Typical Week

On Sunday night, my husband wasn't feeling well. He took a sick day on Monday and I got up early to take our daughter to school. I took his Jeep because it's nicer than my car. I was driving down the road and it just shut off. I was PISSED. This is the 3rd time this year that we've had this issue. We've had the car less than 2 years and it only has 38,000 miles on it. Every time they say it's something else and fix it and then it's good for a few months.

I got it to start and it sputtered back home. I took her to school in my car and then I had a million errands to run. I called the Jeep dealership and they said, "We don't have an appointment until September 11th."
"I'm not supposed to drive my car until September 11th?"
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
I couldn't handle it. "So, what's actually going to happen is that I'm dropping off my car this afternoon and you guys are going to fix it."
"We can't look at it today."
"Well, you will look at it tomorrow." I was being a huge bitch.

We dropped the car off that afternoon and I told my husband I'd take him to work/pick him up for a few days until they get us a loner.

In the meantime, the kids have been the kids. My youngest is doing online school and I'm helping her with that. They teach math so idiotically nowadays. My oldest is having her typical teenage melodramas.

On Tuesday, my oldest came home from marching band and complained of being achy. She had a long day, so I gave her some ibprofen told her to take a shower and go straight to bed.

I was awoken by her at 2 am. "Mama, I'm not feeling good," she told me. She was a little warm but nothing alarming. I was half asleep and I let her come into bed with us. She snuggled in-between me and my husband and I rubbed her back. After a half hour or so, she complained that she was shmushed and went back to bed.

My phone rang at 4:14 am. It was my daughter, "Mom, I feel really bad." I got out of bed and went into her room and she was literally burning alive. She had stripped down and was sweaty and delirious. I went downstairs to get the thermometer and could not find it anywhere. We lose thermometers constantly in this house.

My kids are always taking their temperature for no reason. Cramps? Take your temperature. Itchy nose? Take your temperature. There are probably a bunch of thermometers under their beds.

I gave her fever reducer and a glass of ice water and I sponged down her steaming body with a cool cloth. She tossed and turned and moaned. I felt terrible for her. She finally settled into sleep at 6 am.

No sleep for me because I had to get up and take my husband to work. I'd barely slept so I made myself a cup of coffee and left in my pajamas. After I dropped him off, I ran into Walgreens to grab a thermometer. I shuffled through the aisles in my pajamas, moccasins, hair a mess, no bra. That's me!

I got a thermometer and some cold Gatorades and went to the check out. The cashier was my little buddy that tells me EVERY TIME that I have the same name of a girl he went to high school with. He liked her, but she was kind of a bitch. I have to hear this story EVERY TIME. He's a little slow, sweet though. So I stood there with my hot mess self and listened to his story about the girl he went to high school with as he rung me up and I just nodded like I had never heard the story before.

I got home and took her temperature - 103. Yikes! She hasn't had a high fever like that in years. She was very achy and her throat hurt.

"I'm going to get dressed and I'll take you to the doctors and we'll go pick up some chicken noodle soup."

I was getting dressed and my phone pinged. It was a text from my daughter:
CAN YOU GET RAVIOLI AT THE STORE?
REGULAR RAVIOLI OR CHEF BOYARDEE? I replied.
I DON'T UNDERSTAND

I called her, "Do you want regular ravioli or Chef Boyardee?"
"What's Chef Boyardee?" she asked, pronouncing Boyardee with a french accent. "Is that fancy ravioli or something?"

I laughed so hard that I almost pissed my pant. "No, baby. It's not fancy ravioli."

There are certain things my kids have not been exposed to: Chef Boyardee, bologna, American Cheese, Spam, Hot Pockets, Vienna sausages, white bread.... I don't buy that stuff. I'm not trying to be a food snob or anything, I just don't like having diarrhea.

"Just regular ravioli then, or if they have spinach, than spinach." My kids are so weird. I take food requests every week before I go to the grocery store. This week my 11 year old said, "I want salami, sushi, soda, and tomato soup."
             

I took my daughter to Urgent Care where they diagnosed her with strep throat and prescribed antibiotics. Then we went to get chicken noodle soup-and "regular" ravioli.

