Mom to the Screaming Masses

Sometimes I Have These GREAT Ideas

2013-05-20T10:41:10-04:00

Now that I'm working full time, and dealing with a couple of situations that are unmentionable, my free time during the week is virtually nonexistent. Therefore, much like the vast majority of women in the world, I'm trying to cram everything in on the weekend. I do laundry and groceries during the week, cook and bake during the week, and take everyone to their activities, games, concerts, rehearsals, etc. – but the other stuff, the more fun stuff, has to wait for the weekend.

Even if the weather does not cooperate.

I was determined that we were going to pick strawberries today. Next weekend is the big Strawberry Festival here, and all the fields will be depleted. After that, it's too hot for any strawberries to hang around. It's been raining off and on for a couple of days now, and the forecast for Sunday featured thunderstorms all day. After church, we ate a quick lunch, and I jumped into the car with four kids and six buckets. I told them that as soon as we got to the strawberry fields, we'd have to begin to pick fast. As we drove, the sky grew darker and darker. I alternated looking at the road and looking at the sky. What a clear up, would it stay overcast, or would the sky worsen?

3 miles from the fields, I got my answer. Looking up ahead on the road, I could see the rains. It was kind of cool, a neatly defined line of where the rain had already begun to fall. Soon, we were immersed in it. Wipers on low, wipers on high, headlights on. About 30 seconds in, I gave up. We weren't going to be able to pick strawberries today. I turned around the car, telling the kids "Maybe we'll try during the week." Everyone complained. "We really wanted to pick strawberries!" Me too, kids, me too. i had visions of jams and berry pie, of strawberry infused vodka and ice cream sauce.

One of my kids asked me, "You said the field is three miles away, right? Why don't we drive there and see? Maybe it will stop. Maybe it's not even raining there!"

Wisdom from a Shortie. Hmmm. Maybe she's right, I thought to myself, so we turned around again and drove to the field. It was still raining fairly heavy when we got there and so we sat in the car for about five minutes. Soon enough, the rain tapered off, and the sprinkling was pronounced tolerable - and out of the Jeep we jumped. Buckets weighed, instructions given, thumder warning heeded - we trekked through the mud, splashed through the puddles, went to the far end of the field, and picked us some strawberries.

It was INSANELY muddy. Our sneakers (duh, I wasn't thinking - if I was, I would have made everyone wear rainboots) were ankle deep in the mud. The plants were so wet that the sleeves of my sweat jacket were literally dripping, and I had to ring them out before I could move on to another section. Our knees were coated, legs splattered - and we loved every minute of it.

49.5 pounds worth of fun, to be precise. We may have been a little bit overzealous.

If you need me this week, I'll be in the kitchen.

After Forty, It All Goes to Hell

2013-05-16T21:22:19-04:00

There are people that you meet in your life, and you are immediately and forever best friends - like, you share sweaters and eyeliner and might could be persuaded to swap husbands.

(This isn't that kind of post.)

There are people you meet in your life that you fervently hope will go far, far away - but they never get the hint and they are always and forever with you. Kind of like toe fungus - have you ever tried to get rid of that stuff? Or that warped Tupperware lid I know I've tossed out ten times.

And then there are those peeps you get to know online, but you've never seen them face to face - for all you know, they could really secretly be a 15 year old hairy ax murderer living in their mama's basement. But, despite that, you think to yourself, "If I could just get in the car and drive, I'd be close to her house and we could have coffee together and eat too many Greek cookies and gossip for hours. Maybe we'd braid each other's hair - or maybe we'd just get really drunk together and make slovenly fools of ourselves in public and humiliate our children. We'd make MEMORIES together!"

Such is my good friend, who I've never met, Becki.

And she wrote this post, this post that tied in so perfectly with what has become a veritable shit storm in my own life that I had to beg her permission to riff on her topic.

I've noticed something. I'm over 40 now, 43 to be precise - what? I don't care, it's just a number, and the alternative is to be forever a younger number, so I'm cool with whatever that number is - and my husband is closing in quickly on a decade that is not the decade that follows my own upcoming (although somewhat farther away, by, say, A LOT) decade - and getting older means that your body, you know, gets older too.

