I have been utterly exhausted for the last week or so. The kids aren’t keeping me up at night, I’m just having trouble getting into bed at a reasonable hour. And I’m not even accomplishing much of anything in that time—just hanging out, being awake. Hooray! Way to use my time wisely.

Not related to my exhaustion at all is the fact that Owen’s birthday will be this weekend. He’ll be three, finally, though of course he already thinks he IS. One of Dane’s sisters gave him a birthday gift yesterday, because she’s going to a friend’s wedding instead of to our birthday fiesta. (Seriously, couldn’t her friend have planned that a little better? Never mind that I didn’t schedule our party until last week, that’s entirely irrelevant.)

So we walk in the door to see her yesterday and she says immediately, “Sorry in advance about the size, but I’ve got a gift for Owen!” Always a good start. He tears into the thing, which is longer than he is tall, and discovers… “A tanker! Mama, it’s a TANKER!” It’s a dairy truck from Braum’s, brought home from a trip to visit relatives in Arkansas. Complete with pictures of cows on the side. Wow.

As you can imagine, he had to sleep with the thing last night (because what says “bedtime” like a two and a half foot long metal dairy tanker? Nothing I can think of). And THEN. And THEN! When the sun began to rise this morning, Owen leaped out of bed because The Tanker! The Tanker MISSED HIM! The Tanker (and it sounds like that, The Tanker, when he says it) NEEDS to be pushed up and down the hallway at top speed with a “vroom-vroom-vroom-eeek!” noise while everyone else is sleeping! At almost five o’clock in the morning!

Dane and I spent two hours dazedly trying to help Owen understand that it was still Laying Down Time, that Mommy and Daddy will NOT SURVIVE the day if we start it at 5 AM with vroom noise, and that The Tanker IS STILL SLEEPY.

Obviously, our efforts were fruitful and he went right back to sleep.

Oh, wait, no. Eventually I kicked Dane into consciousness and told him to go start a Bob the Builder movie before Owen woke the girls. Except—surprise! Audrey was already awake. And thus began my day.

I think over the course of the day I consumed a sum total of 6 chocolate cupcakes (baked last night, in practice for this weekend’s birthday party, of course) and a mug of green tea with more honey than any non-bee creature ought ever to consume. Maybe I’ll make some real dinner after the kids go to bed. Which really ought to happen about NOW, given that they’ve mostly been up since five o’clock this morning and it’s now 8:00 at night.

Wish me luck.

Dane and I have been talking (er, whining and complaining) about this miserable interesting weather.

It gives me headaches. Not the talking, the weather. I don’t know why, exactly, but it does. In addition to all the regular stuff (you know, the sweating and the makeup melting off my face and the inability to sleep because it’s too hot. Again, if any of that’s not normal, there’s really no need to point it out).

So I mention to him that in order to keep the head throbbing to a manageable level this week, I’ve required a little caffeine-and-Tylenol cocktail to get through the afternoon.

What he heard, apparently, was: “Blah blah blah, COCKTAIL TO GET THROUGH THE AFTERNOON.”

“What?” He splutters. “You’re drinking cocktails while I’m at work?!”

My first thought: Do you not read other mommy blogs, man? Because alcohol is kind of a recurring theme, and no one ever splutters, “WHAT?” after reading this stuff. At least I don’t think they do. I’ve never seen anyone do it.

My second thought: How nice that you listen when I speak! Especially when I’m giving you critical details about my health. You know, the kind that you might need to relate to an EMT should I collapse one day: “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but the heat HAS been giving her terrible headaches!” (Okay, that’s not likely to be relevant. But still.)

My third thought: Do you see a juiced lime around here somewhere? Dirty margarita glass? No? I thought not.

What I actually said, with one eyebrow raised and a bemused expression: “A TYLENOL AND CAFFEINE COCKTAIL. Meaning, I wash down a couple of Tylenol with a mug of iced green tea. Because the caffeine makes the Tylenol more effective, and ALSO keeps me from falling asleep.”

