Surviving the Domestic Jungle

I change my sheets about once every two days now. Its a lot but I have mentioned on here that I am a big family bed person. I LOVE having my kids get in bed with me and watch movies, read books or just cuddle. Well, because of my open bed policy, I have allowed the kids to eat and play in my bed as well. Today when I changed the sheets, there were stains from chocolate ice cream, oreo cookies, yellow marker and toothpaste. From this I gather that we need to eat better snacks, buy some paper and keep the toothpaste in the bathroom! All of these stains were produced by one big blue eyed little girl by the name of Hailey! She is a scamp, a scallywag and a mischievous little girl! She gets into everything! She gets into everything then puts it in my bed! I find her things everywhere. She has hiding spots she prefers and sometimes I really have to search. She is an amazing little person and I never know what she will do or say next. She is my biggest source of stress but also my biggest relief from it. She knows no limits but not because I don’t give them to her. She is a free spirit and in a sense I embrace and allow that. I let my kids be who they are and worry about the mess later. Hailey loves my bed and bedroom in general. I am constantly putting her things back in her room. Even as I write this, Hailey is playing in my sheets with a rock and a toy lizard signing the Wonder Pets theme song. I love it and will change my sheets everyday to have my kids feel comfortable in my room and in my bed. When I was a kid, I had to knock on my parents door before I could come in. I haven’t shut my door since I don’t know when. When they get older, they will stop wanting to hang out with me so as much as crumbs in my bed is annoying, I will miss it when its gone.

To be a mother you sacrifice a lot and the main thing that you give up is your sanity. Yes, pregnancy is hard and pushing a baby out is even harder. Yes, sleepless nights and poopy diapers are a challenge. Nothing about motherhood, and I mean nothing, comes close to what I have sacrificed the past few weeks for my 2 year old Hailey. I have literally watched Toy Story 1,2 and 3 no less than 45 times. I am not kidding. My child is obsessed. I could act out all three movies!!!!!! Now, of all the annoying kid movies out there, this one is pretty decent. At least I have not been stuck on a Barney kick. Those kids scare me with their extra happiness! The Toy Story trilogy is a good trilogy but oh my god I am about to go insane. If we could go outside without dying, I would do that. For us to go outside, it has to be at night because of the record breaking heat. I refuse to go to stores or the mall and walk around because of the temptation to spent money. I do not need to give into temptations! I miss a northern climate. Yes, the snow sucks when it is up to the second floor window BUT, the summers, falls and springs are decent. Here it is two seasons. Hot as cold and cold. There is no in between. I suppose I would miss the sizzling heat but maybe I wouldn’t. I am not someone who enjoys sweating and yesterday, in my car with ac full blast, I was still “glistening”. To decode for you, “glistening” is a ladylike way of saying that I was sweating. My husbands deodorant states that it “makes unfresh men legends of confidence”. Well, mine does not offer such delightful results and hence the “glistening”. Today I chose the “glistening” over the story of toys. The lesser of two evils!

My parents are considering moving to Thailand, which if you knew my wonderful parents, you would know that it isnt that radical of a statement for them. For me, it would be out of left field! My father knows no limits and that is why he has been so successful in his life. He never limits himself. If he can dream it, he can do it. His attitude, along with my mothers style and creativity, they are an unstoppable duo and to know them is to love them. And people do! You remember my parents. They stand out in the crowd! Well, knowing that, you might be able to understand how this idea kind of suits them. They have friends there who have talked the place up and they are really considering it. I only had one rule for them, NO BEACH! I am too scared of tsunamis. I would miss my parents but trust me, I would be visiting them in a tropical paradise! I would stay for weeks actually. The flight alone would warrant a week of rest to recover!! I would be happy for them should they decide to go. Of course they would be dearly missed but now that all their kids are grown, it is their time and their choice how they want to live. I think their ‘can do’ attitude is fantastic! I love my parents and their spirit. They really live life the way it needs to be lived. They enjoy good food, good wines and good company! They have stories to tell and they have both traveled. My mom spent a big chunk of her youth growing up in Europe. I am so proud of my parents and I am doing everything I can to encourage them to go and live and enjoy! They have done their jobs as parents and are entitled to live however they can dream up!

