If You Don't Do It This Way, You're Wrong!

Do you know that there's a "proper" way to fold a fitted sheet? I'm not even kidding. Apparently, there's this magical method of folding that makes that hot mess of a lumpy, bumpy sheet into a masterpiece worthy of the finest obsessive compulsive individual.

This is such a hot topic that you can find instructions and even how to videos on YouTube and HGTV.com.

I have even seen it implied that if you DON'T know how to fold a fitted sheet, that there's something inherently missing in your makeup. You must be a heathen for cripe's sake! Which made me think, do I know how to fold a fitted sheet? I mean, sure, most of the time they're done in a hurry so even though I'm pretty sure I know the "proper" way, it just gets done willy nilly so that I can finish folding the load in the dryer before the wash cycle finishes. It's a revolving door of laundry in my house so most of the time it boils down to, "Crap! I forgot I have laundry in the dryer, let's just put it on for 10 minutes to fluff them up quick!" My folding area is generally just the top of the washer or dryer so it's not like I'm looking for professional quality folding here. (Not to mention, most of it is hung up in closets anyway.)

It was then that I realized that I was starting to get just a little too concerned with the semantics of folding a fitted sheet and it occurred to me to ask myself why I care? Don't they just get shoved into some dark linen closet until they get put on a bed? Is there some sort of linen closet inspection crew that's going to randomly inspect my folded sheets? Are there linen police that are going to take me away to laundry jail? Why do I care how it's folded? It literally sits in a closet until I put it on a bed...which is then covered with blankets. If anyone comes to my house, turns down my bed, and remarks on my wrinkly sheets that "must have been incorrectly folded in order to achieve the specific type of wrinkles that have formed around the fitted pockets" then you can drag your ass out the door. I cannot be friends with anyone who has such high expectations of my cleanliness standards and clearly doesn't know me that well. I'm no slouch when it comes to cleaning but there are areas that I find I don't really care enough about until such time that it smashes me over the head, like when the dust bunnies form an army and begin to stage a coup. Laundry folding, sadly, falls into this category as well. They are clean and dry, what the hell else do you people want from me? (No, don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question.)

It makes me wonder if this is another one of those things that the internet tries to trick me into thinking I am supposed to care about. Like the Great Toilet Paper Roll Debate. (Caps worthy.) It usually starts with some sort of meme or picture on the Internet. Maybe one like this:

Ha ha ha... funny though.

If you read the comments underneath one of these images, I am sure that World War III is ready to break out over the people defending the "wrong" way that they hang their toilet paper roll. I am amazed that someone has so much time on their hands that they needed to design this picture. It couldn't have been a mother with children in the house, because we are just amazed that the toilet paper roll was actually changed in the first place, let alone how the freaking roll is hanging. Heck, we would even take the "monster" version because, hey, points for effort, right? Akin to finding an empty milk container in the refrigerator, finding an empty toilet paper roll can be just as maddening. (Especially when it's usually right next to where the toilet paper hangs. Grr.)

Actually, I'm amazed that I even have extra toilet paper because my children seem to eat it and I feel like I am always buying toilet paper. If they made a super, mega, extra jumbo pack of toilet paper, I'd probably buy 2. Toilet paper, milk, and coffee creamer...those are the 3 things I am always out of in my house. You'd think, because I know that, that we would never run out and yet, we still do. It means that my entire life consists of: Go to the store, buy the stuff, bring it home, find something else you need, repeat the first four steps daily. 

The moral of the story is this: You can't force me to care Internet. I'm just too tired, I ran out of shits to give like 10 years ago and I'll fold my sheets improperly while you watch, just for spite. Muah ha ha ha ha ha. (Evil villain laugh.)

iWanna Send a List to Santa

It’s pretty well established that I am an iAddict. I keep waiting, very patiently I might add, for those cunning, innovative Apple executives to find something new to sucker me into. I mean, I’ve already got the iPad, the iPhone, and the iWatch. What’s next? iAlarmClock? iTelevision? iSneakers? (iWill probably have them all!)

While I continue waiting for new Apple products, they just keep cranking out updated versions of their old products. Why? Because they can. They know that us suckers who are hooked on their easily adaptable, interfacing iTech will continue to feed our habits with updates that contain cool new features that we are convinced we must have. Sure, we’ll bitch and moan about the headphones that use the charging port now, making it so that we can’t charge our phone and listen to music at the same time, but we’ll still buy it and get over that idiotic quirky feature. Then they’ll roll out adapters that we can buy for a few bucks that will allow us to do exactly that…and then never use them because how often do we really charge and jam out at the same time anyway? We will buy these newfangled phones because we have to keep up with the times (and the iTunes updates).

If anything is proof of this, it’s the iPhone 8.

Now, those wily associates at Apple, Inc. are usually rolling out a new version of a phone fairly quickly now, at least since phone numero 5. This time they decided to roll out two new versions kind of close together: The 8 and the X. I’m assuming the X stands for ten (but then again, you know what they say about assuming…) which begs the question: “What the hell do they have against the number 9?” I mean, I can understand if they skipped 13, but 9? That’s numberist and I can’t believe that they’d discriminate against 9 that way. Geez.

I digress. (Which is really just a shorter, nicer way of saying I strayed off topic to rant about something trivial but you followed me there and back again, so what’s that say about you?)

So my husband and I just iTeched ourselves with updated phones last winter. Nine months later they rolled out the new version. My first thought was this was no big deal until I found out that the 8 has the charging pad that I have envied on the Samsung phones for quite awhile. Now I’m convinced that I must have one. I MUST I tell you! My second thought was “Really?!?! You couldn’t have bleepin’ told us that the new one was coming out so soon? We would have just waited!!” (Followed very closely by a lot of mental F bombs that were okay because they actually looked like this: @!%&%@! And there was no harming of any child’s psyche from the silent cartoon swearing that occurred in my head.)

So I’ve been slow simmering about this whole situation, turning into a grumpy old woman who grumbles under her breath when she sees the iPhone 8 commercials, silently (and covertly if small eyes are present) flipping the TV off. (No, not turning it off, flipping it off. You know, giving the bird to an inanimate object? This in no way signifies I am nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake. I don’t think.)

And then I saw a commercial for the iPhone X.

Now, remember when I said they keep adding new features that we are convinced that we must have? Yeah, the X takes the cake in this category. Instead of making you put in a passcode or using a fingerprint to unlock your phone, it uses your face. That’s right, YOUR. FACE. How freaking cool is that? How difficult is it going to be to steal a smart phone that is so smart, it won’t unlock without the owner’s face? (Although this brings up interesting questions like: Could identical twins open each other’s phones with face recognition or is Siri so flippin’ smart now that she would know the difference? But I am digressing again.) To steal my phone, you’d need to steal me too. And I am not so light. (Stay safe, eat cake etc)

So now I live in a world where faces can unlock phones. What’s next? Ass cheeks that verify your PIN number? (Ha ha, I just got a mental image of that one. You’re welcome.) So the next time you’re bummed out and feeling blue, consider what an amazing world we live in that would encourage us to eat cake to keep our iPhones from being stolen. Freaking fantastic!

