Hand made gifts and why you should love them.

So, it's that time of year again. Time for mommy and daddy Claus to bust their humps and give all the credit to our favorite rouge attired burglar. Merry f'in Christmas, everyone.

I am already wiped out and it's not even Christmas Eve yet. December 26th, I will be like the Native American guy from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. I am gonna stare into space, sit on the couch and drool.

You see, Christmas is a magical time of year. For children.

They build Gingerbread houses (which we have to construct "GOD DAMN IT! It collapsed AGAIN!"), eat delicious Christmas cookies (which by the end of the cookie baking, get more and more burnt because the amount of shits given have rapidly decreased), use the power of advanced technology to watch the same Christmas show over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (you will burn in the fires of hell, Christmas Spongebob!), go to bed on Christmas Eve in their sweet little Christmas jammies (that another adult had to pay to ship to and I had to make sure to wash so that had them to wear) and fall asleep listening to the sounds of what must be Santa (or, you know, two delirious adults, who hate wrapping paper so fucking much at this point that they end up on the deck at 3am, lighting rolls of it on fire).

Christmas is also magical for childless adults, for whom it means quasi-drunk office parties, exchanging presents that they actually like with friends and two weeks of glorious unadulterated fucking around.

But for adults with LITTLE children, Christmas can be hellish. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the cocoa and presents and watching The Grinch 8,000 times (cause I tune it out somewhere around the third time). And I like the end result of baking cookies, crafting and sending Christmas cards. It all LOOKS so magical. When it's over and you can finally breathe.

But, it's in the process of PREPPING for the holidays that you lose your mind. Especially when you are a CRAFTY parent of little children and get the stupid idea that you are going to MAKE all your gifts this year. Our house has become a veritable Christmas assembly line at this point in the season. We ARE Santa's workshop. Crafting and cookie baking and Christmas card address writing. I feel like a fatter, disgruntled, sore-armed Martha Stewart. My apologizes if whatever I send you is smudged from splashes of wine.

I like making thing. No, that's not a typo. I mean THING. As in, ONE. Once it becomes a dozen that have convinced myself to make, it gets tedious. And the kids start begging to help (destroy everything completely) and I have to give them their own projects to do. Which just results in my supervising kid's projects all day and then tucking kids into bed, and then sitting down and staring at a pile of unfinished business. And staying up until 2am to finish crafting crooked, bleary-eyed versions of whatever they were meant to be.

So, basically what I want to say is, if someone gives you something homemade for Christmas, be grateful. Because they have stayed up inhumane hours to make 20 (or more, God bless them) of these. They have definitely not had a meaningful conversation, or looked anyone in the eye for over a week. They are starting to feel lonely and depressed, wondering if it will ever be over. Debated how many feet of string it would take to hang yourself. Started wondering what it was like before they learned how to macrame/cross stitch/ knit/ sew/ glue. And snarling about those bastards who could afford to just go to the store and buy stuff. They have bled, or shed tears for that craft. The only thing that is keeping them going is the thought that YOU will love what they are making.

So I don't care if it's the ugliest fucking thing you have ever seen. I don't care if you open your present and can't even tell what it's supposed to be. Because your friend/child/sibling/parent, etc. lost a part of their soul for two weeks to make that shit for you. They gained ten pounds from stress eating and are falling asleep standing up so much that they are worried they are narcoleptic. And their sanity hinges upon your approval of the gift that they made just for you.

So you thank them. With tears in your eyes. And you wear that ugly-ass sweater proudly.

And next year, as with every year, when I decide that I'm Martha f'in Stewart again, somebody slap me.

Metros of the World, this is the final straw...

Coming 2013: Lots of man crotch.

Apparently skinny jeans weren't emasculating enough. The next trend in Men's fashion are said to be "Meggings", or Men's Leggings. 

Between learning of the existence of Meggings and Kanye West wearing a skirt during last night's Nationally televised 121212 Concert, I have decided that it's my responsibility to write an open letter to the Metrosexual Men of the World, those heterosexual males, for which this trend might become popular.

Dear Metros of the World,

Cut the crap. By doing things like wearing "Meggings" (which are gonna make that sucked in red bull and vodka gut look incredible and force you to wear screen printed t-shirts with sayings like "I'm a Grower, not a Show-er"), you are ensuring that no woman will ever procreate with you. The end is totally nigh.

