Damn you, karma

I'm going to make this short because I'm a sad and worried mommy tonight.

You know when you get an idea in your head? Well, my idea was always that Gutsy would be the first of the gremlins to break something.

I was wrong.

Geekster took Intrepid and Gutsy 3 1/2 hours away to visit the in-laws today. While they were there, tree-climbing fun was had. No problem, right? Boys, trees... they sort of go together.

That is, until a tree branch breaks and boys go falling.

Intrepid broke his leg very close to the hip. He's resting comfortably in the hospital in Peterborough, leg in traction and morphine soothing the aches away.

Either tonight or tomorrow (I'm guessing tomorrow at this point) he will be transported to the local children's hospital around here so they can put a pin in his leg and cast it.

When Geekster called to tell me the news, I had to hand Spawnling over to The Sister before I dropped to the floor. My back hit the wall and I nearly slid down in shock.

Ok, I know it's minor. I get that. I'm not stupid, ok? I'm The Maven. He'll be fine. But he's my baby. My baby. My firstborn. And right now he's in a hospital three hours away with people other than me taking care of him. And Gutsy is being treated like a prince at my in-laws' place, but I never packed him pajamas. What the hell is he going to sleep in tonight? (It truly amazes me where my mind goes. Those motherly instincts have no bounds).

When I was 13, I was hit by a car. It just happened to be when my mom was taking her first 'girls' weekend' away in, like, forever.

Karma is a bitch, isn't it?

I'll update when I know more.

Muffin Wars

Phew.

I just finished smiting the Sodom and Gomorrah of the fruitfly world: namely the dried-on orange juice on the counter and the dried-on everythings on Spawnling's highchair.

Take that, you little bastards.

I'm feeling very omnipotent right now.

At the moment I'm drinking some low sodium V8 and trying to convince myself that it will fill me up. I'm starving after the cleaning and the dancing to MP3s on the player with Geekster's oversized headphones wrapped around my head. I was burning extra calories while breaking up the fruitfly lovefest. It made my task more enjoyable.

I was all set to make some chocolate chip cookies today; I have all the ingredients and a new baking pan. I had children sleeping and/or watching television and/or listening to more highly annoying Naruto theme songs on YouTube. The problem? My Betty Crocker cookbook has gone missing in the move.

What, you say? Who cares, you say? You can find 35,000 other chocolate chip cookie recipes online, you say?

True, I say. But there is only one amazing cookie recipe, and that can only be found within the pages of the Betty Crocker cookbook. The others simply pale in comparison. If you haven't had Maven Crocker's chocolate chip cookies then you have been dealt a horrible hand in life and should consider therapy to deal with the anguish.

They are, if I do say so (and of course I will), incredible. I'm guessing that this is why I can pack away 8 or 10 of them in a day.

Maybe it's good that I haven't found that cookbook.

Plan B, of course, is to start the Muffin Wars.

It's a simple solution to a problem I've had lately: I love to bake but I haven't the time. My neighbours, on the other hand, have lives far less chaotic than mine. They also seem to enjoy baking. Baking for my family.

Isn't this most excellent?

The week we moved in we were given Welcome Muffins from Pajama Pants, our single, female neighbour across the road. Welcome Muffins are provided in a disposable pie plate because they say 'Welcome to the neighbourhood. Because I don't know whether or not you're a thieving miscreant I will give you a baking tray that I don't need back'.

The second tray came from Popsicle Pop and Gardening Girl about two weeks ago. They also provided a disposable baking tray, even though they know two other generations of my family members.

Either they have trust issues or my grandma is into high crime.

Anyway, the point is that both trays of muffins were delicious and I wish they could hurry up and make us some more because I'm getting tired of not having baked goods in the house. Therefore, Geekster and I have concocted a way to get the ball rolling.

First of all, we could tell Pajama Pants how delicious her muffins were: 'Delicious Muffins, Pajama Pants.'

Pretty good so far, eh? Now comes the twist:

'You know what? Gardening Girl brought us muffins, too! Isn't that great? They were so good. I mean, not that yours weren't. They were good, too. I think. Yeah, yeah... I remember them now. The taste and all, three weeks ago. Good. Yep, good. And hers were awesome.'

I suspect by afternoon we would have a fresh batch of muffins.

