Crappy unpracticed "Cups" for my Mom

Here you go, Mom! I only did one take because 3 kids and a job. Love you!

Five Ways to Cry over Cops and Pie

Let's talk about the 5 reasons I cried today, since I have nothing else fun to talk about and I am committed to my goal of blogging every day.

1. I woke up crying because I had a dream that I was an equestrian that was part of the military. There was a war that ended horse-riders being a branch of the military and we all ended up in a Motel 6 in the basement for four months. When they finally opened the door and let us out I ran out onto the grass on I-35 and kissed the grass. I don't know if it was the pride of having served my country, or the sadness about the fact that I was know an unemployed equestrian without a government health plan.

2. Accident number 1's asshole that hit me is still trying to claim it's my fault that he hit me. Like I was backing up on the highway when he was innocently just trying to go to work as a priest at a children's orphanage. Because of this, they want me to pay my deductible to get my car out of the shop. When I told my insurance I didn't think that was fair, he told me next time I should get a deductible I can afford. I want to find out where he hangs out and make him swallow his teeth. (Is that a thing? If not, it should be) Also, I want to sue everyone.

3. Because of asshole from accident #1 I needed a copy of the police report. I called the police station and they said I had to go downtown and pick up a copy of it. Apparently the law is in no damn hurry to get in the cloud. I tried to get downtown, and they had the entire place blocked off because of a suspicious package. I stopped to ask a police officer if there was somewhere else I could park and he yelled at me that THERE WAS A SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE AND NOTHING I NEEDED TO DO WAS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE BLOCKING TRAFFIC TO ASK HIM WHY HE WAS BLOCKING TRAFFIC. I sniffled. I actually tried to run from two ladies who were just going to ask me if I knew if "That jail be open because we gotta see little Hank". I cried over the cop yelling at me. I cried because the records lady told me they couldn't find my file- she was immune to my emerald green tears of manipulation, but thankfully her co-worker wasn't and dug until she found it.

4. After I drove to drop off the police report at the insurance company, I called my Mom to listen to me cry about how mean the cops were. She was sympathizing and telling me everything I needed to hear when I noticed lights flashing behind me. I moved over so the police could go catch the bad guy and to my horror he followed me! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. He came to my window and told me his name was Milo. Milo needs the warm embrace of a woman. He said I had pulled into the intersection to turn left before the light turned green and I might think that was an acceptable thing to do but I WAS WRONG AND HE WAS SO TIRED OF CLEANING UP ALL THESE COLLISIONS BECAUSE HE'S JUST A TRAFFIC COP AND TRYING TO MAKE THE CITY A SAFER PLACE. Then he passive aggressively told me to stay off my phone. I had the biggest urge to insult his small penis or his bad dye job, but instead I took off my sunglasses and let the tears flow. I ended up with a warning and a weather report. I think he really just wanted some attention or some appreciation over letting me off with a warning, but I still don't really know what I did wrong. I called my Mom to cry some more.

5. I managed to make a beautiful and delicious homemade chicken pot pie that was making me feel better about myself.

BOTH kids cried over having to eat it. I tried to catch a picture, but Adrian changed his face at the last second in order to screw up my funny blog picture. 

After 1 hour and 10 minutes of begging and pleading and threatening with them to eat their food, I finally lost it and cried tears of failure into my own plate of delicious chicken pot pie.

Okay, but look how cute Collins is. She wins my favorite kid of the day today.

This is how she wiggles her way out of her bathtub sling, every time. It's terrifying and ineffective. 

Sneezing = Single and Lonely

Ellis, Collins, and I had just left the park and were on our way home.  It was one of those moments that I was feeling like a superior parent.

Ellis: Did you like that dog with the big tail?

Me: Yes! I loved him, he was so sweet. I think he was part rottweiler.

Ellis: I don't care about that.

Me: Oh...o...kay.

Ellis: How come no one ever brings their cats to the park?

Me: Well cats would really just run away, and they also don't  like being on leashes.

Ellis: UGH. We don't have a cat or a dog. Well, we had a dog but we don't anymore cuz she's so dead.

Me: Yeah, Sable died. It's okay though, that happens. Do you want to talk about it?

Ellis: UGH NO. WHY DON'T WE HAVE A CAT BECAUSE ALL OUR DOGS ARE DEAD?

Me: We can't have a cat because I am allergic to cats.

Ellis: Well, Daddy's not.

Me: I know, but if we have a cat in our house it will make me very sick, that's what being allergic means.

Ellis: Maybe Daddy can get a new wife that's not allarshick to cats.

