So a fellow Beth over at The Couch Confessional sent me this little tag in which I get to talk about myself, and not my kids! Sweet. And because not one, but two, doctor's offices laughed at me today when I called to see if someone, anyone, would see me to get this large boulder off my sinuses before Thanksgiving, I think I deserve it. Here goes.

7 Super-Exciting Facts About Me

Fact 1: True story: My best friend growing up was also a Beth. We were both born on the 22nd. Our parents used to unknowingly buy us the same Christmas presents. The same purple raincoat with matching umbrella, etc. (Creepy, eh?) Both of our families moved south after we graduated from high school. We went off to college, lost track of each other a bit, and when we resurfaced, discovered we had both married Canadians. We both host a Canadian Thanksgiving party for our friends every year. We had both named a daughter after our sisters. The one thing we don't share: She lives in a faraway country that I cannot spell, pronounce or find on a map without great struggle and tries to help people for a living; and I live in a suburban home a mile or two from Target and a mall and try to reconcile my extensive television viewing schedule with the needs of my children. Minor details, minor details.

Fact 2: I am spatially/directionally challenged. If my husband tells me to turn right, he will usually have to follow up by saying, "No, your other right." I'm hopeless.

Fact 3: Many people say "Heroes" jumped the shark in the season one finale. I say it jumped the day Hayden Panettiere went on the "Today" show and said her whole family had gone to Duke [sic].

Fact 4: I recently read a story about a study that found that people who watch a lot of television are more likely to be unhappy. I completely reject this notion. I am actually unhappy because of the aforementioned giant boulder still sitting on my sinuses. I really need an antibiotic, people.

Fact 5: I was once in a gang. OK, no. Technically, that's not true. Here's the thing: Once, in grad school, I drove into the South Side of Chicago in my sweet, beat-up Escort with my UNC Tar Heels vanity license plate and bumper sticker in search of a blues club for an article I was working on. I didn't find the club (see Fact 2) but a few weeks later I found out that there were gangs in that area that identified themselves with UNC paraphernalia. So for those few minutes while I was lost, I was actually totally gangsta. So gangsta, and I didn't even know it.

Fact 6: If you type my name into the Original Gangsta Name Generator, you will find that I am actually called the Off Da Hook Skull Cruncha, yo.

Fact 7: I believe in the medicinal value of the Frosty, which I am currently enjoying.

... they might have conversations like these:

I walk into the family room, where there are people wearing what looks like 18th-century garb on my television set and a deeply portentous narrator's voice filling my entertainment space. Great. Educational crap.

Me, exasperated: What are we watching?
Him: "Nova"!
Me, amused: I'm sorry, "Nova"? With dramatization? Since when does your beloved "Nova" offer dramatization?

Minutes go by, although let's face it, it could have been just seconds ...

Me: Why are we still watching this? I'm in no mood to learn anything. Can you turn on "Greek" instead?
Him: But this is really exciting stuff. It's leading up to how they figured out E= mc2!
Me: What is that anyway?
Him: It's like the greatest equation of all time!
Me: Yeah, but what is it?
Him: It's the key to ...
Me: No, what does it stand for?
Him: Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared.
Me: But that doesn't make any sense.
Him: I know! That's what is so incredible about it. Think about it: energy, mass and speed of light in the same equation!
Me: No, I mean that "C" would stand for "speed of light." That doesn't make sense.
Him: No, but: Energy is related to mass times the speed of light squared! It's amazing. Doesn't that just blow your mind?
Me: What blows my mind is that they decided that "C" stood for the "speed of light," when there is clearly no C in the phrase. And also, that we're watching this instead of "Greek."

I went to the dentist a few days ago, lugging both little people there with me (hey, the dentist said I could, so why not). Shockingly, they both behaved like their toy privileges depended upon it, which they kind of did.

But here's the best part of the trip: As I was leaving, walking down a very long hallway as MJ and Little L peered into each exam room and watched the drills (is there a worse sound, I ask you?), a dental hygienist bolted out of her patient's room, followed us up to the reception desk and stopped me.

"Where," she asked, all urgency, "did you get those jeans?"

I looked down at my sweet Old Navy low-risers, which just that morning I had pondered tossing out because of the tears in the hems at the bottom. (I flipped the rips up and wore them anyway, because that's how I roll.) Wow. Good thing I didn't, I thought.

"These jeans?" I asked her.

"No, no," she said, still with the urgency in her voice, "I meant those jeans."

