The Angrivated Show: This is my circus

Here’s a glimpse into just a regular of day in Circus Angrivation, aka: my home with these people I call family. Also, a little backstory that’ll be useful a bit farther in, the blog aliases for my kiddos are based upon their own nicknames here at home, or else I’d really get confused. Somehow with Stinx being “the baby” & all, she has enough nicknames & extended forms thereof no thanks to the hubs, that I could fill a notebook full, organized by the timeframe they were used in. The current favorite is StinkToopfs which seems to bed used more than her actual name. Don’t ask, because frankly, I don’t remember how he made it up other than using her own adorable pronounciation of the word ‘tooth’. Happy readings now of a day in the life of this angrivated mom!

Any other averaged temperature day in a Great Lakes winter, my kids will stubbornly park their butts indoors & refuse to go out unless bribery is used. Today, of course, when school was canceled for temperatures of ten below zero (Fahrenheit), the boys decide they absolutely must go outside to play. They’ve been warned the few times they did venture out that they cannot go in the backyard grass area, only the driveway. It’s winter & we have a dog who turned our grassy area into first a mud wrestling pit & finally the pond that it became with all the early winter rain. ‘Nuff said, right? When old man winter decided to settle in for good, that flooded yard turned it into an ice pond.

Sure enough, not even twenty minutes later they stumble in, unable to bear the thirty-five below wind chill whipping across their faces any longer. As they pile into the living room, the hubs & I pick up the distinct stench of dog crap following them. Apparently, they did not listen. So we send them to go shower, telling the one who wasn’t going first to strip down to his boxers while he waits so the stench doesn’t spread, & as they walked off, I grumbled, “How didn’t you realize that the dog’s poop has dissolved into the water back there, it didn’t magically pick itself up after all?” It’s The Dunce who turns around & answers, “There’s no water full of dog poop back there?! It’s just ice, moh-ohm!” Yup, there he goes, living up to the nickname, AGAIN! I actually facepalmed myself trying to rattle my brain for some sort of understanding. I know damn well from the extensive homework monitoring I have to do with my lazy, crazy boys, that he covered the whole Solid, Liquid, Gas/Permeable, Dissolvable, Osmosis unit in science already, retouching on what they already learned last year!!!

Before I could even respond to the kid, Stinx comes running into the room screeching something completely incoherent in advanced toddlerspeak. As soon as the stench hit her nostrils, she stopped dead in her tracks with a wrinkled nose & look of pure disgust on her face. “What’s wrong, Stinx,” my husband says to her, trying to stifle a laugh. “Eeewww! It pell gwoss, dah-d!”, she squealed. So I ask, what’s unknowingly going to be, the golden question of the day: What does it smell like?
“It pell like bitcsh. Bitcsh, BITCSH, BITCSH!” Everyone started cracking up before she was even finished with her no-nonsense declaration. I choked on the swig of pop I had stupidly taken after asking the 3yo an interpretative question of opinion. Don’t know how she knows what a “bitcsh” smells like…. Wait, just a minute there! My dog is a female, isn’t she? This kid’s way too smart for her own good! She certainly got me good on that one.

The Pot Stirrer, Bean just couldn’t resist this opportunity to turn the attention spotlight back around onto herself. She comes running down the hallway, bursting into the middle of the living room with a crazy leap of sorts, then breaks out into this Iggy Azaleas type rap & dance routine about her Papa G-Stache (as in mustache, because her Papa’s got a Tom Sellek wannabe one). It was all fun & games until she broke out the twerking…. my 6yo ain’t twerking in this house over my dead body! Of course she’s not happy having to stop so she starts getting sassy in a spoiled rotten diva kinda way, telling me that I can’t keep her body from moving because only her brain has control of that. I’ve been schooled again by yet another one of my offspring. Thankfully, I was saved by the bell hubs telling me I should probably head to the grocery store before it’s too late & I get stuck in rush hour traffic.

