The Great Fart in a Bag Incident

The past few weeks (or months) have been devoid of blog updates due to the chaos and turmoil commonly known as moving. After 10 years my husband and I made the decision to sell our house, the house we became a family in, to the person willing to throw the most money at us. I'm sure as I turn to leave for the last time, our boxes loaded into the U-Haul and the rooms scoured of our very existence I will shed a tear but at this moment with the memory of paint fumes still dancing in my nostrils and caulk still clinging to odd and surprising surfaces that I have no recollection of affixing it to I can say that I will not miss this bitch.

It took us a month. One month to pack up any item that personalized the place, to paint everything a grey-beige that popular redecorating sites are now cleverly calling "greige", to caulk all possible surfaces that join any other surfaces and to clean the place in a manner that would say to the average home buyer, "Hey you! We are very clean people! We commonly and with great frequency climb chairs to dust off the top of this refrigerator and make it a point to remove all spices and canned goods from the lazy susan on a weekly basis to divest its shelves of even a trace of dust. Do not be fooled! There has NEVER been a cobweb so impressive dancing from this bathroom light fixture that these here homeowners left it there just to see how long it could get and these window sills have ALWAYS been this immaculate. They were in no way deemed a "lost cause" and painted over in haste due to the impressive level of grime that had permanently marred their surfaces. Come and live here! This is the house where dirt fears to tread!"

(I'm aware that I quote Poltergeist too much. It's a sickness.)

The children were very confused. Questions ranged from, "Why are you cleaning my bathtub with a toothbrush?" to "Can I bring my princess cup to our new house?" My favorite question came one night, however, as I leaned across my daughter's toddler bed while I tucked her in. She was very concerned about the move. The conversation unfolded like this:

Julia: Well, can I take my bed with me to a new house?

Me: Of course baby. We can take all of our stuff, we just put it in a truck and take it somewhere else.

Julia: Can I bring the dogs?

Me: Yes, the dogs will come with us.

Julia: And can I bring Patrick?

Me: Yeah, Patrick is part of the package bud. He comes too.

Julia: (looking over my shoulder into the darkened room behind me) And can I bring him?

Me:(looks nonchalantly over my shoulder into the void of her opened closet and then back at her)...who baby?

Julia: (empatically gestures with her chin back over my shoulder) Him! I want him to come with us too!

Me: (All the hair on my body standing at military attention) Yeah baby. You can bring him too.

If you haven't read previous posts, I can only assume she is referring to Michael Taxenor. He's been established as the little boy who "lives in her room" and gets brought up an a regular basis, which serves to freak me the fuck out every single time and now he's been given the invite to imprint on us like that demon in Paranormal Activity. Neat!

It appears, however, that it may be awhile before we can actually load our earthly and unearthly possessions into a moving van for we have yet to find a house despite the fact that ours sold in two weeks. We put an offer in on the house of my dreams, it fell through and now we are fortunate enough to have sold our house to people who wanted to rent it out in the first place. Translation: we're renting our own house. It is weird to say the least, but beats the hell out of having to move twice, sign a long term lease somewhere or buy a place out of desperation. The right place will come along and in the meantime I intend to mine the rich vein of comedy gold that this situation has revealed, beginning with what I am calling either "Fart Bag-Gate" or "The Great Fart in a Bag Incident of 2013."

Almost immediately upon the house closing, I was sitting on the recliner, quietly reading a nuanced, well written and finely crafed novel about love and the human psyche while my husband caught a few afternoon z's to make up for a long night at the fire station the night before when I heard a ruckus at the front door.

(it is not well written)

Not wanting the dogs to bark and wake everyone up, thus ending a rare moment of afternoon quiet alone with a cup of coffee and a good book,

(it is not a good book)

I darted for the front door and opened it just before a pre-teen looking kid could ring my door bell. 

"Does Billy O'Shaunessy live here?"

He and the three kids standing behind him all regarded me with shit eating grins and I knew I was about to be pranked, but how? He didn't go with, "Is your refrigerator running?" or lead in with something that could be answered with "That's what she said!" so I was truly lost in figuring out where this was going. I could only surmise that this was going to terminate in such a way that involved a vague, mildly hostile epithet directed at my mother and so I pressed on, my eyes narrowing.

"Who?"

The kid's expression grew more excited and I knew he was getting ready to throw a zinger at me that I would never see coming. I was close in that, I never saw the fourth kid who'd been hiding around the corner coming as he jumped out at me and launched a foreign object at my face. It all happened so fast that I didn't have time to even freak out, I just kind of instinctively moved my head to the side so that whatever he'd just hurled at me hit the door and exploded behind my head instead of in my eyeballs. All I could think at the time was, "This is totally just like when George Bush dodged that shoe."

(Look at how perturbed the guy next to him is. Someone just hurled a shoe at the President of the United States and he's all, "Really now, must you be so childish?")

The smell hit me before I even saw it and I new it was a stink bomb. Now I was pissed. These little assholes didn't even have the creativity to set it off on a school bus with no possibility for escape or in the room with a substitute teacher when her back was turned like a civilized adolescent. Nooooo, THESE twats tried to blind a stranger and ended up dousing the front door of what has only recently become her rental property and then commenced to run down the street like a pack of giggling hyenas. If I had to paint that front door again, it was going to be with their virgin blood.

(How can you blame them? They were, like, 12.  I'm 35 and think this is hilarious.)

