1. So I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for 40 days. The jury’s still out on how it’s going. It may be leaning more toward “she sucks at this,” although I feel like I’ve had a few winning days. Or hours. Or moments. Let’s keep it real and go with moments.
2. The truth is I feel a little lost, like I’m not sure what to do with myself. I mean DUH I can clean and cook and take care of kids and all that stuff, but I’m used to getting up and going places and doing things and having forty-seven thousand things to do each day to torment and terrify me – and now, I have like a few very simple things. NOT EASY, simple.
3. And I’m like WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE and where am I going and what’s it all for and how do I pass my time? So, like a damn border collie, since nobody gave me a clearly discernible job, I made one up for myself. In the past few weeks that I’ve been off school (and pretty much work) I’ve replaced virtually all the body products I used with inexpensive homemade versions. It started out as a financial thing (read: we’re fucking broke and can’t afford $7.00 aluminum-and-paraben-free deodorant so I buy the regular stuff but then feel like I’m giving myself breast cancer plus that natural shit doesn’t work anyway) but as it’s evolved I find it so easy and fun that I’m pretty much sold, and frankly, feel like a bit of a schmuck for paying what I did for something I could make in my kitchen with very little brains or effort.
4. Anyway, y’all expressed some interest in the recipes I’ve been using and such, so I think I’ll do like an 8-week thing where once a week I post a recipe for some granola shenanigans I’ve been up to.
5. That way people who want to kill me in my sleep for writing a post resembling helpfulness (cause we don’t do that here, damnit!) can just ignore me on those days, and hopefully stick around on the other days to talk shit about women who throw baby sprinkles.
6. Although I’m 100% convinced that one can be a shit-talking renegade mama AND make homemade stuff. In fact, I feel incredibly empowered by this whole process – like I’ve really said “fuck you” to the man in a whole new way. Like all the sudden I feel way less victimized by American materialism and marketing and its insistence that I need companies to make me beautiful and my house clean. More on that later.
7. I suppose if we’re having a day of the week (please God let me actually stick to this) and a theme and whatnot we should have some sort of name for it: Crunchy Mondays? Hippie Hump Day? Wipe butts and make lotion? The Angry Amish? I have no idea where that last one came from.
8. Help me. I’m struggling with the naming our little series cause it isn’t just about enviro stuff (conservation, chemicals, etc.). It’s also about finances and what I was mentioning before: becoming more independent – feeling a sense of accomplishment and ownership over more areas of life.
9. So anyway, back to the week. You know it’s occurred to me that I think I really depend on the rushing to fill something in me, like if I’m moving super fast I don’t have ever really look at my life, or face anything. I’m just going, running at whirlwind paces, too damn busy to open my eyes. Do you ever experience that?
10. And on the 28^th I’ll go back to school, and undoubtedly I’ll feel a pang of regret that I didn’t enjoy my time with my kids more fully, hang back and chill out as all these things happened, with me around.

By the way, this blog will be two years old next week, on the 26^th. Trip the fuck out.

I never knew when I started writing this thing that such an incredible group of people (women mostly) would come together and teach me so much and help me see that not only am I not alone in feeling like a bit of a jackass in this mothering world, but there are plenty of women out there who feel exactly the same as I do, and will admit freely!

I do love you people. I do.

Thanks for keepin’ it real, and for sticking around.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of what we’ve been up to the last couple weeks (since I didn’t write last Sunday – bad blogger!), featuring my kids doing cute shit, and my husband sticking his tongue out. Somehow these people ruin my life and make it perfect, at the same damn time.

Pretty fancy if ya ask me.

xoxo

I took Ava to a “high tea” and it was amazing.

Last Sunday I took the kids to see a Tibetan monk do a sand painting (mandala).

Here was Ava’s prayer flag and mandala.

Georgie’s been reading naked under side tables…

and not being afraid of the water…

and melting my heart by making faces like this when I pull her against me.

Rocket’s been tying things together.

They’ve all been watching T.V. and eating ice cream at Nana’s house.

Lately this has been the sleeping arrangement.

and then there’s this fool and his damn beard.

The kids have been “sneaking around” together.

And I’ll never get enough of the cloth-diaper/wool nighttime ensemble…

No really, I won’t.

