If This Is Motherhood

I've Moved!

2011-12-28T14:24:00.000-05:00

I'm still at the same domain! www.ifthisismotherhood.com except I have moved to self-hosting with wordpress. So please update your bookmarks, visit me at my new spot and add me to your Google Plus circles as GFC will be discontinued soon! Hope to see you there!

Balancing intelligence with childhood.

2011-12-19T16:36:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I forget that my children are empty slates. I get irritated when they ask too many "stupid" questions or make a comment that is just wrong. I expect them to know things they really shouldn't know.

Some two years ago I was pretty good at seeing life through their eyes. I was pretty good at reminding myself that they don't know better. But I've noticed lately that I'm doing quite the opposite now.

But I do know, at least in part, why. Because The Professor is nearly 10 now. And though I know it is at least, wrong to do so, I can't help but look at his peers and even his younger brother and compare. And when I see awareness in the majority of the other children, I can't help but be irritated with his lack of.

It blows my mind to think that my Professor is intentionally careless about the impression he makes on his peers. It has been suggested strongly that The Professor isn't actually delayed socially -- that he really just doesn't care what his peers think or if they are his friend at the end of the day. His focus isn't on his social life. He's more interested in figuring the world out and he does that better with friends as a distraction.

It's a little twisted because I am huge on letting my kids be themselves, choose their friends and make their own mistakes. Yet I cannot help but jump up and down yelling and barge into his social life (sometimes uninvited) to save him from social suicide.

And The Gremlin doesn't escape my helicopter parenting either. I can't help but shush him when he is simply being who he is in a place where I believe it might somehow socially decimate him. Because he generally doesn't give a shit either.

It's a challenge I perhaps face when parenting gifted children? I often forget lately that however smart they are, they are still children and I need to allow that to be. It's so hard to have an in depth conversation with a 9 year old about the population of Tokyo and the traffic problems they face now and in the future, then watch the same child burst into tears and swear his life is over when his favorite pencil fails to stay sharpened. It's bizarre to watch these kids learn to play complex musical instruments or anticipate the end of a complex joke, but be seemingly unable to understand why they should eat their broccoli. Especially when the same kids can give you a lecture worthy of a college lecture hall on the benefits green foods have on your body.

More and more I struggle with this lately -- balancing their intelligence with their childhood. It's quite funny really because I'm quick to call a teacher out when they are doing it but lately I am making the same mistakes.

I get so frustrated because my child can intelligently debate global warming with me, yet doesn't seem to be able to master tying his shoes. It's hard to remember that they are children developmentally when they are 90 year old men intelligence wise and still mere 4 year olds socially. Or just old men that have already learned that friends will come and go and found their peace with that. Maybe I should do the same?

I love my kids for exactly who they are but I wonder if they know that or if I put off the vibe that they should be less childish because that's what the world requires of them or because their life would be less complicated if they were mindless drones, selling out to fit into what society thinks they should be?

I'm going to work harder at accepting their quirks and remembering that intelligence doesn't cancel out childhood. That's a tall order when everything about these children is absurdly grown up most times, but their childhood is just as important, if not more, as their success academically.

*Sigh* I just wish that all the experts in this area could back up their claims of all these challenges being normal for advanced children with solid suggestions on how to deal with it.

This Is Who I Am – Issue 5 – Nickelback & Mac & Cheese.

2011-12-18T11:08:00.001-05:00

I have always loved music. I can build a list of songs that would describe my entire life. I’ve never had a moment in my life that I could not find an appropriate song for. It doesn’t matter what genre of music it is, there is a song for everything. I listen to grunge, pop, rap, R&B, alternative, rock, classical, country, and everything in between. And I love all of it. The one thing I am always grateful for is that my boys and The Husband all share a similar love for music. The Husband and I can be found late at night, sitting at the computer, scouring YouTube for music we haven’t heard yet. One of my favorite recent discoveries is Adele – Rolling in The Deep. LOVE THIS.

But all 4 of us love one artist in particular. NICKELBACK. It’s something we all share. Every single album – every single song, we LOVE. Nobody complains for me to turn the music down or off when I play Nickelback and when a new album is released, we are all huddled around each other at the computer, pulling up new songs and listening to them.

The Professor has written several letters to Chad Kroger, the lead singer. In each letter, he requested for he and his band to come have macaroni & cheese with us and perform “Rock Star” in our living room. I’m pretty sure none of those letters were ever read (since I shamefully found two of them in my purse this weekend and I can’t guarantee I remembered to mail the others either). The Gremlin wants to be a rock star and his idol is NICKLEBACK. At the tender age of 4, he walks around all day long singing “Rock Star” and when we drop The Professor off at school or pick him up, guess what you’ll hear playing in my car? Yup. That’s right. NICKELBACK. The Professor has his own MP3 player and the only artist on the thing is NICKELBACK. Seriously, we are HUGE fans. HUGE.

Unfortunately, my lung condition makes it unsafe to go to an indoor concert, so I have never seen them in concert. I couldn’t afford tickets anyway and I wouldn’t go without the boys and The Husband because they are big fans too.

So they have a new album out. It’s titled “Here And Now” and holy shit, it’s awesome! Not like I am surprised. NICKELBACK doesn’t do anything but awesome. But this time, there is a particular song that really reached out to me.

Several times through-out recent posts I have commented that I was feeling really alone. And I was. I was feeling overwhelmed and tired and pretty depressed. Not depressed to the point of it being dangerous, but still pretty depressed. And music is where I run, hide and regroup, so I turned to NICKELBACK.

The song is called Lullaby. It’s amazing and really jerked me to the point of tears. Not so much because I was feeling that way, because this song goes to depths my depression just isn’t reaching. And thank god for that. But because I always feel like Nickelback is talking to all of us with their music. This time, this song, really made me feel a bit better. Take a listen:

Did it jerk you? Even just a little bit? I love the part where he says “Cuz I have faith in you…”. I just love this.

And if you need another example of feeling like they are talking to all of us with their music, check out this song. This is also from their new album and touches me deeply every time I hear it.

I LOVE NICKELBACK. We love NICKELBACK. How cool would it be if he actually performed in our living room? God, I’d never forget that. Not ever. And I know the boys wouldn’t either.

And here is another song, again full of hope. LOVE THIS. The whole album rocks, people! Check it out:

What new music have you discovered lately? Do you have a favorite? Don’t forget to check out the new album! Next week, maybe I’ll post my life in songs.

Why a Blog? The Belated Bloggerversary Post!

2011-12-16T13:33:00.001-05:00

I’ve been blogging for over a year. I missed my bloggerversary in October because I was on a stress driven hiatus, but it’s officially been a year since I made If This Is Motherhood, my little home on the internet.

When I started blogging, there was an echo here. I was talking to myself for months. Or at least I was talking to the quite limited audience of a straggler or two who dropped in, then left never to return.

So I have to admit to some pride that my blog has become a mildly popular blog. I do get a fair amount of visitors, I have readers (and many who have become friends) that come back and read every time I post, and it never ceases to make me smile when I get another Twitter follower. I’d have no twitter followers if it weren’t for this blog, because I never used Twitter prior to this.

A week ago, Before It’s News left a message here for me, asking me if I’d be interested in having my blog RSS fed to their site. I’ll be honest, I have no idea if this is something everyone gets or if I’m special (Don’t ruin it. You know I’m special). This morning, I got another message from them, stating that my blog is officially feeding to their site!

I am a writer at heart. It took me a while to say that out loud. I have always written and I know I always will, but I honestly never considered this blog to be a written work by me. It was always something I considered a leisure – a hobby that allowed me to network with other parents and clear my head.

But it is so much more than that. It has taken on a life of it’s own. When I am taking The Professor to school, words for a blog post are dancing around in my head and when I’m making dinner, I’m secretly pining to sign on a check my comments. This blog is my virtual baby. I am very proud of it.

Yet, when a friend who feels that I am “wasting my talent”, asked me why I chose to blog instead of going to school for something with more recognition, I had to think about it and think about it hard. Why did I choose to blog to (in the beginning) a blind audience? Why not a book or a column? Why don’t I even attempt to write for a magazine? And the answer was hard to find. Because I kept telling myself that I am not “good enough” to write for big places like magazines, newspapers or major websites. But that isn’t true. I know very well that at my best, I am a quite talented writer. I know that only 40% of what I write ever makes my blog and I know that I have boatloads of notebooks filled with stories and articles the world would love to read. I simply choose to keep them to myself.

Despite knowing just how big the world is, my world feels quite small to me and I like it that way. I like writing to an audience I can keep up with. I like recognizing those who comment, remembering the last post they posted and knowing that however small it may seem to me, my world really is a part of a bigger picture. My family is a part of a bigger family. A family of bloggers, all of whom support each other and lift each other up when things get tough. I don’t want to be writing to a plethora of anonymous people, most of whom I would never talk to, read about or know.

I want more than a five minute glance from those who read my blog. I want more than a zillion likes on Face Book and 17 retweets. I want to be special and I am. Because nothing I write is edited by anyone. I don’t answer to anyone, write for anyone or say what anyone else wants me to say. This blog is me, in my truest form. Every tear shed, every cuss word and every triumph is shared by choice, the way I want it shared to an audience that cares.

I blog for connection. It’s a connection with people all over the world, that I would not have were I to write for an editor in some big fancy magazine, because I would be edited or (OMG) censored and that would SUCK. I like my sailor’s mouth (although I am trying to stop using it around the children). I like the freedom of having my own blog and I love the personal nature and feel of it. I like being able to say what I want, post when I want and be who I am without fear.

So this was my pat on the back for a year of blogging. Albeit it two months late, it still deserved some sort of recognition. Happy Belated Bloggerversary to Me!

The Annual Christmas Tree Rant.

2011-12-12T11:45:00.001-05:00

So, last year I ranted about the dreadful Christmas Tree decorating nightmare, and here I am again. This is becoming something of a blogging tradition for me.

I should stick to hot cocoa and ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.

Last night, it was brought to my attention that we are a shocking two weeks away from “The Big Day” and I had as yet failed to break out the decorations. I should have waited, grabbed a glass of wine and watched The Husband do the decorating.

Somehow, last year, I decided it would be a good idea to pack away an entire box of non-working strings of lights? No idea why in the world I would do that but apparently I did. So when I pulled out the boxes to get to it, I quickly found that I had only 3 strings of lights that worked. Not enough for a 7 ft Christmas tree. So I took them all off the tree figuring we’d buy more lights for the tree and use these lights around the house.

Really? A box full of non-working lights? Why? Why? Why?

Then I opened another box, and found that it was full of working strings of lights. WTF? Why in the world would I neatly pack a HUGE BOX full of non-working lights?? Ugh. So the decorating nightmare begins. I KNEW there was a reason that whenever my kids started talking about getting a tree, I changed the subject. Fast. Because again this year I am reminded of how much I loathe decorating. Loathe it.

So I proceed to pull out the lights, which ironically were not packed neatly as I packed the non-working lights (wtf?) and untangle them and attempt to put them on the tree.

The Christmas tree hates me. I’m convinced this is at least 50% of the problem.

The stupid lights won’t stay on the tree. I get two strings on the tree, look down and find that somehow the first string has drooped so severely, it is mostly wrapped around the tree stand. Have I told you how much I HATE decorating the tree?

So while I am wrestling with strings of stupid Christmas tree lights, the boys are naturally, pulling everything else out of the boxes. Unfortunately, they get it in their head to take all my garland and start wrapping it around the banister to The Professor’s room, but when it isn’t long enough, they start yanking on it, then fighting over it, then wrapping it around each other and eventually ripping it into smaller pieces which were then strewn through out the house. It looked like a Christmas Garland massacre.

They thought the ripped up garland looked nice around Mr. Snowman 2

So much for valuable time together with the kids. I start yelling, throw the garland away in a fit of cuss words and pleas to just let me get this over with and attempt to move on. While I am doing this, The Gremlin is beating the Christmas tree with a little bat he has. WTF? He loves the tree. I am so glad he doesn’t love me enough to take a bat to me. I guess I should be counting my blessings, right?

All this is taking place with cheerful Christmas music playing in the background. Nice touch.

So I gave up on the tree. I left the lights haphazardly thrown around the tree and decided that The Husband could do this. He has far more patience for this shit than I do.

My fucked up decorating job.

And I move on to putting out our pretty Christmas candles and knickknacks. This should be easy right? Yeah. For anyone else but me. The boys have taken the shade to my favorite candle holder and somehow misplaced it. While I am looking for that, they get into a heated discussion about who gets to arrange the blocks in Mr. Snowman’s tummy to reflect how many days are left until Christmas. This altercation turns into a duck & run situation as two small, and quite hard blocks start flying across the room. One of them was saved from the impact of the wall. By. My. Head. They are not bad kids…..they are not bad kids…they are not bad kids….

The mess and the mess maker.

The night ends with me saying Merry Fucking Christmas, it’s bedtime! Followed by the cries of two little boys who just wanted to decorate for Christmas. Violently, or with “spirit” if you can see a silver lining.

I really don’t like decorating.

Where the lights will stay until The Husband’s day off.

I’m just not feeling it.

2011-12-12T06:59:00.000-05:00

I’m just not feeling the season this year. I’m not looking forward to Christmas. There, I said it out loud and now everyone will think me a scrooge.

Usually I love Christmas. I love the sight of the decorations (though I hate having to be the one doing the decorating). I love the scents of pine and the cheerful music. I love the colors. I usually love everything about Christmas.

But this Christmas, I am just plain depressed. I still haven’t decorated, but I should. The boys are used to me being all mushy and excitable about Christmas and I see the disappointment on The Professor’s face, every time he asks me when we are going to decorate and I tell him “When mommy has the patience to get through it without losing her mind.”. And I feel bad for him. Because he really wants me to be in the spirit.

I tried listening to Christmas music. Didn’t even touch me. I tried being excited because I know the boys are going to have a nice Christmas but that isn’t working either. I’m tired and I don’t have the energy to be excited over a holiday that simply isn’t worming it’s way into my heart this year.

I feel like every time I say Merry Christmas, or shop for a gift, or look at my barren tree that I am avoiding decorating, I am just going through the motions. I’m doing what every one wants me to do.

What I really want to do, is climb in bed and sleep through Christmas. Is that horrible?

And now I have to make some sort of goal for the new year? Maybe I should skip that too?

So come on everyone. Someone help me get into the holiday spirit! Please? You’ll be making two little boys so happy if you can find something that will cheer me up and get me into the spirit here!

What do you do to bring the Christmas spirit out when you’re having a hard time finding it?

Huh. Wish I’d known sooner.

2011-12-11T12:29:00.001-05:00

So I mentioned that my camera broke, right?

I have been devastated! I love taking pictures of the boys and now all I have to do it with is my cell phone, which takes the crappiest pictures EVER. Ugh.

So yesterday, The boys and I went to a Christmas party. It was more sophisticated than I imagined it would be, having never been invited to an event that was exclusive to only those with an invite. At the risk of sounding like some sort of redneck, backwoods hermit, I’ve never been to that kind of Christmas party before. It wasn’t what I expected and I admit to a little bit of vanity at having an exclusive invite. And it was really nice.

I know, again I sound like I have been hiding under a rock for a long time, but the Christmas parties I’ve been to in the past usually involve a bunch of people getting drunk or sitting around bored.

This was so different. Food was served, literally served to us at our tables and if we wanted something, we had only to ask a server. Dessert was served with the meal and an a cappella choir, whom I swear sounded like angels, wandered around the room singing Christmas carols as we ate and we enjoyed the company of, in my case, people I did not know. A truly relaxing experience and the boys behaved incredibly.

And then there was Santa. This guy made an amazing Santa! Jolly enough and you could feel the kindness seeping off him as he went around the room, kneeling to talk to the excited children waiting, and stopping to bid their parents a Merry Christmas. Hugging elderly men and women and singing along to the choir. Truly the best Santa I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

So I wanted pictures but my phone was taking crappy, blurry pictures and I was so disappointed. Another young lady and her husband offered to let me use their camera to take the picture and it came out beautifully and then they texted it to me later in the day.

But I couldn’t get it off my crap phone! I don’t have a cord nor do I have a data plan, so I thought for sure I could only text this picture to those whose number I had. This morning on a whim, I attempted to text the picture to my email address and it worked! Check out my babies!

(This was taken with a different camera phone)

(This was taken with my phone. See the difference in quality?)

I wish I’d known this sooner, even though my phone takes superbly shitty pictures. I can’t really afford to buy a camera right now and at least this way I can take a few pictures on Christmas Day! They won’t be the best and I’ll have to insist that the boys stand perfectly still because any kind of movement results in a blurred picture, but I’ll be able to capture the moments I was stressing about missing and share them online! Yay!

I really need to figure all this technology stuff out. Right now, I’m just crossing my fingers that there are no additional cell phone charges for texting to an email address. The Husband will kill me if he gets charged $17.00 for my texting to an email address.

Anyway, The picture just above is The Gremlin at the music store. It was like an expensive field trip for us. We went to get him his electric guitar and as you can see, he found another instrument he is interested in.

And I leave you with this picture of the boys, since it’s been a while. Sorry about the quality, as this was taken with my phone.

Dear Santa

2011-12-09T10:51:00.001-05:00

Dear Santa,

Here comes another Christmas! I sure hope you’re ready! Have you seen the list my boys made for you? Seriously. Don’t. Bring. All. That. Stuff. Please.

I have a list of my own today. I know you can’t grant most of this stuff, but I’m hanging on to hope and telling you anyway.

Things I Want For Christmas

1. I want to feel better. I’ve been a bit depressed lately and a lot overwhelmed and I just want to enjoy the holiday. Just let us all be happy to be with each other and help me remember that someday, the kids will be grown, and I’m thinking I might maybe miss this.

2. My camera broke. It has been dying for almost a year and it finally kicked the bucket. I should’ve known. I purchased it used over 3 years ago. I’m broke. I won’t be able to take pictures of Christmas day! I have been pining after this Canon Powershot. I know it’s pricey, but c’mon, I haven’t sent you a list since I was 5 years old!

2. Another broken item, but I think my kids did this. My vacuum broke. Sweeping the carpets is getting old really really fast! Please send me a vacuum.

3. SNOW! The Gremlin wants snow so badly on Christmas Eve. I know we live in Virginia and all, but please paint everything white for us on Christmas Eve, if for no other reason than to see the joy and wonder on my little boys face.

4. Please check your naughty list for bullies. The Professor is being bullied in school and having a really hard time with his peers. He’s a good kid Santa. Just a little bit different. At least have an elf pay a visit and warn these bullying children…..and their parents.

5. A volume button for the children. It doesn’t have to work all the time, but if you could sprinkle it with Elf Dust and I could just fool around with it for one day? It would be so cool to be able to mute them just once in a while. Mostly just when they are fighting or whining.

6. This is an odd one. Camaro parts. You know, my husband has that car I call “The Mid-Life Crisis Car? Well, he loves it. But the parts are so freakin’ expensive and I’d love to see something under the tree along the line of Camaro parts. He works hard all year long to allow me to be here with the children and not killing myself at work everyday.

7. I need a picture of you in front of my fireplace. The Professor is on the verge of disbelief! I’m not ready yet Santa and I know you need his belief to power your sleigh, so Say Cheese!

8. And lastly, I wish for every one every where to have a wonderful Christmas. I wish that all those who are struggling, find joy and happiness this season and that those who are not struggling, will think about their neighbors and reach out a hand to help them. I wish that children weren’t starving and people weren’t homeless. I wish that the world would, for at least one day, join hands and lift each other up.

Merry Christmas Santa! Have a wonderful season and for goodness sake, don’t eat my cookies! They are only there because the kids insist. Trust me, they aren’t very good and could potentially harm you.

*Written for Mama’s Losin’ It Writer’s Workshop! Link Up!

Pour Your Heart Out: When motherhood isn’t enough….

2011-12-07T11:33:00.001-05:00

It’s Pour Your Heart Out Wednesday over at Things I can’t Say. I haven’t done this in a while but I have a lot going on and could use the vent session, so here goes.

You all read about The Gremlin and the car keys this weekend. So you know I didn’t have a great weekend. I guess what you don’t know is what I didn’t write in that post.

I didn’t mention that The Husband was furious. Not with the kids, but with me. He just kept saying that I left my keys down where The Gremlin could get them. And he was right, I did. Just like both of us have done since we got the car, I left the keys on the kitchen counter next to the microwave. I wonder if this had happened and he’d been the last person with the keys, would he be so quick to accept the blame he so readily placed on me? I know I wouldn’t blame him. In fact, I figure, shit happens. It sucks when it does, but it happens. The moment is as it is and no amount of blame was going to make those keys magically appear where they had been left.

But I am a woman on the edge. I am struggling with motherhood, my idea of what motherhood is, and the reality of what I am actually capable of doing, which is far less than what I have always thought a mother should be. And The Husband’s attitude sent me right over the edge and fast. I turned on him, said things that were plain nasty (one of which was that I don’t even want to be a mother anymore) and we have been stuck in silence since.

The key was going to cost us $500.00 to replace. We were going to have to take the kids Christmas presents back to the store in order to replace the key, so I know there was a shitload of stress and strain on the both of us. And I know stress does bad things to people.

Here’s where things get really sticky.

I want to apologize. Not for what I said, but for going over the edge even though I was well aware that he was stressing too and I let the stress get the best of me. But I can’t apologize for what I said. I meant it.

Sometimes, I don’t want to be a mother anymore.

I love my kids. I love my husband. But I feel pressured to be something – someone – I’m not. I am disappointed in myself for not reaching my own expectations, however far-fetched I know they are and I am losing sleep over my failure to please myself.

I hate that yelling has become the norm in my house and I hate that I feel like I am constantly forgetting something, burning dinner or mistaking The Husband’s work hours and waking him up late. Every time something happens, at least something bad, it seems to happen on my watch. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning and there are so many people around me, yet no one sees it or cares enough to reach out a hand to me.

The boys need me constantly and I both love that and hate it at the same time, because I need some me time, but there isn’t any time in my day for that. It is barely 11 am and The Gremlin is eating Chex Mix and staring at the television because mommy needs to blog or she’ll lose her freakin’ mind. Nice.

The Husband doesn’t seem to notice that I am slipping and how typically female of me is it to not want to tell him because if he doesn’t care enough to notice than why should I tell him? I know he can’t read my mind, but you’d think he’d be able to read body language, facial expressions, tone of voice or the fact that I am extremely irritable with him ALL the time. Because I resent that everything falls on my shoulders. The blame when The Professor is not behaving in socially acceptable manners, the blame when something goes missing that is both expensive and our lifeline, the blame when dinner is burning on the stove while I am trying to fold laundry, the blame, the blame the blame….it’s too much pressure.

There are good times. I love listening to the boys, watching them grow, feeling their hugs and kisses and listening to their laughter. I’m just not sure it’s enough right now. I am really struggling with motherhood because I feel like maybe I did something wrong when the boys were younger that made them who they are today? Maybe I failed to teach them manners or boundaries or basic respect. Maybe I shouldn’t give them kool-aid, but it’s cheap and fits into my budget. Maybe I should put them to bed earlier, but between commuting and homework and dinner and showers, the day is long and 9pm is the best I can do. Maybe I shouldn’t have given my kids televisions in their rooms, even though I WAS initially against the idea, because now it’s become a habit I hate. The maybes, the what-ifs, all the places I could have gone wrong, possibly did go wrong. How much of this is beyond my control? I don’t even know anymore.

All I know is that I am doing the best I can and still, it just isn’t good enough. The Professor is struggling bad in school with his peers and I can’t fix that. The Gremlin is inexhaustible but I’m not and this is not working. The Husband is The Husband and on a good day, he can be a real pain in the ass. On a bad day? Oh My God.

What happens when motherhood isn’t enough? What happens when the pressure builds and there is no release? I thought motherhood was supposed to be natural – instinctual. Why do I feel like the only mother struggling so hard with it?

OMG The Missing Car Key.

2011-12-05T12:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning, The Gremlin got up really early, while we all still slept. Probably around 5 am. Apparently he thought it would be great fun to take chocolate and strawberry syrup, whipped cream and mustard and dump them all over the carpet in his room.

But that wasn't satisfying enough. He then took my car key. And he lost it. Who knows where. I tore everything apart and no key. And it's the only key we have. And it's a keyless entry transponder thing. And it's going to cost us nearly $500.00 to replace it and the only way I'll have that kind of money is if I return the kids Christmas presents. I spent all day and half the night looking for the key.

The Gremlin swore he had it upstairs. Then he said he threw it in the garage. Then he said he dropped it down a portal in the wall. Then he said the tooth fairy took it (WTF?). Then, again and again, he said it was upstairs.

I am completely fed up with imaginary friends. Fed up.

Saturday night, I was in a complete panic. Some of you may have seen me twitter the need for a #locksmith.

Sunday morning, I was feeling like a terrible mother. I was wondering how in the fuck I am supposed to be human in this house. I can’t sleep, eat or pee without the kids because clearly, they cannot be trusted. I had to get food, and I was going to my friend’s son’s birthday party. So my friend picked me up and took me food shopping, then off to The Bounce House we went for the birthday party. Of course, I had to tell my friend that I needed a ride home earlier than expected because I absolutely HAD to find this key. I told her she could bring her son here to play, but I really couldn’t stay.

I have spectacular friends.

So she comes over, with her husband and their son and we proceed to turn this house upside down again. Each of us checked the spots the other had checked, two or three times over. No key. No fucking key. Around 10pm, my girlfriend asked on Face Book for someone to help get my car unlocked so we could see if I left the key in it. I was 100% positive I hadn’t. I knew it would not be there. But her friend responded, came out and called AAA and AAA came out and got the car open. The alarm went off and there was no key in the car. We had to disconnect the battery to make the alarm stop going off. Still no fucking key and it is now 11pm. My friend has to leave. Her son has school in the morning. I am all upset. We are all sitting at the kitchen table, trying desperately to think of one last place we have failed to check. Where can a four year old see that we cannot that would conceal the car key from an adults view? Nothing. We’ve got nothing.

As we were talking, my friends friend was playing peek-a-boo with The Gremlin. So she bends over to peek at Brandon and comes up with a puzzled look on her face. “Is this a remote control? A key?”, she’s asking. And in her hand is my car key. The Gremlin hung it on the underneath of my kitchen table. The kitchen table we had all sat at several times over the weekend.

OMG. What is wrong with this kid?? He looks right at us and says “Ha! I know I tricked you!” Seriously? I’m not thinking this is very funny. Not. At. All.

Motherhood, Giftedness, Aspergers: Mission Impossible

2011-11-27T12:21:00.001-05:00

This might be a long one, friends. Please be patient with me. I’ve got much on my mind. I am fighting a battle with myself and I could use some advice and support.

I’ve talked about giftedness on this blog many times and most of you are aware that both of my children are extremely gifted. Having gifted children can be challenging but I have to admit, they blow my mind every single day and I know just how blessed I am. But sometimes, their giftedness is confusing and sometimes it feels like more of a curse.

Such is the case with The Professor.

As many might already know, The Professor is a real scatter-brain. He has zero organizational skills, he doesn’t excel so much socially and I struggle to teach him the skills he needs outside of his education. Lately, I’ve got new worries on my heart.

Last summer, I took The Professor to a psychiatrist. I think she was a psychiatrist. She was meant to be a counselor. I was concerned because I felt like I was not succeeding in teaching him the social norms and emotional coping skills he needed and I needed guidance. I wasn’t looking for any kind of diagnosis because in fact, I didn’t think anything was necessarily wrong. I simply believed that my gifted child was really struggling emotionally and socially and I knew that I was reaching the end of my patience and ability to teach him.

He has been evaluated by at least 6 others prior to this because I thought he was struggling with ADD or ADHD but all 6 didn’t see it. They said that he was simply a very gifted little boy and this was par for the course. My pediatrician has said the same thing to me several times.

But this time, after 3 sessions, the psychiatrist called me into the room and said that my job should not be this hard. She thought The Professor had many of the signs of Aspergers.

I know lots of parents with Aspergers children. I know lots of parents with Autistic children too. Many of my favorite bloggers face these challenges every day! But for me, I was completely lost when she said this. My heart was racing, my head was spinning. I was racking my brain looking for the signs that must have been there long ago. I was struggling with the fact that she had only seen him 3 times. My pediatrician has seen this child hundreds of times and swears there is nothing wrong with this kid! And more than anything else, I was struggling with bring this issue to The Husband, whom I knew would not be okay with this.

I was SO right about The Husband. His reaction to this was significantly less than supportive. I had doubts myself, and big ones, so eventually, the issue simply went away. I pulled him from counseling and we went about our happy lives as though the word “Aspergers” had never been uttered.

