The other day Mac and I did this thing where we flirt and tease all day, temporarily deluding ourselves into thinking we’re hot and have an active sex life.

Dad, please stop reading this post.

Anyhoo, you know, we taunt and whisper things and grab inappropriately. Et cetera.

As you can imagine, this is rather fun, and by the end of the day, both of us are ready for, um, the end of the day.

So a couple days ago we were doing the aforementioned let’s-pretend-we-just-met thing all day long. That evening I went out with a friend and didn’t get home until 11:30pm. The whole drive home I was imagining how I would wake him, a-hem – and what would probably follow. I went in the house ready to assault him.

But when I walked in the door I was assaulted. By the condition of my house. The front room looked like Toys R Us spun around in circles vomiting on the floor. The living room and kitchen were barely recognizable. The real clincher, however, was the animals. They were all pacing around like the walking dead, moaning and mewing and looking at me like “Please. Do something.”

I checked the cat’s bowls. Empty. I checked the dog’s. Empty. I checked the fucking rodents’. EMPTY.

Suddenly, I was not in the mood. What the fuck, husband. It’s 11:30pm and I want to ravage you but instead I have to walk around and feed the furry beasts. Even though you were here all night, and they were supposed to be fed HOURS ago…and I’ve been asking you for like 6 months to please help feed the animals on a regular basis…you still couldn’t do it and now, once again, at the end of my day, I have to do what was YOUR JOB.

Not hot, husband.

Not hot at all.

And as I finished feeding the last small mammal and felt the last spark of sex drive fizzle out through my toes, and my desire to do my husband turned into a desire to do in my husband, I realized how drastically my idea of “hot” has changed since I was like, oh I don’t know, 20.

Of course it’s a little hard to tell what I considered “hot” when I was 20, since my man of choice was whoever showed up after I’d had enough beers to make men start appearing hot (which may explain how pretty much NONE of them fit the “hot” bill the next morning….but I digress).

Despite this difficulty, I’m 99% sure “Hey baby, I fed the guinea pigs” would not have struck my former self as a turn-on.

But now? Oh yeah. Bring it.

What? You picked your stinky ass socks off the bathroom floor and put them in the actual laundry basket?

Come here baby. I got something for ya.

What’s that you say? You cleaned out the car and changed the sheets?

Take me I’m yours.

To illustrate, I made you a few graphics, which embody my current idea of the hottest shit in the world.

Yes, I realize this makes me pathetic and old and uninteresting.

Also, tired. Very tired. And with a thrashed house. So tired am I, in fact, and so thrashed is this house, that the thought of a man doing the chores they somehow can’t manage to figure out how to do on their own EVER. (I’m serious. What is wrong with them?!)..is like a giant hit off the love pipe. Like roses and dirty talk and sweat and red wine. Like oceans and whispers and bare muscular chests.

Like yes, please.

[by the way, if I’m the only one of you who finds men-doing-chores sexy, I will in fact off myself.]

Why yes.

Yes I do.

1. My baby is a super talking machine. She says everything. It’s slightly creepy to see a kid that little demand “up” and “out” and “taco.” It’s pretty safe to say she never shuts up.
2. All I know is she did not get that from me.
3. We put up Christmas lights yesterday. Usually we’re doing it 5 days before Christmas, in a panic, when it’s raining, because the kids won’t leave us alone about it and the Big Day is approaching. So I was impressed with us.
4. Then one string kept going out in varying locations, resulting in 3 strands of lights in the trash and FOUR trips to the store in search of extension cords, new strands and other devices we thought might fix the situation. Neither Mac nor I ripped down all the lights or broke the reindeer’s head off in desperate exasperation, which makes me even more impressed with us.
5. I play Christmas music pretty much constantly from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day. I do this mostly because it irritates my family. Don’t tell them.
6. Speaking of Christmas music, can we all just agree that dog-barking and cat-meowing renditions of Christmas carols are fucking lame? Not cute. Not amusing. Annoying.
7. Not totally unlike the fact that my toddler has an acute fascination with the TOILET. She’s like a wayward cat I tell you. She just digs toilets. Playing in them. Splashing in them. Placing various household items in them. And just to add a little more fun to the scenario, since the 6-year-old has some sort of disorder making it physically impossible for him to FLUSH THE FUCKING TOILET, the toilet water involved is very often not clean. I hate my life.
8. In other news, you can dunk a Blackberry in the toilet multiple times and it will still work. FYI.
9. Oh, and Thanksgiving was awesome. We spent it with my brother and his family. It was our first holiday together since he moved back and it was even better than I had imagined. Lucky, lucky me to have loving, wonderful family within driving distance.
10. Okay. Hallmark moment over. Let’s get back to reality: I don’t care what anybody says, I will not miss the fact that I pretty much never get to go to the bathroom alone. And if they aren’t IN the room with me, they are RIGHT outside the door… “Mama! What are you doing?” Me: “Going to the bathroom.” Them: “Pee or poop?” Me: “Leave me alone.” Peals of laughter. Toddler pounding on door. Banging. Flailing. Toddler wailing until I let her in. Kids straining to see. Me, thinking “There are a lot of things about motherhood I will miss, but I will not miss this.”

Huh. I think I’m going to name this “the toilet post.” Happy almost-December. I love Christmas.

You know what else I love? Train overalls.

1.)    The problem with avoiding exclamation points is that some sentences require them, unless you’re okay with sounding like a sarcastic ass. Now obviously I am okay with sounding like a sarcastic ass, in fact I quite regularly seek out opportunities for such, but every now and then I’m being serious and want to convey that sentiment.