Have a great week, everybody.

Look, I get it. You’re fucking old. You have old people problems. [And judging from some of the creams I recall in my grandma’s medicine cabinet, I imagine some of those can get pretty intense.]

Clearly, you’re a little pissed. Maybe it sucks to be old. I only FEEL old on occasion, like when I go to class, or hear teenagers speaking, or wake up in the morning, but I know I’m not REALLY old, so I have very little perspective on this topic.

But seriously, old people, it kind of creeps me out when you’re mean to my toddler.

I MEAN SHIT. You’re OLD, and she’s REALLY FUCKING CUTE.

YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE NICE. Grandmotherly. Warm. A little maybe?

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Maybe you’ve gathered that I have a slightly insane socialite toddler who insists on engaging with pretty much every passer-by in her line of sight. She’s like the Queen of England in her float or chariot or whatever the hell they use over there, smiling and waving at everybody, absolutely SURE they’re all there to see her.

I mean duh.

Obviously.

And 99% of the time, when she toddles up to some table o’ strangers, grins and says “HI!”, their faces brighten and seem to say “holy shit you’re a cute little bandit, aren’t ya?”, which is, of course, the response we’re all lookin’ for.

Occasionally she walks up to people in restaurants and they give her this polite “hello” but then look at me like “yeah, she’s cute, but so is my fettuccini. Somoveitalong.”

And we do.

At music festivals involving blankets and grass (the kind that grows on the ground, people! Get your heads outta the gutter!), she tends to have excellent luck, probably cause half the people are drunk and the other half are stoned, but all are hanging out at a damn hippie show (meaning they’d look really bad giving the shaft to a little toddler).

Or maybe it’s the way she plays it, sidling up and just sitting down beside them, like they’re old friends, staring at their vegan black beans as if she’s never eaten before (until they actually OFFER her some and you’re like “I swear we feed her” and they’re like “yes sure of course, that totally explains why she’s begging strangers for legumes.”).

And as you know, her socialite tendencies have resulted in some pretty remarkable situations.

But check it out. There’s always that one lady.

The mean one.

The one that looks at her like she’s some sort of varmint poking its head out of its grotto as she attempts to sip tea in her drawing room (what’s with the British theme? And what the hell is a “drawing room?”).

(By the way, I say “lady” because I can only recall women giving her the ol’ middle finger, which is even creepier, right, because of all those gender stereotypes demanding women to be all maternal and shit, and old people to be nice?)

But I digress. Again.

Though it just happened the other day, which of course is why I had to write about it. We were in Walmart (I still die a little inside writing that), and Georgia was sitting in the cart. A woman of about 75 walks up next to us and of course Georgia starts her usual “Hi!” or “Hi friend!” or “hello!” but she’s not responding. My mama bear instincts sniff mean old person syndrome, so I start trying to distract Queen Georgie from her routine, but there’s no stopping royalty.

She just gets louder and leans into it this time, with this gigantic smile on her face (which was like the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen), absolutely determined to get this woman’s attention, being so forward the woman can’t possibly ignore her, until she finally looks Georgia right in the face, scowls (and I mean SCOWLS with a death-dagger glare that would wither marigolds), and looks away, visibly hating her, and us.

So of course I’m like “Hey, lady. Are you fucking SENILE? Don’t you see that this adorable piece of humanity just said ‘hello’ to you? I know you’re old, but I’m not above kickin’ your ass right here in the goddamn toilet paper aisle.” (I’m sure weirder things have happened in Walmart anyway.)

But I keep all that inside, cause I realize that would be weird to say aloud, and I may get arrested.

So I look away, a little embarrassed for my baby (which is totally freaking weird, but let’s move on) and try to distract the toddler, who has of course no idea she’s getting the cold shoulder, and keeps trying to say hello. After we leave, the other kids process the whole thing, asking me like nineteen thousand times various formations of the same question: “Why was that lady so mean?”

And pretty soon we’re all ready to throw down.

Cause you don’t fuck with Georgia.

Yes, that would be the Georgia who has completely forgotten the whole thing, having moved on to saying “hello” to the new people in her path, a couple teenagers in the check-out line, who have fallen victim to the toddler and are defiling all coolness by playing a game of peek-a-boo.