And he's just NOT buying that.

He's had three large and scary health crises occur in his family of origin, and they finally scared him enough to go to the doctor. Well, no. They scared him enough that he mentioned a desire to visit the office of a physician at some point in his next year, and I snarkily came back with, "Well, your life insurance IS paid up...."

I'm a lot of fun at parties, I tell you what.

But. I made the appointment. We went together to seek the services of a physican who is a friend of ours, a neighbor,

and also, apparently, a reader here. Oops. And, hi.

The blood work was done, the requisite tests performed, and all came back clean and clear. His neck - my husband's, not the doctor/neighbor - is giving him a bit of pain, and he was diagnosed with a smidgen of degenerative disc.

In other words, you are getting older and so is your neck, dude. He's NOT buying it. At many given times, he's had me massage it, rub lotion on it, and he's taken to asking me if I feel something wrong in there. Like, really wrong. He was offered therapy, but declined it, as he doesn't feel like it's helpful.

I told him it's because he's getting older.

He didn't like that.

But that's the honest truth. Bodies break down after about 40, or maybe 35. Yeah, about 35. That was when I developed a hernia, and was diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma, and my periods ran amuck for an uber insane amount of ridiculousness. And I've noticed other things too - I don't have the stamina, the desire, the energy I once had, the bladder control (sorry, tmi!), the flat out interest in stuff. My patience has disappeared, along with my ability to tolerate bullshit -

oh, wait. I dunno if that has anything to do with age. I have to work a LOT harder at pretending like I actually care about some things, that's for certain. That's probably just me, though. I'm a broken person, a flawed person, a person who is missing several key things. The cool thing, though, is that my husband likes me, missing pieces and all, and he's got those things that I'm missing in plentitude - and he's willing to share. He doesn't even SEE those jacked up parts of me - the missing, flawed areas that are all I can focus on some days.

And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing, no matter what your age.

But, dude - it's SO MUCH EASIER to be 27.

The Myth of Matching Pajamas

2013-05-14T20:44:14-04:00

This picture is a total fluke.

My girls both had on matching pajamas. I didn't dress them. I didn't tell them what to wear. It just happened.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I asked for pajamas. I wanted super cute pajamas for my baby to lay around in. Everything was GOING TO BE PERFECT. My mom told me that my son would probably live in a Onesie and if he wore pajamas, they'd probably not match. I was AGHAST. When I shared that conversation with co workers, I expected them to have my back, and to a person - every single lady laughed.

Honestly? One even cackled.

"When you have your baby, you'll seeeeee! It all goes out the window!" she crowed gleefully. To be fair to me, it took a lot longer for me to lose that dream - I still like the look of cute pajamas. No one else in my family gives a fig about it though.

These days, I could not possibly care less what you wear to bed - as long as you aren't naked and you, you know, GO TO BED. After all, matching pajamas may look good, but they don't mean that you are a good human being.

Other things matter more to me now.

Politeness matters.

The ability to argue a point without alienating the opponent - and getting your point across without being offensive - well, that matters a whole heck of a lot to me.

Advocating for yourself - whether it be your food allergies, your asthma, your desire to eat something that is healthy or tastes good to you but is not "popular" or mainstream - that matters to me. Standing up for another person - when it is safe for you to do so and not when it isn't - that matters as well.

Kindness matters.

Education, and the desire to learn - that matters. Learning for the sake of learning, and not because you are required to do so - that matters too. I want my children to desire to better themselves even if no one is standing over them, demanding that they learn the times tables and the capital of Belize and how, exactly, electricity occurs. I want them to read for pleasure - that matters too.

Doing the best you can absolutely matters. I want my kids to take pride in their work, in the sides that they show the public, in the image that they project. I want them to understand that the Internet is forever, Twitter is searchable, your profile is your public image, no one has 900 friends - and I do not want them to have to learn some of the lessons that I did - the hard way.

Those are the lessons that matter. Things that I used to think matter? They just flat out don't, in this journey I am on towards growing functional, contributing adults.

And how many of us realize that - that we are raising adults? Most people are wrapped up in the smart mouthed kid, the crying baby, the recalcitrant teen - but those are stages in raising adults.

