Confessions of a Former Mother's Day Hater

If you're a mom, or if you know a mom, want to be a mom, have a mom, or know how to spell "mom," do not Google "I hate Mother's Day."

The results are devastating. All 38,700,000 of them. I read a few blogs and some of them are pretty funny, poking fun at burned-toast-and-runny-eggs breakfasts in bed, wearing those dreadful carnations at church, or having your three-year old stuff ant-laden flowers into your hair. Those are the sort of playful haters, if that's a thing. They might really just need a good night's sleep and a long shower (alone), because if they have to wade through spit up stains and goldfish crumbles for one more second they might explode.

Other "I hate Mother's Day" posts are sad, sadder, and saddest, recalling broken relationship after broken relationship between every possible combination of grandmothers, mothers, and children in tones either bittersweet or with downright vengeance. I wish I was totally unable to connect with any of those stories.

It's not always pretty out there.

I have been a mom for 18 years, and about three years ago, my impossibly wise oldest daughter saved me from the Mother's Day Haters Club.

On my first Mother's Day, I decided I would send Mother's Day cards to all the mothers on both my husband's and my side. I counted up all the moms, a step-mom, grandmothers and step-grandmothers, and wound up with a whopping ELEVEN moms and grandmothers:
my mom
my grandmothers -2
my daughter's godmother
his mom
his step-mom
his grandmothers -2
his step-grandmothers -3

I didn't know it at the time, but I was setting up an impossible precedent for myself. I did it anyway, because
I wanted to LOVE the wonderful day that is Mother's Day. 

And I wanted it to show.

I was so thrilled on my first Mother's Day that I truly felt called to celebrate every mother-figure that ever impacted our lives. Eventually, that yellow list would shorten a little at a time. Some sort of naturally fell off the list if there was not much relationship to begin with. In other cases, there would be a massive falling out and our relationships were lost as a consequence of purportedly irreconcilable differences between the person and someone else in our family. Like I said, I wish I couldn't relate to losing a relationship. After a couple of years, the list was shortened to:
my mom
my grandmother- 2 1
my daughter's godmother   (She just really didn't expect a card or gift, This was totally ok to let go of.)
his mom
his step-mom
his grandmothers -2
his step-grandmother- 3 1

Now, it should be noted that during our first couple years, we always went to brunch with my husband's mom, usually one of his grandmothers and one of his step-grandmothers, so that meant small gifts/cards for all of them, plus making sure that I stopped by and dropped off cards/flowers/little gifts for my mom and grandma, AND sent cards to the others on the pink list. And no, it never occurred to me to have my husband take care of his side and I would do mine; I did it all and he just signed his name. It just never occurred to me to NOT try and control it all.

Are you exhausted yet? I was, but I just kept it up anyway. See how in control and organized I am? SEEE??

We did this for a few years, until we moved out of state. We had three Mother's Days with just my little family. I didn't know how good I had it there. My two kids were still little, so I never expected much, and their dad was always good about helping the kids do some cute little things. There were cards to ship and that was okay, but there was less running around to do.

When we moved back to our home state, we picked right back up with the brunch tradition. But now we had three kids. Each year, I would start to stress out completely about trying to make it "fair" for all the mothers and grandmothers try to coordinate it so that each mom/grandma had some special recognition from us, and I would shake myself into a little corner just thinking about it. In the beginning of May I would start to fret about coordinating it all, and my husband would wish I could just chill out about it all, but year after year I still juggled the brunch, three kids, church, gifts, cards, flowers and "stopping by's" for:
my mom
my grandmother
his mom
his step-mom
his grandmother
his step-grandmother

 I hated Mother's Day. I hated the very idea. I hated the juggling. I HATED it.

And it showed.

About three years ago, on my 14th Mother's Day, this time with four kids, we went to a very early Sunday Mass, then to my husband's step-grandmother's church for an early brunch, then to a later brunch with his mom and his expanding side of the family. We sent our usual cards and flowers out of town, probably late. I didn't acknowledge it, but I was an impossible stressed out train wreck. I don't know what I was trying to prove by keeping that kind of schedule; I was just trying to be agreeable to each invitation we'd gotten. Our day started at 7am and we didn't get home from all this "celebrating" until after 3pm. I had been already exhausted and a wreck at the second brunch, and my nervous behavior ended up further straining relationships that were already in precarious places. I was a disaster by the time we got home.