Off I go with Stinx, the only willing victim, to gather foods of nutritious value from the grocery market, that will only be rejected with disgust once they’ve been plated & served.  We don’t even make it past the produce & into the cereal aisle, when we bump into a very sweet elderly lady who I’ve helped reach things off high shelves for her several times in the past. I actually have developed quite the soft spot in my heart for her, because she reminds me of my dearest grandmother, the greatest role model I’ve ever had for being a mother & wife, gone  just over a year now. She even says pretty as perty, just as my grandma did. During our previous encounters, I’ve been alone or with The Dunce, so she has never met my fiery little princess, Stinx, before. After greeting me, she turned to give her attention to Stinx who was trying to climb a pallet full of bags of sugar behind me. (She kicked a whole in one with her boot accidentally & I  pretended not to notice as I took her off of it. I’m such a horrible person, reprimand me already!!!)
  “Well, hello there perty girl.”
  “Hi, nice meet you!”, replies Stinx.
  “Well, you sure have manners. What’s your name sweetie?”
  “Pwrincess StinkToopfs.” Said in a very confident, sure-of-herself tone, because that’s the kind of socially fearless kid she is.
The lady looked at me questioningly, confused by Stinx’s answer. I’m pretty sure her sideways stare meant she was silently praying that I wasn’t really one of those generation X crazies naming their kid absolutely ridiculous names. The whole while I was fighting the urge to run away in embarrassment, laugh hysterically, & beam with pride all at the same time. I settled for an explanation instead, because this little old lady already had a little place in my heart & I knew I needed her & our random grocery shopping meetings just as much as she does, all alone in life the way she is. Then I made a quick escape, claiming to have to get somewhere else because Stinx was already back up on the sugar pallet & my mom ears had picked up on the sound of another bag steadily pouring out. Who leaves a pallet with bags of sugar in the middle of a large entry aisle stacked up in pyramid formation looking like a playground toy?

Somehow I manage to get out of the store $3.27 under budget! I was absolutely elated because that meant I could grab two 2-L of Coke from the much cheaper dollar store on the way home, instead of just one. All that joyous Coca-Cola love-buzz was killed instantly upon reentry to my domicile. The hubs was so engrossed in his fotball game that the kitchen looked like World War 3 had taken place without him ever hearing the bomb drop. Remnants of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches were smeared all over the countertops, the sink that was already full of dishes that Tee was supposed to do was now overflowing, & the kitchen table was a playdough nightmare carelessly left behind to dry up & be blamed on me because it’s my fault the dough isn’t capable of handling extended periods of aeration.

My presence in the home instantly set of a chain reaction rippling further into the house in wave affects like that of a nuclear bomb, snapping the hubs back to attention. He quickly scrambled off to find the children, survey the mass destruction in the other rooms, & start barking commands to retain order back to normal, acting innocent about how all this could’ve ever happened on his watch. I got busy putting the groceries away while the hubs & kids righted things in the living room, bathroom, & bedrooms before I even dared to make entry & ended up having my own personal World War 3 level temper tantrum. You can bet I took my sweet ol’ time with the task, too. Finally, Tee & The Dunce come barreling in like a troupe of monkeys just as I was getting the last few cans of corn on the shelf. They immediately set to work cleaning the mess in the kitchen with Bean trailing behind grumbling that she’s too tired after cleaning up the legos in her room to take care of the playdough mess. While they got busy in there, I took Stinx upstairs to take a nap because she was falling out on the couch like a weathered drunk, & grabbed some clean clothes while I was up there, to go sneak a shower with.

Before I can make it all the way back down the stairs, Bean’s voice comes ripping through my eardrums at a blood-curdling level. Then I catch the sounds of the boys tussling reverberating under the echoes of Bean’s shrieks. The hubs is already back into football-land, paying no mind to anything except the bounce of my boobs as I flew past the tv screen to go negotiate the cease treaty of World War 4 before the artillery rolled out. Just in time, too, because I saw The Dunce eyeing his abandoned broom & Tee reaching for a wet towel just as I came in. Bean’s jumping up & down holding her head, looking like someone just viciously attacked her. Before I can fully survey the scene, a trio of voices bombard me with their own rendition of what happened, explaining away their innocence in the whole scenario & how they tried to do the right thing first. They still haven’t figured out that this tactic only gives me everything that I need to piece together the real truth. If they all stayed mum, or at least limited the details & exaggerations to seem clueless, they’d never set off the mom radar.