They tore off down my street and I calmly yelled for my husband to call the cops. I didn't really feel like this was a cop related situation, but I wanted the little shits to run home with the idea that cops were coming instead of stinking up anyone else. The idea that they might pee a little was not unwelcome either. However, when you rouse a man out of a sound sleep with the phrase, "Red, call the cops" no matter how calmly you utter it, said man is going to immediately get an adrenaline surge and leap from the couch like a ninja while yelling, "What? Why? What happened?"

Loudly enough for the punks benefit, who were still in ear shot, I exclaimed, "Some fucking kids just threw a stink bomb into our house." He tore through the house for his car as I stood out on the sidewalk watching them run for the corner. They were cackling their heads off, looking back over their shoulders periodically at the idiot chick they'd just pranked.

They started like this:

Then, upon looking back one last time to gloat only to see my pretty enormous husband run out like a serial killer and hop into his car, they were like this:

He chased them around the neighborhood a bit, obviously NEVER intending on catching them but wanting to scare the ever loving shit out of them as rightful punishment. Upon their second pass through a park to escape my husband and his big bad Sentra, a landscaper looked quizzically at the departing children and then back at their pursuer. My husband pulled over and let the guy know what was happening and the landscaper cracked up. "Mission accomplished, they're all bawling their eyes out!"


Which made me picture them like this:

If this entire story were an Aesop Fable, I believe the moral would read:

If you must revile your neighbor, make certain first that he cannot reach you...in his Nissan Sentra.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, where are the kids? Isn't this a blog about her kids and all the ways she screws up basic parenting skills?"

Do not dispare. You see, upon hearing the initial commotion at the front door, my daughter walked out of her room and was standing in the hallway during the entirety of Fart-bag-a-pa-loo-sa. She heard me tell my husband to call the cops and heard me tell him that "some fucking kids threw a stink bomb into our house." I was not aware of her presence until I walked back inside and saw her there. I didn't know how much of the entire scene she'd witnessed until she skipped through the kitchen later while singing, "Fucking, fucking, fucking!" with a big smile on her face. She's said it twice more since and we haven't heard it again. I'm sure she's saving it for ballet class.

And, as a parting gift, I leave you with a video of my son shoving me to the ground in front of the other preschool parents during my daughter's Halloween parade. I was crouching down with him on my knee in order to get a good video angle when my son spotted my daughter and became enraged that I wouldn't allow him to run over and join her in her parade. Shoving ensued. The other parents pretended that they didn't see it. I allowed them to keep up that ruse. Not a word has been spoken of it since.

Happy Friday!

Have I lost control or did I lack it in the first place?

The course of the last few weeks and, more specifically, the last few days have caused me to ponder some fundamental questions about the state of affairs in my household. From the outside looking in, I see other families operating on a functional level that seems to mirror what any reasonable person would call typical. That's not to say that these families don't appear to have their own fair share of ebbs and flows in the craziness category. It just seems, in comparison to the chaos that swirls around my existence like a category 5 hurricane (sometimes even complete with debris and liquid of dubious origins) that the other families I know aren't subject to the same types of all out pandemonium that we have up in here. Which begs the question, is it me? Is it something inherent in my DNA that spurs children to act like demons? Like some kind of pheromone I'm releasing that triggers a biological response, culminating in abhorrent decision making? Is it my utter lack of leadership abilities, despite the fact that I try with all of my might to possess a shred of the intimidation factor that my mother and those of my peer group possess? Are my kids just heathens? In examining this, I decided to look at the events of the last week and assess the situation for what it is in an effort to come up with a game plan.

Incident #1

The child safety lock on my silverware drawer is broken and the children know this. Lately they have taken to retrieving every spoon in the drawer that they can carry and using them as their "tools" so that they can pretend to fix their toys. This didn't bother me until I grew tired of washing fifteen spoons per day, so when I heard my daughter clanging around in the drawer a few days ago and looked up from my email to see her walking through the house with a spoon, I had this interchange with her:

Me: Julia, can you please put that spoon back? It isn't a toy and Mommy doesn't feel like washing all of the spoons every five minutes.

Julia sighs theatrically and then saunters back over to the silverware drawer as I redirect my attention to the computer monitor. The sound of the drawer opening is followed by the clanging sound of silverware being thrown back in amongst its compatriots. 

Julia: I put it in my butt.

Me: (Looking up in alarm, hoping against hope that I had misheard).....you what?

Julia: I didn't put it all the way in my butt, but I put it a little bit in my butt.

I have no idea on which spoon the assault was committed but I can say that all spoons were scrubbed like Meryl Streep in Silkwood.

Incident #2

Taking my children to the mall on a hot Arizona day is one of the few activities I can do with them by myself. They are 3 1/2 and 2, which means that they may have the muscle ability to walk on their own but lack the emotional maturity to listen to reason (and possibly a condition in which they are physically unable to hear their mother's voice at all, not unlike when Carolann couldn't hear her father in Poltergeist). Taking them to the mall allows me to put them in the double stroller, walk them to the play area, watch them play in a contained space, take them to the Disney Store so that they can color and dance with the music on the big screen in the back, feed them Subway, spit out a few quarters for them to ride the carousel and then load them up for home. It kills a lot of time, is air conditioned and I'm normally able to pull it off with no issues. 

During better times. The frantic yells for Patrick are good foreshadow for Incident # 3

All was going well a couple of days ago until we hit the Disney Store portion of our rendezvous. Instead of an unstructured coloring time with music like they usually have, a kindly Cast Member was leading the children in a pirate activity that coincided with videos and songs from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Four kids were lined up in front of her as they pretended to fly with pixie dust, looked through imaginary telescopes and practiced their pirate vocabulary. Adorable. 