She pointed to the ones on my one-year-old.

"I just had to come down here and ask," she told me. "I just love them."

This actually happened, people. I got out-vogued by a kid who can't even walk yet. What does that say about me?

So I was making out my annual grid of fall television shows -- new ones worth watching, days they're on, times they air, returning shows, conflicts in recording, etc. You know, like everybody does this time of year. (What? You don't? Hmmm.) It's sort of my equivalent of fantasy football or baseball, except my opponents are the networks and my DVR. Oh, and time, which, as always, is a worthy and formidable foe in my quest to conquer all my favorite shows in a single week while making sure my children are well-fed and clean. They generally are.

Anyway, I finished my grid, looked up from my work -- a timeline of teenage romps, medical dramas, sci-fi nutjobs and sitcoms about friends who don't have children and spend way too much time in each other's apartments to be platonic -- and gave Randy the news.

"It's looking pretty bad," I told him.
Him: "Yeah?"
Me: "Yep."
Him: "What's the diagnosis?"
Me: "That Monday night at 8 p.m. is where our television dreams go to die. We have Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dancing with the Stars ..."
Him: "Ugh."
Me: "Anyway ... Dancing with the Stars, Big Bang Theory, Chuck ...
Him: "Uh-oh."
Me: "... and Gossip Girl."
Him: [sarcastic gasp of tragedy] "Oh no! Not Gossip Girl! Anything but Gossip Girl! What are we going to do?"
Me: [ignoring lack of appreciation for my pretty, pretty show] "Well, I think it's clear what we have to do. I can dump Dancing with the Stars, I guess ..."
Him: "Please?"
Me: "... but unless two of the other four are available online -- and here I have to exclude Gossip Girl, because you know I love it, xoxo, and I like my teen dramas in full screen, in all their backstabbing glory, as they were meant to be seen -- we're going to need another DVR. What do you say?"
Him: [with a promising note in his voice] "Well, I think we could manage that."
Me: "Yeah?"
Him: "Sure. Just take MJ out of preschool and we'll use part of her tuition to pay for another DVR so we can keep watching all of our shows."
Me: "Awesome. I love it. I'm calling Time Warner Cable tomorrow!"

I do. I really do want to be a geek. Remember, back in the days of leg warmers and Aqua Net, when being in the know about computers meant you were kind of a nerd (and not the good kind, either -- think dudes from Weird Science)? Those were the days when the coolest possessions you could have were the oversized sweater with neon-colored block patterns and the latest Poison CD. Now, being a geek is all the rage. Hundreds of geeks line up outside Apple stores to get the latest iPhone -- normal people, like you and me, who don't study quantum physics. (Wait -- I'm not the only one not studying quantum physics, am I?) And speaking of that, CBS has "The Big Bang Theory," which proves that not knowing what the hell a genius is talking about can be really, really funny.

Be a nerd ... all the cool kids are doing it.

Sadly, it has come to my attention that I have a long way to go before reaching geekdom. Yes, it's true: I was once the only chick in the theater for Star Trek: Nemesis, but I was on a date with the nerd that I married, so I'm not sure that counts. Every day, I learn something new that makes me feel like I'm the only kid at school without a Swatch watch. (And believe you me, you don't want to be the only mid-1980s kid at school without a Swatch watch ... or shoulder pads, for that matter.) I was watching "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" this week -- which, particularly whenever the blond cheerleader and her family is on, is absolutely awful (but yes, I watch it anyway) -- and they threw out this little tidbit of info from a high school freshman on the show: "Nobody e-mails amymore." Apparently, e-mail is, like, so yesterday. So my main mode of electronic communication is now as current as the bag phone.

I also read in Wired that Twittering is the new blogging. I just started this site in December, and I'm already outmoded? It's taken me this long just to figure out what an RSS reader is. I am amazed by the people who find the time and patience to Twitter, and I can almost guarantee you I'll never be one of them. Why? Because I waste my free time watching crap shows like "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." (Although, in fairness, I am reading Unaccustomed Earth right now, by Jhumpa Lahiri, whose writing I love ... so I don't actually waste all of my free time.)

I do think I should get geek bonus points for reading Wired, but then again, that, too, is because the husband subscribes. And he is, as previously mentioned, something of a nerd. I literally just took his new laptop from the FedEx guy ... a new laptop that was delivered directly from Shanghai, I kid you not. And he called me five minutes after it hit the doorstep to ask me if, as his sources had told him, his package had been delivered to "reception/front desk." (How great is that? I'm the front desk now.) He even ordered my engagement ring online -- which, to the untrained eye, might seem impersonal, but in this case is actually the highest compliment.

