My dryer isn’t working. It was making a squeaky noise, I think I mentioned, and we had our contractor take a look at it. I kinda thought, eh, annoying noise, but it still dries the clothes! Carry on! Those in the know, however, said, FIRE DANGER! Turn that thing off RIGHT NOW! And so I was overruled.

As promised, I am now carting wet laundry to my mother’s house to dry until such a time as a Specialized Dryer Repair Professional can determine exactly how much our dryer is worth to us.

Until then, reasons I don’t enjoy being dryer-less:

Occasionally my mother likes to use her own appliances.

I have three kids. The baby one uses cloth diapers. We make a lot of laundry.

Wet clothes require laundry baskets to transport. Or at least really large plastic bags. I could use about six more laundry baskets.

I don’t have a clothesline. I understand that I could procure a clothesline, though I don’t really know what would be involved. (Buy a length of rope? Staple gun? Maybe this should be someone else’s job.) Also, it’s raining.

I would go ahead and give up washing the clothes altogether, but I can’t convince the kids to wear stuff more than once. (Brush the mud off the knees! No problem! Finger paint? Adds character! No problem! Spaghetti sauce? Oh, all right, put it in the dirty clothes basket.) Sigh. I think I better go load more wet towels into the trunk of my car.

Abigail, this weekend: “It took SO LONG to get to Saturday! Almost the whole week!”

Why yes, yes it did. Especially since the children had been asking whether it was time to go to the party every ten minutes since LAST Saturday. Finally, finally, FINALLY it was time.

We went. At the appropriate time on the appropriate day, and with the appropriately wrapped gift. Amazing, I tell you. We all had a lovely time; there were tasty morsels of all sorts, and games for the kids. Plus the munchkins got to drink juice out of pouches, which is pretty much the most exciting thing on the planet.

At the end of the evening, as Dane and I buckled the littler ones into the car, Abigail sank into her own seat and sighed, “It was a jolly good party.”

And then we put her back into the Dickens novel from whence she came.

There was a time when wearing a black shirt would have seemed like a good idea. It would go with everything! Even be slimming, maybe. And the color was so forgiving—willing to hide the occasional splash of coffee or spot of ink. Gone are the days, I tell you. Gone are the days.

Six months ago, wearing a black top would have been an invitation to the baby: Spit up on me! Today, I am fairly certain it calls to my children: Wipe your nose on my sleeve! Smear oatmeal on me! Spill paste here! Yes, clothing speaks in a frequency inaudible to adult ears, but my children, they hear it. They hear it well.

I don’t even know what this gunk is on my shoulder. I think I don’t want to know. I do know that I can see it, so I’m thinking it’s time to change the shirt. Possibly it is time to take a shower. And to invent a more crud-resistant color.

Toddlers, they are messy creatures. I had forgotten.

Audrey seems to have become a full-fledged toddler overnight, what with the walking and the trying to use baby signs and the babbling at us in frustration (“I SAID, ma ma ma ba da ba! Don’t you people listen? Whaddaya mean you can’t understand me? Waaaah!”).

And my, can the girl make a mess. Anything in drawers, on shelves, or otherwise within her reach, she’s happy to relocate to the floor for you. I’m not even sure there’s any point in picking the stuff up, since she just pulls it all back out again. Better to live with kitchen-towel-covered floors, if you ask me. Which you didn’t. Just consider it a lifestyle suggestion. Mm-hmm, that’s right. Who needs Martha Stewart when you’ve got me, telling you to leave dry goods strewn over your carpets?

Yeah, that’s about what I thought.

How your weekend might go if you were Dane:

Friday night your wife will inform you that you’re all going to a party on Saturday. She says you already knew, though; she’s just reminding you. So helpful, that wife of yours!

Saturday morning, you’ll pile the kids in the car and head to the local family-owned toy store to choose a gift to bring to the aforementioned party. It is possible that your wife will complain about the new store owners, who have a tendency to tell children not to touch things (it’s a TOY STORE) and who apparently feel that restocking depleted merchandise is underrated. (Of course, the old owners pulled some slimy moves on other local business owners, so your wife wasn’t such a fan of them, either. Possibly she is just whiny.)

Upon arrival at the toy store, you will have to buy new shoes for your own kids (Because they’re on clearance! And they’re See Kai Run! Can’t not buy!) in addition to the planned-on gift. But don’t worry, you have plenty of time before the party starts.

When you get home, there will be all sorts of Lunch Eating and Baby Nursing and Nap Taking Activity, but no gift wrapping or other party-getting-ready. At some point you will ask what the plan is; how exactly are we getting to the party on time? But your wife, she will be unconcerned with this whole concept of Having a Plan.