My kids were over it immediately. My son wandered over to the, now pushed aside, coloring table and began working on a picture while my daughter came over to me and held on to my legs as if something about the blonde woman cheerfully channeling Captain Hook was inherently evil. This kid is not shy, so I took it to mean that she might be running out of steam, at which point I suggested that we hit the streets and get some lunch to go. 

She lost....her fucking mind. 

She ran away from me, caught sight of a bucket of bouncy balls in her escape path, reached in and threw a gob of them up in the air in mid sprint so that they flew every direction and screamed the shrill, ear piercing scream that is only achievable with the vocal chords of a female toddler. Seriously, dogs in El Salvador heard her. I caught up with her and hoisted her up so that I could put her back in the stroller, only to have her stiffen to the point of utter straightness, still while shrieking the shriek of the maimed. It was like trying to put an angry department store mannequin into the back of a Graco double stroller. I was left with two options, I could wait out the tantrum in the middle of the Disney Store while everyone around was forced to listen to it or I could apply gentle, yet persistent, force to her solar plexus with my forearm in an attempt to get her to bend in half long enough to strap her into the stroller. I chose the latter, ignoring the burning stares of the parents whose children were now skipping with the Cast Member on a quest through the store for gold doubloons. 

I got her secured as she screamed in fury and realized I'd made a tactical error by putting her in the back as I loaded my son into the front. I'd been going for maximum containment when I placed her there, but  as I buckled my son it appeared that I'd sentenced him to a session of "How Many Times Can I Get Kicked In My Thoracic Vertebrae?"

I wasn't about to try and move her to the front seat after having to employ WWE moves to get her in the stroller the first time out so I lit out of the store, pushing them for all I was worth in an attempt to get out of the mall and to my vehicle as quickly as possible, all while trying to ignore the looks of disgust and mild empathy the kicking and screaming were eliciting in those I passed. I also tried to reassure my son that his anguish would soon be over, but I'm not sure he could hear me over the sound of the body blows. 

We'd made it to the exit just in time for her to level his seat with a kick that actually gave him whiplash and I finally lost my shit. I got down eye level with her and told her to knock it off, which she responded to by kicking her legs back into his seat and then leaving them extended so that he couldn't sit back. I tried to get her to relax her legs, but she held them firm while screaming wordless sounds of insanity.

You know how, in movies and in TV shows, they make Satan's voice really deep and guttural to go for both the intimidation factor as well as an evil and unnerving sense as well?

 I did that.

 In front of Kona Grill. 

While people were sitting on the patio enjoying a few California Rolls during their lunch hour. 

In my daughter's face. 

Put your feet down and stop kicking your brother or I will throw your blanket onto the freewaaaaaaay!

People stared. I got the kids to the car, loaded them up and burst into tears. Haven't been back to the mall since.

 Incident # 3

Our final incident occurred today. I actually got a full night sleep last night and was feeling ready to take on the world. I was turning over a new leaf in all of our lives. No more junk food. No more yelling. More reverse psychology. More positive reinforcement. I made the kids and I breakfast, got everyone dressed and we headed out to pick up lunch so we could spend some time at the fire station with their dad. I even went so far as to put a little gel in my son's hair so it would be all cute and David Beckham-esque as we went out to conquer the world. This decision will become pertinent later.

All went well as we hung out with dad and his crew at the station, so well in fact that I decided on our way to drop our library books off that the kids had earned the ability to go inside and pick a few movies instead of just dropping our books off in the drive thru like we were going to. Hoorays issued forth. We went inside the library and I grabbed the stuff I had on hold, then proceeded upstairs so the kids could play in the toddler area for a few minutes before we made our selections and headed home.

I was really congratulating myself at this point. The kids were playing quietly and looking at books while I took a gander at the Jillian Michaels selection I'd picked up. I was one of those moms! The ones whose kids just behaved and I could hang out with them without having to hover over them every second to keep them from going utterly nuts. If I'd had a Starbucks in my hand, the moment would have been complete.

Then we decided to leave. I told each kid they could pick a movie and two books, which when added to the four books I already had in my hand meant my arms were completely full by the time I'd gathered up our selections. I stood there for a second, trying to figure out the best way to accomplish getting all of our loot and my kids out at the same time and that's when all hell broke loose. 

My son saw my hesitation, saw my helplessness under the pile of books and I literally watched as the evil overtook him. If you remember from my Mother's Day post, my son is a runner and he is fast as shit even when I'm NOT bogged down with diet books and Chuggington DVDs. He broke into a giggling sprint, which proved to be irresistible to my daughter, and they headed for the stacks as a unified and now shrieking front. People on the computers looked at me with annoyance, but unlike the irritated and disapproving stares of the mall-goers, I actually felt like these jack holes could go fuck themselves. They were in the children's section of the public library, if they wanted quiet they could have gone to the reference section for god's sake. 

I walked calmly and resolutely to the end of the stacks, as that was where the sound of horribly behaved children was heading, and willed myself not to start yelling for them. I may have not felt bad for the bit of noise my kids were kicking up, but I wasn't about to add to the cacaphony. I intercepted them with my best disappointed face, which only made my son crack up and act like he was going to take off again. My disapproval is like an aphrodisiac to that kid. Thinking fast, I asked his retreating back if he wanted a movie and he was thankfully unaware that it was a movie he'd already picked. I made a big show of handing him the DVD and asking for his help in carrying it and this newfound task seemed to stop his need to escape long enough for me to herd them downstairs to the checkout kiosks. 

