We took the little cherubs to see Grandma and Grandpa Naptimethoughts a few weeks ago. Really, it was more of a cry for help because by mid-August all our lives were hanging in the late-summer balance of too much togetherness.
They have a jacuzzi tub, and J and K like to have their baths in it.

It’s kind of a weird obsession of theirs.

My dirty, bath phobic children — the children for whom I bait animal traps with cookies in order to catch for bath time at home  — the same children that bite at my hands like flea ridden opossum when caught and dumped in the water, suddenly become sweet, lavender-and-rose-scented, Jesus-I-thought-that-was-a-tan, hygienic, small people.
Grandma runs a bubble bath, and immediately (and amazingly) the two of them hop in. J lays on his back like a smug little otter, and K sits primly upon the bath seat.
First order of business, the obligatory bubble beard.

Ah, isn’t that funny. As classic as the man who walked into a bar. (Sigh.)
Next is the fart. J offers a fart of such resonance that it could be its own percussive instrument.
He does this. Every. Time. Don’t ask me how he manages, for I do not know, however, the bubble(s) it delivers seems to be the real prize. A low, sustained vibration and then a singular bubble, as large as possible, is the most desirable fart sequence. The children laugh. My mother tut-tut’s affectionately. Then we get down to brass tacks, the throwing of bubbles and the drowning of the rubber duckie. At some point, they are washed. I’m not really sure when.
So, after dinner on our first night in the happenin’ town of Williamsburg Virginia, The kids hopped in the tub with Grandma at the helm. I was sitting on the couch in the living room listening to the kids have tub fun and taking a well-deserved break.
Then I heard K say:

“I grab your penis.”

There is a moment of amused silence among my compatriots in the living room. I hear my mother vaguely in the background, and then the dulcet tones of my sons’ ass. Everything must be back to normal.
The husband and I had resumed our conversation with my father when we hear J say:

“Oooooooh yeah, my buttcrack.”

Another moment of silence.

“Yeah, get it in my buttcrack, K”

My curiosity is piqued. I walk into the bathroom, and all three of them turned to look at me like the cat caught with her paw in the aquarium. K had stopped, mid-flow, pouring hot bath water and bubbles onto J’s butt from her bath toys (read: plastic Cool Whip containers from the kitchen). My mother shrugs her shoulders.

I left. For good measure, I closed the door behind me.

So that’s how she gets them in the tub.

The next day, Mother Naptimethoughts and I had planned to go shopping. Specifically, we had planned to go bra shopping, as my bras had been breaking and wearing. Besides one ill-fitting purple monstrosity and an old nursing bra, (which was, in fact, preferable to the purple monstrosity) I had run out of garments with which to buttress my boobage.
I hate bra shopping.
This time though, this time, I swore to myself that I would have a good attitude while shopping for bras, and try to make the whole experience easier for myself and my poor mother.  She needed bras too, and I can (maybe) be a little bit (a mite if you will) bitchy horrible testy during this particular breastivity.

I will have a good attitude while shopping for bras.

We went to a bra outlet. It appeared to house every bra in the southern United States.
I had a good attitude.
I picked out seventy thousand bras, in six thousand different sizes and colors so that I could compare each bras’ disappointments individually and in contrast to the disappointments of its’ competition. I had a good attitude.
Mom chose four bras, in one size. I think I had a better attitude than she did.
We’re not particularly modest people, so we shared a dressing room. On with the bras.
I had a GOOD ATTITUDE.
Some of them poked, some were too big, some too small, some too pinchy, some did nothing at all, one after another, each sucked more than the last. The bras were piling up in the tiny fitting room. If we didn’t find a winner soon, we would suffocate in the uncomfortable pinch of discarded cup sizes, but I HAD A GOOD ATTITUDE.

Mom kept going out and coming back in with other bras. Every time she opened the door, I was invariably braless, and there was someone out there to stare at my naked boobs.
What can you do? I smiled and said hello. Hell, the lady staring is sporting a pair just like mine, and I had what I could still manage of my good attitude. After a while, no one could see me for the pile of discarded bras, anyhow. I suggested that Mom might’ve taken one or two more bras into the fitting room initially, relieving her of the need to leave the room (and put me on much more intimate terms with the “Fitting Team”) quite so often. Just a suggestion, though. I had a moderately good attitude.
Finally we both settled on two and had to choose. I decided to put both on one more time and make the final decision. Just as I was hooking the last bra, a pain shot up the back of my neck and across my left shoulder. It seriously put a crimp in what was left of my good attitude, but I thought I’d just pulled a muscle. Putting on seventy thousand bras in a row will do that to you.
Mom and I ended up choosing the same bra.

I hate them now, turns out they were pinchy on the DL, but that’s another story.

By the time we got back to my parents’ house the pain in my neck was growing intolerable, and there it stayed. I had pinched a nerve there, and the remedy is… Nothing.
Dr. says: “sit on your ass and take one pill to make you sleepy, another pill to make you loopy, and wait. That’ll be seventy thousand dollars, please”. Coincidence? I think not.

My advice? Take the blue pill.

I spent the rest of our time there on my back staring at various ceilings in the house.

The husband drove me home in a drug induced haze while I stared at the roof of my car.

By the time I was able to get up and say hello to the world, this was the world I found. The apocalypse must have come to visit while I was all fucked up on percocet.

But hey, opiates may have just saved our entire family from the horrors of late August. They started school today. Both of them, and my neck feels all better.

Happy September everyone, and remember only this:
However much you love your children, they still suck in August.