Making Memories (Or is it Mom-ories?)

Do you ever think back to your childhood and there are those few things that stand out to you as memorable? Chances are it's either something really funny or something really awful, isn't it? Like the time you went on vacation and your sister threw up in the car. Or that time that you got stung by a bee on the beach. Or that time that your Dad burped along to a song on the radio. (Listen, for boys, gross IS funny.)

For some reason, our memories seem to catalog the funniest and most horrendous things as the most memorable. Sure, you might remember the song that your mom sung you to sleep with when you were little, but first you'll remember how your little brother wet the bed  until he was 5.

Why am I thinking about this you ask? Probably because the one memory that my youngest brother has of me (and he wasn't even there, it's just a "passed down" memory) is that when I was four, I ate a stick of butter. Why? I have no freaking clue. I mean, yeah, I DO love me some butter, but not enough to eat an actual stick of it. But that's adult me. Maybe four year old me was like, "Mmm, butter. Must eat some." And it makes me wonder what memories my own kids will carry with them as they grow up.

For instance, our annual vacations where we drive for two days each way. What are they going to remember from that? (I mean, other than creative ways to insult idiot drivers.) Will they remember the "snackpack"? (The backpack full of "Shut up and eat this" snacks for the drive.) Or the movies they'd watch on the way down?

Ha! Right.

Here's what they are going to remember:

That year that the boys had a fart off to see who could stink up the car more. (that was THIS year, thank you very much for that.)

That Mom would drive in New Jersey so that Dad didn't end up flipping anyone off.

How much Mom HATES driving in the Carolinas and their stupid two lane highways. (Just put in a third lane already!!)

Sleeping in a hotel room with your entire family sucks. No, I take that back. It actually SUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKS! Big time. (Sleeping with kids. Snoring husbands. No fan for white noise. Need I say more?)

How cranky Mom can get being stuck in a traffic jam when he bladder (that's been squished by four bouncing babies thank you very much) is full to bursting.

How long into the drive it takes Mom and Dad to start squabbling because traffic also SUUUUCCCCKKKKKS! (Sometimes we actually make it out of the driveway! Ha ha ha.)

How annoying Yo Gabba Gabba can be on repeat for 18 hours.

That time there was a snake in the bedroom. That Mom found. At 11:30 at night.

That year that the dead jelly fish were all over the beach and Mom kept having a heart attack anytime the two year old went near one.

It will be interesting, ten years from now, to look back together and compare our memories of the same trips. I'm sure that everyone will have a different perspective on things. Hopefully their Mom-ories make me out to be less crazy and frazzled than I really am. Or if not, maybe they'll think it's funnier then.

For all the families making similar "rememberies", may they be as funny, stinky, and memorable as ours have been. And from my family to yours, Happy Easter!

Looking Out From the Eyes of a Mom

Looking Out From the Eyes of a Mom

One day, I might finally open the laundry room door,
and not find mountains of dirty clothes from ceiling to floor.

Someday, I can look in the mirror and see,
Past the dark circles, frown lines, and crows feet.

On another day, I might be able to solve the mystery,
of where the mates to those lonely socks are hiding from me.

One day, maybe even soon, I will finally see,
what fuss is all about this time that's for "me".

Someday, maybe, I will have the joy of knowing,
what it's like to have hampers not overflowing.

On this day, I know that every mom can understand,
why I listed two laundry complaints, oh they know firsthand!

On a distant day, I could finally begin to plan,
little boy bedtimes without checking for bogeymans.

One day, I will finally beat back those damn dust bunnies,
under furniture, in dark corners, thinking they are funny.

Someday I will know what it really looks like,
to have windows minus sticky prints from little tykes.

On another day, maybe I can climb the top of laundry mountain,
I'll claim these lumpy piles as my own, with a saucy grin.

(Maybe one day, hopefully quite soon, I will be taught,
Don't climb laundry after drinking that bottle of wine that I bought!)

One day I may actually know what it's like to eat,
a HOT meal, sitting down, in my very own seat.

One far away day, I may sleep through every single night,
without sick kids, crying tots, or monsters from scary dream frights.

Some distant day, I will have to explain to people why,
I am so effing weird and why aspirin commercials make me cry.

On that day, I'll simply blame every single thing,
on hormones out of whack from birthing my offspring.

(One day, my own will know how true that really is,
when they've grown WAY up and have their own kids.)