We got downstairs after a blistering lecture in the elevator and they stood compliantly next to me for a few seconds as I began scanning our items for check out, but soon the allure of running around the lobby area was too great and I began frantically loading books onto the scanner to finish the job before they tripped someone, knocked something over or ran again. Library employees watched the scene from the front desk with awe, which I've become used to seeing in the faces of those we encounter on outings. There are things you never want to see public employees surprised by, especially those that are exposed on a regular basis to kids and the horrid behavior of your children ranks highly. 

I had finally gotten all of the books scanned when my son figured out that the door was automatic and charged through it into the open air. I dropped everything and gave chase, getting halfway around the front of the building before I was close enough to him to reach out and grab him. Unfortunately, due to my need to make his hair all stylish and spiky, that was what my hand connected with and I yanked him to a stop by it which caused a homeless man on the bench in front of us to cock an eyebrow at me. I am not making this up. I have now been judged for my shit parenting form by a homeless dude on a library bench. 

I picked up my son, who was giggling about the entire affair mind you, and went back in to retrieve my books and purse from their discarded pile in the lobby, at which point my son decided to bite my shoulder like a gremlin in front of the check out clerk. 

I'll be taking all that crap back through the drive thru next time.

So is it me? Is it them? Is it some sort of combination of the two that has produced a perfect storm of evil spawn and terrible parenting, thusly condemning me and my family to angry stares, public meltdowns, lifetime bans from various venues and nights spent staring at the ceiling wondering how in the hell I'm going to make productive members of society out of them? Do other parents have to chase their kids down so they don't enter restaurant kitchens? Do you, dear reader, ever pause with a spoon hovering just outside of your mouth to wonder if it's been in someone's butthole?

In the face of the evidence, I can honestly say that trying to come up with a game plan seems futile at best. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and thusly, no idea how to alter that behavior. For now, it appears, I just have to wait it out and bask in public censure.

Gall bladders, Eating Right and Zumba

There comes a time in the lives of many, be they male or female, when the reflection staring back at them in the mirror is unsatisfactory. Maybe they've put on some weight, maybe they've gone a bit soft in the middle, maybe they feel that they could use a bit of toning here or there. For some, all it takes is the realization that they aren't where they want to be in order to trigger a change. For others, a wake up call is in order before they can effect real change. For instance, someone asks when they are due and they aren't actually pregnant. This happened to me. A few times. I responded to their insinuation that I was fat by anger eating a bunch of Taco Bell mexican pizzas. That'll show 'em.

In my case it took passing out while pooping at work, passing out while pooping at a friend's house and the then hasty removal of my gall bladder to make me think that I might need to stop treating my body like a garbage dump. I am not shitting you (I did have to stop shitting myself though, apparently).

It was like this. Except at work.

I'm gonna admit, it wasn't like I really had a choice in the matter to make some changes. When you have your gall bladder out your body just doesn't process fat the way that it used to. Sure, there are people out there that go back to some semblance of normal afterwards but I didn't fall into that category. Without boring you with the gory details, let's just say a couple days of fatty eating and I was less than comfortable. You guys, seriously, I'm not going to delve any further okay? I'm a fucking lady.

Stopped up worse than LA traffic.

No one out there wants to go through life feeling horribly sick every few days, so I think I made the only choice the majority of people would make. Having said that, I also had to make a choice as a mom too. If I'm curled up into a ball and useless to the world, how am I going to take care of my kids? As it was, the only reason that my failing gall bladder went from an organ that might need some attention to a full blown emergency situation was because I simply didn't have time to be sick. I'd be passing a stone, literally on the floor and clawing at the carpet in agony while gasping for air and I was convinced it was gas. "Nothing to see here people, just  a grown woman who needs to fart. It'll be over in about an hour." How I could convince myself that gas was the cause of that level of pain can only be chalked up to the fact that my kids were 2 and 1 and my husband worked 24 hour shifts. It was simply not convenient for anything to be wrong with me.

Finally an episode of "Hey, mom is writhing on the floor again" just didn't want to end and my parents took me to the emergency room, which brings us back to what we already know. My gall bladder was full of stones, one of them was lodged in my general bile duct which was creating a blockage that put my liver enzymes through the roof and I needed surgery. Now.

So out it came, which took me from this:

(About a month before the surgery. Even my elbows are fat. How in the hell does one get fat elbows? Oh yeah, midnight cheese eating.)

To this:

Day after surgery. Just informed that dinner was Jell-O and broth.

So I had to change some things. I was advised that all the gunk that had aided in mucking my system up could still form in the liver and even without a gall bladder I could suffer from blockages again so I started watching what I ate and exercising, which anyone with kids knows isn't necessarily an easy task but the far preferable choice when the alternative is endoscopic surgery following an episode of agony from a blockage. Better option or no though, instituting these changes for myself wasn't going to be easy with toddlers in the mix.

First, they don't want to eat what you eat. I learned this one day when I made some tuna salad and placed it on my son's plate only to watch him gag like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, complete with eye watering and sound effects. Which means that there are nights when I do what I swore I would never do before I became a mother. I make two separate meals like a freaking short order cook. Mostly I try to make them at least intersect; turkey burgers with baked fries for the kids and a grilled portobello with baked fries for me, but sometimes they have nothing to do with each other. If I know for a freaking fact that they will power down some mac and cheese and I'm craving an egg white omelette then damn it, I'm gonna go ahead and pretend I'm a line cook at Denny's and make a bunch of random shit. It's not like I'm going to be eating my dinner hot anyway, who cares how long it takes me to put my portion of it together?