To their rooms they were sent, banned from all electronics, gizmos, & gadgets to think about their choices while they sit. I follow behind the pouting procession, attempting to make it into the bathroom this time to take my shower. I stop at the doorway to make sure the kids make it into their time-outs then shut the bathroom door. Of course, the mom in me never locks the door out of stupidity because I already know it’ll jinx someone into needing to poop or end up peeing their pants. I start the shower, get undressed, turn around & see the hubs staring at me with “the look”. He knows I’m such a softie for that look, it gets me every time… Into bed that is. “Let’s go take a trip upstairs while the kids are stuck being good for awhile. The last time was the night before we got at Christmas time, I’m dying!”, he says as sweetly as my most manipulative child, Bean, would say while trying to con daddy into buying her twenty dollar lipstick from Sephora at the mall. “Ummm, babe, we’ve got a slight problem. There’s no where to go. Stinx is napping upstairs (we have a bungalow & share the large space upstairs with her,), the kids are all in their rooms (if you’ve never had to use this option, well, you just wouldn’t understand. Their sheets usually need a good washing as it is.), & they’re all awake so the living room or kitchen are off-limits. Next thing I know, I’m being helped up off the cold, hard bathroom floor by the hubs, after doing it next to Stinx’s potty chair with the water running full blast to drown out any noises that could escape. In the heat of the moment, we forgot to shut off the hot water side of the shower I had already turned on, so I was stuck taking a lukewarm shower that turned icy just as I was getting out. I’m just thankful I still got the shower!

Coming out of the bathroom, I’m met with the sight of my hubs passed out on the couch, remote in hand. The kids have released themselves from timeout to run wild with Stinx, fully recharged from her nap. I struggle to make dinner while refereeing the wild game of zombie ninjas that’s broken out in the boys room, changing loads of laundry, sneaking into the smoke room for a few hits off the sanity bong, letting the dog out the backdoor, letting the cats in the front door, & unbraiding two dolls hair just to be asked to braid another’s, all while helping Stinx put on a pair of ballet shoes. The hubs doesn’t even wake up to eat. Snored right on through, clutching that remote to his chest like a teddy bear or lovie. “Eeewww! I. don’t. like. this! Why do you always make such disgusting foods? You know I’m not gonna eat this, mom.” “Yeah, what Bean said!”, seconds The Dunce. My human garbage disposal Tee pipes in, “You guys are so bogue! Dontchya know it’s just cuz you two have bad tastebuds. It’s good &you said you were hungry five times while she was cooking, so shut up & eat you two. There are starving kids who’d eat your food instead of their rotten rice & like it, they’re starving for real life with no food but the rotted rice!” I guess I should’ve also warned you, he’s prone to repeating himself out of excitement.

The rest of the evening seems to drag on in slow motion, as if time started running at the speed of myself in accordance with my energy levels. The closer I came to falling asleep standing up, the slower the clock ticks, & the more revved up the kids get. I go hide in the bathroom begging the heavens to wake my hubs up so I can get outta bedtime duty, but I know it’s not going to happen. Five hours of sleep or less every night takes it toll on him when he gets a rare day off & it’s the least I can do to keep from hearing his mouth yapping all day long for the love of my life. I leave the safety of the bathroom to see that the big kids had encouraged Stinx to strip down to her undies & run around screaming “Big Money Pimp” while doing her baby booty shake dance for their own amusement. I have to say, I was laughing right along with them, they’re so much fun to hang with when they’re not out for each other’s blood. A few rounds of dance-off, one quick to go too-far wrestling match, & fifteen endless games of hide-n-go-seek that are beyond pointless in this small house with so many kids because there’s only like 5 good hiding spots, & bedtime finally came. Oh, how I just love bedtime…. NOT! The time after bedtime is my favorite time, but not bedtime itself. It’s a battle of wills, 4 against 1, not a very fair fight at all. It takes a good hour to get em all in bed, another half hour to get them to sleep.

The minute I can finally plop my butt down, after sneaking the remote outta hubs hand & packing a bowl to chill with while I watch something that isn’t cartoons or football, the hubs pops up like he’s only been dozing for a few minutes. He’s confused, wants his football back on, & is strangely hungry as if he hadn’t eaten all day. It’s really a hilarious sight & gives me a much needed post-bedtime drama laugh. I give up on the tv & immerse myself in Pet Rescue Saga, playing until I’m drooling on myself then force my butt to go bed.

This is my crazy life. Day after day after day. The angrivated household is full of laughter, arguing, & wtf moments, but it brings me so much fulfilment to orchestrate this 6-ring circus we call our family. These kids are growing way too fast as it is, letting them be kids while I take it all in is the greatest job I’ve ever had, the only job I’ll ever want. And after 9 long years of marriage with the horny teenager stuck in a thirty-six year old’s body, I love this guy more than ever, because he always makes sure we all know that no matter what we face- this angrivated show must go on!