But I always think about people like that for a little while after, wondering what it must take to transform a person into that condition. Maybe it was just a bad day, but I doubt it. A bad day doesn’t make you hard against a child.

I wonder what kind of life must have been endured, to turn a human heart cold against the irresistible warmth of a baby. To make it impossible to utter a “hello,” to find even one millisecond of joy in the antics of a little girl, throwing her innocence and smile and trust your way, a complete stranger, even for just a moment becoming your child, your friend, your own.

And it reminds me that if you’re gonna put yourself out, by god you’re gonna get the middle finger sometimes, you’re gonna get the shaft. And it’ll sting to the quick of all you’ve got, for a minute or two or years, and you’ll feel your pride sink into your toes, in that familiar anguish of realizing your love isn’t coming back, and you’ve thrown it all out there for nothing, looking like an asshole, a tool. You handed it all over, and they chuckled at the gesture, waved you on with a twitch of an uninterested hand, left you standing there with your open wound of vulnerability, and shame.

Your expectation a mirror to the pathetic naiveté that led you there in the first place.

The boy who says no.

The friend who walks away.

The lies.

The joke you told to become one of them, the faces that made it clear you’ll never be.

The family member who’s gone.

The thing you thought you had that you never had.

Old lady, come to think of it, you’ve got every right to turn away, to shield yourself from whatever it is that threatens you, that bothers you, that pulls something up from your gut that you just can’t fucking stand.

You’re alright, doing your thing, teaching us how it all goes, giving us a chance to watch a toddler handle you with the grace of some sort of Zen monk, giving it all to you in that moment, everything she’s got with total abandon – then letting you walk away, free, detached, having gained nothing and lost nothing, her fire still crackling, looking for the next person, to warm, to do it again.

Always, to do it again.

There’s enough to go around, I guess.

my kids, pretending to be “mean old people”

One of the most baffling aspects of motherhood is the way it seems to obligate me to get excited about things I’m really just not that excited about. Like I’m supposed to get all into it because I’m a mother or something, but really I just watch other women get excited about it and wonder if I’m missing something.

You know like “When did that ship sail, cause seriously, I barely give a shit.”

For example, parent-teacher conferences. I hear women talk about them like they’re the biggest deal all year. You know what I think when I get that notice home? “Damn, how the hell am I going to wrangle the toddler while I sit through this thing?” Or, “Shit. One more thing to do.”

I mean I can write the whole thing for you right now anyway. Here it goes: “Your daughter is way above grade level in all subjects but has a hard time working with others and waiting her turn to talk. Your son is performing below grade level in all subjects but is a natural leader and a master at P.E. and everybody loves him.”

And all these “milestones” that I’m supposed to start jumping up and down shouting “yippee!” – first crawls, first words, first whatever – obviously these are kind of fun, and I’m excited in a “I’m glad my child is progressing” kind of way, but I’m not like tearing down the house with glee. Ya feel me? [Seriously, Janelle, rhyming?]

Because all these “milestones,” while glorious in their indication that all is well with the offspring’s progress, also mark whole new insane levels of work and chaos.

Crawling? Yipee! Now I have a MOBILE maniac.

Walking? Now I have a fast, mobile maniac.

Talking? Start of the slippery slope to the day when she NEVER EVER FUCKING STOPS TALKING. EVER.

But one of the things I felt comfortable in my disdain of, one of the “milestones” I thought I was safe to not get excited about, at all, in fact pretty much loathe, was potty training. I mean, who likes that? Nobody. It’s not fun. It’s not amusing. It’s not even cute. It involves crap and work and pee, and cajoling, and angry blog posts by judgmental women who hate the fact that I bribe my kid with chocolate chips.

WHATEVER.

So you can imagine my surprise when my homies emailed me an actual invitation to a “potty training party.”

A what what?

Oh yeah, you heard me. A party. Celebrating potty training.

Like, one you’re supposed to attend. Fiesta. Shindig.

You get it.

Here’s a quote, in case you don’t believe me: “Let’s get potty training started with a party! Come and join us for a day celebrating this inevitable milestone! We’ll have snacks and drinks for all, and a lot of fun!”

What the WHAT?

