If you are over the age of 20 why the fuck do you like this garbage?  How can you stand these whining, sniveling, emo-inspired, teen angst bitches for more than 15 minutes?

I don’t get it.  Tried to read the books (just to shut my kid up) and I could not get past the first chapter.  Literature this is not and it’s not even good crap.  So to then take it to the big screen?? Oh good gawd… help me now.   A good friend of mine tried to convince me a few months ago that the movies are “fantastic” and she tried to make me watch them.  I fell asleep less than 45 minutes into the first one and that was only to prevent myself from vomiting.

This is why I don’t like them:

It’s like sitting in a room with Princess and all her friends and all their “drama” that is not even really that dramatic for over 2 hours.  Who the fuck would want to do that? I would rather go to the dentist and the Gyno at the same time.  In fact the only thing more annoying than all the teen freak out mass hysteria over this shit is the grown women talking about what “team” they are on?  Really? ummm….. fucking gross.

So last night I became the ONLY MOM on the WHOLE PLANET who wouldn’t let their kid go to the midnight showing of this movie.  Now, let me clarify something here:  I was going to let her go but only if she went with her friend who has a car (oh my gawd how horrible am I for that?) and the whole thing didn’t involve me beyond her waking me up at 2am to tell me she is home.  Oh yeah and she can’t wear short shorts and spaghetti strap tank tops.   Fair right? I mean she didn’t have to go and be seen with me (you couldn’t pay me!) and she got to roll with her friend in her car.  Come on!  Teen dream is it not?  So her plans fell through and her friend didn’t go, she had friends down there but couldn’t get a hold of them and I am just SO MEAN because I wouldn’t let her walk down there in the dark at almost midnight and then walk home again at 2am.  Furthermore, I am “irritating” because I didn’t want to get up and take her there at midnight, then get up again and pick her up at 2am with a kidney infection and two sick toddlers.

What kind of mother am I? Clearly a terrible one.   Now the only reason I was  letting her go in the car with her friend is because the movie theater is 5 minutes by car from our house and yes it is within an easy walking distance but not at MIDNIGHT and 2AM!!!  So right now I am pretty sure she hates me.  I am hoping to win some sort of meanest mom award of some kind.  I keep working very hard towards this goal and I keep getting bumped out of the running by other bitches.  Someday I will achieve this peak of maternal greatness… we should all aspire to great things because life without goals is an empty one.

~RM1

Most of us assume during the infant and toddler years this is to be expected but what they don’t tell you is it never stops.  Yes, your teenagers will not let you go to that bathroom alone.  In fact they will not talk to you all a day long, avoid you even and the second you go in the bathroom they will immediately need to “borrow” $10 or need a ride downtown or want to know if YOU know where THEIR ipod is…. all while you are taking a crap.   None of these things can wait until you come out, they must all be asked the second you go in there and get comfortable.  Why? I don’t get it.  I mean really am I going to stop mid-crap and get up and drive you downtown?  Have I ever done that? ummmm…. no.

I do confess with my babies I have nursed one while sitting on the toilet.  Yep, sure have.  Desperate times people…. desperate measures.  I also have allowed my toddler to take apart and entire box of tampons so I could use the toilet and avoid him waking up a newborn who had me awake all night long.  I felt justified since that particular box was buy one get one free at Target and so it was $3.99 well spent in my opinion.   I have not read a book or a magazine on the toilet in almost 16 years.  I miss those days.

Here is the thing, while my teenager makes me nuts asking me random shit while I am trying to shit, my 2 year old bangs on the door like a DEA agent on a drug raid, my one year old sobs uncontrollably while trying to peek under the crack of the door because he just KNOWS my boobs are in there somewhere… the kid who drives me the most insane when I use the toilet is the one who doesn’t make a peep, the one who is silent and never asks me anything or even knocks on the door: Green, my own little silent Mommy Stalker.  He stands outside the bathroom door and just waits.  I can hear him shifting positions, scuffing his feet along the baseboard and most of all I can feel him staring at the door.  His eyes are like laser beams focusing intently on the door then the door knob waiting for it to turn and the door to open.  It absolutely makes me crazy.  I sit there trying to not be constipating while I feel these eyes pressed on the door. Then when I can’t take it anymore I yell “What do you need?!!” only to hear him say “Nothing.  I’m just waiting for you.” FOR WHAT???????  WHY?  I don’t get it.  Why is he waiting for me?  When I come out he just says “Hi mom” and then runs off to play.  It makes no sense.   It makes me crazy.