Next, I would casually walk up to Gardening Girl while enjoying one of my still-warm muffins.

'Hi, Gardening Girl. Oh, this? This is a muffin from Pajama Pants. Doesn't it smell amazing? I sure do love when people bake for me. Especially if they do it regularly. You know how busy I am, being a stay-at-home-mom to three boys. It's so tiring. I don't get to eat much, as you can tell.' (this is where I show her how much I'm wasting away by sucking my cheeks in for that waif look).

Subtlety is key in these transactions.

She's a bit older than Pajama Pants, probably in her early 70's, but I suspect that by the next morning she'd be able to bring me some muffins if she worked through the night.

Using my big brain coupled with my girlish charms, I could probably manage to swing an outright battle for my affection between my baking neighbours.

I'm worth it.

Humanizing the Goddess

*ahem*

Yes, I realize I went on and on about needing to update more often and then didn't post for, oh, a week.

I get that.

But if you're going to blame someone, please blame the nine-month-old. He's still not walking (I'm secretly thrilled about this because he's still so baby-like) but he's currently growing four top teeth at once and is anything but easy-going right now. He's not willing to let me have my hands free, nor does he like to be predictable in his sleep patterns. This is not conducive to regular blogging, friends. Even my one-handed-typing-with-Spawnling-in-arms is a no-go, as he's quite proficient at pulling off Lapzilla's keys.

I do believe attempting to destroy The Maven's keyboard should be listed as a sin, but so far the Powers That Be haven't gotten back to me about that. Maybe they didn't get the memo.

Anyway, before I get any nasty comments, I did have two gardens planted for me by the lovely Lushgurl last week. I sucked her into it by convincing her that I had a black thumb. In reality, I can hold my own in the gardening department but I prefer sitting in my kitchen watching someone else do it. In the end there's still a garden and I don't get an ugly farmer's tan. See? There are benefits to manipulation.

Actually, I begrudgingly enjoyed my coffee and wished I could make pretty things out of mounds of dirt, too. The nerve of talented people coming over and showing off like that. Thank you, Lushy, for working so hard like that. And an equally big thanks to her daughter, AAngel, for looking after the Gremz for a while so I could have no idea what to do with this 'spare time' stuff people keep telling me exists.

I'll post some pictures once I locate the rechargeable batteries that the gremlins have run off with. They probably put them in some ridiculously loud toy that 'accidentally' ran out of battery juice. There are many of those 'accidental' power-downs in this household.

Speaking of begrudgingly watching someone do things, I should probably write a bit about my friend, Mrs. Wailing. We've known each other for over a decade, pre-kids and pre-marriages. Back in the days of staying up all night and hanging out in my rental garden home filling the walls with nicotine. We were such badasses.

We're well past all that cool stuff now. The big W and I are both mothers to boy gremlins and are brave enough to stay home with them full-time. The difference? Mrs. Wailing's home is very, very clean. I'm talking immaculate here. It's spotless enough that she could have Jesus over for a pot roast in a moment's notice. I have never seen the place in anything but perfect condition. Amazing!

Oh, we all tease her about it, of course; that's just our envy shining through. In fact, for Wailing Jr's birthday last weekend, I went with my usual theme of buying him things - this time they were books - related to cleaning up, as he shares his mother's love of tidiness. A mutual friend, Stephbucks, also makes cracks about Mrs. W. possibly breaking out in hives at the sight of dust on the baseboards. As a gift from her kiddos, she gave four-year-old Wailing Jr. finger paints. Ah, a woman after my own heart, tainted ever so slightly with evilness. Even I hate cleaning up finger paint!

It truly does seem like Mrs. Wailing is near perfect, don't you think? Adorable, well-behaved children. A perfectly clean home. Not even a flinch at the finger paints. She's a good sport about all our jabs, too. Obviously, any friend of mine must have incredible patience.

Today I was over for our weekly visit. As per usual, the home was impeccable. My gremlins had no problem making it feel more like home in short order, however, as they tore apart not only the main floor but the bedrooms, too. Those are my little darlings, making mommy proud.

It came time to make lunch. I had brought over some cheese and bread so that we could have grilled cheese sandwiches. As I dealt with Fussy McClingsalot, AKA the Teething Terror, AKA Spawnling, Mrs. W. took care of fixing our lunch.

