Sam is helping me do dishes. Helping me at every turn. Helping me so much I’m starting to wonder if I’ll finish the job tonight. And he’s talking. Talking about anything and everything; right, left and sideways. I admit it, I’m not listening that closely until…

“So did it get throwed away?”

“Did what get thrown away?”

“The potty seat dat I had when I was a baby.”

“Oh, yes!” I said. Not at all certain how this topic came up and severely discombobulated, I find myself adding, “Because it was disgusting and covered in poo!”

“And ’cause I got too big for it?” Sam suggests.

“That, too.” I push the dishwasher drawers back in place and rifle under the sink for the dishwashing powder.

“Mommy, I helps you a lot don’t I?” Sam asks as he dumps a quarter of a box of dishwashing powder in and around the soap recepticle.

“You sure do baby.”

“Remember when you said nobody helps you and then I did and now I do the dishes every day?” He presses the start button and slams the door closed. “AND I feed the dog,” he adds with a satisfied grin.

I recall a certain hissy fit where I may have vented that no one helped mommy ever. From that moment forward, dutiful Sam has made it his business to help me to within an inch of sanity each and every night. Sometimes you really do get what you ask for. Ain’t it grand?

I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing today.

I mean I want to be writing the most awesome novel/short-story/essay/something-or-other you’ve ever seen in your life, but I’m obsessing neurotically instead. So pretty much par for the course.

I could easily blame circumstances: I’m sick, all the boys are home, Jason is NOT home.

Did you pick up the resentment in that last bit? I mean, naturally, since I got to get away from the chaos of 4 boys for 2.5 days, it’s only fair that I should give him a measly afternoon to himself before he goes back to his grueling job, right? I get it. Really!

But since I’ve had to mediate at least 117 fights, open 8 dozen fruit roll ups, pour 30 glasses of milk AND listen to a never ending barrage of cartoons all afternoon, my sense of right and wrong is slightly skewed.

Right now it seems perfectly reasonable to want to ditch them all and run away to someplace quiet with a desk, a computer, and my MUUUUUSE. Because I am certain the only thing holding me back from becoming Harper Lee’s doppelganger is my lack of reliable childcare.

It has nothing, NOTHING whatsoever to do with my lack of talent, education, willpower, or good ideas. Not one. Damn. Thing. *sigh*

So, I spoke at church on Sunday. It felt great:  a) because I love me a microphone and b) because I really had something I wanted to share. Maybe I’ll try to write that bit up later. But for now, just try to picture a triumphant me marching down the sidewalk to my car. Jason had to leave for an emergency surgery mid-service, so I am alone and constantly admonishing all 4 boys with shouts of “Stay on the sidewalk!” (they didn’t). And “Don’t RUN!” (they did).

Jack shouts something about a rotten egg before making a sprint through the flower beds toward the van. Upon arrival (first) he opens the passenger side door which Sam promptly shoots through (2nd). Tom and Will are in a dead heat, and as they approached the finish line, the pushing and shoving begin.  Tom’s feet became tangled with Will’s within spitting distance of the goal. He winds up falling halfway into the van while Will skids across the pavement just behind.

Imagine my moment of elation and success slowly deflating as I revert back to my normal role of referee and emergency medic. Will’s knee is scratched and bleeding and he screams repeatedly at a decibel level slightly greater than your average jet engine that he is “terribly, horribly hurt” (he is not).  Tom sets up a wail in the background, and I turn to inform him bluntly that he is NOT hurt and should stop howling.

“But I lost my shoe under the van!” he sobs (he did…direct center).

As I’m wearing my good church clothes (in which I’m beginning to sweat profusely), I know I have no choice but to put everyone in the car, back the van out of the space, then get out to retrieve the shoe. I redouble my effort to hustle Tom and Will into the van, but they are having none. Clearly, I haven’t adequately addressed their respective concerns, so each determines to out-yell the other until their (unclear) objectives have been met.

In the midst of this burgeoning fiasco, a sweet and well-meaning family are attempting to introduce themselves and thank me for what I shared in church. As Will and Tom are both competitively caterwauling at this point, I have no idea who they are or what they they are saying, but I manage to pantomime the notion that there is a shoe located dead center beneath my mini-van’s chassis. Either I am a gifted mime, or they witnessed some part of the ordeal. Either way, their young son obligingly crawls under my vehicle, retrieves the errant shoe, and they continue on their merry way. I wonder if I’ll ever see them again, and if they’ll expect me to remember their names.

I put Tom’s shoe back on and order him into his seat. I manage to calm Will enough to get him buckled in with promises of copious amounts of antiseptic ointment and his choice of superhero bandage. I lecture them all on how very important it is to listen to Mommy then do what I say — especially when Daddy isn’t here to help.

Eventually, things are calm again. I’m standing in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee and staring at nothing when Jack slips under my arm and hugs me around the waist.

“Sorry, Mom. It was all my fault. I’m the one who said ‘rotten egg.'”

“It’s not your fault, baby. You couldn’t have known anyone would wind up hurt.”

“Still…” He trails off and we sway for bit together. He giggles and I smile.

“Maybe next time, we could all stay close together and walk slowly. How about that?”

