Monthly Archives: January 2018

Everything is cold & dead & stupid & I hate it

Posted on January 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

I’ve been sitting in this coffee shop for exactly 46 minutes now. And yes, I see you over there, Annoying Hovering Couple, with that dual stink eye you’ve been giving me for the last 17 of these 46 minutes in the hopes I might feel pressured to hurry up and finish my business here so you can have my table.

But the joke is on you. Because I can’t think of anything to write and so will probably die here at this table. So take that croissant you pronounced in the uppity French manner and shove it.

Ugh. Sorry. I’m just in a foul mood. Is there anything worse than January? Well, yes. I mean, torture is pretty high up there. Human trafficking. War. Extreme drought. Animal cruelty. That gross YouTube guy. Culottes. People who put raisins in chicken salad.

But January comes in at least a solid 770 on the list of Worst Things.

It’s cold. Everything is dead. There’s only one major holiday and you spend it hungover.

The bills are starting to roll in from Christmas. Nothing fits because of those ten (fine, 12) pounds you gained over the holidays. Everyone keeps bragging about how they’ve already done their taxes while you’re over here like, it’s not even May yet. And then they correct you and tell you they’re due in April but you don’t care because you got a mad case of Seasonal Affective Disorder and everything is stupid and dumb and ugly and stupid and I hate it.  

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And there are still two months of winter left to go.

Ugh.

I know. I know. First world problems and all that. I’m trying to see the bright side. I really am. I even flirted with the idea of giving that Danish idea of hygge a whirl. Because lighting a candle and wearing a big floofy sweater will solve everything. But then everyone on the Internet kept arguing about how to actually pronounce hygge and I got annoyed and started drinking copious amounts of wine while randomly yelling out “I’m doing Hoo-GAH!” until my husband made me go to bed.

Honestly, it wouldn’t be that bad if I could just curl up in bed with seven blankets and read a good book. Which I would read for all of five minutes until finally giving up the facade and just binge-watching all the seasons of “Arrested Development” for the third time on my laptop.   

But I can’t. Because I made the seemingly well-thought out decision to have children.  

Don’t get me wrong. Having children is great.

In the summer.

When you can go places and do things.

But in the winter? Before they’re old enough for school? Having children is inhumane.

Every morning, there they are, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and not caring that you got drunk practicing hygge the night before. Eager and ready to do things no matter how crappy it is outside. Happy and healthy and impatient for you to throw out a bunch of creative and imaginative and educational crap that their spongy little brains can soak up.

All of which I am happy to do.

In the summer.

And most of the early fall.

But all I want to do right now is hibernate in my blanket fort.

Sigh. Luckily, my love for my children is slightly stronger than my hatred of January. Which is why I took down the “No Kids Allowed” sign outside my fort. And why I will suck it up and smile and throw out a bunch of creative and imaginative and educational crap for their spongy little brains to soak up inside our fort.

Because I am a good mom.

And also because I’m trying to distract them from the fact that I am clinging to their tiny little furnace bodies for warmth.

 

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Posted in Family, funny, Love, Parenting, Pop Culture

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I’ll sit in the sinkhole tonight, honey

Posted on January 23, 2018 | 2 comments

You want to know what true love is? Volunteering to sit in the couch sinkhole after a long day of work and raising kids so your equally tired partner can sit on “the good side” while you watch Netflix.

Wait, what? Oh, is that just in our house? You guys don’t all have a couch sinkhole?

Well, in that case, let me explain to all you fancy folk with your houses full of structurally sound furniture exactly what a couch sinkhole is. It’s when whatever it is that couches are made of breaks in one spot, but not completely, meaning there is now one precarious area on the couch that is lower than all the rest. And you can still sit there if you sit in it just right (although if you hear any creaking or groaning wood, freeze and stop breathing for a good solid three minutes until you’re sure it’s not going to collapse). And as long as you put down a pillow first before you sit, there is a good 80 percent chance you won’t be impaled by a broken spring.