Beyond the excessive use of exclamation points, which already makes me want to die a slow death in a cold basement, the idea of celebrating POTTY TRAINING is about the most obscure concept I’ve ever heard of. It’s like oxymoronic. Or Ironic. It can’t be real. BUT IT IS.

It’s like having a party to celebrate menopause. Or hemorrhoids. Or how about a little shindig honoring a recent hysterectomy? (although wait. That one may have potential.)

You know what potty training looks like in our house? A naked toddler pissing on the floor then running up to us gleefully exclaiming “I peed in the potty!” Or Rocket laughing his ass off from the other room, barely squeaking out between squeals of laughter “Georgia’s pooping in the dollhouse!” Or it’s seeing the toddler begin to urinate on the couch, yelling “NOOOOOO!!!!” (like in one of those Hallmark movies where the dude protagonist watches the main chick die), and (in similar slow motion) bolting across the floor to stick her on the potty, which is, incidentally, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING LIVING ROOM (because potty training seems to turn you into white trash, TOO) meaning we all get peed on and the floor is covered but the actual potty contains approximately 5 drops of urine, the sad remains of the cross-room journey.

For obvious reasons, I delay this shit (ha.ha.) as long as I possibly can (because OMG the work involved), but eventually it becomes so obvious that it’s “potty training time!” that I start looking bad at playgroups (um, because I totally go to those), so I start sloughing the work onto my husband, telling him he better get on it and pronto, as payback for the fact that I carried the urinater in question in my womb for 10 months and now pee on myself when I sneeze. Also he still doesn’t know where we keep the strainer.

Only fair, says I.

Dude, I’m not kidding, we’re so bad at potty training the toddler HERSELF asks us to remove her diaper so she can poop.

Judge not. Or judge. Whatever.

So HOW THE HELL am I supposed to comprehend a PARTY celebrating the “inevitable milestone?”

It ain’t easy, I tell you.

After we commiserated for a bit on the bleak state of humanity (what has the world come to when we’re having parties celebrating potty training?), my friend did some sleuthing and discovered that the event in question is this thing created and “sponsored” by Pull-Ups (oh yeah, you thought it couldn’t worse, didn’t ya?), and if you want to have one of these little shindigs, you “apply” for it and Pull-Ups chooses you based on SOMETHING (I can’t even imagine) and they send you a bunch of Pull-ups for your kid and guests, party hats and all kinds of other nonsense. There’s even a “potty training DANCE” everybody can do together! I just vomited a little in my mouth.

So basically, in having one of these parties, you become not only a threat to all that’s holy, but also a tool for the marketing antics of corporate America! Gooooo Huggies!

YAY!

SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!

Only I’m making my own damn invitations. Otherwise, my people won’t be interested. Here they are.

You coming?

1. If I were a stay-at-home-mom and I knew some self-righteous working mom who thought I did nothing all day, I’d totally knock on her door 3 weeks into winter break, smile and ask “How do ya like me now, bitch?”
2. Cause seriously. This shit’s crazy.
3. WHEN ARE THEY GOING BACK TO SCHOOL?
4. It’s not that we all hate each other. Or maybe it is. No, we just mostly hate each other. I jest. The truth is that 90% percent of the time my kids are annoying the hell out of each other AND me, 5% of the time they’re not annoying each other but definitely annoying me –and the remaining 5% is the time we’re having happy family bonding moments.
5. So as you can see, those odds suck. There is so much yelling in my house. It ain’t right.
6. The thing is, I’m not really working and school doesn’t start again until January 28, so basically I’ve been doing nothing except “homemaking” (I put that it in quotes because seriously, I’m not sure if I’m capable of such a task) since December 10. The good news is I turned over some miracle crafting leaf in the form of my obsession with making body care products. The bad news is my house looks like the woman in charge has an obsession with making body care products, as opposed to, say, cleaning. Or “homemaking.”
7. I haven’t done laundry in nineteen days, but if you need a rosemary mint sugar scrub, I’m your girl.
   
