Looks

As I am typing this, I am in the midst of a whirlwind of activity. I am about to embark upon the rarest of adventures... A night on the town without my children. I am determined to write my blog this evening and get it out on time, even if my makeup suffers the consequences. I was a day late putting it up last week, and as I have learned from my dieting history, if I start letting things slide they will quickly turn into out of control Wilde-beasts rampaging through the cupboards and submitting things late left and right.

As I was getting ready this evening, twirling (the clumsy version) in front of my husband, and asking his opinion on my outfit, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I have a real shirt on, I'm not wearing yoga pants, and thus far I have no stains on my clothing. And not to toot my own horn or anything (but, toot toot!) I am wearing makeup and jewelry, which is practically unheard of.

Then I happened to wander past a mirror.

The discrepancy between the way I think I look and the way I actually look is alarming to say the least. It truly frightens me that I can be so delusional because it makes me feel as if I'm losing my mental capacity as well as my looks. Here I am, prancing around, thinking I look like my college self, and when I prance past the mirror I am jarred into the reality that I am, in fact, thousands of pounds heavier than I feel and a million years older. As I was gazing mournfully in the mirror, I came to a horrible realization... The way I look now when I'm all dolled up is the way I used to look when I had a really bad hangover in college. Right down to the puffy bags under my eyes.

I have been telling myself since the birth of my youngest (three years ago), that I'm just tired and I'm not getting enough sleep and if I could just get a couple of extra hours I would look like a million dollars.

I got ten hours of sleep last night and guess what, this is just how I look now!!! I am mystified.

I don't think of myself as being particularly old, I am certainly youthful and vibrant in my own mind, so what's with my face and body deciding to age??? I am sincerely angry about it. How dare they betray me this way?!? Especially considering the amount of money and I spend on face creams, devices, wrinkle eliminators, and sunscreen trying to keep my face looking like it's former self.

It's nights like these, when I'm caught in a spiral of "my body is dying all around me" thoughts and visions of myself using a walker and having purple granny hair that I am grateful for the unrelenting advances of my husband.

This man cannot let me bend over to pick something up from the floor without trying to grab my butt... And when someone treats you like some sort of sex object all the time, you can't help but feel at least a little sexy on occasion.

For instance, when I marched out of the bathroom this evening and said to him, "You said I looked great! I look like a sister wife!!!" he calmly replied, "Well, you do... But you are a SEXY sister wife."

Well, hopefully this made sense and contains no typos because I am leaving it as it is, much like its author, in all of it's imperfect glory, because I will NOT be more than five minutes late for my girl's night out.

Have a wonderful week everyone!!!

The Dirty Mouths of Babes

So, I detonated the dream bomb last week... After all of my freaking out and paper bag breathing, everything was okay, nobody pointed an laughed at me (at least not publicly), and you were all so sweet and supportive about it I wanted to cry. I didn't though, which I feel is a step in the right direction considering my proclivity for unnecessary waterworks.

In case you're wondering, the update is that I need to have 4-5 minutes of material ready for my open mic debut. Holy hell!!! I'm a talker, as everyone knows, but that just seems like a daunting amount of material to prepare... Freaking out again? No, not yet, but trust me I will be soon. I'll occasionally update you all on this stuff, and until then rest assured that I will be entertaining (???) you with my semi-coherent ramblings about whatever pops into my little brain.

Anyway...

This week it has become painfully obvious that my children love to curse (in our house this includes the words "fart", "shut up", "stupid", and many other staples of childhood humor). They love it more than anything in the world. If they had to choose between the lives of their beloved stuffed animals (which have all been named, imbued with sparkling personalities, and dubbed their "children"), and never uttering another curse word, they would choose cursing without hesitation.

I can't explain it. I have absolutely no idea why they derive so much satisfaction from using the "forbidden" words they know shock and humiliate their mother. I don't roam around my house like some sort of deranged sailor (that's my husband, haha), dropping f-bombs like socks out of the laundry basket. Is that even a saying or did I just show my frump again? I know that most kids end up saying a naughty word at some point, much to the horror/ashamed amusement of their parents, but this is something else... This isn't casual experimentation with language... This is... Gleeful.

I am by no means saying that my kids curse all the time. They don't at all. What I am saying is that when they do, they enjoy it. Those kids savor curse words like I savor five minutes of peace and quiet.

Why?!? Why do they love it so much?!? Is it because they are 1/2 sailor on their father's side? Is it in their DNA? Do they somehow sense that once upon a time I, too, thoroughly enjoyed peppering my sentences with those four-letter gems when my mother wasn't around? Sorry Mom, but I did. I, at least, had the decency to wait until she wasn't around.