This was all fine and good, but finding time to exercise was the other piece. I mean, I didn't feel like carving 5 seconds out of my life to do that before I had kids, now that there were actual constraints on my time and freedom it was going to be damn near impossible. I had the obligatory  gym membership everyone gets, touts in conversation and then summarily blows off for episodes of The Biggest Loser and root beer floats. I don't know what it is about that show, but it makes me want dessert. And to not work out until I puke/cry/hurt myself. It definitely makes me not want to do that. 

I couldn't blow it off anymore, however, so I decided to load the kids up and go work out. My daughter ran toward the other kids and the play equipment in the Kid Zone as if she didn't have a care in the world while my son stood at the door and sobbed, his expression so full of "fuck you" that I felt like a selfish ass leaving him there. I made it through 12 minutes on the elliptical machine before the kindly care provider came out and assured me that I was, indeed, a selfish ass and that he hadn't stopped crying since I'd left. A second attempt at taking them with me ended after 19 minutes when my daughter decided to squeeze herself into an exersaucer designed for a child half her age and proceed to take the hugest poop she'd ever accomplished. It was becoming readily apparent that I needed to workout at home.

My solution to this, as irony would have it, was to buy ten used Biggest Loser dvds at Bookman's. I would now be doing the workouts that I watched the people on the show do while I loafed on my couch in the face of their efforts. They range from Weight Loss Yoga with Bob Harper all the way to the Last Chance Workout with Jillian Michaels. They are hard, but they are doable and I am able to slap one into the dvd player a few times a week in order to fit some exercise into my routine without having to load the kids up, take them to the care center, stop my workout every two seconds to attend to whatever they are doing, load them back up and then shower them with Purell. 

Don't get me wrong though, it still isn't a cake walk. Just because it is more convenient doesn't mean that working out in my living room yields any type of "me time" result. 

This is when they were running around me singing, "Everybody poops! Everybody poops!"

My daughter likes to alternate crawling under me during downward dog and climbing onto me during plank.

Efforts to shoo her were in vain. Also, the dog was wet from jumping into the pool and came inside to shake off  in my general direction.

With these kinds of distractions at home, I decided that it would serve me well to actually leave the kids with daddy once a week and take advantage of my gym membership alone. The problem was, I'd gotten accustomed to the ADHD quality of workout videos. The constant change up in activities, the encouraging banter from the host, the Stepford wife-like smiling of the participants now made the elliptical seem boring and since I only run when chased, it looked like I was going to have to foray into the world of workout classes. The one that fit my schedule was the 6:30pm Zumba class and so off I went.

It is here that I would like to take a moment to explain to you the utter humiliation that is Zumba. Zumba is an aerobics class that fuses several different dance styles to the pulsing rhythms of Latin music. The instructors and many of the participants are very well coordinated and posses basic talents, like the ability to quickly discern left from right and the mind boggling talent of clapping whilst moving the feet. These people typically stand in the front. 

I, however, stand...

I'm so far in the back that I'm practically taking this picture from my living room.

It's an hour of shaking your ass, throwing down some merengue and generally humiliating yourself. Seriously, you're supposed to look like this:

I am being entirely genuine when I tell you that I, in reality, look like this:

So why do I do it? Why do I subject myself to a class that, for an hour, reminds me every time I turn the wrong direction and violently accost the person next me that I have no rhythm and really no business attempting to shake hips that were clearly fused to my pelvis from birth so only a strange and awkward seizure like movement is achieved from my efforts?

Because it gets me out of the house without my kids, which makes me a better mom. I love them. I honestly do. But the other day I was in such desperate need of a shower that I put them in there with me and then attempted to shave my legs while my son built Trump Tower out of shampoo bottles and my daughter repeatedly pointed to my lady business and asked, in horror, why it was "moldy". At 3, I'm pretty sure the explanation for why mommy doesn't always have time to wax will go straight over her head so I just told her it was because I was a grown up, nicked myself on the shin with my disposable Daisy razor and then made every attempt not to shoot my son across the shower like the escargot that Julia Roberts loses in Pretty Woman as I rinsed shampoo from his hair. (I still don't know how I pulled this off, wet toddlers are about the slipperiest things on the planet.) So, I Zumba to get a break from my routine, to take time for myself.

And because, after all of the failed attempts at synchronized clapping and abysmal forays into staying on the same foot as everyone else, I look like this:

(Taken in a bathroom stall for your amusement. Don't say I never gave you anything.)

It's genuinely a hell of a workout and just distracting enough in its indignities to be over before you realize that an hour has elapsed. Don't take my word for this, go and try a class out. If you have a gym membership I guarantee you that there is a Zumba class there and if you don't, most cities have a rec center that host fitness classes for a really small drop in rate. Try it out, take some time for yourself. You'll need to keep your strength up and your sanity intact for when your daughter lays down on the floor in the Hobby Lobby to furiously kick her arms and legs in unison and refuses to get up, even as she is causing a bottleneck in the aisle, because she's "swimming in the pool."

Is that just my kid? Oh, okay.

Guest Blog Fun, The Friday Five and Cursing Babies

I was given the wonderful opportunity to write a guest blog about my love of trashy romance novels for Refreshingly Riki today. If you haven't been to her site, give it a gander. She talks about all kinds of things over there, chief among them books and her love of reading, so if you are so inclined to crack a few spines (of books that is. Unless you're a professional chiropractor I think I speak for everyone when I ask that you please keep any human spine cracking to a minimum) don't hesitate to check her out and read my post here while you're at it. I hope you enjoy it!