One day, that seems so far away now but is closer than I think,
I'll look at my kids to see that they grew up in a blink.

Some day, they always say, you'll miss these times,
of sticky kisses, boo boos, and mystery wall grime.

(One day, the mystery grime will be known to me,
even if it's clearly a hand print from child number three.)

One day, these kids of mine will still call me mom,
but they'll have their own lives, far from calm.

On another day, they will finally begin to see,
through my eyes, and how fleeting time can be.


P.S. I promise next time I will be back to my sarcastic, eye rolling, sassy self. But for this time, hug those babies a little tighter tonight and be thankful for all of the moments and memories you are giving to them right now. (And stock up on tissues. I wasn't kidding about those commercials.)

Because...Winter (And Other Reasons I’m Losing My Mind)

I love living on the east coast for a lot of reasons but the biggest one has always been because we get to enjoy all four seasons here. My kids get to go sledding in the winter and swimming in the summer. They get crunchy leaves in the fall and the renewal of the Earth in spring. I love the heat (especially the extreme hot temperatures!) and while I hate being cold, I’ve generally tolerated winter fairly well. It’s only a single season after all.

Until winter 2017/2018 started kicking my ass.

I am not sure why, but this winter seems to be extremely heinous. Could it be because the temperature’s favorite setting is deep freeze? Maybe. Is it because it won’t f%*#ing stop snowing? Quite possible. Is it because I’m getting older and my body is slowly preparing myself for retirement and moving to Florida with the rest of the nation’s retirees? I don’t know. What I do know is that the cold seems to have settled into my bones permanently. I’m tired of single digit temps. I cringe at the thought of another bleeping snowstorm not to mention the fact that I’m seriously contemplating buying an arctic snowsuit. I have to psyche myself up to take a brief 15 minute walk outside for some exercise.

Because I’ve lived here my entire life, I think that means I’m supposed to have some sort of super immunity to the snow and cold. It’s like one of those ‘Meanwhile in NY” memes I’ve seen floating around the Internet. You know, the ones where the South shuts down over 3 inches of snow and we’re barbecuing with 3 feet of snow in the backyard? Yeah, like that. The winter is starting to drive me crazy. I’m losing what little sanity I have managed to save over the years. It doesn’t help that January seems to be the longest month ever. Is it March yet? Because I feel like January has been at least twice as long as it should have been.

Yeah, this is the one I was thinking about.

And if you open your mouth and a complaint about the weather falls out, it’s bound to be in your grandmother’s voice. Crabbing about the economy, weather, politics, and “kids these days” is something that is reserved for a specific age, one that generally comes with grandchildren, retirement, and crotchety old person-ness. I’m too damn young to qualify for that. So the weather is driving me insane and I’m not allowed to complain about it for another 18 years or so.

It’s not just the weather that’s making me lose my marbles, it’s the cabin fever. Being cooped up inside all the time with rabid children and stir crazy pets. I’d love to send them all outside but Mother Nature flipped her bitch switch and gave us a temperature with a wind-chill factor of negative 5. This is the weather so cold that your snot instantly freezes to the inside of your nostrils if you take so much as a small breath outside. And if it’s not too cold, then it’s too dark. Sure, the days are starting to get longer, but the sun is still cutting out from work pretty early. By the time we are home from work and school and dinner is done, it’s midnight for all intents and purposes. The house, which normally has ample room and space for five people to maintain peaceful cohabitation, starts shrinking until everyone is in everyone else’s business. (You can’t hide. They will find you.)

As if that wasn’t enough to earn me a nice white jacket and a pretty, padded room, the house is starting to check things off its “Make My Owners Daft” list. In the last few weeks we have had four light bulbs go out in three different fixtures, a carbon monoxide detector died, the basement door handle refuses to stay on, and the front step is taking a beating from the subzero weather and is disintegrating before our very eyes. If we manage to make it through this winter intact, it’s possible that the house may not. There’s a giant conspiracy between Mother Nature, our kids, and our house to move us to the funny farm.

Yes, I am ready for my tinfoil hat so that the aliens can’t zap my brain.

So while I’m slowly losing my marbles like I’m in a game of hungry hungry hippos with a roomful of toddlers, I am seeking solace within the confines of a good book. It’s so pretty in there and they don’t have frostbite. I think I’ll stay there awhile. At least until the ground is green again and I can feel my toes.

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.