She was very lethargic, I had to coax her to eat and drink. Last night her fever was still high. She called me in the middle of the night, and I laid with her. She burrowed herself into me. My pajamas were wet with her sweat. She hasn't wanted me to leave her side.

I wonder when she will stop wanting her mama when she is sick. I think it's kind of weird because I never wanted my parents ever when I was a kid. She'll be 40 years old and she'll still be calling me when she's sick.

So, one is sick, I'm helping the other with school, I'm driving my husband back and forth....and my husband calls today and says, "Yeah, so we need to get a whole brand new engine."
"What?"
"Yeah, I thought that was a little excessive too. Can you track down all the oil change records and bring them to the dealership?"

That was not what I wanted to do. We've had 7 oil changes since we've owned the car - I have the records for 5 of them and the other 2 were at an Meineke which shut down 2 months ago. It's been a big cluster. I'm still waiting to hear back from them....

Amazingly, I don't feel stressed out. I'm kind of like,

             

So, whatever. Welcome to my shit show.

This Month

              
It's certainly been a while. Where have I been? That's such a loaded question. I don't think I could accurately paint a picture of my life if I tried. It certainly has been interesting.

This past month, I've cooked countless meals and done at least 40 loads of laundry. I picked up extra shifts at work. I held dozens of newborn babies and listened to their bird-like cries and ached for my own children. I had some health issues which included a trip to the ER, followed by doctors visits and tests. I stopped eating bread and lost 5 pounds.

I got into arguments and smiled at strangers. I binge watched 6 seasons of Game of Thrones. I massaged sore muscles, wiped tears and given more hugs than I can count. The house has been full of people coming and going- neighbors, family members, friends - girls in ripped denim, shiny lip gloss, and painted nails. Boys with tousled hair, charming smiles, and voices that are 10 years older than their faces.

I stood in the rain and witnessed the earth go dark as the moon passed in front of the sun. I daydreamed about being back in Rome - sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee and the smell of honeysuckle that cascaded over stone walls. I laughed a lot, complained a little, and prayed constantly.

When my oldest daughter came to me and told me that her dark, black bedroom is not "who she is anymore", I painted it lavender with her late at night. I ordered new beds and mattresses for the girls and put them together, hung pictures on their walls, remembered when they were small and I still felt like they belonged to me.

I became stranded in a flash flood and spent many hours driving my children back and forth - to camps, music lessons, rehearsals, gymnastics practice, and friends houses. I woke before dawn and watered wilted flowers. I cried...and sighed....and contemplated whether or not my entire life has just been one great big existential crisis.

I had moments of joy, moments of sorrow and passionate kisses in the dark. I plucked silver lightning- bolt gray hairs from that spot right above my ear and cleaned up after everyone in my house. I have been present and a million miles away. I reluctantly sent one child back to school and started homeschooling my other child.

I wiggled the loose tooth of my youngest daughter and let the blood and saliva run down my fingertips. I have given lectures and pep-talks. I have yelled and spoken in hushed tones. I have felt happiness, worry, satisfaction, disappointment, contentment and fear. All of the emotions, sometimes mixed together, crashing into me like waves on the shore.

I am a wife and a mother of two teen/tween girls. This is my life. It's messy, random, exhausting and full. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad, and sometimes it just IS.

I hope to catch up soon. I love to write, to get out all of these things that are inside of me so that I don't feel like I'm living inside my own head so much.

I long for the summer to melt into autumn. My soul is calmer in the fall. The days are shorter, the air is cooler and the house will smell like pumpkin and cinnamon. It's the little things that make me happy. Surely, all will be right with the world.

They Looked So Happy

                   
I don't follow celebrities. Sometimes when I see the tabloids at the grocery store I don't even know who some of the people are on the cover. This was not always the case. When I first got married, my husband quickly figured that I'm not the kind of girl that appreciates flowers. So instead of bringing me home flowers, he'd bring me a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food and some trashy tabloid magazine. We didn't have extra money and so this was quite a treat for me.

I was always fascinated by the celebrities that were getting married and having children the same time I was. Gavin Rosdale and Gwen Stefani, Chris Martin and Gweneth Paltrow, David Arquette and Courtney Cox, Kate Hutson and Chris Robinson, Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen. It was an escape from my peasant life.

