Chapter Eight: Shopping and Stress

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Today is the day the flock has chosen to go what most of them call shopping but what Nudge calls "the bane of one's existence inside a plastic cart". She's singing around the house about it, traipsing around the house and hopping up and down. Angel warned me in her mind that she's going to throw a surprise shower and to be nice even though that's the very thing I can't stand.

It's Jeb's turn to take watch while all the boys are getting groceries and all the girls are shopping for clothes for me and unmeasured amounts of stuff most likely for the shower. Jeb just 'doesn't do shopping', so he offered to take watch.

It's been an hour.

And for once in his life, he's shut the small, thin-lipped hole in his face that he calls a mouth.

Every once in a while, I cringe getting kicked in the gut or get up for another inevitable trip to the bathroom.

He still keeps his paper lips sealed.

At least, until Total comes in with one of Angel's sequin-encrusted bows in his hair and lip gloss on his black, shiny wet nose. Then, he can't even help it, he simply bursts into tears snickering. I come back into the bedroom and almost fall over, laughing for the same reason, only twice as hard as Jeb. The fact that my lungs are being squished by three tiny winged humans is not helping.

"What?!" Total demands. "I look faaaaabulous, Angel said so herself." He humphs at the end of his sentence, making us laugh even harder. He chases his tail in circles, trying to find out what's wrong with his 'faaaaabulous' look. He even checks his paws for toilet paper. But we only laugh even harder when we find that his small, originally black wings, have been painted in rainbow stripes.

"You should realize," Total drawls. "That you are going to have to dress infants, and you'll soon feel the urge to dress them like this." Jeb seals his paper lips again, and stares holes into my gut, which has now become the size of a watermelon on steroids.

"I somehow think that you do not have the ability to see through objects," I say to Total, trying to imitate his drawl. "Because there are two boys and only one girl. I will certainly not ruin my children's dignity by..." I pause to laugh soundlessly. "Dressing them up in pretty little bows and sparkles and making their wings into rainbows.." I continue to laugh without making noise. Total growls as Jeb rejoins me in laughing at Total, who flutters his rainbow wings and tries to strut out of the room.

It isn't until the girls and the boys trample in through the front door with the sound of rustling bags that I realize: how will I dress them? How will I feed them? How will I take care of all three of them equally?

How will I do anything?!

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