It is forty-eight degrees here this morning, and my little daycare boy will not keep his clothes on. When it was August and so hot that I threatened to die on a daily basis, he remained clothed. Something is definitely odd about this child. No wonder my children love him so.

(While I typed the above sentences, Owen stood beside me and told me a riveting story about how he had some talking marshmallows that kept escaping from their cages. If my posts ever appear choppy and weirdly worded, it is his fault. Remind me to ask him later if he ate the marshmallows after they escaped, because I don't want to find them stuck in my tennis shoes like last time.)

Anyway, it is cold and it is Monday and I did not sleep more than maybe three minutes total last night and my husband just called and informed me that he is hanging from a window many stories up in the air in downtown Atlanta at this very moment doing something for his job (he is a sheetmetal worker) that I do not understand. All I heard was the phrase "hanging from a window" and now I am all freaked out. Why couldn't he have been an accountant like I told him to? No one ever listens to me, and look where it gets them. My wisdom is wasted.

In other scary news, Halloween costumes have been purchased at our house, and we are going to have a cheerleader, a racecar driver, and Thomas the Train roaming the streets come October 31st. Hmmm. That wasn't very scary, was it? That's actually on purpose, because I really don't want to celebrate the more upsetting side of the holiday. I choose instead to focus on the candy. That's what it's all about anyway. I should just dress them up as giant Hershey Kisses every year and be done with it.

Oh, for goodness sake. I give up. Not that this entry had any kind of a theme or anything, and it doesn't appear that I'm going anywhere with my random sleep-deprived babbling, but Owen is back now to tell me that the Great Marshmallow Revolt of 2008 is taking place in my kitchen and I need to join him in his quest to protect our home. He has taken two marshmallows and broken them in half, sticking the sticky sides to his head in an apparent attempt to illustrate the horror of the attack. I tried telling him to be a man and protect us from the onslaught, but he just looked at me like I had lost my mind. I suppose I must go to battle.

Is snack time like this at your house, or is just us?

Never mind. I don't think I want to know.

Yesterday the daycare children (of which I presently only have two) came in with ziplock bags of cocoa puffs for breakfast. Owen took one look and decided that he, too, would like to partake of such a delectible meal, and who am I to argue with peer presure? Since I own both ziplock bags AND cocoa puffs, I quickly made him up a bag and mentally high-fived myself for getting out of having to actually cook anything. I didn't even have to use dishes! Or utensils! My joy, it was overflowing.

As soon as I handed him the bag, he plopped himself down on the floor facing my kitchen. Immediately, the daycare children sat down beside him, and they all three commenced crunching their cereal while staring at some point on my kitchen wall to the left of my dishwasher but slightly avove the doorknob of the pantry. I looked too, but didn't see anything but the wall. So I sat down beside them and stared for a minute, wondering what in the world we were looking at. Finally, I asked them.

"Mom," Owen replied, looking at me as if I were a very slow creature that he felt obligated to tolerate, "We're watching a movie. This is our popcorn."

Of course.

They proceeded to sit that way for FIFTEEN MINUTES, y'all. Fifteen minutes while I signed on and put up my Wordless Wednesday picture (and shockingly, you were all correct about the dry-erase marker culprit. However did you know?) and my living room was totally quiet except for the crunching of cocoa puffs and the sipping of sippy cups. I was flabergasted. But the experience left me with one persistent thought, one nagging idea that just won't let go of me no matter how much I try to ignore it. I don't think I'm strong enough to withstand the pressure.

I've just got to get me a bowl of that cereal.

Wordless Wednesday~ Quick...which of these children do you think drew on my living room wall with a red dry-erase marker the other day?

I am beginning to wonder if Owen has lost touch with reality.

The other day he came out of the bathroom looking concerned. Knowing that there are many alarming things that could happen when a four-year-old is alone in a bathroom, I asked him what was wrong. And this is what he told me:

"See, there was this bug in there. A really BIG bug. And it crawled all over the floor, and then up the sink, and then it TURNED ON THE WATER! But it just turned on the hot water, and I knew that it would burn my hands so I had to turn some cold water on, too. Then the bug was mad. I finally just left it in there because it was freaking me out."