In the late afternoon, my 14-year old daughter looked at me and said something like this: "Ok. We spent all day doing what other family members planned for their Mothers' Days. When does it get to be YOUR Mother's Day? When do WE get to plan something nice for YOU?"

It hit me like a ton of bricks. My kids were old enough to have their own list, and in their world, their list looked like this:
their mom (me)

I had spent years and years and years, robbing my kids of the peace of knowing that they had the time and space to do something nice for me on Mother's Day. And now my oldest was 14, and the years with all of us under one roof all the time were quickly speeding by. I had very little time to change things around.

But I did.

I would never have wanted to stop visiting my mom or his mom, etc., but I just hadn't seen how my focus was so heavily centered on them and all the grandmothers on my lists that my own kids felt like I was practically forcing them to ignore me for much of Mother's Day, year after year. 

We haven't been to a single brunch since. And guess what? The extended families seem okay with it. I had to say stuff that was VERY uncomfortable for me when we were first declining invitations, but my husband was there to soften the changes. He was thrilled at the idea of having a wife who wouldn't be shaking herself to death with the stress of making things "fair," so he's been great at making sure to find other ways and times to celebrate the very worthy mothers on his side.We split up a little now to do lunches with our respective sides BEFORE Sunday, and still make sure to send flowers and cards to the non-local moms/grandmas.

Now, my list is much shorter. Some of our grandmothers have passed away and we have unfortunately lost touch with another, so it looks like this:
my mom
his mom
his step-mom 

My husband and his siblings took their mom to lunch a couple of days ago, and we sent along a card and small gift; one of my sisters and I and some of our kids went to a great place for lunch with our mom today, and we sent flowers to his step-mom.

I totally LOVE Mother's Day again.

It shows... to my kids for sure. It's not nearly as important that "it shows" to anyone else anyway.

My last three Mother's Days have been absolutely fabulous. My hubby and four kids shop and cook for meals at home, or sometimes we go out to a meal, just the six of us, and we just chill. We go to a late Mass. I don't do laundry or cook, and if they serve me burned toast and runny eggs, I am genuinely happy about it. I read or crochet and they plant flowers. We don't do any running around. We spend the whole day just being together without any stress and it. is. amazing. 

I only wish I had thought of it sooner. ;)

The Smoking Kitty

not exactly how I pictured myself, but what're ya gonna do...

Today I pondered two seemingly unrelated incidents:

1. My oldest daughter is a senior at a local Catholic high school, and she had her last all school Mass today. I didn't plan on crying even a little, but I did. A little. It was May Crowning. (This is a ceremony held during a Catholic Mass in early May, where we crown a statue of Mary with flowers.) I thought about all Anna's childhood and adolescent years, about her cute plaid Catholic school jumpers and braids as a Kindergartner, and how it seems like it was just yesterday she was learning to talk.

2.Yesterday, I ran into the mother of my childhood best friend. In the ten years since I've been back in my home state, I've only run into her three or four times. Two of those times, one of my kids wasn't wearing shoes, and those were probably the only two times any of my kids have EVER been out in public without shoes. So yeah, that's awesome. What are the odds? I haven't seen her daughter, my old friend, in probably 15 years.

I don't really believe in coincidences. I think God places us and others into situations that give cause to teach or learn something or another all the time. So it makes me smile when I can make a connection fairly easily about running into my old friend's mom, and my daughter's last high school May Crowning Mass.

When I was in junior high, my childhood best friend and I were part of a group of six or eight other girls. Within this set, there were pairs of best friends. Sometimes those pairs swapped up a little now and then: a classic symptom of learning to navigate close friendships in the context of larger social circles and all that. Overall,  Liz and I were pretty "real" best friends for most of our teenage years. She was an only child, so when her parents took family vacations, I got to tag along for a few years. We definitely had our differences now and then. Sometimes I look back and regret the kind of friend I was in complicated situations, but overall, we were peas and carrots.

When we were in junior high, our larger circle of friends had a few girls who were experimenting with smoking. In 1987, this was pretty cool. Smoking made you a little bit of a rebel, especially if you were an otherwise perfectly good Catholic school girl. In my case, I was already heavily embedded in the world of professional ballet, where literally everyone smoked. (You can't eat with a cigarette in your mouth.) So when my school friends started surreptitiously buying cigarettes, it seemed like a good time to give it a try, since I was likely going to end up a smoker like all the other ballerinas anyway. 