I think I need to get a detailed list of things I am not allowed to say to my siblings spouses due to the fact that I inadvertently got my brother in more trouble than he was already in. I was supposed to have dinner with my mom and my brother last night but my mom cancelled because she airs on the side of corn flakes. She is sweet though so maybe she is a frosted corn flake! Either way, we didn’t go. I texted my brother things were off and he texted back he would call me soon. He says he will call me in 5 minutes and then I wont hear from him for two weeks so I wrote it off UNTIL his wife texted me asking if I had heard from him. I got a pit in my stomach and my worry kicked in. I told her we had texted earlier in the day but other than that, no. I never heard from her again. Well, you cant do that to me because I literally take on your worry and it effects me physically so then I have to figure it out just to get rid of the worry that I didnt have to begin with! Its annoying but its just me. Anyway, I called my brother, no answer. Called my sister in law (she is out of the state right now) and she answered and we chit chatted and I said maybe he was with his friend because he had mentioned something about him coming to the dinner we had set up. Well, unbeknownst to me, she HATES that guy. I mean passionately hates him so there you go, write me a damn list if you don’t want me to sell you out without even knowing I’m doing it! I tried my best to back track because honestly I had no clue if he was with this friend or not. I think my sister in law had every right to be pissed because my brother was avoiding her phone calls and men, if you are reading this, NEVER avoid your wife’s calls unless you want to make your life a living hell. We are number one! There is zero excuse to avoid your wife. Don’t want to talk? Send a text! Just don’t ignore us! Anyway, she was texting me until 2am stressed out. I felt like crap because I knew that it was my fault that she was worried. Funnily enough, I call my mom this morning to tell her, because my mom is my best friend, and she told me that my sister in law had called her too and my mom told her that he was probably drunk! So, here I am worried I had screwed up my brothers marriage and my mom is selling him down the river no problem! Family is just another word for drama….but I love them all!!

I think my son, being the third child, is chronically tired. My poor baby NEVER has an uninterrupted nap because of his big sister who is only two and isn’t exactly a big advocate of the ‘inside voice’. She is the loudest child on earth. Literally. I would check her hearing if I hadn’t already when she was a newborn because she is so loud! My husband always says she will be a singer because of her pipes. Maybe she will be but for now, she is my sons sleep deprivation problem! When he naps, it is either a ten minute cat nap or it is a few hours couldn’t wake him up if you tried. Those naps come about because of exhaustion. Poor little guy. He loves his sisters and whenever they are near, his face lights up. He loves watching them and you can tell he wants to play with them so badly. Soon enough he will but for now, he watches them with big bags, suitcases if you will, under his pretty blue eyes. I suppose it is not that bad but he really does get interrupted during every nap. Thankfully he sleeps through the night but that is the only time the house is quiet so I suppose that is the only time he can actually sleep peacefully. They irony of all this is, my two year old wakes up at night! She usually starts crying around 2ish (not every night but very often) and maybe one other time in the night. So, I can feel sorry for the kids and their sleep all I want but ultimately the one who is exhausted is me! Some days my eyes burn and three diet cokes are necessary to get through the day! I am not a coffee drinker. I hate the way it makes me feel jittery and shaky. Kids don’t realize how good they have it being they can take a nap, are sometimes forced to take a nap, then you become an adult and all you want to do is take a nap but cant! The grass is always greener and we are never satisfied but we are all tired.