I disagreed with someone last week about organic foods. Yes, I know that they are important. What we eat matters. But if it comes down to eating as much fruit and veg as we do - and needing to cut it in half if we have to eat all organic - well, organic matters less and we just have to deal with it. Organic was a big bugaboo when I had one teeny tiny - now, when I'm feeding 8 or more, well, different strokes for different folks.

If my kid drank organic milk after nursing 3 years, only wore organic cotton diapers handstitched by freed women from Uganda, slept with me until s/he was 5, was never vaccinated, didn't play with weapons, went to a Friends School, was allowed to grow his hair into dreadlocks, and never made to do anything he or she didn't want to do -

it wouldn't make my kid(s) any better. Because I did some of those things and I didn't do some of those thigns, and I did the best I could. Some days, doing the best I can is good enough. And some days it's not.

But, much like my desire for everyone to wear those stupid matching pajamas, it's often a pipe dream.

The Weight of the World

2013-05-13T16:17:57-04:00

Twice last week I read something about kids and weight that really resounded with me.

Kira wrote about her children, and their tendency in weight to be more short and compact. She wrote: Midway through the exam, it was time to go over the growth charts. The kids' pediatrician and I have come to something of an understanding about the growth charts years ago. He would show me where the boys fell, and I would shrug away the dots with a brusque, "Yep. Looks like one of my kids." The thing is that my children are all, like me, of hearty peasant stock.

Another friend asked: Anyone have any tips on getting a young girl to diet without giving her an eating disorder???

It's so funny, because about a month ago, one of my kids fell clean off the bottom of the growth chart. I mean, completely off - she's got a BMI of about 4%. She's 15 and weighs just about 80 pounds. If she was my first, I'd be super alarmed - but she's following her brother, who lost 25 pounds in his Junior year from September to November, thanks to Cross Country and a lack of eating really anything at the right time.

I'm serious - the kid would eat lunch at 10, skip snack, run five miles, come home and eat an entire loaf of bread, and be too full for dinner. When he lost all of that weight, his doctor took a ton of blood, checked him over for everything, and sent us to a nutritionist. She went over snacking, how to eat effectively, taught us a bunch of stuff and sent us on our way. His weight loss coincided with mine, and there was a wee bit of discussion that, maybe, I'd cut my kids food portions as well - but that wasn't it.

Then there is my one daughter, who dropped a ton of weight on purpose thanks to a shitty boyfriend who told her she was fat - and I had NO idea until she went to a formal and I could see her spine and collarbones clearly. THAT was fun.

So when my daughter dropped weight this past few months, I wasn't unduly alarmed. That's what *my* kids do. They know all about nutrition - it's been preached to them forever and ever - but when they spend most of their time out of the house, they make different choices and for various reasons, they super slim out.

One of my shorties has lost so much weight that he's officially "failure to thrive" - go on and ask me how much pediasure we buy around here. It's a lot - and that stuff ain't cheap. He's lost weight for different reasons - mostly anxiety, food allergies, and the beginning of an ulcer. Good times. No one wants to eat when you think it will either kill you or hurt your gut.

Those four kids, well, I joke that they are my husband's body type - no butt, thin. You know the type. It's just my kids. They are not heavy.

But two of my shorties are different. Shortie #1 is 55% for weight, 30% for height and 75% for BMI. Shortie #2 is 70% for weight, 40% for height and 78% for BMI. So clearly, from my side of the family - the stocky, German peasant type. To look at them with friends, though, they don't look like heavy kids. Interestingly enough, shortie #1 appears to be heavier than #2 - but the numbers indicate differently.

Which makes me slighty stabby about growth charts.

How to help more than a few put ON a few pounds, while helping two that don't need to put on a single pound without raising food obsessers - well, if you can solve that, let me know. Shortie #1 LOVES all things crackery/bready/sweet and getting her to eat fruit and veg is difficult - and she's not a lover of activity. Shortie #2 loves fruit and veg and eats as much of it as I will let her - and loves to ride bikes and go for walks - so if she's doing all of the things that she *should* be doing, and #1 isn't - but they both have really high growth numbers - well, it's got to be genetics. And when my friend asked about her daughter and dieting - it hit home to me. I don't want my girls to *diet* - but we need to find the happy medium of not worrying about weight and eating the right stuff and getting more active for them - things I've forgotten about because my other kids are so thin.

