Wonder Mom

I love my job because, even though I commute like ten million hours a day and it's even worse right now due to the holidays, we also get a couple weeks off at Christmas. This is because someone did the math and said it was cheaper to give us all a paid break rather than pay us to sit around surfing Facebook for two weeks AND heat the buildings. This way, we surf Facebook from home and they turn the heat off at work. I'm guessing the numbers were legit, or the person in charge of that math wanted a paid vacation. Either way, thanks dude. If only my daycare weren't closed during the EXACT SAME TIME as well. It's not that I don't adore my son and want to spend time with him. I just really really want to sleep and he really really doesn't want to let me. He hasn't figured out that just because he can exist on four hours a night at four years old doesn't mean other people don't need sleep too, particularly mommy. I swear to god, this child is like a s...

Okay so on the one hand, whoever decided "the hangup button on FaceTime should be bright RED!" is a moron. Most of the people using FaceTime are toddlers, and what do toddlers like? Red buttons. Ugh. BUT! His lack of impulse control can be used to my benefit. For example, during conversations with my mother, he has an unerring instinct for hanging up on her just as she starts criticizing me or my brother's wife or complaining about Donald Trump, so it's actually pretty helpful. Also, his little voice shouting gleefully yelling "I hanged up on Grandma!" is so stinking cute. So maybe the red button is actually a genius invention. I'm a little torn on this issue.

How do you talk about childbirth and new motherhood and all that without ending up scaring someone or sharing too much or exaggerating too much or not telling the truth enough? How do you correctly explain the out-of-body experience that is giving birth, and the sudden rush back into your body in that moment when he rushes out to meet you and you hold your arms out, shaking, waiting for the nurses to hand him over so you can reconcile the child you thought you were having with this tiny, real, immediate human being with the crumpled face of an old man and a smell so sweet and primal all you can do is rest your nose against the top of his shockingly silky soft head? Motherhood is FUCKING CRAZY. The emotions, the hormones, the shit you go through giving birth, the shit you wade through (literally) for the first several years, and the shit I've yet to experience with my young son or grown stepchildren. It's messy and insane and you say things that make you sound like a crazy w...

At the end of my workday, I get a bit lazy. (At the beginning, too. And in the middle sometimes.) Anyway, I'm back! So I believe I left off with the story of my birth control malfunction. I was working at the time in retail, odd hours, and I took the pregnancy test on a whim when my period was overdue by a few hours in December of 2013. (The pill made it like clockwork. God I miss that.) I peed on the stick and then went outside for a cigarette, absolutely positive that I wasn't pregnant. Then what to my wondering eyes should appear, but two distinct lines, so pink and clear. (What? It's Christmastime, and it was then, too!) I was stunned. I threw away my cigarettes and poured my hidden booze down the drain then went to the store and bought three more tests (three different brands), just to be sure. They were all glaringly positive, despite the fact that I hadn't even technically missed a period yet. I called my husband and basically blurted out the news. He was q...

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. I also wanted to be an artist, a kindergarten teacher, a ballerina, an astronaut (but only if "Star Trek" came true), a lawyer, and, for a long time, an archaeologist. But writing was what I always came back to, in the end. So now I return to it, in an attempt to share some wisdom, humor, and normalization of the struggles that I know I am not alone in dealing with. Motherhood and marriage are fucking hard. I mean, no shit, right? Life is tough in general, and in the current political and social environment (not to mention the actual  environment), it's even harder. And I know that there's a million and one people out there shouting about how tough it is to be a mom, and trust me when I say that I'm aware that it's easier for me than for a lot of people out there in the weeds of parenthood - but we all know that your struggles don't negate mine, and vice versa. Backstory: I was chronically single for...