Just Sizing Up the Competition

Remember the Publisher's Clearing House?  The big Ed McMahon sweepstakes?  You send in an entry form and six months later the prize patrol rolls up to your house and they give you a huge check and you win a million dollars and you scream and cry and are most certainly dressed to clean toilets and/or are nursing a forehead pimple that rivals the one you had for senior prom.

Who still enters that?

Besides me and my Grandma, of course.  One of us is going to win the million.  These days, they throw in five thousand dollars a week for life too.  My daughter says that if we win the prize that Daddy could quit his job.

To which I respond with a scoff.  Staying at home is MY gig.

So if you haven't entered this year, don't worry.  You wouldn't have won anyway.  To prepare, I'll be sitting in my chair with my lipstick on, waiting for the prize patrol to come with my check.

Me and Grandma.

Forty

When I was this age:

I thought forty looked like this:

When I was this age:

I thought forty looked like this:

When I was this age:

I thought forty looked like this:

When I was this age:

I thought forty looked like this:

Now that I'm forty, I look like this:

And I think I should look like this:

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And this is how I feel about that:

You Are Not My Friend Redux

When I started writing this blog I had a hard time coming up with material to write about that wasn't embarrassing or too personal.  I knew that my mother, pastor, and quite possibly old boyfriends would be reading. I didn't want to give too much of myself away.

I got over that quickly, as it turns out that I don't really have too much to say that isn't personal or embarrassing.  My need to write edged out any shame I might have from my propensity to reveal TMI.

Plus, it's refreshing to air out your thoughts to people like strangers and nosy acquaintances who will never admit to you that they read your blog like they're reading your diary.  And I realized that not many people read it anyway.  Some people just aren't into blog reading.

Snobs.

Anyway, I amuse myself, and during one little flurry of self-entertainment made up this joke that I brought out a few times in mixed company.  It's awkward and no one but me liked it or got it, so I put it out on the blog to get it some love.

So far, it's gotten like seven hits.  From me, probably.

But I am approaching a pretty big milestone birthday this weekend, and this famous joke that I introduced three years ago is appropriately timed.

Evidently three years ago I was worried about this particular birthday, and now that it's here, I'm more intrigued that I am turning this age rather than dreading it.  I keep expecting to turn into one of those women who they feature in magazines with the headline Fabulous At Any Age!

A lot of time is spent in my own little fantasy world, I guess.

So here it is.  If you want to see it in all its glory, you can go back to the original post.  But why would you?  It's right here:

I went to the gym two days in a row this week, after taking the summer off to goof around at home all day. Now I am stiff and sore and I feel Old. And then this just happened:

At the door: Knock, knock.

Me: Who’s there? 

At the door: Forty. 

Me: GO AWAY

Funny, right?

No Pets Allowed

There are no pets in this house.

Not because we are allergic, or because we are between pets, or because we live in a place where they don’t allow pets.

We don’t have pets because I don’t like keeping pets.

And because my job is managing this house and the lives of the people who live in this house, I choose for our family not to have pets.  The three animals I take care of are enough work, thank you very much.

Now, look.  I am not anti-animal.  Not really, anyway.  I don’t kick cats off of my front porch and I don’t set traps for rabbits.  We feed squirrels, if you want to know the truth.  But I’m not posting pictures of abused dogs and cats online and demanding justice and adoptive homes for them, and I’m not taking in strays I see wandering the neighborhood.

I will love your dog at your house, pet your cat and will even allow him to crawl into my lap.  There’s something about the warmth of a pet who settles next to you, totally trusting and not caring that you are anything other than a comfy cushion to perch upon.

But please know that I will not pet-sit for you.  At my house, anyway.

We’ve had pets.  We had a dog for eight years who we had to put down when she got sick.  It broke my heart into pieces to make and carry out that decision.  A piece of me still nurses that terrible experience, the decision to end her life.  That was seven years ago.

We’ve had fish since then.  Hermit crabs.  A kitten my father rescued and we raised for six months.

These relationships ended in death, with the exception of the cat.  All the goodbyes were hard in different ways.  The fish died ungracefully (floating sideways in a bowl with no warning, only to be scooped out and unceremoniously flushed), the hermit crabs died mysteriously (there were two, and what happened to the big one’s claw?), the cat was exiled (we received mildly threatening anonymous mail after he was spotted in several of our neighbors’ homes who employed doggie-doors), and the dog’s death was tragic, premature, unfair.

Our children still ask for a pet.  Any pet.  They promise to take care of it.  I reply that we can get a pet when daddy quits his job and I find one to support us.  They can all share the pet-keeping chores while I work sixty-plus hours a week.  They will be in charge of the house cleaning, vet appointments, kenneling when we go on vacation, walking, poop-scooping, bathing, feeding, and shampooing of carpets when the pet has an accident.  Their pleas for getting a pet eventually cease.

They rattle off the kinds of exotic and domesticated pets they will keep when they live on their own.  They have given them all names. I remind them that I won’t pet-sit.

They continue to be disappointed.  I frown at my husband when he joins my children’s pleas for a pet.  I am the bad guy, the ogre who disapproves of their frivolity, the one who keeps hostage the happiness that will only come from owning a pet.

I am strong, and we are still pet-free.

But the warmth and comfort of a dog, the deadpan silliness of a cat, the gleeful chirp of a bird, the delicate beauty of a fish as it glides through the water – I still enjoy it.

At your house.

 *******

This post inspired by:

Prompt #1: Introduce a pet.

The Best

Babies are the best.

I was shopping away in Target, buying up soda in multi-packs like a boss because they were on sale for like under five dollars, which is ridiculous but there it is.

I looked over and there was a young mama pushing her cart and holding a teeny baby over her shoulder.