On the plus side, having a couch sinkhole has greatly improved our children’s behavior.

Kid 1: Mom, she took my Batman! *pushes sibling*

Kid 2: No! Mine! *pushes back*

Me: Both of you learn to share or you’ll take turns sitting in the sinkhole during movie night.

Kid 1: You can have Batman!

Kid 2: No, no, you have it! I insist! *both frantically hug each other*

Yeah, our couch is old. If it were a human, it would already be well into puberty and rolling its eyes every time I talked. In dog years, it’s roughly 103-years-old. In couch years, it’s 700-years-old. A hard 700. It’s the Keith Richards of couches.  

My husband had the couch before we even met and it has traveled with us from Ohio to Texas to Boston. And so the sinkhole is just the latest of the couch’s maladies. There is the sticky and stained left side arm of the couch because a certain someone in the family that is definitely not me kept spilling martinis and wine on it when she was young and childless. Then there is the random mangy patch from where the dog kept licking that spot over and over and over again for mysterious yet very important dog reasons. And the good side opposite the sinkhole was our son’s favorite spot to sit while he was being potty trained.

And it took MONTHS to potty train him.  

We should get a new couch. We really should. In fact, we should replace a lot of things in our house. But we have three very good reasons why we don’t:

One, we have a pre-schooler and an 18-month-old, meaning anything new coming inside our home would instantly be baptized in a tsunami of juice and what we hope are chocolate stains.

Two, anytime we start even thinking of Googling the price of new furniture, a $600 vet bill magically shows up. Or Christmas is coming up…again. Or we do our taxes and discover we owe money to the IRS…again.

And three, buying big ticket household items is an aspect of adulting that bores me to death. In furniture stores, I instantly revert back into a whiny teenager. Why do we have to be here? How much longer? Just pick one already. Why is everything so expensive? Ugh. I wanna use my allowance to buy books and travel. Boo.

Sometimes I worry that we’re crossing over into pathetic territory with our couch sinkhole and our cheap rocking chair hanging on by a splinter and our almost 14-year-old red car that sports a gray hood (and a passenger side door that only opens from the inside) and our upholstered dining room chairs that have faded to a color that can really only be described as “angry pink.”

But I’ve never really been one to try to keep up with the Joneses. So, instead, I’ve decided I’m just going to change my entire way of thinking about this situation. Because I’m a grown-up. And I’m allowed to do that. Which is why, from henceforth, we will just be known as the quirky, eccentric family with the endearing couch sinkhole that they made a part of the family because they were too busy being eccentric and quirky to care to replace it. And eventually it will be a hilarious, quirky story my grown kids tell on first dates to the horror of the person sitting across from them.

Ah. Yes. That feels much better. Problem solved.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my 3-year-old just fell into the sinkhole and needs help getting out.

 

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Posted in Family, funny, Humor, Marriage, Parenting, Pets, Travel

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Kid(not)napped

Posted on January 15, 2018 | 3 comments

Funny title, huh? Ha-ha! HA-HA-HA! Oh yeah, LAUGH IT UP, CHUCKLES. My entire life is ruined but I’m glad YOU find it so hilarious.

Oh man. Wow. Sorry, you guys. That was uncalled for. It’s just, I’m exhausted, you know? From all the not sleeping my oldest is doing.

I knew this day would come. I mean, he’s almost 4-years-old. He napped longer than a lot of kids do. And, as that famous Robert Frost poem goes, “nothing gold can stay.” And silence is golden. Right? Or something. So, it has to go away. Eventually. Or something. I don’t know. I’M SO TIRED, YOU GUYS.

But knowing that kids eventually stop napping doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. I also know that kids are messy eaters but that doesn’t mean I also don’t cry a little bit every Spaghetti Wednesday at our house.

Honestly it wouldn’t even be that bad except that my second kid is on the short list for the prize of “Crappiest Napper Of All Time.” The first year of her life, she would only nap if someone was holding her. It took months to get her to nap in her crib, followed by even more months of training to get her to nap in her crib for more than 12 minutes.