I know Aspergers isn’t a bad thing. I know it isn’t something that can be medicated. I know that it just requires a new understanding of the way my son thinks and a lot more patience than I have had in the past. I know we don’t even need the diagnosis to change the way we handle situations with him. But I also know, after some research, that gifted children often struggle in the same areas as Aspergers. And I’ve read that gifted children are often misdiagnosed as Aspergers and vice versa. It’s like playing Russian Roulette with my child’s psychology! Very confusing.

So eventually, we dropped the whole issue and carried on. Occasionally, I would see The Professor do something that made me think “Aspergers!”, or he would melt down over something that seemed so insignificant and I would mentally replay that day in the counselors office and worry quietly to myself. But I never spoke those concerns out loud and once whatever incident that spurred the thoughts passed, I was over thinking about it. Until recently.

Recently, I find that I am really struggling with parenting The Professor. I am concerned because I feel like I am seeing signs of depression in him. He can’t sleep (which is nothing new on it’s own and a trait of a gifted child) but then once he falls asleep, he has begun waking in the middle of the night and complaining that he cannot go back to sleep. The boy slept maybe 6 hours in three days recently and I had to send him to bed with no television or books to read for two days in a row just to ensure that he got some rest because the poor kid looked like hell. He still has regular #2 accidents, which are both disgusting and frustrating for me, and I don’t handle the incidents very well because he is nearly 10 years old! I thought he was being lazy but discipline isn’t working and neither are reminders. There HAS to be something wrong with that. But more disturbing than any of the above, is his attitude about both himself and the world in general. He has become very negative. The boy is miserable. He has a very low opinion of himself and I can’t figure out why. No matter how many times I tell this kid that he is spectacular, awesome – amazing, he still thinks he is too small and not good enough. It seems like an issue a 9 year old should not be struggling with but it’s been said that the gifted are often at a greater risk for depression even at this young age. He has become very picky about the foods he eats, preferring to eat waffles with nothing else on them, shying away from mayonnaise or butter, complaining that certain foods make him want to hurl and drinking only specific juices. He doesn’t even like the sugar loaded cereals he has always loved in the past. And he’s becoming aggressive. This is a concern because every little thing can set him off. If he spills his milk, he might jump up screaming and try to tip the table over and for the past few weeks he has even raised his hand to me a couple times. This is not a discipline problem. It can’t be! You can only discipline so many times before you start seeing that this child just isn’t learning anything from it! Furthermore, he doesn’t like hugs anymore. When he does hug me he does so with his arms, but his ass and the rest of his body never come even close to touching me. I have to physically move his body and guide him to giving me a “real hug”. Would you be worried?

My girlfriend says I talk to much, explain to much, allow him to argue with me too much. But not talking results in a longer melt down and the result is always the same. The behavior is repeated again and again and I’m tired of disciplining while quietly worrying over whether there is something else going on. My gut is torn on this issue so I can’t rely on that. On a good day, I see a gifted child. But I gotta admit there are few of those anymore and on a bad day, I am sure there is something else going on. There is one place where my gut is not torn. I cannot simply stop talking to this child. I cannot lay down the law and believe that he is getting it. He isn’t getting it. And I don’t, in my heart, believe that he is playing me. I know some others believe that, but I know my son and he is not playing me.

I am taking him to my pediatrician. I am not going there with any specific concern. I am going there asking him to spend some time with The Professor and assure me that he is developmentally okay. I am going to tell him the behaviors that are concerning me as well, but I will not walk into his office asking if my son is Aspergers. I trust that if the signs are there and I am bringing the other issues to the attention of the pediatrician, he will see it. I really trust my pediatrician. He has never ever given me any reason not to.

I could really use my Aspergers parents out there to shed some light on this subject for me. I am hoping that because The Husband trusts our pediatrician, if this is what the pediatrician comes up with, he will at least give it a chance. If not, I can always just change my parenting style and wait for him to see it. His relationship with The Professor has been faltering lately as well because he is fed up with the behavior. Eventually, he has to see that everything we have done thus far simply isn’t working and accept that there may be another explanation for all the behavior that The Professor exhibits.

I don’t have the money to go buy books on this subject right now, but if there is something that you want to recommend, please go ahead. I’m even open to offers to mail me a book if you think it will help. I could really use some guidance and support here, so please, from one parent to another, Help Me.

I want to spank my children.

2011-11-25T23:03:00.001-05:00

There were times as a child when I wanted to do bad things. Didn’t we all? I often think about this because the most memorable part of those times, was what stopped me from doing those things, at least the majority of the time.

I remember standing in the doorway of my father’s room one afternoon as he napped. His wallet was sitting on the nightstand near to him. He was a heavy sleeper. He wouldn’t have noticed if I slipped into his room, silent as children often are when they are up to no good, and took money out of his wallet. At least, he wouldn’t have noticed while he was sleeping. And I knew that. But I also knew what would happen when he did.

(If you have a weak stomach or heart, please skip this part).

As I stood there thinking about how much bubble gum I could get with five dollars, like a ghost, crept in the sound of the belt –swish!- through the air. The SMACK! it made when it hit my skin. The lasting impression it was making on me even now, only imagining what my father would do as soon as he’d found out what I’d done. I walked away from his bedroom that day. I did not take money from his wallet.

(It is now safe to continue reading)

When I had children, spanking was a atrocity. I could not imagine ever hitting my child. “I’ll reason with my kids!”, I’d think to myself. “There is always a better way than spanking. That just teaches violence!” , I’d say confidently during discussions with other moms and dads on the issue of spanking. I didn’t realize then, that children come in many different personalities and sometimes perhaps, a spanking does what a lecture, grounding or time-out cannot.

Now before I continue, I want to say that I think the belt is a bit much. Far too violent and unpredictable and I would never ever even consider using it on my children, although I’m not opposed to threatening it. It sounds scary enough. But what happens when threats don’t work anymore?

I am the mother to two very different, and very smart little boys. They know that all I can do is take away the things they have or stand them in the corner. They know it because nowadays they are taught that anything more than that is abuse.

I’m the mom you get annoyed with in the store because she seems to have no control over her children at all. You won’t see me buy a screaming child a treat to shut them up, but you will shake your head in disbelief when a boy far to old to be acting in such ways grabs a bag of bagels out of a basket and WHACKS his brother over the head with it. And when I take the bagels away and scold him, you’ll shake your head once again when I turn to get butter and the same child does the same thing again. You’ll gawk and stare as I attempt to get some kind of control and you’ll walk away thinking “That mother needs to discipline her children!”, judging something you don’t know.

Because what you won’t see in the store, is me taking every damned fun thing away from the child that acts up. You won’t see the trillions of time-outs or head-in-hands frustration at the end of the day. You won’t understand why by the end of the trip I am raising my voice at the children or simply doing my shopping as though they are not misbehaving. You will see undisciplined children and look at me as though I MUST be doing it wrong.

But they have to eat (it’s illegal to starve them) and I have to shop. Seeing as I do in fact love my children, and love them enough to discipline them even though it seems ineffective no matter what I do, and I’m rather broke, I cannot afford to pay a babysitter nor is it easy to find a trustworthy babysitter, so, they must come shopping with me. So, where does that leave me? Being judged by people who don’t know? Disciplining again when we get home for what purpose? So the kids can laugh me off and do it again next time?

These are the times when I want to spank my children. I don’t want to beat my child within an inch of his life, or take the belt to him. I want to spank him as a form of discipline, with my hand (or even a wooden spoon if necessary). We are not talking about an angry beating or leaving welts and bruises here, though I will say I imagine it is pretty hard to spank a child and not leave the child with a red bottom. I want to give him something to remember the next time he is considering acting like a wild boar in public. I want to make sure that by the time he is old enough to be bigger than me, he still has a healthy fear of the consequences certain actions may bring. And it really pisses me off that a few bad parents, have created a situation where good parents cannot give their children a disciplinary spanking without being arrested.

I said it. I want to spank my boys because I know it would be a reasonable spanking. I know that I am a grown up and can administer a spanking without inflicting serious harm upon my child. I know that I am not considering a spanking because I want to hurt the child, but rather because I want to teach him. Thus far, nothing else has worked. Soon it will be too late. Soon they will be bigger than me and I won’t be able to inflict that healthy fear. Then the same people who judge what they don’t understand now, will judge again. And a few simple, disciplinary spankings (not abuse) could have prevented it all.

What a shame that I cannot feel free to be a parent unless I am ready to be arrested trying to do so.

The Thanksgiving Post

2011-11-24T08:20:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I can’t believe it! It seems like it snuck up on me! One minute, The Professor was going back to school, then, BAM!, it’s the holiday season!

I had a plan to write this yesterday. No one is going to be online today. I shouldn’t be online today. But my plans didn’t work out. Turns out pies take a long time to cook and with shopping, prep, school and other detours dictated by my little guys, I’m up bright and early to finish my pies and while I am having my first cup of coffee for the day, I’m coming here to write.

Like most people, I spent my youth wanting more. I didn’t give thanks much, probably because I didn’t realize how much I had to be thankful for. I always wanted more than I had. I wanted to be further in life (isn’t it funny?, Now all I want is to go back.), I wanted to have more, do more – see more. Like many, I was too busy keeping tabs on what I didn’t have, to realize how much I had.

You already know that I am sick. I have a lung condition – a serious one – and several other health issues. It’s funny how what you would think to be a curse or punishment can so easily turn into a blessing. I always say it won’t change me and I don’t want it to change the ones I love, but thinking about it, it has changed me.

It’s given me perspective. It’s helped me appreciate life. All the mountains we are still climbing, the rocky roads and detours along the way – they’ve got nothing on the mountains we’ve conquered and triumphs we’ve celebrated. The path you’re on can be changed if you want to change it. Nothing is set in stone. Life is too short to spend it regretting the experiences that make you who you are -- even if those experiences contain a smattering of mistakes along the way.

Today I am thankful for everything. I am thankful most of all for my family and all we have worked together to build. I’m thankful for everything I have had to overcome to have the family I have. I’m thankful for The Husband, who is my absolute opposite, and manages to somehow balance me. I’m thankful for every single minute I’ve had so far, watching the boys grow. I am thankful to have a warm home and the food to cook on Thanksgiving and I am thankful that I was able to help others have food this season. I am thankful for coupons, which have made it possible for me to help others this season. I’m also thankful for the friends I have, though there are only a few, a girl could not ask for better ones.

There are also a couple rounds of thanks I want to hand off to a few bloggers. I’ve been absent from blogging for a while, experiencing a tough time, and when I came back, these people welcomed me & gave me words of encouragement and support when I really needed it. They have become more than just fellow bloggers. They are friends and I appreciate them. So, Jill from Yeah. Good Times., Brandi from Dysfunctional Supermom and Holly from Holly’s House, Thank you for the encouragement, the support and the laughs! To my readers: If you haven’t already, you should take a look at these blogs. They are written by amazing moms, with amazing stories and a great mixture of sarcasm, humor and most importantly, hope, which can be awfully hard to find sometimes.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

WTF? Evil Bitch.

2011-11-21T11:15:00.001-05:00

A warning. I am not in a very good mood.

Do you want to know what really sucks?

It sucks that once a month I waste 2 whole weeks of my life in an uncontrollable downward spiral.

If you read yesterdays post then you know that it is “That Time” for me. And boy is this one a kick in the head!

I can’t even say I’m up and down, because I might have hit the bottom 17 times in two days. This sucks. I’m just bouncing around at the bottom of “the period blues”.

I’m cranky and irritable. I’m re-examining my parenting and for the past two days, I am convinced that I suck as a mother.

I’m sure it’s just this horrible period doing this, but it doesn’t matter because in the worst moments, I can’t see that.

The Husband was a bit cranky after work yesterday. I never get bent over dumb shit like that, but this time, I was almost in tears because he wasn’t tossing confetti and telling jokes after a long day at work (WTF?)!

Of course, he might have been in a better mood if I hadn’t sat scowling at him when he asked me if I could get him a drink. Or if I hadn’t rolled over in bed with my back to him without so much as a goodnight. Or if perhaps, I’d not completely lost my mind because he left an empty cookie container on the counter. And maybe, when he said “Hi! How was your day?”, I could have answered him instead of rolling my eyes as I walked away.

My chicken was dry, despite the fact that I cooked with my new best friends: Reynold’s Oven Bags. I am convinced I will always suck at cooking even though I know I left the chicken in for way longer than I was supposed to because I forgot I was cooking. And why did I cook chicken again when we have already had it so many times in the past week???

Is it even a little comforting to know that I’m not only cranky with everyone else, but I’m even cranky with me?

This morning I was late getting up, then lost my temper on The Professor for not jumping out of bed fully dressed with a smile on his face.

Clearly, I’m an evil bitch right now.

It’s Monday and I hate Mondays. This is especially interesting, since I no longer understand why any parent would hate Mondays. I used to hate Mondays. Then I had kids. Then one of those kids started going to school. Now, with the exception of right now, I am usually a Monday Maniac! The kids go back to school on Monday and they will be there for 5 whole glorious days! But today I hate Mondays and yesterday, I hated Sundays.

The poor Professor had to listen to me on the drive to school when I started ranting and raving about how every fuckin’ gas station has a different price for gas and fuck it, if we run out of gas on the way there, we will just sit in the damned car all day. After all, anything has to be better than going home to clean so the ungrateful people in my house can mess up all my hard work. Poor Professor.

I hate whiners, so I’m annoying the piss out of myself. I hate cooking but ironically love Thanksgiving. And I’m ticked off because the only way to have the Thanksgiving dinner I want is to cook it, which requires some skill and plenty of patience, neither of which I have an abundance of at the moment. I did mention I was in a bad mood, right?

Ugh. Being miserable is exhausting. Please. Pleeeeeaaase. Let this be over soon.

This Is Who I Am – Issue 4 - “That Time”

2011-11-20T13:06:00.001-05:00

BEWARE:

It’s “That Time”. If you can read this, you may or may not be standing too close. Proceed with extreme caution. Know where your emergency exits are located and be prepared to use them.

*I desperately want a shirt that says the above. Ever since the birth of The Gremlin, an early warning system is imperative in my home. It’s “That Time” of the month for me. “That Time” for me usually lasts about 2 weeks. Family & Friends, heed the following and no one will get hurt:*

Week One:

I’m tired and a little bit irritable. I might snap at you a little, but I’m still mostly in control, and if you don’t challenge me, I’ll probably apologize and at least attempt to be approachable. If you have any kind of bad news for me, don’t wait to deliver it. You have approximately one week before the only safe course of action is to keep your distance.

At this point, I am still in control. I may be cranky, but it’s best if you let me decide that. Do Not Point It Out To Me. I know very well that I am being unreasonable and hard to live with. Deal with it.

Week Two:

Run away. Don’t try to be a hero. I am crampy and tired and I am no longer in control. Although I know I am being a wicked bitch, I cannot stop and somebody will get hurt. Do not whine about dinner, housework, or the mood swings in this house. Take care to announce your presence in a soft voice and do not touch me without permission.

Do Not Ask Me What Is Wrong. Everything is wrong. You will not be right for 7 to 10 days. Debating with me is a bad idea. Arguing is a worse idea and getting cranky back with me could certainly be lethal for you. Stay the hell out of my way, be prepared to exit quickly and quietly and for fucks sake, if I am sleeping, do not wake me unless I am on fire.

I probably forgot to iron your work shirts, dinner will probably be burned and deemed inedible and you are lucky the laundry even made it to the dryer. If you want it folded, do it yourself. No I am not planning on answering the phone. Or the door. I’m probably going to cry. If I do, it’s best to pretend it isn’t happening. When I get mad because you ignored it, just keep quiet, don’t make eye contact and don’t try to fix it. You can’t fix this.

Not prepared for Motherhood.

2011-11-19T12:58:00.001-05:00

How do you teach your children something you don’t know yourself? I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately.

I never had a strong sense of family, and my relationship with my own siblings has been mediocre at best and sporadic. I’ve always wanted more for more own children. I’ve always wanted the boys to respect their brotherhood. I’ve always wanted them to be tight.

How do I make that happen?

There was one boy in my family. I had one brother living in my home with me. He was younger than me. In fact, I was the oldest in my house. I felt a sense of responsibility for my siblings – being the oldest and all. But we were never tight – never close. Eventually, we all grew up, lost touch with each other, fought our own battles and faced our tough times on our own. Only recently, did we come together and start sharing our struggles with each other and supporting each other.

The boys fight constantly. If one falls and gets hurt, the other usually laughs. If one gets in trouble, the other is usually the one who tattled. If one is struggling with something, the other is usually not helping. It bugs me.

The Husband says he fought with his brother this way when he was coming up. He has some real nightmare-ish stories to tell of the things they’ve done to each other. It doesn’t surprise me much. Sibling rivalry is normal, right? I mean, especially amongst boys. Right?

I just want to know that beneath all the bickering, fighting, tattling and teasing, is the bond brothers should have. I want to know that when I’m not here, or not in the immediate vicinity, they have each others backs. I want to know that when the chips are down, they are thinking about each other as family, and standing behind each other when it really counts.

They are young right now. I don’t expect to wake up every morning and see them harmoniously helping each other and treating each other respectfully. But how do I know that I am instilling that in them? How do I take all the sibling rivalry and turn it into a message they will keep with them forever? That brother’s are brother’s for life and that’s a gift they should never forsake?

*Sigh. As a mother I worry that I lack the skills needed for this job. Skills that were never demonstrated to me, and so I have a hard time identifying them when I am trying to teach them to my children. Sometimes I feel like maybe I struggle more than most with motherhood, because I simply was never taught these things. I learned them eventually, I think. But I never learned how to be a mother. I never learned how to deal with the bickering and fighting, or how to teach the valuable lessons that the boys will eventually take with them into the world and into their own families. I never learned how to nurture, when to be tough, how to creatively teach my children the life skills and lessons they will need someday. I am a fish out of water in the motherhood adventure and it scares the hell out of me. I want them to be more prepared for the world than I was. I want them to have the relationship with each other, that I always longed to have with my own siblings.

Despite the fact that I recognize that they are young and that the fighting is normal, it still bothers me to hear it. It still bothers me to see The Professor laugh at The Gremlin instead of helping him up or vice versa. It still eats at me – wondering if I am successfully giving them the lessons I wasn’t given at their age. And on the rare occasion that I am allowed to hear them laughing together or playing, or that I see the concern on one of their little faces when the other is in trouble or in pain, I find that it isn’t enough for me to see it once in a while. I want that for them more often. I want a strong sense of family.

I hope someday, that the boys will have what I didn’t. More than anything else, I hope they will be able to look back at their childhood and find lessons they learned from me that I wasn’t sure had stuck. I don’t want them to struggle the way I do with parenting, although that is probably inevitable because parenting is hard. I still want them to have a solid idea of how to raise their children and an almost natural thought process as far as what they want for their children.

Still I struggle because I was never taught how to be a mother. I just hope we offer them better examples and send them out into the world more prepared than we were when we became parents.

Coupon Junkie’s & Oven Bags

2011-11-18T14:47:00.001-05:00

Back in August, I started couponing. Our budget wasn’t increasing and the cost of food was, and we simply didn’t have enough food. We were finding ourselves cleaned out two days before shopping day every week and there is nothing worse than empty cabinets in a house full of boys with big appetites.

I don’t even know exactly how it all started. Suddenly, I was interested in the coupons in the Sunday paper, then I was on a coupon forum exchanging coupons with people around the country. Now I have a binder. Seriously. A binder stuffed full of coupons and on average I am saving at least 50% on my grocery bill. More accurately, I guess I am getting at least 50% more groceries with the same amount of shopping money. Most importantly though, I feel good enough about the experience to come out of the closet and announce my crazy coupon junkie* status.

It all came at an ideal time. The Husband became very ill and ended up needing emergency gall bladder surgery. They had to remove it. After removing it, he was on a special diet and I cannot tell you the sticker shock I suffered when I went to buy special mayonnaise and paid $5.99 for it. OUCH. I had been looking into couponing for a few weeks, and The Husband’s special diet pushed me right into the arms of the Sunday paper.

At this point, we might need to build an addition on the house just to make room for all the food I buy without violating my budget. I love that I can whip up dinner without even thinking about it and I am not running to the store every other day for something I need for a meal. I’m not running out of things and I’m not sacrificing brand preference because of the cost. I shop the sales, and use the coupons and we are doing so much better with our groceries now. I’m so excited, I just had to share it!

The other benefit of using coupons is being able to buy the things I normally wouldn’t. Reynold’s Oven Bags would be one of those things. My local grocery store had them on sale for $1.99 and I had a $1.00 off coupon. Now on Wednesdays, this store doubles coupons up to and including $1.00 which made the coupon a $2.00 coupon, which made the oven bags free. That’s affordable enough for me!

I don’t know anything about cooking in a bag. I actually asked my sister if I had to blow the bag up before I tied it. Don’t judge me.

In the past, you may have read, that I am a horrible cook. The Husband says I must have something against food. My kids, they didn’t know that food was supposed to taste good. I burn precooked food with specific instructions.

The night I bought the oven bags, I came home and decided to give them a go. I pulled out the boneless, skinless chicken I can now afford to buy and stuck in the bag and cooked it according to the instructions, with some lemon juice, fresh garlic and Italian seasoning. Oh my goodness people! My meal rocked. I made an edible meal for the first time since motherhood forced me to cook 9 years ago! So what if I did it in a bag! I’m going cook everything in a bag from now on! It’s so exciting. It excited me so much, that I went back and bought more boxes of the oven bags, just because I don’t ever want to be without them again! You know your meal was a success when your 9 year old looks shocked and exclaims “Mom! I didn’t know you could cook!” Yikes. Even I didn’t know it was that bad. Damn.

*The Professor deemed me “The Crazy Coupon Junkie” and the title stuck.

Drive fast!

2011-11-17T13:14:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I feel bad for The Professor. He has to talk to such an impatient mommy. I try to be patient. I know he needs to work out what he wants to say. Then he needs to process and deliver it. I try real hard to wait patiently and sometimes I try to help him work out what he is trying to say.

Sometimes it’s easy. He’s looking for a particular word or phrase and I can help him figure that out! Those moments are beautiful – harmonious & rewarding. I am the mom I am supposed to be and he is satisfied with whatever statement I helped him deliver.

But then there are the times when things aren’t quite so easily worked out. And the times when the question he is asking or statement he is trying to make simply doesn’t make sense to me. It goes something like this:

We are driving home from school when this conversation takes place. Maybe road rage is the result of irritated parents forced to drive in cars with children who need to fill silence with distracting questions that have no real answers.

The Professor: “Um, Mom?”

Me: “Yes?”

The Professor: “Um………………..Oh, mom?”

Me: “What?!”

The Professor: “Um, why do we live on this street, instead of that one?”

Me: “Because our house is on this street, not that one?” I feel the irritation starting to rise as I brace myself for another useless conversation.

The Professor: “But why isn’t our house on that street?”

Me: “Because it was built on this street I guess.”

The Professor: “But why don’t we live on that street?”

Here it comes. My hands tighten on the steering wheel. I sigh. If I was standing up, I’d be shuffling my feet like a small child that has to pee.

I respond, “I told you. Because our house was built here. On this street. This is where our house was built, so this is the street our house is on. Okay?”

The Professor: “But why didn’t you choose to live in that house on that street?”

Me: “Because someone else lived in that house. Do these questions have a point? What are you trying to say?” At this point, I am barely hanging on to the thin string of patience and I’m praying that he will just drop it.

The Professor: “But why did you pick this street? Why not that street?”

Me: “Oh my god! I didn’t pick the street. I picked the house and the street came with it!!”

The Professor: “What if our house was on that street?”

Me: (I want to ram the cars in front of me and run the red light to get home really fast and end this conversation) “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I guess it would change everything. Okay? Does that answer all your questions?”

The Professor: “Can’t we move our house to this street? Or maybe we could pay those people to move out and then we could move in! You could give them like, a hundred dollars that would be good and then we could live on this street in that house and they could live in our old house. But we could leave some of our stuff in our house and come stay with them sometimes. Then we could live on both streets.”

Me: “I guess you really like that house huh?”

The Professor: “No. Not really. Um, mom?”

Me: “No! No more. Stop.”

The Professor: “But mom, Why didn’t you choose a house on a different…..”

Me: “Oh yeah! We’re home. Sorry babe, we are going to have to have this conversation another time…..ah ah, no way, come on now, out of the car!”

Poof What do you need?

2011-11-14T21:45:00.001-05:00

Have you ever found a rubber band wrapped around some old mail or a really old newspaper? You can tell just by looking at it that it won't withstand much. You can see the lines in it, threatening to break if you dare to remove it from it's parcel. It feels dry as old wood and has little white cracks through-out it. Chances are, if you attempt it's removal, it will simply break. No snapping for this rubber band -- it's simply worn.

Sometimes I feel much like that old, worn down rubber band. Today is one of those days.

It was barely 9am when my toilet started misbehaving. It clogged, and not even due to one of the children. It simply clogged and at this very moment remains clogged. And the more we plunged it, the worse it got until it finally served us with gallons and gallons of shit water, all over my floor. JOY. If you haven't on previous occasions read about my toilet water neurosis, you can do so here.

I haven't mentioned this, but my kitchen sink has been screwed up for a few weeks. It clogged up and upon inspection, we found that the pipes in the wall are leaking, so all my dishes have been being done in buckets of water which need to be carried and emptied in the bathtub (which seems REALLY far away when you're carrying buckets). It sucks.

So I spent the day today, not only emptying buckets from my kitchen sink, but doing it with a full bladder because I refuse to pee in a bucket dammit. I'd rather use a public bathroom, lots of Lysol and toilet seat covers (it's the freak in me). This sucks and the money for a plumber isn't growing on the money trees my kids believe we have in the back yard.

But the true problem is not the plumbing. I am sure I could deal with that, at least for a short period of time, without losing my ever-loving mind. The true problem is the 4 year old child I lovingly and honestly refer to as The Gremlin.

This child is impossible. It is hard to believe that behind the beautiful face making lovely and welcome affirmations that mommy is a glitter princess genius rock star, lies a child who just loves to watch me unravel. What could possibly be so bad about this adorable little guy?

1. He poops.

He poops in the potty a lot. Except when he doesn't. For some unknown reason, he poops in corners. He waits until everyone is occupied doing something, and then he takes a dump. On the carpet in his room, behind the couch...and once, even on the table. How gross!

2. He thinks we are all hilarious.

He doesn't care what you are threatening to take away. He doesn't mind a spanking. In fact he relishes in the thought of laughing while you do it. He isn't intimidated by missing out on snack or some special treat because he'll just help himself when you're sleeping or otherwise preoccupied.

3. He loves anything dangerous.

Especially if it might make you cry out in fear or jump up and rush toward him so he can cunningly avert your grasp. He is especially fond of busy streets and moving vehicles.

4. He wreaks havoc and destruction quietly.

It's never expected. You don't hear it. You won't see it coming. I promise you would never guess that this child could do these things. But while you are doing the dishes and you think he is watching television happily, he is really drawing on the wall with green permanent marker, or feeding his toys to the dog or emptying every bottle of soap he can find into the bathtub. Ever see JAWS? The music they play in the background whenever the shark approaches plays constantly in my head. This child can break a window silently.

5. He's extremely strong willed.

If you think you can tell him no and eventually he will stop having a tantrum and either give up or forget, you are very very wrong. This child goes for hours on end. Everything is a fight, a battle, a tantrum or just blatant defiance as he does exactly what you told him he could not do. And discipline does not work. He WILL do it again. And again. And again.

I really don't know what to do with him. I lose my temper and start yelling. Then I start crying. Then I start yelling again. Then I fall into defeat and just clean up, throw out or attempt to repair whatever he has done. All the while he sits and grins or repeats my threats and cries of exasperation back to me with a knowing smirk on his face. And he is only 4.

There is poop on his carpet again, chocolate that I didn't give him smeared on my couch, green marker on the wall, a hot dog stuck in the VCR and something sticky all over the bookshelf and this is just one day. Tomorrow it will be more of the same. *Sigh*

Stop peeing on the dog!

2011-11-13T15:00:00.001-05:00

“No peeing on the dog!, Don’t put toys in your underwear!, Why are you wiping blood on your wall?, Where did you get shrimp rolls and how did you get them in there?, Do not stick things in your brother’s ears!, Why are there mashed potatoes on the ceiling?, What is that brown stuff on the sink? You must apologize for peeing on Joshua’s sweatshirt! Why are there hotdogs in your toy box?”

The phrases that are uttered in my house deserve some sort of award.

Once upon a time, I believed that raising boys was easier than raising girls. Maybe I was wrong. Is it just boys? Are they really as moody and fresh as my Professor, or as crazy and fearless as my Gremlin? Are they secretly trying to kill me, or is this normal boy stuff? I’m beginning to think I might not survive my children’s childhood.