Here was the low down on our raging cigarette habit: my eighth grade friends and I were so addicted to smoking that we would bum cigarettes off each other for "later," or trade brands of cigarettes, sometimes during class right under my mom's nose. (She was our literature teacher.) See how baaaaaad we were? Once I noticed a boy catch sight of one of our little trades during class, and the shocked and mortified look on his face was oddly satisfying. My smug posture said: That's right! I'm a straight up rebel!

We would sneak over the wall behind the convent after school and smoke. I was completely incapable of inhaling, by the way. But I could blow a smoke ring, and that made me cool enough. Jealous? We went out to lunch and asked for the smoking section. (That was a thing back then.) I smoked in the car with my ballet carpool friends, who previously had started smoking. And they listened to Violent Femmes. It simply did not get cooler than that.

The details that led to the end of my maybe week-to-ten-day-long smoking spree are a little hazy, but it involved somebody snitching on us about smoking behind the convent. When I was caught, I totally threw Liz under the bus. I got really clever and admitted that I was "just holding her cigarettes for her." I really thought that would get me out of trouble. (I know. Amateur. 13-year olds are kinda stupid, right? I took a risk with my behavior, and then lied about it. Fortunately, I know now that the "do a dumb thing and then lie" pattern  is basically a way to stutter for help; the lamest excuses mostly translate to "help me, I'm an idiot, and I need someone to save me from myself.")

Well it didn't get me out of trouble. It got me in more trouble. (what??? I was shocked.) Liz was furious with me, and our little smoking group disbanded a bit. It was spring, and our school had selected a few girls who had the most leadership/scholarship in our classes to participate in our May Crowning ceremony. (This was a big deal. If you got to be a part of this procession, or be the one who got to actually crown Mary, then you were a shiny gold first place medal of a student.) Well that month, I made history in our school, as the only girl ever who would be chosen to crown Mary and then altogether removed from the May Crowning procession. I guess my little incident demoted my leadership standing.

I never smoked, or pretended to smoke again.

My friendship with Liz was eventually repaired, but her dad saw to it that I would never forget it. He'd always had nicknames for us: mine was Katie-Kitty, or just Kitty. Except after that week, it was "The Smoking Kitty." He also gave me an ash tray with two little boots on it that said "Stamp Out Smoking." 

Oh HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. ha.

After I was caught, my mom said almost nothing about how bad cigarettes are for people. She was disappointed in me, but didn't need to explain that. A day after I got caught, when she dropped me off at ballet, I coughed on the way out of the car. All she said was, "See?"

Yeah. I saw.

Most of my adult life, that story has come in pretty handy, mostly for a good laugh. I've always flown a pretty straight and narrow path, you know, except for that one week I SMOKED in junior high. (Who, ME? yep.) But under the funny part, there's the lesson about rebelling, the lesson about friendship, the lesson about consequences, the lesson about expectations, and the lessons about self-respect that I gleaned from that over the years. This moment of my life turned out to be more important that I knew at the time.

Here's the part where two unrelated events make sense together:

During Anna's last May Crowning, I watched her sing in her last liturgy. I watched her with her friends. I observed the way she carries herself.  Today, I saw someone who I almost didn't recognize. I saw a beautiful young woman, not my baby girl. I don't know her inside and out like I knew my baby. Don't get me wrong, I still really know this young lady, probably better than anyone else right now, but even though I am her mother, I am not her, and she is not me. She's also not "just like me." She might look a bit like me, but she's not me. Her mind is her own, her memories are hers, and only Anna will ever know what it's like to be Anna. She is not mine. She is God's. It was my job to prepare her for that weighty realization, that once embraced becomes weightless.

I think over time, we gradually discover what really ends up impacting us, and we don't always recognize how much we learn from a situation until years later. Sometimes those stories have really funny parts, like when you're 13 and your friend's dad gives you an ashtray. Some of those stories are kinda sad, like when friends eventually fall to their own paths, and then when you talk to your old friend's mom, you wonder if all you have in common anymore are memories. Maybe that's enough. I wonder what Anna's most impactful memories will turn out to be. Whatever they are, they will be hers. I hope I handled her most important moments in a way that reflects how much I love her. I can't possibly claim to know what those moments are now, and maybe I never will. But I hope she will. And I pray her lessons will be mercifully learned, and eventually cherished. 