And to all my readers: Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy (Festive?) Kwanzaa, Feliz Navidad, and Gesundheit. 

Bribery and Other Fun Parenting Tricks We Don't Admit to Using

I have found that bribery is a most useful parenting tool. Anyone who hasn’t used this at least once in their lives either has Stepford children or is lying. Before I had kids, I thought I knew how to be an effective parent. It probably looked a little Mary Poppins-esque in my head. I would have polite, well behaved children who did what they were told and didn’t give me any lip about it. But apparently, that only happens if you’re a movie mom with movie children. Non-mannequin children are loud, messy, chaotic, gas expulsion machines with no filter and sticky fingers. They can be polite and well-mannered with other people, but drop all pretenses of refinery once they hit home. Which is fine. I’d rather they’re little heathens at home and angels outside of it. It just means that sometimes, bribery gets the job done better than anything else. Sometimes, the desire to be the perfect mom gets trampled by the “It’s not hurting anyone and it’s saving a lot of time spent arguing about it” rule.

I’m currently bribing the youngest with coins. Potty training hasn’t gone as smoothly as all the imaginary scenarios in my head have gone. So, in exchange for doing his business in the toilet and not in his pants (thereby making more laundry to get heaped on top of laundry mountain), he gets a coin. It’s been a quarter, but when I run out of those, he gets two dimes and a nickel. (Frankly, he’s happier with the two dimes and a nickel because in toddler math, three coins is better than one coin anyway.)

It’s funny that this works but it totally makes sense if you think about it. He’s three years old so he has an idea of money, but not a full understanding of it. He just knows that when he asks for McDonald’s and Mom doesn’t want to stop, she says that we don’t have the money right now. (He’s probably going to grow up and tell his friends we’re poverty stricken because of it, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.) So money equals happy meals. He hasn’t figured out that coins aren’t as good as paper money and let’s be honest, no one other than young kids seem to want pocket change when a dollar bill will suffice. (Or a five spot!)

It’s not just money that I use to bribe my kids either. I’m not above leveraging snacks or desserts to get my kids to eat dinner. Especially when one of them is insisting that they “don’t like it”, even though they ate it the last 3 times I made it. If I make a kid’s favorite cake or cookie, it’s go time! I have at least 2 days wheedling good dinner behavior out of that, maybe 3 if I’m lucky.

The biggest bribe worthy opportunities come from events.

“If you’re not good, you’re not going to Alex’s birthday party on Saturday.”

“If you pinch your sister one more time, no trick or treating!”

But the best, most awesome event that gets weeks and weeks of bribery for parents is Christmas. Everyone is complaining about store rolling out the holiday decorations earlier and earlier and I’m thinking, “Thank you Baby Jesus!” Let my kids see Christmas stuff everywhere. It’s just going to remind them that they have to be good because Santa’s watching! That’s right, kids, you have to behave even longer! They’re starting that Christmas hoopla right after Halloween now. Some places start before Halloween. So we’re getting a good two months of bribery out of the deal. “Remember, Santa’s making his list!”

Technology is making it easier for us parents too. My kids love electronic devices like the iPad and Alexa (Echo Dot) and playing computer games on the laptop. It’s a gold mine of things that you can use to elicit good behavior from your children. Yeah, yeah, I know, YOU would never do such a thing and your kids are perfect, etc. etc. and yadda yadda. Come see me the first time you are trying to diffuse a toddler-who-had-a-not-long-enough-nap meltdown in the grocery store. I will promise that kid a kidney if we can just get the hell out of that store immediately!

Another parenting trick that I would never use is sibling rivalry. This one has a short shelf life and only works a few short years when they’re little and too young to remember the mind games that Mom and Dad had to play just to get him to eat his vegetables.

“Wow youngest child, look at how good older brother is at eating his dinner! I bet YOU can’t eat your dinner like your big brother!”

“Look teenaged daughter, your oldest brother is doing so well in college, I bet YOU can do just as well, no, maybe even better!"

“Hey middle child, you are behaving SO well. Thank you for being a good boy.” (Said in front of current misbehaving child.)

Now, before you get your judgey face on, listen.  It’s not like I’m proud of having to stoop to these measures. It’s just that sometimes, you just have to find something, ANY thing, that works and stick to it. Not many people will admit it, but this parenting thing is freaking hard! It doesn’t even come with a manual. You’re supposed to figure this shit out for yourself and hope that you can produce decent, productive members of society using chewing gum, a paper towel roll, and a paper clip. (Ha! MacGuyver reference.) I know people who can't even make meat loaf let alone productive members of society. So if we need five minutes to think and the iPad educational app is just sitting there so quietly....go ahead, I won't tell a soul. (At least not while I'm paying my kid to poop!)

Old Dogs and New Tricks

I have a bucket list. I think most people have one, to one extent or another. If you’ve never heard of a bucket list, it’s a compilation of things you want to do and/or see before you “kick the bucket”. (Totally not morbid at all to make a list of things that you want to do before you die!) Last weekend I actually got to check off one of those items. It probably wasn’t even big enough to be bucket list worthy, but that’s ok. (I love crossing things off lists!)

It was a paint and sip, okay? There, I said it.

Have you heard about this trend? It might be “so yesterday” since I tend to lag a few years behind when it comes to what’s hip and cool. (See? Like “hip” and “cool” really isn’t that, well, hip and cool anymore.) Paint and sip is where you go pay a chunk of money to have someone teach you how to paint a passable painting. (If you’re lucky.) To spice things up, they offer alcoholic beverages to you while you are attempting to channel your inner Picasso. You know, because alcohol makes all skills better, right?

Let me preface the detailing of this event by saying that I enjoyed myself. I can’t paint for shit, but it was still an enjoyable evening. Plus, I would totally do it again, even if my painting looks like a middle school art project.

So back to the paint and sip. It was done as a girl’s night out slash birthday celebration and boy did I need some girl time! One of my online classes is kicking my butt, the youngest is resisting potty training harder than a super virus resists antibiotics, and the lottery still hasn’t taken me away from my daily work drudgery. (Not for lack of trying though!) So we gathered at a nearby establishment that was called Paint and Sip (original, right?) and sat in front of our blank easels and paper plates full of paint. On the walls are all the different paintings that they have done. This is probably to drum up excitement at what your painting can turn out to be, you know, before you muck it up with your total lack of artistic ability.

The painting was supposed to be a sunset and a lake and a loon. (Which looked a lot like a damn duck to me, but what do I know? I'm not the bird whisperer.)

Simple, right? (Well, other than the damn loon which, I will have you know, I decided was not going in there from the get go. I know my limits.) A little water, a little sky, some blackish-green blobby mountains and a squiggly sunset. Hey, I can do this! Maybe. No, I CAN do this!

I can NOT do this, as it turns out.