Things have gone far enough. You tan, you wax, you product. All things that I have cleverly avoided by marrying the last beacon of hope for humanity. A "man's man". For whom eyebrows means one, not two.

But I fear for my children. That they will in some way find this attractive. And I will end up with grand babies who have to wear Spanx to get into their onesies. Whose first hair cuts will be fades. And who smell of a permanent mixture of burnt on tanning oil and Acqua Di Gio.

I know how lucky I am. To have one of the last men of a dying breed. A man for whom pants means rugged jeans, or sweat. Who has embraced with open arms, the body hair and musty smells, with which he has been naturally gifted.

Some women might see this differently. I say it's because they don't know any better. Like how we will never know how fun it is to ride a Unicorn (or maybe it's terrifying, I don't know...)

These women don't realize how sexy a man looks when his jeans are slightly too tight and they sag down under his beer gut. They have never known the embrace of a sweaty man who smells of hard work and is obviously out of deodorant. Or what it's like to have a long makeout sesh with a scruff-bearing male and have a sweet two day reminder of the embrace in the form of beard burn. Or how titillating it is to watch your man get dressed and do the old sniff test as a form of quality control. You might say it's disgusting. I say it's downright sexy.

So please, please Metrosexual Men, don't embrace this Meggings thing. It's the most "unmanly" thing you could do and it's just taking this whole thing a bit too far. I know they don't make 'em like my husband anymore, but could you at least butch it up a little bit?

Besides, they look like they would create a Testicle/Vice Grip situation. So drop this trend like last season's Nike's. Your rapidly dwindling, fist pumping sperm colony will thank you.

Sincerely,

The last SANE woman on the planet. (And my burly husband will tell you, that's a stretch)
Amy Terror

Pictures with Santa

Thinking about renaming my car CHILD SLAYER

8:30 in the morning is too early to have to actively TRY not to kill people with my car. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to re-name our car "CHILD SLAYER". I will emblazon this name on the hood of my car, throw on some horns and paint flames up the sides.

All of the kids with a little bit of common sense will know to stay away from CHILD SLAYER. There will be tales told about how my car eats children and they will scream and run in fear on sight. When they hear the purr of my engine, they will walk faster through crosswalks and clear the street. It will be magical.

Of course, that will be probably backfire on me, living in the San Francisco area. All of the little hipster kids will jump in front of CHILD SLAYER because they want to die in the most ironic way possible. Skinny jeans, flannels and thick, black glasses will be stuck in the undercarriage. CHILD SLAYER will go all Christine on me and will force me to listen to mixed tapes of shitty underground bands. And it will refuse to take in anything but gasoline made from ears of corn.

That sounds like way too much work. Maybe I should get just start getting a little more sleep.

Can we have cookies?

Vaginas at the Dentist's Office.

Today, I am that mom who makes you glad you don't have kids.

Or at the very least, glad you don't have as many (three) kids as I do.

I got a good half dozen, so-hard-they-were-audible eye rolls and an infuriating amount of tongue clicks as we "sat" in the waiting room at the dentist's office. And by "sat", I mean that I stood in the middle of the room, trying to use my feet to direct my somersaulting children back to chairs while my hands were kept busy with paperwork.

Apparently I lost my God damned mind when I booked this dentist appointment for all three kids at the same time. I must have.

To be fair, I did think that because I had made the appointment weeks in advance that by some miracle my husband would come with us to help. Apparently I was insane AND smoking meth.

That obviously didn't happen.

And so I spent my morning/early afternoon frantically hushing my screaming monsters and visually scanning the room for sharp corners that I could use to impale myself if my day didn't start to turn around.

Of course there was plenty of paperwork that had to be filled out as soon as we walked in the door. I hate paperwork. As soon as my kids caught sight of me putting pen to paper, my inattentiveness allowed them to turn into waiting room demons, creeping their sticky-little-kid-fingers up the sides of the chairs of the other patients, cartwheeling into the shins of all of the people, trying so unsuccessfully to ignore their presence.

Ain't working, right? Yeah, it doesn't work for me either.

I scribbled that shit down as fast as I could.

Sorry there's no way this is legible, but it's what you're getting out of me right now.

I handed the forms to the receptionist. And that's when I noticed an unexpected sight from across the room.

Why do I see my four year old's vagina?!?