But I digress ...

I never thought I'd wind up so beyond of the realm of tech trends that my 13-year-old niece would have a better cell phone than me. I've been reading Randy's copy of Geekipedia to find out just how much I don't know. I'm only on the A's, and I'm already out of my league. Take your J.J. Abrams, for example. Creator of "Lost"? Yeah, that guy. Remember the "sat phone" that the Losties kept calling each other and the bad guys and the boat on? The Geekipedia article on Abrams says: "viewers may have thought that the sight of a KRZR — a Motorola phone marketed two years after the story was supposed to have taken place — constituted a continuity error. Nope. It was a tip-off to season three's time-bending finale." OK, um ... you have to be a special sort of viewer to 1) know the model number of that phone and 2) know the year that it was manufactured, vis a vis the year in which "Lost" takes place. If this is the kind of stuff you have to know to be a cool geek, I've got a really long way to go.

But, you have to start somewhere. There have always been a few bugs with this blog's layout, a lot of things I have to work around, a lot of tweaking that's beyond my understanding. So beginning Monday, MotherBunker is moving to self-hosted Wordpress, where I'll have a bunch more stuff to learn ... but, I think, more resources to learn it. I think the new site is slightly more geekified (that CommentLuv thing? Genius!) ... and therefore cool. You know, until I move in, anyway. That's a preview of my new place above; and on Monday, I'll post a forwarding address here, so that all three of my readers will know where to find me :)

Well it's official: Cars has reached irrational levels of adoration in our home. MJ has the bug. I have the bug. Randy ... well, he still likes real cars better. And LL Cool Baby is much more into dollies. So I guess it's just MJ and me. She likes this movie so much that she even watches the deleted scenes (the ones that are just drawings, not all Pixared-out yet ... the "brown" ones, as she calls them) over and over again. I find myself telling Randy things like: "You know what line I love from this movie? The one where Sheriff asks Mater what he had told him about talking to the prisoner, and Mater says: 'To not to.'" How bad is it, people? Let's borrow a line from one of Mater's cousins to explain:

You might be obsessed with Cars if:

... at 10 p.m., when your toddler has been in bed for an hour and a half, you don't turn off the movie that has been playing all day. You, in fact, stop what you're doing twice: to watch the scene where Lightning McQueen fixes up Radiator Springs and then the one when he goes to the big race at the end.

... and you think to yourself: Man, I would have loved to have been at that race.

... while picking up a Cars book for your daughter, you buy the soundtrack for yourself.

... your kid and your husband get a boo boo in the same place, and each of them gets a Cars band aid ... Sally for her, Mater for him.

As he was leaving for work yesterday, Randy asked MJ and me what we had planned for the day.

"Oh," I said, with genuine enthusiasm, "we're going to have lots of fun ..."

He laughed. Not an "Oh, good, wish I could be there" kind of laugh, but rather a cheerful snort. A chortle, if you will. A disbelieving snicker, you might say. Now, give him his due: He had been up since 3:30 a.m. with MJ, when a fake need to use the potty turned into a need for toy cars and who knows what else. So the idea of having any sort of fun when watching this particular toddler for the next eight hours was, admittedly, not a viable notion to him. But I really did have plans for the day. Good ones.

Which is, of course, where I went wrong. Randy had plans to sleep all night, after all, and look where that got him.

So the new read-along book I wanted to do with her ended after two pages, when she figured out this was the same story she could watch in movie form on the DVD player. I used to love read-along books when I was little, so surely she would, too? Nope. Not so much. But then again, what good is a read-along when you can't read yet?

Then there were the muffins that I thought we could make together. Like any kid who hasn't yet realized how much work is involved in cooking, MJ always wants to help in the kitchen. We have a toddler cookbook by Annabel Karmel that makes this task seem like a glorious mother-child bonding moment. Witness the shiny happiness on this page:

But what MJ did instead of pouring and stirring was to make "apple boats":

... which is altogether cuter than stirring and pouring, but was not in the recipe, aka, "the plan."

The day went on like this. I had a vision of how our day might go; she had an altogether different idea -- not worse than mine, just a different interpretation. A different plan. No plan, in fact.