8. I suppose I should do some sort of Christmas-recap-Happy-New-Year’s-reflection-thing, but the truth is I really don’t feel like it. Christmas was a bit of a disappointment, as holidays usually are, and it passed as Christmas usually does, driving around and getting ready and not being at home, with my family, where I want to be. Next year I’m cancelling all commitments on that day. I mean it. I’m out. I just want to sit at home with my husband and kids for a few hours to open gifts and play with them, hang out together and relax and drink coffee and not have to get dressed or drive or be anywhere, until the evening at least. I don’t know why that means so much to me, but it does, and I have only myself to blame for not making it happen, pretty much ever. I seem to cave at the critical moment. I’m a caver. I always think it will be okay and fun and then it’s just too much and it’s stressful. But then by the next year, I forget again. And I get a little sad at the end of the day, because once again I didn’t spend Christmas the way I envisioned. Let’s talk about something else.
9. Like New Year’s. Yes, New Year’s. Now THAT was fun. Some new friends of ours (who I now pretty much see as family) invited us on New Year’s Eve to a house they rented on Lake Tahoe. The day before New Year’s Eve was the day we spent running around thrift stores trying to scrounge together snow gear. Oh yeah. We plan.
10. But we went and it was one of those days that’s just so perfect. Where the weather’s fine and the company’s wonderful and the fire’s burning and the kids are laughing. It was a 5% kind of day, and it set it all right.

Happy New Year to all of you. I fucking love you.

Let’s do big shit this year. Or not.

Cause let’s be honest, we’re already big. We’re huge, particularly in Japan.

Kinduva big deal.

Well to each other, at least. And that must be something, right? Maybe in Japan?

Anyway…snow trip!

my jacket from the 1980s!

steer clear of the yellow, Georgie!

he’s growing his beard back. oh happy day.

definitely a 5% kind of day

A friend of mine is expecting a baby any day. Thinking about her, about the last couple weeks of pregnancy, the days passing like the melting of arctic sheets (before climate change), each contraction offering hope (“could this be it?”) only to find yourself still pregnant 24 hours later, wondering the same damn thing, feeling like a turtle on its back – so damn powerless – sure you’re the first woman in history who will actually stay pregnant forever.

And all the assholes keep texting: “Have you had that baby yet? My goodness you must be READY TO BURST!”

I’ll kill you in your sleep if you call again, bitch.

So of course I sent her a text about how much the last days of pregnancy suck ass, and she agreed, but also responded with a text that surprised me. Apparently mothers were sending her messages about how hard breastfeeding is.

What the hell?

Why would you tell a woman about to give birth how “hard” breastfeeding is? Particularly if it were something she wanted to do?

Why do mothers feel compelled to “tell their stories” as if it’s universal fact anyway?

For every breastfeeding horror story, there is a beautiful one. Take mine, for example: my mom was a La Leche League educator. She showed me how to nurse my baby. Of course I did it wrong for a while, and my nipples felt like my own personal burning milk volcanoes for a couple weeks, but we pulled through and it was all good and the baby nursed til she was two. Is that beautiful? I don’t know. But I’m sure it wasn’t “hard.” Or maybe it was a little hard, but it wasn’t deal-breaker hard. And then with my other two kids, nursing was the easiest thing on the planet. I love nursing babies. I miss it sometimes.

But here’s the kicker:  that is just my experience with breastfeeding. I don’t know about your experience with breastfeeding. How the hell would I know? Maybe it will totally suck for you, or it won’t work, or you’ll hate it.

I’m not you. You’re you.

I’ve had experience being a wife but I have very little insight on your marriage.

I lived Texas for a while, but I have no idea how your trip to Austin’s gonna pan out.

I’ve lost a shitload of weight doing certain things, but I don’t know what you and your body need.

Um, DUH, right?

Yeah, it seems like “duh,” until you enter the presence of that special person who has just got to share her horror birthing story EVERY DAMN TIME SOMEBODY’S PREGNANT, or mentions birth, or thinks about mentioning birth, or thinks about getting pregnant, or knows somebody who once thought about getting pregnant.