Face, meet palm. My kid's vagina was out at the dentist's office.

I let her dress herself this morning, in a frantic attempt to shave a whole 68 seconds out of our "running out of the house as fast as we can" routine. So she decided that she wasn't wearing underpants. And the pair of pants she put on had a hole the size of a fist in the crotch.

My child was literally cartwheeling around the waiting room in crotchless pants, flashing her vagina.

Maybe those eye-rolls are warranted.

I nonchalantly jogged back to my seat and covered her up with a magazine, looked down at the floor and let out a good ten second sigh. And prayed to every deity imaginable that no one else had noticed. 

We haven't even made it in to see the dentist yet. Not off to a great start.

REVISED  MISSION: Make it through the appointment without killing self or children AND make sure that crotchless pants go unnoticed.

So I spent the next ten minutes, sitting next to the flasher in the waiting room chair and holding her legs together before they called us in to the exam room.

"Come on back!" said the receptionist, who I'm sure had to be aware of the predicament I was in.

Alright, three kids, one chair. They were gonna have to take turns.

I had my two year old go first and it became painfully obvious that the hygienist, who could not get him to open his mouth, did not have children.

Also obvious, was the fact that the other patients in the room did NOT want my six-year-old to do a loud, running commentary about their dental procedures.

And the vagina flasher decided that no matter where she sat, it was gonna be spread eagle.

Remind me later to sew this chick's legs together.

Ugh. REVISED MISSION: Try not to kill self or children, carry flasher around to make sure crotchless pants go unnoticed, get six-year-old to sit down nicely and stop bugging people AND coach idiot teenager through brushing my son's teeth by making up stories about spiderman killing the sugar germs.

We made it through the rest of the appointment relatively unscathed. Everyone had perfect teeth and no cavities. Thank God. Cause I would have had an apocalyptic scale meltdown anyone needed teeth drilled today.

Lesson learned. Never taking all three kids to a dentist's office at one time by myself.

Oh, and I will be doing a vagina check from now on every time we leave the house.

Five things the Presidential candidates and my children have in common.

Today is election day and regardless of the issues and who you support (or who makes you want to burn effigies), it is your responsibility to get out there and vote. Have your voice be heard.

I mean, sure, the electoral college will totally be the deciding factor, regardless of who wins the popular vote, but it's still super important to stand in line and fill out your ticket.

And sure, the candidates are both pure evil and regardless of who wins, it will still mean the same policies being implemented and the rich will still get richer...

Alright, so maybe I'm a bit cynical, but hey, today marks the end of what we really care about.

NO MORE POLITICAL CRAP ON FACEBOOK!

So anywho... Everyone, enjoy your election day, exercise your freedoms...

And here is my contribution.

Five things the candidates and my children have in common.

1. They look really creepy when they try to force a smile.

She's a write in candidate. Vote Phoenix Terror 2012.

2. Whenever they are in charge of spending, somehow I end up broke.

Yes, we really needed those seventeen jars of peanut butter. And private jets for all our buddies.

3. They always seem to get themselves in a heap of shit.

Totally a brownie btw. Just for visual effect.

4. They are massive flip-floppers.

"Mommy, I want to be something you are gonna have to make because they don't sell it in stores for Halloween."

"Oh, you made my costume already ? I meant that I wanted to be a Disney princess."

"I want vanilla ice cream!"

"Oops, I meant chocolate. NO! Strawberry!."

"Women shouldn't be able to have abortions!"

"Abortions for everyone!"

Make up your goddamn minds already.

5. When they get riled up, they don't listen to a thing you say.

So whichever candidate you decide to vote for:

Whether it's Obama riding a Unicorn:

Or Romney-Jesus:


Just get out there today and vote!
HAPPY ELECTION DAY!

(P.S. I stole all of these images, minus the ones of my kids off of the interwebz and do not claim ownership of them)

(P.S.S. I'm voting for Roseanne)

The Bag of Epic Shit-Puke: If this doesn't make you puke, I don't know what will.

1:00 am PST, my 6 year old daughter, Phoenix stumbles out of her bedroom and into the living room, saying that she needs to "poop". She is in the bathroom for all of two minutes and screams "I have a POOP PROBLEM!". I was feeling kinda nauseated and was thinking that at the worst, we would have a Whitney-Bobby situation and that I could maintain.