A lactation consultant once told me that women who demanded (or demand) excellence from themselves in the workplace are often surprised or frustrated by the ways in which they can't control the daily tasks of motherhood. It starts when you devise a birth plan that gets shot to h-e-double-hockey-sticks as your labor doesn't behave right, and continues each time you make a plan, big or small. In my workplace, there were rules and etiquette and meetings and benchmarks. In parenting, there are questions, journeys, unknowns. Being prepared doesn't mean crossing off a checklist of to-dos; it means understanding that you might just have a better time at Chick-fil-A's customer appreciation day than your kid, who actually turns out to be afraid of the main attraction: The guy dressed up in the cow costume.

In fact, if motherhood were a job you interviewed for, it would be the only occasion where "I'm a perfectionist" would be a proper response to the question "What would you say is your greatest weakness?"

As a freelance writer, I knew the steps to putting together an article. I could envision the research, the reporting, the transcribing, the brainstorming, the writing, the editing. As a mother, the best days I have are usually the ones where one random activity takes us to another one, when I don't concern myself with entertaining her so much as I let her be entertained.

Most of the time, I know this; I've learned it through months of practice. But there are days still when I have to relearn it, relinquish control, rewrite the plan, and make apple boats instead of apple muffins.

I am clearly not cut out for the "have baby, will travel" set. I always seem to be just a step behind everyone else when it comes to meeting the current standards of mother-child excursion preparedness.

For the past few weeks, we've been new gym members. (Technically, new members of an old gym we used to belong to, back in the halcyon days of semi-ripped ab muscles and good posture.) In those four weeks or so, I've been in three-and-a-half times, which is about the number of instances per week I had planned to go. The half, by the way, constitutes the trip when I worked out for 10 minutes before the child care folks came and got me to retrieve my absolutely-out-of-her-mind-with-stranger-anxiety 11-month-old, which is not to be confused with the trip when I never made it out of the child care room because she was in full meltdown mode 15 seconds after we entered. I sat in the room for an hour, playing with toys I could have been playing with at home, while Randy finished his workout. But that? The frustration over actually wanting to workout and actually wanting to leave the baby behind for a while to do so, and being thwarted every time? That's a different story for a different time.

This story is about how I went back in to retrieve my children yesterday morning. Bawling, splotchy, shaking, heaving, squealing, angry and frightened baby? Check. Waiting for me at the door. Well-adjusted, happy, couldn't-care-less-whether-Mommy's-around-or-not toddler? Hmmm. Being held. Looking pouty. Nice Gym Nanny looking at me with mingled pity and concern -- not for MJ, I guessed, but for her mother, her wholly inadequate and unprepared parent who apparently missed the memo that said her kid -- and all other kids -- is incapable of going ONE HOUR without having something to eat and drink. One hour, people.

Me: What happened?

Nice Gym Nanny: Well, she wanted a snack, and we couldn't find hers (waves a hand in direction of a counter that is literally packed with little Take-and-Toss bowls with goldfish crackers, each lovingly labeled with child's name before the mother/father left home to exercise.)

Me: Oh.

Nice Gym Nanny: Yeah. So she was really disappointed.

And so, I guessed, was Nice Gym Nanny ... in me. This is one of the reasons that I never bothered much with Gymboree classes and the like when MJ was even smaller than she is now; the idea of having to pack up her and half of her belongings to go somewhere else to play for 30 minutes seemed like unnecessary work for an 18-month-old with very simple needs. And now, packing a small lunch at 9:30 a.m., complete with masking tape monogramming (do you know how long it would take me to find masking tape around here?) seems like a lot of unnecessary work for a mother with a very simple need to sweat out all the spent patience clogged in her SAHM-y pores.

Am I being whiny and petulant? Yes. Most of the time Sometimes, that's what a blog is for.

I'll be honest. Some days I can't remember to brush MJ's hair before we go to Target. What I'm saying is: I'm soft. I need training. Boot camp. I'm a Type-L (for "lollygagging") parent personality living in a Type-A world. I'm pretty sure preschool in the fall will be as much about preparing Mommy to play nice as it will preparing MJ to do the same. They should charge me double. (But don't tell them I said that.)

Hee. It sounds like a dirty word, doesn't it? Well it kind of is, and I'll tell you why. Last night, Randy's parents (Canadians visiting the U.S. on Canada Day? What? It's true. You heard it here first.) showed us some video of, if not the Loveliest Place on Earth, at least the Loveliest Place In Holland, where they visited a few months ago.