Most parents say that kind of thing in jest. I assure you, I am not kidding.

The Professor broke a growth plate in his wrist recently. He is so much nicer to be around with a cast itching at his arm and restricting his activities (sarcasm). And guess how he broke it! Climbing a tree? No. Riding his bike. Nope. Playing football? Not even close. He broke it jumping on the trampoline we bought the boys for Easter. I’ve seen this kid throw himself down stairs and not break, bruise or otherwise damage anything. I’ve seen him bang his head against the floor, or ride the lid to his toy box down the stairs, and come out of it with a grin and a story to tell his friends. But he broke his freakin’ arm on the trampoline.

Meanwhile, The Gremlin is more obsessed with the family jewels now than he ever was before, and while I can say that potty training is pretty much done, and done with much success, I’ve yet to find a way to make the boy stop trying to show “it” to people, pee on something or someone, or grab himself while make a woohoo sound because he saw someone do it in a music video.

He tried boxers on for size for the first time a couple months ago. Most kids boxers don’t have an opening “there”. It’s usually closed. Sewed shut. But of course, these had that hole, which my son fondly referred to as a pocket. He wanted to wear them, and only them, to drop his brother off for school one morning and I agreed figuring, we aren’t getting out of the car and no one can see him. Huh. I should have thought this through more carefully. Upon arriving at the school, The Professor decided he was too impatient for me to completely stop, or even slow down, before opening the car door. This forced me to spew a colorful rant about falling out of the car or ripping the door off, which brought one of the school drop off monitors to the door of my car to deliver a lecture of her own to the poor Professor. The Gremlin, always up for a friendly conversation, managed to get the monitors attention. Want to hear how? This is awesome. He told the monitor his pants had a “pocket”, then ripped open the “pocket”. He basically flashed the poor woman. Shame obviously isn’t a hurdle for this kid.

They are trying to kill me. Is it just boys? I’ve spent endless hours teaching these kids what is appropriate and what is not. I have rewarded good behavior. I have tried both disciplining and ignoring bad behavior. I have all but padded my walls to keep them safe. Nearly everything has a lock in my house, and the day a find a device that keeps them from flushing the toilet if there is too much toilet paper in it, I WILL use it. I don’t even care how much it might cost. The trampoline is surrounded by a humongous safety net that requires special attention every time the wind blows too hard here!

Yet, despite my diligence, my boys still consider total annihilation of what little humility I have left, to be a good time. They still find a way to harm themselves or each other and they still manage to get into things I thought I had locked them out of!

How am I going to survive motherhood?

Being honest with myself & with you.

2011-11-12T13:40:00.001-05:00

So I’ve been gone for a long long time and most of my faithful readers have probably given up on me. I still come around, lingering in the corners of the blogging world and reading the blogs I’ve come to love, but I rarely comment and I took a very long break from posting.

Yesterday I was reading a post from Allison over at Motherhood WTF? and it inspired me to write again. I didn’t feel so alone. I didn’t feel so……horrible about my parenting.

My readers have been here through the good and the bad. You’ve all heard me tell tales of Shit water & Spray paint and stories of school triumphs and Science Fair victories. I always wanted this blog to be a place for me. A place for me to vent, laugh, cry, commiserate and come together with other parents. I love this blog.

So where have I been? Hmmm, where do I start?

Summer vacation sucked. I spent the entire vacation feeling outnumbered and overwhelmed. I never wanted to be the kind of parent that didn’t enjoy her kids, but this summer, I did not enjoy my kids. At all. I tried. I really tried. I took them hiking, swimming, had friends over, took them to parks and special events and the beach. I sat down determined to make it through board games I can’t stand and watch cartoons I am sick of. But at the end of the day, I still didn’t have the warm feeling that I enjoyed the time I spent with my kids.

The truth is, the entire summer was spent breaking up fights, ending shopping trips early due to bad behavior and falling onto my bed at the end of the day, nearly in tears with that bad mommy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I had almost given up on ever blogging again when school started and I missed my blogs anniversary because I was still feeling alone and didn’t want to come here and whine in yet another post about how overwhelmed I was feeling.

The Gremlin turned 4 in October. I thought to myself “Thank the heavens, the boy is out of the horrific three’s!” Not quite.

As time as proven, he is now entering in to the fucked up fours. The boy is a bundle of inexhaustible energy. Everything has to be locked up around this kid. The unbreakable is no longer unbreakable when the Gremlin gets a hold of it. It’s so frustrating! I never yelled at The Professor the way I yell at the Gremlin. It bothers the hell out of me. I turn into “Monster Mommy”, screaming and cursing and asking him why he can’t just act right for once. “Why did you dump the soap all over your bed? Why did you throw hotdogs around your room? Why can’t you just go to bed at a normal time for once? What am I doing wrong with you? That’s it! Do you want me to start using the belt? I’ve had it! I’m moving out and ya’ll can terrify your father!” Sounds pretty bad, huh?

I would never actually hit my kids with a belt. It drives me nuts that I make threats like that! But it gets the Gremlin’s attention! He stops, and considers for a moment what that might feel like. Then he waits for me to walk away and continues whatever bad act he was doing to begin with.

The Gremlin alone is a Category 5 hurricane with a chance of tornadoes. The weather in my house? Cloudy with a high probability of melt downs (both adult and children melt downs).

The good news is I still have this. This blog. The readers I unintentionally abandoned. I am going to start writing again even if it’s only once a week.

You haven’t fed me yet!

2011-08-01T06:46:00.000-04:00

The Gremlin has been obsessed with a particular topic lately. He talks about it, asks about it, points it out to me in public and has already called favorites.

Boobies! He is obsessed with boobies. He points his out, tells me Miss Marsha’s (a close friend of mine) are his favorite, and keeps reminding me that only girls have boobies.

One day recently, while getting ready to go in the pool, he looked at me innocently and asked….
“Mommy, why do you have boobies?”

Well me, I’m pretty level headed and I always try to tell my kids the truth about everything if I can, but for a minute I was stumped. Why do we have boobies? Is it simply for aesthetic purposes? Hmmm, aside from feeding babies, what else are these things good for? Mental Note: Google other physical reasons for the presence of “boobies”, most commonly and respectfully referred to as breasts.

Sorry, got sidetracked. So I made the mistake. The mistake of being honest with a big mouthed 3 year old. I told him we had boobies so we could feed our babies.

He immediately pointed out to me that I hadn’t fed him yet, to which I responded that I had fed him eggs because mommies boobies weren’t feeding babies anymore. And that is where the discussion pretty much ended.

Until we were in Target recently.

I guess I should have been more clear about why I wasn’t using them for what I told him they were for. Or perhaps I should have lied to him and told him that boobies helped keep me balanced when I walked or something. But alas I didn’t.

Now people in Target either believe my child to be a pervert, or think that I may be failing to feed the child. True story: He was pointing at women in Target (or more precisely at their breasts) and asking “Is she going to feed me Mommy?” I’m so glad I’ll probably never see most of those people again.

So what’s the lesson here? Be very, very specific and clear when you explain certain sensitive subjects to your children. Oh, and perhaps find another reason for the presence of boobies?

*Don’t forget to scoot on over to The Scoop On Poop today and tomorrow! I am featured today and guest posting there tomorrow! It’s my first guest post ever and I am totally excited so please stop by and check it out!*

Long Absence.

2011-06-22T17:27:00.001-04:00

I’ve been hijacked by technology. Funniest thing, technology is. For a few weeks now my husband has been telling me that I can get a Blackberry when I upgrade my phone and I just kept saying “For what? I don’t need a fancy phone like that and it’s so heavy! Who wants to walk around with a brick as a phone?” Meanwhile I’ve been pining after an IPod Classic since the first one I bought ended up not working.

Now I am addicted. A good friend gave me her IPod touch and I can’t get enough! I had no idea this thing did internet and everything! I am completely, pathetically hooked. I just figured out that I can read all of your blogs on it! How exciting! Except that I really don’t know much about this stuff so if anyone can recommend an App that lets me read and comment with ease, let me know!

With that said, I need to apologize for my long, unannounced absence. I am so sorry. Things have been crazy for me lately and I’ve been taking care of personal issues. Believe it or not, the IPod makes it easier and now I am so addicted, I actually think I might want an I Phone. That probably isn’t going to happen but hey, a girl can dream, right? So while I am pumping Apple up on my blog, let me just say that I am SO not opposed to reviewing the I Phone for ya’s (because I totally believe Apple reads my blog about nothing electronic).

Anyway, I’m back. I missed all of you and started reading blogs again today on this absolutely amazing little IPod. Just gotta find an App that lets me comment easier.

So this week, I totally intend to come on and post my first post in too long. Keep an eye out for it. I am so glad to be back!

Dear Friend : Gone But Not Forgotten

2011-05-29T11:11:00.001-04:00

Dear Friend,

Wednesday marks a year since you’ve been gone. I can’t believe it’s been that long but we all still miss you so. I was looking through the too few photographs we have of you last night, remembering better times.

Your daughter called me last night. I always look forward to those phone calls. She misses you. All three of them do. It’s been so hard to watch them struggle with your loss and I find myself telling them that you would have been so proud of them, then flinching at the past tense usage in that statement. I tell them that things will get better and that this pain will ease, then I hang up the phone and cry.

God, I wish you were here because they need you so damned much. As they change from little girls to young women, so strong and so beautiful, I just can’t believe you aren’t here to lend them the guidance they need. I try, but I’m not you. I hate watching them face such enormous struggles and grow so much more quickly than any of us ever wanted. I give them whatever wisdom I can, then I tell them to find a quiet place and talk to you – that you will be able to give them the guidance they need, even if they can’t see you.

We miss you. I often find myself looking to the sky, wondering if you are looking back. Wondering if I am telling the girls the right things – if what little I can offer is enough or if I am falling short and failing them. You and I often worked together with things like this – saying the right thing to teenage girls – and now, I find myself alone and so scared that I am just not enough for them, because the truth is, they need you.

I just know you’re there, watching. Perhaps you offer your guidance in whatever way those who have left us do. But today, and every day since you’ve been gone, I send my love to you. We send our love to you. You are so missed. The girls have so much of you in them and thank God for that as it helps give them the strength to get through the pain of losing you. Sending hugs to you.

Love Always,

The Family.

Summer with a Side of Birth Control

2011-05-27T13:57:00.001-04:00

You’ve already heard of my adventures with shit water and spray paint and many already know that I was in the Emergency Room Tuesday Night with a severe kidney infection. Needless to say I was in massive amounts of pain and lost at least 2 days of sleep to the fever shakes. I am feeling much better now, but I’m completely exhausted halfway through the day. But when you have ~~little walking forces of nature~~ little boys, you can’t stay down for very long, and rest really isn’t an option.

Wednesday, for us, was spent reminding the boys that mommy needs to rest and wasn’t going to put up with any crap. Yesterday I tried to do the same thing again but failed miserably. Finally, I sent the boys outside to play, hoping that if I couldn’t sit down for 5 minutes, maybe I could catch up on some housework. *SNORT* Imagine that.

Ten minutes after sending them outside, The Professor comes inside telling me that it’s an emergency. I run outside to find that the pump to my pool is exploding – water gushing everywhere – so I unplug the stupid thing, the water stops and I leave it at that. Two minutes later, The Professor is back again, telling me that The Gremlin is playing in a puddle. I assure him it’s fine. Twenty minutes later, he comes in telling me that The Gremlin got his hair stuck in the trampoline zipper. He then tells me that he cut his hair to get his hair out of the zipper. Because naturally, the common sense solution to the problem is NOT to come tell mommy, like he did when The Gremlin was playing in water…..no, of course not. The common sense solution is to cut the kids hair.

Time passes and things are relatively quiet. The kids seem to be playing nicely in the backyard, so I sit down to read a bit when The Professor comes back. He’s all giggles as he tells me that The Gremlin – not him – threw all the shoes and dog toys in the pool. The pool is fenced in. But The Gremlin has a good arm and manages to get anything and everything tossed over the fence. Assessing the situation, I find 11 items thrown in the pool. The Professors sneakers, The Gremlin’s sandals, The dog’s food and water bowls, the dog’s chew toy, 2 empty water bottles, a bucket and a bug collector kit. This discovery prompted me to ask The Professor just how long he waited before telling me that things were being thrown in the pool. Combined of course with the smirk on his face that clued me in that he was just as involved in this activity. At which point, he confesses that he was throwing things in the pool too. So I brought them inside, washed them up and put them to bed with no snack and no television.

This morning, I woke up at 9:15am. That is 15 minutes after The Professor is supposed to be at school. But The Professor and The Gremlin have been up for a while apparently and I somehow lost a day. So when The Professor casually mentions how he is getting a day off school, I simply look at him with bleary eyes and remind him that it is Saturday. Listen. I am tired, okay? Somewhere this week I must have lost a day. Probably the one I spent shivering while sweating and barely able to stand up straight. Anyway, The Professor made it to school by 9:45. The school is used to it by now I think. Hell, he’s only on time if the school pretends school starts at 9:30. I try, but I’ve spent much of this school year trying to figure out how to stop The Gremlin from turning my alarms (all 4 of them) off before they go off.

Those of you who have been here since the beginning of this blog already know it has been a hellish school year for me. For those of you who haven’t, you can go check out my October, November and December posts for more on that.

The adventures I’ve been suffering with my boys rival only with the greatest natural disasters in the world’s history. I can only imagine the adventures I’ve yet to be unwillingly dragged into when both of them are home all day long. But I’ve been thinking about Scary Mommy and her request for the best thing about Summer.

ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION. That is the best thing about summer. If I don’t have to drive the boy to school, then at least I can drink because I don’t have to drive if the occasion (or disaster) calls for it. I have a feeling there will be plenty of those opportunities if recent events are any indication of what the summer holds for me.

On a side note to all of you with teenagers out there…..if you need to have “the talk” with your teenagers and you’re feeling awkward about it, just send them here. I guarantee, my blog is excellent birth control.

Shitty. Literally.

2011-05-23T13:38:00.001-04:00

I know it's been a while. I know. No excuses. Forgive my absence. Eventually, things will settle and I'll write more often again.

Yesterday was a long, long day. The Professor spent the day with diarrhea. The kind that falls out of your butt in streams every time you stand up. So that was fun.

So last night, around 6 or 7 pm, I am outside in the garage, putting laundry in the dryer, when The Professor comes to the back door crying. I hear him yelling that he needs my help. "The toilet is overflowing really bad Mom, and I really need to go!" he cried. At the garage door, I am given a second to assess the situation. There, at the back door, stands my little boy, with brown shit streaming down his legs and tears streaming down his face. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I rush out of the garage, leaving the garage door open and unlocked. The dryer door is open as well, but The Professor is having a crisis and I just don't have time. The Gremlin follows me inside.

Oh my God. The bathroom is flooded with shit water. There is no possible way for me to avoid stepping in it. The Professor follows me because I didn't tell him to stay put, so naturally, there is a trail of shit following him everywhere he goes. This is so fucking disgusting. There is half a roll of toilet paper floating at the top of the toilet because my son thinks his ass is the size of Virginia. Despite the fact that every time he clogs the toilet, I remind him that if he must use so much toilet paper, he needs to flush before putting more in the toilet, he "forgot".

So I'm plunging. And plunging. And plunging.

Nothing. The toilet is completely clogged. My feet are wet. There is shit water everywhere. I'm completely disgusted. And then, the water slowly recedes. The toilet is still clogged, but at least the water isn't running all over the bathroom.

And The Professor says "Mom, where's my brother?" Fuck! A search ensues. He is not in the house. I go out back. I'm yelling his name. I hear him yelling back. He has somehow gotten himself barricaded in the garage. It only takes me a few seconds to get the door open. The first thing I see?

The Gremlin has something red in his hair. Something red on his eyebrows. Oh my God. I walk into the garage. There is red everywhere and some pretty potent fumes. Red spray paint. Shit. Shit. Shit. The Gremlin was in the garage spray painting while I was wading in shit water. There was red spray paint on the pool table, on the foosball table, on the air hockey table and the dryer. There was red spray paint on the treadmill, the floor and the weed whacker. There's red spray paint on his Power Wheels. Red spray paint on the pool balls. Red spray paint. Everywhere.

For a moment, things fade. I stand there. I'm stunned. I'm pissed. I'm hearing Daddy Day Care trouble music in my head. There's a puddle of gasoline on the floor. He dumped gasoline on the floor. All of the gasoline. This child is a force of nature. Destruction and wreckage is everywhere. I close the door, take The Gremlin back inside. The toilet needs to be fixed. But first, how do I get spray paint out of a child's hair and how lucky is this child to have managed to have gotten his entire eyebrow, with no contact to his eye?

I grab the acetone I use for my nails and soak the nail sponge, gingerly soaking his red hair in the sponge and carefully...ever so carefully...running it over his eyebrows. The spray paint miraculously comes off. The Professor is standing wide eyed, just waiting for Mommy to lose it, pants around his ankles, shit EVERYWHERE. I tell him to clean himself up. I head out to the garage with the acetone. My husband is going to be furious. I scrub. And scrub. And scrub. But the acetone is evaporating quickly and I am soon out with only a fraction of the spray paint removed.

I go inside. Here come the tears. The Gremlin is oblivious. I haven't starting yelling yet, but it's coming. I feel it. And then, as I hear myself turning into a crazy person, I start yelling. While I yell, I flush the toilet and watch the water rise. I plunge furiously, stopping at intervals to scream. "FUCKERS!!!"

My fingers are sticky with spray paint. My white socks, brown with shit water. My germs meter is in the red. Feces. I won't even keep my toothbrush in the bathroom because I once heard that feces are all over bathrooms despite your level of cleanliness. And it's on my feet and the cuffs of my pants. And every time I plunge, water jumps and sloshes.

This was my night. My family, is a force of nature. Luckily for me, I found this stuff. It's called Motsenbocker's Lift Off #4 Graffiti Remover. Lowes and Home Depot sell it. It's about ten bucks and this stuff really works. This morning, I was able to get all the spray paint off of everything. It says it removes other things too, and off porous and non-porous materials without ruining the finish on your furniture.

Thank you Mr. Motsenbocker. You saved my pool table. Thankfully, the little demon was only able to spray paint that which was at eye level, which means he didn't get spray paint on the felt of the pool table. Thankfully, the boy wasn't hurt. Well, not by the spray paint anyway. He did get a spanking though.

People, this three year old thing......actually the whole motherhood thing? Yeah. Yesterday, it was way over-rated.

Explosion.

2011-05-09T08:20:00.000-04:00

So, last week (Sunday to be exact) life exploded in our face. Apparently the stress hit my husband and myself at nearly the exact same time, then proceeded to wreak havoc on us. By Monday morning we weren't speaking, by Tuesday we were ready to walk away from our 11 years together, by Friday I hadn't slept in 5 days, I was crying all the time and I was sure my soul had been ripped out, wrestled to the ground and stabbed just enough so I would be alive long enough to die slowly and painfully. It sucked.

We both acted foolishly. We both let things simmer until they boiled until they exploded. Hateful, hurtful things were said and things got very out of control very fast.

One of the major issues? The kids. I am overwhelmed and he didn't understand why. He sees children that behave on the Tuesdays that he is home. I see children that want to please Daddy because they don't see him often enough. He sees broken furniture, disarray, out of control laundry and dishes in the sink. I see a shortage of hours in the day and a mommy that is just trying to survive this stage of the children's lives. Unfortunately, we both have a lot more patience for the kids than we do each other.

So the whole week sucked so bad. By Saturday, I was certain Mother's Day was going to be worthy only of a blanket over my head in a dark room with a box of tissues. But we worked it out.

Still I feel bad. I know that it really bothers him to have any kind of mess. It bugs him to see dishes in the sink. It bothers him when he asks how my day was and I can only respond with the same "Long." I always comment with. But more than anything else, it bothers him that even if I catch up in one area, I fall behind in another.

Am I the only stay at home mother who has difficulty? I keep hearing that it gets better when the kids are a little bit older. And I keep telling my husband that this is transitional. That it will get easier. I don't know if I believe that, but that's what everyone says.

It's hard to believe that 3 years later, I am still adjusting to having a second child. A preschooler. A rule breaker. A hell raiser. A totally dependent child. It feels like this will never end, but at the same time, when it does, I'll be sad to watch it go.

We forgot about each other. We've been so stuck in survival that we turned our backs on each other, and eventually turned our fangs on each other. It was horrible. It was war. It was wrong. And I hope we learned enough to prevent this from happening again.

I don't know what the point of all this was other than to vent and share what was on my mind. But I leave you with this song. There is so much good advice in this song, and it helped me do what I needed to do to resolve my role in our recent explosion.

Childhood doesn’t wait.

2011-05-08T11:23:00.001-04:00

I keep this poem on my refrigerator. It’s been up there for years. The paper is gray now – no longer white – with a phone number written in it’s corner and what I hope is just a grease stain making the center of it nearly transparent. From time to time, I turn to it, read it, take a deep breath and put it in perspective. It helps me check myself and remember that one day, I’ll miss the fighting, the imaginary friends and juice stains on the couch, the late nights and early mornings.

Happy Mother’s Day to all my friends and family!

“Childhood Doesn’t Wait.”

I was sitting on a bench
while in a nearby mall,
When I noticed a young mother
with two children who were small.

The youngest one was whining,
"Pick me up," I heard him beg
but the mother's face grew angry
as the child clung to her leg.

"Don't hang on to me," she shouted
as she pushed his hands away,
I wish I'd had the courage
to go up to her and say...

"The time will come too quickly
when those little arms that tug,
Won't ask for you to hold them
or won't freely give a hug.

"The day will sneak up subtly
just as it did with me,
When you can't recall the last time
that your child sat on your knee.

"Like those sacred, pre-dawn feedings
when we cherished time alone
Our babies grow and leave behind
those special times we've known.

"So when your child comes to you
with a book that you can share,
Or asks that you would tuck him in
and help him say his prayer...

"When he comes to sit and chat
or would like to take a walk,
Before you answer that you can't
`cause there's no time to talk

"Remember what all parents learn
so many times too late,
That years go by too quickly
and that childhood doesn't wait.

"Take every opportunity,
if one should slip away
Reach hard to get it back again,
don't wait another day."

I watched that mother walk away
her children followed near,
I hope she'll pick them up
before her chances disappear.

~ Kathie Phillips Davis

It always brings a tear to my eye but it is so true. Happy Mother’s Day!

“This Is Who I Am” – Issue 3 – Roll With It

2011-05-01T12:35:00.001-04:00

This series was intended to point to specific places, people and events that changed me – made me who I am – or created strong views and values for me. You can read more here.

Some people have a list. A schedule of sorts that maps out their goals in life. They know exactly where they want to be at any given moment. They are working toward specific achievements – keeping their eye on the ball. I don’t and after some reflection, I can honestly say that I never have and I probably never will. If my parents were paying attention I would have driven them nuts with worry and rage. On the occasion that they did take interest in me, I did drive them insane with worry and rage.

I never had a goal growing up to be anything in particular. There were just too many options and I wanted to try it all. Even as I sit here typing this, I try to pinpoint a specific goal or a place I want to be 5 years from now and I’ve got nothing. The goal for today? To survive motherhood without damaging the little people too badly. Or at the very least, to have enough money to pay for their therapy if I do fuck it up.

I didn’t plan the kids. One day, it just happened. BAM! I am a mother. Huh. This isn’t everything I expected it to be, but then, did I actually expect anything from the experience? Nah, not really. Because I didn’t plan the experience, so I had no expectations.

Some people would shake their heads sadly. They would find it sad that I have no goals, no expectations from life. I admit, I have, on occasion, wondered how one gets through life with no expectations or goals. What kind of person are you if you just roll with it?

A wise one, I think. My lack of goals and expectations has given me much experience. I’ve done some good things and some bad things. Some unbelievable things and some things I regret. But I’ve done a lot of things! I didn’t finish high school and I don’t have a GED but I am a strong advocate of self-education. I can read and write. I know how to build a web page using raw HTML code. I have worked on oil trucks and in typesetting. I’ve been a bartender and a telemarketer. I’ve successfully run my own day care business.

As a teenager, at one point, I traveled the country in a van. It was me and a bunch of others from all different parts of the country, selling magazines door to door in different states each week. We lived off hot pockets so we could afford to buy pot and get totally baked in the evening while worshipping the Grateful Dead and Nirvana, living in a different motel room each day. I had nothing to show for my days on the road in the end. Not really, anyway. Just an experience under my belt. Something to one day blog about, even though I didn’t know what a blog was back then.

I went through a crazy phase in my twenties. Seriously people, I was nuts! I met a guy in Texas online. I wrote poetry – he liked it and wrote a poem called “Angel Of Beauty” for me. One day, he sent me a shit load of money via Fed-Ex and the next day I got on a plane from NY for the first time and flew to Texas to spend a week with a guy I didn’t know. We travelled through Austin, Texas together, got my belly button pierced, got introduced to Acid Jazz and dark, smoke filled clubs banging out music that was far too loud and drinking margaritas that were far too strong for a person my size. I listened to Coyotes howl late at night on his private property in the middle of no where, smoking weed and making love in a tent under the stars every night. You’ve heard of one night stands? This was a one week stand. I never went back and he never asked me too. I miraculously came back alive with no regrets.

I’ve gotten myself in trouble on various occasions. At one point, I was nearly sent to prison for 25 years to life for conspiracy to distribute drugs. I wasn’t actually directly involved but it didn’t matter. I was involved enough.

I have intentionally put bad substances in my body with the intent of getting high. Ironically, street drugs never brought addiction to my doorstep, but later in my life, I would find myself addicted to Xanax after my lungs collapsed and I spent 3 years on a drug doctors failed to mention was highly addictive.

I’ve been homeless in NYC. I’ve also been underage, working in a cafe in NYC, handling liquor I was too young to handle, living in an apartment I was too young to rent, with a lot of money I was too young to save, and dating a man I was too young to be dating.

I’ve met gentlemen and monsters. I’ve suffered. I’ve laughed, cried and triumphed. I failed. I’ve picked myself up and moved on. I’ve gotten stuck in places I wished I hadn’t and excelled in places I never would have expected. I’ve had healthy friendships and toxic ones. Made hard decisions that made me question myself and easy decisions that I learned both hard and valuable lessons from.

So what’s the point? I guess there really isn’t a point. Everything works for someone. Having no plan, no goals, no expectations – it’s worked for me. Rolling with it works for me. That’s how I roll – with it. One day at a time, one moment at a time.

Maybe tomorrow we will move to Florida, meet new people, live through a massive hurricane and ride an alligator. I don’t know. All I do know, is my life is never boring. If there is one thing I will never regret, it’s my tendency to roll with it, with no plan.

I love being a mother. Except when I don't....

2011-04-30T07:11:00.000-04:00

My husband made what was supposed to be a funny remark yesterday and it's still bothering me. He said I am becoming one of those "bitchy" mothers. And he's right. I'm stressin' big time folks and I need to get a handle on it.

The boys are a handful and both of them need me constantly for EVERYTHING. The Professor is having organizational issues, both here at home and in school. The Gremlin is hell on wheels and practicing being a Rock Star. It's perfect. I have a 3 year old Eminem – foul language and all -- in my house. Lovely.

And I feel like it is getting harder and harder to find "me" time. I don't blog much anymore because I don't have time. I don't typically get the kids asleep and the house completely clean the way I like it until 11:30 at night and then I want to spend time with my husband who gets home sometime between midnight and 1 am and then it's off to bed to get a couple of hours of sleep before I start the entire exhausting routine all over again.

I don't mean to be a bitchy mother. Seriously, I don't. But at 9:30pm when The Professor comes down the stairs asking me when Mother's Day is, I can dredge up only irritation that I will once again have to remind him that he is supposed to be in bed. And instead of calmly telling him I'll look it up, I snap at him that I don't know when it is but he should be in his damned bed anyway and that I will look it up and tell him another time. And then? Because that alone doesn't qualify me for Mother of The Year, I forget to look it up. I only just found out that Mother's Day is next weekend, when my husband called and mentioned that it is the busiest day of the year for the restaurant and that he has to work. Joy.

He says he is going to give me money to go buy myself some clothes, which I want, but is it selfish to say that I would be happier to go to the movies with my husband? Without the kids? Or that I would rather lay in bed all day with him – and no kids – than go shopping with two kids and spend the day stuck in the same old routine only to see him again when the day is over? Ugh.

Anyway, I knew he would have to work. I expected it. What I didn't expect was the intense disappointment I felt when he told me that. Of course, I didn't share that with him. Because I know that if he could, he would be here and I appreciate how hard he works. Is there a Wife of The Year award? Maybe I would be better suited for that one, than for the Mother of The Year Award? Ya think?

