Hats off to you

BAM! Traditionally, Memorial Day Weekend kicks off the summer season. This year, it’s so powerful that my teeth are dangling. Today is Tuesday, and one of my busiest for my clients. It’s also the end of the month, so because I am self-employed I wear many hats. Today, it’s my D.U.N.C.E hat.

Foolishly, I thought that my children could entertain themselves for just 90 minutes while I sent out invoices and tried forming a sentence. From the next room, I can hear my son calling my daughter a “poop.” Now, it’s time to wear my “mommy hat.” What I really just want to do is put on my “fucking bitch hat” and scream at them about how they should be able to refrain from talking about or calling each other a piece of shit for less than say....6 minutes. What can I say, fantasy is my coping mechanism.

While they are celebrating their freedom I am freaking out about how I will handle their sovereignty. It also has not dawned on them that they can sleep in past 6:30 a.m. It looks like it’s gonna be a bumpy start to a long summer. But hey, my loss is your gain. Think of all the crazy material I will have for the blog!

Motherhoodintheraw is back and mediocre as ever

Your Motherhoodintheraw blog is back and just like the "Rocky" movie series will hang around longer than it should but will bring you stories that you would rather forget. Either way, it's an escape. Which is why you are reading this or maybe you are really bored and your annoying facebook friend that is a new parent posts anything with the word "mom" on it. Hey, I'm not knocking. I love you gals!

Upstairs, I can hear the awful sound of a cavernous plastic bin mixed with mega-blocks, Legos and a bastard brand of Legos, spilling out on the floor. This sound is more unnerving to me than breaking glass. I am a self-confessed neat freak. However, I never know what's going to set me off. For instance, every morning a pack of determined spiders spins the most intricate webs on my kid's playset. To me it's beautiful and reminds me that I should never give up on my dreams no matter how many times my hours of work is destroyed the next morning.

Which brings me to the bin of blocks. I know that making my kids pick up every block is what I should do. And I do try. I even make idle threats about throwing away the scattered chaos on the floor. For effect, I grab a garbage bag and sway back and forth. What always stops me is the memory of buying this shit and that in a few weeks my almost four-year-old daughter will look for a small plastic princess comb from a fucking happy meal toy that she took from the lunch box of another preschool classmate. ~Breathing break~

But being a neat freak is not always a bad thing. For one, I recognize the origin of each item in my home. Mind you, I can't remember to buy coffee filters or peanut butter on a trip to the local Kroger. But I can recall that I bought that knock-off brand of sunblock (that was not the continuous spray kind) at the Walgreens around the corner from my parents house in Florida. I know when to pat down a child after a playdate or when to pat down mine.

And I remembered how much I missed writing this blog. Not because anyone asked me to start it again. But because I was watching Oprah's final episode air and I remembered that I was watching her show when I first started this blog four years ago. Which makes me feel freakin' neat to share my mundane thoughts with you. Thanks for coming back. Now move your finger off the trash button.

Are you gonna eat your tots?

Yowsers! What a week! An old gal pal of mine taught me the definition of a fair-weathered friend by demonstrating that she was one herself. There are worse things but no one enjoys life's little harsh lessons. Speaking of lessons, we found out that my son got into the local charter school. Confused? This would make the third time that I have had to shop for school supplies for the same kid in under a month. I should start charging for my services.

On my way inside his current school, I passed a large window and spotted Greyson sitting in between two girls chatting and sipping on his milk. There are few things more precious than watching your child develop into an individual, especially when they don't know you are looking.

The lunchroom was a low hum of tiny voices sharing interesting facts such as older siblings, favorite cartoons and unique personal talents. Some things never change. Like how nasty and unappetizing the school lunches appear. The lasagna looked like it was about to make a run for it and back into the can it came out of. EXCEPT for the tater tots. No food makes a deeper emotional connection for me than tater tots and Kool-aid. I had to fight the temptation to snatch them off the trays of each kid around me.

Monday begins a new chapter in our back-to-school adventures. I say, bring it on!

What I learned about life from refinishing my front door

I have no idea what possessed me to even take on the arduous task of staining and refinishing my front door. Ok, I'll fess up....$$$ oh, and that my hubby said I couldn't! Over the last year or so, I have made it my mission to tackle DIY projects. Today shrouded in the warm rays of spring, I busted out the sander, paints and a drive to succeed.

My hard work payed off but turned out to be a much larger scale project than I anticipated and just like my door was caked in layers of frustration and resolve. In the end, the door turned out beautifully. I celebrated by downing two beers and stood in the middle of the street to admire my handy work. I was struck by a deeper parallel to refinishing my door and life's little lessons. Here is what I learned:

Lesson # 1 Don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone of knowledge.


Lesson #2 In order to get to the heart of the problem, you have to entirely scrape away at the old layers.


Lesson # 3 Ask for help.


Lesson # 4 Don't be afraid to start over.


Lesson # 5 When all else fails read the directions.

Now where did I put my happy pill?

Ahhh yes, it's that time of year again when gyms fill up and the world goes back to what it was doing before the holidays. Personally, this past Christmas was one of the most stressful in memory. The cause was related to managing 7 adult bodies and personalities my own included. The final head count was: 7 adults, 2 dogs, and 2 small kids in just 2,200 square feet. Luckily, I have some slivers of moments to which I can cling tenaciously (if need be.) Moments like when my son realized that Santa had arrived and the fun we had hiding a stuffed Elf all over the house for a month. It is truly magical to screw with a five and two-year old's minds.