What I walked into, I was not at all prepared for. I turned and ran into the kitchen, hugged the garbage can and gurgled a gallon of vomit out of my face. Oh. My. God.

So now, I'm puking in the garbage can in the kitchen. Not just once, but I mean like five straight minutes of actively vomiting in there. So Superhusband, Jude, decides to spring into action. Knowing that what I just saw put me over the edge, he was hesitant to enter the bathroom.

"How bad is it, Phoenix?", he screamed from the hallway.

No answer from Phoenix, so he peeked in and noticed the shitxplosion. She shit somewhere in between pulling her pants down and making it to the toilet. It was EVERYWHERE. Gooey brown liquid, oozing all over the floor and in between all of the obnoxious nooks and crannies in the toilet seat. Superhusband gags, but forges ahead. I walk into the hall to witness his heroism. And then promptly return to the kitchen to projectile vomit.

He cleans the poop off the floor like a champ and even disinfects it with Comet. I, stomach now entirely empty, grab my shit-child and throw her in the tub. I stop up the drain and start the water, then quickly pull the plug and pull the plunger to turn on the shower. Thank goodness I had the foresight not to let her marinate in it.

So I tell her to just stand there and rinse her butt off, while Superhusband finishes cleaning the floor.

Oh shit. My stomach is gurgling. I'm gonna puke again.

Superhusband steps out of the way and throws the shit bags into the kitchen trash bag containing my innards. I vomit again while poor, poop-coated Phoenix stands naked in the shower and lets the water run down her back.

I stand up and I think I can handle it now. Ok, just have to get her out of the shower and dress her.

Then I hear it. And then smell it. She starts gagging and then projectile vomits onto her feet in the shower again and again. Hurl. Hurl. Hurl. Giant chunks of noodles from dinner just sitting there in the bathtub. FUCK. I call for Superhusband to step in. And promptly return to the kitchen to vomit on top of the shit bag. Oh. God.

So, I tell Phoenix to hold the puke for a second, throw a towel onto the bathroom floor and whisk her out of the shower. I tell her to hover over the toilet just in case she's gonna puke again. She pukes.

I grabbed Superhusband some gloves and plastic bags and he scoops out the chunks of puke and bags them up, finishing up by rinsing the tub out with Comet, which is apparently our official sponsor of the night. I get Phoenix some clothes and Superhusband hands me the bag filled with puke. Which I also place in the world's most vile trash bag. And then I puke for another five minutes straight into the toilet.

Phoenix goes out to sit on the couch and I hand her our small bathroom garbage can to puke in. Then Superhusband and I need to remove the bag of Epic Shit-Puke from our house. I carry the whole can out in case the bag had a hole in it, Superhusband following at a safe distance for moral support.

Dear Mr. Garbage Man,
I am so sorry that we left you a bag full of Epic Shit-Puke. It is by far the most vile garbage bag the world has ever seen. As a matter of fact, I'm sure there is someone you aren't fond of in your life. Consider it a gift, light it and put it on their lawn.

Sorry again,
Still puking,
Amy Terror

Eating babies: Not just for Greek Mythology anymore!

"Awwww. What a cute baby! Wait, what?!? That's a cake?!?"

I'm gonna give you a second for you to get there too....

HOLY SHIT, PEOPLE EAT THESE?!?

I know, right? So I understand, in my rational brain, that this thing is made out of cake and marzipan. But holy motherfuck, how do you cut into a baby? Yes, it's a baby made of cake. But...but...It's a baby! 

And how do you not feel like a terrible person eating this thing? I mean, how do you not feel like a sick fuck?

"I want the head!"

"I want to eat the baby's foot!"

I feel bad when I see a stuffed animal sitting by itself on a shelf in the store, I  could never take a knife and cut into a baby. I'm sure my kids are relieved to hear that.


Although, on second thought.... maybe I will get some of these to keep around the house in case my kids get really out of hand. I can make an example out of it when they start fighting.

"Oh yeah! You want to hit each other? Well this is what happens to kids who misbehave in this house!"

*whips out marzipan baby*

"Mom, whatcha got there? Is that a BABY?!?  OHMYGAWD WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING TO THAT BABY?!? MOM HAS FUCKING LOST IT! SHE JUST BIT THE HEAD OFF!"

"RUN! EVERYBODY RUN!"