Ten Minute Tale: Post-Op

"Ten Minute Tales" are short, stream of conscientiousness blog entries that will have no content editing because I'm going to just write out everything that pops into my head in ten minutes and literally stop when the timer beeps.

If you read my last post, my daughter had surgery a few days ago. We're on post-op day four:









And go.

This was yesterday:
Really?Who gives a kid both marbles and the teeniest tiniest water balloons? I have picked up marbles for three days straight and now I've finally hidden them. I blew my stack about them so often that now if I see one and my kid sees me see it, his eyes widen and he says "I'll get it" and he hands it right over. That's how I get my kids to do things. I put the fear of God in them. It's a great strategy, but I hate using it. But the water balloons? I tried to be nice and let my four year old play with them a little, meaning I had to attach them to the hose, then twist the hose on, then tie the damn thing off, then tell him to pick up all the pieces so the neighbor's cat wouldn't die; four of them broke and when I finally tied one off, it exploded all over me. My sister had told me to just throw the damn things out, and I should have, right away. I always have to learn the hard way. (Please note my effort to save the neighbor's cat, despite the fact that I think "someone else's cat" is the second best kind of cat, right behind a stuffed cat, and when I say stuffed cat, I know I really mean dead cat, but stuffed cat is nicer.  And no, the real cat was no where in sight, and yes, I did throw the STUPID water balloons away.)

And that's when I came back into the house soaking wet. I had to help my post-op daughter into the shower so she could go to her first physical therapy appointment. It took us three hours to get her ready and transported to the office. My patience is stretching very, very thin.

And today:
I am caring full time for my daughter. She can barely get out of bed. She deserves help and I am happy to help her, but it's very hard to do this with three other kids who all have their own stuff to do, and who all suddenly need ice packs and tylenol. And my four year old has school today. And it's "Dad Night" at pre-school tonight, and we have to bring ice and $6. I never have cash. There's no way my daughter can go to school tomorrow. Maybe she needs a wheelchair. Call around. And my son has a camping trip to go on this weekend, and my husband said he would go on it with him. Great, but really? The thought of doing all this post-op stuff alone makes me st st st st stutter.
And my husband's birthday is tomorrow, and the marble/balloon relative wants to know what our plans are?
WHAT MY PLANS ARE?????? They are to freaking not explode.

 I'm an Avenger. I'm the Hulk. MOMMY SMAAASH!!!

times up.
I'm okay. We're ok. The learning curve is a jerk though.

My Tantrum About My Tantrums

Here's the thing. I just don't really have enough time to write...
I love writing, and I like the sense of accomplishment after I finish a piece. But predictably, after I start something new, I enter this vortex of actual schedule conflicts and the familiar self-doubt that cripples many of the halfway decent ideas I've ever had. I decided I need to make a few changes about what I'll allow myself to publish, and I'm sure it will be desperately interesting for me to explain myself.

Here is my perpetual cycle of how Katie kills flies with WMDs, or for those of you unfamiliar with the extents to which I can take a metaphor, how Katie takes a decent little idea and squashes it with disproportionate criticism until it fits into a new and potentially more suitable venture.


First, I get all amped up about an idea like, let's say, writing a blog:
I have so much to say! My commentary is entertaining and interesting! I can write good! So then I'll write a couple of posts, get a few "that was cools" and then I just cannot ignore the laundry or kids anymore and I have to get back to actual real life. Smugly, I tell myself I'll get back to it when... whatever. Because after all, I still have a pre-schooler at home with me most of the time, and he rarely naps anymore, so there's little consistency for a routine that includes tapping unsystematically at my laptop. So I delay writing, and delay and delay, until I can't remember why I wanted to write to begin with.

Then I get all philosophical:
Why am I doing this anyway? Why do I care if anyone reads my blog? Why do I think I need that kind of attention? Couldn't I just write reactionary things about whomever or whatever when I'm either elated or frustrated in my purple fuzzy diary with the lock and just let it go? (No, I don't have a purple fuzzy diary. It's red, and not fuzzy; what am I, 8?)

Enter self-destructive criticism. I'm very good at telling myself I'm bad:
For example, I thought I wanted to write a blog that was primarily funny and entertaining. Why did I tell myself I would try to focus on the funny? The reality is, there's a lot I'd like to write about that's not funny. But why would anyone want to read about that? What is the point? What is the meaning of life? Why are we even here? What if Horton doesn't find a good place to set our dust speck down?

