And not to leave Alex out, his resting spot in the laundry made me laugh.

I had been alerted to the fact that this happened when people started tweeting me about it. Typically I don’t get alerted when people audition for shows but Chris Mann, you see, sings the song to which I am dancing ridiculously below:

It’s a catchy song. Many of you may have seen my ridiculous dancing when I posted last year about What I Learned at Blissdom. The reason I’m posting today is not to show you this damned video again (although it does make me laugh). I’m posting because of something Chris Mann said on The Voice.

For those of you who have not seen his audition, he sang a beautiful Italian song. It was breathtaking. When asked why he chose to sing something that was not in English he said “I’ve tried for years to shrink my voice down and I decided for this audition to just be me.” He stunned people by finally being himself. Yourself is the best that you can be – none of us should be trying to be someone else. We should just be our best us. It was a lesson that, if you read What I Leanred at Blissdom, you may recall I learned while dancing ridiculously to a song he sang. And while watching him on The Voice a year later, it was a lesson I found I needed to be reminded of: I’m best just being me.

Thanks Chris.

If you need a social media manager for your new found fame, you know where to find me. If not, just keep reminding me to rock on with my bad self.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

If you had to sum up my blog in a word, what would it be?

I’d choose: rambling. Or, mine.

I don’t like it because it’s retro or hipster or because it makes me think of Mark Wahlberg when he used to be Marky Mark. I like it because it’s weird. It’s just a weird thing to say.

I always think “Which word?” And then I start thinking “You know that phrase could kind of be a threat. Or it could mean your mom is a total MILF and they wanna say hi. Or it could just be a weird thing to say.” It’s ambiguity and the prospect of it confusing people is why I love it so.

I also really enjoy telling people “Jamaica Me Crazy” because it’s something a dad who thinks he’s being funny would say. Realistically, I like weird quirky little phrases because language is a place where I can amuse myself endlessly.

Or perhaps I am just weird and quirky.

For instance my favorite joke is this:

Why did the monkey fall out of the three?


Because it was dead. 


Why did the squirrel fall out of the tree?


Because it was tied to the monkey.

Yes, this is an actual joke that someone else told me.

Now, here’s why I love it. No one ever guesses that the monkey was dead. The answer comes completely out of left field and shocks people. Then they always guess the squirrel is dead – which is hilarious because why would it be funny if you know the answer? Facts aren’t funny (and that’s a fact). But then, finally, most people ask “Why would a squirrel be tied to a monkey?”

Why would ANY of that joke happen? Why would anything in ANY joke happen? Why would a rabbi, a priest and a zebra walk into a bar? Because it’s a JOKE. But there’s something about this particular joke that makes people want answers. Which amuses me.

You know why a rabbi, a priest and a zebra walk into a bar? Because it’s ludicrous. And facts aren’t funny.

Anyone will tell you, pregnant women are insecure.

Well, that is a lie. It’s not that we’re insecure. It’s that we’re learning entirely new ways to be hot mamas. Like any transition, it can be tough. When you move to a new city, you miss old friends. So do pregnant ladies miss the signature sexy moves that they have cultivated over years.

In a time of our lives when crouching down causes the elastic on our underwear to pop off, the old bend-n-snap takes on a whole new meaning.

So I’m here to advise the pregnant on how to bring their sexy back. Because isn’t that what all pregnant women are concerned about?

1. Moisturize

Plenty of pregnancy books will advise you that moisturizing your skin will help prevent stretch marks. I say this activity can do double duty. Never under estimate the effect that rubbing yourself can have on your husband – even if you’re just rubbing some Jergens onto a vastly swollen belly. Even better, ask your husband to do the rubbing for you. With any luck, this tiny bit of action in the middle of his pregnancy-related-dry-spell will be enough to tide him over.

2. Stretch

Sure, you can’t touch your feet, let alone see them. But stretching out all those muscles you haven’t  used lately – like the ones in your toes – can help you get ready to bring it in the boudoir. Be sure to reach far out ahead of you – putting the chips a few feet further away can help you achieve this goal. If nothing else, your husband will appreciate that the chips are just a teensy bit closer to him than they have been in the past few months. Let’s face it, for the past few months you’ve been threatening to eat HIM if he eats your chips – and not in a sexy way. The removal of threats alone should help him go to sleep easier and perhaps forget about sex for a bit.
3. Kegels

Repeat after me and say “I’m not doing any fucking kegels, ok?”