They will hold their knees and rock like Bart Simpson in the episode where he's scared of his clown bed. "Can't sleep, mom will eat me."

Marzipan baby cake, probably like $150. Tormenting children, priceless.

Either I'm a big pussy, or migraines are the devil.

I have headaches. Who doesn't? And I have, in the past, had really bad headaches. The kind where you want to punch the next kid who whispers in your direction right in their cute little button nose. These type of headaches usually accompany a night of persistent drunk-foolery and many sentences that end in the word "bitches!"

But today. Holy shit. Today, I experienced a big girl headache. I had a migraine.

I have heard women utter the phrase "I have a migraine" before and I thought I knew what they meant. I'm sure for most people, when you say you have a "migraine", you just usually mean that it's a bad headache and you're a drama queen. Or you want to get out of sex, or chores. But I get it now.

I was all fine and dandy, watching the kids play Wii and all of a sudden, double vision. Then the lights were too bright and my eyes refused to focus. I strained to see. I started seeing spots and started praying to like 10 different deities. It was terrifying. And lasted like an hour. I honest to God thought I was about to die.

I was convinced that I had either had a stroke or some sort of rare double retina detachment (which would totally only happen to me), so my bff drove me to the ER, where I sat, panic-stricken and mentally repenting for all the sins I have ever committed.

"I'm having a heart attack or a stroke or something!" I said when I walked up to the registration desk.

The nurse took my vitals and shooed me back into the waiting room. That should have been my first sign that I wasn't on death row yet. But there I sat, in the squeaky plastic waiting room chair, shaking like a leaf and convinced I was gonna drop dead, my heart pounding out of my chest.

"We ran some tests and everything came out fine," they said.

"A complex migraine can mimic a stroke," they said.

Now you tell me. After I have already promised myself ridiculousness to the tune of "I'm gonna start working out," and "I'm not eating any more red meat." Well fuck that noise.

Part of me feels like a pussy, because I made such a big deal out of having a migraine.

The other part of me... Feels like I survived one hell of a migraine. I'm still not entirely convinced that I'm not dying. Migraines are no joke.

How life changes after becoming a parent.

I have been a parent now for six years. That's long enough for it to seem like forever, but not so long ago that I have completely forgotten what it was like to be a childless individual. I started thinking about all of the things that have changed in the last few years...

Single people, you will be in denial and say this stuff will never happen to you, but I and the other parents will assure you, it will.

And your adorable little monsters will take over your world and leave you searching for the pod that your new, sock-stuck-to-your-ass-wearing-two-different-shoes, self hatched out of.

First of all, when I was childless and heard a baby cry, it did nothing. I didn't pay attention to it. At most, maybe it was irritating. Now, when I hear a baby cry, I panic. Usually because I have a momentary lapse in judgment and for a split second, get a pang in my stomach and think that this baby is something that I have to attend to. I know it's not, rationally, because I don't have an infant. My kids are toddlers and older. Usually, they will yell about one of them hitting the other, or how they have to pee, but there are no more baby cries in my house.

But you see, having had three kids, I spent the better part of these last less-than-glamorous six years running into rooms the millisecond that my miniature people started screeching at the top of their lungs.

Many of those years meant seemingly unending nights of being jolted out of glorious sleep and having to bend to a baby dictator's every whim. Sleep deprivation is a torture tactic and if I had whatever information those little interrogators wanted, I would have given it up faster than a teenage girl with low self-esteem.

So when one of my neighbors' babies cry, I get war flashbacks. Fortunately, my brain kicks in right after and I have, what has to be the greatest realization in the world:

It's not MY problem.

Sorry to anyone who currently has a newborn. I'm not gonna sugar coat it, it's pure hell. And every time I hear a baby cry, it brings me right back into the foxhole.

Heil Baby.

Second, my standard for what I will wear outside of the house has lowered.
Oh, did I say lowered? I meant disappeared.

That's right, I now have absolutely no standard for what I will wear outside of my house. I have become one of THOSE Walmart people. You know, the hefty lady who wears her pants up to her boobs like it's a shirt, because apparently you don't need a shirt on if your pants are stretchy and you're sexy enough.

Sexy.

Alright, I'm not that bad, but I'm getting there.

And it's not that I don't care, it's just that I no longer have room in my brain for shame.

Slippers to the store?

Yup, I've done it.

Shirt coated in chocolate/coffee/poop?