“Oh my God, birth was the most traumatic experience of my life!!!  I was in labor for 9 days. No really. NINE DAYS. I didn’t eat food or drink water that entire time so when I went into the hospital they all thought I was going to die because I was so X, Y, and Z, and then they gave me Pitocin and I was in SO MUCH PAIN but they accidentally put the epidural in my calf instead of my back so I got NO relief. Finally I was at 10 and the doctor was like “PUSH! PUSH!” but there were nineteen interns in the room and I was trying to push but I couldn’t feel anything on account of the leg epidural, so I pushed for 5 hours until the doctor said “this baby is just too big to birth and the heart rate is declining,” so they rushed me in for an emergency ceseran and I passed out during it due to exhaustion so I didn’t even see my baby for 48 hours, which caused me PTSD and night terrors. And now I also have hemorrhoids the size of golf balls and the veins in my eyes are permanently popped and my calf is numb and half a hospital staff has seen my vagina. Basically I had rather stab spend the rest of my life stabbing myself in the eyes with bamboo shoots than give birth again. But good luck with yours!”

Oh COME ON. You know I’m barely exaggerating.

Seriously, what’s wrong with these people? How do we become so self-righteous as mothers that we think we KNOW The Way it Is, failing to recognize that all we know is our own tiny slice of life – a miniscule speck, a nothing. How have we become so self-centered that we believe it necessary to spew our horror stories across America, into the laps of hopeful, brave, capable women trying to carve out their own path in this crazy motherhood gig?

Is it empowering? No, it isn’t fucking empowering.

Does it help anybody in the world? Hell no. (Unless you count the storyteller’s ego.)

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed that these storytellers generally have one kid, maybe two – but probably one. Why do I think that?

Because after you’ve had more than one, you know that EACH BIRTH IS DIFFERENT and each nursing experience is different, and nobody can tell you what to do to birth your own baby.

And most importantly, you realize you don’t know shit.

Not that you won’t tell your birth story. That’s an actual god-given right and addiction and obsession of every mother. It must be done. Can’t be helped. But it can be done in a way that’s like “well, this is my experience,” rather than “This is the experience you will have and therefore this is what you should do.”

[Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I pretty much always tell my good friend Cara Lyn the gory details of all my birth stories, because it’s just so fun to watch her squirm. Plus, she isn’t pregnant. YET.]

But basically, the people who offer unsolicited apocalyptic stories need to remove their heads from their asses and get over themselves. (in my humble opinion – HA!)

Let a woman create her own damn horror story. Or, better yet, not.

Because check it out, psycho-horror-birth-story moms: For every dreadful traumatic birth story, there is a Rocket-birth story…
where you labor 6 hours at home with contractions timed perfectly apart, where you fall asleep (literally) between contractions, and you sway and rock and get in the shower, and you’re riding the waves of a gorgeous blue ocean, so whole and contained in some primal Eden, until your husband says “we have to go,” and you get in the car and drive to a birthing center, where the nurses think you can’t possibly be in hard labor – because you’re so just too CALM  – but they check you cause your mom insists (you could care less) and you’re at 8. You have 2 more huge contractions and forty-five minutes after arriving you get in the birthing tub and push three times, birthing an exquisite 8.5 pound baby boy.

The midwife says “Turn around, pick up your son.” (because you gave birth on your hands and knees)

So you turn and see him there with wide open eyes and outstretched arms, pushing the water like the fins of a little fish, until you scoop him up and pull him to the surface – to you to life and to earth – watch his eyes blink and lock on yours, his petal mouth draw its first deep breath while his body floods pink and your heart explodes then, for him.

And there isn’t a sound in the room.

There isn’t a single ripple in the entire universe to disrupt the waters of this one moment.

A midwife whispers “how do you feel?”

And you answer with a smile from your belly, “elated.”

OR, you can have a birth like Georgia’s, where you flail around the house screaming like a fucking hyena, wishing you’d die, until you finally, after 2.5 hours of pushing, birth a nearly 10-pound baby in a funky position (in a horse trough in your living room, FYI).

Both of these stories are “truth.”

But the thing is they’re just my truth: small and unique and mine.

You know what I think we should be telling women who are about to become mothers?

Welcome.

Just that.

Welcome.

Welcome to the path that’s never been tread before, leading to a place nobody’s visited, a spot carved out for you and your baby, where the two of you fit, just right – like a motherfucking glove.

[So don’t stress when they scowl at you, muttering “Damn, that looks uncomfortable.”

You got this.

So just keep on keepin’ on, new mama, we’re right here with you, walking our own dusty roads, hoping you’ll steady us as we steady you.

And welcome, welcome to motherhood.

Come on in.

The water’s fine.