To which he replied: “Ah.”

But really, if I WAS spending my afternoons drinking, don’t you think he would have noticed? Maybe?

So. Yesterday. We dropped the kids off at a friend’s house (with lunch and changes of clothes and bathing suits and towels! Not packed by me!) and then drove aimlessly around town, looping around and changing lanes and generally trying to keep me in the dark about where we were going until we made a u-turn and—ta-daaa!—we were at the chiropractor. “Hooray! An adjustment!” I said (okay, really I said, “I am totally wearing the wrong outfit to get an adjustment,” but I meant the hooray thing).

But no! Dane had scheduled a massage for me, at the chiropractor’s office (Oooooh, massage! Nice. I could VERY much use a massage!). But! No again! When we walked in, the receptionist said she would call and see where the masseuse was (always a good sign!). After a terse phone conversation in Spanish involving the words ‘ahora’ and ‘cumpleanos,’ she told us that the masseuse had had an emergency and we’d have to reschedule.

So we went and picked up lunch instead, to eat in our very quiet house. Except we found that our very quiet house was full of very quiet stuff all over the floor. And would best be defined not so much as a ‘house’ but rather as a ‘pit of smothering heat.’ The stuff all over the floor led to an incident involving me accidentally sending a toy skidding across the kitchen and into a patch of sticky nastygoo, which led to Dane deciding to mop the floor while the kids were out (do we know how to have fun, or what?). And then we fled the scorching, messy hovel we call home.

We went to a little chocolate shop where—unbeknownst to me—they have begun serving chocolate desserts in addition to the tiny expensive delicious truffles. They also have indoor, air conditioned seating. We thought we might decide to live there forever. And ever. And eat nothing but chocolate. Forever.

But, responsible parents that we are, we left. We went shopping at little boutique shops filled with Stuff You Must Not Knock Over (Owen! Abigail! That means you!) and then picked up our kids.

When we got back to the oven home, I had a call from the masseuse-less office telling me they had fired the woman. I mostly said, “But I—I didn’t—No, I—It’s just—I mean—” in between the many apologies and the “No, not because of you. Not because of this. Well, yes, because of this, but not ONLY this…”

And later, when my mother, who lives nearby and uses the same chiropractor, called to schedule an appointment for herself, they apologized to HER for several minutes, even though she had NO IDEA what they were talking about. I think she forgave them.

And that was my birthday! Well, most of it. All the stuff that’s fit to print, anyhow! (Don’t you love how I lead you to imagine that the unfit to print things were risqué, when actually they were dull, sweltering, and involved kids refusing to fall asleep? No extra charge for that. That’s just the kind of minimal entertainment I offer around here.)

Did I mention it’s my birthday today? Still not quite 30. I’m embracing the label “thirty-ish” though, possibly because if I start with it now, I can hang on to it for a few years. And we all know I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to think about how old I am every single year.

Dane planned a lovely day of surprises for me, including him taking the day off work, getting up early with the kids, picking up bagels for breakfast, taking the kids to play at a friend’s house all day, and driving me around town from one delightful thing to the next! Things he didn’t plan on that happened anyway included us mopping the kitchen floor while the kids were out of the house and some poor woman getting fired from her job for offending me (yes, really! Not at my request or anything! I was just The Last Straw). And now you can’t wait to read more about THAT, right? Right?

But it’s STILL my birthday, so I think I’ll go enjoy more of it right now, and tell you all about it later.

I need this heat to go away so Audrey can WEAR some of her tiny cute baby clothes before she grows out of them. I just put away a bunch of laundry, and let me tell you, that girl’s closet is exploding with baby adorability. And yet she goes naked. All day, every day. (Well, she wears diapers. I’m not THAT committed to cooling off.)