Me: But then I wouldn't be your Mama! You'd have a new Mama!

Ellis: But, it would be okay. You could live somewhere different and I could just have a new Mama and a cat.

Me: ......

Ellis: I think I would name her Callie. Do you think that's a good name?

Me: I'm sorry Ellis, I just have trouble thinking of a name for your new cat that you're going to get once you convince Daddy to abandon me because of my inexcusable allergies.

Ellis: UGH ALL RIGHT YOU CAN STAY AT OUR HOUSE.

Me: Yay! Frozen yogurt?

A Complimentary Drawing

The carpet smelled of pee and had spots in it that looked like the mange, so I called to have Stanley Steemer come make it all better.

I don't like being at my house by myself while strange men are there, but in this case I really didn't have a choice. Husband with one T was at work and the piss had to go. Plus my groupon was only good for a weekday.

I caress my mace in one hand as I open the door. So far, these two employees don't APPEAR to be interested in kidnapping me and keeping me in their freshly scrubbed basement.

One looks like him -




And his partner looked like this guy:





They were there to take care of my every need carpet-wise.

I stayed in whatever room they weren't in. I didn't want to lay in my bed to give them any ideas about laying down with me, so I mostly just walked around my bedroom or the kitchen, pretending to be super interested in the paintings on my wall.

Scary man #1: That your guitar?

Me: Um, yeah it is! (fake smile)

Scary man: No way, you like a rockstar chick or something?

Suddenly I knew I didn't need to be afraid of them, especially if they wanted to pay attention and compliments to me.

Me: Well, I mean, (real smile) yes, I guess I am. (BEAAAAAAMING)

Not scary anymore man: Damn, will you play something for us while we work?

Me: I just couldn't. (putting my guitar strap on)

I played them "Blackbird" and "Here I go Again", I thought it'd be nice to mellow them out and then rock them back up. I put a lot of thought into my set list for carpet cleaners. They were happy to listen and and probably surprised at my enthusiasm. My willing audience members are about as abundant as my blog readers, (here's looking at you, Mom and Dad!)

After I finished, it would've been awkward to stay out there and not entertain them, so I sauntered back into the hallway to look at those pictures. I was so ready for them to finish so I could just take a nap. I heard them kind of packing up, so I walked back in to the entry way where they were getting ready to leave. It was like all of our musical friendship we had just made a few minutes ago was gone. He was awkwardly avoiding my gaze.

Me: You guys all finished?

Him: yep (snickers and look at his friend)

Me: What's so funny?

Him: umm...nothing maám... will you sign this please?

(no eye contact)

Hmmmm

I sign and they are on their way. I walk into the living room, feeling the clean and wet carpet on my toes. When I notice they had made me a pile of things they found underneath my couch.

There is my Michael Kors bracelet! And there is that damn monkey Ellis was looking for! And look, here's a piece of paper, I wonder what's on it? I turn it over and BAM.

I suddenly remember a day a few years back that Mat and Adrian and I were all coloring together in the living room. Adrian got bored and went and did something else, but Mat and I kept coloring for each other, each one-upping the other one as far as inappropriateness goes, purely to make each other laugh.

I'm staring at a cartoon penis, with a sign beside it that says "Mat's" and an arrow with a giant thumbs up sign and a yard stick. I actually did a pretty good job on the details. You'd think I would have made sure that funny picture had ended up in the trash can instead of under the couch for two of my new fans/Stanley Steemer employees to find. I bet they had to stifle their laughs for so long after finding that picture. They probably thought I missed my calling as a sex cartoonist.

Now we use Chem-Dry, and I always make sure to put my penis drawings in the sex comic cabinet first.

Let me be your Victim!

Who would have thought being in a car accident was so fun?

I was driving to work a few weeks ago and traffic was about as fun as a pap smear. We would be moving along just fine and then suddenly, everyone would be at a dead stop without any explanation why.

We had just been moving along quite nicely when the police officer in front of me suddenly slammed on his brakes. I slammed on my brakes and managed to just avoid hitting him. My purse had been thrown from the front seat and was now upside on the floorboard, all my stuff spilling out. Girls know that is the least fun thing, ever.

At that very moment I felt a hard smack as the car behind me had just slammed into me, which jolted me forward hard enough to crush the cop in front of me.

"Oh shit. Mat is going to KILL ME" , Was the first thought that came into my head. I have knocked off 5 side view mirrors since him and I have been together and had multiple other fender benders and hitting non-moving objects.

Then suddenly, it dawned on me.

Wait....This wasn't my fault!!!! I'm a VICTIM! I've never been a victim before! Everything is always my fault!

