My daughter is almost three years old and prefers to keep me within arm’s length. I told my husband today that if she were my boyfriend, I would break up. I need more space. I am totally not kidding.

She stands on the bathroom counter while I dry my hair and put on my make-up. Mostly, she peers at herself in the mirror, scrunching up her nose, pursing her lips, baring her teeth, flirting with herself. Today she was posing, a la Paris Hilton.

Then she noticed I was looking at her and she stopped her self-examination and grinned an embarrassed grin at me.

Sometimes, that’s how blogging feels to me. I started my first blog as an experiment with a few friends. “We’ll share our journals,” we said, “And see how the others live.”

The first time a stranger commented, I freaked out, a quiet, private little freak-out. Another time, I emailed a commenter to demand, “Who are you? And why are you commenting on my blog?”

Most of the time, though, I write with abandon, pretending I’m alone. I feel a little self-conscious when it’s all about me, me, me–but only when I picture the whole Internet watch me as I stare at myself.

And when I catch you looking at me, sure, I feel bashful for a moment. But I’m going to pretend that it’s just me here, and fifty of my closest friends who understand and won’t laugh at me behind my back.

And now I will commence the navel gazing.

All I have to say today is that I feel deflated and bummed out that my twin 12-year old boys are so often the target of bullies. Why are some kids such cruel brats? At the pool today, my husband noticed several boys mocking my twins during a game of water-basketball. He intervened, but was incensed afterward. A little later during “Adult Swim,” I walked to the grassy area to see what was going on–a cluster of kids had gathered out there–and just then, I heard a bony girl with bucked teeth say to my son with a sneer, “I don’t even know your name.” Then her cross-eyed brother said, “He’s stupid.” I strode up to that kid (the same boy who last year slapped and pinched my youngest son–but I’m too tired to find that post and link it) and said, “EXCUSE ME? DID I JUST HEAR YOU SAY SOMETHING UNKIND?”

He shrunk back and denied it. Then I said, “Good. Because we would not want to say unkind things here, would we?” That group of kids broke up and I told my son he should move away. And as we walked away, I told that skeleton of a girl my son’s name, not that she even realizes what a snot she is.

My boys just don’t seem to read social cues with any savvy. It’s disheartening, but at the same time, a week ago at Vacation Bible School, they did a great job of interacting with younger kids and adults, too. They were volunteers with excellent attitudes, so I have to hope that they will ultimately be fine, despite the bullies who dot the landscape like dog doo left behind by inconsiderate dog owners. Sometimes you have to scrape your shoe off and watch your step so it doesn’t happen again. I hope I can teach my boys that lesson eventually.

In the meantime, we’ll continue schooling them at home, away from the stench of people who have nothing better to do than pick on other kids.

I read the newspaper because I am a grown-up. I eat fishsticks because that’s what the kids ate and a few remainded scattered on the cookie sheet. When the phone rang at 12:11 p.m., I was doing just that, reading and eating.

The woman on the telephone asked if I’d be home, if she and her husband could stop by at about 1:00 p.m. I said in a calm, measured voice, “Sure, that would be fine.” Then I gave her directions to my house. I hung up the phone and sprang into action, enlisting the aid of my sons who wander around in the summer, looking bored.

Fortunately, the family room carpet was freshly vacuumed, thanks to army-crawling CuteBaby whose new mission in life involvs gnawing on power cords and eating specks of paper and licking the carpet. I only had to clean up the lunch mess, put away a few reminders of our recent trip to Florida, sweep and hide away the basket of clutter that sits in the kitchen taunting me.

By 1:00 p.m., sure, I was a little sweaty, but my house looked presentable. The doorbell rang and there stood Happy Little Family, mom, dad and baby girl. I’ll start watching the baby next week, just afternoons, four days a week. I saw Dad stealing glances at my desk, which sits in the family room. A landslide of papers covers the entire left half of the desk. And Bloglines kept beeping as blogs on my list were updated. (You really must check out Bloglines. Oh! The organization! The time-savings! The little beep that brings joy to my day! Someone has updated something! I must log on and check it out!)

Anyway, they left. Naptime arrived. At 2:15, CuteBaby and DaycareKid were sleeping. Babygirl? No. She was resistant, in fact, told me in no uncertain terms, “I do not want to go night-night!” I insisted that she did and she would . . . but she didn’t. It was 3:15 p.m. when I gave up.

But I wasn’t happy about it. Mommy stays sane around here by taking little breaks here and there. Lunchtime, while the kids nap, is one of those times. So, downstairs I tromped and she trailed behind me. I went straight to the kitchen where I poured myself Diet Coke with Lime (thank you, caffeine, you are my friend). She stood near me and touched my pants gently. “I love your pants! I love your shirt! I love your shoes!” she said in a sweet voice.

How can I be irked, really, when my curly-haired girl spreads the compliments as thick as chocolate icing on a birthday cake?

She never did sleep. She played in the sand and then she turned on the sprinkler and got drenched. She ran upstairs to put on dry clothes and came down wearing a pair of purple stretch pants and a pair of blue Osh-Kosh overalls. No shirt. My 7-year old son played in the sprinkler, too, and left a trail of soggy footprints all the way up to the bathroom–which doesn’t seem possible. Shouldn’t the carpet have dried his feet off at some point?