I am working hard to get my head back into the game. The parenting game, the writing game and the work game. Hell, my blog even took a booster seat in the back. I compare this "swimming up stream" feeling to a situation that took place when I first entered the corporate world. I was working for a company called, PMSI (a story for another day.) and one lady decided to get everyone going on the "Vegetable Soup Diet." For those of you that don't remember this fad, it involved cooking a week's worth of nasty veggie soup and consuming this swill two times a day for two weeks. Can you guess that came next? I bet my IBS folks can. The womens restroom remained stalled out at all hours of the day. Toilets overflowed, and a foul smell that would make even a forensic scientist wretch filled the carpeted hallways. I worked in the call center taking orders from Workers' Comp patients anxious to get their Darvocet and Stadol delivered to their doors. Because I did not subscribe to this diet, I was certainly not going to suffer in the smell.

The pain and distraction from holding my urine proved to be too great and I developed a nasty UTI. I haven't had one this bad or since. The point of this story was to illustrate how hanging on to slivers of good or bad memories relieve tension and can make you laugh your ass off. Which is what I needed just then.

Happy New Years Peeps!

Coupon criminal

The folks over at Kroger have hired some crack detectives masquerading as cashiers. One agent in particular (we'll call her Alma) was quick to notice that I had only purchased one jar of tomato sauce instead of the two that the said coupon stipulated. Apparently, this opened up a flood gate for a line of questioning starting with my brand of toilet paper. "I see this coupon is for two double rolls of Charmin." I began fishing through plastic bags in search of the shrink-wrapped ass wipe. From then on I was not a shopper, I was a COUPON CRIMINAL.

Impatient shoppers behind me had become bored with the scandal rags and began to sway from one leg to another. Each piece of carefully clipped paper produced a cold sweat across my forehead as I tried to recall whether I had indeed purchased the right amount of the right product. Luckily, I was only caught with the one misdemeanor and was let off with just a warning.

There is a new sheriff in town, and I have no plans to mess around with her. Her weapon: a scanner. Her mission: to crack down on coupon criminals.

Play by play playdate

I remember watching commercials as a twenty-something for popular headache remedies and never being able to connect. The commercial would open with a Mom clutching and rubbing her temples. The scene behind her was always wild and chaotic with several children literally bouncing off the walls and furniture. Internally I would laugh and dismiss this scene as ridiculous. Not me. Bullshit.

btw, I have a headache THIS BIG, and it has crazy fucking kids written all over it. Here is why:

10:37PM -Cries erupt from my 2 year old daughters room. It seems that she decided to sleep in the buff again. My husband was kind enough to clean her up and leave me a ball of piss-soaked bedding on the floor.

10:51PM - Deposited the crumpled mess into the washing machine and retired to my bed where my husband and our little screamer were already asleep. By this time the only thing left to watch on the boob tube was crappy home improvement shows like, "Clean Sweep."

5:22AM- Goldendoodle puppy started his freedom campaign.

6:02AM-6:41AM Total blur. No coffee yet.

6:53AM- Coffee has slowly begun to kick in. Maternal instinct also kicks in and I manage to make a bowl of cereal for my son.

7:28AM- Carpool arrives. Hug and kiss my son.

8:02AM- Screaming 2 year old is now awake and looking for me. Spend the next few minutes on good morning hugs.

8:03AM- Spend the next few minutes pinning my daughter down to brush her teeth. Manage to avoid bloodshed by the skin of her teeth.

8:07AM-8:31AM Zone out in front of computer updating my Facebook and Linked In profile while 2 year-old zones out in front of Dora The Explorer.

8:33AM- Realize that the piss-soaked sheets are waiting for me. Open washing machine to find that the pissy pull-up was part of the crumpled mess from the night before. Strange gelatinous chemicals coat my sports bra and daughter's sheets. It smells worse that it sounds.

8:39AM-More fucking laundry.

9:02PM- Dog begins his daily mission of chewing the shit out of everything that does or doesn't move. His only criteria is that it be something very precious to his owners, and has not been touched by himself or any other canine.

10:00AM-11:37AM- Neighborhood parents meeting. Perfect opportunity for me to bitch about my day. Leave the meeting with my screaming daughter tucked UNDER my arm like a cheap piece of luggage.

11:37AM-12:31PM- Whining continues from backseat until I am finally strong-armed into turning on Spongebob for 30-50lb passengers. Make a mental note to workout and crack a few beers after the kids go to bed.

12:32PM-3:14PM- Experience some relief thanks to daughter's nap and son's playdate. Decide to update my blog.

3:18PM- Enter puking puppy. Clean up mess and count the minutes till my husband arrives home. Must get outside and run my ass off.

3:19PM- It starts raining. Scratch plans to run outside.

3:30PM-Panic begins to set-in after several feeble attempts to fix plastic cockroach fail.

3:43PM - Husband surprises me with a brand-new Dyson, to which I exclaim, "You KNOW how passionate I am about vacuuming!" (seriously...and I'm NOT being sarcastic.)

5:00PM- Made it to the gym. This would be the only time my kids DON'T seem to need me to do much of anything. Must be the fact that they are parked in front of Yo Gabba Gabba aka visual crack for kids.

6:40PM- Arrive at Chick-Fil-A for a fundraising event in sweaty workout clothes. Managed to run into EVERY fucking teacher from my son's school. Either they think I am some sort of a gym rat, or I work on a alpaca farm.

7:17PM- Kids are being especially needy which only ads to my level of stress. Work in a quick shower and shave. Exit the shower with streaks of blood on my shins. Frightened children.

7:59PM- Suggestion to brush teeth gets ugly. Pinned down dear daughter and managed to scrape just enough plaque off her teeth to stave off gingivitis.

8:01PM- Stormed downstairs in frustration. Husband took reins and put children to bed.

8:02PM-Parked myself in front of a bad movie and bought some downtime between last minute business calls.

10:42PM-Had strange dreams about my childhood memories.

6:02AM-Took no prisoners and popped an Excedrin. They may not be yellow or different, but they have my day written all over them.