Maybe I've mentioned the FatherBunker-in-Law is Dutch? (You know, before he also became Canadian.) I know! I am SO sort of multicultural-by-marriage. The good people at my liberal alma mater would be so proud ... you know, if I were actually using my diploma. And if Dutch-Canadian was a popular buzzword for multicultural. Which it's not. Hmm. Must rethink patterns of logic.

ANYWAY, the Loveliest Place in Holland: Keukenhof. Holy cow, they grew a blanket of tulips at this place in the shape of a dragon, and all I could think of as the images flashed across the screen was the dried-up-and-dead petunias sitting on my front porch -- which were beautiful before we went away for a week during the hottest days of the summer when it didn't rain. Now? As previously mentioned ... dried up and dead. I was also regretfully reminded of the Bleeding Heart bulbs that were so lovingly planted in the spring and so rudely lounged upon by our dog, so that they would not grow ... that is, when he wasn't peeing on the tiny, lifeless body of a baby evergreen. Then there were the squirrels -- oh look, aren't they cute, digging up my Gladiolus in that corner? Oh, that's really sweet. From there, my mind went down a dark place to the only thing I have successfully grown -- a pale pink knockout rose that I loved to look at out my window ... until last week, when the freakin' Japanese beetles came to roost and left its leaves looking like the contents of a dirty old ashtray. So, fine, Mother Nature: You win. I give up. Take all the vegetation we have. Keep on giving us these 98-degree days (and I don't mean the kind where I have to listen to Nick Lachey & Co.) with no rain, so that we can only water two days a week by city rules. Send me some leaf-chomping bugs to take care of anything the drought or the family pet doesn't do away with. It's AWESOME. Really. I mean it.

FatherBunker-in-Law tells me that "Keukenhof" means "Kitchen Garden." But I've decided it means something else entirely. I've decided this is my new curse word for all things gardening-related. So now, if you walk by my house and hear me yell, "Oh, Keukenhof! The dog's been peeing on (insert name of newly dead plant or shrub here) again," do not be alarmed. Because at least this word won't make you cover your toddler's ears -- although you may be tempted to speed past the crazy lady beating insects off her flower boxes with a broom. And I'm OK with that.

"Mommy! Mommy! Could we watch Lightning McQueen? Mommy! Could we watch Lightning McQueen? Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

MJ says this to me from her breakfast perch this morning, where she is running her miniature red No. 95 Lightning McQueen car on the table between bites of syrupy waffle. You may know LQ as the "lead character" in Cars, a movie we have only just begun to watch. And watch. And watch. A movie that, I daresay, is rivalling Madagascar as my "new" (it's new to me) favorite animated film. It's a tale of friendship, small town vs. big town, the big picture vs. the big idea, winning and losing and how losing sometimes means winning ... plus it has all that great music, especially the Rascal Flatt's version of "Life is a Highway" and the sweetly sad "Our Town" by James Taylor -- which anyone who comes from a small town would love. And I do.

So, when I went to turn it on for MJ this morning, and the sound wasn't working, I was a little bit sad myself. Which, in and of itself, is sad. But I digress ... to the Bat Phone!

Ring!

Randy: "Hey."

Me: "Yello. 'Sup?"

Randy: "Not much. You know ... working. Earning money for your keep. Trying to get this project finished up so I can spend time with my parents while they visit this week. That sort of thing."

Me: "Sweet."

Randy: "What's going on there?"

Me: "Bit of an emergency. The sound won't come on the TV."

Randy: "Hmmm. Well, that's no good."

Me: "Yeah. That's what I thought. What did you do to it?"

Randy: "I didn't do anything to it."

Me: "Then why won't it come on?"

Randy: "I don't know. I didn't touch it."

Me: "Well how do I fix it?

Randy: "I don't know. It should work."

Me: "Well this is unacceptable. I can't go through a whole day without sound on my TV! Who will babysit your children? Do you know what I have to get done today?"

Randy: "I can't imagine."

Me: "Yeah, well. I'm frustrated."

Randy: "I can see that. Sounds like it's going to be a long day. OK, well, gotta go work now."

Me: "Yeah, OK. Fine."

It's times like this when I realize I've lost all control of reality.

The good news is that I did get the sound fixed. It turns out that our television, with all of its myriad systems and dozens of remotes for hundreds of functions, responds surprisingly well to cursing.