When I was a teenager, I thought I knew the woman I wanted to be. I knew my whole life plan. Graduate high school, go to college, graduate college, get job, meet dream man with perfect family, marry him, take a tropical honeymoon, buy a beautiful home, have children and then ultimately live happily ever after. To say my life didn’t go that way would be an understatement.  I did graduate high school! The thing about life is it really isn’t what we expect. Sometimes the surprises it brings are amazing joys and sometimes it brings tortuous hell. I prefer the joys myself but I know I have to take the good with the bad, the peaks and the valleys, the yings and the yangs. There’s some old saying that when you don’t experience the bad, you can never truly appreciate the good. I am going to have to respectfully disagree yet at the same time, gracefully understand the point. Should a million free bucks randomly show up at my front door, I would not have to be poor to appreciate it! I may not be as thrilled if I have 65 million dollars already but I am sure that I would still smile! If I was broke as a joke (never understood that saying….is it because broke and joke rhyme??) I might pee my pants but nonetheless, it would be appreciated across the board.  Money makes people happy. Can it buy happiness? I’m going to have to say yes. It sure helps to bring the happiness. People that cant handle it self-destruct because of other issues, not because money is the root of all evil. My god I am spouting off a bunch of sayings! I’m digressing from my original point that life is a gamble, an adventure and occasionally a pain in the ass. Some people have such tragic lives that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what atrocities they have survived. At the same time, those same people pull through all of the adversity and can become very well rounded, successful people. At the same time, people with pampered lives that never really have any of the stereotypical hardships, live out of control and waste their lives on drugs or perhaps just a ‘poor me’ attitude. I fall somewhere in the middle. There is a balance to life and you must live it in said balance. If that scale tilts too much in the wrong direction, you will know it and you will know it quickly. My life scale was way out of balance with my teenage selves plan of action. In some ways I’m happy my life wasn’t the cookie cutter plan I had laid out for myself. What a boring existence knowing what was around each corner. Some people like life that way and to an extent I do as well when it comes to some aspects of life. I prefer the way life can be like….well, a box of chocolates! You really never know what you are going to get do you Mr. Gump? One day, one hour, one moment and your life can change. One ‘chance’ encounter on a Tuesday afternoon at a Starbucks can change the direction of your life. I have spent the last ten years of my life allowing life to happen and seeing where it took me. In some ways living that way has left me feeling lost. There was no plan, no direction. In other ways, I wasn’t adhering to a plan that may or may have not made me happy. As a result, most of my decisions have been based on my heart. My heart is sometimes a bad judge of a situation! Untrustworthy organ that it is, I have made choices that I would deem as mistakes but if you view that from another perspective, nothing is a mistake. Without making those deemed mistakes, I would not have the life I lead today. Without the bumps and mistakes I have made, I would not have my children and I would never go back in time and change anything as that would erase the three most important people I have in my life. Without my children, I do not know who I would be. I base every decision on them. How will it affect my children is my first question in every situation. I have allowed myself to suffer for their benefit and I would lay my life down in a second for them. I would also kill for them…..remember that! Ok, that’s tiptoeing on the edge of creepy but I believe most mothers would agree with me. Being a parent is plagued with fear. Fear of everything. Everything? Everything! You live every moment of everyday in a state of fear. I thought I loved a man unconditionally once, and then I had children. No love I have ever had for any human being comes close to the love I have for my children. My mother is probably up there but I wouldn’t die for her. If I died for her, I would leave my children and no one is worth that sacrifice. Sorry mom, I love you and thanks for giving me life! Being a mother is truly the most important thing I will ever do. Even if I were to become President of the United States, I would be worried that I wasn’t spending enough time with my children. Their Christmas concerts would come before any government emergency. Ok, so lets never nominate me for president. I would not be very good at it. Although, should I ever become President, there are quite a few things I would change. We all have a tendency to get stuck in our ways and shun and fear change. Change is good! Change is a breath of fresh air and change is necessary in that house of white! I truly look forward to when this world becomes a much more open and understanding place and when we can rewrite the history books. A world that my children are free to be who they are and not who society says is acceptable. Life is too short and too much of a gift to not be living it as your authentic self.  Who or what is your authentic self you ask? It is who you actually are! Imagine that. We all spend so much time and energy worrying about our image or our impression or even if what we say is acceptable to people, we stop remembering that the only person we are responsible for impressing and ultimately making happy is our self. It doesn’t matter if you are perfect, live in a perfect home, eat the perfect foods, wear the perfect clothes, drive the perfect car and have the perfect kids, you are still going to have people look down at you and judge you. You might as well be whom you are, love yourself how you are and put forth the confidence that you like yourself. People respond to confident people. Not cocky, confidant. Big difference. Finding confidence is a real challenge. When we start out our lives, everything we do is applauded and we are treated like everything we do is fantastic. We are beautiful and talented and number one! Then, we enter kindergarten and the exact opposite happens. Kids pick on each other and break each other down to the core and we spend the rest of our adult lives dealing with those issues and trying to overcome those insecurities that are pounded into our heads. Everybody remembers what they were picked on for. Name something! Too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, big nose, big ears, braces, buckteeth, big feet and the list goes on and on. I was picked on for weight (mainly by my brother) but trust me; I have carried that into adulthood. Thankfully not the weight but sometimes the issue is a much heavier burden to carry! As I age, I am realizing that how I look is not that big of a deal. People care more about what you have to say then if you fit into a size two. I’m not 18. I am not trying to skip along a beach in a bikini! I would much rather be a size 6, in a one piece mom bathing suit and making sand castles with my kids on that beach as the 18 year old girl skips by and is pleased that she looks better than me in a bathing suit. When she is my age and a mother, she will realize that being me is so much more fulfilling than being her. With age comes wisdom and that is what makes a person attractive. You could be the perfect looking person but if you have no personality and nothing to say, you are actually ugly. Inner beauty radiates so much brighter than a six pack and perky boobs. Would I take a 6 pack, perky boobs and inner beauty? Heck yes and throw in that free million bucks! I aspire to be one of those women who I envy that just standing near them makes me feel like I am wearing a cozy sweater and eating warm chocolate chip cookies while watching a fire crackle in the fireplace and cuddling with someone I love. I have met a few women like that in my life and to become one would be one of my goals realized. I don’t even know if those women have boobs or what pants size they wear. I don’t care! I just want to be near them. I want people to bask in my glow one day but I think you only achieve that glow with age. I never met a 20 year old whose glow was baskable. Not that there may not be one out there but I am not holding my breath. I like breathing.