I know that girls, especially, tend to grow "out" and then grow "up", and so maybe this is that time for both of them. I wish I could remember with my older kids if and when this occurred.

It's so weird to me, how I have children who contain the same genetic background, and yet are built so very differently.

You Can Drop off My "Mother of the Year" Award Anytime Now

2013-05-11T22:28:12-04:00

One of my daughters is in performing arts school. Her specialty is voice, in the opera division. She's come incredibly far since the beginning of the school year. She has amazing teachers.

One of her teachers was involved in a theater production this weekend. Students were offered discounted rates, and parents could get a cheaper rate as well. My daughter really wanted to see this performance. I did as well, for I love all musical theater, and Carousel has always been a highlight for me. Really, I just love anything that Rodgers and Hammerstein did.

We planned a mommy and me type day - although with a teenager, you don't really say that. The performance was in the neighboring city, and we both were certain that the show was at a theater very close to one of the light rail stops. We both like riding the light rail - it feels somewhat city, and cool. So we planned our day, purchased the tickets ahead of time and picked our outfits.

When we left the house, we both were dressed very nicely. I had curled my hair, put on fresh makeup, was wearing a maxiskirt and a sweater. It was a tiny bit warm for a sweater, but theaters are typically cold and, after all, I was just riding down and going in to the theater. I grabbed an umbrella because it was overcast, but not yet raining.

My daughter had on 2 1/2 inch heels and a nice dress.

We left the house in plenty of time. I was very proud of myself – I hate to be late, and any time I go anywhere, I try to be very organized and prepared. So we left in plenty of time to get on the light rail, took it all the way down to the stop closest to the theater and the mall and had plenty of time to spare. We walked around the mall, windowshopping, and even stopped in the Lush store, a particular favorite. We tried several different lotions, smelled shampoos, and left in time to walk over to the theater.

I was super proud of myself. We were PREPARED.

My first clue was the fact that all of the front parking spaces in front of the theater were empty. The Will Call ticket window was not open, and the security guard wondered just what we were doing there. It was 2:10 at this point, and the show started at 2:30. Surely, there should be some sign of life, and not the bland empty nothingness we faced. Frantically, I pulled up the show on my phone, and realized my mistake. The theater that we needed to be at was six blocks away.

The light rail station does not go down that far. There are no cabs. And I had no car.

And so we walked.

We started out the day looking like this:

I look somewhat ratchet in this picture, but notice the lack of sweat and the somewhat pulled together look

As we walked, it got hotter and hotter, the sweat began to run down my back, and I realized that I had not put on my Spanx under my skirt. If you don't have a thigh gap, you know why I needed those Spanx under the skirt. The Chafe, it is a real thing.

We walked through some very sketch areas. At one point, I became disoriented, and we went to a block in the wrong direction. We walked past pawnshops, tattoo parlors, gun shops, and the bus station. The only people visible to us were obviously street people. My poor girl limped in her high heel shoes, and I cursed at myself. What kind of a mother doesn't check the location? What kind of a mother doesn't have her car available to drive to the other location? Why did I think taking the light rail would be such a fantastic idea?

We made it to the theater with two minutes to spare. Of course, there is the obligatory five-minute delay for good luck in the show, so we were fine. The show was great. Her teacher did very well, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Until it was time to leave, and we both remembered that we had to walk back. And so we walked, past the padlocked buildings, the barred and gated windows, the homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk, the man sitting outside the tattoo parlor with gauges the size of golf balls in his ears and a tattooed, bald head, the people hanging out at the Greyhound station, and all the way up to the light rail stop. It was getting dark, and my Spidey sense was working overtime. I felt uncomfortable, unsafe and a trifle nervous - and seeing the "Bring back the city!" invocations spray painted on abandoned storefronts - in an effort to make the city feel safer - flat out didn't help.The humidity was brutal, her poor feet ached in the shoes (and she begged me to let her walk barefoot but I declined) and my hair was plastered to my head, my hot roller set a distant memory.