My house still retains the remnants of the noontime cleaning spree and for that, I congratulate myself. Tonight? I’m channel surfing while I read magazines . . . unless Bloglines keeps calling out to me. Beep! Beep! Beep!

Back when we only had the twins, I was careful to take frequent pictures. If I took a photo of one twin, I immediately took a picture of the other twin. I kept all my scrapbooks up to date.

When my youngest son was born, I zoomed in on him and photographed him extensively, to the neglect of my older boys, I admit. Taking pictures of three kids was tricky. And six-year old boys aren’t thrilled about being still, especially for a photograph.

Since my daughter was born almost three years ago, my picture-taking has dwindled. She is an uncooperative subject, ducking her head like a celebrity avoiding the paparazzi. Last year, when I attempted to photograph all four children (at the same time!) for a Christmas newsletter photo, this is typical of what happened:

And now, I’m behind in all my scrapbooks. Instead of documenting their lives through photographs, I’m running behind, trying to keep up.

By the way, I have to say that I find people who are videotaping experiences instead of experiencing the experiences kind of make me shake my head. At Disney World, for instance, more than once, I saw someone videotaping something instead of just opening their eyes wide and watching it. What’s the point? (That also goes for children’s school performances, though in that case, I can see why you’d want to get it on videotape. Simple reason, really. Blackmail.)

When I was fourteen, I rode my bicycle from Seattle to San Francisco in five weeks. I used to dream about riding across the country. Can you imagine Iowa on a bicycle, all that flat land? Or the Rocky Mountains? Or crossing the Mississippi River? Dipping your bicycle tire in the Pacific Ocean and then triumphantly dipping it in the Atlantic? Well, I used to imagine that.

Then I went off to college and sold my bicycle and never pedaled more than twenty miles on a bicycle again. And then I got married. And then I had kids.

But Lance Armstrong! What an inspiration! Overcoming cancer, training his wrecked body, pushing himself up hills and winning, winning, winning. Getting married didn’t stop Lance Armstrong. He got married, too, you know, in 1998–after he survived testicular cancer. He had the forethought to bank s p e r m, so he and his wife were able to conceive their children (a son, born in 1999 and twin daughters born in 2001). None of this stopped him from his professional bicycle racing career. His wife was by his side when he won his first Tour de France in 1999.

She wasn’t by his side this time, though, for his triumphant seventh win in a row. No. Now, he appeared with his children and his girlfriend, singer S h e r y l Crow. He divorced his wife in 2003 and hooked up with Ms. Crow soon thereafter.

So here’s the thing. When I see Lance Armstrong on television, crowing about his win, grinning about his achievements, basking in the glow of admiration–all I can think is that he couldn’t even keep his marriage together for five years. Five years. His children are now shuttled from home to home, place to place. His children are the ones who pay the price for his inability to keep his marriage together.

And sure. I know. It takes two people to make a marriage work and there is no possible way we can assign fault. Marriages, even celebrity marriages, are private. Who knows what happened behind closed doors? But I can’t help myself. When the world showers confetti on someone for grit and sheer determination, I can’t get past wondering what the ex-wife thinks about all this. And how the children feel seeing daddy holding hands with someone who is clearly not their mother.

That’s the legacy, I suppose, of my own parents’ divorce. I’m much more impressed by, say, Cuppa and Anvilcloud’s thirty-five years of marriage than I am by one guy winning seven bicycle races in a row. I imagine that the Armstrong children, the almost 6 year old boy and the almost 4 year old twin girls, know what I mean.

I realized with a spark of joy yesterday that my favorite babysitter now possesses a driver’s license. And a car. So I called her and at 8:00 p.m., I left my house.

I wanted to see a movie–any movie, really–and so I saw “The Island.”

I hope I don’t spoil it for anyone, but here is the gist of the movie, the take-away kernel of truth:

Black pants truly are more slimming than white pants. In fact, even if you are Scarlett Johanson, your backside will look like a huge pear if you wear white pants coupled with a white body-skimming shirt.

My daughter likes to tell this joke with a twinkle in her almost-three-year-old eyes: “You smell good . . . but you’re not a cookie!” That’s it. That’s the whole joke. Then she laughs and laughs.

This is regarded by many to be the description of the ultimate Christian woman.

I think she sounds like a working mom, not a stay-at-home mom. She seems to have a staff, not unlike this Alpha Mom.

Though I could be wrong. I’m just saying.

In my house this morning, my 7-year-old son has been stomping around, chasing the preschoolers and riling them up by hollering, “BOK CHOY!” CuteBaby is 8-months-old now and is mobile. He scoots around the floor, delighted to see, touch, and taste every toy. My carpets have never been cleaner, in anticipation of his newfound skills.

I’m thinking of calling my babysitter tonight–the one who now drives herself around in her own car–and seeing a movie. Just the thought makes me tingly all over and makes me want to scream with joy, “BOK CHOY!”

(Yes, I know it’s a vegetable, but my son thinks it is a fine proclamation anyway.)

