No luck. But on the way home he passed the ice cream shop where we’d had dessert, and on a whim, as they were hanging up the CLOSED sign, he knocked. There was Teddy, next to the vanilla.
Teddy has also been left at school, at Starbucks and at the playground. She has been “misplaced” in the oven, the pots and pans cabinet, behind the bed and under the bathroom sink. Each time she’s lost, I’m unable to bring my heart rate down until we find her – partly out of sentimentality, and partly because I’m terrified of trying to make my daughter function in a Teddy-less world.
The other two children have their inanimate crutches as well, but they’re past the age at which I worry that losing their beloveds will ruin their lives. The Diva has Cordurory,  who looks as though she’s been rode hard and put up wet, and the Pterodactyl has Blue Puppy, Blankie and Fuzzy Pillow. (Fuzzy Pillow is just a bed pillow covered with a blue jersey pillow case, but about six months ago it apparently developed a personality.)
When I was little, I had an enormous yellow bear I called Cindy. I still have him. His eyes have been scratched out and the kids and Hot Firefighter Husband are afraid of him.
But having Cindy reminds me of how special it is to have such a reliable source of comfort. When the Tyrant’s throwing a tantrum because I won’t let her use the computer cable as a whip, nothing brings her solace like a good Teddy hug. Ten years from now, when she’s screeching at me because I won’t let her attend a boy-girl slumber party, comforting her won’t be nearly as simple. And I’ll miss that.
This morning at 6:54, the Tyrant marched into our bedroom and said, “Dad, take me potty.” So Husband took her potty.
Then she crawled into bed with us and made me scratch her back. After the back-scratching I got her a sippy cup with milk, took out the dog, made the coffee, took the Tyrant poopie, talked to her extensively about giants while she sat on the potty, brought the Pterodactyl a sippy cup with fat-free milk and no scratches on the top, and handed the Tyrant advertising circulars which she ripped into pieces and artfully arranged in my bed. Husband pretended he was dead. But really he was just being very still, thinking, “I got up first and took her potty. So we’re even.”
Husband swears he does not keep track of who does how much housework, but he is lying. Certainly I keep track. I’m winning. Although I try not to hold that against him, there is naturally some accrued bitterness.
I am obligated at this point to add that I definitely have a keeper husband because it is rare to find a heterosexual man who has large biceps and nice legs and is also obsessed with clean floors and tidy bathrooms. Just last night during a family outing to Bed, Bath & Beyond, he begged me to buy him a floor steam cleaner, but I talked him out of it because I had just spent the same amount of money on boots.
Nevertheless I cringe at the monotonous routine of obligations that monopolizes most of my mornings. Make the kids breakfast. Make them eat their breakfasts. Yell at the dog for eating their breakfasts. Wrestle the tutu off the Tyrant. Put her in timeout for hitting me with the tutu. Make the kids lunch. Comb the house for the lunch boxes. Wipe lipstick off the Tyrant’s mouth. Find matching shoes. Pack backpacks. Dig through stacks of clean laundry to find socks. And nearly every task includes nudging Hot Firefighter Husband out of his comfortable habit of leaning at a 90 degree angle on the counter, the newspaper spread across an acre of counterspace, eating his oatmeal and sipping the coffee that I made. 
I realize that I’m complaining about Doing My Job. I am in fact the family’s designated Domestic Engineer and Estate Manager, and my duties include all of the above mentioned tasks. But still! Can’t somebody else force-feed Froot Loops down the children’s throats sometimes?
Weekends usually are slightly more relaxed, but sometimes not having a routine trips us up, too. Friday night I had a Social Obligation, by which I mean a Girls Night Out, while Husband worked. Sometime around midnight, while Husband was saving the life of a person in cardiac arrest, I was learning about a really fun game in which you do a shot called a Lemon Drop, then a guy holds a lemon in his teeth and you suck the juice out of the lemon, which saves you the trouble of squeezing the rind.
Anyway, neither of us slept for more than three hours that night, so in my opinion we should have equally shared responsibility for entertaining the children, who were bright-eyed and enthusiastic after an excellent night of sleep. To his credit, he did let me take a nice long nap while he cleaned the Pterodactyl’s room, but then who do you think had to clean the kitchen? Actually, he did that, too, now that I think about it. But I am definitely the one who had to come up with the idea of taking the Pterodactyl to Outback Steakhouse for dinner, and then it was me who had to stay up until 10:15 last night to pick up the Diva from a birthday party. I’m exhausted.
Right this second, in fact, as I’m trying to write this important perspective on motherhood, the Tyrant is screaming at me to go find her tutu, which I threw behind the dryer last night in a fit of rage, and Husband is watching Meet the Press. It’s not fair. At least, though, in the battle of Who Does What, I’m winning. For now.
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