Please don't get me wrong. Anyone who knows me knows that I love my kids. I love being a mother. Most of the time. Except when I don't. When it feels like I am failing miserably at it. When I am late getting The Professor to school every single day of a particular week because he has to be in an out of district school because our district school failed us. Except when The Gremlin pours not only my favorite body wash (which I found out today Target does not sell anymore), but also my shampoo and conditioner down the tub drain because I was juggling too many things and forgot to take it out of the shower. Except when I am still cleaning at 11pm when all I want to do is sit down and write or read a book or get stupid drunk and puke before I pass out (okay, so that last one is an impulsive thing and I swear it never actually happens).

But then they smile at me and wrap their little arms around my neck with an "I love you Mommy" that would melt the polar ice caps. And I do love being a mother. I love watching The Gremlin discover life. I love hearing The Professor tell me excitedly that he made a new friend or heard a song that he liked. I love that The Professor is astute enough to ask when Mother's Day is when his own mother didn't even realize it was coming. I love (and at the same time loathe) that the boys are so much like my husband and I when we were little. I love that two people can create such beautiful and innocent little lives. It's amazing and humbling. And that is when I love motherhood – being a mother.

I'm sure this is just another ride on "The Motherhood Rollercoaster" and I know that there will be higher points, better days and eventually, I will feel like I have this on lock down until it all falls apart again. It's been an incredibly stressful April for me and I am hoping May is a little bit better.

I also hope that my readers and friends don't completely abandon me because I am not posting as much and because I know I have neglected all of your blogs horribly this month. It's been a rough month. Do you forgive me?

Technical Problems.

2011-04-29T18:50:00.001-04:00

So, you all remember the many, many times I have mentioned The Professor's organizational issues, right? Well, I need your input. I'm out of ideas and I'm running out of money to spend on things that just don't work.

The Professor has an amazing teacher. She's flexible, kind, firm and she maintains a personal relationship with each of her students. She's AWESOME! She's been working with The Professor as has his gifted resource teacher to help him be more organized. For a while, it seemed like he might be catching on.

Apparently not. For the past week, I've been getting notes home from his teacher detailing minor incidents that are becoming problems – all related to his disorganization. I know she isn't picking on him. He's always had these issues and she has been working hard to help him.

I've tried everything – accordion folders, timers, tiny notebooks with lists in them, thousands of reminders and too many other things. Reward systems don't work well in this house because he has very limited interests and none of them are cheap. It either takes forever for him to save cash and he decides not to save it or I spend a fortune every time he gets a reward because, well, his limited interests and the price tag on them is impossible to work with any other way. I don't want to put tape on his clothing with notes on it, because that will create social issues.

The real problem here though doesn't even really fall on him. I am extremely disorganized and barely manage to know what day it is. I don't know for sure where anything in my house is. Well, that isn't true – I know that I have an accordion folder for all important documents, but that's where it ends for me. I have this feature on my home phone (Verizon) that lets me record a message and have it delivered at the date and time of my choice via a phone call, so I immediately program appointments and such into it. If it weren't for that? Oh, I'd be completely fucked. How can I teach my son organization, if the closest I get to it is organized chaos?

I need ideas. Suggestions. I have not tried a PDA because I can't find one locally and I do not have a PayPal account due to a falling out with them so I can't get one on EBay. I don't think his teacher would object to it, although I can see issues with it in future classes. I'm not worried about that though, just now.

I know nothing about organization. Nothing. Seriously, I should be the poster child for disorganization.

Any ideas?

Not always what it seems.

2011-04-27T17:16:00.001-04:00

I feel the looks – the tension. An outsider would wonder why I can be so patient with my youngest and so impatient with my oldest.

If you know me and you are shaking your head yes, I invite you to spend a month in my house and see if you still feel the same afterwards.

My 3 year old has more common sense than my 9 year old. I look at The Professor and remember simpler times, when he had intelligent and interesting things to say. I try very hard not to utter the words "You're supposedly gifted, making choices like this?" because I know that he's still a child. But it's hard.

The Professor lives in a special world. A world where the trees are made of chocolate – the rivers of root beer and the flowers giggle when he passes them by. The boy doesn't even try to pretend to be on this planet (or even in a nearby solar system and it's flippin' annoying. It seems like he just runs with his impulses even though the exact behavior has probably gotten him in trouble before. If he wasn't my child (a child) I might have punched him straight in the eyeball by now.

Yesterday, a young man in a wheelchair passed by our house. The Professor and I have talked about handicaps. We have talked about wheelchairs and about being appropriate toward those confined to one. Several times. But what does he do this time? He points and very loudly exclaims "Look mom! That thing looks like a baby stroller! That man is driving around in a baby stroller! HA!Ha!"

Okay, really? Does the word RUDE mean anything to this child? But when I glare at him he simply smirks, shrugs and says "What Mom?"

This is the same kid that will shake the shit out of a carbonated beverage, then ask you to open it for him. Or put dish detergent in the dishwasher knowing that the last 3 times he did it, the dishwasher spit water and soap all over our kitchen. This is the child that introduces his friend to me by saying "Mom, this is Jacob. He's a little chubby, right?" RIGHT IN FRONT OF JACOB. It's exasperating!

The senseless moments never end. I just came in from outside, where the dog was chewing The Gremlin's brand new sandal. The Professor said that the dog wasn't "chewing" it, she just had it in her mouth. That is why he didn't feel it necessary to come get me, because "By the time I got off the trampoline to tell you, she would have chewed it up anyway!" WTF??????

And my husband learned not to tell The Professor anything you don't want him to share. Sunday, on our way to an Easter egg hunt, The Professor had this to say:

The Professor : "Mom, I know The Gremlin can't be the devil. Do you know why?"

Me: "No. Why?"

The Professor: "Because Daddy says you are."

Real nice. That's awesome. If you're reading this dear husband of mine, I welcome you to my hell. You're going to be here for a long, long time.

Spring Break Day 1: Survival

2011-04-18T18:32:00.001-04:00

I hate to be the mother dreading Spring Break. I want to say that I am going to enjoy the time I honestly miss when The Professor is in school. I plan on trying to do just that.

But today is day one. And it’s been an awfully long day one. Today, I’m not seeing a much needed break of the typical stressed out, jam-packed, time cramped daily routine. Today I am thinking: SURVIVAL.

I had plans today. I didn’t leave the damned house until 5:00pm and still I left with two bored and cranky children. And as I type this, The Professor is in the back yard with his brother tormenting him while his brother screams my name. Thirty seconds from now, they will come flying violently inside pointing their fingers at each other and whining that someone got hit, or bit, or pushed.

Still, I am so totally masochistic. I am going to color eggs with these little heathens. The eggs are boiling now. Joy. Why do we celebrate Easter anyway? I’m not religious.

Day 1 of Spring Break is almost over. I haven’t participated in any of the fun, joyous activities I had envisioned. Instead, I have spent the day using survival techniques like bribery, empty threats and again with the yelling I hate so much.

I am SO looking forward to day 2.

Total Blockage

2011-04-17T20:25:00.001-04:00

I want to write.

I’m sorry I haven’t been. I am experiencing a blockage.

I sit down to write something and nothing comes. There’s plenty going on. There’s plenty of things I could talk about. But none of it is worthy enough to go from my head to the keyboard apparently.

Last night I had a horrible nightmare. I dreamt that my husband died. I watched as if I were a ghost, while I (in my dream) curled up into the lap of a friend and sobbed, terrible, horrible tears. I watched while I ripped clothing that was his out of the closet, and tried to find his scent in desperation.

I woke up with tears rolling down my face and my husband wasn’t home from work yet. But for a brief moment – just one moment – I could not figure out if my nightmare was a nightmare, or reality. It was terrible and I am still a little shook with the experience.

So for today, since I don’t seem to be able to find any other words to put here, I leave you with this: Go hug your husband. I’m certainly going to.

Mommy looks like a….rock star, princess.

2011-04-13T18:40:00.001-04:00

I know it’s been a few days. Things are crazy hectic here this week. My husband’s new work schedule (new is actually like 1 month old, but it’s still new to me) is throwing me off big time as it always does. He still has Tuesdays off, but the rest of his days are twisted. On Monday he goes to work at 1pm. On Wednesday & Thursday he goes to work at 3pm. On Friday he goes to work at 1pm. On Saturday he goes to work at 11am and on Sunday he goes to work at 10am.

Okay, so at least I can remember his hours when I writing it here. But I barely know exactly what day it is most times, so 90% of the time, I’m shocked when he says he has to go to work because most times I think it’s Wednesday when it’s actually Tuesday or Thursday. I know, it’s terrible, but I’ve always been this way, even before the children. I sure wish I could blame it on them, but I can’t.

Does anyone have a 3 year old that is beginning to relate dress to different people? The other day, The Gremlin watched me getting into one of my favorite tank tops. I was trying to do it really fast so he wouldn’t get much of a view, but anyway. It’s a little black tank top, sleeveless and it ties around the neck. It has a few little gems decorating the neckline and it fans out around the waist, almost like a baby doll shirt (?). He looks right at me and says “Mommy, you look like a princess!” Yeah, this one is a charmer and he is damned good at it too.

So this morning, I am getting dressed again, and I pull out my favorite white shirt. I don’t wear it very often because white is a twisted color, but it was sort of breezy today so I wanted something better than a tank top. So I put it on and I walk out of the bedroom and The Gremlin looks at me and says “Mommy, you look like a rock star!”

I wonder where he gets this stuff from?

He also wants to build me a rocket ship and last night he made me sit with him while he sang to me. I have no idea what he was saying, but he was moving his hands around the way a performer might during a concert. It was hilarious and touching all at the same time. Unbridled energy and irresistible charm all in such a small package.

I’ll be worried and dreading the onslaught of trashy girlfriends when he’s a teenager, but for now, I’ll enjoy being the object of his affection. It’s really too sweet to do anything but enjoy it.

This Is Who I Am – Issue 2 – Addiction.

2011-04-10T10:58:00.001-04:00

Addiction.

Have you ever watched a friend or family member destroy themselves and others while dealing with addiction?

I’ve seen it too many times. It never gets any easier to watch and those affected by it, will never shake the heaviness addiction always leaves behind.

Recently, a dear friend and someone whom I considered family, passed away. Prior to her death, she’d been struggling and losing a battle with addiction.

I remember once, when she wasn’t so heavy into drugs. I remember her smile, her laugh and the way she always found hope and warmth in her children. I remember the way she always supported me when I needed it. The hours of talk when one or both of us needed an ear. The shoulder that was always there when we needed it.

But addiction took that from her. The last months of her life were spent stuck somewhere many of us won’t ever see. She was lost. Addiction stained her and everyone who loved her. None of us truly understood. Most of us never truly will.

I always thought I tried to help her. I always thought that reminding her that she had children that needed her and people who loved her, somehow helped her see through the darkness she seemed to be constantly consumed by. I always thought I was a good friend. I thought she was making bad choices and I thought she knew that. I thought she could choose not to be addicted.

I know better now, but it’s too late.

A few months before she passed, we had an argument. It would be the last time we spoke. And the argument was about drugs. I was angry. She was hurting her children. Children who adored her despite her often selfish behavior. She had friends. Friends who would have seen her through if she’d only let them. But, in my opinion, she was “choosing” drugs over the people who loved her. She was choosing to destroy herself and in the process, she was breaking the hearts of her children and isolating herself from her friends. That was my opinion. That was my pain. That was my mistake.

When she died, I stood next to her children and watched her laid to rest. I watched the tears stream down her young daughters face as the pastor said his prayers. I watched adults exchange glances of helplessness and pain and I felt the warmth of tears on my cheeks as I remembered when times weren’t so hard for her. I took her children to the gravesite, and showed them how to talk to her. It should have been so easy. Death never affected me the way it affects others.

But her death did. It broke me. As I stood next to her children, bracing myself for the one sided conversation with a passed loved one, the lump in my throat grew. How can this be real? How can someone with so much life – so much heart – just be gone one day? There was no anger left. Only pain and regrets. My voice caught in my throat as I said her name aloud. The words I thought I had were lost to me. The tears fell freely again. I planned to be the strength for her children. Instead, my pain may have helped them face theirs.

I still hurt for her. I still hurt for her children. Addiction means something different when it hits so close. It leaves holes in the hearts of those who care for the person addicted. It leaves questions and fear. It leaves guilt.

Guilt because it’s easy to think we can save the person. It’s easy to think that they are being selfish. It’s easy to be angry – to walk away, throwing our hands up in frustration because they just seem to be making a choice.

But I don’t think she would have chosen this. I don’t think she would have chosen to punch a hole in the hearts of her children. I don’t think she would have chosen to leave the people she loved with so many questions and so much pain. I know she wouldn’t have chosen to watch her children go through their teen years without her. She didn’t hurt anyone intentionally.

Addiction was simply stronger than she was.

I miss her sometimes. Sometimes, I pick up the phone, thinking to call her and the pain is back. When I talk to her children, the pain comes back. When I remember back yard barbeques and trips to the zoo with her, the pain is back. But the anger is gone now.

It wasn’t my fault.

2011-04-09T11:56:00.001-04:00

The other morning, my husband’s uncle’s car got hit. With me behind the wheel. You know the one? The pretty little mustang I’ve been rockin’ while my Buick is out of commission?

Shit. Shit. Shit. It wasn’t my fault.

But the things that happened immediately afterwards, might have been. Sort of, kind of, maybe.

Okay, I was in the school parking lot when this happened. A woman, angry because she’d been confronted by some other parents about her child’s behavior on the bus, got into her car, then attempted to exit the drop off area. Through the entry.

So she’s hauling ass out of a parking spot, about 12 inches off the side of my car, since I am stopped nearly directly behind her. There’s a truck in front of me dropping off their kids and a car behind me waiting. I had no where to go. So I see her backing up FAST. I try to hit the fucking horn, right? But the stupid thing won’t work! Have you ever gotten into a car you are unfamiliar with and been unable to figure out exactly where to push to make the horn work? Yeah. That happened to me. And I KNEW she was going to hit me. I closed my eyes and braced myself. CRUNCH!

Oh my fucking flying bat brained son of a bitch FUCK! She fucking hit me. Damn. SHIT. SHIT. SHIT. I’m still hearing the crunch.

But THEN, the woman doesn’t want to get out of her car. She was going to keep going! But since she was sort of trapped, and I was NOT moving my car until she got out of hers, she gets out. And she’s all “I’m so sorry. I’m having a bad morning…I was confronted by some parents about my kid’s behavior on the bus and I was upset. I’m sorry!”

Me? I’m a real nice person. So I say, “It’s okay. I get it. We all have days like that! Just give me your insurance information and we can be on our ways. Really, it’s no biggie.” Okay. It was kind of a big deal since it wasn’t my car, but it wasn’t my fault either, so as long as the insurance would pay for it, it really wasn’t a big deal, you know?

And she clammed up. All of a sudden, she’s saying “Wait. My insurance? This isn’t my fault! I don’t see how I hit you. YOUR paint is on MY car! ” Okay. Now she’s mistaking my kindness for stupidity.

Now I’m kinda pissed. So I start to get sort of aggressive. Well, as aggressive as a girl that weighs 90 pounds soaking wet and stands a mere 5’ 2” tall can get. So aggressive? Yeah, basically that means that I puffed my flat chest out and threw my hands up and said “Um, yeah, my paint is on your car BECAUSE YOU JUST HIT ME. I wasn’t moving. You were. AND, you’re trying to exit through the entrance, so technically, had I been moving, it STILL would have been your fault.”

Another parent (who now gets the honor of being yet another of the mistakes I made this day) chimes in and agrees with me. So the woman calls her husband. Mistake #1 – Should have gotten that parents number. Then she says “Why don’t I just give you my phone number? I just want to get home to my husband.”

Mistake #2 – I say “And you certainly can get home to your husband just as soon as you give me some insurance information.” (I should have taken the damn phone number) Meanwhile, I call The Husband’s Uncle and tell him what is going on. I tell him that I’m not sure what to do (never had an accident before that I had to deal with) and that the woman is trying to leave without giving me any information. I’m upset at this point and my voice kind of cracked a little bit on the phone.

So he says “It’s just a car. As long as you are alright, just get her plate number.” Isn’t that just amazing? So I ask the woman if I can use her pen because I don’t have one and in a moment of disbelief, she actually says No! Wow. Mistake #3? Always carry a pen in your purse.

So I look at the license plate, try to remember the numbers and the woman hands me a piece of paper with her information on it, which I didn’t even look at because I was trying to remember the number. She drives off, and I try to hurry into the school to get a pen. But upon arrival into the office, I’m told I need to sign in and all this. Finally, I get a pen and a piece of paper. And I forgot the fucking number because I have a memory like a sieve. But I’m not worried. I have her information, right?

Wrong. I look at the paper, and she wrote down a policy number, the type of car she was driving and a name. A name that isn’t the name of an insurance company or agent and isn’t listed in the residential phone book. No phone number. No nothing. SHIT. Mistake #4? Look at the information before assuming she gave you good information.

She fucked me. Damn.

My husband is more pissed off than his Uncle is. He says I should have licked my finger and written the number on the hood of my car. Who really thinks that way???? But someone else pointed out that I could have texted the number to my husband or something. Ahhh. Great idea. Too late.

I cost my husband $200.00. A series of stupid mistakes, really early in the morning, coupled with the upset that made me have difficulty thinking straight really screwed up my week. The woman did about $250.00 worth of damage. But without a plate number, our deductible for an uninsured driver/hit and run is $200.00.

But I can make the horn work now.

Ageless?

2011-04-08T21:11:00.001-04:00

Is sexy something you can only be when you aren’t a 33 year old imperfect mom? Do flaws (especially serious ones) make you “less sexy” or is sexy really in the confidence you have in yourself and the person the people closest to you know you to be?

Yeah. I guess I am feeling my age. Or I feel like I’m too old now not to be? *Sigh* I have had this post sitting on my heart for a few weeks, but the SITS Girls “Letting Go Link-Up” seems like as good an opportunity as any to completely bare my soul to a bunch of people who may or may not judge or laugh or even agree or disagree with me.

When I turned 30, my entire life changed. You’d think LAMS Disease would have changed me, but seriously, I don’t think that much about the disease. I just let go and let God (even though I’m not sure I believe in God…I LOVE the concept?).

Suddenly, I wanted to connect more deeply with my husband. I wanted to dress up and go out. I want to dance in the rain and make love on the beach (too much information…I know).

But, I also felt like I should be feeling older. It feels wrong to be dancing around (and singing horribly off key) in the kitchen with headphones on my ears after the kids are in bed. But it makes me feel alive despite the horrible embarrassment I would suffer if people knew (which they now do). So, I do it. Almost every night. And I am trying to learn belly dancing so I can surprise my husband. All the while wondering how “sexy” or “youth” or even “attractive” can possibly be seen in my too thin, birth affected body. But what bugs me the most about me, is my teeth.

My family has never seen me smile. I have a deficiency that caused my teeth to start decaying in my mid-teens. You couldn’t see it much then, but now I am 33 and most of my teeth are gone. And insurance won’t cover a replacement so I can get them pulled but then I’ll just be 33 with no teeth. There’s just no way I could come up with the $475.00 for dentures. So…all my smiles are tight lipped and I am afraid to talk to people because I just KNOW someone notices and thinks to themselves “Gross!” I’ve even convinced myself that my husband must be so disappointed and I refuse to kiss him (you know…really kiss him) because I think my mouth is so gross. And I’m not ugly! Until I smile. It’s truly horrible and it’s killing my public image as well as my personal one.

I KNOW I’m not as young as I feel. But with my lung sickness and then on top of it, my mouth problem, I think it’s really bringing my self-image into a bad, bad place. It makes me sad to think that my kids might never see a genuine smile from me. It makes me sad to think that the intimacy found in a kiss between spouses might be lost to me forever. Or that when or if I get the money to get them fixed, I’ll not be young enough to enjoy it.

But you know what the strange thing is? When my teeth weren’t this bad, I didn’t care about my looks. I never thought on whether I was pretty or sexy. I never worried about what people thought of me. I figured shallow people really aren’t my crowd anyway…you know?

But now? Now I sort of need to feel sexy and attractive. Now I care what people see. It just sort of happened when I turned 30. My entire life/love philosophy changed. Everything I liked and disliked changed. I changed – grew – and maybe in some ways, became less confident.

I never cared before. I am an awesome person. I make friends easily but choose them carefully. I help when I can and even sometimes when I can’t. I am intuitive and smart and funny. I KNOW these things. My friends know these things.

So why? If I know these things, why am I tortured by things no one would ever even be rude enough to ask me about? Why am I stressing something as shallow and superficial as my image?

Turn That Music Up…

2011-04-04T15:15:00.001-04:00

This post is a little more personal than usual. Or maybe not. Some of my posts are pretty personal, but this one – this one speaks for the things that aren’t often said aloud because of fear of judgment and such. Or maybe everyone says it all the time and I’m just not reading it.

I’m missing the good old days. The nights when we drank far more than we should have – stayed up later than we should have and turned the music up louder than it needed to be. The days when we knew we had to get up early, knew we would have a hang over in the morning, knew that we wouldn’t be drinking again for 6 months because we wouldn’t be able to handle the smell of it.

I’m wanting to have a little bit of fun. Is there anything wrong with that?

I guess there probably isn’t but I’m not talking about tame fun. Hell no. I want to get a little bit out of control (with someone who isn’t out of control to care for the kids). I want to get a little more drunk than is healthy (with someone who isn’t drinking here), dance just a little bit more provocatively, right close to The Husband (yeah. Drunk will make me forget that my body is NOT what it used to be, right?). I want to turn the music up just a little bit louder than we usually do (But not loud enough to wake the kids up).

Hmmm, Maybe I should just send the kids to a friends for the night one of these weekends.

I want to have some adult fun. I want to make Jell-O shots, over-indulge in Tequila, down that extra shot even though I know my body has had enough. I want to get drunk, get stupid, get laid and get up in the morning with a massive headache and that “I’m never drinking ever again” sentence on my lips.

Of course I don’t want to do that all the time. But I want to do it.

How about you? Do you ever just want to have fun? All in, temporary insanity, out of control if only for the moment, fun? It’s been a long time since we had a party. Birthday parties don’t count.

This Is Who I Am – Issue 1 – NYC – Part 4

2011-04-03T13:31:00.001-04:00

This is a part of the series “This Is Who I Am”. You can read Parts 1, 2 and 3 here. I hope you enjoy it. This is the final Homeless in NYC post.

______________________________________________________

…..I must have been sound asleep within seconds. The last thought I remember having was a concern that I heard the rats in NYC were huge and aggressive…..

I woke to Mike pulling me to my feet. “C’mon, we gotta go.” he said. His hand taking mine in an almost parental way. For a minute, I wanted to yank my hand out of his and demand that he not touch me – remind him that I wasn’t his girlfriend and I didn’t want to be. But he was gentle enough and it was kind of nice, so I left my hand in his.

I was surprised to find a sunny day waiting for me outside. The streets were alive with people. There were hot dog vendors on corners looking oddly aggressive for people looking to sell food to others. My stomach, not fully recovered from 48 hours of starvation, rumbled at the scent – the sight – of the food being sold from these grungy, aging carts.

We didn’t walk but for 5 minutes or so before we slipped into an apartment building. I say slipped because somehow I missed the entire walk. I had no idea where we were and barely registered entering the building, but suddenly we were inside of a furnished and very tiny apartment.

Mike had let go of my hand and was yelling “Yo! Tweed! Where ya at man?” He was obviously comfortable here, but I wasn’t and I hung back at the door. A brief conversation took place between two male voices – one of them Mike’s – before Mike yelled for me.

I felt like I was on display when I walked into the room. A guy sat at a computer I assumed was his, his chair turned slightly toward me. There were two guys sitting on what looked like a daybed and Mike stood in the doorway. Small is the best word to describe the man I would come to know as Tweed. His face was riddled with acne and his eyes were indifferent as he gave me a once over, then turned his attention back to his computer. “Get her something to eat man.” he said to no one in particular it seemed. One of the others left the room.

Mike was watching me. I looked back at him, trying to disguise my unease. “This is Tweed. You are gonna stay here with him. Get a job, some clothes…..” I was certain he’d said something else, but my voice failed me when I attempted to question it. Instead, I made my way over to the doorway and stood behind him.

I must have looked ridiculous hiding like a child behind a boy I’d only just met last night, but there was a honesty about him and I didn’t want to stay here. “I don’t want to stay here.” My thoughts rang out loudly although they were barely a whisper, in the otherwise silent room.

The guy on the couch grinned. Tweed turned slightly on his chair, his eyes passing between me and Mike, silent but somehow intrusive. Beside me, the man who had previously left the room seemed to simply appear with a bag of White Castle and a can of orange soda. He handed it to me, then stood there. “I’ll just go. Thank you.” I sat the bag of White Castle on a table near to the doorway. I sounded a lot more confident then I felt and leaving the bag of food had my stomach churning in protest.

Mike took my arm before I got a full step away. “You can’t stay with me. We’ll break you. The boys…..” he trailed off without finishing. My breathing got heavier and my eyes started to well with tears. “Look. Tweed is a good guy. You can stay here. He’ll help you find a job – a good one. Please stay.” That last statement -- “Please Stay.” – it sounded almost like it hurt him to say it. A bowl of weed was passed to me and I hit it, coughed and opened my soda. There was a conversation between Tweed and I, but I can’t remember it. I just remember him telling me to finish my food and me getting all defensive. I remember him laughing and taking the bag from me. That’s it. I sat down on the daybed, and fell asleep again.

Tweed, as I would find out later, was 25. He sold weed and cocaine out of his apartment and had holes he claimed were bullet holes in the floor of his living room. His friends would later laugh when telling stories about dropping drugs through the holes during raids.

Tweed gave up his bed for me. Mike left when I was sleeping that night and I never saw him again. There was a sadness in me for that. I never got to thank him, and admittedly would not have known what to thank him for until months later. I would also hear months later, that the youngest of that group had died – smoked dust and jumped off the top of a building, convinced he could fly. Such a sad ending to such a young life and even at my young age, I could feel the pain of this strangers death.

Tweed took me shopping, bought me decent clothes and fed me for a month before I found a job at a small Italian cafe. I stayed with him for another month afterwards, then got my own studio apartment through the foreign man that was his landlord, in another building in a slightly better part of the Bronx. We saw each other off and on for a month or two, but lost touch. I don’t think we had a lot in common and to this day I wonder about the kindness Mike, his crew and Tweed showed me. Where did it come from? Why me? I tried to give Tweed money several times but he refused. He’d smirk a little, give me a little shove and say “I got dis.”

It’s funny how one bad deed (selling drugs) can stain a person – make them a bad person or a dangerous one – a saint or a hero -- without ever actually knowing how bad (or good) that person is. Often, a teacher or a priest is thought to be good until someone accidentally discovers the bad. Simultaneously, drug dealers, homeless people and gang members are easily seen as what is wrong with society and judged immediately and harshly by those who have never walked so much as a city block in their shoes.

Despite making bad choices or contributing to an increasing drug problem or even just sleeping every night in an abandoned building and being a part of a gang, these were good people. They had good hearts. It would not have been hard to destroy me. It would not have been hard to use my lack of food, clothing or housing as leverage to get things from me. To be quite honest, I know several people today, who though they are seen as good people, would have done just that. Funny enough, the people we often judge harshest, were the people who probably saved my life.

I am wiser for it. I am grateful for it and this part of my life will never be forgotten or taken for granted. At 16, I learned what most don’t learn until their mid to late 20’s. I learned to look closely before I make a judgment about anyone despite their circumstances. More importantly, I learned that humanity, kindness and compassion exist even where there is great wrongs being committed. Even where the dim lights and foul odors make people turn their heads in disgust and shame, there is humanity worth looking for and worth appreciating.

Thanks for listening. Recounting this story has been an amazing experience for me and as I wrapped this last part up, I actually felt the same sadness I felt so many years ago and the same appreciation that has my eyes warming with tears now. Even in the darkest corners of our society, good people with good hearts exist. Sometimes, you have to look past their method of survival, at the person behind the bag of dope or the bandana that is their gang colors, to find them.

10 years in…Worst Marital Advice EVER.

2011-04-02T13:06:00.001-04:00

I was blog hopping and came across this article by Charli at this awesome blog, Man Wife and Dog. She was commenting on an article this blog commented on by Harper’s Bazaar.

Articles like this upset me. Charli called it laughable. I agree to an extent, but on the other side of the tracks, I’ll call it negligible. It’s misleading and it’s discouraging to married couples experiencing difficulty.

