Birthing Beautiful Ideas

Yes, I know how lucky I am to have my darling children.  I love them more than I can fully express, even when they keep me awake at all hours of the night.

And I realize how lucky my family is to have a roof over our heads.  To have food in the refrigerator and jobs and running water and a safe place to live.  And I’m not forgetting all of that luck for one second.

But COME ON universe!  What is UP?!

Yep, that’s the kind of night I had last night.

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Something truly magical happened on Wednesday night.  Something so magical and wonderful and exquisitely beautiful that I almost couldn’t believe it when it happened:

Both boys slept from about 8 p.m. until 6 yesterday morning.  Without any fights, or meltdowns, or freak-outs, or early morning wanderings to snag some spicy banana muffins.

It was a glorious night.

And because of this glorious night, I woke up yesterday feeling like a new woman.  A calm woman.  A still-fatigued woman, but a woman who was beginning to see a little more rest and a little less “attack-of-the-overtired-children” in her future.

So yesterday evening, as Tim was putting A (2) to bed and M (4) was resting peacefully in our bed until A fell asleep (our latest sleep strategy!), I decided to get in a little exercise, a little shower, and then an early bedtime.

It was a good plan.  A wise plan.  I was, after all, taking the kids (by myself) to Chicago to visit their grandparents the next day.  A good night’s sleep was on the agenda.  It was a totally reasonable and magnificent plan, people!

But oh, those wise plans.  How they mock me.  How they ridicule me.  How they tease me like a seventh grade bully.  ON CRACK COCAINE.

‘Cause those plans were about to be demolished.

During my post-exercise shower, I heard what sounded like someone pounding really, really hard over and over and freakin’-over-again on the front door.

And because I have a one-track mind right now (and on that track is a freight train riding to OH MY GOD, WILL MY KIDS EVER SLEEP town), my first thought was “WHO THE F#&K IS KNOCKING ON THE DOOR WHEN WE’RE F#&KING TRYING TO PUT THE KIDS TO BED?!?!”

My mind.  It curses like a sailor.  Especially when I’m exhausted.

Once the knocking of doom stopped, I prayed that the salesperson or the survey-taker or the neighbor-kid or WHOEVER IT WAS THAT WAS TRYING TO DESTROY BEDTIME would just go away.  Quietly.  Quickly.

But then M ran into the bathroom to let me know that he was going to check on who was “knocking at our [second-story bedroom] window.”

Duh, WHA?!?!

I screamed, “NO!  WAIT!  DON’T GO NEAR IT!” and then hopped out of the shower.

Oh my god, what was I going to find?  A mutant squirrel?  A serial killer?  My two-year-old, who had now learned how to climb out the window and swing from the tree branches like a real howler monkey?

So with my hair sopping wet, water dripping all over the carpet, and a towel draped over the front of my body, I tip-toed out of the bathroom to see what was making all of that sleep-obliterating noise.

No hulking rodents.  No serial killers.  No two-year-old.

But there were a handful of neighbors in the alley behind our house.  They were looking up at something.  And there were some flashing red lights a block or two away from us.  Oh, look!  Those lights were coming from a fire engine.  And hey, LOOK!  THE WIRES ON THE TRANSFORMER BOX BEHIND OUR HOUSE WERE SMOLDERING.  They were on FIRE!

FIRE!

MOTHERHUMPING FIRE!!!

Boobs, meet neighbors.  Neighbors, boobs.

I threw that towel down, yelled for Tim to gather the kids, and then told him to run out into the front yard because OH MY GOD THERE WAS AN ELECTRICAL FIRE!

Tim later informed that the room looked like a scene from one of those ’80s sorority films, what with the bouncing boobs and the “FIRE! FIRE!” shrieks.

Which, you know, had to have looked awesome.  To the neighbors.

So Tim scurried outside with both kids as I scrambled to get my clothes on, and then I made a mad dash out the front door.  You see, WITH OUR LUCK that burning wire could have flown across the yard, landed on our gas grill, and then sent the whole house up to the moon.  It’s not outside the realm of possibility when it comes to our lives. And I didn’t want to be near the house when it happened.

Once I got to the front yard (with a lovely case of “raccoon eyes” and, hey neighbors!, shirt on!), Tim and I learned that the transformer box had exploded while I was in the shower.  Like exploded, exploded.  Flames shooting up into the air and everything.  And that’s where the noise came from.  THE KNOCKING, BOOM-BOOM, POUNDING SOUNDS WERE FROM AN EXPLOSION!

AT BEDTIME! (Seriously, couldn’t the fire have been a little more considerate of my family’s needs?)

Hours later, after the fire department put out the fire, after the power company had fixed the box, after both boys were in bed, and after the electricity came back on in the house, Tim and I snuggled on the couch with a couple glasses of wine, way past my hoped-for early bedtime.

And we realized that it’s got to be one hell of a week when you tell each other, “HEY!  AT LEAST THE HOUSE DIDN’T EXPLODE TODAY!”