What kills me the most is they don’t do this to ReneDad.  He can take his PS2 in there and play an entire Madden Superbowl without so much as a knock.  He can read every book he has checked out of the library in a month in one bathroom session totally undisturbed.  Why can’t I sit there just once and read just one short article in Sunset magazine without breaking up a fight, shouting out chores and screaming for peace?  It is just so wrong.

So here is the part where I ask “IS IT JUST ME?”  I know it’s not. I know this because there is actually a community page on Facebook called Going to the Bathroom Alone. Swear.   So go for it and confess the desperate things you have done to use the toilet alone, or the things you have done to just use the shitter at all.  Tell me all the lame stuff your kids have knocked on the door “needing” the second you sit on the throne.  Let us all lift the mysterious veil of motherhood secrets and warn all those “I want a baby” makers out there what they are really in for.  Let them all know they will never, ever shit alone again.  Ever.

On the up side of things eventually the day will come when the bathroom interrupti will have to wipe our asses and I plan on seeking my revenge.   Green is first on the hit list.

~RM1

“How come every time I go away somewhere something happens to you?”

….with a big fat smile on his face.  Not funny man.

So what happened? Well considering my track record for disaster when ReneDad goes on a trip it could be just about anything, this time it comes in the form of poison oak.  It is BARELY even fucking spring here in California and I already have this god damn shit.  What the fuck?! I don’t think I should get this shit until at least mid summer and it better involve some camping, some marshmallows and a river!  It wasn’t bad enough that my allergies have hit an all time peak and I was already on the verge of ripping my face off but now this shit?  I totally get how RM2 felt last year after our camping trip when she had seriously the WORST case of this shit that I have personally ever witnessed.  She got the shit in her eye. Whoa.  I felt bad for her then but now I am looking at her like she is my personal hero because she survived it! I woke up this morning to officially having this shit on my neck, chin, face and now…. you guessed it… my eye. FUCK THIS SHIT!!!!  If it spreads to my vagina then I am jumping off a bridge.  I have it on my ass too by the way so the likelihood of it creeping just a little further southeast is not totally out of the realm of possibility and we are talking about me so you do the math.

This morning I’m wearing Calamine lotion all over my face like I am Tammy Faye Baker and I’m gussied up on my way to an interview with Barbara Walters.  I look crazy.  If I could pour this shit into my eye right now I would.  The truth is it totally kills me that ReneDad is right.  Every single time he goes away for a few days he comes back and something has happened to my ass. How is that possible? How is it that I spent 10 years as a perfectly capable single mother and now I am married and when the husband goes away I turn into an idiot? It just pisses me off.  He thinks it’s funny and now he has declared Open Season on the jokes.  Who can blame him? I would too. Really, I blame him.  It’s his fault I have this shit.  The cat gave it to me and since the cat was sleeping in his spot while he was gone that makes this ALL his fault.  (This is the part where you agree with me and make me feel better)  The cat even crawled under the covers and curled up next to my ass which is why I have it on my ass.  If he had been in his spot in the bed this would have never happened, at least not just to me, he would have it too and then I could make fun of him.

Now if you will excuse me, I am off to go rip my face off and scratch my eye out while I sit on hold with the doctors office so I can beg and plead and convince them this is an emergency that requires their immediate attention.  Otherwise I am just going to go down there and oooze all over their chairs until they see me.

~RM1

What the hell has happened to me?

