everything i touch turns to whale road

The other day I put light bulbs in the fridge, and poured my drink of seltzer into a measuring cup of brown rice.

Have also noticed that in my recent posts, I switch verb tense mid-sentence.

This morning, Mamie calls. I don’t answer bc I’m tugging on underwear that won’t fit. Why won’t it fit?? Scream at the phone every time it beeps, I’m TRYING Mamie!! Realize the underwear is Barbie underwear that belongs to the 6yr old.

The other day, putting the children on the bus, I notice he’s fiddling with his fly. Stop it, I say, that’s not polite. He says, It doesn’t work. The bus pulls up. I say, grinning madly to encourage him, It’s okay, you can’t even tell. The great talks, aquariums, pillow fortresses… none of this will he remember. What he’ll remember is that I once put him on the bus with a malfunctioning fly.

At dinner, Mimosa and I watch the children run circles. The girl is giggling, which should be cute but is not, in fact, because she has been giggling for two hours. The sound at the end of the day is shocking, abrasive.
Mim says, Some people say that this excess energy and giggling is a sign of something else wrong. Like being hungry. Some people say it’s sort of a fit.
I ask the child if it’s feeling okay, if it’s hungry or having a seizure. This is apparently the funniest thing I’ve ever said. Child rolls around on floor clutching midsection.

But Mimosa brings up an interesting point. I worry about them being normal. I know they’re normal. Are clearly beyond normal, and have reached genius status. Next spring, we’ll all be holding hands on Oprah. Then she’ll give us a cruise and a house.
But sometimes, I wonder. Why does he love to chew his hand so much? And why does he sometimes do this Stevie Wonder bob with his head WHILE chewing hand WHILE saying in a high-pitched Beavis voice, Ehhhh, where’s my spiderman? I’m always uneasy. Is this normal?


Mimosa and I model good behavior bc they’re incessantly awful to each other. A morning will go like this:
Why, thank you Mimosa for driving us to the store. How very kind indeed.
You’re welcome, Hannah… I love you.
An evening will go like this:
What do you think of my painting Mimosa?
Hm. Her gaze is sort of piercing.
I glare at her. Then try for amiability. She must mean, piercing like the
Mona Lisa. Ten seconds later…
What I meant to say was ‘demented’—her gaze is demented.
Oh yeah? Well that thing you’re painting looks like sorbet.

Yesterday, I burst into tears. The day has been full of non-accidents, which I’ve decided are tragedies. Culminating in me looking in the back seat to find one of the booster seats missing. Immediately bawl, run into the coffee shop where I’m meeting Mimosa, and yell, Some college student STOLE one of our booster seats! The booster seat is in the back of Mimosa’s car, of course.

How am I doing? Fine, I think. Totally balanced even. Great, considering. But there are moments (sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, holding Maus, crooning I love you so much I love you so much, while in the background the children watch worriedly) when there is (small/brief) evidence to the contrary.

What's worse: it’s affecting everyone around me.

Mim stands in the kitchen holding a fresh bouquet of flowers. Where, she demands stamping her foot, is my GIANT FORK? (meaning the scissors)

Here, I tell her, trying to help. Besides I see the scissors. I pull out from a pile of junk, a dirty feather duster.

It’s aphasia, Mamie tells me. That’s what you have. Like those old people in hospitals that say whale-road for ocean. It’s called kenning, putting two words together like that.
Ken is know in Scottish, I say stupidly.
Kenning, says Mamie.
Scottish. I just said Scottish, like it was its own language.
I’m not disagreeing with you about anything.
Ken comes from the Middle English kennen.
We’re the smartest smart people ever.
Except she means the smartest dumb people—she would never say the smartest smart, and it’s my fault she’s like this.


Mamie will be here soon, and I'm hysterically happy. Tonight, because we like to invite disaster, we’re taking the kids to the fanciest restaurant in town.