Mat was going to be worried about me! He was going to ask if I was hurting and give me a neck rub!

The cop was beside my window instantly, checking on me. I managed to put on a I'm -so-scared-but-I'll-try-to-be-brave-and-selfless look. I was taking in every moment of the sympathy and the worry. It felt so good compared to the scowls and judgement you get when you hit someone because you're playing on Facebook on your phone.

"I...think...I think I'm okay.."

I get out of the car slowly and the cop pats me on the shoulder. He gives me a few reassuring words about how impressed he was that I had managed to stop before I hit him.

Asshole Greg that hit me is behind me. He looks like his mom just put him in time out for getting into the cookie jar. Pouty, crying, almost hitting himself in the head.

"I shouldn't have even gotten up this morning. I'm sorry I hit you. I don't know what's wrong with me. I hate myself. Like every day."

"Hey, bud, it's okay. These things happen. Let me console you and show you how good I am at being the confident and brave victim. Because you're really unfortunate at being liable." I patted his shoulder and aimed him towards a post he could rest against.

I got a honk and waved, modestly. I knew I had to have had a lot of friends driving to work at the same time and they would recognize me and be worried about me. It was such a nice change from the "How did you manage to hit someone,  Mary!? Were you just not paying attention?"

By the time I got to work, everyone was making sure I was okay, bringing me breakfast burritos and hugs. It was the best and funnest car accident I have gotten into, ever. I decided that every accident I get in from here on out wouldn't be my fault. Such a great decision.

3 days later, in the rental car, I managed to smash in the back of a Nissan in front of me that had stopped suddenly. I didn't buy the insurance that came with the rental.



BECAUSE I WAS STILL A VICTIM!

Incoming Texts

I can remember when Adrian would cry whenever one of us left him at daycare.

When I would leave him to go on vacation he would call me, barely able to use the phone, to say he missed me and he couldn't sleep.

I remember the joy he would get at 2 years old when Mat would come home from work and he'd take off, with his one arm wagging beside him, to jump on him.

Now, he's almost 10. He's the sweetest boy around, but he's leaping and bounding toward teenage years.

He has a crush on a girl a school, one of his friend's older sisters. She's absolutely gorgeous and has mastered the art of being politely dismissive. Adrian is officially a stage 4 clinger.

Their texts go something like this:



Hi. You're very pretty.

Thank you!

will you be my girlfriend

I am too young to date! But you're very nice!

but hey you are my girlfriend because you text me even though im not your mom or dad

No, I'm not silly. We're just good friends!

friends that are boyfriend and girlfriend you're pretty

......


Poor guy. I think he has these romantic 10 year old visions in his head of dancing in the kitchen on a whim to Nat King Cole, while playfully flicking flour at each other.

She hasn't texted him back in a few days and he's rather distraught. He's trying to give her the "cold shoulder" as he calls it. (I guess he heard that phrase at DARE???) Tonight he was helping me clean the dishes when his phone buzzed from the other side of the room. He made eye contact with me and looked as though he was in absolute disbelief that he could possibly have an incoming text.

He sprints across the room

"that's my phone, that's my phone, that's my phone"

"please be her please be her please be her please be her"

He picks it up, his hands shaking, and looks at me, his eyes full of lost hope and said, dripping with too much sarcasm...

"oh.great. It's Daddy. THANKS FOR THE TEXT.

"I'm not even going to write him back"

He throws his phone into the chair and storms off to his room to do something super boyfriendish, like play with Pokemon cards or make rubber band bracelets.





He eventually moved on from his heartache and helped me put Ellis to bed.


This is one little girl that will never break his heart. Even though she frequently kicks him in the head.

Thank God he is reading to her on the night she picks Dr. Suess. 38 minutes of rhyming when all I really want to do is watch MTV reality shows and drink a vodka collins. 

Bomb Dot Com

I can already tell how hard it is going to be to write every day- Here's a completely unreadable story from today.



If you really want  a good laugh, you should ask your kids to do impressions of you. For some reason this came up tonight and Adrian gave a great impression of me. It included batting his eyelashes and saying

"OOOOMAAAAHHHHGAAAHHHH THESE MASHED POTATOES ARE THE BOMB DOT COM"




First of all, I'd be all right with my life if I had never said the words bomb dot com.

Second of all, Mary, stop loving food.

Third of all, the way he batted those eyelashes like a sexy giraffe makes me feel like I'm really contributing something to the world.