You will realize that less than an hour remains until the party is scheduled to begin. You like to be on time. Punctuality is very important to you, one might say. Possibly the phrase “knickers in a bunch” comes to mind. Your wife, not so much with the punctuality. Though she tries.

But when she suggests that you all work together to tidy up the house in this last half-hour before heading out the door (So that we come home to a clean house! Everyone likes to come home to a clean house!), steam may in fact come out of your ears, and you will probably feel the need to put your foot down. No, you will insist, No. No, no, NO, we must NOT tidy up the house. We must dress the children, and get them all use the bathroom. We must pack a diaper bag. We must WRAP THE GIFT, for goodness sake. But there is no need (no! need!) for us to tidy up the house.

You will, technically, be right about this, and after a mad scurrying about, the children will be freshly scrubbed, clean clothed, and buckled securely in their car seats right on time. With the wrapped gift and everything.

Instead of buckling herself in, your wife will choose this moment to run back into the house to grab the party invitation. Because it would not be the first time you all headed out to an event before realizing you didn’t know precisely where we were supposed to be, or when you were supposed to arrive, or just how long you were supposed to stay. You will not be exactly surprised, then, when a queer look comes over her face as she asks what today’s date is.

“I’m a dork,” she will say, because the party is, in fact, NEXT Saturday. “A loveable one, though,” you will console her. And then you will have to throw a little ice-cream-and-movie party for your own children, who for some reason do not find Mommy’s error to be even remotely amusing.

And? Best part? You will get to do it all over again THIS weekend! Oh well. At least you already have a gift.

Owen, eying his lunch today: “Are elbow noodles made of people skin?”

We had the outside of our house repainted today (what is it, home repair week around here?). This involved having all our doors and windows covered and taped. While we were INSIDE the house. Because where else were we going to go, really?

When the painters finally took the plastic wrap stuff off one of the doors, I had to a strong urge to run out into the middle of the street. Just because I could. But some number of children (3) would probably have followed me, plus I would have had to walk directly past the still-painting painters to get back into the house, so I just sat down and stared out the door for a while with the littler two on my lap. Good times.

We spent the afternoon felting soap. (Do not make fun of me, I happen to know that a great many of you are crafty, too. Even if you make more practical things than felted soap.) (And yes, I should totally post a picture, but I do not have a functional digital camera.) When Dane came home, the kids made him go immediately to examine their creation. “It’s soap, Daddy!” They shrieked. “Soap covered in wool felt!”

“I can see that,” he told them cheerfully, then whispered to me, “But WHY? WHY did you cover soap with wool felt?” Again: Just because I could. Or rather, because the kids could. With almost no help. And it takes a loooong while. Which is helpful when you’ve been sealed in your own home with painter’s tape.

Hey, guess what? The kids got new closet doors today. Exciting, right? Well, it is to us. Our contractor called this morning to tell us the doors were in, and to see if he could stop by with his crew to install them. Our contractor happens to be my stepfather. And the crew? Also known as my brother. Hooray! Come on over, guys!

I’m pretty sure we’re his favorite clients, by the way. Oh, you’re here to install the closet doors? Awesome. Do you also want to touch-up paint? Cool! Could you find the paint first? It’s in the loft above the garage. I think. Hey, and while you’re here, will you take a look at my dryer? It started making a horrible noise and stopped drying things yesterday. Also, it seems to be leaking grease onto the clothes. That sounds like a quick fix, right?

And can the kids follow you around while you do all that? And measure themselves with your measuring tape? And hold up your level to see if it’s bigger than they are? (It is.) They’ll probably ask you eighty bazillion questions about what you’re doing—but that’ll help keep you focused, right? So they’re helping!

And! Just to make it more fun to work here? If you can’t fix the dryer? Don’t worry about it! I’ll just bring my wet clothes over to YOUR house to dry! I have your home phone number. I will call you.

His favorite clients, I tell you. Favorite clients who don’t pay. And never, ever go away.

The computer seems to be working. For the moment, anyway. All files have been backed up. I think.

The rental turned out to be Finding Neverland, a happy little movie about death and imagination. We quite enjoyed it. Owen woke up coughing right at the end, so he sat in my lap in the rocking chair and saw the Peter Pan staging. He didn’t remember it specifically the next morning, but we had to play pirates all day long.

However, as I haven’t used up my whine quota yet today: It claimed to be “Inspired by True Events.” You know, as opposed to all those False Events one hears so much about these days. Is there some rule that fictionalized memoir-type movies have to make up their own descriptive phrase? Really, had “Based on a True Story” and “Inspired by Actual Events” been so overused as to have lost all meaning?

Up next: “Based on Actual Occurrences Involving Real People, Except the Parts There is No Record Of, Which We Imagined or Invented (Out Of Necessity). A Few Scenes Were Entirely Made Up, For Plot Development Purposes. Also, Some Names Have Been Changed.”