I got the idea last week after seeing some pretty hilarious Mother's Day tweets that it might be fun to post a top five list on Fridays. Seeing as how Mother's Day is long since over I'm gonna go ahead and pick something else to focus on today, but I think it will be just as delightful.

This week, I stumbled across one of the best examples of smart assery I've ever experienced in a little thing called "offensive wallpapers." Most of us, if not all of us, have seen those inspirational quotes that someone took the time to place lovingly over a thought provoking landscape scene. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here is an example:

(In case it wasn't clear...this is the road to discovery. It's in Duluth.)

So without further ado, here is my first ever Friday Five. This week's selection:

Top Five Offensive Wallpapers

1.

(I read this in Wilford Brimley's voice, followed by his use of the word "Dia-bee-tus.)

2.

(The crack in that floorboard grew a flower. Your crack, however...)

3.

(No, Teddy  Ruxpin, I don't want to be friends!)

4.

(Wouldn't an entire wheat field provide enough fiber to alleviate this?)

5.

(I have no words.) 

And finally, here is a video of my son becoming so incensed at my desire to film him that he crawled into a laundry basket and began hurling expletives at me this morning. My blog isn't called Mother of the Year for nothing people.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend everyone!

It Has Been Nice Knowing Everyone....

I thought it might be wise to put pen to paper (or in this more specific case, fingers to keyboard) in the event that I'm never heard from again. My husband is on shift, the children are asleep in their beds and there is a Lightening McQueen race car out in my family room alternating between shouting, "Where am I" and "Wanna race?"

I am taking this to be both the bewilderment of the spirit possessing it as well as its malevolent desire to hurt me and short of this bitch catching fire, I refuse to go out there.

This is just the latest in a long string of odd occurrences that have gone down around here lately. Beginning a couple weeks ago, my daughter began talking about a certain "Michael Taxenor" to my husband. I can only guess at the spelling of that last name as I have no earthly idea who Michael Taxenor is, but explaining to my husband that this was a figment of my daughter's imagination after she told him "Michael Taxenor comes to my house while you're at work" was interesting. Upon further questioning I was let off the hook, however, when she expanded her story to explain "He's a little black boy in my room."

I still chalked it up to imagination until last week when my 2-year-old pointed to the corner of MY bedroom and asked, "Who dat man?" I did what the average parent would do and hauled ass straight out of there. (Yes, I took him with me.) My son then proceeded to run to me every time I put him at the kitchen table to eat and tell me he was scared of the "Boogey" under the table who was kicking and biting him.

I automatically pictured the scene from Poltergeist where the entity stacks all of the chairs on the kitchen table and started wondering how I would go about googling diminutive women who would tell my "Boogey" to cross over into the light. This has persisted ever since and been witnessed by both sets of grandparents as well. Everyone agrees, this is some f-ed up shit.

Which leaves us at this evening and a Pixar character's desire to communicate with me and possibly bring me bodily harm from across my house. I'm going to turn on all of the lights and watch Pretty Woman at full volume until morning as a means of distracting myself from my impending fate. If I should disappear, please check all snowy TV channels in the off chance that I'm just in some parallel hell dimension that you can merely pull me out of through the ceiling, but if I'm not there, you're gonna need to burn this place down and salt the earth. It's for all of our sakes.

Fat Lips, Mimi's Cafe, Clint Eastwood and Lucy Liu

Ah Mother's Day, the one day a year in which it is socially sanctioned for we maternal units to cast aside our shroud of martyrdom and demand that those we love most in the world worship us for the poop cleaning, booger wiping, tear dabbing, wound cleaning, food prepping, car pooling, schedule keeping, non sleeping, etc that we all do on the regular.

This worship can come in many forms; flowers, some form of edible delivered to us in bed and macaroni necklaces ranking amongst the highest, but really the reward one enjoys most for their efforts is unique to each mom. I, for one, am a fan of brunch. I have virtually no idea what it is about it that makes me love it so, I mean really, it's just a late breakfast, but everything about it makes me happy. From the sparkling mimosas in their long, flutey glasses to the crispy bacon and crunchy potatoes to the satisfying way the word just pours from one's mouth (brrr-uuun-cccchhhh. Say it slowly. It's super fun.) I find myself dreaming of Mother's Day brunch the moment that the calendar rolls into May.

So it should then help to paint the picture of how my Mother's Day went when I tell you that my husband was on shift (he's a firefighter), which left me all by my lonesome with two toddlers. What does one do when they find themselves in need of some Mother's Day lovin' and the person who is supposed to orchestrate it is tasked with saving lives that day like a selfish asshole? You horn in on your sister's Mother's Day plans and get yourself invited to her place.

It was a lovely affair. Her husband put out a huge spread, they provided everyone's favorite donuts and all of the moms got to eat on fancy glass plates while the rest of the dirty masses got paper ones. I felt truly pampered and worthy of the honor of Mother. Then my daughter fell off of a barstool and cracked her face on the tile, which signaled that it was time for us to depart.

(I assure you, she is fine.)

Then it was on to the Mother's Day Ice Cream Social that my husband's captain decided to throw for us ladies at the firehouse. This was very sweet and I am very grateful to him for thinking of us. Having said that, it usually works better to have everyone down to the station when you aren't among the three busiest stations in the city. We got a lot of great action images of our guys running to the truck as the emergency tones deafened everyone, but they had gotten us ice cream for the occasion and we all felt very sincerely appreciated. Thank you guys!

(When the captain ain't around, the rookies get the recliners.)

I went to bed that night pretty tired and looking forward to my husband coming home the next day so we could get down to the business of what I have heretofore entitled "Second Mother's Day." This was going to be the real deal, the type of celebrating and pampering that I was watching people post about on Facebook all day. 