Here’s a excerpt:

Love is a commitment, but the idea of choosing to work at your marriage sounds like a drag. I'm going to write something that might irritate people, but here we go: Sometimes you luck out. Sometimes being married is easy. Sometimes — strike up the violins and cue the Hugh Grant voice-over — love chooses you.

Frankly, it should be easy. It should be a joy almost every day to be married, to feel relief and gratitude, and if it isn't, you're in the wrong marriage. The secret to a happy marriage isn't hard work, as if we should behave like dogs gnawing over the bones of a relationship until we discover marrow. It's not convincing yourself that every good marriage takes work and hauling yourselves to therapy twice a week until the wheels come off. The secret to a happy marriage is finding the right person and remaining faithful. Call me a boorish American bourgeois (and all my unhappily married friends in Europe will), but that's pretty much it.

Read more: How to Stay in Love with Husband - How to Make a Marriage Work - Harper's BAZAAR

AHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHA…..Wait….Wait. *Snort* Let me stop laughing. THAT right there? That IS funny! The idea of choosing to work at your marriage sounds like a drag?? No, actually, my favorite part is the part where the author says that it should be a “joy”. Huh. I’m so fucked. Ten years into my marriage and now I’m thinking “Really? Easy? Joy? Hell, I really missed something then.”

My marriage? Not easy and I don’t think joy would be the proper descriptive word for it either. Work would be good, or challenging. Or on a more positive note, I’d call my marriage, interesting….stimulating….full of passion and life. But joy only describes our life before we decided to move in together, have children and riddle each others lives with dirty socks, bad financial decisions and..ahem..passionate discussions (we call them fights) about the bills, or the school or who doesn’t do enough around the house.

I didn’t marry myself. If I did, I imagine my marriage could be called “joyful”. But I married my opposite. I married a man that challenges me and intrigues me – makes me laugh -- and sometimes, yes, makes me want to scream out in frustration. I married a man with a totally different philosophy about life and kids and money. I married a man that compliments me because he has the qualities I don’t. And there has been tears and pain just as much as there has been laughter and love.

Oh yes, and we didn’t run our asses to therapy and work on it until “the wheels came off”. We learned. With every mistake we made, we learned that living with another isn’t going to be easy. “Basic respect” only goes so far. If one of two people in the marriage fails at “basic respect”, shall I run off and file divorce papers? Sure, I could…..but I’d be miserable and I’d be a statistic.

Worse, I’d be without the man that makes my knees weak and my heart speed up. I’d be without the man that completes me……all because I didn’t think I should have to put any effort into my marriage? That, in my opinion, is just plain silly.

When I wake up with the warm body of my husband beside me, I don’t grumble out of bed dreading yet another day when I have to go to my “second job” called marriage. I wake up with all the lessons I’ve learned, the tears I’ve cried, the laughs, the hugs, the love – front and center in my heart and my mind. And when we face a difficult time, those lessons are the ones that make my marriage worth the effort to keep it going.

In conclusion to this little rant of mine, marriage IS work. Over the years together you will change. It’s just what happens. He will change. And you will both still be trying to figure each other out….year after year. If you love each other – if you can’t imagine your life without this man – the work you put into it is worth it. Don’t be so quick to give up on your marriage simply because it’s taking work to keep it together. Everything good is worth working for.

10,000 Reasons…

2011-04-01T13:47:00.001-04:00

This morning, as I was taking The Professor to school, The Gremlin’s sweet little voice rang out from the back seat.

“Mommy?” he said, in that small, innocent little voice.

“Yes, baby?” I responded as I pulled out of my driveway.

“Are we there yet?” And The Professor erupts into a fit of giggles.

It’s barely 9am and already The Gremlin is scheming. A glance in the rear view mirror confirms the smirk I knew he was wearing. And for the 20 minute drive, he would repeat this question at 3 minute intervals. The only thing innocent about this child, is his beauty. Extraordinary, he is.

The head full of blond curls – the big brown eyes – the flawless skin and chunky cheeks. It’s easy to get charmed by this kid. It’s easy to forget that in 5 minutes, he’ll be out of his car seat, dancing around on the back seat giggling while I frantically search for a safe place to pull over so he can be strapped back in. So easy to get sucked into the tiny yet strong little arms hugging my neck right before he licks me. Ugh. The boy’s beauty is surpassed only by his intelligence and charm. A powerful combination to be sure and one I worry about regularly. At the tender age of only 3, he uses phrases and words beyond his years in the proper context, and sarcasm is an art he has already mastered. Sometimes, I don’t know whether I am to applaud his clever little mind or discipline his wise little ass.

“There’s something about a bad boy that makes a good girl smile.” This phrase comes to mind every time I set eyes on this child, and I foresee a future of parental worry and doubt. And plenty of laughter and secretive laughs between my husband and I over something he’s done or said that we couldn’t reveal as funny to him.

And The Professor’s laughter in the front seat made it difficult not to smile. It was a welcome addition to a morning usually filled with whining and complaining or moping silence. His brown eyes, usually filled with sobriety and often a sadness he won’t share with me, for just a moment, filled with amusement.

The Professor is the serious one. A highly gifted child, as is his brother, he won’t ever relate to his peers the way he wishes too and tragedies like the earthquake/tsunami in Japan will always bring him pain and leave him scars. He is an old man trapped in the body of a 9 year old and the worry and guilt I will suffer for him will be dramatically different than those I will suffer for his brother.

The Professor will always feel things more deeply than his brother or his peers. He’ll never truly understand how the death penalty can be deemed unacceptable, while war is supported and even rewarded. In his heart and mind, both will always be morally wrong because in his mind taking a life is wrong, and it will always be a source of angst for him. He is going to struggle to find the balance between adopting a cause and making himself ill with worry or anger over that cause. So much like me as a child, it’s going to be painful to watch and challenging to guide him.

And I am going to struggle every time these boys do. I’m going to struggle to maintain a straight face when smiling at the mischief being caused by The Gremlin is an instinct. I’m going to struggle to open my heart and mind to the moral struggles The Professor will face, always hoping to say the comforting thing, or give the answer he needs, even when he may be hoping for a different answer.

At any given moment, I’ll have 10,000 reasons to put my head in my hands and cry. I’ll have 10,000 reasons to worry, to feel guilty, and sometimes, to bask in triumph and success. While the boys are finding 10,000 ways to make me wonder if I am doing this motherhood thing the right way, I’ll be collecting 10,000 reasons why I wouldn’t trade in my motherhood status for anything in the world.

Food Insurance. Scared yet?

2011-03-28T18:40:00.001-04:00

So last night, I’m laying in bed listening to the radio when I hear a commercial that sort of crept me out a little bit. I don’t have cable, and couldn’t find the commercial I heard last night, but I did find the following video on YouTube.

Does this freak you out? C’mon, even just a little bit?

I’m a little bothered by it. Does someone know something we don’t?

The thing about this insurance that really irks me though, is that it isn’t affordable for the average Joe (or Jane). It’s actually even a little bit funny because they talk about tough economic times being a good reason to purchase food insurance.

The only way we could afford to purchase this insurance, is if we decided to starve now, so we could pay ahead of time to maybe eat later when some kind of horrible something happened and we needed to open our food insurance supplies.

They do an essentials kit that costs $199.00 and feeds 1 adult for 2 weeks. Or….this is great, for $1789.99, you can feed a family of five 2 meals a day for 3 months. And if you like, you can take advantage of their payment plans. You can get 3 boxes per month for 3 months for only (sarcasm) $626.00 a month or pay $219.00 per month and get 1 box per month for 9 months.

We spend (being generous) about $400.00 a month on food, and that is with my husband hardly ever eating here. At best, I’d be increasing my food bill by $200.00 to get enough food to feed my family only 2 meals a day? Of course, 2 meals, yes, is better than no meals. But can you afford this? I’m sure my kids would agree whole heartedly, were I to say;

“Sorry kids, Mommy and Daddy are buying food we can’t eat, just in case we someday need it, so you’ll have to live off school lunch & Ramen for a month or two.”

Yeah. Right. The scene in my house would be something similar to that movie, ALIVE.

Here’s my final thoughts on this;

Sure, the weather is weird and getting worse every year, the end of the world might come someday (like it has in the past, ya know? Think Y2K), mass unexplainable animal kills are scaring the crap out of us, and the situation in Japan is equally as scary…….but peanut butter is cheap and non-perishable. Buy an extra container or two when you have extra cash. Stash away some matches, powdered drinks and water (.99 cents for water or cheaper depending on where you get it). Most major department stores have sample bins filled with all sorts of first aid supplies. Grab some canned veggies and other non-perishable foods when you can. Stash them away in a hole in your floor, or a closet or something.

If something does happen, you have it and you didn’t need to starve yourself for months so you could eat if something ever happened. You might want to stock a rifle there too. If something were to happen, somehow I’m envisioning a situation like we saw in the movie The Road. Those with giant red backpacks filled with food on their backs will be the first to be robbed.

I’m not trying to be ignorant here. It could happen. I just think wasting your money buying “food insurance” is so much more expensive than stocking up with the few extra dollars you might have. And a whole lot more realistic for those of us who can’t afford this.

Crazy, but Worth It.

2011-03-27T12:44:00.001-04:00

I know I am supposed to do my series today, and I am going to try. It’s been another long week and I haven’t even gotten to start it, but if I can get it up today, I will. If not, I will post it this week sometime.

For now, I have questions for all the married and committed couples out there. It’s something that has been on my mind all week and I just was a little on the fence about posting it here, because I rarely talk about my marriage and this post is nothing short of ick! on the mushy meter.

Last night, The Husband once again managed to surprise me with one of the small things. The ones that really matter, you know? He’s been doing a lot of that lately, and I have to say, I’m likin’ it. But more than anything else, it has me looking back at past times, because we’ve been through some crazy shit together and our marriage barely made it through some of it. In fact, 5 years ago, I would have said we weren’t going to make it. Five years ago, with a broken heart, I would have said that I didn’t know where I would be in 5 years but it probably wouldn’t include him. Our marriage was in serious trouble.

It wasn’t all him. It was youth I guess. We were both wrong a whole lot more often than we were right. But I was certain that I’d fallen out of love with this man. I was hurting. I was angry. My heart might have shown up in an X-ray as physically broken. Wow. It was almost 3 1/2 years ago now. I’m so glad I didn’t walk away. I’m so glad he didn’t walk away.

How often do you fall back in love with your husband? Do you remember the falling in love feeling? Do you remember the simple kiss that leaves you high on love for hours?

I don’t know why I’m sharing this here. I guess because our marriage is a story of hope? We’ve both had moments in our marriage when we didn’t deserve the kindness or love we got from the other. We’ve both hurt each other in unspeakable ways and we’ve both believed at some point, that our marriage wasn’t worth it. Or at least we thought we believed that I guess, since we’re still going. And we are stronger than we ever were before.

This morning, he laid a simple soft kiss on my lips, and I felt myself fall again. What are we at now? Like, 350 times? It’s crazy! Love is crazy.

Ours is filled with moments when we should be doing better for each other. It’s filled with passionate disagreements and colossal mistakes. It’s filled with stupid fights over stupid things and silly misunderstandings. My marriage is full of life.

But more importantly, as I am coming to see, it’s full of love. It’s so full of love that it is often overwhelming and it makes the tough times seem so much tougher. Sometimes, it brings out the very worst in us and others, the very best. But when I stumble, he’s always there to catch me. And whatever he needs from me, whenever he needs it, is there.

Does your husband ever inspire you like this? Does love inspire you like this? When was the last time you fell back in love with your husband? How often does it happen to you?

No Mom Ever Wants To Admit This.

2011-03-25T17:48:00.001-04:00

I want to come here and tell everyone that things are improving. I want to say that I've found something that works in my home, with my kids and I want to proudly announce that I'm working it successfully. But I can't.

No mother ever wants to admit this, but I'm really struggling here. Things have not gotten any easier. Actually, I think they may have gotten worse. Or maybe things are just piling atop each other and making it seem that way.

It seems like both of my children enter their different stages at the same time, and they have both entered rather difficult ones. Or maybe, they are just opposing forces with strong personalities that I don't seem to be able to relate to at all. Nor can I seem to find a way to get of this roller coaster.

It's The Gremlin. My life feels so out of control lately, mostly because it feels like he is completely out of control, although in my heart, I think he's just being 3. In my head, I hope I'm right about that. And sometimes, I admit I wonder if there is something wrong with this kid.

He is mass destruction in an angelic looking package. He is defiant and destructive and probably the most hard headed preschooler I have ever met. Ever. I don't know what to do with him!

I set firm limits, do my best to remember that he is only 3, offer rewards and praise, but not so much that it is harmful, stick firm to time outs, spank on occasion, keep a strict schedule (or try to), send him outside to play, do activities with him inside, limit his sugar intake and repeat myself constantly.

He blatantly refuses to potty train. He will sit on the potty telling me he doesn't have to go, then piss on the floor 30 seconds later. But I know he knows when he has to go. He tears my house up and I barely have time to clean one mess before he's off making another one. He WILL NOT stay in his car seat and sometimes I have to pull over to strap him back in upwards of 4 times in the 20 minute ride to get Damian. He's begun to taunt me too which drives me insane. I have stopped spanking because when I did he would giggle with glee and say "Kick my butt Mommy!" Which would only prove to piss me off and then I am forced to walk away from him lest something terrible take control of my dwindling sanity. The boy went from the irritating two's to the holy hell this kid is going to completely destroy my home and then he is coming after me three's and I'm not sure what to do at this point.

Did I mention he is really aggressive? His answer to angry feelings is to hit, throw things, scream "I hate you" or annihilate his bedroom. And speaking of bedrooms, bed time is a massive joke. It takes me 3 hours, sometimes more, to get him to stay in his bed, stop screaming my name and finally fall into a mass destruction induced sleep. I bet if you set this child loose in Japan, he could do more damage than all of the things that have happened there and he could do it in less time.

I hate that I sound so negative about the boys all the time lately. They are such good kids! The Professor seems to have learned from his grounding and his behavior has gotten much better, but The Gremlin has been difficult at best since he turned 2. Unfortunately, he can reach more stuff, climb more stuff, speak more clearly and does everything in a bigger way at 3.

I know my three year old is not the only one. I am not, cannot possibly be, the only mom struggling with discipline, bedtimes and positive parenting. But I sure feel alone at 11pm when I am STILL trying to get this kid to stay in his bed, or when he blatantly disobeys a direct instruction and then watches me flounder with keeping my patience.

So here I am, blogging it because I have to put it somewhere, right? And hoping that I'm not alone in this. The Gremlin is an amazing kid, with a huge heart and an outstanding ability to master any sport out there. We've done martial arts with him, basketball, football, baseball and swimming and he's got them all mastered. Couple his love for sports with his easily underestimated body strength and this kid might be the next NFL star someday. But in the mean time, I need to find a way to get at least of smidgeon of control inside of these walls, or I'll be checking into a place with softer wall and stronger drugs in no time at all.

The Mood.

2011-03-24T16:20:00.001-04:00

The mood is setting in. I hate it when I get this way. All I want to do is sleep. I'm not aggravated, just depressed and brooding for no good reason at all. It might signify the beginning of "that time" for me, or it might just be something I go through from time to time.

Is this a female thing? Do you ever go through this? The sunniest day or brightest smile couldn't cheer me up today and it's annoying. My son is talking to me and his words are getting lost somewhere between the two of us, and the mother in me is working really hard to bring myself back to listening mode, but it just isn't working today.

I suppose I am entitled to a day of down every now and again, so I'm not worried about being a bad mom or anything. I guess I am just annoyed with myself for not being able to anticipate this mood and avoid it.

Do you ever feel just plain lost? Like you wake up one day and wonder why everyone around you seems so happy and ignorant to your sudden change of mood? And that annoys you too? That no one seems to notice?

This is the mood. When the clouds roll in despite the sunny day and I can't stop it or control. I can just sit here, feeling crappy and wondering why. Ugh. Sorry to be so serious, but I'm in a serious kind of mood today I guess.

Thanks for listening.

Madness...Wait.. Is that thing on?

2011-03-23T17:28:00.001-04:00

There is no limit to the levels of loud in my house. Actually, it extends beyond my house. Let's just say that where ever I am, there are two little boys, both talking loudly and simultaneously, stopping only to yell at the other to shut up or whine that one or the other was talking first. Sometimes I swear I must look white trash with disrespectful kids. I assure you, I am not and they are not. They are just very...um...enthusiastic. Yeah.

This morning, I realized I was joining the noisy madness. I've probably just adjusted to having to have my voice heard above the voices of the boys, which, yeah, they have really. big. mouths. But I digress.

This morning, after taking The Professor to school, I went out front to help my husband while The Gremlin watched television and ate breakfast. The Husband was trying to figure out what is wrong with my Buick and in order to do so, he had to access some kind of panel of wires. In the trunk. This meant he had to climb into the trunk. His entire body was inside. So, The Gremlin comes outside with no shoes or socks on and it was pretty cold this morning, so I was telling him to get back inside.

He just kept saying, "Where Daddy? Where Daddy? Mommy? Where Daddy?" And I kept telling him to get inside so he didn't get sick. Still he continues the incessant questioning about where his Daddy was.

Finally, and very, very loudly, I yelled "Daddy is in the trunk! Now get inside, I've got to finish this and then I'll be in!" Huh. If I had neighbors, they'd have a pretty good reason to be calling 911 right about now, eh?

In other news, I've been censored.

The Husband got The Professor the headset he's been wanting for his PS3. It lets him talk to his friends while he plays the game with them. It's mostly his classmates who seem to have a lot of the same games. Last night, at 8:30, I yelled up to The Professor that it was time to turn the game off. Then I got distracted by the mass destruction of my 3 year old, and forgot. At 9:05, I discovered he was still on the game and went up the stairs bitching.

"Dammit! Did I not say it was time to turn that game OFF! This is what I'm talking about! Responsibility! What the hell.......wait, is that thing on?"

He had that headset on and it was picking my big mouth up and carrying my rant through the headset and into the ears of his little 8 year old friends. Great.

I'll be a paranoid schizophrenic before the kids move out.

Potty Mouth – It’s a problem.

2011-03-21T20:07:00.001-04:00

I have a terrible potty mouth. Horrible. The F-Bomb in my house? Dropped way more often than I care to admit.

The Professor hates it. He nags the shit out of me all the time about cursing. It usually goes something like this:

I drop a whole gallon of milk trying to hold the hand of a squirmy three year old, while telling The Professor that there is no need to scare the shit out passing motorist by running as fast as he can toward the road because I already checked the mail, while the gallon of milk with my pinky and a bag of groceries with the other 4 fingers, while trying to unlock the door. I know. I’m amazing. So anyway, the milk busts open…….all over me, all over my now screaming 3 year old. I have no milk.

“Fuck! Shit! Shit! God Damn It!” I’m irritated and it’s going to get much worse. “Fuck me! We have to go back damn it. I can’t be without fucking milk! I’ll never get The Gremlin the FUCK to sleep without it!”

I know this is really, really, really bad. I KNOW. I just can’t help it.

“MoOooOm! STOP cursing!” The Professor is on a life long crusade to clean up mom’s act. Which is more annoying than it is inspiring because I’m annoyed to begin with and THAT is why I am cursing! And you know what?

My mouth wasn’t this bad until I HAD CHILDREN.

“Okay..okay…sorry. Get in the flippin’ car! C’mon, let’s go. Mommy is going to waste gas and time because I couldn’t hold onto the fucking milk.” Wow. I made it three very short sentences before my mouth betrayed me. Just wow.

So, for the past few weeks, I’ve been reaping the rewards of having a potty mouth.

The Gremlin when he couldn’t get a door open?

“Mom, Me can’t get the huckin’ door open!” So what he for some reason changes the F to an H. The funniest thing about that is that when he tries to say he farted, it comes out “I fucked!” With an F.

The Gremlin after hearing me say “What the fuck?” at an idiot who obviously couldn’t drive and tried to somehow scooch around me on a single lane narrow road at a STOP SIGN?

“What the fuck! Fucky me….fucky mommy…fucky daddy….fucky……” Nice.

And my personal favorite? The Gremlin after doing a back flip he should not have been able to pull off without a bump or a bruise but somehow did so I totally support the following statement, made in awe of himself.

“Oh DAMN mommy. Me did a back flip!!”

I am really trying to stop with the cursing now. See, in the presence of people like, my mother in law, or school officials, I DO control it. The Gremlin does not.

People are starting to give me dirty looks. Just today, while shopping for milk, The Gremlin came to me complaining that The Professor was “being an ahhole!” And my kid……has a very LOUD voice.

I try to be such a good mother. But stopping cursing is a big, fat, backfiring FAIL for me.

Who’s The Bully Now?

2011-03-21T04:19:00.000-04:00

Have you seen this?

I am probably really late posting this. I’m not even sure exactly when this took place. It was mentioned to me by a friend, so I went to check it out. I know it was sometime in the last two weeks or so because this video was uploaded to eBaum’s World 6 days ago.

Let me first say, WOOHOO! A bully finally gets what he deserves! And it looks like that could have easily turned into a tragic broken neck or worse. I am honestly impressed that this kid got back up and I don’t know how he managed to not have any broken bones.

What I do know, is that the smaller child was suspended from school for 21 days and the larger one, 4 days. If you watch, the smaller child hits the larger one about seven time before the kid retaliates. This was based on the fact that the smaller child instigated. What I don’t know, is if the children standing around watching this, or the child filming it, received any consequences. They should have.

On that note, I fell upon an interview with the mother of the bully in the above video. One of the first things she said to the press is that her son got what he deserved. She then expressed that this video was virally spreading across the internet and her child was being demonized. Here’s the thing; I agree with her. I have a son myself who is often the target of bullies, so I just want to be clear here; In no way do I support bullying. However, I pose this question.

Who’s the bully now?

Based solely on my comments at the beginning of this post, I make the cut for being a bully. Sad but true.

This child’s mother is right. The outpouring of support for the *bullyinator is awesome. But it has also turned into a torment the bully session for people around the world and I wonder what kind of message are we sending? I think the child learned from this. I think being pile driven into the sidewalk would teach me a lesson and humiliate me enough where I didn’t need the rest of the world pointing their fingers and laughing at me. Will he not have a hard enough time just walking through the hallways of his own school?

So before you *share the video above with a million people, think about it. He’s a child and children make mistakes. This child learned a lesson. A painful lesson from the looks of it and I think it is safe to say that he has suffered enough.

What if your child was the one in this video? Don’t say it couldn’t be. One tried and true fact about parenting, is kids are unpredictable and poor behavior often surprises us when we know we have taught them better. So, What if it was your child? Would you be whooping and sharing this video with half the country? Would you make snide comments, ridicule and make fun of the bully if your child was the bully?

The World English Dictionary defines a bully as a person who hurts, persecutes, or intimidates weaker people. By glorifying this issue, are we not doing some bullying ourselves?

All I can say, is please think twice before you comment with snide remarks or share this video with your plethora of FaceBook friends. He’s a child. And if we continue to allow this issue to be glorified in such a manner, we are only teaching our children that bullying is okay if we deem that the person deserves it or got what they deserved.

*Bullyinator – A Person who exterminates bullies. I made that up LOL

*I wanted everyone to know what I was talking about, so I posted the video. I will be taking it down in a few days. I also shared it to my facebook, an act I regret now, when I watched it for the first time. It was only after watching the mom talk about her son and this video that I came to realize that we were not behaving much better than this bully behaved.

Writers Workshop – 10 Things My Mother Taught Me.

2011-03-20T19:03:00.002-04:00

My mother and I have a sketchy relationship at best.   My family was broken and dysfunctional for so long, I don’t remember a time when I could say there was any normalcy at all. There are abuse reports back as far as when I was about 8 months old. How sad is that?

I can’t name 10 things I learned from my mother. At least I can’t do it in list form. I hope Kat doesn’t mind if I alter this assignment just a little bit. I chose this prompt because I did learn things from my mother. I just don’t know how to list them.

I think the most potent thing I learned from my mother, is who I didn’t want to be.

It bothers me to say that out loud, because I know it would hurt her, and while I don’t speak to her and don’t wish too, nor do I wish to hurt her. By the time I was 12 years old, I had a running list of things NOT to do or say to your children. That doesn’t mean that I have never made some of those mistakes with my own children; it simply made it easier to recognize them and change them though not always with ease. And for that, I am grateful to her. Unhealthy habits die hard, and without a troubled childhood, I’d not have that knowledge so early in life.

I think I also learned to change for myself and be myself instead of trying to change for others or be who they wanted me to be. I remember when I was 6 or 7, wondering why my mother always seemed so angry with us. By the time I was 12 years old, I had become what I believed she wanted/needed me to be. I had become a grown-up, trying to guide a raise a grown up and her children because it seemed to make her proud of me. I wanted her to be someone she wasn’t. And in the process, I didn’t figure out who I really was until I was late in my 20’s. And oh boy, did I ever screw up, multiple times, trying to figure it out. It seemed like nearly everyone who knew me, knew who they wanted me to be. No one knew who I really was. Now I just accept people for who they are and I stick with who I am. I am still to this day learning about me, but I no longer feel like I am behind in the race. Change is constant, so I will always be learning something new about myself. But now, I expect that those who love me will love me for who I am or at least accept that this is who I am and I do my best to always do the same.

But the two most important thing I learned from my mother were compassion and strength. It took a great deal of both to live with my mother and a great deal of both to get through the fighting between my mother and father after they separated. It took strength to live in some of the places we lived. It took strength to watch my mother lose herself in depression, or try to numb the depression with even worse things.   I wish I could sit here and put the things that our childhood entailed into this post and walk away from it, but it seems unfair to the other children who went through it, and even to my mother, who I truly believe never actually intended for this. I’ll just say that it took the strength of me, and the strength of my siblings to go through what we did. And that strength I learned from my childhood got me through some tough times later that might have otherwise destroyed me.

Just as I am sure it takes strength to be constantly depressed, constantly troubled. This is where I learned compassion.

I may not completely forgive my mother. Many other issues prevent that for me right now, though I don’t walk around with hatred in my heart either. But I do have compassion. She had a horrible childhood as well. While it isn’t an excuse, it does make me sad for her. Not sorry for her….just sad. It makes me sad for her that she didn’t have what she was later unable to give us, in her own childhood. It makes me sad to know that she spent so much of her life feeling depressed and weighed down by both her own childhood and the consequences it had on her own heart and mind. It makes me sad to realize that my mother was always unhappy, depressed, trying to escape demons she never should have had to begin with.   And because of that, I accept that she might never change and we will never be close. Hell, we probably won’t ever speak again, but I don’t hate her (though I say I do sometimes, I realize while I write this that I don’t). I simply want to break the cycle and I choose healthy.

Despite my many mistakes getting to this state of my life, I have my mother to thank for where I am today. And myself of course, in a much more positive, pat on the back, buy me a beer kind of way :0).

Thanks for listening. This is a part of Mama Kats Writers Workshop!

"This is Who I Am" Issue 1 – NYC – Part 3

2011-03-20T07:23:00.000-04:00

This post is a part of a series I run here. Every Sunday (I missed a few Sunday's and I am so sorry!) I write about something I experienced that influenced, changed or inspired the person I am today. This post is about my experience being homeless in NYC as a teenager. It's been longer than I expected it to be so you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. If you enjoy this, please leave a comment to let me know. If you don't enjoy, well, too bad. :0)

______________________________________________________

..........I had a choice to make. Go with the boys who had earlier seemed menacing, or stay in my current predicament, shoved up against a wall by an angry man who was bigger and stronger than I.

I slipped under the man's arm and fell into step with the boy. I could feel the guys eyes on me as I walked away. My heart was pounding so loud, I was sure this kid could hear it. I'd gotten lucky. Or had I?

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Should I thank him? I didn't know what to say or do. When I finally did open my mouth to say something, I said "Well, thank you for your help." and began to walk away. Not what I intended, but then what did I intend?

I was walking quickly when the boy caught up and fell in beside me. "My name is Mike...." I said nothing. I kept walking. "And yours is?" he said, sounding perhaps amused and a bit breathless. I slowed down a little bit, not because he was out of breath, but because I had no where to go. I needed to think. "Hello? I'm talking to you Chic." Now he just sounded annoyed.

I stopped my near jog, turned toward him and said "Chic is fine." The boy I now knew as Mike, if that was actually his name, smirked. Someone brushed between us, and a cop car flew down the street with it's lights and sirens blaring. I stared after it for a minute, wondering where the car was going. My thoughts were interrupted by a bemused "You want me to call you Chic? Whatever, fine with me honey. C'mon, I know a place to go where we can relax. You're hungry aren't you?"

