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The moment before I pulled up this blank screen, the boy attempted to move my newly-poured cup of Diet Coke from where it was quite happily situated upon the patio table.  Apparently he sensed that I needed it closer to me, even though closer to me meant that it was also closer to the laptop.  I watched with a mixture of encouragement and horror, fearing that if I moved to take the drink from his hands he’d startle and spill the dark liquid across a keyboard already lousy with sand.

Prior to that the two smallest ones attempted to scale the fence, a tree, several stacked lawn chairs and the compost heap despite having earlier turned up their noses at very fine climbing equipment located at a city park.  Cool plastic with no rough seams built by conscientious engineers whose only goal was the maximum joy of children, and they scorned it entirely.  They dragged  around as woefully as you’d expect from children at a funeral — though surely my children would caper with intemperate glee at any funeral they’d attend.  They’d probably scale the coffin.

And the tattling, oh holy mother of glass dildos the tattling.  The tattling I cannot bear, especially when the eldest child baits her younger siblings.  “Let’s fight,” she’ll say, sotto voce; but the second a small person responds by wildly swinging in imitation of some random Power Ranger, she screeches “Mom, he’s hitting me!”  As if she’d been sitting quietly reading Plato.

On days like this one I do not know how I’m going to make it though the next decade and a half plus until the youngest one is out of high school.  Honestly.  If a circus were at the moment in my town I’d be tempted to run off with it, even though I have no acrobatic skills and my elephant poo shoveling abilities would surely leave something to be desired.

But an elephant wouldn’t talk back.  It would not sit petulantly on the floor and refuse to use the toilet even though we’re late to take another child to class and I know the potty will be needed desperately the instant the mini kicks into gear.  An elephant would not throw sand on its sister and then scream when the sister tosses grass back.

An elephant would not tattle.  Of that I am completely certain.

As I finish this, a knot of my children and some neighborhood hangers-on has gathered beneath a shady tree to examine someone’s new Pokemon cards.  All is at peace as a half-dozen brown, black and blond heads bend toward the notebook spread open on the grass, until one of my small darlings leaps up. She knocks askew two hats.  As she races off she screams, “So long, suckers!”

And I’m half-tempted (and I’m only half-joking when I say it) to run off screaming the exact same thing.