Except, I learned upon waking up that he was going to be delayed in getting home by a couple of hours. Panic welled up within me. Any rational person would realize that he would be along soon, would give the kids a toaster waffle or some equally substance-less snack and patiently await his arrival so that everyone could sojourn to the long awaited brunch together in due time. But what has two thumbs and isn't rational? Well, yeah Jodi Arias is correct, but I was actually referring to myself here.

So I loaded the kids up and headed off to Mimi's Cafe because, damn it, I was getting an omelet, bacon, breakfast potatoes and a piping hot cup of coffee that I didn't have to brew myself and I didn't care what I had to do to get it. Which included actually eating at Mimi's Cafe.

The fact that the hostess put me and my kids in a booth directly adjacent to one occupied by a single, glaring man in work boots in the midst of an otherwise completely empty section of the silent restaurant had bells of doom gonging in my mind. I mean, there was no one there but this guy and us. It was Mimi's Cafe at 7:45 a.m. on the Monday morning directly following Mother's Day, the place practically had tumbleweeds blowing through it and this guy was giving us his meanest Clint Eastwood glare. Naturally, the best place for us should be immediately beside him.

(Yes, we are punks. No, we do not feel lucky.)

Still, I tried to be positive. I mean, I brought legos, that should be enough to keep the kids pacified until our meals come, right? They kept it together as drinks were ordered, happily played with their blocks as the coffee came out and smiled genially as I ordered the food for, you see, they know that in order to achieve an advanced level of evil they must wait until orders have been placed to lose their shit and start throwing lego hail mary passes across the dinning room. I got up to retrieve the blocks, returned to chew my daughter's ass for throwing them and was stopped short by the sight of my 2-year-old running with his cheetah legs straight for the kitchen. I burst into a run after him, catching his shirt just in time to keep him from getting to the food prep tables, but not before he'd roused the attention of the entire kitchen staff who were staring at the tiny interloper and me with looks that said, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

I got him back to the seat and proceeded to start packing up the legos as a consequence for throwing them, at which point my daughter emitted a shriek so high pitched and so shrill that I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't a signal to her dolphin people that she was in danger and to assemble post haste. This was the last straw for The Outlaw Josey Wales next to us. At least I'm taking his decision to slam his hands angrily down on his table and leave the restaurant mid french toast with no tip on the table as such.

I can now officially say that the behavior of my children has driven strangers to vacate public areas. It was now just me, my kids and my staggering inability to keep my kids under control left in the restaurant and I burst into tears. I still can't conceive of many things that are more pathetic than a grown woman wearing a shirt with a jelly donut on it having a pity party at a Mimi's Cafe but if you can think of some I'd seriously love to hear them. 

(I'm not kidding, this is the shirt. It depicts a jelly donut murder, and I was sobbing in it.)

I pulled my shit together in time for the food to come, shoved it down my gullet as quickly as possible, ran after my son one more time as he bolted behind the bar (he didn't even have the common decency to make me a fucking bloody mary while he was back there) and then left, fending off the offers of help from two well meaning employees who were obviously so moved by my lack of parental abilities that they felt compelled to lend a hand in bringing the ineptitude to a stop. 

It was a quiet ride home. Maybe, I thought, it was on the fitting side that Mother's Day would come and go with no fanfare directed my way. I clearly suck at this. In 24 hours my daughter had sustained a bloody facial injury, I'd lost my 2-year-old twice in a restaurant and driven a guy from the premises with my lack of leadership ability. Maybe I should work a little on my technique before I start expecting any gold medals here.

My husband arrived home mere moments after I did with a huge Dutch Bros coffee in his hand for me and a card telling me how wonderful I was. He added a post script to the bottom that read "Get ready to go shopping..." and clarified upon my questioning gaze that he wanted to take me to "Lucy Liu Lu Lu Diamonds, Whatever" for Mother's Day.

The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: What in the hell is Lucy Liu Lu Lu Diamonds?
Him: That workout clothes store you like.
Me: You mean Lululemon?
Him: Sure, yeah, that place.
Me: A guy at Mimi's Cafe slammed his hands down on the table and left mid breakfast this morning because the kids were acting up and I started sobbing in public.
Him: (Scowling) Fuck that guy, he should have eaten in his kitchen if he didn't want to be around people.

And so, I have to say, my Mother's Day turned out relatively awesome in the end. The Mimi's story has gotten a little humorous with the benefit of time and I scored some new workout clothes to wear at Zumba, an activity that I will dedicate my next post to as it is a shit show so incredible as to not be ignored.

Now that a week has passed, the dust has settled and some perspective may or may not have been gleaned, if you'd care to share your Mother's Day stories, I'd love to hear them. The Good, the Bad and even the Ugly.

A Walk to Remember

Sometimes at night, after my kids have gone down to bed, I creep into their rooms and run my hand lovingly down their soft, cherubic little cheeks. They look so sweet and so innocent I am compelled to take a picture because a) I want to chronicle the moment of peace and b) I've heard that if demonic possession is actually a thing, it can sometimes manifest itself in photography.

The results remain inconclusive.

Today my parents came over and we decided to walk a quarter mile from my house to an Italian restaurant with the kids to get some pizza. My mother had purchased a kid's umbrella for my daughter and she wanted to let her try it out on a little neighborhood walk like an elderly, Asian woman waiting for a bus so we all headed out into the warm Arizona air.

My daughter was completely stoked.

Until she refused to hold the umbrella high enough to see and we had to pluck her out of that rain gutter   you see to her right.

