Long days, nights that should have been shorter.

Last night, in my dual-pronged quest to a) become America’s Next Top Mama and b) actually get a little bit of writing done (surprise, when it comes to writing I am such a procrastinator that I literally cannot produce anything before 11pm) I sunk to new lows of parental bribery.

By some fortunate and rare twist of fate, my husband actually got half a day’s R&R to make up for losing his Saturday to the US Army. This allowed me the uncommon luxury of retreating to my bedroom for about an hour and a half to eat my lunch and read a book while I listened to some low-volume music. Despite the fact that I could still hear the boisterous songs of Henson’s Fraggles in the living room, it was like taking a mini vacation.

The miracles didn’t seem like they had any intention of stopping. I managed to spiff up the kitchen just in time to wreck it again by working on my hummus recipe. With a successful result there it was time to make pita bread, because hummus isn’t really a stand-alone sort of dish. Just an aside…

1 16oz can of chick peas/garbanzo beans, rinsed and placed in a blender with
¾ to 1 cup of water, added slowly while pulsing the legumes until it forms a lumpy paste
2 to 3 tsp Bragg’s liquid amino acids or lemon juice to taste
salt and
2 to 3 cloves of garlic and I promise this will be plenty plus
3 to 4 tsp tahini and
a splash of olive oil just blend it until it doesn’t feel like you’re eating a tongue anymore

The child, having been up since roughly 7am, took one of her bi-annual naps (and there was much rejoicing) while I made pita bread, cleaned the kitchen again, and wrecked it by making asparagus, a noodle side, and pork loin for dinner. My husband helped start and extinguish a fire and fixed every mistake I made with the pork loin, God bless him. She woke up just before dinner was done cooking.

After my husband went to bed, my daughter and I saw up watching movies and writing novels (respectively) until about three a.m. In a moment of premonition, as if knowing something terrible would happen between evening and morning, I wrote the first half of the blog. I managed to put my daughter to bed without getting kicked in the face by her protest-tantrum, and I shortly followed suit.

I had ominous dreams all night. In one of them, I was back in school attending some sort of international media-frenzied political conference. I had to write arguments and prepare briefs and I can’t even begin to explain the horrors I felt. In another dream we figured out how the dog was escaping from our back yard—because somehow there was no fence attached to the house ‘round the left side. In actuality, that side of the house is the other half of the duplex, but in my dream it made perfect sense. I was trying to wrangle the dog and also save the cat from an unknown neighbor’s attack falcon (I could start a whole new blog just about my dreams, believe me) when I awoke with a start to m husband opening and closing the front door.

This event occurs three times a day at my house: first when my husband comes home from Physical Training around 7:30 in the morning. It happens again if and when he comes home for lunch during the day, at around 11:45, and it happens again when he gets home in the evening. My level of exhaustion convinced me that it was the first of these events. The sound of my husband chastising my daughter caused a panic in me, and I got up, checking the clock on the way to the hall. 11:23—he was home early for lunch.

I don’t mean to brag on my terrible parenting or anything, but when you’re bad at something you just can’t hide all that away. Apparently, my daughter has the capacity to move without making any sound louder than that of a key in a front door, seeing as that noise was what eventually awakened me. I have this mental image of her tiptoeing around the living room in a pink version of Cruise’s Mission Impossible getup with one of those decibel measuring devices they have in all those jewel heist movies these days. I don’t know how long she was awake, but she managed to:

• eat an entire package of Orbit gum
• feed the dog two envelopes of liver training treats (see if I can ever get him to sit on command again)
• locate the scissors and after sampling and disapproving of the cinnamon flavored Orbit, cut every stick into tiny pieces instead
• fill the dog’s already full food bowl to overflowing and
• eat twenty or thirty cherry cordial filled Hershey Kisses.

She confessed to a whole gang of other crimes, but neither could I understand her nor find any more evidence of wrongdoing. She cleaned up the overzealous dog food while my husband and I eliminated the gum wrappers and he talked to her about the amputationary (amputative? amputationic? none of these words are in my spellchecker) powers of Henckles kitchen shears. Afterward he went for a lie down and she and I had a little chat about gum and stomachs and seven years. She seemed totally unimpressed. What it all comes down to, people, is that soon People Magazine will release a special collector’s cover featuring America’s Next Top Mama and I will definitely be one of them.

Get out your cell phones, America, I’m going for Idol next.