My artistic ability is limited to the written word and maybe my penchant for baking. My artistic talents do not lie in painting pictures. Walls yes, something suitable to hang on those walls, not so much. But I DID, however, find out why it’s a paint and SIP as I sat there and surveyed my surroundings in the "I'm not painting the damn duck" time. Liquid fortitude. Alcohol induced courage. Or maybe it’s so that you think you’re better artist than you really are. (Or so you don’t give a crap that you aren’t? Either way.) Long evening short, at the end of three hours you have something that you believe is pretty good for a novice, and maybe even a warm, fuzzy feeling. (Although that could be from the alcohol, depending on how many “sips” you took.) All the rest of the class has similar attempts so you feel pretty good about your own offerings. And if you can find someone with even less skill than you, you can inwardly make yourself feel better because you're at least better at painting than one person.

Unless there was, say, someone with actual artistic ability in your group. Like, maybe, an art teacher.

Yeah, if you want to feel inadequate as a burgeoning artist, have someone with real talent painting the same picture as you. Which, as it turns out, looked NOTHING like the picture we were attempting to paint and yet was 1,000 times more amazing. Sigh.

Oh well, I already knew that I wasn’t destined to wield a paintbrush like a weapon. A pen maybe. And I’ve definitely honed my razor sharp word skills. But next time I paint and sip, I’m going to pick an easier painting. Like maybe some stick figures and a smiling sun.

5 Reasons I Suck At Summer

Labor Day is a few scant days away and even though it’s still technically summer, everyone knows that Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer event. (Hence all the big sales to commemorate it!) The end is nigh I say! 

Now that Summer ’17 is drawing to a close I give you my list of:

5 Reasons I Suck At Summer

1.) I take it for granted. Every year it’s the same thing: The end of school comes and the entire summer stretches out before me, an endless blank slate of possibilities. Oh, the things we’ll do! The places we’ll go! The people we’ll meet! And before you know it, it’s the end of August and you’re thinking, “Crap! We didn’t DO anything! We didn’t GO anywhere! How are the kids going to have special childhood memories of summers growing up?” Mom guilt, mom guilt, and more mom guilt. So I cram everything into the last two weeks of the summer so that if my kid gets saddled with one of those “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” assignments it doesn’t say he just played Minecraft and took field trips to the backyard where he made s’mores. Although he DID play Minecraft and I’m pretty sure that we’ve made more s’mores than a family of 5 ought to make in one summer, I want him to have a little more pizazz in his essay. I mean, he’s never going to be able to say we took our yacht down to the club, but he can at least say that we took our Ford Escape down to the ice cream place. (Fancy!)

2.) We stay put. We’re a pretty boring family in terms of vacation. We go to Florida on spring break in April and then count down the rest of the days until we go back to Florida in April the next year. Don’t get me wrong, we love our annual beach escape but there are plenty more places we want to see. Every year my husband and I talk about “little trips” we could take. Day trips. Small overnight trips. With kids. Without kids. Basically, we make a list of places we aren’t ever going to be able to go to so long as we are buying all this damn sports equipment/musical instruments/school clothes/medical coverage/food for a small army. We dream of going to cool places like Boston and doing cool things like eating lobster in Maine but in the end we run out of time and money and ambition. (Holy crap do I need some more ambition! Just a little though. Like a gallon. Or two. A day.)

3.) I work, he works, we all go to work work. Ugh, if only that pesky full time job that supports us and keeps us in clothes and food and fun things weren’t so…full time. I mean, really, who NEEDS to work 40 hours a week? Uh, I do. And so does my husband. Sadly, if we want to afford those things we can’t afford, we need to work. Both of us. At jobs that take us away from our lives 40 to 50 hours a week. And unless Powerball starts cooperating, we probably have to continue this trend for another 20 years. Oh my God that sounds so depressing. Remind me not to speak that heinous number out loud ever again. From now on, it shall be known as “the retirement countdown that shall not be named”. (Bonus points for any of you who caught that literary reference.) So, take away forty of the best hours a week and what are you left with? The crappy scraps of the week day hours and two measly days on the weekend. Someone should lobby for more frequent 3 day weekends. Can’t we fit a few more holidays in there? Like Margarita Monday, National Nap Like You Mean It Day, and We’re Really Glad Hitler Lost Day? Aren’t there more people we could celebrate? Let’s start with making Black Friday a national holiday, or as it shall be named forthwith: The Day We All Buttoned Our Pants Back Up and Went Shopping. Of course, it has to be online shopping since we’ll all be off. (Since robots are slowly taking over the world in a bid for total domination, maybe we can get them to start by taking our black Friday shifts.)

4.) I fill the time I’m NOT working with projects. To make matters worse, once you’re an adult, you do adulty things like home maintenance and landscaping and chores. (And we aren’t even getting an allowance for doing them!) Since we work all the damn time, we have to do these adulty things in our time off. So we aren’t working at work but we are working at home. Laundry, lawn mowing, grocery shopping, scrubbing toilets….we’re living the dream baby! Clorox in one hand and a sponge on the other! I tend to measure my summer in terms of progress. Like this summer I managed to paint the front porch and I’m 25% of the way through re-organizing the basement. It’s not as productive as I wanted to be, but on the other hand, I did something so I feel some measure of accomplishment. But guess what I’m NOT doing while I’m being all grown up and productive? Spending cool time with my kids catching lightening bugs in jars or pitching tents in the backyard. (Ok, ok, so if you know me, you know that tent thing was never happening anyway, but you get the picture.) Ugh, why did no one ever tell me that this adulating thing was so hard? Didn’t anyone make a pamphlet for this?

5.) I miss a lot of opportunities to make big deals out of the small deals. Here’s the deal: My kids don’t always know that I’m sucking at summer. Especially if I can pull a Houdini on them and make them think that I am freaking amazeballs at summer. Unfortunately, I often forget to make a big deal out of those smaller moments so that they are convinced that they have had the BEST TIME EVER!!! (And maybe I can even fool myself into thinking I’m winning this summer thing!) So when we take the youngest two to get ice cream and eat it at the beach, they think it’s awesome while my husband and I are just excited to sit down after completing a day of chores. Consider that: The beach is an adventure to them. You gotta take advantage of these times. They won’t always be impressed with your moves. They’ll start to grow up and your tricks will become old. They’ll roll their eyes and say, “Seen that one, Mom, what else you got?” They’ll stop thinking you’re cool because you bought new sand toys and start wanting things like iPads. They basically turn into walking, talking money sucking zombies who roll their eyes and perfect the ‘OMG, how stupid can my parents be?” look. 

So enjoy the 27th time this summer that they want to have a campfire, even if you have taken out stock in graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars. Let them think that going to the town wide garage sale is a treasure hunt. Let them have ice cream for dinner and tell them it’s only because it’s 912 degrees out. (This way they’ll get an appreciation for ice cream AND extreme exaggeration!) But for God’s sake people, don’t let an opportunity pass you by. You're faking memories here!

Celebrate Good Times…Sometimes

When it comes to anniversaries, there are generally three types of couples. The first type is the people who will make sure they celebrate every single anniversary and probably add fancy things like cruises and parties on the big ones. The second doesn’t celebrate anniversaries at all, maybe because they’re grumpy or maybe because they’re part of a secret organization of an anti-happiness cult. (I haven’t met anyone who would fall into this category but then again, what do I really know about anti-happiness cults? Nothing.) Third are the couples who only celebrate the milestone anniversaries. (You know, 5, 10, 15 etc.) They save up all their celebratory feelings to unleash them only when they feel like it’s really necessary.