4. Bladder Control

If you really want to bring your pregnancy sexy back, you should probably try to keep from peeing your pants. But, based on the chant I just led you through in Tip 3, that ain’t gonna happen. Instead, keep some extra maternity underpants on hand so that you can do quick change as needed and hide your pregnancy related incontinence from you husband. The good news is, if you ever find yourself stranded in below zero temperatures, your extra pair of maternity underpants can also double as a tent.

5. Role Play

I’ve just been accused of carrying a pumpkin under my shirt by my husband. This insinuation gives me full permission to hunker down on the couch in some sweats and dig into some ice cream. Perhaps El Hubbo can start working on bringing pregnancy sexy back himself – by rubbing my back and doing the laundry. I’ll even try not to wet myself while he takes initiative.

So for those of you who are looking at bringing sexy back during pregnancy the best tip I can give is: do the laundry and help your pregnant wife out.

Because, let’s face it, the only people truly interested in bringing pregnancy sexy back are men, right?

It made me want awesome hair. Which I don’t have because I always throw it in a ponytail because I hate styling it. So I got it cut. Drastically.

I’m not sure what I think. I love the length but the layers feel a little…Velma-y.So tell me what you think. Honestly. But be gentle.

Before:

After:

Throughout those several months when David was living far, far away from us and I was both queen of the castle and its only lowly chambermaid, my brain fully ceased functioning. Well, no it didn’t, because if that were the case someone would have noticed and my child would have been taken away from me. But, it stopped functioning just enough to give me a fucking complex.

I’d send emails without attachments. File things into the wrong folder and go nuts looking for them. I forgot to update my fantasy football league, ever. I was moving faster than my brain could keep up with.

“Oh, but these are small issues and understandable given the situation,” you might be thinking to yourself. Sure, they are, when looked at on a small scale. But when you’re 1 degree off perfect and you don’t have time to course correct, eventually this happens:

Over time, you get further and further away from where you’re supposed to be. Now imagine that diagram if you’re 5 or 10 or 25 degrees away from perfect and you’ll have a good idea of how off target I was feeling.

I was really, really, really trying to hold it all together. I’d make the train with literal seconds to spare. Even so, I got a few parking tickets. Because in my haste to make the train, I entered the number of the spot I was in yesterday and paid for someone else. Whoops! But at least I got safely to work on time where I could busy myself frantically sending emails without attachments.

Still, I was under the impression that people weren’t totally noticing and if they were, they weren’t completely appalled by my inability to do seemingly simple things. But then it really fucking came down on me.

One day, I went into false labor. I called David to let him know since he was still 6 hours away. I let him know it was way too soon to tell but wanted him to be aware. An hour later he called back to see how things were going. I said, and I quote, “I don’t think this is anything. I’m probably just dehydrated. The best thing is for both of us to get some sleep and discuss it in the morning.”

Naturally, he drove home in the middle of the night in a panic. Perhaps I would have done the same if it were my pregnant wife. But here’s the thing: my in-laws heard the news from David and they spent $800/ticket to come see the baby. They cancelled my father-in-law’s birthday party to do this. They then sent a text to our whole family letting them know the baby’s arrival was imminent.

It was at this point that I really started to question my communication skills. Hadn’t I said “the contractions are irregular and could mean nothing?” I thought I’d said that. But the truth was, at this point, I really had no clue what I’d said to whom anymore.

While I sat and pondered my potentially abominable social skills, an email came in. Feedback from our recent showings. One couple had told their agent they didn’t want to buy our house because it was not clean enough.

I took that information and I formed it into a tiny ball of shame and I shoved it deep, deep down as far as I could and I tried to ignore it. But it kept popping up. I kept picking at the thought that our house was a pig sty. I ran over the list in my head: our house was organized. For every showing, I washed every dish, removed every piece of trash, made every bed.The laundry was done, the garbage taken out, everything in its place.

But we all know I hate to do the floors. If I’m being honest, I’m not a huge fan of dusting either. As a result, rooms I don’t use regularly can get missed when it comes to the dusting. I just literally do not remember. It’s low on my priority list. I began to fret that I was living in squalor and not even aware of it.