Here I was trying to do something good for my daughter, make a memory - well, I'd made a memory all right.

I felt like the worst mother ever, and then karma interfered.

There was a woman standing at the light rail station. She had a couple of children with her, and one of them bore the brunt of her anger. As we got closer to her, we could hear her screaming obscenities at this child, who was apparently her daughter. She was so upset with her daughter at one point, she kicked her, and then said, "Yes, I kicked you. And there are cameras here that caught it. I hope CPS saw me do it and they will come and take you away." She grabbed the young girl's arm - she was probably 12 or 13 - and threatened, "I'll punch you in the nose if you don't shut up right this minute!"

I get it. I've been really, really angry before.

My daughter sat next to me on the bench, and she texted me – what do we do? I texted her back – nothing. There's nothing we can do. The mother continued to parade her daughter, grabbing her arm, and yelling obscenities at her. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore, and we got up and went to the other side of the light rail stop.

And suddenly, the fact that I'd gotten the theater wrong, wasn't able to find a cab, forced my daughter to walk six blocks, through a sketch neighborhood, in the heat, didn't seem so bad after all.

Sometimes, my best effort is good enough.

And The Score Is..

2013-05-09T12:25:01-04:00

Life: 1 million, Carmen: a big fat 0.

I feel like, in every aspect of my life, I am a failure right now. Almost every kid in my house is having trouble with asthma. Maybe if I had been more on top of that, we wouldn't be sucking so much albuterol right now. I've got a stack of prescriptions in hand, and anyone who wonders where the money went last month – just look for the pharmacy receipts.

One of my kids is struggling in school. Maybe, if I had been more on top of that, the grades would be better. The self-confidence would be better. The student wouldn't feel as if every teacher hated him.

My writing has left me. I feel abandoned by the muse.

Every single day, we are out of something VITAL at the store. EVERY DAY.

I have almost no desire to exercise. I haven't been to Zumba class, other than once, in more than three months. Frankly, I do not have time for the drama and cattiness that occurs. I try to walk at least four times a week, but it feels like a punishment, a slog, and I can't wait to be done with it.

We seem to specialize in mouthy and self-centered lately. No family does mouthy and self centered quite as well, I'm convinced.

Everyone keeps asking what I want for Mother's Day, and my inbox is full of Mother's Day pitches. But I'm not quite sure how to tell everyone that what I really want for Mother's Day is a nap. And not to have to do one single dish, one piece of laundry, pick up one single thing. And that doesn't mean no one does it, and i do double on Monday. I want it all done by SOMEONE NOT ME.

Wow. I'm pretty negative lately. It's no wonder my readership has gone down – I don't even want to read me. But I've always been committed to telling the truth, even if it's not flattering, or filled with puppies, unicorns, and rainbows.

I did do one thing right. We did this this weekend:

And then we did this this weekend as well:

I'm missing 2 pepper plants, so that's why it's empty in the middle

And then, somehow, my oldest boy turned 21. I remember being 21. If I can remember it, how can he BE it?

I think I need to get out to the beach more. In fact, I think we ALL need to get out to the beach more.

Mortification and Other Forms of Torture

2013-05-07T13:39:35-04:00

One of my shorties has a very, very good friend. This particular shortie doesn't have many friends – but with one really good one, you don't need a whole bunch.

This is the story of how these two shorties almost got me arrested.

The mother of my girl's friend invited her over to play. This is my girl's favorite activity. At least once a day, my girl asks if she can go to her friend's house. After all, they have dogs, they have a trampoline, they have more fun at her house than they do at ours. I'm okay with this fact. Not all of us can be the fun people – and I have more than my share of responsibilities lately, so if my girl wants to go to someone else's house to have a good time – well, I'm grateful for those people in my life.

Every single time my girl goes to her friend's house, she comes home in different clothing. Maybe she jumped on the trampoline, and it was wet. Maybe they rode bikes, and she got sweaty. Maybe she spilled a drink on herself, dropped some food on herself, or had a well-timed "accident". Whatever the reason, when I did laundry last week, I found three sets of her friend's clothing.

