Today was one of those days that has resulted in my meaning "mother effing Sunday" in both ways "mother effing" can be taken: adjective and verb. There were moments of hilarity and swaths of fun, but overall, it wasn't the sort of day I'd wish to repeat anytime soon. Seismic is the only accurate way to describe the decibel, energy and intensity levels that reverberated throughout our home. Consider that family game-time, if you'd been peering in from outside and thus unable to hear the sounds within, would have resembled four people playing musical seats-on-the-carpet, two of them wholly against their wills, whilst breaded in the crumbs left by the wild animals simultaneously cracking the whip and eating/flinging all manner of snack. The irony was that the game is an all-players against the board kind, but really, you couldn't have had a less sane, less unified group. Two people's brains being forced to drum against their skulls doesn't generally lead to calm groupthink. Amidst lunatic cries of "This is FUN! What?! Be quiet! My turn! Your turn, dummy!" we aborted during Round 2.

As an aside, can I just say that Eddie Redmayne is to handsome what those awful Toe Shoes are to awesome. Both skeeve the balls off me.

I believe these both to be emphatic NOs. As is ever seeing Kim Kardashian's rear again. I'm sick of it!

I think that parenting is often hardest for me during those hours in which so much is asked and demanded, at the same time, even if sweetly, that I literally fritz. Like an overworked fuse, I short out. My stomach feels like a roiling cauldron. My brain ceases to function in any reasonable way.

Oh.my.god. I am not even kidding. Oliver just saw this post and said he wanted those fucking shoes. Although I am usually a "You bet, honey!" kind of mom, in this instance I said "Hell NO, Oliver. Those shoes are ridiculous!"

Because my brain is truly fried, I then say things like, "Yo, get dressed, we're going to the farmers market for some FUN!"

So J and I went to the farmers market which I have missed desperately. Both Ol and T have accidentally broken pieces of china this week, so they were off to Crate & Barrel to replace those pieces, but Ol instructed me to "Go to Bonapawte and get me an eclair. If they don't have eclairs, I'll have a wasberry palmier. If they don't have those, I want a cwoissant." Yes, drill sargeant!

J narrated literally every inch of our drive. Well, when he wasn't talking he was playing an incredibly high-pitched saxonet he'd built -saxophone + clarinet- that made me want to drive off the road. I thought of every pretty flower I'd ever seen and then realized I'd probably need a bit more zen than imagined flora as we'd not even parked yet.

Mother of god.

It was cute when he picked out three tiny purple cabbages, one large green cabbage and some carrots and declared it all a "Jack-pot." Same song, second verse, at the apple and apple cider stand; third verse at the maple syrup and griddling-now pancake stall; less so at Bonapawte where he insisted on relaying to the extremely-accented French madame the entire story of Oliver and the feve that I recently shared with you. Not that I mind his gregariousness; I don't. But when strangers who are attempting to sell things to a long line of people and have NO idea what a child is talking about but feel they must stay with you because you're in the midst of buying expensive pastries, well, it's a tad stressful. I'll say that she couldn't have been lovelier, but mon dieu.

Oliver just came down for the 6th time to stick his tongue out and implore me to fix the problem of the "bump on my tongue I've had since Lake Chawles!" I simply cannot do any such thing because A) it is SO far back and B) I don't have any topical tongue-bump solution on hand this fine mother effing Sunday night.

Thank the damn lord that T just served me a steaming bowl of fresh pasta and leftover short rib yum stuff as I sit on the couch. Plus wine. Round 2.

"Boys, go upstairs for quiet time" resulted in their building a stairs-length track down which they rolled marbles. Many marbles. Repeatedly. Ever so often, they'd yell, "Can we build that flashlight now?" like that's just something people do easily and all the time. Duh.

Mercifully, a marvelous babysitter came for two hours during which time I ran like I was in a race for sanity, on a treadmill, surrounded by no one. Periodically, I'd look at the mileage counter and think, "Well, that's sufficient" and then I'd remember that hyper-talkative engineers were both my immediate past and near future, and my legs just kept pounding, as if to say, "Girl, you crazy if you think we're done and returning to that yet!"

Perhaps that's why I'm affixed to the couch. Whatever it takes.

I can finally feel my cortisol tentatively settling, my neurons appreciating the red wine as if I've lovingly wrapped them in the coziest of blankets. My stomach is now too full to fizz. The fire is a tremendous supporting actor, Percy is snoring, Tom's talking aloud to the Packers game like he cares about the Packers, and I am just so effing grateful to be quiet and still.

It is now time for more time with: http://beautifulbatch.tumblr.com/