I think my husband and I fall into this last category.

We didn’t always though, and I think it’s probably the same case for many couples. I think it changes depending on what you have going on in your lives. I mean, I don’t know of anyone who didn’t celebrate their first wedding anniversary. I’m not saying they aren’t out there, but if any of the husbands I know ignored their first wedding anniversary, they’d probably be divorced before their second. The first one is special because it’s brand new. It’s the celebration and remembrance of the day, one whole year ago, that you promised your lives to each other. You’re most likely still in the honeymoon phase and don’t even want to stab your beloved when they leave the toilet seat up or chew with their mouths open. Yes, THAT’S how in love you still are. Things like that are still your partner’s “quirks” and not “the thing most likely to make me hold a pillow over their head if they don’t knock that shit off”. So you clearly still celebrate the love that you spent so much money and preparation on a short 365 days ago.

Once the baby factory is open for business, many more couples start to fall into the no celebration category. Once you start having kids, you quickly realize that things like fun, reasons to wear panty hose and hot meals are a vague memory. (Oh darn, you mean I don’t have to wear the soul sucking contraptions known as panty hose? What a shame! Sarcasm font.) Oh sure, we like to SAY that we will still have date nights in order to stay connected, but let’s face it, we’re both usually falling asleep by 10 PM. (Okay 9.) For us women, we’re more excited than we should be about the prospect of not having to shave our legs and being able to stay home in yoga pants and that really old t-shirt that is so comfortable but really not fit for any function outside of a trash dumpster. Not to mention that we own 9 pairs of yoga pants that have never seen the inside of a yoga studio. The closest they ever got was when we walked by a hot yoga session going on in the building next to the Cinnabon in the strip mall. (Hey, don’t judge. Raising kids requires A LOT of energy. Sometimes sugar and cinnamon and icing are that energy.)

During the kid phase, you might still manage to celebrate if by celebrate you mean run a background check on potential babysitters that are allowed to watch your precious progeny for two hours so that you and your husband can sit down to a meal that you actually get to eat while it’s still hot. (Oh, is this what real food tastes like? I had forgotten.) I don’t care if you’re my mother, sign the disclosure and sit down for your polygraph test! Yes, I realize that you successfully raised me but I’m also kind of a weirdo so I don’t really have a lot of confidence in your child rearing skills.

My husband and I had quite a few years of dinner-versaries and sadly, it wasn’t even a really nice place to eat. If you get too “frou-frou”, I’m probably not going to eat it. I’d like to say my taste buds are classically trained but mostly it’s just that I’m not culinarily adventurous. (Classically trained sounds less picky.)

“I don’t care if truffle oil is in right now, it’s weird. No, I don’t want an arugula and goat cheese salad. Do I want what? Cold soup? Why in the hell would I want cold soup? Isn’t the point of soup is that it’s hot? If you serve me cold soup it better be melting ice cream. You know what? Let’s just go to Applebee’s.”

And ta-da! Applebee’s became our go to place and it was perfect. We didn’t have to get too dressed up and we could even afford it during the “two kids in braces” phase of our lives. If we wanted to get a little wild, we might go to Olive Garden or Red Lobster. (Ooh…getting crazy now!)

Then, last year, we had a milestone anniversary. The entire year leading up to it we talked about how we would make it special from our usual chain restaurant celebrations…until said anniversary came and we were knee deep in preparations for putting our house on the market, something that was happening a mere three days later. Exhausted and achy from sanding, painting, fixing, scrubbing, polishing, and shining up the house and everything in a half mile radius, we barely mustered up the energy for a dinner out. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you where we ended up going to eat. The whole month preceding slapping that “For Sale!” sign on our home is still a blur to this day. I can’t even be sure we celebrated, how sad is that? Did we just skip the whole thing? Is that why I don’t remember? Whatever you do, don’t tell my husband that I don’t remember…Oh hi, honey! No, I didn’t forget that you read my blog. I was just kidding! Totally kidding. I absolutely remember our anniversary last year! SOOO special! Love you!

Okay, so we probably both had an epic fail in the marriage celebration department last year. It happens. I’m sure there are times that people have way too much on their plate that taking a moment for themselves just isn’t an option. Things much worse than exhaustion due to house selling reasons.

So what do you do? 

You make it up the next year. And you do it big. Like “the kids are spending the night at their grandparent’s house” BIG. Like, we can actually dress like adults and go to a fancy restaurant BIG. Like “We can dance around the house naked because there’s no one frigging here except us and the dog and the dog doesn’t care if we have our fur on or not!” BIG. Not that we’re dancing around naked in our house. But we TOTALLY COULD!!! If we weren’t so full from our fancy dinner…the one that we got to eat in one sitting, without having to get up and get anyone anything through the entire meal! (You know, sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy.) My biggest worry (other than the aforementioned dreaded panty hose) is that my husband and I don’t remember how to have a conversation that isn’t interrupted by our children 47 times in 30 minutes. Do we know how to talk to each other without children tattling on each other or making farting noises with their armpits? I don’t even know anymore but gosh darn it we’ll try!

And if that doesn’t work out, there’s always next year. Until then, where did I put my yoga pants?

Potty Training is the Worst

Once your child turns two, people stop telling you how cute your kid is and instead start asking, “When are you going to start potty training?” This is a loaded question because what I want to say is, “Why the hell is that any of your business? How about you worry about yourself and I’ll worry about my toddler’s bathroom habits!” Apparently though, this might seem offensive and rude so I usually just make some vague comment or laugh about how I’m not looking forward to it. Har dee har har, ha ha ha, move on people, there’s nothing to see here.

Nobody really wants to get into this topic of conversation because it never ends well. Either you get lots of unsolicited advice or you piss someone off by not living up to their expectations. Yes, vague acquaintance, please, let me toilet train my child according to how you think it should be done. You are either regaled with stories of how their precocious progeny was fully toilet ready at 18 months (Just…why?) followed by a ten minute explanation of how awesome their child is or you hear a horror story involving severe constipation, doctor’s visits and not being trained until they were 4 and what a complete nightmare it was. I’m never sure how I’m supposed to react to this. Am I supposed to complement/sympathize? How long do I have to stand there nodding my head and offering nondescript murmurings before I can escape this conversation unscathed?

You can’t compare two kids from the same parents, let alone two kids from different parents. It’s just not going to happen. They have different personalities, different levels of stubbornness, and a different birth order. (If you think this doesn’t matter, ask my husband how much more spoiled the fourth and final child is.) What works for one kid might not work for another. Your kid might think toilet training is awesome because he can pee standing up, but another kid might have a traumatic “butt-falling-into-the-cold-toilet-water” experience and have severe potty training PTSD. One kid might like a sticker reward, the other might like m&m’s. Just like everything else, it’s a crap shoot as to what will finally work and you just cross your fingers that you won’t get too many (more) gray hairs getting to the finish line.