Then, they all broke up and it made me a little sad. Not, like, really sad. I wasn't personally invested or anything but I would think, "Oh, they got married the same year as me" or "Oh man! Their kids are the same age as mine." It gives me pause.

I don't keep up with celebrities anymore. I'd much rather read Southern Living than People nowadays. However, in the news this week there were many headlines about Anna Faris and Chris Pratt getting divorced. The comments made me laugh so hard. "But they looked so happy!"

You think they were happy?!?! They were working parents, in their 8th year of marriage and they had a 4 year old child. Seems like the time for things to fall apart.

The idea of marital happiness fascinates me. The only people that believe you need to be happy all the time to stay married, are people who are not married or have not been married long enough to know better. If you go into marriage expecting to be happy all the time, then you will be gravely disappointed.

I have a solid marriage. Right now, it's the happiest that it's ever been. I am grateful for that. We always joke that the first 9 years were the hardest. Certainly, all the years weren't terrible but it did take us almost that long to figure it out. There were times when my marriage was in the toilet.

When we were 22 and 23 we went to marriage counseling. We were struggling. We had been married over 4 years and we'd moved 5 times in those 4 years. We had just moved to the middle of the country where we knew no one. We had a 2 year old and a new baby. I was a senior in college, my husband was in his early 20's working for the Department of Defense trying to support a family of 4. We had barely enough to get by. My husband had been hospitalized with meningitis that summer which was traumatic, his father had just died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, among other things......

All of these things weighed on our marriage. We went to marriage counseling for a few months. We had no one to watch the children and we certainly didn't have money for a sitter. We scraped up all of our resources to pay for counseling. I remember walking in, spreading a blanket on the floor and setting my oldest daughter down with a few toys. I sat next to my husband with the baby at my breast. We resented each other.

It's easy to resent your spouse when you have young children. No one knows resentment like a mother, waking up for the 3rd time in the middle of the night to calm a fussy baby while her husband snores, who is exhausted from wrangling children all day and her husband comes home from work and sits down to watch a show to "unwind."

My husband resented me for not understanding the pressure of trying to support a family alone. It was hard for him to be replaced by the children. I didn't know how to be a wife AND a mother. I always gave so much to the children that there was nothing left for him.

So, there we at in the therapist's office and hashed out our problems. She would always drop hints about how we probably shouldn't have married at 18 and 19 and had 2 kids right away. Well, thanks for the insight, Captain Obvious!

We hated her. As a matter of fact, that is the thing about marriage counseling that brought us together- our mutual disdain for our marriage counselor. Who does she think she is, judging us? We're going to work this sh*t out. We'll show her!

Things got better. We worked at growing up, the children got easier to manage, we accepted our lives for what they were, and we worked on forgiving a lot.

If you have young children and your marriage is in the toilet - fear not! It is not unusual and it gets better.



So when we hit 9 years, the kids were 7 and 5. They were both in elementary school and we became more like a couple again instead of just mom and dad. Now, we both avoid the children together. We have much more time-just the two of us. As a matter of fact, we went out to dinner twice this week. It's been a re-discovery of sorts.

How do you stay married? The hell if I know. During those rough years, the things that kept us together were the fact that we are best friends and make each other laugh and that we think each other is hot. Long term marriages live off of oxytocin. It replaces that being "in love" stage.

It is sooooo wonderful to fall in love but it is a sickness. It would be exhausting to be in that stage forever. Your brain would be cloudy and you'd never get anything done. The early stages of love are all-encompassing and obsessive. Long term love might be less exciting. There are no pop song or movies about long term love but there is so much beauty in it.

I am attracted to my husband for different reasons than when we first got together. Whenever a super-hero movie or Star Wars movie comes out, he always takes the girls on a date. He takes them out to dinner and then to the premiere - just the 3 of them. Watching the excitement on his face when he ushers the children out of the door is hot.

The other day, he was sitting on the couch, watching a show. He looked so serious. I watched him with his newly shaved head, salt and pepper beard, and his big broad shoulders and strong arms. His is so strong. He could probably kill someone with his bare hands, I thought. "I want to give you 20 babies," I blurted out.

He turned to me like I was weirdo. "I don't want 20 babies."