To sum up, I did graduate high school. I enjoyed my education and I have my leather bound diploma to prove it. I never went to “college” and hence, never graduated. I instead chose to go to the school of life. Some classes I have failed and others I have aced and I will not graduate until the day I die. My leather bound diploma will be my children. They are my greatest achievement and my job. I never thought I would have such a rewarding job that I don’t get paid a dime to do. I get paid in hugs! The only dream man I will ever know is my son. No man I could love will ever be perfect like him. He is the ultimate man in my life and always will be. I will guide him and teach him how to be a man so that one day he can come close to being the dream man for some lucky woman. Marriage is another branch of the school of life that is advanced placement classes. Marriage is not for the weak. You must be willing to go inside and really take a look at yourself should you want to succeed at marriage. It is one thing that is always changing and always worth trying new ways to make it better. I’ve never had a honeymoon but I have travelled and I will travel again. A honeymoon is a onetime thing. I try to make every trip I take feel like the first time….hehehe. Who really is a virgin on their honeymoon these days? I don’t have to buy a house to have a home. I have purchased a house before and no longer have that house.  My home is wherever my family is. It could be a tent in the middle of the forest. With my family there, I am home. Living happily ever after is the goal at the end of the day right? Wrong. You will never live happily ever after. Damn lying nursery rhymes and fairytales! Life will have some very unpleasant moments and the goal is to find happiness in all of the ups and downs, twists and turns and ins and outs. Bad times will come but can you make lemonade out of those lemons is the real question. If you can, you have succeeded. Like I said before, my life has not turned out remotely how I thought it would but thankfully, I like lemonade and I like all the different glasses it has been served to me in. Grab a straw and have a drink!