The baby seemed to be looking at me.

What a beautiful baby, I said.

He was a beautiful baby.  He was little and pink, fuzzy on top, bright and shiny and trying to lift his head off of his mom's shoulder with all of his teeny tiny might.  He was dressed in only a onesie, that wonderful piece of baby clothing that every mom has hundreds of but somehow when your kids are babies you never have enough of them.

Thanks, she smiled.  He was hot, and was screaming in his seat so I just took him out of it.  And now, look, he's fine.

How old is he?  I asked.  Just three weeks, she replied.

I smiled back at her.  He's perfect, I said.

She thanked me and I walked on through the store.  I remembered when our kids were babies.  None of the sleeplessness or frustrating unknowns that fill most days as a new parent came to the surface.  Only the memories of the warmth and weight of a little sleeping body, the simple acts of feeding, bathing, dressing, and holding those babies were in my mind.  In an instant, tears started to form in my eyes.  My throat tightened up a little. Those were such sweet years.

Babies are the best.

*******

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On Motherhood

Before having children I heard that mothering is the hardest job in the world.  I didn’t know what that meant, and I sure didn’t believe it.  My mother made it look so easy.  I needed to educate myself, so I read books and asked questions of every mother I knew.  It was an overwhelming project.  Every mother has advice, a thousand anecdotes to share.  I felt like I absorbed every piece of information out there.  I was prepared.  Then my children were born.

I was not prepared. Mothering really is the hardest job in the world.

Before becoming a mother I heard that having children was like having your heart live outside your body.  I didn’t understand.  Love had happened to me before and it didn’t feel like that.  Then my children were born.  I understood, but I felt as if I couldn’t provide for them sufficiently.  Every feeling they had was my own, a hundredfold.  I desired to anticipate their needs, prepare for those needs, and execute perfect solutions for those needs.  I tried my hardest, and failed every single day. 

My kids made unfathomable messes, resisted potty training, and watched a troubling amount of television.

I worried that I was the only one on the brink of disaster each day despite the consoling thought I hung onto since the day my children were born: I am one of billions of women who had done this job with varying degrees of success.  Despite the evidence that I was in good company, I doubted my skill set.  So I connected with other mothers and found myself in the fold of a group of warriors who bravely slogged through the mothering trenches with me.  We helped each other develop parenting skills, weed out unproductive endeavors, applauded achievements, and encouraged each other through failure. These mother-warriors became wonderful friends.

I continued to educate myself to assuage lingering doubts that I was capable of effective mothering.  I read that “Children will thrive despite best efforts or worst mistakes. Don’t strive for perfection, only adequacy.”

This advice suited me; I was never one for herculean efforts.  I adopted a strategy for baseline everyday mothering: survival.  If the kids were fed, clothed, and reasonably clean at the end of a day, it was a rousing success.

I learned some things: there is no limit to the messes that children create, but mothers must be persistent in teaching them to clean up.  In potty training, mothers should train themselves to put potty training first.  Children’s television programming is an exasperating blend of soothing repetition for children and insanity-inducing boredom for adults, and mothers should accept it. 

My kids thrived.

I’ve been a mother for twelve years now.  The job gets harder every day and I threaten to quit often.  I am still learning and am thankful for the untold mothers, strangers and friends alike, who have steered me through it.  I owe my mothering expertise to them.  Happy Mother’s Day, fellow warriors. 

So far, I haven't ruined them.

Release the Kraken

As a parent I often find myself in a group with other parents.  We share horror stories and endure each other’s bragfests, laugh and shake our heads at the new adventures our kids enter into each day.  Sometimes, a fellow parent who has kids older than ours listens to our tales, and sagely nods; they’ve seen it before, weathered the storms in the pulsating sea of kids’ emotions and exploits, and they say: “Just wait.”

Or “She’s going to give you trouble.” Or “It gets worse,” or “better,” depending on the snark level of the adviser.

Wait for what?  The walls to cave in at the next temper tantrum?  My kid’s head to spin at the next outburst?  Blood to rain from the heavens, animals to run for the hills, earth to quake and sky to part the next time one of my children tests a limit?  What am I waiting for?

In my mind I have seen the dark side taking hold of my children when I’m not looking, or even worse, when I am.  Will my kids turn out to be drug addicts?  Murderers?  Teen parents?  Strippers and prostitutes and pimps?  Gang bangers?  Rapists, arsonists, terrorists, or worse yet, politicians?

Whatever it is, I can guarantee that I am not ready.  I was never ready to have children in the first place.  I wasn’t ready to become pregnant either of the times I became pregnant.  I’m not ready for them to grow up, to experience the things I did, for them to lose one more shred of innocence. 

Each day, the sight of my twelve-year-old behemoth of a boy entering the room causes me to stop in my tracks.  He is so tall.  When did that happen? My daughter, a whisper before ten, resembles me so much that even I marvel at the similarity in photos.  The verbal assaults they unleash on each other and sometimes on me ring in my ears; I’ve heard those words before, about thirty years ago, and my blood goes cold.  I remember the bad things I’ve done, all the arguing with my parents, the punishments I received.  I was not a terrible child, and yet my growing up years were littered with tension.  This is going to happen here, too. 

These kids have caused me bouts of irrational fear, inordinate amounts of sleeplessness, too many heartbreaks to count, tears, anger, nights of drunkenness, confusion, frustration, sadness, exhaustion, and more than a few gray hairs. What else am I waiting for?

Parenting is hard, y’all.  I don’t need people telling me to just wait for more.  I know it’s coming.  I’m not ready, and I’m scared.  I’ve had twelve years of practice, and it is not enough. 

Still. 

Bring it.

*******

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