At least I thought she was. For, the next thing I knew, she was taking bread out of the toaster.

Toasting the bread? This is one step I'd never performed in order to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

The next thing she did was not only creepy, but just outright wrong: She slapped a piece of processed cheese between the pieces of toast and put them it in the microwave.

I couldn't speak. I was absolutely stunned. I had to regain my composure.

'Um.. Mrs. Wailing? What... um... what are you doing?'

'Making grilled cheese,' she replied calmly.

Wide-eyed, I replied: 'No. No you're not. You're butchering toast.'

'I am not,' she retorted. 'You don't like how I'm making grilled cheese?'

Perhaps she had just forgotten. I needed to gently remind her, that's all. 'The thing about grilled cheese is that it's grilled. You know, in a pan?'

Mrs. Wailing looked beyond mortified. 'What? You want me to cook? Me? Cook? No, no. I hate cooking. Mr. Wailing does all that stuff.'

And finally, I understood: Mrs. Wailing isn't perfect like I thought she was. She has all the time in the world to clean because she saves time by microwaving her kids' sandwiches.

Isn't it nice when people are instantly humanized?

I came back to my messy, mostly unpacked home with a smile on my face. Then I made tacos.

Then I didn't clean up the taco stuff for a while because I kind of suck at cleaning.

Then I noticed that Fruitflypalooza was happening in my now messy kitchen sink.

Then I spent the next three hours trying to find time to clean it with Gutsy and Intrepid and Spawnling requiring various things from Tylenol for headaches to wanting help gardening to nursing an entire cup size out of my breasts in order to soothe sore teeth.

Meanwhile the fruitflies where having an orgy in the salsa bowl.

Then I thought long and hard about microwaving some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.

He'll be toddling 'round the kitchen when he comes

If someone could kindly tell Spawnling that sleeping at night is conducive to a happier mother, that would be grand.

Oh, and if you could also let him know that it helps when he lets mommy get some mommy time in the evenings instead of sleeping for 45 minutes and waking up again at 8:30PM and staying up until I go to bed, that would also be greatly appreciated.

My coffee maker has never seen more use. It's probably starting to feel like a cheap whore. Next thing I know it'll be asking me to drop some money next to the bean grinder before I leave the room.

Oh, and the other thing he's not doing? Walking. Nope. Not at all. And that, I've concluded, is a strong indicator that he's going to be a slacker who lives with us until he's 32 and snags a hot lawyer girlfriend who will take care of his designer shoe fetish.

Intrepid took first steps at exactly nine months. Like, the day he turned the big niner. And Gutsy? You guessed it: Exactly nine months.

Well guess who turned nine months today and tried to impress us with his standing up unassisted in the middle of the kitchen floor a few times? That's right: the new kid. Were we impressed? Hardly. He's been doing that for three days now. It's kind of getting old.

"Hello, Spawling? It's your pal, Clue. Just wanted to give you a heads up that you're the third boy in the family. You might want to try stepping it up a little."

So now we have the not sleeping coupled with the not walking. He should know by now that negative attention is not as good as positive attention. Also, he should be telling this to Gutsy who still hasn't figured out that secret at 4 1/2, but I digress...

Also, I should perhaps make Slackling aware of the fact that I'm still holding a bit of a grudge over being three days late. His older brothers came early. Why couldn't he be more like them?

I think, as crazy as it sounds, that the Tupperware Tornado might be trying to assert some individuality. Maybe he's attempting to show us that he's not Intrepid and Gutsy's triplet brother who decided to hang out in the womb a few more years. That he has his own thoughts, feelings and timelines. That, despite being the third boy gremlin, he's actually his own person.

Funny, isnt' it? Him thinking he's people and all.

But then again, he might also be giving me exactly what I want and need; a lot of my friends have just had or are just about to have babies. I cuddled Fly's little sweetheart and instantly wanted another squishy infant. Tonight I snuggled a three-week-old baby girl who looked at me with those adorable newborn eyes that said 'You, too, could have one of me, Maven. Just one more try. Come on. You're fertile enough! You can do it! Just go home and make one of me RIGHT NOW.'

