I'm a bird; I'm a plane . . .

Like most moms I have a secret identity. Sure, we moms look normal and perfectly mild-mannered, but we're good at controlling images. Nobody ever got to be a mom because she let it all hang out. Well, not my type of mom, anyway. Trust me: my type of mom keeps it very carefully covered and buttoned up. I learned sometime in college--I was a slow learner in this area--that one had to conceal the more outrageous aspects of one's personality. Crazy Wild and Wacky Woman? Just keep a lid on it until you're back at the dorm. Looney Tooney Eats-Balloonies? Save it for those who really appreciate you. Sail beneath the radar; keep a low profile; eventually someone will fall for it.

(Note that this is not advice for those people who are living on the outer edge of social acceptance. Far be it from me to advise those who may or may not be experiencing personal anomie. It's just what I discovered for myself. Go ahead. Pick your own path; follow your own road to social and personal acceptance. Just remember that standing on the steps of the dorm and belting out the lyrics to I Will Survive may bring you attention, but it won't get you any kind of desirable date. An interesting date--as in "let's write it in the journal so I can show it to my future daughters and warn them about guys like this"--possibly, but not something to build a permanent relationship on. I should know.)

Anyway, I stowed my crazy college self away and assumed the role of wife and mom many years ago. That's my public persona, the one the ward and the neighborhood get to see when I peek out of my burrow. It's what I use when I go about the daily business of life. Face it, nobody whips out a secret identity to do the shopping, unless their average person clothes are in the wash and the cape and leotard are the only clean things left. Except if they're Batman, who I think secretly gets a huge kick out of the whole costume thing. Must be all that latex. But moms save the good stuff for when it's really important.

My secret identity is, well, I haven't ever named my secret identity. If I ever do, I'll probably go for something like MOMRA, Contender with Chaos, or maybe THE MELINATOR, Doom-Slayer of Sass. It's a work in progress. I'm sure I'll come up with something good about two days after I write this. Suggestions would be appreciated and carefully considered.

The costume is simple: pajamas and reading glasses. My secret identity has a relaxed side I don't display in public. I'm probably the only person in the world whose super secret alter ego has less style than their mild-mannered selves.

That's the whole idea. People out there see the organized me, the on-the-ball me, the yes-I-can-do-this-and-forty-two-other-things-at-the -same-time me. They see me waltzing (one, two, three, one, two, three, dip) through my seemingly innocent life with my skirt and appropriately coordinated top on and they think I'm--well, amazing sounds braggy, how about competent? Some people honestly think I am a put-together, well-thought-out, non-safety-pinned-together type of person. [Snort.] I've even heard myself described as "creative", "energetic", and even--hold on to your hat--"talented". [Snort, snort.] I've worked hard to create this fiction, and it's pretty convincing.

The real me--the me who actually lives and breathes, as opposed to the image everyone thinks they see--is a person who would like to do nothing more than lie on the couch all day and contemplate the absolute fabulousness of good mystery novels and pop-tarts. My idea of paradise is having all the time I want to do nothing of vital importance. (Not nothing, just not anything necessary to life or its continuation beyond the occasional heartbeat.) I dream of a whole 24-hour day when no one expects me to do anything. That dream has never been completely fulfilled. I've approached it on certain sick days, and there was the whole forced bed-rest during pregnancy thing--but those are cheap imitations of the real deal, which would require serious strength of will to ignore the tearful pleas of my children to feed and entertain them while not medically required to so ignore.

Someday I will shed this aura of ability, this role of reliability. I will admit to all the world that Yes! I am the reason junk writing and junk food were invented! No, I don't actually enjoy mopping floors! My spices are sorted but not alphabetized! I haven't dusted the bookcases in two months! I convinced my husband to clean the bathrooms during my second pregnancy and never took them back!

My day will come; every superhero gets outted eventually. In the meantime, don't spread it around. Every mom is entitled to a few secrets.

I'll bare my soul, but don't lay a hand on my stuff!

I took the required biology classes in high school and college. (And passed--whew!) I've attended the marriage relations class at church. I've even studied an anatomy book or two in my time. (Who knew the spleen was so interesting?) Those sources--informative though they were--only skimmed the surface of the true difference between men and women. Because the truth is not merely that we are physically different, or that men have the incredible ability to have nothing going on in their crania for hours at a time. (Which baffles me. I mean, Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." So most men are imaginary, apparently. That would explain my dating record in college.) The real difference, my friends, lies in our dissimilar acceptance of junk piles.

Admit it, women--you have one. It's the stuff on the convenient horizontal surface which gets shuffled, stashed, sorted, and shifted, but which never quite goes away. Unless the in-laws,the Relief Society president , or other such worthies are visiting, of course. The items may change, but the pile remains. Permanently. Indelibly. Ineradicably. A monument to life's endless tasks and the stuff that accompanies them.

But, see, that's the key to how women are different from men. Women--and I'm basing this rant on the fact that I am, in fact, a woman, as are my sisters, mother, and quite a few of my friends, and we all act similarly--have ONE pile (large and unwieldy though it may be). Men--my husband, father, brother, husbands of friends, this is a scientific sampling!--have multiple mini-piles, just as permanent and ineradicable, in lots of places throughout, and sometimes outside, the residence. There's the mail pile, which becomes the papers-to-sort-through pile. There's the bottom-of-the-stairs-to-take-upstairs-when-I'm-going-that-way pile. There's its mirror-image twin at the top of the stairs. There may be others, depending on available flat horizontal surfaces and wifely tolerance. The items in the piles may vary by season or work load, but the piles remain. They are a fact of life no one told you about in those entertaining lectures during P.E.