My dad and stepmom had a long-running argument about the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” My stepmom loved the movie while my dad held it in disdain, sniffing contemptuously that it had no plot.

Sometimes, I worry that the problem with this blog is that it has no plot. If I’d written it in other decades of my life, the suspense would be killing you. Where will she enroll in college? Will she survive a summer working as a nanny? Who will she marry? Does her dad really die when he’s 47? How does the whole infertility thing work out? Does a birthmother choose her? Pregnant? She’s pregnant? When–and where–will the baby be born? Does her husband survive his throat cancer? Will the family move across the country or stay in rural Michigan?

Yeah, well, this blog occurs during a plotless part of my life. And here’s a terrible confession–on dismal, cloudy days when I’m feeling trapped and suffocated by the laundry, I think of horrible occurrences that might shake up my life. Even as I permit these wretched thoughts to amble through my mind, I scold myself. How dare I do anything but give thanks for the blessings in my life–my home, my husband, my children, my health, my friends, my extended family?

The thing about a crisis is that in short order, your meandering, messy, mundane life immediately narrows into a sharp focus, like sunlight through a magnifying glass narrows into one red-hot point of light. You don’t have a yard full of sunshine anymore, but a single searing inch of scorched grass. (Or a slug, if my kids have anything to do with it.)

Laundry doesn’t matter.
The dust under the beds doesn’t matter.
Cooking? No way.

All that matters is The Crisis.

It’s completely sick, of course, to long for a crisis. And I don’t, not really. But when I read that “good” blogs have a plot, I realized I am sans plot. Plotless. Empty, devoid of plot. Plot negative.

Wouldn’t that be a great blog title? “Without Plot.”

Well, sure, I do have a plot of sorts, but it’s not the type of plot you’ll find in any book sold in the grocery store. It’s the dull “lead a responsible life and raise responsible children” kind of plot.

I wonder if some people keep making bad decisions because they long for a plot, for the excitement of a page-turner? The truth seems to me that life is less like a novel and more like a slide show, the kind that your dad used to show you in the darkened living room after he got home from Europe. One castle looked like the next and the Alps? Boring when all you really want to do is call your friend and check the rumor mills for juicy gossip. But your dad kept clicking the slides, giving a droning explanation of each one, “and there, if you look at the left, you can see the blah, blah, blah, blah, and on the right, see that speck? That’s blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

See? Now, if I had a plot, I’d just tell you breathlessly about the latest trauma or drama. But I have no plot. Tomorrow we’ll wake up after the sun rises. Shower. Welcome DaycareKid and CuteBaby–he’s crawling now, his mom says. Play, keep kids from shoving each other, start laundry, make lunch, settle little ones down for naps, check email and blogs, answer the inevitable “what’s for dinner?” question, fold laundry, offer snacks, play some more, walk around the block, wait for moms to pick up their kids, cook dinner, eat dinner, clean up, give baths, read . . . and another day will end. I’m a girl with no plot.

Tomorrow will be sort of like today. And today was kind of like yesterday. It doesn’t make for exciting blog fodder, but it makes for a pretty good life. If you can stand the monotony.

While the rest of the country is having a heat wave, our weather is perfect. Sunny, warm, blue skies, gentle breezes. I planted orange and yellow flowers in my flowerpots outside and then we went to the pool. We tried to go in the van, but the battery is drained–again–and so after being completely buckled in, we all unbuckled and switched to the car. The battery in the van (our old 1991 Chevy Astro)was dead when we returned home from our trip last week, so before he left yesterday, my husband jump-started it and drove it around awhile to make sure it was working. Which it is not now.

The kids are incapable of simply staring out the car windows when we go anywhere and just leaving each other alone. They have circular conversations about video games or the restaurants they’ll own one day. They plan what the menu will be and who will cook for whom and if they’ll give discounts to relatives. Even my daughter has taken to pleading, “BE QUIET! STOP TALKING!” when we go somewhere in the car. They also cannot stop poking, touching, wrestling, grabbing, shoving and tormenting each other.

When I wasn’t busy doing summertime stuff today (and laundry), I was busy creating a reciprocal blogroll which you can see in my sidebar over there to the right. I think I linked to everyone who links to me–so if your name is missing, let me know. I’m all about reciprocity and I love the fact that I just used that word (”reciprocity”) in a sentence.

For those who were wondering, yes, I did make milkshakes–finally–last night. I am a woman of my word. Unless I forget.

My only regret for the day is that I failed to make my youngest son a Serengeti Trek t-shirt by ironing on the iron-on transfer. And I failed to get caught up on laundry, dust the house, clean the toilets, weed the garden, sweep up the patio, pick up clutter on the floor, empty the kitchen counter, scrub the George Foreman grill, iron those pants hanging on my exercise bike, put away my daughter’s clothes, start an exercise program, write a best-selling novel, teach my youngest son to tie his shoes, “clean sweep” the storage room, clean the litter box, vacuum the floors, mop, organize the kitchen cabinets, make a plan for lunch tomorrow, pay bills, wash windows, sort through school-at-home materials, solve the crisis in the Middle East, and figure out what to do with my hair.

Other than that, it was a day well-lived.