"Well...yes. That would freak me out, too." I assured him, "But...Owen...was there REALLY a bug? Because we kill bugs in this house. That's why God made shoes."

"Yes! But it was REALLY BIG! You can't kill it with a shoe. You would have to kill it with a truck."

Thinking at this point that one of those horrid flying roach bugs had gotten into my house again, (if you have never seen them, they could seriously carry away a small child. Ben once stood on one for a full minute, and when he moved his foot, it casually walked away without even a dent.) I ran to the bathroom armed with one of Ben's steel-toed boots. I slowly opened the door, intent on erradicating my house of this horror, and saw...nothing. Knowing that this is my little half-bath with very few places that a roach of that caliber could hide, I was beginning to think that I was being played. I stuck my head out of the door.

"Owen...are you POSSITIVE that you saw a big bug in here? Was it maybe your imagination? Because, sweetie...if there really is a giant roach bug in here, you can forget dinner because I will set up camp in this bathroom until I squash that sucker flat, and you know how crazy Mama gets over these things. So please tell me the truth, because pb&j might not have to happen if you are just delusional."

(Notice how I have just overlooked the fact that the child told me that a bug turned on the hot water? That part did not even register with me until later. I heard the words BIG BUG and everything else just went right over my head.)

"Well...maybe it wan't that big. Maybe it was just like an ant. Or a bee. Or a fly! I hate flies. Or maybe I was just thinking about a fly, because of that bug you ate the other day. Or maybe it was a giant baby! There's a giant baby that follows me around and tries to eat me....."

At that point, I escaped to the place in my head where I go when my children babble incoherently. But first, I had one brief moment of clarity.

Owen is probably going to be a writer. Or an artist. Or some other such thing that requires endless imagination. And I will be one very proud Mama.

If he doesn't give me a heart attack first.

Nature's campaign against me continues.

This morning while I (say it with me, people) was waiting on the porch for my daycare kids, I was once again attacked by a flying creature. Seriously, from now on I am waiting inside. The outside is dead to me. I mean it this time.

There I was, standing in my bare feet and wondering how exactly I had forgotten to eat breakfast, because honestly y'all, I don't forget to eat. Eating ranks right up there on my list of favorite things to do, right under reading but slightly above watching HGTV. So I was mystified by this, and apparently I had my mouth open in wonderment or some other such appropriate emotion, when an insect flew RIGHT IN MY MOUTH. I started choking and sputtering, and tears were streaming down my face either in desperation because I was choking on a bug or horror that I was choking on a bug, I can't be sure which.

This, of course, is when my daycare family rounded the corner and proceeded up the path to my door. They were greeted by my tear-stained face and frantic coughing fit, and I'm surprised that the mother didn't take her children and run because by all appearances I was dying. Would you leave your children with a dying woman? I am not entirely sure about her maternal instinct right about now. And then, internet...and THEN, when I calmed down enough to explain my plight to the woman, do you think that she offered me any sympathy whatsoever? Do you think that she gave me her shoulder to cry on while I regained my composure and accepted the fact that I had just EATEN AN INSECT FOR BREAKFAST??? No. Do you know what she did?

She laughed at me.

And not just a little laugh, either. She was doubled over on my front porch, in complete hysteria. I am grievously offended.

This is the woman that showed up at my house the other day in her bare feet because she had left her house and driven all the way to mine, and did not notice until she got out of the car that she wasn't wearing any shoes. It was raining, people. How in the world did she not notice that she was shoeless while she was loading up two toddlers into her car, much less while she was driving? And did I laugh at her? Well, yes, but only after she left. The point is, I was nice and did not tell her that I thought that she was kind of dingy, and only laughed behind her back when I called my sister-in-law to tell her about it. Why could she not give me that same dignity? I fear I am scarred for life.

But as for the insects of the world, I'm never trusting them again. If, in the future, I do venture outside my front door, I will keep my mouth firmly closed. I will not even TALK outside again, and I may not even breath. Which I guess will limit my outside time somewhat anyway. But at least I will be safe from suicidal bugs.

Honestly, I was not THAT hungry.