At which point we advised her that if the umbrella was going to be a hinderance to her vision we were going to have to take it away. This prompted a response of, "You can't talk to me! No talking!" and a look of hate so pointed and so well cultivated that I had to give the little shit some props. She definitely knows how to make someone feel like a dick.

My mother then got down to eye level with her and said sweetly, "Well, I expect you to hold that up high or I will be sad. Okay?" and then whispered to me, "I had to get tough with her. Sorry."

I found this rich considering that this was the same woman who'd once swung a vacuum cleaner cord at me after lassoing it psychotically over her head like the Lone fucking Ranger while promising my death if I didn't get the hell away from her but I guess the definition of getting "tough" with a kid could have changed since the early 80's.

The walk continued, until my son decided that he'd had enough and slunk to the ground next to my dad. I picked him up to continue our journey (we'd gone a block. You'd think we had jogged a 5k at this point) and was met with rage that I wouldn't let him down so he could continue to stubbornly refuse to walk and scream "No!" at all of our attempts to nudge him into motion.

I tried reasoning with him.

Which just caused him to go full Chris Brown on me.

The evening ended with us triumphantly reaching our destination only to have my children crawl under the table to sit with "Bapa" because their associations with him are filled with joy and rounds of "This Little Piggie" as opposed to associations with me that include rounds of "If You Say Poop One More Time to the Cashier at Fry's I will Throw Your Donut Out Of The Window on Ray Road When We Get Into The Car."

So I take pictures of them when they're sleeping. Tomorrow is a new day.

The Pinterest Generation and What Makes Me a Shitty Mother

Pinterest.

I'm not new in both lauding and lamenting Pinterest and all it stands for, but I think it still bears mentioning what Pinterest and its ensuing cultural ramifications have meant to me as a parent, wife, woman and human.

Pinterest makes me believe, in the wee small hours as I mindlessly scroll through post after post of lasagnas in muffin tins and dresses made from men's flannel shirts, that I can create my own reality. It has me thinking, as I print out Nutella recipes and templates for a firefighter birthday party that I can throw under a canopy of DIY fireflies in mason jars surrounded by mugs with baked on Sharpie drawings that life is simply a means of finding a creative solution to everyday problems. Need to lose weight? Print out this daily workout schedule followed by 200 lunch recipes under 200 calories that feature avocado and hibiscus leaf for maximum fat burning. Have a kid who holds their poop until it is turtling out of their butt while they run screaming from it because they are somehow frightened by their own bodily functions? Just take a regular spray bottle, fill it with water and affix a cute "Poop Spray" label to it. Once you spray the toilet (and maybe their ass for good measure) with it that kid will buy your line that the spray makes pooping fun and they'll be flushing their logs in no time.   Pinterest gives you the feeling that you can navigate life through a series of life hacks, tricks and DIY innovations and sometimes you can.

And then, sometimes, you find yourself at Peter Piper Pizza for a 6-year-old's birthday party with both your 3 and your 2-year-old in tow and you realize, there isn't a life hack for this. This is no quick trick to navigate through the crush of greased up, cracked out children all converging on the candy skill crane like it's a life raft in the last moments of Titanic. There is no step by step guide to prepare you for the 2-year-old running away from you through the restaurant with the speed of Jackie Joyner Kersee, your only chance for catching him to some how corral him into a corner like a wolverine while the 3-year-old pees herself on the big plastic tube slide, strips naked in the middle of the throngs and then screams at you for not letting her ride the carousel that way, her point driven home by the clenching of her angry and dimpled butt cheeks as you desperately carry her tantrum stiffened body over to a booth.

What do you do? I don't have a Pinterest pin for how to deal with this situation and I think it's because of the dark, underlying theme of our Pinterest generation. We are all trying to convince ourselves that we are good at this by mod podging baby pictures onto bricks. When that fails, we try desperately to cling to the idea that we can fool others into thinking that we are by our craftiness. But the thing is, as I realized tonight while I looked at the parents who were staring at me with horror in the restaurant while I tried to jam jeans that had been in the diaper bag as a spare set of clothes for so long that they no longer fit on my now moistened daughter, no one is buying it. They see that I, and any other parent out there like me, am barely holding it together. I love my kids, genuinely love them, but they can see the wheels turning in the Target while my son is screaming "damn it" at the top of his lungs. They know I'm thinking about punting him across a vast distance. Hopefully they see that I never would, but they see that I'd like to just the same. They know I'm not good at this. Fuck, they know I'm not even really passable at this.

So what does a well intentioned but dumb shit parent do when the urine hits the polyurethane? All you can do is gather them up and make good on the 17 threats you'd made through out your excursion to leave while a child behind you makes their way down the tube slide, exclaiming to their waiting mother, "Mom! The slide is slippery!"

Then you take them home, put them to bed after story and good night song and write a blog about how truly you suck at your job, and it isn't for lack of trying. Sometimes, I suck the very most when I've tried my very hardest. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but the results of my days as a pseudo stay at home mom are rarely without stories and that is where this blog comes in. If you are the type of parent who has this shit down pat, well then pull up a chair and prepare to laugh at the asshat who can't quite seem to get it right. But if you're like me, if you suck at this too, I hope you can relate. Either way, I am writing this to chronicle my time spent as the mother of a boy and a girl that my husband and I decided to space 16 months apart as a comic relief in a day that often involves bodily fluids, broken items and copious usage of the phrase "shut up mommy", and that is just from the 2-year-old. If you wanna feel better about yourself in anyway, stay tuned.