Still, I write here not to snark, but to confess. It's good for the soul, if not beneficial for the blog.

My pile is on the dining room table. That's the flat surface which hasn't been used within its intended purpose for over a year now because of life and its intersection with flimsy excuses. It's a convenient spot: right off the kitchen, large-ish, easily accessible. And the fact that it can be seen by anyone who enters the front door is a real bonus. I'd like to think it gives my home the appearance of a place where Important, Interesting Things get done. Or maybe it just makes me look like a slob. Potato, potahto.

In the spirit of soul-cleansing confession, I will now reveal for all the world--or at least the minuscule portion which will actually read this--what is on the table of dread and doom:

• a Christmas cactus, because I wanted the table to look pretty. The obvious contradiction in reality is not lost on me.
• two solar ovens constructed for and used by the Young Women during their pre-camp certification. They will go downstairs just as soon as I get rid of the ginormous birdcage down there. Anybody want a birdcage?
• a small pile of discharge papers from my recent visit to the hospital. Should I shred them? Save them for tax purposes? Add them to my personal history? It's a dilemma.
• a cardboard box of things I keep thinking would be interesting to use in our homeschooling next year. The receptacle changes, but this is one feature of the table which will always be with me.
• blue and white star-spangled ribbon to be used at camp, and which will probably be taken upstairs to join the rest of the camp supplies today, fingers crossed.
• an orange folder with some unused YW info. Or it may be empty. I haven't looked at it in a few weeks. It has achieved a certain junk pile maturity which gives it almost total immunity. I'm thinking of redecorating the room around it next time. Sort of really shabby chic.
• a copy of the Church News which my counselor gave me because it had articles dealing with YW stuff. I need to stash it in my horrifically overly-large YW-stuff binder, which is residing in my huge black bag of doom on a chair next to the laden table.
• Tracking sheets from YW meeting yesterday, so I know how the YW are doing with their Book of Mormon reading, and which will be discarded as soon as I enter them into the computer, which I will do when I'm done writing this. Probably.
• some containers purchased with the intent that they would be used for my gardening lesson at Enrichment meeting last Thursday, but which never found fulfilment because I was stuck in the hospital instead.

That's it. For the moment. I'd better get it cleaned off, because I'm going to DI today, and I'm sure I'll find something that will need time on the table. Think of it not as messiness, but as an exercise in stuff-rotation.

We're Baaaaaack!

I wanted to write last night--really I did. My brain tried to talk me into it.

"C'mon, Melia, you'll feel great once you get going; it's only the beginning that hurts a but. Just think of how accomplished you'll feel afterward, and you could really use a chance to burn off some frustration." Oddly enough, my brain tries the same speech when it wants me to exercise, with identical results. That's why no entry was posted last night, and it's also why I'm still carrying baby fat from a pregnancy ten years ago. (Apparently it's the last fifty pounds that are the hardest to lose. Who knew?) My brain, it seems, is a poor motivational speaker.

The brain was willing, but the rest of me didn't give a flying fig.

Actually, for a flying fig I might have made an effort, but alas, no figs, and therefore no altitude gain from said nonexistent fruit. (Note to brain: Next spring, if you still hold out optimism to get me on the treadmill, remind me to plant as fig tree first. Apparently I'll do anything for seedy purplish fruit with unsuspected aviation talents.)

Still, fig or no fig, why would I have passed up a chance to broadcast my every insignificant thought? (I have no pretensions about my place in the grand scheme of the collective cultural consciousness--the blog name says it all.) After all, it's not like I've shown any hesitancy before in commenting endlessly on the trivial minutiae of Melia. Ah, but this time I had a good excuse. His name is Anders, and he's a tiny cranky tiger.

I thought he was just getting feistier when he punched me in the face from three a.m. until five-thirty. (Perhaps he's having extra-tigerish dreams. Awwww, isn't that cute.)

I passed it off as grooming reminder and nothing else when he spent an entire evening clawing the skin off my chin. (Time to trim those nails. Dear me, how quickly they grow.)

But when he spent an entire sacrament meeting asleep I knew something was wrong. This is the boy who spent the previous Sunday using the sweet sister who sits behind us as his personal jumpy seat. This is the child who has to be pulled out from under the table twenty times in one dinner--not bad when you consider that our average family meal only lasts ten minutes. (They're polite, but chewing just isn't their style.) This is a baby who will not quit. Until Sunday.

And of course, he had to do it the day before his father left for a four-day trip to New York. He has timing. (Take your pick as to the antecedent on that sentence; it applies equally well to both.)

So I've spent the last three days trying to keep the older three children occupied, organized, and on schedule while constantly jiggling up and down to soothe a crabby tiger. It has not been pretty. Avoid the mental image if you can.--Sorry, too late.

I dosed with Tylenol. I administered ibuprofen. I encouraged liquids--thank goodness that's the accepted wisdom, because encouraging a steak dinner would be impossible at this age. Monday night I got desperate for relief--his and mine--and wrapped him in wet towels. We spent a soggy, sleepless night on the couch. I believe we dozed between one and two a.m.

It seems I don't function well with that little sleep.

So there was no way in a small town in Michigan that I could have constructed a coherent sentence yesterday. (Yeah, I know, it's never stopped me before. But this time it was exhaustion rather than just mental catharsis that I had to consider. I was being kind to everyone involved.)

Today, though, is another story. I had a full TWO hours of sleep last night, and Anders' fever broke sometime around three a.m. We're both back in action.

Roberto owes me BIG TIME for this week.

Feeling fine and back to chewing on innocent insectoids.

Anders isn't too bad. either.