And the world turns smoothly on...

So I was sitting at my desk today, right after the students all left, eating a sandwich. And my uterus gave a mighty red throb and shouted, "BITCH!"

I gasped, whimpered, downed two Advil, doubled over, and whimpered, "Why?"

And my uterus drank in the drugs, gave a smug, evil throb, and retreated in gloating silence. "You know, heifer. You thought you could skip our little chat for three months running?"

Uhm, not to alarm anyone, but I think I'm going to start my period soon. Just a hunch, mind you, but the uterus hasn't made a lot of predictions that haven't panned out.

And in other news?

On Sunday night, Zoomboy came in to my room as I was folding clothes, holding his fist up like a little mouth, and said, "Guess what, Mom! I traded brains, and now I'm Invisible. THIS is Zoomboy!"

I said, "Uhm, that's nice, uhm, Invisible. And it's good that Zoomboy's still around!"

And Zoomboy said, "Now watch me open a door!"

His older sister, who was watching this whole thing in amused fascination, burst into laughter and laid full out (right on top of all the folded laundry, btw) and lay there, convulsing, while he pattered into the hallway and slammed the door.

Then he opened it--and stuck his fist in first, and had it look around. And Chicken almost wet her pants. For a moment, "Invisible" was highly affronted.

"She's laughing at me, Mom!" And then, before I could tell him that she was laughing at his total and complete adorableness, he said, thinking hard, "Wait! No! She's laughing WITH me!" And then he left, holding his little alter-ego-fist up next to him.

When Chicken could actually catch her breath in the rubble of my folded clothes, she said, "No, (gasp) Mom. I was (gasp) laughing AT him!"

And Squish's plans for world domination are uninterrupted.

"So you guys were alone today?" I asked her day care worker, and Brenda said that yes, the other four kids she usually has were either sick or their mother had the day off. "What did you do?"

"We drew," said Brenda with a rather wry smile.

I looked at the drawings and said, "Yeah, I can see you helped."

Brenda looked at the picture and shook her head. "No, that was all Squish-- I just added this line here."

I looked at the picture with rather wide eyes--it was a creditable stick-figure cat, with a complete stick figure family. "Zoomboy didn't draw this well," I said bluntly, and Brenda nodded her head, her eyes wide.

"None of them draw this well."

We looked at Squish, who smiled guilelessly, and asked for an orange drink, and then we shuddered. She's learned to try to disguise it-- everybody has given up teaching her actual letters and how to read, because she starts just shining us on. We figure that an actual AUTHORITY figure will have better luck, and then the world had better get the HELL out of her way. (Of course, before that happens, she's going to need to figure out how she gets in the car and on the way to Brenda's in the morning. Right now, she's waking up halfway to the freeway and trying to figure out not only how she got dressed and where she's going, but also who the hell the exhausted hag in the driver's seat might be.)

And I think I'm going to submit Talker's Redemption tonight... I think it's ready. But I worry... it's hard to watch your baby's go... and I worry about having too much out there right now. It seems like I've been releasing stuff like mad, and since I'm the first to admit that I'm the world's most boring human, I do worry about saturation. Of course, publishing has also become sort of my meth of choice... which reminds me... I'm going to go crochet with some alpaca now... it feels so decadent, doing that, like taking a bath in champagne...