David talked to the agent. She said she agreed with the comment and had heard the feedback from a few showings recently. David reluctantly informed me he thought the floors made the house look awful. And I wept. I wept and wept. I cried until I couldn’t breathe. It seemed like the final verification that try as I might, I was doomed to fail at everything. So, I reverted to my old fall back in times of crisis and I wept rivers of self loathing.

If I’m being honest, I scared the crap out of Alex.

I tried so, so hard to get it all done. I kept the house neat and organized (which my family and David had repeatedly congratulated me on while he was gone, so I know this is not delusional). I thought because of this I was keeping up a semblance of order and cleanliness in our lives. But lo, I was 1 or 5 or 20 degrees off perfect and it had gone on long enough that people were starting to talk. I’m sure that happened everywhere: at work, at home, in the blogosphere, in the checkout line at Target.

People knew I was flailing and most of them were polite enough not to say anything. My mom made me dinner and my dad filled my water softener with salt to take the edge off. Boss Lady delegated projects to other people to let me tie up loose ends before leaving. My sister helped me wrap Christmas presents and Liz helped me get organized for maternity, but mostly people were polite enough to not say anything.

Which sounds like a complaint but ultimately I’m grateful for. The truth is, I’m not sure I need to know every time someone thinks I’m failing. I need to live up to my own standards and not someone else’s. The truth is, I don’t mind nor notice slightly dirty floors. As long as I’m not sticking to them, I’m ok. Do I need to clean them better for showings? Yeah, sure, I guess.

But in the rest of my life, I don’t know that I really want feedback on how people see me. I’m hard enough on myself. The moral of the story is one I’ve been telling myself for 6 months now: I could stand to drop a few projects so I can focus better on what I have.

We all have some days when we feel like we suck at everything. When everyone around us is better, smarter and funnier than we are. I have days and weeks and months where I’m convinced that’s true. As much as I’m trying to tie this paragraph off nicely into a happy moral about what I learned, the fact is, I’m still embarassed and ashamed of getting that feedback on the house. I still worry how many other people thought I was failing miserably and never told me. I worry constantly about just how far off perfect I am.

There is no superwoman.

Want to see me keep failing? I’m doing it ridiculously on Facebook – like Taming Insanity today to keep up with my epic failures.

When I had Alex, the weight I’d gained during pregnancy fell off my bones before I had much time to notice it was there. However, Alex barely ever slept which led to me not noticing much of anything for the first eight weeks of his life or so.

Evan, on the other hand, is a great sleeper for his age. Which means I have more energy. Which means I notice things. Things like my weight. Here’s the thing: I think I look slamming.

The scale, on the other hand, keeps telling me this is the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life by about ten pounds. I want those ten pounds gone. (Plus then maybe another nine to get back to pre-Evan weight. But the first ten get me to pre-Alex weight.) They are an affront to how awesome I think I look. Plus, I need my pants to fit again soon because I can’t live in workout pants.

Honestly, I really don’t think I’m fat. But I refuse to let those pounds win. Because I look GOOD and they need to acknowledge that. Them not disappearing in acknowledgment of my badassery is rather infuriating.

This is war. And this time? It’s personal.

However, even though I am something of a renegade punctuator, I know that punctuation matters. The most basic of tenets is this:

There is a big difference between “Panda: eats shoots and leaves.” and “Panda eats, shoots, and leaves.”

Surely you’ve all heard that right? Or something similar? Well, if not all you need to do is spend some time with my toddler to see how important the almighty comma is.

I frequently hear “no blue”.  This is problematic as Alex has no verbal punctuation. He is so frantic to communicate that he does not pause. Words often run together. This means I do not know if “no blue” means “I absolutely detest blue and it’s the worst thing you could give me” or “no, I’d really prefer blue today”. Basically I’m constantly guessing if he means: ”no blue” or “no, blue”.

Many a tantrum has been thrown due to me guessing incorrectly in these situations. At least half of them by me. Because how do I explain to a toddler that he needs to pause in his speech to communicate his needs accurately?

Clearly, I don’t or we wouldn’t have this issue.

I’ve sort of resigned myself to the fact that this will be an issue for now. While this is mostly livable and results only in a few tears, I still cringe a little whenever Alex beams happily up at my father and proclaims “Let’s eat grandpa.”

Want to reform my loosely punctuating ways? Like me on Facebook and tell me why punctuation matters.