I have a personal facebook page and last night I made a comment on one of my friends posts regarding Christmas trees. She said she was glad that this coming Christmas she was going to be able to go out into the forest to chop down her tree. Obviously my friend will not be living in Texas! Anyway, I said to buy a fake one because they last forever. She said she would never buy one because they are worse for the environment because they end up in landfills. True. Now, the Christmas tree debate could have ended there but some guy, her friend not mine, commented and called me sacrilegious and ended the insult with a smiley face. Im not one to take too much offense to nonsense like that but if your going to be a jerk, own it! Don’t be passive aggressive! How the hell am I sacrilegious for saying buy a fake tree? Oh that guy bugged me! I detest seeing all the dead trees lining the streets waiting to be picked up and taken to the dump! I feel like I am looking at a murder scene. A while ago, I was going to my parents and one of their neighbors chopped down one of their very large trees and I got emotional. It really struck a chord with me and I think cutting down trees is awful. If I ever have a real tree, it will be one in a pot that I can plant in my yard when all is said and done. Ive had my fake tree for four years now and the way I view that is I have saved 4 trees lives. I may end up putting my tree in a landfill in the distant future but maybe by the time I am done with it I will become Jewish and get a menorah and never buy a tree, real or fake, again! Im still in shock about being called sacrilegious. That guy and his damn smiley face insult. How about this Christmas tree insult guy, you are an ass

To silence a writer is to take away the very air they breathe. I have gone back and forth with continuing my blog for various reasons and my conclusion is that I must write! I cant hold it in!! I truly enjoy writing my stories and opinions. I have been discouraged recently by things that don’t even deserve a mention and it threw me off my path but I am back on it and better than ever! Sometimes you need a little kick in the ass to remind you of what is important and my blog is so important to me and my voice. It is MY voice! There are no interruptions, no one opposing my views (until they comment!) and most of all, no one silencing me. To those who read my blog, I am humbled that you find what I write interesting enough to come back. To those of you who read my blog because you do not like me, I am again humbled that you find what I write interesting enough to come back. Bad or good, you read what I write! While I have hesitations of opening up too much, I am going to do my best to be open and hope that through my openness, I help someone who may have the same problem or situation. We all go through things in our lives, good and bad, and its nice to know someone else has been there and done that! Its a comfort, a link. I have been silenced in a previous life but not this one, not this time! This time I win! This time I must be heard!! You can probably tell I have a pretty intense conviction going on right now but some of this blog has a code in it that only one special person will understand

So today is Father’s day and it has been pretty uneventful. We aren’t big celebrators of Mothers day or Father day. I call my dad and tell my husband happy father days and that is about the extent of the festivities. My oldest makes me Mother day stuff which I treasure, and in the years to come I am sure they will make me breakfast and all the other mothers day stuff. Fathers day just isnt as important as mothers day, in my opinion. Maybe as the kids age they will make the breakfast and make homemade gifts but somehow I cant see my husband wearing the macaroni jewelry that I would walk around in like it was diamonds! I think the greatest gift I could give my husband for ‘his’ day, I gave him which is an all day marathon of his pointless video game without bitching at him!! He has been happily blowing up other soldiers and cities all day. Useless, pointless waste of time, but, he got to do it without my opinions. Happy Father’s Day hunny!! I love you very very much and THANK YOU for our gorgeous babies! They both look just like you but yet I am the one that suffered and birthed them, Im not bitter……And to my dad, you are a character and the older I get, the more fun you become. I am literally addicted to my parents and LOVE spending time with them. They are my friends, my therapists, my advice givers and my kids versions of cool. They love my parents and get so excited to see them. Its special. Anyway, to all the Fathers, keep doing what your doing and remember this: All parenting is, is trying not to screw up your kids too badly! Have a great day!!!

“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I’m trying to do the right thing, and that’s where I’m going with this.”

I was so moved by this man’s quote that I had to write about it right now! His name is Roy McDonald and I have never heard of him until today. I like this mans attitude and I like that he had the ‘balls’ to say it and I like that he used profanity while saying it! Politics needs to come out of the stone age and start accepting some truths and this guy seems like he is on the right track. Gay marriages is only one of the issues that they need to get real about! I dont know much about this man but I do know I like it when someone says enough is enough and is willing to change and see things through new eyes!!