Lord knows I have curbed my tongue since having children to a painful degree, and I feel my self control should have earned from my girls at least some modicum of shame when they pop off with a swear. I mean, seriously, nobody wants to scream, "Cheese and crackers!!!" when they stub their toe. Nothing takes the pain away like a well-placed cuss word.

So you might be asking yourself how I came to this horrid conclusion in the first place. The sad answer would be that when my kids accidentally cuss, they don't gasp in horror nor do they even look guilty. They glance slyly at one another and burst out laughing. They laugh their little guts out. They literally hold their sides, roll around on the ground, and chortle until they can barely breathe. It is beyond appalling.

Each time it happens, I lecture, reason, beg, put them in time out, take away their dessert, tell them their Grandparents would be horrified, or take away toys, and nothing seems to make it any less funny. I am at my wit's end (apparently it is quite a long wit because I have been teetering on its end for quite some time now). In fact, I get the distinct impression that punishment adds to the mystique and hilarity of cursing. This has led me to ponder the obvious... The unthinkable... The punishment that must not be named...

THE DREADED SOAP!!!

When I cussed as a child (when I got caught anyway, haha), that is exactly what happened to me. And everyone else my age. I will never forget the taste of that blue Dawn from the bottle. It tasted so wretched it had to have cleaned every word that came out of my mouth for at least a month. I have to say, it worked like a charm. I only remember ever having to taste that soap one time.

So the question is... Could I? Should I? Do I dare apply this punishment to my babies?

Uh... No.

I just can't do it. I don't have it in me. I can't imagine putting soap into one of their tiny little mouths. I mean, they kiss me with those mouths. That's not to say that I think it's wrong to do... I mean, I got soap in the mouth and look how great I turned out! I'm just saying I'm a weenie.

So, for now, I will have to comfort myself with time outs, lengthy lectures on decorum, and the saying "therapy helps, but screaming obscenities is faster and cheaper."

That being said, I am seriously considering shipping them off to the Cuss Control Academy. It's a real thing, look it up.

Hope you all have a wonderful week filled with fun and laughter that is not induced by saying words you know you shouldn't.

Detonation Complete

Well, it's that time of the week again... Time to neglect my household duties for who knows how long, let the things that need to be done around here scream at me as I pointedly ignore them, and type my little fingers to the bone.

I must admit that I have been absolutely dreading this week's blog. I feel like what I'm about to do is the emotional equivalent of showing you all my horrible naked body or something. I would never do that to you, don't worry... After all, you wouldn't be able to read my blog if you went blind. Or mad. Or both.

So, here I go, about to detonate my dream bomb and then sift through the wreckage of my possible mortification. Incidentally, I felt I had been using the word "humiliation" too much and thus looked it up in the thesaurus... Mortification has sort of a ring to it, don't you think?

I know I am drawing this out to a ridiculous length, but really, I'm super nervous, cut me some slack!!!

Soooooo....

The thing I have always dreamed about doing that I am going to just go for, try, possibly fall on my face in public, can't wait to do (yet it makes me nauseous to think about), and that could forever be a source of embarrassment for me is...

I sincerely hope it lives up to the hype, but I realize that the more I hype it the less likely that is... Especially when several of the guesses of my loved ones were much more interesting and important. Things such as going into politics, writing a book, or trying to become the next Taylor Swift (Can you tell I'm stalling? No, of course not, I feel like I'm being pretty subtle).

Anyway, my dream is:

Stand up comedy.

Ridiculous? I know. Crazy? Most likely. But I'm doing it anyway.

I realize it's kind of a strange thing for a chubby stay at home mother of two to dream of doing, but I can't help it. I realize this next sentence is the cheesiest thing anyone has ever written, but I feel it in my heart. I have been obsessed with comedy ever since I can remember. I have been rolling this around in my head, picturing it, and okay, I'll admit it, secretly writing comedy bits in a notebook labeled "MANDY ONLY!!!" for years.

Side note, the strangest thing about the notebook (aside from it's existence) is that a notebook labeled "MANDY ONLY" has somehow managed to acquire an alarming amount of children's drawings in it... Ah well, as long as the kids don't read my crazy ramblings and tell their father that he is fodder for my comedic barbs I can't object too much.

So it's out there now... My poor little dreams are just shivering in the cold without the safety of their secrecy clothes.

