Laugh

During my undergraduate degree, I had the opportunity to take a class on Shakespeare's Tragedies. Oh, man was I excited for that class. I emailed the professor a month before the semester started to ask which plays he was going to cover so that I could get a head start on my reading. Shakespeare! Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...

I never did get a reply to that email. The professor ended up being one of the most memorable of my college career (Graduate AND Undergrad) because he was a demon, When he would walk down the hall, we would turn and walk in the other direction, literally. No no no, he was not particularly difficult to please, he was just evil incarnate. My classmates and I used to call him Satan. He was prone to making vast generalizations about the world, and I quote: "All fat people are lazy." "You all are so stupid, I don't know why you bother being alive." etc. He was married to the department head, so no one bothered reporting him. Plus, he wasn't even an English professor, but a Communications professor. He spent inordinate amounts of time making us watch old Japanese movies of Macbeth where the characters were all in Samurai costumes. He insisted that you could not understand Shakespeare unless it was being performed. As a class full of English Lit majors, a good bit of us disagreed.

The class was so different from what I expected. But I did take away a lot...mostly because I couldn't believe it was being said. One particular thing has stuck in my mind. This professor said that laughter was a feeling of superiority. Whenever you laugh at someone, it is because their behavior is something you would never do or see yourself above doing. If you could identify with the behavior, you would empathize and not laugh.

Now, I am sure there are lots of exceptions to this rule. Like laughing from pure joy. I laughed when Brother was born. When I saw his little purple self for the first time. Or when you are just happy to be with someone. Or even laughing from having fun, like maybe on a roller coaster. I always get the giggles on roller coasters. It is interesting to think about and a lot of research has been done on laughter. It is a stress response and a coping mechanism. There is a Wikipedia entry and tons of quotes regarding laughter. While far smarter people than me have spent tons of time thinking about laughter, I would just be happy doing it more often.

And so! I will share with you my favorite joke:

Two muffins were in the oven.

First muffin says, "Whew! It's hot in here!"

Second muffin says, "OH MY GOD! A TALKING MUFFIN!"

(Insert Laugh)

Heavyweight

I wanted to post something airy and light today. A cute story. A funny joke. Like how Scooter was so lazy this morning, he laid his head on his tray this morning and tried to lick up his Cheerios.

It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.

I want to be able to smirk at the future with an ironic grin that says, "Take your best shot. You can't best me." I want that confidence.

It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.

I want to lower my "give-a-shit" factor so I don't have panic attacks by simply reading the news. I want to be full of happy memories and fun. I want to be the kind of person that not only everyone wants to be around, but that *I* want to be around.

It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.

It is much easier for me to tell you that we had Scooter's 1 month check up and he couldn't get any of his scheduled vaccines due to the diagnosis of the egg allergy. And that he has slipped on the growth chart into the 3rd percentile from the 30th just a few months ago and the Allergist hasn't explained anything properly to anyone and we have to bulk up his diet with I-don't-know-what-just-yet and go back in two weeks. And how I just want to cry and cry and I wonder how you all do it. How you make sure everyone is well fed, well educated, well rounded with adequate social activities and exercise and everything else a little human being needs to grow.

Looking in from the outside, parenting never looks this damn hard.

It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.

I need some new coping mechanisms. Maybe I can start with reason: I know this is just a phase of growth, that is why it seems so hard. We will figure it out. We will soon know what to do. People do this everyday. We can do it, too.

Rivalry

I had a hard time getting to sleep on Saturday night and had to get up at 6 AM with the baby on Sunday morning. (Honey gets up with him and Jelly on Saturday mornings.) Scooter is still nursing twice a night, so this isn't helping my rest. I can't remember when last I slept 8 hours solid. I was so exhausted on Sunday morning that I ached from head to toe and felt nauseated. Do you ever get that tired? When Honey got up, I went back to bed. For nearly 4 hours.

This made going to bed on Sunday night very difficult, right? So when an hour past bedtime rolled around, I took a Benedryl to help me sleep. I still got up with Scooter all night long, but in the in between times, I was able to rest. However when it was time to get up, I was still wrapped in luxurious drug-induced coma. Honey started wrestling children through the morning routine and I just laid there through the stomping and the running, mostly still asleep. (I realize this isn't a very positive portrait of me. Don't judge. I'm tired.) And then the yelling starts two feet from my open bedroom door....

Brother: Will you get out of the bathroom? I have to brush my teeth!

Jelly: ME FIRST!

Brother: FINE! Hurry up! Hurry UP! BRUSH YOUR TEETH!

Me: HOLYGODPEOPLE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP YELLING!

And then I crashed back into my pillow. Brother has a hard row to hoe. He is expected to look out for his little brothers, but then tends to be overly harsh with Jelly and veers into 'parenting' him. Only Brother's 'parenting' has basically no patience whatsoever and boy howdy does parenting Jelly require patience. Yes it does. It is not really unusual that Brother hasn't got this down. He's 10. And Jelly loves Brother the way a cat loves your black slacks. With an oozy, flowing let-me-rub-against-you-and-touch-you-even-though-you'd-rather-I-didn't feel to it. So there is much bickering, even though despite the 6 year age difference, they play together a lot, too.

And then you see Brother with Scooter. I love to look at his face when he is looking at the baby. It softens noticeably. He loves to hold the baby and play with the baby. (This is a relief to me because when I told him we were going to have another baby, he literally cried and said, "How could you do this to us?!? For reals.) Brother is very stern with Jelly (um, duh) when Jelly manhandles Scooter. Jelly wants to play! with the baby! too! Scooter mostly looks like a cat you are trying to bathe when Jelly plays with him. Like: "I don't know what is happening, but I know I don't like it and I can't figure out how to get away."

Is this what they mean by sibling rivalry? The constant yelling, hugging, bickering, and softness? Rough and tumble mixed with genuine affection, sometimes perhaps a bit too much? I don't actually know. I am an only child. My parents used to tell me they felt sorry for me. That I had missed so much. I think you can never miss what you haven't had, but I can imagine how things might have been if I had had siblings. The pleasant and not so pleasant; the mundane and the extraordinary, the having a witness to my childhood and having someone who might have looked like me in the world. I am glad we decided to have these brothers. These little boys with will fight and argue and hug and make up. Who will apologize and then run out and do it again. They won't have to imagine what it would be like to have a sibling. What a miracle, right?