I'll still wear it.

Pajamas around the house AND at parent teacher conferences?

Yes sir.

As a matter of fact, I have so little awareness about what I typically leave the house in, that I sometimes, forget to even put a bra on before doing school drop off.

I'm pretty sure the entire school has gotten a glimpse of what I'm working with.

No. Shame.

Sorry kids, but right now, I am the target demographic for pajama jeans.

I vaguely remember what it's like to use styling instruments. Now I'm lucky if I have time to brush my hair. At least I remember to cover the important parts.

Also, when I see moms in heels, it makes me chuckle. Cause with three kids running in three different directions, I would make it all of 30 seconds before I would have to kick them off in order to catch whoever was running directly into traffic.

Third, my brain ain't what it used to be. I used to use it for things and stuff. Like college papers and thinking really hard about theoretical crap that totally would have made me rich if I wrote it down (God, you are a GENIUS when you smoke enough pot).

Post kids, I have to wipe a second time because I can't remember if I wiped or not after I just peed.
Or why I came into whatever room I wandered into.

Or which kid I was supposed to ground when we got home later, cause they did something that I kinda remember pissing me off.

And that we are supposed to do something, I think, sometime this weekend, but I cannot remember what day, or what it is that we are supposed to do.

They say you never can really make up for sleep debt. So you can thank your children for killing off all the necessary parts of your brain.

That shirtless Walmart lady probably has lots of kids.

Fourth, I panic about everything. Partly because I'm insane, but mostly because I'm worried about my kids.

I'm worried that they will get hurt, that they will be hungry, wet, tired, thirsty, catch the swine flu... That we will be well enough equipped to handle the Zombie Apocalypse (we gotta get on that plan of stockpiling guns already, Jude).

I am constantly thinking of how to prevent disastrous scenarios.

Because every time your little pile of cuteness stumbles out into the world, a million things could go wrong. They could fall and crack their little baby head open like my Cora did. We had to get her head glued last year when she fell off of the BOTTOM step of a slide and smashed her head on a set of steel steps. Which gives her a leg up experience-wise for getting into the WWE, but gave me a heart attack.

They could have their cute little ball roll out in front of a Mack truck and get hit and die and have to be resurrected in a pet cemetery, only to come back as a creepy, murderous version of their former self. 

Okay, so maybe not the pet cemetery scenario (although I am HORRIFIED to let my kids play ball near the street now. Thanks, Stephen King.) But you get the idea.

Which leads me to my fifth and final contribution (mostly cause I have to go to bed).

I love my kids so god damned much that even seeing fictional children, or kids that I don't know get hurt, killed, etc. makes my brain explode and tears shoot out of my face at 100 mph.

When I see pictures of kidnapped children on Facebook, or read stories about babies who get cancer, I blubber like an uncontrollable moron. This has singlehandedly ruined my enjoyment of Law and Order and any other show where they have an affinity for doing story lines about raping/murdering children.

Not that I should, in theory, enjoy that sort of story cause obviously it's kinda sick.

I'm just saying that it would be nice to be able to enjoy a good baby murder now and then.

But now I get flooded with all this stupid emotion.

Thanks kids. I can't hear a baby cry without bugging the fuck out, I look like hell, I'm brain dead, I have panic attacks over everything, and I can't even watch someone snatch a fictional child without doing a quick headcount and sniffing back a tear.

We haven't even hit the teenage years yet and if this were Tekken, I would be in the red right now.

Face it, we're all screwed. The one thing that keeps me going is the notion that one day they are all gonna be wiping my ass.

Oh, and wine. Ass wipin' and wine. Mommy fuel.

I need to never Google anything. Ever again.

No, this is not some convoluted advertisement for Bing.

I love to Google.

I would probably say that I spend a few hours a day browsing things on the web and a good half of that is usually spent Googling.

I'm a curious person, I like to know things. Generally out of boredom, so, like the rest of civilized society, I Google.

But some times, my crazy brain takes over and I Google out of paranoia. It's like drunk texting, but for lunatics.

And some times, a crazy person just isn't meant to know things.

Like how if you are forgetful, it could be a brain tumor, or how elbow pain could mean you are having a heart attack.

Google has pegged me for dead a good hundred to a hundred and fifty times.

And each time it's with something new.

And I always fall for their schtick.