I can't, evil (and incredibly cute) little baby! I don't make babies easily! I can't go through the heartache of trying to conceive again.That long, painful process that comes so easily to some and not others. I can't imagine wishing and hoping and testing every single cycle for years. The temperature taking, the charting of cervical fluid, the sadness at a negative result, the mixed feelings of wanting to wean Spawnling sooner so I can try and be more fertile and not wanting to because it's best for him that I don't. Despite having PCOS, I've been blessed with three really awesome (wild, destructive, impulsive, terrorizing) children. Who gets that lucky? Me, that's who. Why would I tempt fate by trying again?

And then if I actually did get knocked up and didn't miscarry again, then I'd have to go through the morning sickness and the tiredness and the emotional rollercoaster and the inevitable c-section and the Russian roulette of depression or anxiety lasting for months on end. Spawnling evened me out. I went from Depressed with Intrepid to anxious with Gutsy to being chill enough (for me) to think that I've replaced my morning Cheerios with Prozac again: The breakfast of champions and people who are essentially emotionally castrated thanks to the wonderpill.

Nope. No babies. This is my last one.

So maybe - just maybe - my last little wonder has decided to take his sweet time and do things on a schedule that best fits his place in our family. Such as walking a few days or weeks later than his brothers in order to let me savour his fleeting babyhood just a little longer.

Happy nine months, Spawnling. I love your non-walking, kitchen-standing self more than I can put into words.

Fun at The Maven's at 10pm

I.

Am.

So.

Sick.

Of.

Renovations.

Our house is starting to feel more like a house now, though. Goodbye mint green kitchen and hello sage green kitchen. Yes, we went to all the trouble of taping, moving furniture into the middle of the room and keeping intrigued eight-month-old and overzealous "helping" four-year-old gremlin paws out of the paint just to change the hue a little bit.

I admit to being a huge snob when it comes to paint colour. I'm a visual person, much like that guy who tells his girlfriend she needs to lose those five pounds. Except I don't have a girlfriend, and even if I did, I would be incredibly hypocritical if I told her to lay off the donuts. And then she might yell at me, throw my clothes out the window and burn our couple pictures.

Good thing I don't have a girlfriend.

I thought I might do more outdoor-type things and bought some discounted plants. A gardener I am not, but I like to pretend. If plants could grow legs and run, they most certainly would at the sight of me. The problem is simple: plants can't scream. They have no audible way to tell me they need care, and I am far too busy to notice little things like drooping leaves or stalks burned to a crisp from a week in the sun.

Generally, my gardens look fabulous in June and are nearly obliterated by July. Except this year I've fooled Mother Nature in the best way possible: I won't be finished planting until mid-July. Hah! Take that, you crunchy old hag. You won't defeat me this year! I'll have delicious lush gardens until at least the first week in August!

So anyway, now that I'm finished with my tangent... The long and short of this is that I bought plants and bought soil and bought gardening gloves... and it's bloody raining outside.

I think Gutsy must have handed in one of his 'Piss on Mom's Parade' cards he got from Satan for all the time-outs he's been given this week. He has the worst attitude ever. I think Super Nanny would run crying in the other direction after a weekend with this kid. He's eviler than she is. He's as predictable as a tornado and about as destructive. I think the child deserves his own documentary.

He also, just to spite me, I'm sure, woke up with pink eye today.

Don't tell me it's not deliberate; he's the only one with goopey eyes. He obviously befriended the Demon of Lesser Plagues and asked for something funny to pass around to his family members. I've washed my hands so much today they're raw.

Oh! And the best part? He's decided that he's going to be sweet and cuddly today. We've all received more hugs than I can count, with eye goop smearing on our clothes in the process. Normally I'm hard pressed to get one or two hugs in a day, in which I'm doing most of the hugging and he's doing something closely resembling a stiff stand.

Good thing for breastmilk, baby. Liquid gold. It's cured more eye infections than Rosie O'Donnell has pissed off celebrities. I got some drops just in case, but our first line of defense is homemade. I've decided this time not to squirt it directly in his eye as I'm sure saying 'Mommy put her booby in my face' might not go over so well with neighbours or subsequent authority figures. For as much as he's driving me nuts, I'm not quite at the point where I'm considering preschooler relocation options.

I just had to pause a minute because Intrepid came out from the playroom to tell me about *ick* the anime show he's watching.