But the worst part is that we seem to have time tables and schedules for these precious beings of ours. It’s like as soon as they are born we are already filling in their desk calendar. “Well, you need to eat solid food in six months and we’ll pencil you in for crawling around 8 months, but we can push that to 9 months if you’re too busy discovering how your hands work. And by the way, we will expect you to be fully toilet trained after a mere two and a half years on this planet. Three tops.”

Are you kidding me right now? I don’t even think my teenagers are fully trained, and since I am the one who cleans the bathrooms, I’m pretty sure I would be the one to know. But we expect our poor kids to get the hang of it by 3? The same kids who can’t even run without tripping and need help doing everything other than feeding themselves. (And some days even that isn’t even a sure thing.) Oh sure, that seems completely feasible. Until it’s not.

Unfortunately, the generations before us have already pre-filled those calendars with expected dates of when certain tasks should be completed. Then we label it the “normal” time. “Well, they normally start walking around a year old.” Puh-lease! Only two of my kids walked close to a year old, the other two figured out they could move faster crawling. Do you know what these guide line dates are? Ulcers for parents. The fastest way to stress a parent out, especially a first timer, is to mention that their kid isn’t on target for a milestone. Do you know what a fertile mom brain can do with this information? Panic. Worry. Stress. Search the web for support groups of parents of other kids who are clearly underachievers. Stress some more. Mistakenly go on WebMD and find twelve different ways your child could potentially be ill because of one ambiguous symptom they had one time last year. Panic some more.

See? It’s not a good cycle.

But parents are supposed to want to stop buying diapers and get their kids to stop killing landfills. People LOVE to say, “Just think, no more buying diapers!” and “How much easier will it be?” The answer to this is: It won’t be! It’s not easier. At least, not til they’re 5 and you’ve gotten the nightmare far enough behind you that you stop self-medicating with wine and chocolate. In fact, it’s probably the farthest from easy that you can get. Because this is potty training in a nutshell: Put your kid in underwear. Ask if they have to go potty 47 times an hour. Put them on the toilet once every 30 minutes because they said no the last 20 times you asked. Sit with kid for 10 minutes until you take him off the toilet. Turn around to wash hands. Turn back around to see kid has wet his pants. Strip kid, wash them up, put clean underwear and pants on. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Potty training is a gallon of “Do you have to go potty” mixed with 2 cups of frustration and 35 gallons of water….for laundry.

 Plus, based on the number of disgusted looks in my direction, I have to ask: Is potty training only a “Mom job”? Because I would totally be okay with it. If this was 1950. Sadly, however, it is not. We are in the year 2017. There are cool things called “Dads” now, who are active participants in their child’s care and upbringing. Huh. Imagine that. So instead of saving all of your judgmental comments on why my kid is 3 years and 3 months old and not toilet ready just for me, aim some of them pointed barbs at Daddy dearest too. We split child care AND snotty child rearing comments. We’re good like that. And if you don’t like it, maybe my kid will “accidentally” pee on your floor. You can’t blame the poor kid, after all he’s just getting the hang of this thing.

Summer Time and the Living is Meh

Remember when you were a kid and it was summer vacation? The world was your oyster baby! No school, swimming all day long, watermelon, ice cream, fireworks, staying up late…and it seemed like it lasted forever. Long, endless days that stretched before you full of complete and utter summer bliss.

And then you grew up and realized that the real world doesn’t give you the summer off. Unless you’re a teacher and frankly, scoring the summer off isn’t enough incentive for me to deal with all those sticky handed, snot dripping, sass mouthed heathens. (I am qualified to assess my child tolerance levels based on the four sticky handed, snot dripping, sass mouthed heathens I gave birth to.) Until you have your own kids, summer is just that “Meh” time where you don’t have to wear a jacket to work. Most of that summer just joy gets sucked right out of your life. You go through your daily grind until the next holiday weekend or until your vacation, fondly thinking of the days of old when July and August were one endless party.

Then you have kids of your own and some of that joy comes back. You get to see those steamy, dreamy days of summer through your children’s eyes and vicariously relive the excitement and wonder that those two months bring. Unfortunately though, now YOU are the one who gets to finance the summer adventures and make sure they have something to look back and reminisce over. In between going to work and carrying on your regular, boring old 12-months-a-year-routine that is.

Unfortunately, my kids don’t seem to understand that functioning members of society require these pesky things called jobs in order to pay for their sun soaked adventures they’re concocting for the next two months. The three year old REALLY doesn’t seem to understand this as he we have the following exchange every morning when I’m getting him dressed:

3: Why do I haf to go to Nancy’s? (Daycare)

Me: Because Mommy has to go to work.

3: Why you haf to go to work?

Me: So we can have money.

3: Why do we haf money?

Me: So we can pay for things like food, and tv, and snacks and the iPad.

THIS he gets. You just have to speak their language. He could care less that we have to pay the mortgage or the lights or the car insurance. If I told him we wouldn’t be able to sleep in our house if we didn’t pay the mortgage he’d think , “Oh cool, we get to sleep outside.” To make it more relatable, you gotta hit him where it hurts most. (Mostly his stomach.) “Ok, so no work means no iPad. Got it. No money, no you tube kids, no blueberries, and no Bubble Guppies. Alrighty then. You just go on to work now Mom and make that money for me to enjoy my creature comforts. Oh and send Dad to work too because I could really use some more animal crackers and Matchbox cars.” (Until they start kindergarten, life is just one big summer for them. Lucky sons of a gun. (Sons of a guns? Son of a guns?)

Summer for kids is much different than summer for parents. Summer for parents means we now have to coordinate daycare, summer camps, plus try to find time to “make memories” that don’t involve rushing, swearing, and running 1,000 errands. (Which is literally our life in a nutshell most days.) We have to add an additional 10 minutes to any outdoor excursion to add sunscreen and bug spray. We have to bathe the filthy little ragamuffins every night. (Or at least hose them down in the backyard. What? It’s not like they’re going anywhere important for the next 8 weeks.) We have to stock up on bandages for the bug bites that will bleed because even though we’ve told them 30 times to stop scratching they won’t listen to us. We’ll buy ice cream and neat marshmallow sticks to make s’mores and slip n’ slides that they’ll think are so cool until they somehow slide on it the wrong way and give themselves red belly. We lose 30 minutes of sanity time every night because our kids get to stay up later on non-school nights. (Whose %$*!% idea was this anyway? It just makes ME more tired, not you. You’re still bouncing out of bed at 6:30 AM.) It means having half the neighborhood kids at your house sometimes and sometimes being able to send your kid to drive someone else’s parents nuts. It means we’ll make  a big deal out of small things like going to get ice cream, watching fireworks, or going to the park so that you believe it’s the best summer EVER and not just that your tired parents are trying to make you think you’re having an awesome summer.