I thought maybe you all would like to see the journey so I'm going to write about it. Not every blog mind you, cause that would get boring. But the culmination of this journey (God, I'm making it sound like I'm taking the ring to Mordor or something) is going to be me performing at an open mic night in Billings and posting the video for you guys to watch. They have one every Wednesday and the date I am shooting for is April 4th... I need to give myself time to prepare, but I don't want to set it out there too far into the future or I may chicken out. Actually I'm feeling a little chicken-y right now....

Eeeeeeeeeeek!!! I'm freaking out!!!

But I think that's a good thing.

The worst idea ever???

It's a new year, everybody!!! Full of hope and promise... Or at least it is for about three weeks. Until I begin rationalizing the old habits I was trying to break with the annual changing of the digits.

The resolution this year is a little (okay, I'll admit it, a lot) weird and, I'll just put it out there, it scares me... Which is why I'm writing it down for all to see. Oh geez... I sorta have a tear of fright in my eye. Yes, I get a tear in my eye when I get nervous... Also when I get scared... Also when I'm happy... And sad... Or watch a sweet commercial... Or my kids do something cute... You get the drift, every emotion is attached to the old tear ducts.

Anyway, I have resolved to try something new... Something that I daydream about, obsess about, have always wanted to do, and that absolutely nobody, not my husband, Mom, or best friends even knows I have been thinking about doing. Before I tell you what it is, I want to explain to you (in my typical long-winded fashion) why I would contemplate such an insane, ridiculous, and potentially humiliating undertaking. Warning: The following is super sappy and may be boring in the extreme.

I'll start out by saying that I love being a stay at home Mom and I think about the implications of that a lot. It has been the most amazing blessing and privilege of my life watching my little people grow and be who they are. They are the coolest! And because I am the Mother of such cool, creative, special children I must toot my own horn a bit and say they're cool because of me. Kind of. Well, alright, I packed them around in my belly for a bit and they came out cool. Either way, I was involved.

Sometimes you get knocked on your ass a little (the pretentious may call it being humbled) by the idea that you were a part of creating this little miracle and making the world better by bringing it into existence. (I would like to note, that as I was writing this, one of my little miracles was unzipping my couch pillow and gleefully tearing the stuffing out of it.) The whole Mom gig is super fulfilling on the most primitive and important levels. I would rather be doing this than anything else in the whole world.

Okay, barf-worthy and mushy as that was, thinking about that and how much I love my kids and want them to simply be themselves and follow their dreams is what prompted this whole resolution idea thing to begin with.

So how many of us parents are following our dreams? I'm not sure. So many of us have been detoured off of the path we originally set out on or intended and have made happiness out of where we landed. Which is wonderful, but also not exactly what we want our children to do.

Of course that does not diminish our happiness or the passion we feel for our lives. Nor does it erase the fact that, in our heart of hearts, many of us still have a personal passion. Something that is completely, 100 percent selfish and has nothing to do with anyone else or what they need and want and feel.

As every parent knows, we make a lot of personal sacrifices to be good at what we do and mostly forget about the selfish personal dreams. While I do feel that much of that is necessary, I'm also not sure it is setting the best example for my babies. Can I tell them to follow their dreams when they don't know what that looks like?

Some mothers show this to their children through working at a job they love, or cooking, or going back to school, or volunteering, or doing a hobby they love... Well, me, I am basically lazy and spend my free time worrying about bills, bitterly cleaning up after everyone, or cooking something for dinner.

So... I have resolved to do something this year that I desperately want to do that scares me to death.

I am going to follow my dream.

My ridiculous, embarrassing, insane, nerve-wracking, super-secret (for a good reason) dream.

And I am going to show my babies what living the life you want to live looks like. I'm not going to sit around fighting lethargy and passing time, I'm going to do it.

I am going to potentially humiliate myself, possibly die of embarrassment, and do what I dream of.

And I thought you guys might want to watch the (potential, have to think positive) train wreck.

I'm going to write about it, the whole thing, on this blog so that I have no chance of chickening out.

Help. HOLY HELL!!! I'm freaking out a little bit. Putting it out there and writing about it makes it real. Panic setting in. Need. Paper. Bag.

So, I am scared to death... And if you want to find out what the secret dream is, that I keep locked up in my head and never ever let out, you'll have to keep reading the blog. I'm too embarrassed to tell you yet.

Maybe some of you have already guessed it by now...? (Hint: It does not involve wearing a bikini in public.) Or maybe you've just been counting how many times I have written the word "dream." It's a lot.