I really don't like anime very much. Well, not the kind he likes. YOU KNOW: THE KIND WHERE THEY YELL REALLY REALLY LOUD INSTEAD OF TALKING AND MAKE EXAGGERATED FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND BATTLE EVERYONE AND DEFEAT EVERYTHING AND GAIN LEVELS?!?!?!?!?!

It's very difficult to feign interest when he comes into the kitchen to give me updates on the commercials. I try very hard, I do. I deserve a medal or some chocolate.

Speaking of which, it's time to apply some chocolate brown paint to the accent wall in the livingroom/diningroom.

Trust me. It's going to be terribly sexy. As sexy as me.

No, no... I was kidding. For real sexy, not post-three-children sexy.

So much for my late night snack

At 8 months of age, Spawnling has turned into a crotchety old bugger. I think he needs to spend some time with Glaring Hobble Man because they seem have a lot in common: they don't appreciate my actions and they let me know it in no uncertain terms. Furthermore, I think GHM could teach Spawnmeister a few things about subtlety. The little guy seems to think the answer is to scream his adorable little lungs out. A glare is just as effective and far less effort, sweetcakes. Disgruntled old guys have mastered that technique.

I love my gremlins, but why must they be so loud? Can't they see that mommy is frazzled? Don't they care?

The worst part is that - just when mommy needs to eat her feelings at 11:30pm - she finds out that the last two ice cream cones she stashed away in the back of the freezer have disappeared into greedy little paws earlier this evening while she was away.

Eating a box raisins may be healthier, but not quite as satisfying.

So I'm watching a pregnancy and birth show on Discovery Health at the moment and I have to say it is giving me absolutely no inclination to add another member to the family.

This must be related to the lack of ice cream. Deprivation of sweets by children is apparently a wonderful form of birth control. Who knew? Also, both lack of sweets and lack of pregnancy are good ways to lose weight. This could work out nicely for The Maven, minus the feeling grumpy and slightly resentful parts.

Fall-out Girl and Mrs. Wailing were just over for a view of the new royal palace and some java. We were discussing 'feeling done' and I was sitting on the fence on the issue. I was straddling the line feeling slightly sore in the crotch area; not wanting another, but not wanting to permanently close the door on the idea, either. After all, it hasn't exactly been simple for us to have children. Three in a decade isn't a great track record. I scored a C- in Fertility 101. It just seems... weird... to decide to be done. Who gets to decide these things anyway?

And on the other hand, I'm picking my jaw up off the keyboard right now after watching the story of one couple on this show. They have three children under five, the eldest has special needs and nearly died twice. They also foster three teenagers.

Oh, and she's eight months pregnant.

It's called "shopping", people. It's a great way to kill some time. Not quite as orgasmic as your current hobby but slightly less time consuming. This grand idea is my gift to you.

See? Who says I don't like to help people?

Funny... I'm still not ready for Geekster to get that vasectomy even after that. I'm a glutton for punishment.

And ice cream. Or stupid raisins.

If you suck like I did, you're gone

You heard me right.

Don't giggle, you pervert. I don't mean it that way.

I know I was a bad blogger. I used to post pretty much every day before Spawnling was born. Then I went down to three or four times a week and suffered huge guilt over it. Then we put our house on the market, bought a new one and moved and I posted maybe once a week or less.

Then I lost pretty much my entire fan base. I'm ok with it. They're just off in a corner crying because I wasn't filling their lives with interesting topics about kids and neighbours and lawn nazis.
But you know what? It's time to come back now. So I polished up the old blog, slapped on a new template and I'm ready to blow my own mind with my amazing posts and 0 comments. My posts are going to be so good and so frequent that I'll want to comment on them myself in awe of their awesomeness every time I read them. I might want to kiss them a little bit and maybe even get to second base.

It occurred to me that while I was away I wasn't checking other people's blogs, either. Lo and behold, half the people who used to fill my wothless life with the ramblings of their worthless lives have disappeared from the interweb!

We can't have dead blogs on a rejuvenated one. That just can't happen. It's like having old Tupperware at a new Tupperware party. Nobody wants to see your scratched up nastiness. They want the new shiny stuff.

So you are nuked, old blogs. Sorry to do that to you. I feel like I just sprayed a can of Raid through my list of special places.

On the upside, I'm excited to blog again.

Who says you can't be replaced?

