We’re going to be featured on Hoarders!

No, we are not.

That was a lie.

[But you probably knew that already, because who the hell would excitedly announce online “We’re gonna be on a show featuring sociopaths who collect shit!”? Okay, I know. I know. It’s a mental illness. It’s serious, very sad, what a shame, etc. But it’s a damn funny mental illness. And a weird one. And I make fun of everybody, including myself. Plus, I’m rude. The end.]

Though we didn’t actually get invited to Hoarders, I bet if we sent them pictures of our hallways, living room and kitchen, we might get the green light.

Now you may ask, “Why does your house suddenly appear like one of those whack-job homes on Hoarders?”

Let me lay it out for you in plain English: because my husband and I are fucking psychos.

That was not a lie.

So you all know what my life has been lately, right? Okay, perfect. So the full gravity of the following story will hopefully sink in appropriately: on Tuesday the husband and I went to Ikea (swoon – so much crap! Most of which I can afford! And it looks only like semi-crap once it’s installed in the home! Yay!). No seriously I love that place. Don’t judge.

ANYWAY, so we get there and we’re buying a few organizational items for what will become the homeschool room, and Mac sees these fake wood floors for very, very cheap and announces “Dude, let’s put this in the homeschool room, TODAY.” And since I’ve been asking for non-carpet in there and we’re poor and I’m a total and complete lunatic, I say “for real? Yeah. Good idea.”

Holy fuck why can’t we just  be like normal people? You know, the kind who plan shit?

Why isn’t there a little voice in my head that says “MAYDAY JANELLE MAYDAY!! – redoing the floors requires moving everything out of the room in question and all that furniture and stuff will be in your hallways and living areas and it NEVER takes one day to do projects like this you steaming pile of idiot! SAY NO SAY NO!”

 But I say “yes.” Because there is something wrong with me.

So for the last 5 days you have to walk sideways down my hall and there’s a piano in my entryway and we’ve all been eating in little huddles on the floor, where there’s space. The best part is trying to carry the baby down the hall, sideways, so she’s facing the photos hung on the walls…and grabbing for them. So you have to like DART quickly sideways down the hall.

Somebody please shoot me.

Because it’s even worse than previously indicated. Once we got the floors down I realized I hate the wall color with the floors. So.we.painted.  But while at Home Depot buying the paint for the walls I saw crown moulding and said to myself “well now looky there! Ain’t that pretty?!” So we bought some. But it had to match the base boards. So we painted all.of.that.too.

And now? We’re running like hell to put this together and I ask you, from the bottom of my heart, “WHY DO I DO SHIT LIKE THIS?”

Perhaps more importantly, “Why do I never LEARN from doing shit like this?”
Because I can guarantee you the next time we do work on our house, the circumstances will be just like this time.

And it will suck just as bad.

Though in our defense, it looks damn good (I’ll post pics when it’s done). Plus, we’re having a really good time making up “caulking” jokes [read: “cock-ing”]. Yes, we’re classy.

[To cheer me up, please CLICK HERE (or on the badge on the right) to vote for me for CBS Sacramento’s Most Valuable Blogger Award. I’ve never been nominated for anything, let alone won anything. So please. Hook it up, friends.]

I wish I could do deep meaningful shit with my kids all the time. I do. I wish that.

But I can’t.

I wish when we spent special time together it was to knit and garden, sew pants out of upcycled wool, build things out of repurposed tires, visit abstract art museums. Paint, dance, frolic.

But I can’t.

I mean I CAN. Physically, I can.

But I can’t. Mentally. Ya feel me here?

Sometimes, I just need to pay money and do something easy with the kid – a guaranteed win. An outing that’s an “in the bag” kid pleaser with very little work on my part.

You know, like going to the movie theater to watch Transformers with your 5-year-old son, after purchasing on his behalf a large, buttered popcorn, one Sprite, one package of regular M&Ms and one package of Sour Patch Kids.

So it’s a PG-13 movie.

So it cost $40.00 we really didn’t have.

So he ate enough preservatives, sugar, additives and chemicals of unknown origin to destroy a few million brain cells.