Maybe I should just quit.

But finally, we have enlightenment and landing back on earth, which is not Horton's dust speck after all:
Here's the thing. I don't really have enough time to write... about only funny things.
Ultimately, I'm unwilling to cave to self-doubt completely, so while I might try to convince myself to quit a thing, I often end up just changing it. I can make sad things funny (laugh at my pain, blah, blah), but that just takes more time than I have. So, I'm not going to restrict myself to the boundaries I had previously set for myself. There's just no reason to do that in a blog called "Nice Little Tantrums" because of, you know, irony. The title can be literal or figurative, and I freaking love the figurative.

So, no more self-imposed boundaries. I have to throw tantrums that are my tantrums. If I have a different perspective than prevailing or emerging socially acceptable ideals, and that's very very very very very likely, then either stay for the sake of reading multiple and varying perspectives about stuff, or don't. I follow a few personal blogs, and I don't always agree with every word in them, but I like getting to know the authors. I like getting a little glimpse into what makes them think the way they do, and I think people in general, are pretty darn fascinating. If I didn't know I was talking about myself, I would think a Catholic, but also Jewish, former ballerina, married mother who struggles with depression and OCD, has five siblings, four children, an English degree and two sets of in-laws might have a sort of unique outlook on life. (Did you see that part? I have TWO sets of in-laws, people. TWO sets!)

-pause-

I'm very dramatic and over-analytical. Basically, I'm going to try and write and post more often about a broader variety of things. Ok?

10 things about 14 things about 6 things about 4 things about 43 things.

As a new blogger, I spend a little bit of time every day reading other blogs. I have liked (and sometimes subsequently unliked) a dozen or so mom and dad humor blogs and other parenting blogs and pages recently. (I’ll write about unliking pages another time. S’gonna be funny.)

It’s a jungle out there I tell ya. There are mean mommy blogs, nice mommy blogs, religious mommy blogs, happy dad blogs, and bitter and angry daddy blogs. There are “I know everything” blogs, “I know nothing” blogs, “drink wine all the time” blogs and “never eat this or that blogs.” There are the blogs which are set apart from others with the fact that they have a NAUGHTY word in the page title. oooOOOoooh. There are political blogs right, left, up and down, and blogs that blog about blogs.

And what stands out to me? I’m a little mental, I know. (Example: I have debated with my husband for years about why comedies are actually tragedies and I’ll probably never let that go.) But what caught my twisted humor’s attention was the numbers.

The numbers! My head is swimming in numbers after reading what’s out there in the blogiverse.

Not sure what to make for breakfast? Here are 14 ideas you can make in 5 minutes using 2 pans and 17 ingredients. Easy as 1.2.3.
Need ideas to keep your toddler busy? No sweat! Here are 18 ideas which he will blow through in 16 minutes and you only need 42 items from 3 different stores and $235.

Can’t get your little darling to sleep? Your worries end here. You just need to follow this 82 step algorithm, and you’ll wonder why you ever had trouble with naptime or math in the first place.

Raising a teenager? Guess what? YOU ONLY NEED TO KNOW 10 THINGS! 10! (There will be 800 articles on the 10 things you need to know, and the 10 things in each of the 800 blogs will all be different. That’s only 8000 things you need to know about raising teenagers, which sounds about right to me.)

It’s ridiculous but I can’t get passed the chronic listing of things and things in lists. I’m just totally consumed with how bloggers listers list and list and list and list. List-i-posts are e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. I can’t not see them anymore. Sorta like dead people.

Maybe it’s the shortest way to get a lot of content out there? Maybe it’s become a self-fulfilling, self-propulsion thing and since everyone else is writing 11 things about 9 topics or 89 ways to do 45 things, then the self-aware blogisphere thinks everyone really just wants a listosphere? Maybe it’s really a marketing thing, and if an article has only 8 “things” in it, bloggers think the holders of the all important “like” readers might take 300 seconds to read their brilliant 8 things? (Some of them are totally brilliant, but some of them also suck. 9 ways to fold socks? Really?)

You know how you might get a new faux alligator purse or something, and you think it’s all original, until you see it EVERYWHERE and think damn, that was a big faux alligator? (Obviously the natural progression of argument WOULD evolve from listing stuff to faux alligators, which are totally a thing.)