Summer for parents is 45 reminders a day that you need to wear shoes outside so you don’t hurt your feet and about 20 of them your kid will actually hear. (Whether they’ll actually put shoes on is probably only like 10 of those 45 though.) We can become the cool parents by letting you have ice cream for dinner when its 90 degrees outside and by jumping in puddles in your bathing suit in summer rain storms and we will totally let you do that if only for the 20 minutes of restoration time we can get out of it. Summer is when we don’t have to pack school lunches but we have to buy A LOT of snacks because fresh air, sunshine and water make you hungry, hungry caterpillars. I know we will go to countless cookouts, picnics, and parties and it’ll be a struggle to feed all the kids because one is picky about food preparation, one is picky about who prepares it, and one is just plain picky and eats 10 things total (and none of them are on this table). They will eat too many popsicles, they won’t sleep as much as they should, and their feet will be permanently stained that dirt color. But that’s ok. Because one day they get to be the boring old parents, wishing they could be back in the leisurely days of summers past. So enjoy it kids. September is right around the corner.

Men’s Suitcases Are From Mars, Women’s Are From Venus

We just got back from our annual vacation last weekend and it usually is my job to be the one to pack us up for it. It’s not that my husband won't pack, because I’m sure he wouldn’t mind doing it. It’s just that if he did, we’d all have 2 pairs of underwear, 3 sets of clothes, no pajamas, and some of us may or may not have a swim suit. (I bet mine would “accidentally” get forgotten. Wink, wink.)

It isn’t his fault that I’m more organized or detail oriented. I think that’s one of the main differences in the whole male/female dynamic. It’s why husbands and wives balance each other out. (Kind of like I hate olives and he loves them.) But it got me thinking about how we think differently about getting ready for vacation. 

On car space:

Him: There’s not a whole lot of room in the back of the car, so what can we eliminate from the list? How about the kids toys? It’s not like they do much other than take up space. Plus, it’s a pain in the ass to clean them every time we leave the beach. Ok, that's solved, they stay.

Me: I don’t think we are going to squeeze everything we need in here. Hmm, what’s not absolutely essential? I guess the sand toys could stay if we needed them to but what will the boys use on the beach? Ugh, it sucks that this will be the first year we haven’t brought them but I just don’t think that they’ll fit. Man, they’re going to be bummed. I'm going to have three days of mom guilt for deciding not to pack their toys. 

.

On packing:

Him: Ok, so I need 3 pairs of shorts, a pair of swim trunks, 2 pairs of underwear and 3 shirts. They have a laundry thingy there, right? Oh and deodorant and cologne. I don’t want to stink. Anything else we can buy when we get there, right?

Me: Alright, so we need at least 5 or 6 outfits. Each. Oh, and probably 2 or 3 swimsuits per person. That way we can let the wet ones dry and rotate them. So that’s swimsuits, beach cover ups, beach towels, sandals, water shoes, sun hat, pool goggles, swim diapers, pajamas, underwear for each day, socks in case feet get cold, a sweatshirt for the chilly evenings, sneakers in case we have to do a lot of walking, sunscreen, aloe, deodorant, beach chairs, toothbrushes, sunglasses, toothpaste, shampoo, dry skin lotion, floss, and mouthwash. Am I forgetting anything? Because even though I could buy anything that we forget (we’re going to Florida after all, not the moon) I will be totally pissed off to have to spend money on something that I already have sitting at home that I forgot to pack. Plus my mom super powers enable me to envision every possible panic inducing scenario and the resulting item that we will require. Advil for headaches, chap stick for burned lips, and stain removing wipes for the car....check.

On preparing the few days before we go:

Him: ……I wonder if I should get a haircut now or wait until we get there?

Me: Okay, so the oil change was done before our big vacation drive. Check that off the list. We got new wiper blades; hubby put them on and he filled the washer fluid too. Check. I have to go to the bank, stop the paper, hold the mail, get the stuff to send with the dog, buy snacks for the ride, get some bottled water for the cooler, charge the tablets, pack the device chargers, remember my medicine, schedule haircuts about a week before we leave (so it’s short but not freshly cut….the Goldilocks of haircuts, it’s “just right”), get toys and puzzles for the kids for the ride, check to see if the car DVD players still work, get movies for them to watch, put wipes and tissues in the glove box, remember a bag to throw the juice boxes and snack garbage in, pack a bag with a change of clothes for the hotel and where the hell is the duffel bag to hold the beach towels? Why does packing take so long? I’m stressed. I need a vacation.

On dealing with traffic jams after already spending 7 hours in the car:

Him: Lots of passive aggressive driving techniques and angry muttering.

Me: A dab of passive aggressive driving techniques and A LOT of mental F-bombs. (Plus one, ok, TWO angry muttered out loud F-bombs that were heard only by my husband.)

So if you and your spouse don’t always see eye to eye on vacation preparation, just know that you’re not alone. There are probably thousands of similar couples out there. So long as you come home with the same number of family members that you started with, you can consider it a successful venture. If you manage to come home with all of them AND all the crap you packed, you also get a gold star of achievement.

Um, why does the mom finger only have 1/2 a bathing suit? Cover your knuckle lady!

Stuck In The Middle of In-Between

Sometimes, when I'm outside in that big, wide world, I might see a little, bitty baby. My ovaries will twitch, I get that urge to smell "newborn baby head smell" again, and I feel a little sad that I'm never going to create a brand new human to take care of again. And then my sticky three year old will grab my hand, loudly demanding a 'nack because he's "just a little hungry" and I think, "OH HELL NO! I'm definitely done with all of this!"

It's tough right now because I'm in the "in-between" phase. The last baby is still young enough that I can get away with calling him the baby without (many) people pointing out the fact that he's NOT a baby anymore, but he's also starting to make that transition from toddler-ness to little boy-ness.

It causes some conflict.

I'm torn between trying to keep him my sweet little baby boy and wanting him to hurry the hell up and go to kindergarten already so I can stop blowing his college fund on his daycare expenses. I want to keep him in footie pajamas but I want him to be able to go to the bathroom completely by himself (You know, without me having to help wipe his butt!). I want sweet snuggles while watching Bubble Guppies, yet I never want to see Bubble Guppies EVER. AGAIN. (Or at least until they make new episodes that I haven't seen forty five times each.) I want to keep buying clothes in the baby/toddler section, but I also want to be able to live life without planning around nap schedules.

I'm telling you, the struggle is real. But apparently only with moms. My husband doesn't seem to get as nostalgic over "the last time we'll have a kid in a crib" or the "the last time we have to have cash on us at all times once they turn 5, for, uh, dental emergencies". I see those sappy "spend time with your children before it's too late!" articles and I feel like time is moving too quickly. (You know the ones that are designed to make you feel like you aren't a good enough parent if you aren't appreciating every millisecond of time spent with your kid, if you don't worship the ground their tiny toes walk on, and if you don't count every waking moment as a gift? The ones that make us regular parents feel awful and spiral downward into a neverending cesspool of parental guilt that we might be able to climb out of with ten years of liquid, retail, and/or chocolate therapy? Yeah, those ones.) My husband scrolls past those sappy articles to find the sports scores. I see kindergarten as the end of his baby years, my husband sees it as an opportunity to know what it feels like to have money again once daycare is over.