Well, feel free to speculate... I have probably built this whole thing up in my brain to a level that can never live up to the hype...

But you won't find out for sure until next week.

Christmas-pocalypse

I don't know about you all, but I am in a slight post holiday slump... The anticipation of Christmas is over, the presents have been unwrapped, and the children have started up their bickering and attempts to maim each other in earnest once again... I will admit, I did try to convince the girls that Santa is still watching them, but he just doesn't hold the same sway when he isn't showing up again for 11 months.

I think the main reason for my slump is the cleaning, though. The relentless, never ending cleaning. There are reams of wadded up wrapping paper, boxes of new things that have yet to find a home, and bits of cardboard everywhere I turn. I have had to clear a path through each of my children's rooms just so they can reach their beds.

Anyway, all of this cleaning gives me a lot of "thinking time." Which is dangerous to say the least. In one of my many musings (the others were super intellectual and not at all ridiculous like this one) I decided that there should be some sort of after Christmas song... I mean there is an infinite amount of Christmas music and not one thing for me to passive aggressively hum at top volume as I clean around my lounging family.

So, I present, the dumbest thing I have ever written... But for some reason it made me laugh.

To the tune of "12 Days of Christmas."

"In the 12 days post-Christmas, these things ann-oy-oy-ed me..."

12 (hundred) boxes
11 (million) pine needles
10 stale cookies
9 stepped on legos
8 toys a-beeping
7 golden wrappers (on the floooooooor) (because apparently we have a full-time maaaaaiiiiiid)
6 broken ornaments
5 loads of laundry
4 missing batteries
3 wrestling pitbulls (okay 2, but they might. as. well. be. threeeeeeeee)
2 fighting children
1 unhelpful husband

and a Mom that is going CRAY-ZEEEEEEE!!!

I hope you all enjoyed a glimpse of my descent into clutter-induced madness.

Have a wonderful New Year!!!

Christmas makes my hair stand on end.

I freaking love Christmas!!!

There's fun music, presents, good cheer, a higher tolerance for a little extra fluff around your middle, and you get to have a tree inside your house... I mean really, what's not to like? I will even tolerate the horrible, cold, wet snow without complaint one day a year just because it's sparkly and festive.

For me, this time of year is full of love and blessings and that feeling of Christmas magic I still have left over from childhood. However, now that I'm an adult, the magical wonderment is now mixed with the very grown-up reality of Christmas stress-induced cardiac pulmina. Is there such a thing as a cardiac pulmina? I think I just made that up... It sounded festive and scary at the same time. Anyway...

Every year I have glorious, glittery, sugar-plum laced visions of spending my time cheerfully listening to Christmas music with my children as I buzz around the kitchen making amazing candies and canning festive jams for all to enjoy. Also, I'm wearing a fancy ruffled apron. My house, of course, is decorated from stern to stem and looks exactly like the North Pole. Every present for every person is beautifully wrapped and stacked neatly underneath my tree by the second week of December and I am relaxed and content.

Smash cut to me looking at the calender on December 17th and realizing that Christmas is less than 10 days away and I haven't bought anyone anything. In fact, my tree isn't even decorated. Though, to be fair, it was decorated until the girls decided to play something called the "spy game" that involved them rescuing all of the ornaments off of the tree and smuggling them in a backpack to their rooms.

Yes, rather than my blissfully organized Christmas fantasies, I spent the three days after my horrible December 17th realization frantically scouring the internet for the perfect present for the perfect price, clicking swiftly from page to page, sweat forming on my brow, as I tried to find a way to avoid paying double the present's value in shipping. I ended up wasting hours of my life with absolutely no results. I eventually came to the sad conclusion that if I got the gifts I wanted to get for everyone I would indeed be paying the extra shipping, which made me sick to my stomach... That is, until I remembered that Amazon two-day ships things for free when you sign up for a free month trial membership of Amazon Prime. So being the frugal person I am I signed up for the free trial with every intention of cancelling it immediately upon receiving my packages...

I have turned myself into some kind of Christmas-time free shipping scam artist. It is shameful.

At this point, Christmas presents have started arriving on my doorstep (thank God!), bringing with them a mixture of relief and horror. Relief that I am finally done shopping, horror that I now have to wrap the damn things. And I am not good at wrapping things.

Every year I sit down with my wrapping paper, tape, and scissors, and visualize the perfectly wrapped presents that will soon emerge from between my hands (apparently I do a lot of wishful visualizing around the holidays)... And every year someone asks me as they're opening their gift, "Aw, did the girls help you wrap this?" Um.... NO!!! They didn't, actually!!! And guess what, I tried really hard!!! I just suck at wrapping presents, ok?!?" Well, I would never talk to anyone like that, but you can see how I would be highly insulted...