Inexplicably, along with the clothing and the shoes, there were three sets of girls underpants that most definitely weren't any that I'd bought. I returned the clothes, and realized over the weekend that I'd forgotten the underpants. I set them aside so that I would remember to give them to my friend. When I left the house late last week for school pick up, I stuck them into my jacket pocket. I knew I would see my friend at to pick up, and I planned to do a sneaky, quiet, private, "pass off the panties".

But my friend wasn't there.

I forgot about the panties.

Monday.

I needed to go to the grocery – there's a big surprise there, it was a day that ends in Y, after all – and it was rainy and cold. I grabbed my motorcycle jacket. My big, impressive, Harley Davidson jacket. The jacket I wear when I'm feeling down. The one that makes me feel like a bad ass. I wore it into the grocery store.I walked around, filling a cart, feeling like a cool and hip person wearing a motorcycle jacket.

Look at me.

When it was time to check out, I could not find my credit card. I'm in the habit of stuffing it in my jeans pocket, and so I did the mad "slap yourself all around until you find your card" shuffle. The card was nowhere to be found, and in my frustration, I shoved my hands into my motorcycle jacket pockets.

And pulled out three sets of little girls underwear.

Right at the register. Right in front of a confused and very bewildered 17-year-old male cashier.

I stared at him in shock, handful of panties in the air between us. How do you recover from that? Where do you go?

He said to me, "Um, are those underwear?"

For the longest second – it felt like six years – I had no idea what they were, how they got there, how my hand was holding them, or really, how I was going to get out of this. I mean, really - what do you say? "Why, yes, they are. I frequently carry them around in public!"

There's no explanation you can give, no details to share, that won't make you sound like Piper the Pedophile. Who else would carry around girls panties in their pocket???

I think it's a good time to mention that I decided to run for Parish Council at my church.

I can just see it now – the headlines on the TV. "Catholic parishioner, running for Parish Council, caught carrying little girl panties in her pockets."

My parents are SO proud of me right about now.

An Outdoor Project

2013-05-04T10:57:38-04:00

Because I don't have enough to do in my life, because I have all kinds of spare time, because I need one more project like I need a hole in the head – I decided that this year, we would have a garden.

When we first moved into this house, more than 10 years ago, my husband built a sandbox. It was 8 x 8. That's a really big sandbox. It was big enough that we could put a canopy over it, and the kids could all sit in it with their friends and still have plenty of room leftover.

My husband is, somewhat, shall we say, ambitious.

The sandbox served us well for many a year. Every so often, we would have a truck load of sand delivered to the driveway, and we'd spend a day or two hauling it back and dumping it. As the kids grew older, there was less playing in the sandbox time – especially for the older kids – and more "let me lay on my towel on the sand and pretend like I'm at the beach".

No one has been in that sandbox for more than a year.

One day last week, I decided that the sandbox could be put to better use. I spent the next day emptying the box of sand. It took all day, and by the end of that day, I could barely walk. I did have the help of my 13 and 15-year-old shorties, and together, we did all of it. At the same time, we scrubbed the outside siding on the back of the house with bleach, pulled out the summer chairs and scrubbed them, and set up the umbrella. In other words, we tried to get the backyard summer ready.

Virtually guaranteeing that the next several weeks will be cold and rainy, which so far, they have been. I WIN.

And then, yesterday, my husband and I went and bought dirt, and together with the help of my oldest boy, we filled it in. (Those two big planters go on either side of the fire pit.)

And now the fun begins. I was planning to go to the nursery today to get the plants, but surprise! It's cold and rainy. So I guess that will have to wait. Yesterday while I was buying dirt, though, I did buy a blackberry bush. That's not going in the garden – I just need to figure out where to put it.

I think in the 8 x 8 garden we will plant tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and herbs. I wanted to plant peas, but I think it's too late in the season for those. My kids want to grow carrots, but I'll need to look into that. I've never done that before.

Do you have a garden? What are you growing?

Write What You Know. Know What You Write.

2013-04-30T22:43:54-04:00

There's this one writer that I follow on Facebook and Twitter. He often discusses what to write, how to write it, and how to say what you mean and mean what you say. He always says, this guy - Write What You Know. Know What You Write.