Well, I will tell ya: a dog, three cats, a parrot, four kids and wall to wall fucking carpet.  I hate carpet.  I think carpet should be outlawed.  It never stays clean, shit always fucks it up.  Our bedrooms are hardwood floor but the living room and dining room (what genius decided THAT was a good idea?) are carpet.  I hate it.  Thus bringing me to wanting a Dyson vacuum desperately.  If we owned this house I would rip out every ounce of carpet and have hardwood floors and tile all the way through it.  We are renters sadly and that means I must endure my evil carpet.   So getting gifts like vacuums and shit that makes my life easier makes me happy now.  I like practicality mostly because we never have any money so things like that thrill me to no end now.  It’s kinda sad when ya think about it.

On Mother’s Day I read all these tweets and posts on Facebook about the flowers, the candy, the fancy dinners many moms received and I wasn’t the least bit jealous because I got the best gifts ever (ok second best next to a Dyson): two garden hose attachments, a new cushion for my patio lounge chair and… are you ready??……. Zen moved out of our room!!!!!  Why do these things make me so happy? Well let me break it down for ya:

The Garden Hose Attachments

For two years now I have had a war with my garden hose attachments.  I am a cheap bitch (mostly a broke bitch) and I bought some at the Dollar Store.  Bad idea. They broke and doused me with water by the second use.  Then I went to the hardware store and bought several over the past two summers and let me tell you there is a reason why they are cheap: because they are CHEAP and the fuckers break, squirt water out sideways in your face, stream water out of the faucet attachment and otherwise are stupid and piss me off.  Then I can’t reach the hanging baskets but I try and dump water all over my face in the process.  Essentially for the last two years ReneDad has watched me make a total fool out of myself every day in the summer watering my garden.  This year he couldn’t take another minute of it and bought me two fancy sprayers, one has a long handle for the hanging baskets. I think I am in love.

The Cushion

A few years ago I scored a really cool patio set for free minus the cushion for the lounge chair.  It get’s hotter than shit on pavement here in the summer and at night I like to hide from my kids and go take naps outside on my lounge chair.  I always say I am going to buy a cushion for it but then I don’t because I never want to justify spending $40 on one when I should be buying soap and toilet paper.  So each year I lay about 10 old towels on it and lay there ghettofabulous.  ReneDad has had enough of it and he bought a beautiful cushion for it so I can go hide out at night.  Once again, I think I am in love.

Zen Moves Out

This Mothers Day ReneDad moved our youngest out of our room and into the boys room.  No longer can he sniff me out for middle of the night boob.  I swear this child at 17 months old is convinced that he is a newborn who still needs midnight feedings, 2 am feedings, 4am feedings…. it is driving me insane.  He sniffs out the milk, I know he does! If I roll over he hears me and wakes up and thinks it is time for the midnight buffet.  I have not slept all night, uninterrupted in over 3 years now between Zen and Wylde and the time has come.  So he moved out and guess what? For the past two nights I slept ALL NIGHT LONG!! Seriously, I am in love.

I am so in love with ReneDad I cannot see straight.  He is the best ever and he totally knows that practicality is the way to my heart.  I am no longer that stupid 25 year old who snubbed her nose at a vacuum.  I live for practical gifts that make my life more pleasant. He knows that if you give me flowers they better be in a pot so I can plant them.  He totally gets me. As far as I am concerned he is now, officially the most romantic and wonderful man who ever walked the earth.  I am so in love.

PS: via twitter I just found out that I am not alone in my love for practicality. Read A Bittersweet Existence Mothers Day post.  Yep.  We might related.

~RM1

When I was pregnant with Green it was an epic journey. I found out I was pregnant and then a week later was told I miscarried.  Something told me that it was a mistake but since I had miscarriages prior I thought it was more like wishful thinking on my part, yet I had a nagging feeling telling me I was still pregnant. A few weeks later I was puking my guts out in the neighbor’s bushes and I knew that I was indeed still pregnant and took another test to confirm it.  The doctors didn’t believe it was the same pregnancy so they did the ultrasound and there he was 12 weeks along doing cartwheels. I was right.  Then a week later they told me I miscarried again.  Nope. Second ultrasound and there he was happy as a bug in a rug.