Here’s the part where I try not to alienate anyone who’s ever written a list:
I’ve already been tempted to do it.

It seems like a natural attention grabber, and provides a structure for writing. But then again, so does a drawing of a hamburger.

I usually play Ask the Googles at least once when I write, so this time I just started typing in “1 thing” and “46 things” and “39 things,” and I still haven’t found a number under one hundred that doesn’t have oodles to teach me about rap music, the Dalai Lama, graduation speeches, how to not be a party-pooper, what your 5th grader should know, how to tie shoelaces, and program computers. Try it sometime. It was kind of a hoot actually (Hey- do you want to know 11 or 16 neat things about owls?)

And my closing remark is that at some point, I will probably have already put a number in the title of a post. Or maybe 5, but NOW it’s just because it’s too ironic to pass up.

Aaaaaaaaand I just realized there’s a number in the title of movie with the dead people remark. See? My subconscious is obsessed 2 I guess.

Sometimes, People are Just Jerks

“Do my eyes deceive me or are you blessed again?”

“And do we have anything we’d like to… announce?”

“You would love this detox idea, you could lose 20 pounds in a month.”

“I have other friends who just bounced right back after having a baby at 37. Hmmm. I just don’t see why it’s that hard.”

“And he’s your youngest? Are you sure?” wink wink, glanced at my, ahem, middle.

And that was just over the last year. This is part one of a series I’ll call:

I made none of these up. I was on the receiving end of all of these at some point over the last year. If I tried to catalogue how many other examples of moron-ness I have had the pleasure of navigating, I would need to drink a winery. (And I don’t even drink wine, so first I’d need to start, then pretend I like wine, then find out how much wine a winery holds, and drink it all.)

Here’s how I replied. Allow me to repeat the questions:

“Do my eyes deceive me or are you blessed again?”
“Yes. I’m blessed, because you’re already missing one tooth and that’s gonna make it really easy to knock out another one.”

“And do we have anything we’d like to… announce?”
“Yes. I’d like to announce that you’re a complete idiot, but fortunately most people already know that.”

“You would love this detox idea, you could lose 20 pounds in a month.”
“Hmm. 20 pounds in one month? What do you weigh, like 130? What if I’d like to lose 130 pounds, like, a LOT faster? Also your statement is a comma splice but whatever.”

“I have other friends who just bounced right back after having a baby at 37. Hmmm. I just don’t see why it’s that hard.”
“Wait… you have friends? Plural? Do your cats know?”

“And he’s your youngest? Are you sure?” wink wink, glance at my, ahem, middle.
“Oh my heavens he’s not! I must’ve left my real youngest at Fat Burger!”

I wish. OF COURSE I didn’t say any of that. (Read my post about why I blog. I’m POLITE, dangit.)

What did I do? What would you do? Shake it off? Oh they’re just well-meaning and don’t really understand? Oh just don’t be too hard on people? Oh they just want the best for you?
NO.
I pushed it all waaaaaaay down. Buried it six feet under and put up a fricken’ headstone that says
“Here Lies A Person Who is Too Polite to Tell You You’re a Moron and Your Words Actually Hurt People.”

Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I laughed it off. Sometimes I cold-shouldered it. Once I had to leave church because I was doing that try-to-hide-it-cry and I just couldn’t hide it well enough. (uh-huh, church. because that’s where I was for one these golden nuggets.)

Sometimes I pretend it’s a catalyst to get back or keep going to the gym. I start dealing with the hurt by fixing ME. I kick over the headstone and declare NO MORE! And then I diet and gym (yes, it’s a verb now) and I try to be just so grateful that those people said those things to me and now I’m so liberated! Oh Thank You, Morons!! What would I ever have done without you? If only you’d insulted me sooner then I’d have been a size 6 a long time ago! Oh, I mean a 4 - does a size 4 make you happier? okay then I’d have been a 4 a lot sooner! Oh bless you, Jerk E. Moron! Then I obsess call it focus and I try harder just to fail again and I’m flailing about in the thunder and rain and I slip into a muddy unfinished pool with skeletons everywhere and I can hear Craig T. Nelson out there screaming "YOU TOOK THE HEADSTONES BUT YOU LEFT THE BODIES DIDN”T YOU!! YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!!" And then my house explodes and I eat a cookie or five.