2.)    For example, I give you the following sentence: “Wow. Good job.” Kinda sounds like I’m actually saying “You bit the big one there, homeslice,” (compared to “Wow! Good job!”)… or… “Congratulations on your third baby. Things should really get interesting now.” That one sounds like I’m about to overnight them an adult size coffin.

3.)    So I find myself using them even though it hurts just the tiniest bit, each time. I know that’s weird, but come on, you know the emphatic use (hA!) of exclamation points is heart-wrenchingly annoying. I know this person (is that vague enough for ya?) who uses one after every sentence, culminating the whole fiasco with two or three right in a row. Emails from her look like this: “We’ve been having a great year! Johnny plays minor league football now, and we’re proud! Samantha is swimming and loves her dolls! And next month we’re heading to the Grand Canyon for vacation!!!“ [Do you or do you not know this type of writer and do you or do you not want to break their shins?]

4.)    I should spend less time contemplating exclamation points and more time doing one of the things on my list, such as preparing lessons for my son (I haven’t done that ONCE EVER – it’s always this off-the-cuff thing), or reading for my classes, or writing the annotated bibliography that’s due on Wednesday, which I haven’t started. All of these would be better options than reflecting on punctuation, but that’s how I roll.

5.)    Last night I went to sushi with Erin and Kim who blog here and here. They are great women and remind me how much it doesn’t suck to have smart, down-to-earth, compassionate friends who don’t give a shit if your skirt is wrinkled and your shirt purchased at Target and your make-up barely visible and your hair not done.

6.)    I hear there are some real super-snob moms out there. I may have observed a few from afar, but I’m guessing they take one look at my disheveled ass and bad attitude and say to themselves “Um, No.”

7.)    Oddly, I’m not losing over sleep over their disdain.

8.)    I am, however, losing sleep over all kinds of other things, such as whether or not we can brush the matts out of the dog’s rear-end or if we need to shave it, and if we do shave it, how much will it scare the little fella (given his fear of anything mechanical) and also, will the hair stick in the shaver? IF so, will Mac care that I used his shaver to shave the dog’s butt? Or maybe I can just pull the hair out of the blades before he sees? OR MAYBE I should ditch the whole scheme thus far concocted and take the dog to the groomer. But I don’t have an appointment for the groomer. Do they take walk-ins? And how much does they cost anyway…? Ohhhh and they could also trim his nails since I’m too scared to do it. Are they open now? I wish they were open now. I’d get up right now and make an appointment.

9.)    I am.not.exaggerating. This goes on for hours and hours and hours no matter how many bottles  pills of melatonin I take or gallons of chamomile I drink or repetitions of a mantra or prayer or following my breath just like Thich Nhat Han says.

10.) So I’m admitting surrender, letting go of my personal desire to be pill-free and going this morning to the doctor where I shall announce: “HOOK IT UP, Doctor, lest I murder my children and end up hand-plucking my dog’s butt hair with tweazers.”

And on that happy note, I shall see you all soon. Hopefully more often than last week. Kiss.

Oh, and check these out.

Georgia is starting to walk for real...

and Rocket decided to get dressed up for his daddy's birthday.

When I’m not busy saving the world creating bumper stickers, I sometimes contemplate important philosophical questions, such as “Who’s more annoying, my cat or my kids?” It’s not immediately apparent, since they really are annoying in many of the same ways. For example, they both demand my attention, walk around whining, poop a lot, wake me up in the middle of night (often by jumping on my head), knock shit over, dart around the house recklessly, and require feeding and playing and cuddling.

But after careful consideration, I’ve discovered that my cat is indeed less annoying than my kids. Here’s why.

1. The cat poops in her litter box, as opposed to her diaper.
2. The cat cleans herself. Without arguing.
3. When the cat doesn’t like her dinner, she just walks away, as opposed to flailing on the ground exclaiming for 15 minutes that we never eat anything good and she’s just SOOOO starving she’s going to die.
4. When the cat knocks something over, she runs away startled rather than playing in the mess and blaming her brother.
5. I can chuck the cat off the bed in the middle of the night when she irritates me.
6. The cat will be entertained with a wadded up piece of paper for 12+ hours, unlike my kids, who have at least 75,000 toys but STILL can’t find ANYTHING to do.
7. I can punish the cat by squirting it in the head with water and not feel guilty about it.
8. The cat’s clothes are already on her and she doesn’t outgrow them, complain about them, need new ones or clean ones.
9. The cat sleeps in a ball at the foot of the bed, as opposed to horizontally across the mattress with her feet in my face.
10. The cat doesn’t talk.

AND, that brings us to the one I forgot: The cat can be left with a bowl of water, some food and a scratch post for many hours or even a day or two at a time, while I go on vacation. The last time I did that with one of my kids, I got in BIG trouble.

Which reminds me, dear friends who refer to their pets as “fur babies” or just “babies,” your cat is not your baby. Incidentally, neither is your dog.

Please stop saying that to people with actual kids. It just makes us jealous.

THE CAT IN QUESTION

There’s really no appropriate introduction for this, except to say that, for funsies, I decided to create a few bumper stickers. You know, things I would put on my car, were I not afraid of getting mowed down by some irate stranger.

By the way, if you are easily offended or sensitive or believe some things are sacred and should just not be made fun of openly on the internet, I suggest you skip this post. No really. I warned you…I’ll give you a chance to think about it…

Still here?

Good. I knew you’d stay.

That’s why we’re friends.

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Okay seriously. Should we print one of these?