Oh no. Relax? No way. Relax was probably code for rape and torture. Or maybe it was code for an introduction into prostitution. I've heard that women get sold here in NYC. Now's as good a time to panic as any. I wasn't relaxing with this kid anywhere! Alarms in my head were screaming. My heart started to race again. A million scenarios were running through my head while I struggled to find a response that didn't come off as hostile. "Look. I thanked you for your help. I am not having sex with you, so you can forget about that and I am not going anywhere with you. Why don't you go gets your boys and do whatever it is you do. Maybe you could go corrupt a few more 9 year olds. And I am not taking food from you because I am not going to owe you anything!" So much for not being hostile. I started walking again, this time the boy just stood there, where I left him.

I was so hungry. I sat down on a bench. Mike stood at quite a distance, staring at me. Why won't he just GO. I watched him walk slowly toward me, a grin settling on his face as he sat on the bench close to me. Too close. I shifted away a little bit.

"You owed me way back there.." he gestured toward the way we'd come up. "But I'm not trying to collect." He had a nice smile. He didn't seem to wish me harm. I was so hungry. "Where are we going?" I asked with some reluctance in my voice.

We ended up at a building that looked abandoned. I stopped at the doorway, not really wanting to enter the dark, debris littered hallways. Did all of this city smell like urine? It smelled so bad, I thought for a minute that I might catch some kind of urine disease just for having breathed so much of it in. Mike continued in, stopping on the steps with a hint of annoyance. Looking back, he waited for me to follow him.

There were so many stairs. Mini-flights of stairs. Eight steps, then a landing, then eight more steps. It seemed like it took forever to get to the top floor of the building. We stepped over trash and people sleeping, passed groups of people smoking and laughing or whispering in darkened corners of the hallways. Mike seemed unaffected by it all. He kept taking my arm and leading me up another flight of stairs whenever I stopped to stare at some bum smoking crack or the whore in the room with no door, and the foul creature I could only assume was her business.

I guess his boys had been there a while, because when he swung the door open, an assault of cuss words and "what took you so long?" inquiries echoed off the walls of the room. There were some skuzzy looking mattresses arranged through out the room, and a big metal barrel filled with garbage in the center of the room. A pizza box with half a pizza pie in it balanced precariously on the window sill of an open window and my hunger was again brought to the front of my mind. Mike sat down near the window and I leaned against the window sill. I wasn't feeling good. I was hungry and tired and despite the open window, the urine smell was making my stomach churn. I wondered if you could throw up without having anything to throw up. It had been about 48 hours since I'd eaten anything other than a piece of pound cake.

Mike handed me a lit blunt. I wondered if these boys were homeless or just enjoying this little spot to do drugs. I shook my head to tell him that I didn't want it. I had smoked before but I didn't want to be high here and I thought I might get sick if I smoked anyway. But Mike still held it out to me, the look on his face telling me that no was the wrong answer. So I took it from him and attempted to take the smallest possible hit off it. This is where I learned that a blunt is so much worse than a bowl. I choked and gasped for air. The boys erupted into fits of laughter, and one of them handed me their 40 to drink. I took a quick drink. Now I was high, tired, hungry and feeling dizzy. I leaned against the wall and lowered myself to the floor. The smell of urine was so much stronger down here and the air was heavier but I couldn't stand up anymore.

Everyone got up and took pizza. I didn't. It felt wrong. I didn't want to eat their food. Besides, I was weak and felt sick. Mike handed me a slice, and told the youngest, Remy, to get me water. I ate so fast, the boys just stared at me. When I finished eating I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.

One of the group yelled from another room. I hadn't even realized it, but this must be an entire apartment. Abandoned. Is it even legal to be here? Won't the cops come and make us leave? Deep in thought, my hunger at least partially satisfied and my exhaustion starting to take over, I didn't notice that Mike had left the room. It was just me, sitting here.....maybe just a quick rest. I laid down, resting my head on my arm. A wave of dizziness erased my disgust about what may have been on the filthy, water damaged.

I must have been sound asleep within seconds. The last thought I remember having was a concern that I heard the rats in NYC were huge and aggressive.

*To be continued....

*A Note To My Readers – I know how long this is. I hate continuing it again. Please believe that there is a good reason I feel it necessary to talk in such detail about this experience – this group of boys. I want you to know where my head was. I want you to know what my thoughts were and even what the boys personalities and lives were like. Because if you know that, it will lend significance to where my head is and the conclusion I come to at the end of it. Bear with me please.

Motherhood – Can FEMA clean this up?

2011-03-19T20:56:00.001-04:00

FEMA should cover motherhood. At least for the first 5 years. When you think about it, motherhood really is a "natural" thing right? So when you couple that with the disaster that becomes your home as they grow, can we not classify motherhood as a natural disaster?

The Gremlin is in the doorway of his room right now, screaming his bloody head off. "Mom, me not gonn do again! Mom, mom, I sorwy!" A claim I have been hearing from him for 3 days with no real meaning behind the words.

He never stops. He never slows down. He never seems to learn. He does whatever misdeed he is going to do, cries that he is sorry while doing his time-out, comes out and does the same thing again.

Between my two boys, this house, my car, my sanity, my confidence and even at some points, my marriage have been traumatized and devastated. Where is my disaster relief?

I propose that FEMA extend it's coverage of disasters to include motherhood. Have your kids destroyed all your nice furniture? Call FEMA. Got more broken windows than whole ones? Call FEMA. Is all your clothing stained with food, Kool-aid, or bodily fluids? Call FEMA. Is your bathroom suffering water damage due to the endless flooding your children subject it to? Call FEMA.

Parents should be able to purchase "parenthood insurance". Pay a premium and if your children draw on your walls or break a window or destroy your carpet, you can use your insurance to pay for damages.

Of course, there'd be a waiting list for FEMA and we might have to live in a trailer for a few years while the damages are repaired. Not to mention the massive amounts of paperwork we'd have to fill out. And I am sure FEMA would take some negative press when dealing with the larger disasters like forks in the microwave, permanent marker on the hardwood floors, and plumbing "issues" but they shouldn't mind that much. They can just claim to be doing the best they can.

All in favor of FEMA covering motherhood?

School Crisis – Budget Cuts – Let's Help!

2011-03-19T05:38:00.000-04:00

I'm here today asking for your help. I've done similar things here before and I never get much of a response. If you don't want to reach out for me, do it for your children. Please.

Across the country, our schools are in crisis. And if you think it's bad this year, brace yourself because in some states, cities and towns it will be much worse next year. Much worse. Some cities, where schools are being shut down due to budgeting crisis, will see an increase of possibly 10 kids per classroom. That means some classrooms could exceed 30 children per room!

Here in Norfolk, it costs approximately $10,000 dollars a year to educate one child. Three schools in Norfolk are being shut down due to the crisis. This means that here in Norfolk, schools in the surrounding area may see as many as 33 children in their classrooms. I was recently told that Norfolk is cutting 12 of their gifted resource teachers. I cannot confirm that, but it will certainly worsen the schooling situation here in Norfolk if it is true. I can confirm that proposals cutting 161 staff positions have been made. That means literacy specialists and resource teachers alike are in danger of losing their jobs. But it gets worse. I feel for those that are facing job loss, but the real crisis presents itself when our children lose those teachers. The real crisis presents itself when our children have difficulty learning in an over-crowded classroom.

In many private schools, parents are expected to volunteer. Parents monitor lunch rooms, clean the floors and run the office or the library. Why do we not do that in our public schools? How much money could we save if we mopped floors ourselves, or supervised lunch rooms or acted as a homeroom moms? While I am admittedly suggesting here, that classroom aids and janitors could perhaps be eliminated, isn't that better than eliminating the programs our children need or enjoy? Isn't it better than our children being without books, or resource teachers? Some private schools raise funds by running a thrift store. Parents donate their children's toys and clothing, and even their own. The stuff is sold and the funds go to the school. Fathers offer up services when repairs need to be made and families that are able make large donations of supplies or even money sometimes.

Our schools need us. Our children need us. If parents pull together, we can make next year a better year than it looks liked it will be. If you don't live here in Virginia, what are your schools like? Are you facing budget cuts? Are schools being shut down? Are teachers losing their jobs? If you are facing a crisis in your local schools, get up and do something about it, please. We don't have a perfect educational system to begin with. Can you imagine it getting worse?

If you are here in Norfolk and interested in getting together to discuss things that can be done to help our local schools, please say so in the comments, or email me @ akazookeeper@gmail.com. Let's band together and make the changes that our schools need and our children deserve!

Girlfriends: Good for the soul.

2011-03-18T16:10:00.001-04:00

It's been a long time since I hung out with anyone. I'm just too busy and I don't have a lot of friends that I enjoy hanging out with.

Sunday night, after everyone left from The Professor's birthday party, one very dear friend of mine stayed behind. Her son went upstairs to play with my son and we sat at the table talking. Occasionally, one of us would assert that it was getting late and the kids had school tomorrow.

Eventually, we stopped thinking about the time and got all caught up in at least a hundred different conversations. We broke open a bottle of wine and relaxed. The kids went to bed very late on a school night, but I don't do it very often so it's okay.

We laughed and reminisced about past times. We both realized that we've know each other since The Professor and her son were in Kindergarten and yet we haven't hung out very often. I wonder why, because I was really enjoying the conversation and company.

Girlfriends are good for the soul, aren't they? I am going to make the effort to do that more than once every three years.

What about you? How often do you hang out and relax with girlfriends? Do you prefer to go out, or stay home and let the kids play? Do you think that friends are essential to making it through motherhood alive? I think I do.

A few hours with a bottle of wine and a good friend really changed my perspective and renewed my patience. Until The Professor sapped ALL my patience on Monday but that was a bad experience and I don't want to talk about it (you can read the post I don't want to talk about here).

And to top it off and make a rough week much nicer, it is 80 degrees here today! I broke out the tank top, rolled the windows in the car down and turned the stereo up while i was going to get The Professor.

Yet another thing that might well be good for the soul. Sunshine.

Karma. This isn't funny anymore.

2011-03-18T13:35:00.001-04:00

I've been told that children are God's punishment for having sex.

Okay, seriously? The sex wasn't even that great! We were young. It was pretty quick. Probably lasted about 20 minutes, and somehow is managing to punish me for the rest of my life. Of course, he's a stud now, and can go for hours ;0) (just in case you're reading this baby).

I personally don't believe the whole "God's Punishment" thing. I personally believe that children are adorable bundles of Karma. Well, I always used to believe that.

Now? I cannot think of a single thing I did as a child that was bad enough to warrant motherhood.

But then, I've mentioned in previous posts that Karma and I don't exactly get along. We're both stubborn and temperamental and we have a sort of Love/Hate thing going on.

If my kids are my Karma, then we have progressed well past the whole Love/Hate relationship thing this week. I think Karma is trying to kill me. No, really. She's a nasty bitch sometimes and she seems to have some kind of hard on for me.

I've been late every single day this week. I told ya'll I would be, didn't I? Stupid time change. I hate the time change. The Professor really dislikes me this week and I'm not really feeling him right now either. The Gremlin is bent on watching mommy have recurring coronaries watching him tempt fate with stunts most three year olds would NOT dare to try and I might need something stronger than wine if this keeps up.

I am not looking forward to the weekend.

The Guilty Parent.

2011-03-17T18:14:00.001-04:00

So last night was a rough night for me. If you don't know what I am talking about, you can read about it here. And it got me thinking (what since I've been riddled with guilt for two days).

What makes a good mother? Is it what kind of meals she cooks? Is it the condition of her home? Is it the way her children behave or how she handles the situations when they aren't behaving? Is it the brand of clothing her children wear or the time her children go to bed? Is it what her children grow up to become? How do we, as a society judge a mother?

And I have come to some harsh truths. The fact is, motherhood is judged wrongly by many of the above things. And many times, the person judging us, is, well, it's us ladies. And that is what makes us good mothers, I think.

Mom's that have more than a fleeting moment of guilt. Mom's that take the time to examine themselves and make those judgments. Mom's that lay awake at night after a particular challenging day with the kids, wondering not how to curb a child's poor behavior, but how she can handle the behavior better next time. Mom's that are willing to ask for advice, open enough to accept it and honest enough to admit when they are wrong.

I was really upset to see The Professor flinch away from me. I wondered how in the world the child could ever truly believe that I would hurt him (although I gotta admit, the somewhat crazy look in my eyes might have inspired fear in the bravest of men). It really bothered me that I had allowed my son to believe that I would EVER strike him in anger. And in the face? I would never. Still it really bothered me that he thought I would.

But then it hit me. All of a sudden. It was a good thing. It was good that for even a fleeting second my son thought I would truly strike him. I means that I am human. It makes me human to him. It presented the opportunity to show that even mom messes up sometimes and presented the lesson of handling your less than stellar moments with dignity. With grace and with a degree of humility. The Professor needed to know that you can only push a person so far. Anger is not a bad thing. It is a natural thing and as long as it does not develop into child abuse or self-destructive behavior, it is a healthy thing.

We judge ourselves. I judge myself. But I think it makes me a good mother to do so. Because as long as I am looking at my actions as a mother, I care enough about my children to manage my own behavior, rather than simply managing theirs. And as long as I am The Guilty Parent, I know that I am far from perfect and I obviously care enough to feel guilty and change things.

I really felt like a horrid mother the other day. It wasn't really my actions that made me feel that way. It was the fact that my son displayed a lack of faith in me when he flinched away from me. Or I felt like he did. But I was VERY angry and he knew it. Had he not flinched, would I have caught myself before I struck him? Most likely, yes. But some wouldn't have stopped themselves. And that would not make them a bad mother, though it would perhaps be a mistake they would sit up feeling guilty about later. And as long as that guilt inspired a change of parenting, then I guess that guilt makes the difference between a mother that makes a mistake and plain bad mother.

My house is not always clean. Dinner usually sucks and my kids don't know how to act too often for my own taste. And bedtime in my house? Nanny 911 would have a field day with me! But I work every day to be a better parent and when I make mistakes, my guilt inspires me to make a change.

I guess, the conclusion I have come to is being The Guilty Parent is being The good parent. Does that make sense?

WARNING: RAW POST with CURSING

2011-03-16T23:17:00.001-04:00

Oh my God. What I am about to write may upset some. If I don't put it somewhere, I am going to put it where it is directed and if I do that, I'll be a bad, bad person.

So many people comment on my patience. They say I have a lot of patience. They say they admire the challenges I deal with when it comes to the boys. They say that the things I feel sometimes are normal for motherhood.

If this is normal, I'd rather be fucking insane. I feel insane. I feel irrational. I don't know if I want to yell or cry or punish or walk away or just fucking pretend that everything is great and hope that things improve. But none of those things is an acceptable option and tonight I am furious, fed up and OUT of patience.

The Professor has pushed some buttons that just can't be diffused with apologies and I am so fucking fed up. Yesterday, TWO DAYS after his birthday – during which he got a shit load of presents from his friends, and a good chunk of money spent on a party for HIM -- I had to go food shopping. Food shopping is always hard with the boys because like most kids, they want everything, but this time, I didn't have a list and I really needed to think to recall the contents of my cabinets. But The Professor whined about having to go, then whined when he was told that my budget didn't include pickles or pistachio pudding, then whined when I told him to stop asking for things. Then, to my disbelief, he engaged The Gremlin in a RACE in the aisles of the store causing a rolling shelf to roll across the floor. So I took him to the front of the store, and sat him in a chair and told him to stay there until I finished my shopping.

And The Gremlin was wired and fired so of course, as soon as the racing begins, so does the aggressive sensory seeking behavior. So he hit The Professor. I would have dealt with The Gremlin if The Professor hadn't lost his god forsaken mind, but what do you think The Professor did as soon as his brother touched him? Oh yes, he starts screaming like someone chopped his fucking ear off. IN FRONT OF A TON OF PEOPLE. So I walked away from him. And I forgot all about the misdeed of my youngest because my oldest was acting so out of control and it seriously just slipped my mind.

I finished up my shopping and gravely checked out, utterly humiliated with the things that had just taken place. So I went to bag up my groceries and The Professor is LAYING on the floor where he was supposed to be sitting, repeating over and over again that it wasn't fair that he had to sit when his brother hit him and wasn't sitting. The Gremlin is 3 years old and cannot be left in the front of the store solo. Besides, my 9 year old should certainly know better than to behave the way he had, spur racing in the store or mouth back at me. So yes, he sat and The Gremlin didn't. I truly feel that The Professor instigates and encourages out of control behavior from The Gremlin, then sits back and enjoys the chaotic results and I am so fucking tired of it! I love him, I do, but is it wrong to expect better behavior from him than from a 3 year old?!?!?

So anyway, he runs his mouth while I am packing up about how mean and horrible I am. Old people are watching thinking he is a spoiled brat – which by the way, he was acting like, quite efficiently – and I finally got sick of it. I told him to get up 3 times and when he finally got up he looked at me and said "THERE. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?"

So I raised my hand to him. And he screamed "Your ABUSING me! Your going to ABUSE me!!"

Patience gone.

I said nothing. I packed up, calmly informed him that it was time to leave and came home. I told him to do his homework and he ran his fucking mouth. I told him to eat his dinner and he ran his fucking mouth. So I revoked his speaking privileges and all electronic entertainment and sent him to bed 2 hours early.

The boy is lucky he didn't find out what abuse was.

Then today, I go on this field trip with his class as he has been begging me to do, I join his class after the field trip for some fun in the classroom, and then he comes home with me. All I asked him to do was clean his fucking room and the chaos ensues. He doesn't clean his room, can't seem to manage to put his laundry in the hamper and when I caught him playing instead of cleaning and comment that I am not stupid when he tries to lie to me, he says "Yes. You are stupid."

Electronic entertainment, fun, joy, happiness, speech privileges – GONE.

And he runs his mouth some more. So I take it for another day. And he runs his mouth some more while screaming like a little girl. Gone for another day. This continued for at least 2 hours. I am exhausted and furious and I swear to all I know and love, this child is cruising for it.

What does this kid want from me? He only has FUCKING EVERYTHING. He doesn't lack my time, my energy, my cash. He isn't ever hungry or cold or unclothed! I feel like when I am nice to him, he shits on me! But when I stay hard and Hitler like, he is miserable. There simply isn't any middle ground here. Something as simple as letting him watch 30 minutes of television is an invitation for him to act the fuck up when that 30 minutes is up. Everything I do has to be so carefully thought out and planned because I have to be ready for him to stomp all over any stone of kindness I lay down.

And his baby brother follows his example. Oh shit. So I am being tagged teamed by two extremely smart children and baited into arguing and fighting and yelling and threatening and finally, raising my hand to my child, which in this case was wrong, because he thought I was going to hit him in the face, which I would never do but the point is, he thought I was going to. Should he have believed I wouldn't? Is it a bad sign that my kid cowered like I was going to actually hit him when I gestured, or is it just a dramatic 9 year old thing?

Two days with Mr. Mouth and I've had enough. He lost everything tonight because he HAD to have the last word. HAD TO. He couldn't stop. But I doubt he'll learn a thing from it. He never seems to. He just does his bid and is good until the next time he decides I am being unfair or unjust or not giving enough or until he needs a friggin' punching bag.

THIS is why some animals eat their fucking young. I am so fucking pissed off. Ugh. Is it wrong to not like my child right now? Would you be as angry and frustrated as I am right now?

Japan, You Rock!

2011-03-15T12:31:00.001-04:00

Please retweet this. Face Book it, Digg it, Email it!

I was checking the news the other day when I fell upon a picture of a man in Japan. He was standing with a smile on his face, rubble behind him and a sign in his hands. Do you know what that sign said?

It said "Thank you for your prayers!"

Really? In a time of grief, tragedy, upheaval and chaos, this man took the time and energy to thank us for our prayers. I was touched by it.

The Earthquake that devastated Japan has now been upgraded to a magnitude 9. They were then further ravaged by a Tsunami. And, as if that wasn't enough, several of their nuclear facilities took serious damage and radiation is now a problem too.

And I have a new level of respect for the Japanese people. As a community, they are simply amazing. They have pulled together.

They are not sitting in shelters waiting for their government to tell them what to do to help. Citizens of Japan are out in the rubble, cleaning – rebuilding. They are carrying their neighbors. They are thanking us for our prayers!

These people ROCK! With all they are going through right now, I wouldn't blame them one bit if they put their heads in their hands and cried. But that isn't what I am seeing on the news. What I see on the news is a country united. A country full of people that truly love each other and their country. People willing to get their hands dirty in order to get their lives back. People who lost loved ones, homes, belongings and even their entire towns, helpig others rebuild what they have lost.

In the midst of continuous crisis, the Japanese people remain calm and steady. As things continue to go wrong, they continue to stay calm, follow their governments instructions and strive to rebuild and heal.

I am truly impressed with their strength and their resolve. I am touched that they have communicated so well with concerned people around the world. I am stunned with the calm faces in the wake of such devastation and tragedy.

Japan, you ROCK! You are truly a good example of community and togetherness. You will rebuild. You will pull through this. Because you are a country of amazing people with big hearts and strong will! I proudly send my support, condolences, prayers and hearty handshakes your way.

Spring Forward – Happy Late for Everything Week!

2011-03-15T09:05:00.000-04:00

I hate this time of year.

Setting the clocks forward an hour? Why? Why, Why, Why???

I am going to be late for everything this week. It always happens to me.

And this morning, guess what? Yup! I woke up at 8:20. About an hour later than I need to be up to get The Professor to school. And the boy slows down when he knows we're late. I should have lied to him. I should have told him that school was cancelled today and we were going to get ice cream. He would have been dressed and ready to go in 5 minutes.

But because he was going to school and because I was rushing him, he was slow. He had to poop. He needed a drink. His stomach was upset. He was tired. He had to pee. He forgot his glasses. He didn't know where his glasses were. Oh My God. I should have told him we were going out for ice cream. Next time, I will.

I really, really hate Spring Forward time. Who invented this? They should be shot. Wouldn't it be ironic if they were? Being as I have no idea who the person is or if they are still alive.

The Almost Disastrous Birthday

2011-03-14T20:49:00.001-04:00

Sorry about my absence recently. I have spent last week running between meetings, preparing for birthday parties and stressing terribly over everything.

I know I missed doing my "This is Who I Am" series. To those who have expressed wanting to hear the rest of my NYC story, I promise I will post it this week. Last week it was just too much.

The Professor turned 9 on Sunday. I can't believe how fast my baby is growing up. He was given a choice this year about his birthday celebration. He could have a sleep over with a friend or two and have a small birthday party on Sunday, or he could have a big party with decorations and a piñata and have his friends over on the day of the party. He chose to have a sleep-over. What was I thinking?

It probably would have been a wiser choice to let him have his sleepover on Friday rather than on Saturday, the day before the party. I forgot that since he didn't want me to make him my traditional custom cake *sniff sniff*, I had to pick up his cake at Carvel. He wanted an ice cream cake. I also had to get paper plates and cups, snacks, drinks and birthday presents. And with the stupid time change (more on that later this week)I already knew I was going to have trouble Sunday morning. Plus, even though I cleaned all week in preparation, some things just have to be done on the day of the party, like sweeping and mopping and re-cleaning the Penis Germ infested bathroom.

So I got started at around 11 am Sunday morning, trying to get the kids dressed and ready to go. Of course The Professor and his friend got sick of each other and started bickering right about that time, so I had to spend 30 minutes playing referee/mediator. Now it's noon and they still haven't even eaten breakfast so I whip up some French Toast (The Professor's favorite breakfast). At 12:30 I was ready to admit that I was in too deep. My husband had to work Sunday and could not get away to come help out so I called up one of the guests that were coming and asked them to come early to help me out. Yes. I am THAT rude. Whatever. Anyway, she was a friend of mine as well as a guest so she didn't mind.

So she shows up around 1pm. At 1:30, I leave. The party starts at 3. My friend stayed with The Professor and his friend and I took The Gremlin with me to spare my house mass destruction. I go to the store to get all the snacks and drinks, stop to get gas, get stuck in massive traffic while going to get the cake and I head home when I realize that I forgot to stop and get the birthday gifts! Oh my god. Seriously?

I glance at my watch and it is 2:49. Shit. Shit. Shit. I contemplate trying to pull it off, but in this traffic with a 3 year old, I KNOW I am not going to make it. So I call my house and tell my friend that I am on my way but I am unable to stop and get his birthday present because I don't have time and I cannot leave her to greet guests she doesn't even know in a house that isn't hers. I ask her if she will go get his presents if I tell her what I was getting and give her money and because she is an amazing friend, she says yes.

I show up at almost exactly 3pm to a house that hadn't yet received guests, thankfully. Now I am scrambling to put the cake away, throw some balloons around on the floor (which is exactly what decorating entails in my house) and breathlessly answer the door as the first guest arrives.

The party turned out fine. The Professor had a blast and more guests than I remember inviting. There were 8 children and 9 adults in my house. Naturally, The Professor's room looks like a disaster scene, but that I expected.

My baby is 9 years old. Geesh. When did that happen?

I can…but it isn’t going to help.

2011-03-11T21:24:00.001-05:00

I had a lot of things planned for blog posts this week. But it’s been such a long week full of headaches and stress. So today, I had planned on coming here and blogging my heart out – laughter, tears and frustrations. I wanted to say how amazing The Sits Girls are. I wanted to thank all of the amazing SITS members who came by and commented on my blog during the comment hour I missed on Wednesday. I wanted to talk about The Professor, who turns 9 on Sunday and I wanted to tell you all about the call I received from the Superintendant of schools and my recent meeting with The Professor’s new school. But it will all have to wait.

It is with great fear, worry and sadness, that I am compelled to talk about the recent devastation in Japan, and in fact, several other parts of the world, including our United States. Most, if not all of you have heard by now that Japan was hit by a 8.9 Earthquake, which triggered a Tsunami, leaking nuclear facilities, volcanic eruption in other countries, and even some devastation on the California coast. It is the largest earth quake to hit Japan ever in recorded history. And not far away from the largest ever recorded earthquake which registered 9.5 in Chile in 1960. Hundreds, both foreigners and United States citizens, have died, hundreds are missing and thousands are displaced.

I admit it. I try to be a good person, but most of the time, I don’t actually pay a lot of mind to things like this. Why? Because it is easy and probably less scary to believe that it won’t happen on such a large scale here. But today, we came dangerously close and it seems that this is happening more and more often. You’re probably thinking, “Oh, so your blogging it because it could have happened to us?”

No. I am blogging it because there is too much we cannot do to help and it bugs the shit out of me. Because no matter how much money we send, how many troops or how many electronic condolences we send, it won’t change a damned thing. Those poor people are without homes, without loved ones, and some are probably without hope. People as close as the West coast have suffered this devastating event and there is nothing I can do. Nothing but worry. And pray to a God I don’t even know if I believe in. And try not to let panic replace my typically casual attitude about natural disasters because it seems in the recent years, mother nature is pissed off and sooner or later, she’s going to hit closer to home.

And people sending money or condolences isn’t going to make us feel any better. It isn’t going to miraculously raise lost loved ones or heal the broken hearts and homes that this kind of devastation leaves behind. I am blogging it because I feel helpless and even, hopeless. Hopeless because I suddenly imagined myself in the shoes of those who lived through this, those trying to live through not only the loss of their homes, but the loss of their loved ones and I realized that nothing I can do can make the loss of so many human lives any better. No words of comfort will give those people back what they have lost.

Yet, what else can I do? I can do nothing but keep all those affected in my heart. And they are. But it isn’t enough for me. It’s stuff like this, natural disasters on such large scales, that scare me so much more than any man made disaster could. What can you do to help the people all over the world who have been, and are being, affected by this? Do you feel confident that your prayers make a difference? If you aren’t religious, do you feel that sending your thoughts, or money is going to make a difference? If it was you and yours, do you think it would change anything?

I sound angry, I know. The thing is, I’m not angry. I’m just frustrated to be unable to do anything substantial to make this any easier or more comforting for all the people who are hurting tonight. How do you cope with this kind of thing? Does it bother you like this? Is the seemingly unpredictable and consistently severe weather events that have taken place across the globe in recent years scaring you?

What does it mean?

2011-03-08T14:18:00.001-05:00

Last night I told The Professor that he couldn’t “Have his cake and eat it too.”

And predictably, he wanted to know why. “That’s kind of dumb mom. Why wouldn’t I eat cake if I had it?”

GREAT fucking question.

What the hell is the point of having cake if you can’t eat it? The only thing that pisses me off more than hearing myself use sayings that don’t make any sense, is having my children point out to me that it doesn’t make sense.

So I embarked on a mission last night, to find out where this “proverb” came from and what the hell it means, because I refuse to let my soon-to-be 9 year old thinking his mama has no clue what the phrases she uses mean. So what if I didn’t! He didn’t have to know that!