A month and a half  later  I woke up in a massive pool of blood and passed an enormous clot and was rushed to the emergency room. The OBGYN on duty told me that I had miscarried and he wanted to do an emergency D&C without an ultrasound.  I remember having horrific contractions, transition labor kind to the point where I could barely speak.  All I could get out of my mouth was “no, fuck off!” and I think I said that to this idiot about 20 times.  He kept loading me up with morphine to shut me up and I remember forcing myself to stay awake and hang on to my baby, then I threw the puke bucket at his ass. He insisted I had miscarried, how I needed to accept it and that I could always “try again”.  I will never understand this “you can always try again” bullshit.  As if somehow the baby you just lost is “replaceable” and you are not supposed to grieve or feel loss.  I think medical professionals should be trained to NOT say that stupid shit to women going through a miscarriage because it belittles the loss they are feeling.  Needless to say I was pissed and literally crossed my legs and told him to get the fuck out of my face and get me a god damned ultrasound.  He was arrogant and refusing and it was the ER nurse who went to bat for me and told him to just let me have it; he gave in and added “well then you can go see for yourself that I am right”.  Hmmm…. yeah… fuck you.

A few minutes later I looked up on the computer monitor and there was my little Green, he was sleeping and his heart was beating strong and he was so beautiful.  The picture was crystal clear, I could see his little eyelids and he was smiling in his sleep.  He looked so peaceful and perfect and I felt like a real mother in that moment because I had protected him, I had kept him close to me and I did what my instincts told me to do.  I was so in love with him I couldn’t see straight. The ultrasound tech was really kind and she sat with me for awhile and let me just watch him sleep. It was the best moment of my entire life.

Throughout Green’s life I have spent countless hours watching him sleep.  Sometimes I go in his room and I stand there staring at him in his little loft bed and think to myself how lucky I am. I remember how I felt when they told me I had lost him. When I watch him sleep I feel that same feeling of relief and joy that I felt that night when I watched him sleep in my belly.  I stare at his closed eyelids  and when he sleeps he still smiles.  I could watch him for hours.  This year on his 7th birthday I went in his room before I went to bed and watched him sleep.  He is so big now,  so tall and is all arms and legs.  His room is decorated with Bakugans and Marvel superheros and he is trying so hard to be big.  Every day he tries to be bigger and more grown up than he really is and when he goes to sleep he surrenders to being small and young and is curled up in his bed asleep and smiling.  He still sleeps with his ball blanket that a friend made him, it is all faded and worn and flat but he loves it.  He still sleeps with this little purple stuffed dinosaur that he won a county fair.  He is only 7 and he is still my little guy.
This year it has dawned on me that this all goes by really fast.  I feel like he has been small for a really long time and that suddenly one day he is going to be 6 ft tall and I am going to wonder what the hell happened.  I worry that he won’t cuddle with me anymore, that I won’t be able to watch him sleep anymore and that the day will come when he won’t need me anymore.  Then I look at RM2 with her two giant boys.  The 19 year old still has his days when he needs his mom (a lot!) and he still cuddles with her and loves her.  Sometimes I see him come over and give her a kiss and tell her what a shmuck he has been and that he loves her and I want to cry because it is true: no matter how giant they get they still need us, they still love us and the feeling we had when we watched them sleep as babies (in Green’s case as a fetus) never ever goes away.  Her oldest giant comes over and hangs out with her and loves her and is so sweet to  her. They never get too big for their mom.

Even though I know all of this now I still don’t want him to grow up.  I wish I could make time stop right now and keep him the way he is at this moment.  I don’t ever want some girl to break his heart, I don’t want to have to share him with some other chick and I don’t ever want to see him get in the driver’s seat of a car and drive away from me.  I want him to stay like this, get into crap, drive me nuts, draw me twenty pictures a day (demanding that I keep all of them) and sleep every night with that flat blanket and that purple dinosaur.   Green will always be my little sleeping baby, perfect in every way and I will always feel that fierce need to protect him and love him just as I did that night when no one believe in him but me.

I believe in Green, even when he makes life it’s most interesting.  Happy Birthday Green, I am so glad you are  here.

~RM1