“Okay, mom.” Another tight squeeze, and he’s off to find his brothers in the play room.

All the elation of the morning is gone, there’s no doubt of that. But the everyday warmth of knowing my boys are growing into terrific young men? Well…that never leaves.

Me (after finally making it to the end of a ride that turned out to be MUCH scarier than I’d anticipated): Woo hoo, Sam! We made it all the way through and you weren’t even scared one time!

Sam (holding up two fingers and sporting a relieved grin): Actually, I wasn’t even scared TWO times!

We tacitly agreed to forget the rest of the ride and just focus on those two moments that didn’t scare  him. Good Parenting Example #412.

Okay…so here it is. I’ve opened myself up to write fiction again, and it’s causing some problems.

Let me back up a bit. Some 20 years ago, I experienced a traumatic writing event, i.e., I chose to attend a college of math and science as an English major.

What? They offered me a full ride!

I had no idea it was because the chair of their department was an embittered, Beckett-obsessed, nihilist who was scaring students off in droves. After one semester/season-in-hell, I decided to take Elizabeth Ayres’ advice, “If you can stop writing, by all means do.”

And whaddaya know, I stopped. Cold turkey. Not one word, not one phrase for YEARS. But like a tiny crack in the dam, they’ve begun slipping out in the last few years. First, through blogging about my triplet pregnancy over at Burrus Boys, then moving on to my current home-away-from-home here at The Drunch. Now, I’ve come full-circle back to my first love, Fiction…and something weird is happening.

All the voices I’ve kept at bay for the last 2 decades have rushed me all at once. There’s historical types rubbing elbows with sarcastic goth chicks alongside wizened old women with boxes of strange herbs. Men and boys, women and girls. It’s a bombastic, fantastic, confusing cacophony of voices mingling in some sort of prohibition-era speakeasy in my head.

Thank God I’m a writer, otherwise I’d need to be on some pretty heavy medication at this point (*crickets chirp as reading audience carefully sidesteps this particular land-mine).

Anyway, my problem is not the blank page in front of me. No! It’s figuring out which characters came to the party together and who showed up solo. It’s trying to force them into some sort of line and convince them to take a number.

On the upside, I seem to have a host of plot ideas and scene snippets galore, interesting locations and bits of conversation out the wazoo. The downside? Since I have, approximately, 45 minutes a day to write, I still won’t have a finished novel if I should live to be a hundred. Agony.

Then there’s the nagging conviction that I don’t know what I’m doing. Not that I’m not equipped with the talent or the drive, just that I’m going about it all wrong, wasting time chasing down rabbit trails that more experienced writers already know not to explore. For instance, I just discovered Scrivener.

Now, Scrivener is a program just for writers that is about the handiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I was so excited, I tweeted about my fantastic find…and found that everybody and their dog had been using it for something like 200 years (give or take a century). There you have it. Irrefutable proof that great things are out there I should’ve know about ages ago. Things that make you more efficient, help you keep your thoughts organized and coherent, things that make your writing super-awesome and sparkly (like certain cheesy vampires that made their craptastic author incredibly wealthy…but I digress).

Anyway — I have high hopes for the Writer’s Conference I’m attending in a few weeks. My hope is to meet other struggling authors, have some of them say, “No that’s totally normal! We all work just like you do!” Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll say, “Ooh! Yeah…that’s really not how to go about it at all. Here’s a list of suggestions for how to suck less.” Honestly, I’d be okay with either scenario as long as it results in me producing something that can eventually be released from captivity (hopefully into the hands of an enthusiastic agent who’ll get it to an fantastic publisher who’ll put my name in big, fat, gorgeous letters on the front cover. Because, yes…I’m exactly that shallow).

So there you have it. The levees have broken. The horses are out of the barn. The toothpaste is out of the tube. The inmates are officially running the asylum. I sincerely hope things are about to get really interesting.

Sam told me I was beautiful, funny and delicious…his three highest words of praise. Try not to be too jealous. Not everyone can BE delicious.

So the first week of school has NOT been as I anticipated. Will managed to blow with a vomit virus on day two. Tom marked day 4 with a colossal temper-tantrum both at school and in the middle of the cul de sac (nothing quite like a hysterical 4 y.o. screaming “Mommy doesn’t love me!” to endear your family to the neighbors). Oh and Jack has some kind of nasty cold and insists on coughing all over everyone to emphasize it. BUT, I would like to take the opportunity to extend a shout out to Sam for perpetually getting up with a smile on his face and going to bed the same way. The little bugger is almost always pleasant and unassuming. And in a family of drama queens (kings?) this means he misses out on a considerable amount of attention. Way to go Sam! You’ve made unobtrusive into an art form.

As for me…I’ve caught the vomit virus AND the cold resulting in my falling asleep and drooling on myself this afternoon. Thankfully, the boys didn’t take the house apart despite having both opportunity and means. Despite a rocky start, I have high hopes for Friday. I might even make it to the gym and manage to sweat for the first time in ages. Fingers crossed.

P.S. Here’s what I had to deal with before 7 a.m. this morning: “Mom…I can’t go to school today because I won’t be able to learn because I’ll be spending so much time at the tissue box.” *sniiiiiiff* Yeah. Like I need this @#$%.