(I have a clinical problem with metaphors.)

I always go after the wrong problem, see. If a jerk cuts you off on the road, do you try to be a better driver so that nobody will cut you off again? If someone steals your political yard signs out of your yard, do you change your vote? OF COURSE NOT.

It is very hard for me to sell myself the fact that each time a jerk says something about my appearance, that I am not the problem. The jerk is the problem, and no matter what I do to fix myself, I cannot fix the jerks. I can fix myself on my own time table. But will the jerk still be a jerk? A resounding PROBABLY.

If I had a time machine, I could fix so many things. I could say the things I always wanted to say now that I’m trying to be braver, and maybe I could even make sure that tucking jeans into boots never became a thing in the 80’s. Sadly, I don’t have one yet. (Somebody needs to get on that STAT.) But like usual, once I have something in writing, I tend to hold myself more accountable. How will I handle it next time? I don’t really know, but hopefully I will save myself from a muddy swim with the skeletons and arrive more quickly at the conclusion that sometimes, people are just jerks.

I Blog Because I'm Actually Kind of a Horrible Person Sometimes

I blog because on the outside, in real life, I'm polite. Usually. I do a lot of entertaining of other people's whims and listening to other people's stories. I try to be genuinely concerned for why people do, say, and think what they do, and I know I don't always have the whole story from other people. I try to reserve judgment and believe people do the best they can. I nod my head in agreement or give a little wince if I don't like something someone said, but I have to feel there's a lot at stake before I will be too contrary out loud. I am a terrible liar and my face will give me away if I disagree with a thing, but I won't always open my mouth and pour forth details. I used to share more of my opinions out loud, but blah blah blah I'm 40 and I know I don't know it all. (shhh. yes I do. just kidding, not really, well maybe) But if I could take out my filter, I could say a lot that's not always very nice. I blog when I don't want to be politically correct, and/or smart, and/or funny, and/or sensitive, et cetera, et cetera.

I have also learned a thing or two about degrees of self-disclosure. The people to whom we disclose the most tend to be our closest family and friends. Not ALL family and friends, just a few. The list of people with whom I will disclose the most has very purposefully changed and shortened over the years. I'm okay with that, but since I work from home and don't "dish" much, I vent here. I can't exactly come home from the park and tell my three year old that other mothers of other three year olds drive me up a freaking wall sometimes, and I can't tell my 10-year old that I met another mom at the park today who was so snobbish and rude that I almost actually told her so. I can't tell my 14-year old son about how I cried reading the lyrics to a song I sang to his older sister today, and I can't tell my 16-year old all my fears about how I may have failed her.

Basically, I blog because I just want to ditch the filter and kvetch about stuff. Maybe I am, deep down, a horrible rotten person who just wants to say mean things sometimes. And if I just can't bring myself to be really mean, which I can't and won't, then my goal is to at least find some humor about whatever it is.

I don't give two figs if nobody ever reads my little temper tantrums. I don't blog to willfully inspire anyone. But if someone somewhere laughs a little at what I write, or relates a little to anything I've done or written, then I think that's pretty swell.

Two cups of coffee

I ran across a mommy blog yesterday, which yet again repeated a new mom mantra. Something like: "I'm a new mom. I started this blog to show you how I'm not going to let motherhood change me, and how I refuse to turn into one of 'those' moms."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHAHA

Sorry, but just BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! New mom blogger, you already are one of them! haha!

You already are.

Yesterday I poured myself a cup of coffee. I set it down on the counter and was legitimately surprised when I saw another cup of coffee there on the counter, right next to it.

It was still hot.

I'm the only one home, and my 2-year old does not, that I am aware of, drink coffee. Unlike the footprints in the sand, I'm fairly certain Jesus did not set that cup there.

But okay, sure, motherhood has not changed me. I just dragged along a husband and four kids live to live in my stagnant, never changing, always predictable, supremely satisfying world of not-one-of-those-moms-awesomeness. And it was super easy and fun!!!

All moms will be "one of those" moms. It's just a fact. The sooner we know it, the better. We all have these pre-determined categories of what "those moms" are, and if we do manage to avoid the types we think we want to avoid, we will invariably create some new horrifying category type for other new moms to kid themselves into trying to avoid.

So you know, relax. It is utterly impossible to become an ANYTHING and not "let" it change us.

I definitely drank both cups of coffee.