I love that he knows me, he knows how to deal with me when I am being neurotic, he's always kept me tethered to the earth. I was feeling a little gloomy around the kid's birthdays. I was trying to be low-key about it but my husband wasn't buying it.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"I know you. What's wrong?"
"Seriously, nothing."
He wasn't buying it, "Okay, now tell the truth."
I sighed, "It's just that I feel like in 7 years, when the kids are out of the house, my life will have no meaning."
He laughed and put his arm around me. "Stop that. The kids will go to college and you will work full-time, work that you love. We will go on all kinds of vacations together and go out with friends. Then, they will get married one day, their husbands be our sons. Our family will grow with new people. We'll get to know their families. Then, we'll have grandchildren and we'll have them over. It's going to be great. It's going to be amazing."

He has a way of doing that, of helping me see the bigger picture. Of calming me. He's learned over the years.

We don't take ourselves too seriously. We had friends over a few weeks ago that have been married 2 years and I joked that I sent my husband a "picture" while he was out of town. It was a picture of my ingrown nail. They asked if I send other kinds of pictures. Ummmm.....no.

I would never send sexy pictures. That's something that girlfriends do - not wives of 15 years. My husband wouldn't even blink an eye. You don't get that excited about something you've seen thousands of times. I'd might as well send a picture of our front door. I live in reality. I always joke that when I go grey, I'm going to dye my hair blonde, get blue contacts, and an augmentation so that it'll be like being with a different person.

The other day he had me laughing so hard. "Being with the same women your whole life is like being in line to ride a roller coaster you've ridden 8 million times. It's not that exciting, you know where all the curves and drops are. But then you get on and it's still thrilling and you remember why it's your favorite roller coaster in the park, so you get back in line to ride it again."

"So, you are saying I'm like a roller coaster?" I laughed.

"My favorite roller coaster in the park," he replied.

"Well, 8 million is a pretty high number. We've only been together for like, 6,000 days."

"There is still time," he smiled.

No More Magic

The other day, my youngest and I were laying in bed watching old home movies. It was a rare event as she usually avoids me like the plague.

But this day was different, we watched videos of her as a toddler - dancing, singing and being cute. We watched one where she was 3 years old, setting out cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.

My 11 year old turned to me. "Mom, tell me the truth. Is Santa real?"
I thought she didn't believe in Santa and has been humoring us. She is going into the 6th grade. It's time. "No. Mom and Dad are Santa."

She didn't seem disappointed. She just shrugged and said, "Everyone was saying Santa wasn't real and I kind of THOUGHT it was you and dad but then I thought you would never spend that much money on us because you are so cheap." Wow. Roasted.

Then she said, "We can't tell my sister because she still believes." I laughed so hard. "No. She found out in the beginning of 5th grade. I told her not to tell you."

The look on my daughter's face was priceless. Her mind was blown.
                                            
I think that her older sister is the only reason that she believed in Santa for so long. Whenever my little one would come home with doubts, she would say, "Who cares what other kids say? I believe in Santa and I'm older than you."

Yes, we all lied to her. But you know what? The world is shit, so we should hold onto the childhood magic as long as we can.

I then confirmed that the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy are not real....and the elf.
"Well, now that you know the elf isn't real, I'm not moving him this year."
She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "Yes, you are."
Excuse me? Do you know what I said to her. I said, "F*ck that elf!"

Just kidding, I didn't say that. But I did in my head. I hate the elf. He brings me no joy. What I actually said was, "You can move him for me now."
"But, Mom! He brought us Christmas doughnuts!" she protested.
"No. I brought Christmas doughnuts and I still will."

She hadn't thought about that. Christmas will still go on as it always has. This year will be different though. None of my children believe in Santa. I imagine we will set out cookies and milk and wait until the children go to get to pile presents under the tree - it's what we've always done but it won't feel the same.

I imagine the Christmases of our future- my husband and I sitting on the couch, drinking coffee in front of the fire, waiting for them to decide to wake up and open their gifts. No toys- practical things like socks and Sephora gift cards, electronics.....

The "little children" days are over. The sound of their tiny feet pitter-pattering down the stairs on Christmas morning and the shrieks of delight when they saw that Santa came will just live in my memories now. Time is passing too quickly.

I have to look on the bright side - at least I don't have to do the elf anymore. I hate that b*tch!