Today by the numbers

10 -- number of inadvisable food products I’ve consumed today: potato chips, Cheetos, raw brownie batter, Nerds, blue Icee, Mandarin oranges in light syrup, handfuls of Special K with dehydrated red berries, cooked brownies, children’s GummiBear vitamins, and sour IceBreakers.
Discussion: We’re housebound. The Diva still has a fever, Husband is working, so I’m stuck at home with one sickie and two wild animals unable to do anything because of the sickie. I’m trying to placate everyone with junk food feeding frenzies. And I admit it...I’m weak. I cannot stand idly by and nosh on carrots while there are puffy Cheetos to be eaten. Not to mention fresh brownies.
9 -- number of times I’ve logged on to Facebook
Discussion: Now that I’m blogging, I have convinced myself (and Husband!) that maintaining my FaceFriends is an important part of my blogger success. I must keep a presence! I must remind people of my wit! I absolutely must know what everyone is doing at any given time during the day! And frankly, on a day when my most stimulating conversation involves where poop comes from, I just need to feel a little bit popular.
8 -- times the Tyrant has thrown a shoe at someone
Discussion: Okay, this is becoming a problem. The Tyrant has a temper. I’ve mentioned her remarkable aim -- she can bean me in the head with any given object from 10 paces. But shoes are her weapon of choice because there are approximately 98 shoes scattered around the house within easy reach. I’m not sure what to do about it. She won’t stay in timeout, and even taught herself to escape from the belt I have used to keep her there, which I don’t do anymore since it doesn’t work, so I’d appreciate you not calling social services on me. If I take away whatever she’s about to throw, she points her finger at me and screams, “PUH-SSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!” so threateningly that I fully expect to be turned into a wart hog when she’s done.
7 -- number of unsupervised minutes it took for the Tyrant to cover 80 percent of her body in black marker
Discussion: My children have always loved stickers, and then graduated to those temporary tattoos that quickly devolve into thin strands of rubber that won’t come off the skin. In addition, the Diva has always wanted me to give her “something to remember you” before heading off to school. So I started the tradition of using a Sharpie to draw a little heart on the inside of her wrist. I thought it was sweet. This has turned out to be a mistake. She interpreted my little love act to mean that drawing on oneself is good, and one of her favorite games is called “tattoo parlor” and includes a menu of things she can draw with associated prices. The Tyrant likes this game.
6 -- minutes all three children played nicely together with bubbles before someone blew bubbles directly into someone’s face
Discussion: The Pterodactyl plays the copy game. The Tyrant throws the Diva’s eraser into the toilet. The Diva takes her Nintendo and hides under the desk. The Tyrant throws a shoe at her. The Pterodactyl eats the Diva’s Oreos. The Diva cries. The Pterodactyl spits at the Tyrant. The Tyrant throws a shoe at him. He cries. The dog eats the Tyrant’s potato chips. She cries. Bubbles finally make everyone happy. Then....not so much.
5 -- number of “iCarly” episodes we’ve watched
Discussion: To all of you people who actually measure the amount of time your children spend in front of the television, I say, good for you. I don’t. I can’t. I’m one of those people who lives in mortal fear of the cable going out, particularly on housebound days when the temperature outside resembles the surface of the sun. And this “iCarly” show, I must say, I find entertaining. Just tonight, an entirely new episode focused on making fun of celebrity chef Bobby Flay by channeling him through a character named Ricky Flame. It was hilarious! In a this-is-how-I’m-spending-my-Saturday-night kind of way.
4 -- time I anticipated having my first glass of wine
Discussion: In fact it was closer to 6 p.m. because I took the children on a bike ride so we could all breathe some fresh air and I could confine them with seat belts for a little while. The problem with having wine, though, is that while it tastes divine and temporarily lifts my mood, it also exacerbates my fatigue so that my motivation for folding the five baskets of laundry has waned. Fortunately Husband won’t be home until morning so I can just pile everything on his side of the bed.
3 -- number of mysterious items the Pterodactyl has wrapped in aluminum foil and spread around the house
Discussion: There’s really nothing to say about this, except that I’m out of foil.
2 -- piles of poop the dog deposited in the front yard
Discussion: I grew up with dogs and I don’t remember spending half my life picking up poop like I do now. When did this become a daily chore? And like it’s not bad enough to use plastic baggies to grab steaming piles of shit -- when your dog is, like mine, addicted to baby wipes, paper towels, checkbooks, Band-Aids and other paper products, you find yourself pulling stuff out of said dog’s butt so often that it begins to feel like an actual accomplishment. Seriously. It’s disturbing.
1 -- number of times the Tyrant flung herself naked off the countertop while eating brownies and landed on her head.
Discussion: Okay, just so you know, I was RIGHT THERE when this happened, and as she fell I grabbed her ankle and held it securely, so that for a moment she dangled upside down and I thought I had saved her from falling. But she’s freakishly wiry and started bucking like a wild mustang, thereby wriggling from my grip and landing on her head from about a foot or so up. I picked her up and set the timer for five minutes, which is my magic head bump number. If a child who has been bonked on the head cries for less than five minutes, we don’t worry about it. More than five requires action. The Tyrant stopped crying in three minutes. I ate her brownie.

**The exactitude of the above numbers has been approximated. Everything else is factual.