So here I am, stuck in the middle of this age and that age.

OF COURSE there's a name for it. Because why wouldn't there be?

I want to remember all the things about this sweet time that I have already forgotten about his siblings. (See? THIS is why they make baby books. For Swiss cheese mom brain. And so we have something to get misty eyed over until they give us grandchildren.) I want to preserve every moment that he loves his mama because one day he'll be too big to want to cuddle and show me his monster "crucks".

And yet....is empty nest syndrome really so bad? I mean, what are we missing out on? Higher grocery bills? Not being able to have nice furniture without stains, rips, or crumbs in the cushions? Being able to sleep past 6:30 in the morning again? One day we'll look back at these days and smile, but...let's just get through them first.

So for now, I guess I'll enjoy each day stuck in the middle. One day it will end and he will turn into a heathen like his brothers and sister before him. He will doubt my judgement, consider me old, and roll his eyes behind my back. Until then, I guess I'll settle in for one more episode of those silly old guppies.

An Open Letter to Clorox

When it comes to cleaning my bathroom, I am old school. No, not uses-a-ton-of-ammonia old school, but definitely I-must-have-bleach-to-make-it-clean old school. Have you seen the commercials with the woman who has a fabulously sarcastic sense of humor advocating the use of bleach to make your house clean? She's my spirit animal. Or in the very least, a long lost relative. (My favorite is the one that uses the phrase "Business End of a Turkey". Watch it on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/p-y-NU3eaU8)

So it stands to reason that when Clorox came out with their "Clorox Clean Up", it was a match made in heaven. (Disclaimer: Sadly, I am NOT being paid to endorse Clorox or its products. However, I cannot help the fact that I adore their bleachiness. It's all a girl could ask for in a cleansing product.) Labeled an all purpose cleaner, it was as if they read my mind. That is, if my mind had said, "I want a bleach cleaner that will take the color out of every towel and washcloth it touches or any shirt I clean in just to give me the peace of mind that my house isn't harboring e-coli." For years my love affair went on unchanged.

This should come in two sizes: "Jumbo" and "Jumbo-er"

Until recently.

Now, before you write me off as some obsessive compulsive clean freak, let me explain something to you. I am, at best, a B- cleaner. There are some things I am absolutely obsessive over, yes, but then there are other things that escape my attention for months at a time. For instance, I don't often notice that I need to dust until a kid swipes a finger through it, thus disturbing the dust facade and making it blatantly obvious that I need to clean. (In my defense, I swear it takes  mere hours to get accumulate again so why stress over it? I'll get to it eventually. Definitely before the dust bunnies stage a coup.) I only scrub the fridge down every 6 months. (Okay, that's a lie, it's more like 8 or 9 but I didn't want you to judge me. It gets done, that's what counts, right?) And windows...well, because they are constantly covered by curtains, I don't really think about them. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. Basically, the windows get done when I take the curtains down to wash them.

But then there are the things like dishes and bathrooms. Those I get a little OC about. In fact, it's for that reason that I insisted that I be the only one to clean the bathrooms in the house. (To be fair, it's not like anyone really fought me that hard on that. Like, "Oh drat, Mom, I totally wanted to clean the toilet but if you insist....")

Which brings me to my current disappointment and the reason I'm writing this open letter to Clorox. (I know, about time I got to it, huh?)

Dear Clorox,

I have been a fan of your all purpose Clorox Clean-Up for years. Nothing makes me feel like I am eradicating the stomach flu or mopping up boy bathroom misses better than your products. So recently, when we moved into a new house, it made sense that I needed to do a fresh cleaning top to bottom. I cleaned so well, in fact, that I finished the bottle by the time I was done and needed to replace it. So, living in a small town and not wanting to travel 20 minutes to get a new bottle, I went to the little store in town.

Upon arriving, I was immediately relieved to see that they did, in fact, carry Clorox Clean-up. Except that they only had the foaming kind. I detest foaming cleansers and hand soaps, but desperate times call for desperate measures so I purchased it. I couldn't take the chance that a roto-virus would strike my house and I would be woefully unprepared!

I suffered through the bottle, and when it was time to replace that one I did travel to a bigger store with the hopes of finding a bigger selection. And I was right. They had the foaming kind, the gel kind, one strictly for the bathroom, and another one (maybe citrus scent? I can't remember). Frustrated, (Where is the spray liquid, all purpose, bleach cleaner I know and love?) I grabbed the bathroom cleaner. It wasn't foam, it wasn't gel, it wasn't citrus or any of that crap, and I use it mostly on bathrooms anyway.

The next day I cleaned the bathroom. With the very first spray, I knew something was wrong. My first thought was that I accidentally grabbed "Mountain Spring" scent or some other attempt to make bleach not smell like bleach. (Which, hello?? Totally defeats the purpose for me. Smelling the bleach lets everyone know that I may have dust balls big enough to pass as small cats, but my damn toilets sparkle.) So I looked at the bottle. And I see the words: BLEACH FREE CLEANER. Wait a minute.?WTF Clorox? Your name is synonymous with bleach. Clorox making a bleach free cleaner is like Hershey making a chocolate free bar or KFC having a chicken free menu. What were you thinking? The bleach is literally the reason I buy this stuff. And yeah, I know, you're going to tell me that I AM the one who bought it, but if you've ever had to bring a toddler to the store, you'd know what it's like to blindly throw things in the cart and sprint for the check out line before something shiny catches their eye that they must have, resulting in a temper tantrum that makes you look like Mommie Dearest when you won't cave to their tiny, terrorist like demands. It saddens me greatly to have this big of a problem finding a Clorox cleaner that doesn't foam or gel, contains bleach, can be used on everything, and doesn't smell like lemons or fresh rain. Is it really so much to ask that you put the bleach back into Clorox?

Signed,

A Disappointed Mom Who Now Has To Clean Everything Twice Just To Feel Like It's As Effective As A Bleach Cleanser

This Friend Can Be Yours With Just 3 Low Payments!

You could send my 9 year old into a room full of kids of all ages and in 30 minutes I can almost guarantee he comes out with a new best friend. Kids can make new friends just because they both like pizza or have the same favorite superhero or because they both breathe air. For adults, on the other hand, the process is a lot more complicated and involved.

In fact, making friends as an adult is a lot like dating.

What?! Did she just say dating? Yes, yes I did. Think about it. When you meet someone and go on a date, aren’t you really just trying to see if you’re compatible? Who wants to date someone that they have nothing in common with and don’t even like? An idiot, that’s who! And we’re not idiots. (Most of the time.) So we have dinner, polite chit chat, and start getting into the nitty gritty, the hard core questions that will let you know if you can spend more time with them, if they are attractive as a person, if they meet your inner list of dating criteria. (But most importantly, if they drink coffee and have a superbly witty wit.)

“So, what’s your favorite color?”

“Are you a cat person or a dog person?”

“Will you make me watch boring documentaries on PBS that I have no interest in seeing because if so, we are done right now, game over!”