Therefore, to formally and forever end any debate about my gift wrapping skills, I present the following:

Below is are some photos of a present that I wrapped and a present that my 3 year old wrapped... I think you will find that you can easily tell the difference.
















Okay, okay, I hope you've all had a good laugh. I suck at the present wrapping thing! Sadly, I try really really hard to do a good job and they always end up looking ridiculous. If you're curious, mine is the one with less tape.

Anyway, stressful though it might be, I do adore Christmas... I love giving presents and, okay, I'll admit it, I love getting presents too... Seriously, if someone tells you they don't like getting presents back away slowly because they are not to be trusted. Presents rock, spending time with your family rocks, and having an excuse to eat waaaaaay too much rocks. So even though I now have a bald spot as a result of my frenetic December shenanigans, I am so looking forward to the next few days of wonder and cheer. Yay Christmas!!!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, and thank you so much for spending your time reading this!!!

How the hell did my Mom do it???

Growing up, I never remember having to hunt through the laundry basket for a pair of clean underwear... I don't remember my mother ever once frantically digging through a metric ton of laundry to try and find me a pair of matching socks as I slowly came closer to being late for school with each passing second...

Was there a constant pile of laundry in the hallway? No. Was the counter covered in a month's worth of junk mail and store advertisements that has yet to be gone through? No. Did my mother suddenly scream out in the middle of breakfast, "Oh my God, did we forget to do your homework last night?!?" Most certainly not. I seem to recall her totally having it together.

I, on the other hand, have been at this "home-making" gig for quite some time now and I feel like I have yet to get the hang of it. I can't tell you how many times I have looked myself in the mirror and thought, "What the hell?!? I look like a grown up!!!" Quickly followed by the near panic attack inducing realization that I am, in fact, a grown up, and not only that but I am somebody's mother... Two somebodies as a matter of fact, not to mention the man of the house that seems to require quite a bit of attention as well. People's lives literally depend on me. Oh my God. OH MY GOD!!! Help!!! Does anyone have a paper bag?!?

I try. Lord knows I do, but no matter how organized, how caught up I feel like I am, how many hours I spend in a day, there is always something that I haven't gotten done. I can never seem to remember it all, keep up with it all, or have everything all in its place all at the same time. As a matter of fact, as we speak, there are two huge piles of laundry sitting unfolded on top of the dryer, my house is a bit messy, my husband's sock drawer is empty, both my kid's rooms need cleaned, and I won't even get into what my own room looks like... Also, I should probably unload the dishwasher.

Why is it so hard?!? I can't understand for the life of me what is so complicated about keeping the house clean, the laundry done, and all the kid's stuff organized. I just don't have it in me, I guess. My natural inclination is toward utter chaos and I can only fight it to a certain point. Plus, my children (the little one in particular) literally follow me around the house as I clean destroying any semblance of order I tried to create... And my husband? How do we put this delicately? Um... Let's just say he loves nothing more than shaving in the nice clean (20 minutes of scrubbing, thank you very much!) bathroom sink or cooking a gourmet meal (aka messiest meal he can conceive of) on my nice clean stove.

Insert gigantic world-weary sigh here. Also, picture me with big dark circles under my eyes and my hair standing on end.

I think the reason my inability to keep things in order bothers me so much is because I feel like I am working the 24/7 shift and just barely keeping things from falling apart at the seams. I am holding onto organization with just the tippy tips of my fingers and it is fighting like a marlin (um, that's a saying, right?) trying to get away from me. I mean, I am a grown up (where's that paper bag???), yet I don't feel like one, nor am I quite pulling off at least acting like one.

I wonder if my kids will make fun of me behind my back when they're teenagers and tell all of their friends how hopeless I am... And say they wish I was more like their friend's Mom because at least they never ran out of clean socks.

Again, world-weary sigh.

I guess all I can say is that they have a disorganized mom but they are happy and healthy, super cute, charming, smart, clean, well-dressed, and always have their hair fixed. I know I'm doing something right (or at least partially right)... And maybe someday I will actually get the hang of this whole thing... Perhaps I just need another 10 years or so of practice?

Until then, I will just have to resign myself to the fact that I will always be forgetting something and my house will never f-ing (Mom, I know you read this so I censored that just for you even though I was thinking the actual word ♥) be clean.