So it only makes sense that now that she is finally napping like a normal human baby, her brother doesn’t want to nap anymore because WHY SHOULD MOMMY BE ABLE TO WATCH A TV SHOW WITH CURSE WORDS AND GRATUITOUS NUDITY!?

What these kids don’t realize is that nap time is not for their benefit. It’s not for their physical and mental health. It’s not for their overall well-being.  

It’s for MINE.

I need, NEED, that hour or two alone so that I can make it through the day without throwing a tantrum or having a breakdown. Just a small window of time where no one is yelling “MOMMA!” Where no one needs anything. Where no one is being a tiny, nosy, little Sherlock Holmes and asking “Momma, why are you hiding in the kitchen? Are you eating cheese again? Can I have some?”

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IT’S MY CHEESE! MINE!

I try to remind myself that I should just relax and enjoy these all-too-short early years before they start school and sports and having even more opinions. I mean, I love them so much. Both my kids are amazing human beings and I should really be viewing this, the end of the nap era, as a wonderful opportunity to spend even more time with my oldest baby who is not so much a baby anymore.  

Ah. It’s a nice thought.

But then my kids holler “Momma!” 62 times in eight minutes and destroy the entire living room with a single Go-Gurt and I start crying as I dig through my closet for all the black clothes I can wear in official mourning of the naps’ untimely demise.

Sigh.

At least I have my memories of those three glorious golden weeks where they both napped at the same time and, for the first time in almost four years, I was able to pluck my eyebrow and make two of them again.

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Posted in Family, funny, Humor, Parenting

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Back off, fellas, I’m taken

Posted on January 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

I am a crappy wife. I mean, I’d hate being married to me. I’m a remote hog and an unabashed blanket stealer and I have to let you know in great detail EVERY SINGLE FEELING I AM FEELING AT THE EXACT MOMENT I AM FEELING IT.

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And then there’s my temper. My lethargic attitude regarding shaving. My severe allergy to replacing toilet paper rolls.

I don’t even know what the man likes on his pizza. I just always order what I want and expect him to eat it.

And yeah, sure, I have my good qualities, I suppose. I’d never cheat. Or be abusive. Or make my husband eat kale.

I’m not a monster.

But still. Take his recent birthday. I did nothing to prepare. NOTHING. Literally ordered his gift the day before. While telling him, “hey, I’m ordering your gift now.” Followed by, “it’ll be here in a week and a half” because I couldn’t even spring for two-day shipping.

There was no party. No fun outing planned. And while I did manage to interrupt my busy schedule of standing in front of the fridge eating all the good restaurant leftovers so that I could make him a birthday cake, he is technically the one who went out into the sub-zero temperatures to buy all the ingredients.

I even forgot to have the kids make him an adorable homemade card. And, thanks to the combination of guilt and laziness (which, when you get down to it, are pretty much the building blocks of my entire personality), I went so far as contemplating on deceptively forging one in their names.

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Even worse is that I didn’t because my laziness is almost always stronger than my guilt.

Yeah.

I’m awful.

And what makes it all the more infuriating is that he doesn’t seem to care that I’m a crappy, awful wife. He never complains or whines. He never asks “did you finish all the wine last night?” or “are you re-watching ‘Twin Peaks’ AGAIN?” And he always gives me an enthusiastic round of applause when I announce dramatically and triumphantly that I finally, FINALLY did shave my legs.

He’s like a living, breathing example of “love is patient, love is kind.” Meanwhile, I am the living, breathing example of if Lorelai Gilmore had a love child with a bottle of vodka and then that love child was raised by blanket-stealing wolves.

It’s almost like the man accepts me for who I am.

I mean, who does that?

And thus we come to the entire point of this column. Happy birthday, baby. You are a saint. Married to human garbage (albeit human garbage that loves you deeply). And this is your real gift, posted on the Internet, for all to see.

A gift, mind you, which you can pull up at any time and force me to re-read whenever we get into a fight and I start yelling about just how lucky you are to have me.

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