Eventually you find the one person who has enough interests to keep you together and enough differences to make you not be a creepy couple and you’re done with the dating business. You keep some of your friends, he keeps some of his friends, you make new “couple” friends….life is grand.

Except, you aren’t done making friends for the rest of your life. It’s not like you have a specific number you are entitled to and one day meet your quota. Eventually you are going to have to make new friends, especially if you change jobs, move away, or lose all of your current friends in a freak accident involving a day hike and an unexpected avalanche. (It could happen.) Maybe your friends have moved and you still keep in contact on FaceBook (A.K.A. virtual friends), but they aren’t readily available the next time you are ready to make a bad decision like dying your hair, getting a nose piercing, or drinking an entire bottle of Peach Schnapps. For this, you need someone who will come along and keep you company. Or at least from falling on the floor and concussing yourself.

So you start the same process, only this time you’re hoping for a mark in that friend column, saving you from lonely, spinster cat lady status.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“What are your hobbies?”

“Are you a Democrat or a Republican because I don’t really care either way, but I want you to not care as much as I don’t.”

(Real quick side note: I don't know why we are so obsessed with people's favorite colors. I mean, what is the deal with that? Does it make or break a relationship if their favorite color is orange? Is this just filler so that we feel like we know something about a person? Or is it so we know what color to buy anything for the next fifty years because it's their "favorite"? I don't get it.)

I think it’s actually more stressful for me to find a new friend than it would be to find a new romantic relationship. Which thankfully, I don’t ever have to do again now that I am happily married to my awesome husband. (Plus the agreement that I will lock him in the basement if he ever tries to divorce me. I am NOT dating again in this century!!) If you consider that I hate to socialize 75% of the time, finding someone I would willingly while away the hours with outside of my introverted little world is a BFD! I’m not going to just spread that friendship around willy-nilly now. I’m going to screen those potential candidates thoroughly, potentially using a 38 point rating system and a 62 question survey. I’m (mostly) kidding about the survey.

And I honestly want this to work out. I mean, how many times am I expected to go through this torment of speaking to new people before I find “the one”? Okay, okay, I’m not really that introverted (or socially inept) but you know what I’m talking about, right? I want to find the Monica to my Rachel, the Gayle to my Oprah, the Sonny to my Cher (I’m an equal opportunity employer of friendships). I want to weed out all the ones who think that Algebra is fun, that think salads are substitutes for meals, or think that going on a hike is fun. (Which it totally is. For people who are not me.) I need someone who is sarcastically funny, gets my dry sense of humor, and likes to read and/or watch paranormal/science fiction. All the rest will work itself out.

Unless you’re a vegetarian. Then I’m telling you right now, it can’t work.

Complications in the Mom Squad

I seem to have a love/hate relationship with my kids. Well, no, actually, I don’t ever hate my kids. I guess I have a love/oh-my-god-you’re-driving-me-crazy-right-now-can-I-just-get-five-minutes-of-peace-to-myself? kind of relationship with my kids. I love ‘em, but sometimes I love them a lot more when they aren’t in my general area.

Real parenting is kind of ugly. Moms have this preconceived notion that we are never supposed to speak ill of our children and we are supposed to think that rainbows spew forth from their butts at all times and we frolic with the unicorns… and then find out what drugs that nice nurse gave us that made us have these pretty hallucinations. Real parents know that kids don’t come with instruction manuals because every single one is different just for spite. Ok, maybe not for spite, but some days that’s what it feels like. It’s messy and exhausting and there’s a 100% chance of fluids from somewhere and 99% of them ain’t good.

And we can admit, if only to ourselves, that at times our kids are jerks. At times they step up their jerk game and become full-fledged a-holes, too. Sometimes we are just as tired of their tantrums as they are of having them. (I don’t know if this is true but I’m guessing since they eventually outgrow tantrums that they do get tired of having them. Either that or they just find new ways to manipulate those suckers they call parents.) We all fall prey to the green eyed monster of envy and wish our kids ate as well as Annie’s kid or that they were as sweet and Mindy’s kid or that they hated candy like Sarah’s kid. It might happen someday. Then again it might not, but we shouldn’t let our mommy guilt paralyze us and waste their growing up years bathed in a cloud of self-doubt. Hell, most days I’m just happy that they’re all alive, safe, and breathing. (Every day we keep them alive is another feather in our caps!) If it’s been a particularly trying day and I successfully get them all to bed without beating one of them, it’s a miracle. (Disclaimer: I actually don’t beat my kids but I do threaten to beat them on an hourly basis. Usually something like, “If you don’t stop throwing that ball in the house, I’m going to beat you.” Or “If you keep sassing back to your father, I’m going to beat you.” Sadly, since I don’t actually beat them, it’s just an idle threat. Well, not sadly, because it’s not like I WANT to beat them. Maybe a swat on the rear. Or a stern talking to! Oh, who am I kidding, I might be getting too soft for this parenting gig. Where are my nerves of steel? It's more like aluminum foil these days.)

I think I had a point before I severely got off topic. Oh yes, it’s that guilt that we carry around with us. We know it’s there, and just as often we know that we shouldn’t have it, and yet, we still do. Case in point: I love having a little “me time” when the hubs takes the kids to grandma and grandpas to visit or they’re spending time at a friend’s house, but I feel bad about it. Like: I will read this book uninterrupted but I won’t enjoy it because I will miss you terribly. I want them to go away and give me a break, but then I miss them when they’re gone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to make the most of my time without squabbling, demanding, whining little monsters, but I don’t know if I’ll truly be able to savor it because I feel like good moms don’t enjoy their children being away from them.

And there it is in a nutshell.

We think that good parents don’t want to spend time away from their kids. What are we, martyrs? Did we sign a contract that said we will spend every waking moment that we possibly can adoring, caring for, or staring at our bundles of joy? Do we not deserve a break after the 77^th time listening to the Paw Patrol theme song or the 23^rd time we broke up a sibling squabble over that one toy that you haven’t been able to accidentally break yet because it doesn’t leave their sight ever? (One day though, they will leave it unguarded and I will swoop in and destroy it! Muah ha ha ha ha ha.) We deserve to be able to eat a hot meal every now and again, right? One that doesn’t involve macaroni and cheese or chicken fingers. One that we might even get to dress up a little for. (And I don’t mean just wearing the unstained yoga pants.) We deserve to go to a rock concert and wonder how we are going to make it to work after staying up so late (11pm). Just like your family deserves time to bond with your precious angels without their parents hovering, being the heavy hands of justice. They deserve to be spoiled and drink soda and eat snacks that they won’t tell you about because it’s part of childhood and frankly, as long as they are happy, healthy, and unharmed, you probably won’t care anyway.

So yes, I will admit, I do need time away from my kids. It helps me not smack them when they’re being uber annoying and it helps me appreciate those sweet cuddles more. That doesn’t mean I won’t feel bad for wanting the time, but give me a hot meal with meat that isn’t cut into toddler sized bites, and I’ll probably get over it. (If not the meat, then definitely the dessert that I DON’T HAVE TO SHARE!!!!!! will probably seal the deal.)