So we didn’t really talk. Or learn anything of any use AT ALL (except, perhaps, that hot women can run full speed through a burning Chicago, dodging falling buildings and Decepticons, while wearing 3-inch spiked heels! Okay, seriously people, I gotta write a blog post about the way women are depicted in those damn action films. I’m vomiting a little just thinking about it.).

So it wasn’t deep or profound or particularly meaningful.

And I felt a little guilty that our special date together – our just he & I time – was a few hours sitting in a theater, watching large metal machines beat the shit out of each other and long-haired women with big lips dodge bullets and squeal.

But there was no preparation. No thought. No arguments. No cajoling. No disappointment when the child in question gets distracted after 10 minutes – more interested in gluing his finger to the table than furthering the objective of the well-thought-out, Waldorf-life craft project.

So it was perfect.

And halfway through the movie he crawled on my lap. And he sat on my lap the whole time. And I smelled his head and kissed his cheek and rubbed his bony little arms. And I watched him laugh when they laughed and get nervous during the fight scenes because you never know – this could be the first time the good guy loses…

And in the car we talked about who’s better: Optimus Prime or Bumblebee, and he reenacted the fight scenes and I realized I finally know the Transformers’ names like his daddy does, and he finally got an hour of uninterrupted mom-lap time.

And I gotta say, the whole thing blew wool-felting right outta the fucking water.

Well, yes. It was a really crap movie. Like bad.

So yesterday I went out with the three kids. Mac was working (shocker), and I was feeling ambitious and altruistic, figuring “I can handle this. I’m a good mom.” Plus, if I’m OUT of my house I don’t have to deal with the mess IN my house.

I know. I’m a thinker.

So we went to breakfast. Then we went to a craft store to pick out fabric for curtains I’ll never actually sew, and we walked around the 2^nd-hand baby store (where I bitched about the prices, realizing I can buy the same shit for cheaper at Old Navy and it’s NEW)…then we went to a couple other stores, then Costco.

And really the little hoodlums were pretty good. I mean they’re kids, so they can’t be THAT good, but for kids, they were alright.

But by the end of our outing I realized something: My kids never stop talking. They never, ever, ever fucking EVER stop talking.

“Mama, do you think it’s weird when girls talk about boys they like?”

“Mama, why are we going this way? Can’t we walk to the next store? Why can’t we walk? I wanna walk. We never walk ANYWHERE. Why do we never walk anywhere?”

“Mama, can we buy this wooden chest of drawers for my doll clothes?”

“Mama, I love it when I fart in my underwear.”

“Mama, Georgia has a booger.”

“Mama, you never buy us anything.”

“Mama, how do the police tell the bad guys from the good guys?”

“Mama, how did the Russian Revolution start?” (Yes, Ava actually asked that.)

“Mama, how come Hitler used gas on the Jews when  all the countries signed that agreement after World War I promising never to use gas again during war?” (and that too.)

“Mama, will I ever grow up as tall as daddy? How tall is daddy? Is he taller than an elephant? I want to be taller than an elephant. A crane is taller than an elephant. But what about a giraffe? Is daddy taller than a giraffe? A crane is taller than a giraffe for sure. Pretty much everything isn’t as tall as a crane. Right, mama? Is a crane taller than everything?”

And ON and ON and ON and ON.

And on.

And on.

And on.

Please give me a break. One break. Two minutes of silence.

Holy fuck do they EVER stop talking?

No. They don’t. They are relentless. I don’t think they breathe. They only talk.

When I’m with all three of them, there is always one of them making noise in my direction, needing me. Always.

Whether it’s whining or crying or wailing or squealing or talking…there’s always noise coming at me from the little people.

My husband can sit there and, by all appearances, not hear a single smidgen of it.

I on the other hand hear every single speck of chatter and feel compelled to answer each and every question they pose. [Unless it has to do with farts or poop or underwear. Most of those questions I let go unanswered, realizing the purpose is usually just to say the word “fart” or “poop” or “underwear” – any response being almost wholly irrelevant.]