As it turns out, the phrase DOES actually make sense if you use it properly. The correct usage of this phrase is actually reversed. So instead of having your cake and eating it too, it is actually eat your cake and have it too.

I found this on an insurance site which I am linking to because I am borrowing their information. I have also checked other sources with the same results.

(1) The phrase’s earliest recording is from 1546 as “wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?” (John Heywood’s ‘A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue’)[1] alluding to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards; the modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1812.

Paul Brians, Professor of English at Washington State University, points out that perhaps a more logical or easier to understand version of this saying is: “You can’t eat your cake and have it too”. Professor Brians writes that a common source of confusion about this idiom stems from the verb to have which in this case indicates that once eaten, possession of the cake is no longer possible. See “Common Errors in English: Eat Cake”. Washington State University. http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/eatcake.html.

So there you have it folks. It basically means that once you eat it, it’s gone. Basically with many, many variations and uses.

I feel better now.

Log Cabins Mom!

2011-03-07T18:43:00.001-05:00

Isn’t it funny how no matter how much you give your kids, they always manage to make you feel guilty for not giving them more?

The Professor wants desperately to go to summer camp. Now, I don’t want to tell ya’ll we can’t afford it. We can’t but if his life depended on it, we would find a way. To me, that means we could afford it if we had to. But we don’t, so we really can’t swing it. And I worry about him at summer camp. Right now in school he is with like minded peers. In camp, it won’t be like that and he really doesn’t get on very well with children that act consistently like children.

I looked up camps that he would be interested in. Science camps, dinosaur camps and even a camp for gifted kids that allows them to be around their peers and be active. They all look awesome, but so is their price tag! And I could send him to a regular camp. But it wouldn’t cost me any less. So I told The Professor that I didn’t think it was going to happen this year. Realistic. I am being realistic. Realistically, it would hurt us to spend money like that on a two week camp. And we do not qualify for financial aid.

Tonight, he was on the phone with a friend of his from school when I guess his friend told him that he would be in camp this summer. Of course, the word camp comes up in a conversation, and The Professor suddenly finds a way to be talking to him loudly, in the same room as me, using key words in his statements like he needs to get into Mommy Google’s index. And it worked. I was listening.

All of a sudden, he screeches out “Log cabins? They have log cabins!! Log cabins, mom! I’ve never seen a log cabin before! Maybe when Jacob goes, I could go too! Then we could hang out together!”

And the other child’s parents (who apparently, and unfortunately in this case, listen to their phone conversations) heard this. So then they start telling me when I am talking to them about how neat it would be if we could do that.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. I mean, really? And I know The Professor wasn’t exactly trying to guilt me into it. He was just trying to make it perfectly clear to me that he really, really, really wanted to go and thought that Mom might be more inclined to say yes if he enlisted the help of well-meaning parents. But those well-meaning parents aren’t going to pay for it, ya know?

So The Professor succeeded in making me feel bad once again because I’m not sending him to summer camp. I am not sending him. Too much money and we really don’t have it.

So why do I feel so bad? I don’t know. Probably because this is the first year since he started school 4 years ago, that he has made genuine friends and now he wants to go hang out with them and I am standing in the way. But then again, I mean, the kid has all kinds of cool stuff here at home! We go to all the free music concerts here and to the beach. I take them hiking and his friends are more than welcome to join us anytime they like.

Mostly, it’s because I went to summer camp when I was coming up. It was a unique experience and one of the few good memories I have of my childhood. I loved summer camp and I kind of want the same for him. I conquered many fears in summer camp, met loads of awesome kids and spent the evenings in front of a bonfire roasting marshmallows. Yeah, I do kind of want that for him. I was a Night Owl at Camp Wendy and I will never ever forget the fun we had!

*Sigh* But I am doing the right thing here. The boy simply cannot have everything he wants all the time. Even if my own memory of summer camp makes me nostalgic and wants him to have the experience. I’m not saying never, I am simply saying not this year.

It occurs to me, as I write this, that having children is as expensive as it is because of stuff like this. Because on top of the diapers, formula, toys, clothing, food and random other necessities, as parents, we just want to give our kids all the experiences we had and even some that we didn’t.

He isn’t going to summer camp this year. I’m just sayin’.

I terrified my child! – Tales of a terrible mom.

2011-03-06T13:02:00.002-05:00

I should teach a class titled “How to say all the wrong things at all the right times, to completely terrify your children.” I should definitely receive the Mommy Blunder of The Year award if there is any such thing.

The other night, my 8 year old and I were talking about the difference between bullying and joking online. I was trying to explain to him that it is very difficult to draw a line there because there is no body language cues. You cannot actually tell if a person is joking, nor can you see if the joke recipient knew it was a joke and therefore, some things just shouldn’t be said.

But he wasn’t understanding it. So I started to tell him about a little 12 year old girl named Megan Meier to try to show him how words online could easily cause more harm than you expected. I didn’t mean to say what I did but let’s just cut to the chase. I told my poor 8 year old that someone on face book told Megan that the world would be a better place without her and she killed herself. OMG I am such a fucking moron!

I watched as his face went from smiling and actively listening, to utterly horrified. What was I thinking? Why would I say such a thing? It just slipped out! It’s hard sometimes with The Professor because he is so much older in his thoughts than most kids and sometimes I feel like I am talking to an older child. It’s the curse of having gifted kids. It’s too easy to forget how young they really are.

And he didn’t understand. At least he sort of communicated that much to me in between tears and gulps for air (I did mention that I feel like a terrible mommy, right?). He swore off face book and video games and the internet. He said that it was scary that someone could tell him to do something like that and he would just do it. He thought it was some kind of mind control or something.

Do you feel totally sorry for my little boy right now? I do. I am a terrible mother!

So I spent hours consoling my little boy after terrifying him. Nice. And now, he is trying to wrap his little head around a senseless death that most adults can’t understand. And all because his mother is a moron. Wow.

I swear I didn’t mean too. I wasn’t trying to. I guess I didn’t even think about the words until the were hanging in the silent air and the results of my words were slowly making their way across my little boys face.

What the hell was I thinking?? Have you ever made a mistake like this? Ever said anything to your child that was just, mind-blowingly stupid? Is it fixable?

Yikes. There’s a lesson here. Probably a few of them. I’m not even gonna go there because really, who takes advice from a momma that tells her kid something horrific like this?

I know I am probably going to get some pretty bad comments for this one. It’s okay. I screwed up big time. Comment away people.

Parenting will never be politically correct.

2011-03-05T12:29:00.002-05:00

We are all wrong.

There is simply no politically correct way to raise children. None of us know what we are talking about. Seriously.

No, really. I am being dead serious right now.

The next time you go out, look around. You will inevitably see a parent doing something you perceive as wrong. Maybe it’s the spanking mom, or the free-ager. Maybe you just saw a parent buy their kid something just because the child cried for it. Maybe you see a mom browsing through the store while her children touch everything, and maybe she seems a bit too detached for your comfort.

Parenting is uncomfortable. And not just for the parent doing it, but for everyone around that parent as well. And it is okay to be uncomfortable. Your parents probably talk about your parenting behind your back. They probably think that your child could use just one good spanking or a better schedule or healthier meals. So what.

Parenting is really just a bunch of people with theories and adorable lab rats. Your kids may or may not grow up to be serial killers and no matter what parenting method you used, somebody is going to find a way to blame you for it. Get used to it.

Because we are all just guessing. No matter how secure you are with the method you have chosen, you are guessing. Sure, studies today may show that hitting a child literally removes brain cells or that children need 12 hours of sleep, but tomorrow there will be another study that will say something entirely different.

There is always a study to prove that your method is wrong. There is always a parent who thinks that her kids grew up to be fine adults because of the parenting method that was used, or a parent being criticized for the method he/she chose but let’s face it, it’s more about personality than anything else.

Our children rule us from the moment they enter our world. They are individuals. They have a personality. What works for you and your children may not work for me and my children. I refuse to be ashamed of that. I refuse to choose a method and defend it because there is no correct way to raise children.

My child is different than your child. My parenting method is different than yours. I am okay with that. I have 2 children, and I use different methods for each of them, because as individuals, they need that. And I don’t even use ONE single parenting method!! I pick and choose, guess and worry, succeed and flounder.

Politically correct child-rearing can kiss my ass. I KNOW the reality of it all. There is no one correct way to raise a child. Just a bunch of parents, each of them doing the best they can with the tiny, unpredictable, sometimes explosive personalities they have been given.

Savers.

2011-03-04T20:13:00.003-05:00

Save money. Save the planet. Save the rain forest. Save paper. Save yourself. But for goodness sake, stop saving parking spaces and seats!!

What is it with people??

At the school the other day, I started to pull into a prime parking spot and a woman comes running over to my car, waving me away from the spot. I rolled my window down and she told said “Oh, I’m sorry, this parking spot is taken.”

I looked back at the spot, just to make sure that my eyes weren’t in fact tricking me, then turned back to the woman and said “Actually, it’s empty.” This was so bizarre to me, that my puzzlement must have been evident because she responded slowly.

“Well, no, someone is going to park there.”

“Yes.” I said, a little baffled still. “I am going to park there.”

“Oh, no, I’m holding that spot for a friend of mine. She has 4 small children and 2 of them are sick and……”

Yeah. Right. I have one small child. He is a pain in the ass and I am not removing him from the car to go stand in the cold because your friend didn’t arrive early enough to get this spot.

I didn’t say that out loud. Instead I looked her square in the eye and said, “I am going to park here. I can park on top of you. Or you can get out of my way. Which do you choose?” I KNEW that tactic was good for something!! She moved. Then she sat in her van and glared at me as if her stare was going to influence me to hurry it up.

The same thing happens with the seats in the auditorium at school events. Someone inevitably has their purse sitting on the seat next to them, so that their mommy friend has a good seat when she shows up. Um, no. And by the way, GROW UP. I got here. I want to sit up front. Your friend should have gotten here earlier.

I am not trying to be a bitch. But c’mon people. Saving seats? Saving parking spots? I don’t let my kids save their so called “spot” on the couch. I don’t let my kids save their channel on the television if they aren’t going to sit and watch the show. WHY would I be okay with you saving a seat in a prime spot of the auditorium (or apparently the parking lot oddly enough)??

GET HERE EARLIER IF YOU WANT THIS SPOT! GOSH!

This was written for Mama Kats Writers Workshop!

Black. White. Gray. Life is messy.

2011-03-04T18:48:00.002-05:00

My kid wants to know if Michael Jackson was white or brown. He wants to know why it’s okay for the state to kill people but it isn’t okay for people to kill people. He wants to know why we fight wars if killing is bad. He wants to know why we use animals for scientific testing, and animals can’t even volunteer, but people get to choose to be a part of a science experiment. He wants to know why we send money to children in other countries when he has a classmate that sometimes doesn’t get to eat because he doesn’t have any money.

Good questions. Most of them have very gray areas though. So how do you explain to an 8 year old that there is a gray area without mucking up all the “right from wrong” teaching you’ve been doing?

*Sigh*

I know I’m disappointing The Professor. He calls my answers “blurry”. I can’t help but feel bad because I feel like he is losing the whole “Mommy is my hero.” perspective and it’s painful to watch him lose faith in me because I can’t answer questions that don’t actually have solid, black or white answers.

I’ve been encouraging him to make his voice heard. Encouraging him to contact his congressman or write to the white house, or whatever.

Life is messy. That is the answer I keep giving him because there just isn’t anything better. I’ve got nothing else.

And it sounds so cliché but it’s true. Life is so, so messy and often, there isn’t a black and white answer.
Still, I can’t help but feel sad knowing that eventually, he is going to stop asking me things because his questions are just too deep and too complicated for me to answer with any certainty.

I’d love to fill his head with my personal beliefs. It would be so easy. But I want him to have his OWN mind and his OWN beliefs. I need to know that when he is grown, he will be okay with standing for what he believes in.

Sometimes I share my beliefs. Sometimes, I am just as confused as he is. Sometimes I wish the deepest thought my child had was “What’s for dinner?”

For the record? Michael Jackson was brown with a skin disease that changed his pigmentation. But does it really matter what color a person is?

The Mouth

2011-03-03T17:59:00.001-05:00

The Professor might be up for a name change. He might have to renamed The Mouth. Because it runs all day, from the moment he gets home, to the moment he goes to bed, especially if he isn’t getting his own way.

And I am so fed up. It’s been going on for three days.

Am I supposed to have more patience than this? Am I supposed to be calmly talking to him about how disrespectful he sounds when he uses that tone with me? Am I supposed to remind him every time his voice raises an octave that he is beginning to yell at me? Am I supposed to answer the “Why?” questions when I ask him to do something, or is it reasonable to expect him to do as he is told without questions?

I’ve always told him that questions are a good thing and he points that out to me every time I tell him not to question me. How do you fix that one? I’ve grounded him, yelled at him and even tried to talk to him.

In the end, I just want to stick a sock in his mouth before he digs himself a deeper hole. And I warn him. A lot. Maybe too much? I mean, I’m all for hearing him out, but he is nearly growling at me through gritted teeth, like it is a chore to answer my questions about things like homework or the condition of his room.

And then he says something like this. “I don’t want to talk about this. You’re making me angry!” Say what??? Someone please tell me who this child thinks he is!

I mean it. I am seriously running out of patience. He turns 9 years old in a week. Is it a 9 year old thing? I’m baffled, irritated, and when he yells my name, all I can do is groan inwardly because I just know it’s the beginning of another tirade about how horrible his life is and how horrible I am being to him and how horrible everything always is for him.

Because you know, having a PS3 in his room and a gazillion toys to play with isn’t enough. I hate to think that my child is just plain spoiled because this behavior just started but I do NOT want it to continue. And I do not want to hear about all the things he doesn’t have or all the horrible ways I torture him –he makes it sound like I should be working at Guantanamo Bay—or even about his totally horrible day. I’m just tired of the whining and complaining and the smart mouth.

It’s looking like it might be time to give this child of mine a reality check. Maybe take everything away from him so he can see what it’s like when life really is horrible and he really doesn’t have anything. Maybe after a week of seriously having nothing, he will come to appreciate the everything he actually has?

Pour Your Heart Out: Time & Guilt Combo

2011-03-03T08:16:00.000-05:00

No matter how much time I spend with my kids, I still feel guilty for not spending more with them. And I feel guilty for not wanting to spend time with them sometimes.

No matter how much time I spend with my husband, it never feels like enough. We don’t connect on a couple level but more on a parental one. All I ever talk to him about is the kids and all he ever talks to me about is his job or his car.

No matter how much time I give to friends who need me, I always feel like the constant interruptions by the kids are irritating and take away from my good intentions. Half the time, I go weeks without ever contacting any of my friends.

I feel guilty for taking time to blog because inevitably, some household chore gets ignored so that I can. The work around here is never really done. There is always a dish (usually more than one) in the sink, laundry to be done, floors to be swept and mopped, or some other mundane task that needs doing.

I feel guilty for having a glass of wine every night because alcoholism runs in my family and I always worry that maybe normal people drink wine only on special occasions. Even though it is only one glass. I am partial to white wine and I stopped having a glass of that at night because there is no health benefits to drinking white wine and I need a logical explanation for any kind of alcohol intake in order to cope with childhood demons.

I feel guilty for not taking proper care of myself and even guiltier for bitching about it because I never actually change that. I never pick up the phone and call the doctor because I don’t want to take the kids with me and I know I won’t have a choice. Now I feel guilty for blaming the kids because the pond is so much deeper than that.

I feel guilty for spending .99 cents on my kids shampoo and body wash and spending $4.00 on mine. I feel guilty for constantly buying my kids things when we go out to compensate for my $4.00 body wash because I feel like everything has to be even and I feel guilty that I cannot afford to buy anything for my husband, yet I can spend $4.00 on my body wash.

Ha! I feel guilty for feeling stupid for writing this shit down and sharing it because I feel like most of the people who read this will think I’m being stupid for feeling so guilty about everything.

At this rate, if the kids don’t kill me, my own guilt will.

My new car. Sort of.

2011-03-02T18:17:00.001-05:00

I am exhausted. At least I feel exhausted right now. The Professor is doing his homework and The Gremlin is laying here on the bed next to me. Every so often his little toes wander onto the screen and I remove his foot with a chastising glance at his grinning little face. This morning he woke up with a massive bloody nose. I don’t know what that was all about. My husband said he used to get them all the time when he was little. And for the first time ever, it was me waking my husband up asking him what to do. Never dealt with a bloody nose before.

I am driving his uncle’s Mustang temporarily until we can find a vehicle or fix mine. Oh boy, what a sweet ride. It’s a 2 door, deeply colored, gorgeous blue convertible. It’s pretty, sexy and fast. It’s a bit small for two kids, unless you want to be able to ~~smack~~ reach them from the drivers seat no matter where they are seated, but really, it’s just the price you pay for driving a freakin’ HOT car. I don’t trust The Gremlin to stay in his car seat so I can’t put the top down, but oh, when you turn the radio up in this baby, and roll the windows down….it’s a sweet, sweet ride. I never noticed anyone else’s car before and never noticed anyone noticing mine, but they did today and they asked about it. So I lied. I told them it was my new car because, damn, this thing is beautiful with a capital B. Don’t judge me. When a new car comes along, well, I’ll deal with that when the time comes. But for now, everyone thinks that my husband spoils me rotten, and since he does (thought not usually in the form of sleek and sexy Mustangs) I’m okay with that.

I got the car last night and needed to blow of some steam since I’ve been pretty much stuck here at home since the car broke down. So I went shopping. Usually, I’ll tell you that I am NOT a typical female. But I do love a good shopping session. I’d like to tell you that I bought a bunch of cool shit I didn’t need and felt much better when I got home, but that isn’t quite how things went.

I took both of the boys with me. The Professor whined and asked for a million things, then finally melted down into tears because he didn’t get what he wanted and The Gremlin was who he is. I bought a hair tie and some Bodycology body wash for me. That’s it. Everything else was household supplies. But I did get 110 Cascade Gel packs for $12.99. It gave me a bit of a charge because I LOVE a good deal. The kids were seriously horrible though and The Professor found himself grounded from video games and television for the night, which he hated and resulted in more melt downs and more tears. The Gremlin ended up with a spanking. The reason for that is because his behavior was influenced and encouraged by his 8 year old brother, so I felt like it needed to be curbed but the brunt of it fell on The Professor because he definitely knows better.

I’m not sure why I am as exhausted as I am, but man, I think I could sleep for a week. The weather was beautiful today but now it’s getting cold again. The day before yesterday, it was 78 degree, and then yesterday it was 47. Today it was at least 70 degrees again. I think the up and down weather saps my energy. A week from now, we’ll all be sick as dogs. Damned weather. Why can’t it just stay warm?

Mommy Blogging & Internet Safety

2011-03-01T14:14:00.001-05:00

I am terrified of child predators. It kicks me hard in the gut to think that anyone could snatch my child, meaning him harm, and there would be little I could do to protect him. It breaks my heart to think of my child fearful or hurting, wanting me, and me not being there.

I think, as mom bloggers, our risks, and our children’s risks of falling victim to a predator may be slightly higher. I mean, we share all our children’s quirks, habits, struggles and loves on our blog! Some of us share pictures. Some of us use our children’s real names. Some mom bloggers, opt out of the whois protection when they purchase a domain, not realizing that ANY creep can get their address without the protection. If you have ever taken a picture of your children in their school uniforms (guilty) and your profile or blog tells what state or city you live in, you’ve put yourself and your children at risk. If your profile tells what city and state you live in, and you blog about your child getting to the bus stop at 9:20 am and the bus came at 9:10 am, you have potentially put your child at risk.

And let’s face it. The internet isn’t a privilege anymore. Our kids can access the internet at school (and school safe guards are easily bypassed). They can use their friends phone or laptop. They can use the internet at the library. There are a million and one ways for a child to gain access to the internet. So even if you don’t have the internet, or don’t allow you children on it unsupervised at home, that doesn’t mean they can’t access it unsafely somewhere else. Isn’t that scary? But times are changing and so must we.

For the above reasons, I have strict rules that govern internet usage and safety both within and outside of my home. These rules are consistently talked about and re-enforced. I hope that all of you do too, but today I am going to share mine in the hopes that it will guide other parents toward internet safety. Too often I hear parents say that their children are always supervised when they use the internet, but that isn’t realistic anymore.

Maintain constant communication. I want my child to tell me everything. And I do not get angry and punish if my child tells me they were on a website they should not have been on or saw something that they should not have seen on the internet somewhere else. Why? Because I want those lines open. I want him to tell me so we can talk about it. Once the communication door closes, it’s awfully hard to get it back open. My boys know (or the youngest will someday) that their actions may bring consequences. But they also know that those consequences will be fair and will only be handed down after I have heard what they have to say.

All passwords must be known by me. I retain the right to check any account my children have in this house at any time, and I do not expect to have to ask you for your password. If it is changed, I need to be told immediately. If it is changed and I am not told, internet privileges will be revoked indefinitely. And I use those passwords. I check. I dig through mounds of friends, read profiles and emails, check browser history and question things I don’t understand. Right now, my internet user is really young, so this is reasonable. As he grows there may or may not be changes depending on his track record and maturity.

No real names are to be used on gaming sites or forums. These sites are at higher risk for predators. As well as not using real names on those sites, my children have been taught never to give their real name, city or state they live in, what time their parents work, or what the name of their school sports team is. Don’t tell people your school’s logo or colors. These bits of information are often thought to be harmless but if the person on the receiving end of this information is smart, he/she can find out a lot about you from information like that. If your child has a PS3, Wii or Xbox, he may be able to access the internet and even play and talk to other gamers while on these systems. I want my child to enjoy himself, but I want him to do it safely. Along with this goes the obvious, of never telling anyone the address or phone number, that the child is home alone, or what time the child gets home or goes to school. Or even whether he takes a bus, gets driven or walks.

NO BULLYING. Cyber-bullying is very real and very dangerous. My boys know that should they find themselves victim to it, they should never be ashamed or scared to tell me. Nor should they ever condone, participate in, or fail to tell me, if they know of someone else experiencing this. It is grounds for the loss of internet privileges, again, indefinitely.

No erasing history or emails, or in any other way hindering my ability to check on your activities online. I do not give a heads up before I check my children’s usage. I do not have to. I am the parent and it is my job, in their interest and in the interest of the whole family, to keep them safe. If I try to check the history and it has been erased, or your Facebook messages are being deleted after being read, the internet will be taken away. Period. I figure, if my children have nothing to hide, then there is no reason to erase anything. It can be erased for other purposes after I have been through it or with my supervision.

No internet after 10pm. Some people think this one is a bit controlling. I don’t. Perverts love dark places. They love knowing that your child is talking to them while you are dozing off on the couch. They love trying to convince your child to meet them on the corner, while you assume your child is safely tucked in his room. No way. No internet after 10 pm, even if I am wide awake.

Keep a safe word. Buddy up if possible. This is a biggie. Safe words can save your child’s life. They can alert him/her to danger, giving the child more time to react to the situation at hand. My children each have a word. If someone stops them, saying they know me, or were asked by me to pick them up, they better know the safe word. If they don’t, my children have been instructed to scream, yell, and cry loudly while flapping their arms and running. If it is possible, I instruct my children not to be walking alone. If you can walk with someone, do it. If not, walk safely. Don’t indulge strangers, keep your cell phone on if you have one, and do not take short cuts through woods or paths off main streets. We always keep my sons phone on vibrate instead of ring. On the off, and horrifying, thought that something happened, the ringing could alert a predator to the presence of the device. If he can’t hear it, there’s a chance it can be traced to a location. I haven’t explained this to my son, but I did tell him that the purpose of the cell phone is so that he can contact me. Not so I or his friends can check up on him.

And finally, the biggest rule I teach my children, is to GET ANGRY & FIGHT. If anything were to ever happen (OMG, God forbid), I don’t want my children to feel helpless and cry. I want them to SCREAM. KICK. FIGHT. BITE. DRAW ATTENTION TO THEMSELVES. THROW THINGS OUT WINDOWS. FIGHT UNTIL YOU ARE EXHAUSTED AND THEN FIGHT SOME MORE!! MAKE NOISE!! The more attention they draw to themselves, the more likely they will be left on the side of the road, scared to death but safe.

It probably seems like I have a lot of rules, but they are really very basic. It might seem like I live in fear or encourage my children too, but I don’t. I live safely. I know the dangers out there, and while my children probably think it won’t ever happen to them (and it probably won’t), if it did, they know what to do.

Size matters & The Librarian might need help

2011-03-01T07:46:00.000-05:00

Since my car is still broke, my husband has been picking The Professor up at school and bringing him to the restaurant until he has a chance to leave and bring him home. Now with The Professor in an out of district school, my husband is only 5 minutes away from his school as opposed to my 25 minutes.

The Professor loves going to Daddy’s work. Why, you ask? Because he gets all kinds of food and Daddy is too busy to pay attention to what he is eating. The wait staff spoils the bosses kid rotten. The down side to this plan, is that The Professor often gets home later than usual and without his homework done, but it’ll have to do until ~~my husband~~ my hero has time to install my fuel pump. The fuel pump on this Buick is a HUGE pain in the ass, requiring him to drop a million other things out of the car just to switch out the fuel pump. It sucks. It requires more than 5 minutes. It requires more than an hour.

So, tonight The Professor got home and I asked him if he ate. He always does, but I just want to make sure. He said he ate “a little”. I asked him what “a little” was. He responded “A couple of pieces of garlic bread, a grilled cheese sandwich, popcorn, ice cream and some lemons.” THAT is my son’s definition of a little? The poor boy must be starving to death here at home.

The best thing about this though, is that he abhors grilled cheese here at home. Telling The Professor that I am making grilled cheese for dinner is like telling him I am cutting off 3 of his toes and giving them to the less fortunate. Tears fall, feet stomp and he swears he is going to starve to death because I am making something “nasty” for dinner. This kid should get an Oscar for the performance. Seriously. But he’ll eat it at the restaurant. Well, I’m onto him now.

Then, he asks me if I have his library book and I told him no. He said the library was asking for it and I told him that he better look under his bed. He looks at me and says, “It’s okay mom. I told the librarian that it was in the mail. She said next time, just bring it back to the library because it’s faster.” Huh? First of all, it may be time for me to stop telling telemarketers that I’m dead and bill collectors that the check is in the mail. My son is starting to pick up on it. Secondly, I’m worried about the librarian. I mean, seriously?

Shit Stains & Puddles

2011-02-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

I haven’t perfected this whole parenting gig yet. Particularly the potty training part of it. I hate potty training. I hate it because I don’t seem to be able to motivate my kids to use the potty. I am up to my eye balls in shit stains and urine puddles and it’s totally gross!

I try to steer clear of talking about The Professor’s personal hygiene, um, issues on this blog, because I don’t wish him any embarrassment. But last night, I was putting laundry in the washer and I grabbed a handful of shit. I almost barfed. I mean really? Eight years old and still leaving more than a little bit of shit in the underwear? The doctor says it isn’t a health problem – that he will grow out of it. The doctor says that punishment isn’t going to help – that lecturing isn’t going to help. The doctor isn’t regularly washing poop out of underwear. It’s fucking nasty okay?

So immediately, even though I know I shouldn’t, I start reaming the kid out for failing to at least warn me that there was a pile of steaming SHIT in his underwear. I know he isn’t hearing me and I know this isn’t actually accomplishing anything, but I’m frustrated near to tears with it all. “I’m not buying you more underwear…” I rant in my very best whine. “I’ve had it, that’s it, you need to start washing your own fuckin’ underwear from now on because I don’t shit my underwear so why should I have to clean them?” There is the F-Bomb again. I just couldn’t handle it. Eight years old!! Ugh.

And even worse, I feel alone in this, because it seems every single parent I talk to has this under control. Their kid was potty trained at 9 months old and hasn’t had an accident since. Damn it, what am I doing wrong??

And then, there is The Gremlin. The Gremlin started showing a keen interest in using the bathroom when he was only about 15 months old. So what did I do? I ran out and bought oodles of character underwear, a potty chair that sings when you do your business, KanDoo Wipes, stickers and charts and rewards and holy steaming shit balls, the kid wants nothing to do with it now! Of course not! Because I spent a SHIT LOAD of money on all of the things normal kids would LOVE to potty train with. I even got him books about potty training, movies like The Bear in The Big Blue House. And I memorized and proceeded to sing the stupid poop song for him whenever we tried to make a trip to the bathroom. I sang the poop song!!!