New goals:

Walk 10,000 steps a day- I tried to do this one today and landed at a whopping 4,765. And that's including a walk around the neighborhood, and parking at the back of the parking lot. Also, I took the stairs at work. That's the first time in my life someone has beat me up the stairs and stood waiting for me to get to the door. That was the longest 15 seconds ever, and I was cursing chivalry the whole way. Damn you and your fit and polite ways of life!



Be back tomorrow!

Lawyer up, Hit the Gym, Delete Facebook.

I have always had trouble understanding depression.

 In fact, for most of my adult life I have considered it a cop-out excuse for being narcissistic and non-conforming. It seems like every person I know that suffers from depression ends up hurting OTHER people's feelings and making every social situation unnecessarily uncomfortable. 

I have always wanted to shake them and say " Don't you understand how much better YOU will feel if you start making OTHER people happy?" 

And I still think that is true! Anytime I am feeling bad about myself I make a conscious effort to make my kids happy. I don't take them anywhere or buy them anything, I just decide to focus all my attention on them for a certain period and it immediately makes me feel better. I have picked up Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle and made them go to prom together, while talking in my My Little Pony sexy voice (What? It's hard to make a non-sexy voice for a sexy little pony like Twilight Sparkle). I have looked through a rock collection and asked questions that were extremely hard to come up with. ("Wow, Adrian, is this real gold? No? Please tell me more.")

Ever since I have had Collins, I feel like a sneaky uneasiness is bringing me down every day. I can't quite put my finger on what is making me sad, but something is. I wouldn't call it depression, but I am somehow in a rut that is not within the realm of my problem-solving abilities. 

Maybe it's the fact that I had a baby and gained weight. Maybe it's that we bought a new house. Maybe it's that I'm a working mother of three kids. It's probably a combination of all these things, along with the hormonal roller coaster that is the main attraction at the pregnancy theme park. (Damn, that was deep)

I'm not happy with who I am becoming. I care too much about unimportant things. I care too much about what people think, (ugh and I'm 30 -when will that go away!?). I find myself scrolling through my Facebook feed, my head full of judgement and criticisms and jealousy. You think you're crazy? This is a normal script in my head as I do a news feed scroll. 

Gah, she's so pretty and perfect. I bet she doesn't get into car accidents like I do.

Gah she's so happy, I bet she's always on time to work and never orders extra cheese on her pizza.

Gah she's so funny, I bet she doesn't have to take Ambien to sleep.

Gah she's so absent from my Facebook feed. It's probably because her life is so great she doesn't ever want to waste time on social media because she's so happy with her awesome life.  I bet her and her husband went to Italy this year. I bet they go to the park every Sunday with their labradoodle and she wears shorts and an effortless scarf, and they discuss stuff that matters. I bet her husband laughs at all her jokes and tells everyone that will listen how great she is. They probably had sex last night, and she probably wore his work shirt afterwards and it was probably so huge and adorable on her.

Gah he's so smart. I wish I was smarter. Why didn't I study when I had the opportunity? I could know so much right now.

Why am I so stupid? Why can't I listen to things and absorb them? Why do I have to watch each episode of Cosmos three times to grasp any of it!

Why do I hit so many things with my car?

Should I not be vaccinating my kids? Am I really that horrible of a mother for not wanting them to get Polio? NO I'M NOT. WHY ARE THEY JUDGING ME?! JUDGEMENT IS SO WRONG.

Ew, she should NOT have worn those shorts. 

If you have ever googled how to get through a hard time, you have probably stumbled upon "Lawyer up, hit the gym, delete facebook". It's something that frequently pops up on Reddit, one of my favorite websites. I think it's mostly related to how to get over a lost love, or properly get through a divorce. 

I'm obviously not getting divorced. Husband with one T is my most favorite part of the day. I don't need a lawyer (yet) (did I mention 2 car accidents within one week?), but I think the other two are something that needs to happen. 

My 31st birthday is June 2. I am swearing off  Facebook (starting on Thursday) until then. I am also vowing to go to bed at a decent time, stop eating junk food, and do some form of workout every single day. I am also going to stop hating myself for 40 days. I am way too hard on silly old Mare, and it's taking its toll. 

I have to be able to share pictures and stories of my hilarious and adorable kids until then, though. So I am going to post here, on my blog, every day until my birthday. It won't always be funny or inappropriate or even readable. It will probably be more like a journal, that no one would want to read except my Mom, who is probably now freaking out with worry while reading about my rut. (love you, Mom!)

Thank you in advance for not deleting my blog off your list. I promise to be back to the inappropriateness as soon as I get out of this Sneaky Hate Spiral. Love you all!