I do okay at the beginning. But after a few hours…my Lord I’m tired of people talking at me. I’m an extrovert and all, but shit. Everybody’s got a limit.

And then I start giving one word answers and my daughter starts picking up on my impatience and I start feeling guilty so I try again but my heart’s not in it but they don’t stop because they actually physically cannot (by the way, is that some sort of ailment?)…so we just go on like that…forever….it’s all really quite a lovely little picture.

So I turn on music. Loud.

But they talk anyway. OVER THE MUSIC.

Sometimes I pretend I can’t hear them.

But they only TALK LOUDER.

Deep breaths. Mantras. “I am a rock in a stream.”

Yeah right. That shit never works.

I tried telling them once about the Dalia Lama stating that “senseless chatter” was a bad thing, clouding the mind and separating us from our Buddha nature. While it appeared promising at first, that particular strategy backfired miserably when they started accusing me of “doing senseless chatter” almost every time I brought up a subject they didn’t feel like hearing.

Oh well.

I know I’ll miss this in 20 years.

OR WILL I?

The only time I get any peace from the NOISE. Except wait a minute. Ava is not in this picture, which means she was probably with me. Talking. Talking to me. Talking to me endlessly. Shiiiiit.

Goodbye employment. Hello homeless encampment.

Okay so we probably won’t end up homeless, but yesterday I quit my job. I QUIT MY JOB. On purpose. I quit my job on purpose.

Sorry. It still shocks me a little.

Why did I do such a thing?

Because I’m returning to graduate school.

Because I can’t return to graduate school and work and see my kids (at all, ever, even a little).

Because I’m effing INSANE.

I mean who does that? Abandons security, comfort, regular income to pursue a degree in English Literature, a virtually useless degree, a degree that promises no particular job at all – and if it results in ANY job it will surely be a low-paying one?

Who.does.that?

Well, I do. I guess.

But I had no choice. I stood at a crossroads. I kept writing posts like this one and this one, registering discontent and a feeling of lack – a sense of being unfulfilled. Something had to change. Something wasn’t right.

You know how sometimes you go through life and there’s this quiet suspicion in the back of your mind that maybe you should do something else? Like a low hum it buzzes constantly “Maybe you should go back to school, Janelle. Maybe you should quit work…” but it remains just an annoyance…background noise…until all the sudden it surfaces completely…rings like a crisp clear bell and YOU KNOW. You know what to do. Suddenly the path materializes in front of you and you just know “Oh. Right. I need to go this way now.”

Maybe I am insane. Maybe I am.

But despite my best efforts to come at it from a new angle, rework it, reinterpret it, it became undeniable that it was time for a change. The path had materialized and I just couldn’t go anywhere else. I tried to rig it – figure out how to do both work and school, but I found that was impossible. There are not enough hours. Something had to give.

It got down to a simple question: do I stay where it’s safe or risk everything to pursue what I love?

We chose to risk everything. And I say “we” because my husband – my heart, my rock, my truest and best friend (and staunchest supporter) – has told me in no uncertain terms that he’ll work 3 jobs to keep us alive, while I sit in a classroom discussing postcolonial theory with a bunch of skeptical sleep-deprived grad students.

I often feel that the universe gave me a kiss on the head when it sent me Mac. It’s like it said “Hey, you. Take this. Have this gift. You’ll be fine.”

And with him by my side, we will be fine.

[Wait. Hold on. I’m still a little flushed from that whole postcolonial theory thing. It’s so hot I’m struggling a little to find my words.]

Whew. That’s better.

Anyway, to answer your questions: No, we really can’t afford for me not to work. No, we don’t have a back-up plan. Yes, we may end up under a bridge.

But whatever, bridges are cool.

“Leap, and the net will appear.”

I’m learning to trust. I’m learning to be okay with the uncertainty. Sometimes you just have to LIVE, and worry about it later.

Right. I’m brave. I’m not scared. I laugh in the face of worry. I am a fearless spirit, trudging my way along the path of destiny.

[Oh shit. Did I really do this? Hold me.]