Remember Creepy Walking Couple? That fashion-challenged, straight-out-of-1988, crazy-haired, scary-grin man and woman who held hands and walked around my old 'hood day and night? She had hair down to her petite behind, he had a rainbow-coloured windbreaker and a beer gut. I really missed their eccentricity for the first two days we were here.

Then along came Glaring Hobble Man and I instantly felt at home!

On that fateful day I was outside with my little dog, Spazzerella, trimming some brush around the front yard. You know, cleaning the place up a little. Spawnling was exploring the grass. As I was pulling a twig out of his mouth for the fourth time, Spazzerella starts yipping at a man walking down the street. He was hobbling, really. Ok, not total hobbling, but all those traits are emphasized when you don't particularly like someone, ok?

I removed the twig from a disappointed Spawnling (who then crawled over to make mouth friends with a rock) and ran up to Spaz and the old man she was barking at. I picked her up and apologized to him, smiling and saying 'Her bark is worse than her bite. She's quite nice, just pretends to be a ten-pound guard dog. Haha!'

The hobbling man kept walking and smirked at me.

What? Did you just smirk at me, new neighbour? Oh, I don't think so. Nobody smirks at me and gets away with it.

People react in very different ways when they're faced with rudeness. Some are rude back. Others ignore the perpetrator. Both are acceptable when met with injustice, I say. However, I like to throw my niceness in their faces. I relish being as polite and kind as possible so they feel even more jerkish at the end of the day. Besides, being mean to someone who's being friendly must have serious karma repercussions, right? I love helping people make bad with the universe.

'Have a nice day!' I say with a smile sweet enough to rot his eyeballs.

Does he say 'You too?' Or even, since we're in a rather French-speaking area of the country, 'Merci, Mademoiselle. Et vous aussi'?

No. He glares as he walks around me on the road. Not a hint of pleasantness in sight.

When I die and become a goddess and he dies and I force him to reincarnate, I'm going to send him back as an ant that spends the last days of its life searching for food in the bottom of a diaper pail and having poopy baby wipes thrown on top of it until it suffocates.

But until then, I need to formulate a plan to make him either respect me as his equal, worship me as his superior (preferable) or, barring that, give him real reasons to despise me. For starters, I'll give him a name and shame him on my blog.

Glaring Hobble Man lives three doors down in an impeccable little bungalow. And I mean little. It's so small it looks like my house threw up some bricks and they happened to land neatly a few doors down in an empty yard. I guess he doesn't need a big house though, because he spends all his time walking and glaring at people. He also has perfectly trimmed hedges, which leads me to believe that he either hobbles over and trims them himself or he hires someone to do it (probably in lieu of adding any size to his existing home; Square Footage Girl would frown upon him.)

I spoke to the previous owner of this house, who said GHM never liked her, either. On more than one occasion he commented that her yard wasn't kept up enough. I think it had to do with the ditch in front of the house not being mowed to his satisfaction. I believe he may not like me because, while I was out beautifying the yard not 48 hours after moving in, I was not, in any way, shape or form, mowing the ditch.

I have made his poo-poo list for all eternity.

No matter. I shall win his heart, force his worship or, at the very least, make it well known that I could kick his ass and throw him into his perfect hedges. In the meantime, I almost don't want to mow the ditch. There's something ever so satisfactory about pissing off hobbling old men.

And yes, I am going to Hell for that and many other reasons. I'm ok with that.

Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

I really have no excuse anymore. I must blog more. Spawnling is eight months old and I can hardly blame my now ancient pregnancy and resulting stomach staples for my computer absence. There is no house on the market, no boxes to pack and certainly no lack of internet to keep me away from coming up with a post.

Yes, things have truly calmed down in Mavenworld. We're in our new house, the gremlins are all finished school and are subsequently causing me to grind my teeth at night, Geekster is back at work and I have nothing to do other than the usual: gremlin rearing, course completing, wall painting, coffee-drinking and the ever important chocolate eating. I can most certainly fit some blogging in there.

Maybe I'll change the colour on here again just to annoy people. What do you think? Pink again? I know a lot of people hate pink. And making people hate my choices is one of my special qualities.

Sometimes I wonder how I manage to have any friends at all.

I'll post some pictures of the house tomorrow. Impossible Mom suggested a video tour, but I'm afraid those with cleaner homes might break out into hives just watching it.

That sounds like fun, too, come to think of it.