I'm blogstipated. I've been thinking for a long while what I can write when there's so incredibly much in my life that is just untouchable - it's not my story, none of the story lines are, and even though they interect with mine - I can't unsnarl the threads that bind all of the stories together. I can see HOW the green thread SHOULD go under the black and over the orange, but it keeps getting snagged in the blue and the purple will not mind it's own business.

So, here's me, writing what I know.

I know how to suck the fun from every last freedom my kids envision. I'm good at that.

I am good with asthma and handling it. Mostly because I've been shoved in the Almighty Inferno of The Difficult Breathing, but I do know me some mean asthma and allergy facts.

I know illness. Lately I've been dealing with two ill family members and I've been learning an awful lot about being a servant and doing it willingly. I won't say well.

I know how to travel. I suppose I could write about travel, but I don't know that I'd do that all that well.

I know how to separate wash, overload the machine, transfer it to the dryer and get it all folded. I do this every day, and I am an absolute whiz at it - but I'm fairly certain no one wants to read that.

I know about leaking Jeeps. I've had mine in to be fixed a record four - or was it five? - times, so I'm considered pretty much an expert there - but there's really not much call for a leaky Jeep writer.

School projects. Oh, boy - do I know school projects. I doubt that anyone would read that - because once you've done one, you have ZERO desire to ever do another - and having all of your kids attend the same elementary school means that every.single.kid does the very.same.project - and I could, I suppose, write a post detailing exactly how you feel like you reside in a time warp. But that's despressing - who wants to read depressing?

I know that when your kid, two times in one week, burns a cup of instant mac and cheese (head hanging in shame, but that's serious crack to my kids) - well, that smell hangs around for a good, long while.

I know about not getting enough sleep at night, mostly because you stay up late. Not because you are playing some iPhone game with litle bits of colored candy (like one of your friends, who can't understand why you won't join her in her most.favorite.game.EVER even though she's invited you to play it on Facebook 1987395 majilion times) but because there is so incredibly much stuffs in your head that you just can't be still enough to sleep.

I know about flipping the calendar, and being thankful that the past month is gone because it was just so full of the suck - but wondering if this is the month that will be the one in which the terrible, awful might happen.

I know about burning the candle at both ends, in the middle, through the wick and over the sides.

I know about working for hours and hours on the computer, just so a ton of people can think that I do nothing all day but play around on Pinterest and shoot the breeze on the book of Face.

I know that my dishwasher makes a high pitched squealing noise for the 2 hours of the cycle, and that it runs right behind my desk and some days, it's all I can do not to yank that sucker out of the wall and bash it in with a shovel. And then some days, I put on my enormous, Look at me, I'm a mix master! headphones and pretend it doesn't exist.

I know about early morning teacher conferences, not so hot report cards, secrets, late night confidences, and more about my pharmacist than I would ever care to. If my pharmacist was a category on Jeopardy!, I would so win.

I know about going to Target to pick up yet another packet of steriods or albuterol or an epi pen and spending $200. Ouch. How many of us could write about that?

I suppose, if I was to write about what I know - I'd write about life. Life is funny. Life is harsh. Life is bitter and cruel and heartbreaking and staggering in it's genius and so full of complexity that it astounds me on an hourly basis.

I know everything. I know nothing.

Some days, it's exactly the same knowledge.

Books You Loved to Hate

2013-04-25T17:31:15-04:00

There are millions and millions of books out there. Books you love, books you tolerate, books that you read over and over again. And it's super easy to talk about those – I know anyone who's read here longer than a month knows of my unfailing obsession with the Outlander series.

But what I want to know is, what are the books that you hate? The book that you read, the one you couldn't get through? The one your best friend's aunt's sister's cousin recommended to you – and you never got past page 10? The bookie force yourself to finish, hoping that it would get better, but it never did. At the end, you were furious with yourself for wasting the time.

I really did not like Gone,Girl. I know that makes me an anomaly, but I just could not stand it. Atonement. Anything by Ayn Rand. TWILIGHT. Eat, Pray, Love.

Those will do for starters. What about for you?