She’s also figured out how to grab “toys” (read: hair, used Kleenex, clean laundry, and the occasional rattle) to play with, and seems to have entered that stage where they play using their feet as much as their hands.

Except I am not entirely sure that IS a stage. If you know for sure, please enlighten me. Unless it happens to be a stage only baby baboons go through or something. In that case, you really don’t need to tell me. Feel free to just keep it to yourself.

Dane came home last night before bedtime! Always good. And he was just in time to explain to Owen that We Don’t Hit, But We Do Brush Our Teeth. Also good, as my previous explanations on these topics were not getting through.

And this morning we’ve already built with blocks and painted! I filled the kitchen sink with water to wash the paintbrushes (which you already know was a foolish plan)—about half ended up on the floor, and the other half ended up purple. Abigail wanted to bottle the purple water to sell as perfume: “We can put it in pretty containers! And label it! It can say ‘purple water to make people smell like paint water’! And we can put it in the store and sell it!” Because who wouldn’t want to smell like paint water? And (assuming there was such a person) they certainly couldn’t be expected to make their own!

And now there’s a lot of jumping on the bed going on with assorted hollers and whoops, and I probably should get in there soon…

It wasn’t so much a better day yesterday. No worse, either, though, so that’s good, I guess. Maybe it’s just the heat turning us all into crazies. Maybe.

We visited with my sister for a while. She’s a student, and wanted some “help” reviewing for her math final. I was all, “Yeah! I love math!” (because I do) and “No problem! I took a year of multivariate calculus in college!” (because I did) and “I can totally explain stuff!” (because there was a textbook that would tell me what to do).

Except, hello? The girl needed no assistance. She blogs about how she hates math, how she’s no good at math, how the math class is frustrating (and, yes, it does sound like her professor sucks), and then she turns around and reads the problem and says something like, “All it wants me to do is PROVE the functions are conjugates!” with a snort.

And it pretty much went on like that the whole time. She would say, “Okay, here’s the problem…” And I would read the instruction and say, “So it wants you to prove, um…” And her pencil would whip across her graph paper and she’d say, “So ‘f’ of ‘g’ of ‘x’ DOES in fact equal ‘g’ of ‘f’ of ‘x,’ as they both simplify to ‘x’—perfect!” And I’d kind of nod importantly as though I had given some actual input.

So nice to be needed.

Yesterday culminated in me replying to a cheerful “The phone’s ringing!” with, “Really? Is it? I didn’t notice. Maybe my ears aren’t working. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear it from over here in DISASTERLAND!”

So we’re hoping for a better day today. And Dane has to work a little later than usual tonight, so if by “better” I mean “dragging on and never ending,” it’s almost SURE to be.

Yesterday was my brother’s birthday (not the brother with the baby, the other one. This one lives much closer). It was also, coincidentally, Bastille Day in France. Every year Dane and I plan to celebrate by razing something to the ground and getting drunk, but we have yet to actually carry through. Not sure whether my brother would really appreciate the sentiment. Hmm.

Hey! No wonder we’re all miserably hot at my house—there’s a heat wave in California! Record highs! No fraudulent rolling blackouts, but still! Very hot!

This is what happens when you have no television and you never check local news or weather on the internet (even though you absolutely thought you would when you agreed to get rid of the television). You think, Gee, I guess I really hate summer! That’s peculiar. I wonder why I don’t remember hating summer any of the other twenty-odd years of my life? Maybe I only THOUGHT I liked summer because of the whole no-school-in-summer thing. Wait, that can’t be right, I haven’t been in school for sort of a long time now…But this is really miserable. I guess I just hate summer. Huh. That kind of sucks—I dislike a whole quarter of the year. And my birthday’s in the summer, too! Aw, man!

And then one day you’re scanning the Yahoo! news headlines, and bam! There’s you’re explanation, right there: Heat wave. California. Ah-HA! Turns out I DON’T hate summer. I only hate HEAT WAVES! So glad we clarified that.