Lust, Actually

CRACK!
My eyes shot open from my deep sleep, so fast that I couldn't figure out where I was. The room was so dark that it took a second for me to figure out which direction I was facing. The "crack" had sounded like my window breaking, so I focused towards the light of the street lamp to make sure that the window was still in tact. Seeing that it was, I assumed that the noise was nothing serious and closed my eyes to fall back asleep.
Then I heard it again, less loud this time. "What the..." I thought. And then, coming out of my stupor, "You have GOT to be kidding me..."
Without turning the light on, I put on my glasses and looked out my second story bedroom window. Sure enough, standing outside on the lawn below was Ex Boyfriend. The boy who I have not seen or heard from in almost four months. We parted ways in late July, and it is now November. It seemed that I had fallen asleep in my time machine and somehow woken up in a 1980's romantic comedy.
I checked the time on my phone. 1:16am. Grudgingly, I rolled out of bed, turned on my light and went downstairs. As I hobbled down the stairs in my Ninja Turtle T-shirt, make-up smeared down my face and half of my hair barely clutching the hairband in my lopsided bed-headed bun, I barely remembered to turn off the house alarm before I opened the front door to glare at the idiot standing outside.
Obviously, this guy knows nothing about me.
1. I LOVE MY SLEEP. Why are you shocking me awake at this ungodly hour, making me think that my window has shattered into a million pieces? You had better be holding a sandwich out there.
2. I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of "romantic gestures" which this ridiculous act hardly even resembles. You are not John Cusack. This isn't 1989, and if you are holding something in the air towards my window, again, it had better be a sandwich (I really love sandwiches, but not nearly as much as sleeping).    
As I closed the door behind me, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Are you drunk?!"
"What?! No, I'm not drunk!" exclaimed Ex-Boyfriend, as if this were a ridiculous thing for me to be thinking. Then, "You are a difficult woman to find."
No. No, I am not.
"What do you want?" I asked, unamused, unwoo-ed, unawake.
He stepped backwards and, making wild gestures, pointed to the windshield of my car. "Read this."
I guess I slept through more pebbles to the window than I had thought. He was giving up, and left a note. Or maybe the rock throwing was a second thought, like, maybe I should do something more than leaving a note on the back of a business card for someone that I haven't seen in months. Either way, I took the note and read it...

I was pleasantly surprised by the decent use of grammar on the note. His texts used to be a puzzle within themselves, of broken English and texting shortcuts, back when we were seeing each other. "Maybe he has been taking intense English classes over the last few months!" I laughingly thought to myself as I read.
Upon finishing reading the two sentenced note, I looked up at him with my still skeptical look. "And?" my face said, without moving my lips.
"I have been driving around your neighborhood for months, looking for your car! I couldn't remember what your house looked like, but I knew that I could recognize your car if I saw it. I got a new phone and lost your number!" He basically repeated his note to me.  Thanks. Because I'm the one who is an English learner.

I thought to myself, You have been to my house multiple times. Are you seriously that dumb that it takes you months to locate the house again?
Out loud I questioned, "Ok...?"
"Hmsienfhsai" He said in his thickly accented voice.
"Huh?" I asked. So much for my English classes theory.
"Did you miss me?" He repeated.
This time, I understood the words, but asked incredulously, "What?!"
"Have you missed me a little bit?" He repeated again.
"I understand what you asked, but you do realize that we haven't seen or spoken to each other in four months, right?" Does he really think that I have been pining over him for the last quarter of a year? Is this what goes through boys' heads?
...the last four months I have been unable to do anything. I sit around sobbing over what was left of our photo-less, pseudo-relationship. Nightly, my shoulders heave, as my tears run down my cell phone, lit up to your last text. "Lol" it says to me, reminding me of our happy times. The irony of my tears paired with your last laughing words, uttered by your soft fingertips against your cracked, touch screen telephone was simply too much for one girl to handle. I have been inconsolable...
Sorry boys. Lindsay pines for no man. My students frequently ask me, "Ms. A, why aren't your married?" Well kids, it's because I am not like this. I have cried over exactly two men in my life, and one of them is my father. You can not change people, and there is no use crying over people who do not truly love you and are willing to show you that they do. Huh, I guess my dad did teach me something in life. But I digress.
"Sure." I told Ex-Boyfriend. I mean, it was after 1:00am. I am not going to argue or crush a man's vision of me being tormented by the loss of our mutually-ended relationship.
"Well, I am not going to keep you, because I know that you have to work in the morning..." I didn't, but again, I was trying to find the fastest way to get back to a deep sleep until about 10:00am the next day, so I wasn't going to correct him.
"...Will you text me tomorrow?" He asked.
"Sure." I said.
"Nope." I thought.
Some of you, at this point, might be thinking that I am a heartless B, but you have to understand two things:
1. I LOVE MY SLEEP and,
2. Ex-Boyfriend's story has more holes in it than the laciest of Swiss cheese, and,
C. Our relationship was never anything in the realm of "long term." He was fascinating and fun, exotic and interesting, but lacked consistency and stability. Maybe he thought differently, but I can't imagine that.
We hugged and I went back in to my house, still baffled by what had just happened. When I got up to my room, I quickly glanced out the window. His car had gone, leaving the street dark and empty as it had been, my car resting alone on the curb in its place. It has now been four days and I have not heard from him, proving my Swiss cheese theory. Our relationship was one of excitement, and just as unpredictably as it began, it was over.   