The boy knows when he has to go. He’s done it. A lot. I know, you’re probably thinking “Gosh, he’s only 3 years old! Relax mom!” But it isn’t like that. He is capable of going!! He won’t do it because I want him too! And holy crapping bananas, I’m running out of patience. This morning, he stood in front of me in underwear and pissed all over the floor! And then, after I cleaned it up, 10 minutes later in fresh, dry underwear, he did it again!! And the boy must have the bladder of a damned horse, because these are no small puddles people!

So what the hell am I doing wrong here? I’ve tried everything. I’m not punishing accidents or failing to provide support and encouragement even when I’m up to my freakin’ ears in disgusting bathroom related fluids. I’m reminding…encouraging…rewarding…all the stuff I’m told I’m supposed to be doing. WTF?

What will I wear???

2011-02-28T08:31:00.000-05:00

Do you know what I love about Virginia? I love 72 degree days in February. Yeah. I love that.

Now, I know so many of you are really hating me for that comment. Half the damned country is still snowed in and I am thinking of taking the kids kite flying. Nice.

I admit it. I am a hermit in the winter time. I hate the cold weather about as much as I hate the hot weather. I like the spring and the fall. Nice, normal temperatures. Nothing extreme.

Anyway, I have been locked up in this house since the cold weather came around. When I go out, I do not dress up. I have my sweats on. I might wear an unsightly scarf to complete the disastrous ensemble. I don’t care if I look homeless as long as I feel warm.

But I tend to start to get depressed too. I really dislike winter. Which is ironic because I love snow….and I would like it even more if it were, oh, about 75 degrees so touching it didn’t totally freeze me out.

But now it’s starting to be warmer here a lot more often. So today, I decided it was time to break out the summer clothing. It isn’t that hard. Winter here doesn’t usually start until mid to late November, so we don’t actually pack our summer clothes away. Even if we had a northern winter, I’ve never been good at spring cleaning and packing seasonal clothes away is worse than spring cleaning, so I just don’t do it.

And I have nothing to wear! Two pairs of shorts! That’s it! I’m so disappointed. I think it is time to go thrifting. What I wouldn’t give to go to Old Navy or something and get myself some new summer clothes, but alas, the kids will be needing clothes too.

So I went through what I can only describe as a midlife clothing crisis this afternoon. I was digging through my clothes, tossing stuff to the side. I actually said “I’m to old to be wearing this!”

Okay. I am NOT that old. I know that. But have you ever seen someone walking down the street wearing something that looked like she took it out of her 7 year old daughters closet and thought to yourself, “That woman is having a midlife crisis?”

Seriously? I’m the only one who does that? Stop lying.

My clothes are too young for me. I’m so itty bitty and it is hard to find stuff that isn’t slutty or teeny bopper - ish. I’m too old to wear jeans that have the word Princess plastered across the ass of them. But I’m too young to shop Newport News! Ahhhh! See? Midlife clothing crisis! I refuse to be the one that looks like she is shopping at The Children’s Place and I don’t want to look like I shop on QVC either. I love low rise jeans. But they have to fit right. Love Bongo. I am totally a brand whore. Sort of. A loyal to a few brands, brand whore.

I know. I sound vain. I’m not really. C’mon, does no one else have this problem? Are you a brand whore, or will you wear anything if it fits and it’s comfortable? Low—rise or just normal jeans? Where do you shop?

This is Who I am – Issue 1 – Part 2 – Homeless in New York City.

2011-02-27T12:57:00.006-05:00

This post is a part of the Series, “This is Who I Am”. You can read Part One here. I will be writing this series every Sunday, so please keep coming back. By the way, I love comments! No pressure, I’m just saying.

……… I wanted to die right there. I just kept thinking to myself that I was an idiot for needing to eat now.

I don’t remember how much the pound cake cost. I don’t even remember if there was any exchange of words between the clerk and I. I remember the first bite. I remember thinking to myself that I had no money to buy a drink and this pound cake was thick and dry.

I walked out of the store, returning again to the hot air and dark street. I thought briefly about the reputation New York City had for being the city that never sleeps, and wondered how I managed to find the one neighborhood that seemed to be either sleeping, or utterly abandoned.

Behind me, the snickering increased, and one of the boys bumped into me. “This is it.” I thought to myself, “How are you going to get yourself out of this one?” I’d already been in some pretty rough places and it seemed like the right thing to do, so I turned around, looked the boy right in the eyes and said “What’s good?” At that moment, I just wanted to be one of them, because if I was one of them, I would be safer. Dark street. Small town girl lost in the big city and broke. I just wanted to fit in.

The boy just mumbled something and turned back toward his friends who snickered and laughed loudly again. One of them approached me, kind of rubbed my shoulder firmly. I shook his hand off me, and start walking My heart was racing and as I walked I realized that these boys were going to follow me. There was no where safe! All the alley ways were so dark and everything was closed. If I screamed, would anybody care? Panic quickened my step, but I didn’t realize it until I was at a near run. It didn’t sound like the boys had followed me, so I threw a glance over my shoulder. They were far behind me, walking in my direction, but at a decent distance. My goal was simply to get out of their eye shot.

So I ducked into an alley. I was hungry and scared to death, and I sunk against the wall, to the ground. “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry.” I kept repeating to myself.

I could hear the boys laughing and talking about something just down the way and thought briefly about taking off again. The alley was pretty dark, but it looked abandoned and if I went further back, maybe behind the dumpster, they’d surely walk right past me, none the wiser.

“What’s a pretty girl like you got ta cry about?” A mans voice startled out of my own fearful thoughts. I looked up at the face of a man who had to be in his late 20’s – early 30’s. He had blond, disarrayed hair, and stunning blue eyes that seemed to be laughing at me. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with work boots and he seemed so big to me.

Because I didn’t have a response that was safe, I got up without responding and stood against the wall, hearing the group of boys getting closer, and praying that I wasn’t going to end up dead tonight. The man stood looking at me. His eyes ran down my body with suggestions in them that made my face burn. Then just as quickly, his eyes changed to show a concerned gaze that met my eyes with questions. “So. What do you have to cry about?”, he asked again.

And again, I just stood there looking at him. Damn it! Why can’t I think? I was running out of time to make a choice. So in sheer panic, I turned and started to walk away. But the man grabbed my arm. Hard. I actually winced a little as his grip was cutting into the muscle of my upper arm. Then, I turned on him, rolled my eyes, and said “Will you please let me go. I need to get home, I was just tired and needed to sit for a minute.”

The man did not let go of my arm, but instead seemed to get closer to me, although I didn’t feel like he actually moved his feet. Maybe he pulled me closer to him. I don’t know – it’s blurry. His face was really close to mine, and his garlicky breath was making my stomach jump with sickness. A fleeting thought, that this man had eaten pizza, combined with my own hunger distracted me from my predicament for a moment. But then I was up against the brick wall, and the man was so close to me with the grip still on my arm.

“This is a bad neighbahood to rest in little one.” He said softly with a smirk. “You don’t really have anywhere to go, do you?” For a moment, the concern was back in his eyes and I desperately wanted to believe that this man wasn’t as dangerous as his grip on my arm was telling me he was. “Why don’t you come on home wit me.” His grip loosened on my arm a little bit as the group of boys slowly passed by the alley. One of the older boys made eye contact with me for a second and I looked away hoping not to send vibes of fear his way. The boy looked away, and they disappeared. There was laughing and the sound of a bottle breaking and the boys voices started to sound further away.

“Come now.” The man said, his grip once again tightening on my arm. “I live with my mother, but she’s asleep right now. She’ll feed you in the mornin’ and tonight you can sleep in my room.” And the panic must have been written all over my face because the man laughed a little bit and said “You think you’re going to make it out here? In those jeans?” A chuckle, warm and rich, escaped him as he looked me over once more. “Not likely, little one.”

“You’re hurting me.” My voice sounded so different, echoing in the alley. There was defiance and fear in it, both of which he seemed to register right away. And then it happened. His eyes changed. There was anger now. Scary anger as he shoved me more tightly against the brick behind me, pushing his body hard against mine as his other hand came up to rub down the length of my hair. And tears fell. I was crying. Shit. Shit. Shit. This was not what I expected from my first night in the city. What had I expected though? Had I even thought this through? “Stupid girl.” I thought to myself.

“Hey Chic!” a younger voice had my head and the head of the man holding me in place, shooting up, looking for the source. It was one of the older boys from the group of boys earlier. “Let’s go! We’re going to Red’s house to smoke one.” The man’s grip had loosened on my arm, and his anger had been replaced by confusion.

I had a choice to make. Go with the boys who had earlier seemed menacing, or stay in my current predicament, shoved up against a wall by an angry man who was bigger and stronger than I. To be continued…….

I am so sorry, but this story is so long. It’s almost hard to believe that I had only been on the streets for an hour or so. But I promise, I will continue this next week, so please come back!

Family Empowerment or Further Degradation?

2011-02-26T12:26:00.001-05:00

Experts call it family empowerment. Children, often as young as 12 years old, are given choices they aren’t actually mature enough to make, in a valiant, if mislead, effort to strengthen families. And it would be effective if it was used correctly, but sadly, it is not used correctly and children, again as young as 12 years old, are given choices they can’t handle with this system.

Does that sound scary to you? Can you imagine your 12 year old being allowed to choose where he/she wanted to live, when a good home was available to the child with a family member? Well, it’s happening all over the country.

Can you imagine family counselors asking you to bend your rules to accommodate a child who didn’t like those rules? How about being told to move out of the way of a violent child so he/she wasn’t further provoked? What about being told that hitting a child, in self-defense, could land you in jail?

Why is it that our children cannot drive until they are at least 16, older in some states, and cannot drink until they are 21, yet they can make life decisions at 12 years old in some cases? How is stripping parents of their authority considered empowering families?

This makes me angry and it should anger you too. Because it could easily be you facing off with counselors, trying to do the right thing for your child, and being told that your child has choices.

Do you know that in some states, children – again sometimes as young as 12 years old – have the right to refuse mental evaluations and even medication for real disorders?? It’s an atrocity!

Domestic violence and/or abuse doesn’t only take place between a man and a woman or vice versa. It’s happening with children folks! A child can abuse, verbally and even physically, a parent in this country and as long as he/she doesn’t leave marks, the cops will do nothing! But, if you should threaten your child, or harm your child accidentally while trying to defend yourself, you can and most likely will, be jailed for it!

The old adage is true. One bad apple, spoils the bunch. Our children are given too many choices now, because a few poor excuses for parents, chose to discipline with Ammonia or chose to skip the hand on the butt and use the frying pan instead. Not cool. But it’s a very real part of society today and I wonder how many out there are aware of the choices being given to our youth? Because many parents are good parents, with good intentions, in a bad situation. And they are prisoners to their out of control children, because the law states that they have to be.

To wrap up my little rant, I should share with all my readers what my idea of family empowerment is. Please, take a minute to comment and tell me how you feel about this issue before you leave.

My idea of family empowerment is assessing a situation and determining that a child is A) in a bad place at home because his/her parents are abusive/neglecting B) Needing more guidance because he/she is simply out of control. And then, after this has been determined, delivering the appropriate help to the child and his/her parents. There should not be a default rule that allows a child (really stressing the age as young as 12 here) to refuse mental evaluation or medication, to allow a child to be abusive to parents or siblings, or to allow a child to use explosive behavior as a means to get what he or she wants. Children should NOT be allowed to choose their place of residence if there is an able and willing family member to house the child.

There are good reasons for our children not being allowed to drink, or to drive, before a specific age. So why are our children given even more complex and dangerous decisions, leaving parents powerless and vulnerable to their children? All I can say is this is an outrage!

Window Licker.

2011-02-25T05:12:00.000-05:00

I should be used to it by now. Public humiliation. For some reason, I thought my 3 year old was going to be, well, normal at The Professor’s play last night. What a disillusioned, foolish woman I am.

Yeah. He was SO much worse than I could have anticipated. He was crawling under the chairs and escaping to try to get to the stage. At one point, he began pretending to be a dog. He licked me, and he licked the auditorium chair. He licked the girl next to him who was about two years old. It would have been nice if people could have held their tongues and their breath and not laughed or commented about how cute it was. I did not think it was cute at all.

Adorable as this child may be, I have a window licker, folks. I have a window licker and everyone now knows it! Perfect. Oh my god, he was panting and barking! It was too embarrassing to even describe with mere words.

And then we had to drive home. Only last night it was an 8 year old, a 3 year old, and poor me. Feel sorry for me. I do.

The Professor was about an inch from my ear jabbering away for the entire ride home. It got so bad that I failed to notice a red light turn green and got honked at. Meanwhile, The Gremlin was torn between activities. Because he could reach the glove box, that was the first thing to be utterly torn apart. Then came the visor, which my husband for some reason, uses to store all his registration papers. Too bad he has like a dozen of them up there. It was like confetti, in an extremely closed in space. Then, because he could also reach the radio, came the blasting of all different kinds of music, and then finally he attempted the dreaded tuck and roll. Scary shit. Never, ever, ever again.

If a meteor were about to hit only my house, and the only way to escape it was to put these kids in that poor excuse for a vehicle, we’d die. I wouldn’t do it to myself.

Lessons learned. Pick up trucks and my children – never again. I need my car back.

By the way, the play was awesome. One of the best and I am so impressed with The Professor’s teacher, who dressed up, put face paint on and got up on stage with her children. Awesome. Just awesome. The Professor really worked hard to memorize his part in it and he was great!

A Pick-Up Truck, A Mouse & A 3 Year Old.

2011-02-24T14:22:00.001-05:00

Last night, we baited traps to catch the pesky mouse. I had forgotten all about it, until I was watching television around 1 am the other night and it ran between my feet. I screamed, jumped on the back of the recliner (because yes, I am afraid of mice. So What.), and demanded that my husband get mouse traps.

So last night, my husband brought mouse traps home and we baited them and set them out. Then he went into the bathroom to catch a shower when….SNAP! Within 5 minutes we caught the mouse. And I feel so bad. We could have used no kill traps. I wanted too. But who’s emptying that trap? Not me. I won’t even empty the traps that kill the mice. We reloaded the traps and left them around. Just in case.

This morning, I had to drive my husband to work so I can drive the pickup truck today because The Professor has a play tonight and he’d be so disappointed if I missed it.

Do any of you drive pickup trucks? How do you put the kids in these things? I would have to have the extended cab. I was left with few choices for the arrangement of The Gremlin in this tiny thing, plus I had to move the seat all the way forward because I can’t reach the peddles unless I do that. That puts the two of us far too close to the windshield for comfort. God, I miss my car something fierce!

So The Gremlin ends up having to sit right next to the door and the biggest concern with that was that he would mess with the door handle or something. This truck doesn’t have those nifty child-safe door locks, so I could see the disaster coming. But sitting him in the middle of the truck meant that he would have been able to grab the steering wheel while I was driving, which I am pretty sure is much worse than opening the door, because at least he is strapped in correctly and I could at least pull over if he opened the door. If he grabbed the steering wheel, well, that would so suck.

So what would any good parent do? I don’t know. We bought him a big bowl of ice cream to keep him occupied. I bribed him again! What choice did I really have?

I cannot wait until my car gets fixed. My husband said if it isn’t fixed by next week, we’ll have to buy another vehicle. He has his eyes on a mini-van for $700.00. I haven’t seen it. I’m not that into mini-vans, but after spending the day driving a pickup truck with a 3 year old sitting next to me, I’ll take a mini-van any day.

To sell? To toss? To give away?

2011-02-23T13:48:00.001-05:00

When The Professor was a baby, I worked EBay. I was good at what I did and I made a killin’. I liked doing it, my customers were always happy and there was always cash flow.

A few years ago, I decided I was done. I wanted out of sales, I was sick of shipping things, and I was running out of sellable items. So I stopped. And my “stuff” meter is now reading “out of control”.

With The Professor, it was easy. We’d buy him toys and clothes. He’d play with the toys, wear the clothes and when he was done, they were still always in amazing, sellable condition. I would take the extra time to stain treat clothing and sort through toys on a regular basis and The Professor has always taken superb care of his stuff. Up until recently. When he turned 7, he turned lazy but that is for another post.

The Gremlin, however, is not easy on his clothes or his toys. He is a tidal wave of activity. One mess easily turns into a bigger mess, until it’s completely out of control. He is very physical, and most of his toys don’t survive him. His clothes? Yeah, they take a beaten and usually aren’t up for more punishment when he is done with them.

My husband, understandably, is smitten with the idea of getting at least some of our money back from all the stuff we buy the children, so he saves everything with the hopes of selling it. We still have all (when I say ALL, I mean an outrageous amount of dolls, houses, sets….) the Barbie stuff from when his daughter was 4 years old. She’s 14 now. I’m just trying to figure out how to take pictures and list things with The Gremlin running around. I also have issues with selling things that aren’t a complete set or have imperfections. I know people will buy it. I just don’t like selling stuff that isn’t mint. I’m anal like that.

The result is an entire room filled with stuff that we aren’t using, but don’t have the time or energy to sell. And a garage filled of stuff that is probably being destroyed by moisture and whatever MUST be living in the stuff by now (we have mice). It’s too much stuff. I admit it, money is not motivating enough this time. There is just too much. And we are running out of storage, so the kids toy boxes are getting out of control now.

I thought about giving the stuff away. I thought about donating the stuff. My husband has his reservations about this. He is willing to indulge my desire to donate but he isn’t willing to donate everything. I am. As long as I don’t have to weed through it all. Lazy? I don’t think so. Have you ever cleaned out the toy box with your children? Toys they haven’t touched in 6 months are suddenly their favorite toy and cannot be tossed? Yeah. I’m not excited about my boys seeing all the long lost toys they will never play with, but will inevitably swear they will play with.

I’d even throw the stuff out. I mean that. I know it’s selfish because there are so many that need. But I don’t have the time, the energy or the motivation to go through this stuff. My goal this year was to simplify so it’s reasonable to say that tossing it would be…well…simpler.

What do you do with old toys and clothes? Is your clutter as bad as mine? It’s pretty bad at this point. Thankfully, it’s contained to a garage and a room, but seriously, we’re practically using a studio apartment to hold old crap in! I don’t know how it got this bad, but something has to give. If I put all this stuff on the curb with a free sign, I would probably get fined by the city for having a profitless yard sale without a permit. I’m so not kidding.

Anyone else have this problem?

“This Is Who I Am” – A Series – Issue 1 Homeless In New York City – Part 1

2011-02-20T21:24:00.001-05:00

I’m starting a series here! It seemed like a neat thing to do and it’s a great way to connect to people through similar experiences and such! I am calling it, “This Is Who I Am”.

The point of the series is to share the events in my life that made me who I am today or influenced my life and the person I am in an unforgettable way, be it good or bad. If you think this is a neat idea and you would like to try it yourself, go ahead! Then come back and leave your link in the comments section and I’ll come check it out, as I am sure other readers will as well. If I get enough people wanting to do it, I’ll turn it into a blog hop, but for now, it’s just my series. I LOVE comments people, so please leave me a piece of your mind after you read!

The following is a true story. *Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

When I was about 16, I spent my first night homeless in New York City.

I got off the subway in a bad section of Bainbridge in the Bronx with nothing but the clothes on my back, .62 cents, and my own cluelessness. I was not a city girl that night. I was a lost girl. And I was prey. I was also lucky, though I didn’t know it at the time.

My first experience in the subways of New York City will live forever in my memory. The screeching of the trains on their tracks, the echoes, the barely lit platforms, and the scent of body odor combined with urine. It’s all still so vivid in my mind. I remember wondering how to get out of this suffocating, underground box.

Following the stairs out of the subway brought me out into the heated air of New York City. A totally different experience yet filled with much of the same sensory assaults. Urine, combined with stale liquor and body odor seemed to dominate the air everywhere. The sound of sirens, people laughing, horns honking, a women cursing loudly somewhere in one of the alleyways, all blanketed me.

I walked through the neighborhood, passing a couple of college kids, probably drunk, hanging onto each other and laughing. A man wearing way too many clothes for a night as warm as this night, slept on a bench. There was a dilapidated shopping cart haphazardly arranged behind the bench. An old man with an Irish accent, reeking of liquor and puke passed me, took notice, mumbled something about a pretty girl and stumbled off into the darkness.

The knowledge that I had nowhere to sleep, .62 cents in my pocket and no idea what I was doing or where I was going was front and center in my mind. What time was it? It had to be about 10:00 pm and I had a long night in front of me. I was hungry and I needed to find a store.

I walked for about 15 minutes before I found a tiny bodega-like store that didn’t look like I might get raped and killed merely for thinking about entering it. It was the only open store on the otherwise unlit block. The filthy front window was nearly entirely covered with sale signs, mostly written in Spanish. There was a group of kids standing outside of the store. One of them was only about 9 or 10 and the rest about my age or older. They were drinking 40’s wrapped in brown paper bags and laughing amongst themselves. I just tried not to make eye contact, put my head down and shuffled into the store. The group fell silent. I felt their eyes combing over me – sizing me up. I didn’t need to turn around to know that they had followed me inside.

The man behind the counter was foreign. He looked ready for trouble and he either knew I had no money or simply trusted no one, because he never took his eyes off me as I stood looking around the dingy little box of a store. Inch thick dust was gathering on the shelves and the products thrown onto them. The counter was almost encased in scuffed Plexiglas and I wondered briefly if it was even safe to buy food from this place.

Behind me, the group of boys started laughing. One of them took a drink out of the freezer. I stood frozen, staring at the rows of dusty ding dongs and coffee cakes. Maybe the boys were like dinosaurs. Maybe if I didn’t move, they’d forget about me and leave. And where were the price tags on this stuff? If I had to ask how much it cost, I’d have to put it back if I didn’t have enough. That would just make me even more obviously out of place.

But they group wasn’t leaving. I knew they were waiting for me to do something. I was prey. I was young, pretty, lost and I didn’t belong. I was fresh meat, and everyone knew it. Why did I wear the tightest jeans I owned today of all days? I could all but feel their eyes grabbing my ass.

I grabbed a pound cake off the shelf and checked the expiration date. Quietly, I made my way to the counter. It took me a minute or two to pull the change out of my pocket. I was wearing skinny jeans and getting my hand in the pocket turned out to be a regrettable ordeal in which I squirmed on my feet, knowing full well that the boys behind me were getting quite the show. I wanted to die right there. I just kept thinking to myself that I was an idiot for needing to eat now. To Be Continued……

Sorry, but it’s a long story, so I’ll have to do this in parts! Next Sunday I will post another part for ya’ll. Have a good Monday!

Who would I be?

2011-02-20T07:50:00.000-05:00

Last night, The Gremlin woke up somewhere around 1:00am. He just wanted to be covered back up, so I did. As I walked out of his room, I said goodnight and he said goodnight back to me. Then his Dad said goodnight and The Gremlin said “Goodnight Daddy.”

And I couldn’t help it. My heart just melted and I thought to myself “How lucky am I that he is so verbal?”

I know..I know. I bitch all the time about how much these children talk and how annoying they can be. I know.

But what would I have if it weren’t for these little moments? Could joy even exist without the little people in my life? Could I ever be happy again, laugh again, smirk again, without the zany sense of humor and proclamations of how great I am?

I know. It’s a sorry state of affairs when you use your kids for your own personal ego boost but dammit, I can’t help it sometimes. The Gremlin has taken to saying things like…

“You are the bet, Mom!” (translation – You are the BEST mom!) or “You’re my super hero!” or “I love you bigger!”

And it makes me feel good. And very, very lucky.

My world would suck without my boys. I’m sure of it.

This morning, I took a few moments to just watch The Gremlin & The Professor. They are growing up so quickly. The Professor asked me the other day to call myself Mom instead of mommy because “What if we were in public when you said that Mom?”

*Sigh* Damn. It’s happening. My little boy is growing up.

It’s hard to believe that my boys EVER needed me the way they used to. I miss it. Sort of. Okay, maybe not miss it, but I miss the new baby smell, the cuddles, the talking at 3am to a tiny little baby who every so often beams with a smile everyone else thinks is gas, but I know better. I do miss playing with their tiny little fingers and toes while they slept comfortably. In their car seat because they refused to sleep anywhere else.

Anyway, I got distracted again. I seem to be experiencing temporary ADD or something lately. So this morning I just watched them. I listened to The Gremlin tell The Professor about Cumulous clouds. Where the hell did my 3 year old learn about that??? I listened to The Professor try to talk The Gremlin into sharing his french toast sticks with him, even though we had plenty more and he could have simply asked me to make them. I watched The Gremlin operate the Wii like a tiny little pro and wondered to myself if the child watches too much television.

I guess I might maybe miss this later on. Sometimes it is hard to imagine missing the stains on ~~my carpet~~ everything, the crayon or marker on the walls, the incessant mom’s, the whining and fighting. But then, sometimes, it’s even harder imagining my life without those things. I mean, the red marker streaks on my once white couch (ask my husband what he was thinking when he purchased a white couch) do add character. And who would I be today if I wasn’t mom? I can’t even imagine. For once, my imagination fails me.

I’d ask the boys what they think, but their answer would probably ruin all the warm fuzzy feelings I have about them right now, so I won’t. Yeah, yeah, who cares. There is no shame in admitting cowardice once in while. Don’t judge me.

I remember when we first had The Professor. I had no idea how lucky I was. I only knew that I was exhausted and I wished the kid would stop crying just once.

I remember when The Gremlin was born. He was supposed to be adopted but I changed my mind and my doctor was not quiet about his disapproval. The same doctor abused the shit out of me in the delivery room and was eventually sued, but that’s a story for another time. I remember him telling me that I was making a mistake.

“You don’t even have a college fund for this baby,” he said sternly “but the family that would have adopted him did!”

The answer came so naturally. It wasn’t a sarcastic come back and I never stopped to think about it.

“Why do I need a college fund? My kids will get scholarships to the best colleges!” And that was that.

I was out of the hospital in 2 days and home with a beautiful newborn baby. My family had grown and I could feel only a numbed happiness and the exhaustion ~~and pain~~ most new mothers feel. There was no anxiety this time around. I thought I was ready.

And here I am today. And I complain sometimes because it’s easy to lose sight of what I have, but even easier to be reminded that my soul no longer lives inside of my body. It now lives in two separate rooms of my home and goes to public school.

This is the only time selling your soul for anything would ever be worth it.

What do you do all day?

2011-02-19T12:54:00.001-05:00

Everything you do, less the paycheck.

That is my response whenever someone questions my stay at home mom status.

Aside from the fact that I can’t actually work. I am disabled. Lung condition. It really lowers my chances of holding down any sort of gainful employment. And I don’t even get “real” disability. I get SSI. I got sick very young. Seeing as I spent my late teens basically being an unemployed squatter, I didn’t have the work credits for SSD. So my income is $674.00. Imagine trying to stretch that to make bills and everything else. Luckily, my husband works hard.

Anyway, I got distracted. What do I do all day, right? Must be nice to be able to log onto the internet and blog, right? Must be nice to spend my whole day chillin’ in front of the soap opera’s, right?

If that is what you are thinkin’, watch your back pal.

Being a stay at home mother is not an easy job. Yeah, sure I sign onto the internet and I blog. I use a program that auto saves and schedules. These posts? Yeah, they takes days to get all these sentences written down and posted! What with the phone ringing, the dog barking and the kids fighting.

I manage. That is what I do all day. I run a family. I schedule appointments, take notes, fix boo-boo’s, counsel, make calls, file. I am a chef. I am a chauffeur, a maid, a handy man, a teacher, a nurse, a dictator, an expert at family politics and so much more.

I don’t get a lunch break. I do not get vacation days. Hell, I don’t even get a paycheck! No $8.00 an hour for me. No sir! I work and work and my reward? A happy family and a bunch of people who think I sit around eating chips and painting my nails all day.

Mothers, especially stay at home mothers, could run the White House. Seriously. We have all the skills. We learned them through trial and error and perhaps we don’t have a piece of paper stating that we are qualified, but the kids are still alive. Doesn’t that count for something?

If I were to ever go to work, I would use my family management on my resume and I think it should qualify me for ANY job. Because mother’s have the widest scope of skills! I mean, when you think about it, half of us don’t even need school and if we do, well, if you have kids, you’re doing the whole 13 years of school all over again anyway. What a great opportunity to brush up on my math skills!

I can fix things. I can fix things on a budget. I can diffuse potentially dangerous situations. I know what to do with puke, shit and snot and I can do it while I am scheduling doctor appointments, making dinner and monitoring the latest developments in severe weather. I can drive under stressful conditions safely. Okay…almost safely. I can handle all the grocery bags, both of the kids, the dog, the phone, the husband and I can do it without dropping, losing or forgetting anything. I bet I can do it without putting anyone on hold and without rescheduling anything.

So. All those skills you paid to learn? Yeah. I have them too and I use them every single day.

What do I do all day? Everything. I do everything and I do it all for free. Beat that!