"Holy shit, my elbow has been bothering me. I'm having a heart attack! My chest does feel kinda tight now that I think about it!"

"Oh my God, why is my heart racing now?"

Could it be because Google just informed me that I'm dying?
Probably.

Could it also be because I'm having a heart attack in my twenties?
Not likely.

But boy, am I gonna check my pulse and freak out because of the off chance that Google might be right.

Googling your medical symptoms is like going to a 95 year old doctor, who is blind, deaf in one ear and calls you "Sonny", regardless of your age or gender.

He has no idea what's actually going on with you, can't read your diagnostic information, so he just guesses you have Polio, "cause it's what's goin' around, Sonny".

And you know it's wrong. Cause, you know, how the fuck could you have Polio?

...but maybe, just maybe....

Fuck.

"Do I have Polio?"







And this is why, I need to never Google anything, Ever again.

What it feels like to watch Honey Boo Boo for the first time.

Food, I have to break up with you.

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." -Author, Moron.

I don't know who was the first to say that, but clearly, they have never tried bacon. Or mac and cheese. Or found themselves hiding from their kids and eating an entire package of Oreo cookies in their bedroom closet.

Ok, so I admit, the last part might just be me.

Since becoming a stay at home mom a few years ago, I have honed my cooking skills. Anything you desire, I can make it and I can make it better than restaurant quality.

DOUBLE EDGED SWORD, PEOPLE!

I make stuff that puts Paula Deen to shame.

"Well, we could make the mashed potatoes/mac and cheese/anything on this earth with regular milk, but it just tastes so much better with heavy cream."

"I put in an extra stick of butter and some cream cheese because it just didn't seem creamy enough."

Some of the cuisine I have ventured into, my God, it should be illegal it's so damned good. 

Bacon wrapped this and cheese coated that.

Sauces, gravies and dips (Oh my!).

I have been defining my world experience through my tongue and stomach and it has been an amazing ride. As a matter of fact, I just got up and got myself a brownie because I made myself hungry just thinking about all the foodie goodness.

So, it probably shouldn't surprise me I have become too fat. (Who would've thought, right?) Not like "Jabba the Hut" fat, maybe "half a Jabba".

I AM HALF A JABBA, FAT.

Amy the Plump. Someone is gonna start playing the tuba when I walk.

And I am gonna need to drive one of those carts at Walmart.

Which, I told Jude, would be my deal breaker for how fat he could get before I would have to draw the line on riding Mister Toad's Wild Ride.

And I don't even know how it happened. It seems like one day I was single with no kids and 120 lbs and the next I have three kids and if you tied rope to my arms and legs, you could float me in a parade.

What the hell, food? You did me dirty. You're like a scruffy-faced bad boy that I just can't stay away from. The one that gets me hooked on meth and booked as an accessory.

So I should probably get on that. The only problem is, that I love food. I love to make it, I love to eat it.

And when I say "love", I mean like romantic, emotional, crazy person love.

When I see a pot full of mac cheese, I swoon. Eating makes me happy. Whenever we have a party, I feed people and we are happy. People tell me that they like my food and I feel like a good host. Whenever I am sad, I eat things and it makes me feel better. They don't call it comfort food for nothing. It's a drug, but you can't just quit eating cold turkey, cause you would die, and dying is bad. But eating too much causes you to die too. You can't win.

So what the hell to do?

Obviously I can't just keep eating what I want or I will end up looking like a character out of Honey Boo Boo. And so will my kids. Cause they watch me eat. Not all the time, just enough, to get a sense that I eat too much crap in too large of a volume.

"Did mom run a marathon while we were watching Elmo this morning? Cause that's a ridiculously large bowl of pasta."

"What do you mean, there are no more girl scout cookies left? You just bought that box off me yesterday."

They're onto me.

And Jude and I are so good about preaching the values of eating fruits and veggies and always making sure the kids eat healthy foods. I don't want it to become some forbidden fun grown up thing to stuff your face.

Like when they are 20 and the realization hits them that they could, theoretically, eat ice cream for breakfast.

I don't want that for them. I want them to see food as a fuel and not as a friend. They need to be healthy. So, I guess, I need to be healthy.

So, here it goes.