Adventures in "Motherhood"

Motherhood is in quotes for this one because, yes, I realize that I was not actually experiencing what it is actually like to be a mother. I got the kids at 8am, and got to leave at 3pm. I got to go home and eat dinner in peace and then sleep throughout the night. But alas, I have made the life choice to currently choose sleep over creating life. I love kids but I REALLY love sleep. Sally is pissed.
The past week, my cousin's kids (ages 3 and 1) have been on their summer break from preschool. I was stoked to get the chance to volunteer my time to hang out with these two balls of adorableness. Here are the highlights.
On Monday, we walked to the park. Man, am I out of shape. Pushing two kids in a stroller up hill is exhausting (by "up hill" I miiiight mean a slight incline). We get to the park and Parker (age 3 years) is immediately running laps through and around the play structure while Carson (age 1) is bear crawling around, trying to keep up with his big brother. As Carson and I finally get to the slide, Parker hops up to me with both hands behind his back. "Cousin Liiiindsay! I have a surpriiiiise for you!"
I trust no man, even if they are only 3 years old. Skeptically, I look at him with a sideways glance and and cautiously ask, "What is it?'
Parker immediately throws his hands in front of him and, holding two yellow dandelions, shouts, "Flowers!"
Oh my goodness. Let me introduce my new favorite person...

When we got home, we made peanut butter and jelly "swandwiches" and then took a nap on the couch together. Flowers, PB&J, and couch cuddling? This is all I have ever wanted in a relationship.

I had let him make his own swandwich (sometimes "squandwich"). It consisted of a glob of peanut butter, flattened, near-ish to the center, and a large glob of jelly thoroughly smeared all the way across the bread and dripping over the edge. Immediately upon finishing his swanwich, Parker says, "Cousin Lindsay, I'm going to give you a hug."
"Oh my gosh! Did you know that hugs are my favorite?!"
Me saying this made him extremely excited, and he hopped down from his chair and ran over to me to smear jelly across the back of my shoulders, i.e. give me a big bear hug. After he figured out that I love hugs, about every ten minutes he would say, "Hug time!" and leap into my arms. I haven't been reaching my daily hug quota since I have been away from students during summer vacation, and let me tell you, the many many hugs that I received that day revived me. Not to mention, Carson wants to do everything that his big brother does, so whenever I got a hug from Parker, Carson was not far behind with another.   

Day two:
There is no amount of caffeine that can prepare me for raising children. How is there so much energy inside such tiny humans? On this day we went on an adventure to...my house. We piled into their "mom car" (the Mercedes ML class- the classiest of mom cars) and drove the 9 minutes to mi casa. Parker picked any and all of the oranges that he could reach. Then I lifted him up to pick some lemons from the taller of the two citrus trees. He chose his favorite zucchini from my garden, all while I lugged Carson around on my hip. Here is a picture of our catch of the day. Also, this is what happens when you let a 3 year old dress himself...

The rest of our days were filled with good times, but I think that I am too exhausted to actually remember many more details. On day 4, Nana took Parker and I was left with just Carson, who turned 1 year old that day. His other Nana, "Nana Glasses" was there helping prepare for his first birthday party that was to be held at the other Nana's house that weekend.
Man, kids are gross. You think they eat so much, but I'm pretty sure about 75% of the food you give them ends up on their face or in their pants. Now, I don't know if this is a well known tactic in parenting, or if I'm just a freaking genius, but after day one, when I would feed Carson, I would strip him down to his diaper and let him go at it. After he had consumed however much food he could get in his mouth and filled up his little baby belly, I would stick him in the sink and hose him down. Call CPS if you want, but I'm pretty sure they would give me a childcare genius award. Here is the big, bad one year old, "eating" his birthday lunch.

After lunch Nana Glasses was blowing up beach balls for C's birthday party, and holy guacamole, did we have fun...

Aaaaaand break time...

While exciting, playing with beach balls is exhausting! C kept trying to use them as a pillow, only to have them roll out from under his head. Good try though, buddy. Beach balls are probably the cheapest, most exciting toy you can get your kids. That's all that my kids are going to have, beach balls and cardboard boxes. Have fun kids. Plus, you can bounce the balls off of their heads and it doesn't hurt! He loved it and I cracked up. Don't tell his parents.

Saturday, the day of the birthday party, I was on my way to my aunt's house, also known as "Nana," and looked down at my watch. There was dried peanut butter on the band. Again, gross.While I was there, Parker noticed the burn on my foot (yes, I burned my foot- my good foot- and there were some nasty scars on it). He exclaimed, " Cousin Lindsay, what happened to your foot?!"
"I burned it." I said.
"It looks like a dinosaur bite!"
Yessssss.
The day was filled with parents and their children and the choice for me to either mingle with the parents or hang out with the kids. Option B will always win. Kids are gross and exhausting, but adults are boring. Here is me, Parker, Carson, and Ty in the ball pool. Good times.