Or, The Weekend in Literal Review, Using a Cat-butt Rating System.

Hell-O bad. The cat has vomited on you while you sleep.
So-so. The cat tripped you while you were carrying a plastic bucket of salsa, the salsa asplode, and now your whole house smells like cilantro.
Pretty good. The cat came and sat in your lap, and did not freak out and start biting you like a little bitch.
Awesome! The cat is sleeping next to your head like a fetching and stylish hat and is purring in a soothing fashion.

1. Friday Night

Friday night sucked donkey balls. Franny and I were quarrelling about dumbness, as we pretty much did all weekend. Franny is always exhausted by Friday and acts like a pill. She flipped out about something and declared herself “stupid” and ran to her room. This always bums me out, because we try not to do any name-calling around here. My modus operandi is usually to say you are being sassy, rude, mean, etc., and here’s how you can fix your behavior. But sometimes when she gets really upset she just freaks out and starts calling herself names. She doesn’t fit in a jar, and the postage to China is too expensive, so what can you do?

Also, my companion and I were supposed to have a date night, but Strudel has been teething so we just couldn’t leave. The children were drugged and put to bed early, and then my companion made me a vodka and POB and I was drugged and went to bed early as well.

Friday night:
Children and their sassy and/or teething moufs:

2. Saturday

Saturday was better, but busy. I escaped to breakfast with my friend Halo, who is a librarian about town these days, because she works for multiple schools/systems. We braved the labyrinthine neighborhood Queen Anne, which freaks my fragile inner compass out, to go to the 5-Spot, part of the local Chow Foods chain. Halo and I joked about hitting all of them in the next couple of months but quickly dismissed this idea after realizing that Jitterbug has gone down the tubes in the past couple of years and that after standing at the door of the 5-Spot for ten minutes no one seated or even acknowledged us. So we split to another neighborhood for a different restaurant entirely.

Then I came home and the dryer broke. And you know, you don’t find out that the dryer’s broken until you try to use it, so we hung up our clothes all over the house until they dried. And then panicked, because we have two small children, one of whom is prone to nosebleeds and vomiting, and we could have a laundry crisis at ANY MINUTE. The building manager promised that she would have a repairperson out today or tomorrow, so I am trying to remain calm.

Chow Foods chain:
Driving around with Halo:
Fucking Dryer: and a *~3

3. Sunday

…made up for a lot of the other nonsense. We took Franny to see Narnia, which was a treat for everyone, and apparently Strudel behaved just fine (drugged up before we left). Children are much more tolerable when they’re in a drug-induced stupor. I believe those Victorians were on to something, with all their laudanum and whatnot. Actually, no, they weren’t, because they believed that women’s uteruses floated around their bodies and strangled people during full moons or something. But they were right about drugs, anyway.

The awesome part was that my stalwart companion hung up a curtain and rod that separates our room into two parts, so that Strudel won’t stand up in her crib and scream while staring at us at three in the morning. She’s not stupid; she knows we’re back…she just can’t make eye contact with us anymore.

It’s helping a lot so far. She can’t see us and we can pretend that we don’t have a baby two feet away from us. So last night, for the first time in over a month, we were able to “fight crime” in our own comfy bed. Take that, bad guys. Also, we had sex.

Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia:
The Thin Line Bewtween Love and Hate (by IKEA):
The Victorians’ contributions to medical science: