No Tantrums Today (No Title Necessary)

Warning: This post is going to be as out of focus as the contents of my Shutterfly account. I'll be writing erractic, stream-of-momness journal style without hesitation or editing.

Begin unhinging brain onto keyboard:

Why is my husband in the garage rapping away on his laptop and why am I rapping on mine in the house? Why do we spend most of our nights of late separate and plugged in online but plugged out in-person? More dates. Must schedule more strawberries and whipped cream drive-in nights like last weekend's. Blades of Glory killed me. He wasn't moved to cackling like I was.

I finished my son's lard-laden canned frijoles negros and melted string cheese strand crisscrossed nachos for a late-night snack tonight without a Beano chaser. What the Hell was I thinking, and does this oversight have anything to do with the night's distance between my husband and myself?

Why did I insist on assisting my husband with bed time tonight when he was perfectly okay with sending me off to the movies to wash down synthetic butter drowned popcorn with pawfuls of bias cut pickled jalapeno slices? In the two hours my overtired daughter loosely rolled around in her sheets like the errant, fake plastic 99 Cent Store pearls she snapped off a gaudy dress-up bracelet with her teeth I could have been sensationally satisfied and salivating for the second half of Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse" double feature. But no. I insisted on helping. Then controlling. Then taking over. Then paying the long, boring hurry-up-and-wait price. No movie for mama. Mama needs a movie, damn it. Maybe mama should start having tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants. Maybe not.

Speaking of tantrums, I eccsatstically report that Cheeks had not-a-one today. Zilch! That's right. Not one ear-blasting, heart-pounding, patience atomic bombing tantrum.

On the anger extinguishing front, I didn't perform as winningly as Cheeks. I reacted like a beast mother when my children burst into the neighborhood Blockbuster Video like a trio of steroid injected rodeo bulls unleashed from a bullhorn pierced gate. They did exactly the opposite of what I asked of them in my proactive, supposedly conflict in public curbing preparatory/pep talk in the van. Yet somehow I still was stupid enough to buy them twizzlers, kettle corn and E.T. (bug eyed extraterrestrial that can still make me bawl like a professional mourner all these years after I bawled the first time, maybe 25 years ... I can't remember).

Is it too much to expect that both boys will hang on to or at least closely orbit the stroller their sister is quietly and happily strapped into, thanks to her wonderfully suckable thumbs?! Is it so much to ask that they don't swipe DVDs off the shelf and drop them like their hot right onto the carpet when they see better ones, ones with ninjas, swords and bloody eyes peering from beneath a crack in a creepy wooden door? I swear I'm still scarred from some of horror flick covers from today's movie rental misadventure.

Ghetto bird (cop chopper) just flitted by. Now flitting with more regularity. Now circling like a hawk. Saturday, April 21 update: Seven in-a-row gun shots rang out a street or two away from ours last night, close enough to echo off of the cement block wall hemming our yard. The grim din was enough to cause my husband to pack in his contract work garage laptop headquarters and head inside for safety and a quick search for police scanners on Google. My guess is we'll own one buy nightfall.

What went right today? Why not ask that more often instead of what's wrong? What went right? Again, Cheeks made no beefs. I'll be high as a college freshman on tea-bagged shrooms on that for, well, at least until his next tantrum. My husband came home from work early, despite what he called a "headache the size of Texas" to play double skateboard ramp Matchbox car race extravaganza. He is so much more fun that me. I suck. I'm serious. I'm only happy when properly (overly) caffeinated.

All of my posts should be like this. It's easier.