Oreos, macaroni and cheese, pizza, cookies, pastas, and good tasting things of all kind: We have to break up. It's not you, it's me. Actually, you know what, IT IS YOU. I have let you run my life for far too long and I deserve someone who will treat me better. Someone like kale or tofu. Sure, they aren't super good looking and they are probably pretty bland on the plate, but they won't make me talk about mah diabeetus like Wilfred Brimley.

Wish me luck. I'm gonna feed need it.

The V in DMV stands for Victory.

We just moved to California last year, so I finally got around to going to the DMV today and applying for a California license (yeah, shut up. It's the result of uttering the words "I will definitely do it tomorrow" 365 times in a row).

I have to say, I was a bit nervous since they make you retake the written portion and it's been 12 years, 3 kids and 57 different hairstyles since I last took this thing.

I didn't even know if I would remember the answers anymore.

Not wanting to walk in blind to a possible ambush,*Gets on the speaker* "She's from Jersey! We're gonna need the long test form!", I went online and practiced with their tutorials, fully expecting to get some

"What do you do if a group of hippies decide to stage a sit-in in the middle of the road?" and "When should you offer some of your medical marijuana joint to a police officer?"
type of questions. I got a few wrong, but I tried to memorize the answers.

Easy peasy.

So I went in and the questions were pretty straight forward.

I took the test, going over each answer again and again like the people who flunk go into some sort of Shirley Jackson-esque lottery.

Which let's face it, they probably do. It takes a rare form of evil masochist to decide that they want to work for the DMV.

I stood in the line where they were grading the forms, triple checking all of my answers.

"I'm sorry sir, but you didn't pass. You can come back and try again another time."

The guy in front of me looked down at his shoes and got handed a slip that I imagined said "You're an idiot", in big red letters.

Oh, crap.

"Next!"

I walked up to the window. The woman looked at my form and didn't mark anything on it.

"Pass." she said.

But being the smug asshole that I am, I knew, but I had to ask.

"How many did I get wrong?"

"You got them all right." the woman said, visibly annoyed.

If the DMV sold food, she probably would have spit in mine.

But I didn't care. I knew I spanked that test.

She handed me my temporary license and I strutted back through the lobby, out the door and into the parking lot like John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.

Who knows all the answers to the DMV written test?
Oh, that's right. I do.

Who's currently licensed to drive a motor vehicle in the state of California?
This gal.

Yes, I am being a gloating asshole about it, but I don't get many victories these days, so I gotta enjoy the little ones.

I just threw a kitten in the garbage.

Thanks SPCA.

While I full heartedly support your mission of taking care of animals and finding them wonderful homes, I hate you.

Because you play on the sympathy of dummies like me, who get sentimental when they see pictures of sad baby animals.

"Oh that poor, cute little puppy. He's so fluffy and sad. I wish I had extra money to help them out each month.... Maybe if I talked to Jude, we could donate $20 or something, anything to try to help out a little and do our part...."

Then the sane part of my brain kicks in, remembering that it's a marketing ploy.

Yes, the money would support animals and go to something wonderful. But the truth is, we just don't have anything to give right now. So I decide to just toss it in the garbage and move on with my day and this is what I see.

It literally looks like I threw out a kitten.

There is a giant motherfuckin' kitten, looking up at me with sad eyes all like, "Why did you throw me out?", from my garbage can.

Damn you, SPCA, for toying with my emotions. I literally just heard Sarah Mclachlan singing in my head and I feel dirty.

Mom's Beauty Advice

Holden shat himself good. And then invented a new kind of pants.

Yesterday, the girls started their first ballet class.

We didn't have the proper ballet outfits yet, so I dug through all of their clothes and put on the pinkest things I could find.

About to walk out the door and running late, I said to myself, "Fuck it. Holden is 2 1/2 now. A big boy. What are the chances that he's gonna need a change of clothes?"

And so we walked out the door, the girls in their pink and me feeling a new sense of liberation.

Now, I think it goes with out saying that not bringing another set of clothes was a grave miscalculation on my part.

After we were done with all our plies and jetes, we were on our way to Payless to get ballet shoes. We pulled into a strip mall and were walking through a Gamestop when Holden promptly oozed shit out of every pore in his body.

I could tell by the tears, that the dude standing next to us was choking back vomit.

The poop carnage was so bad, that just looking at him I could tell that the outfit he was wearing was going straight in the first store-side garbage receptacle that I could find.

Please don't look me in the eye while I do this, guy coming out of the Radioshack. I really DO need to discard these shitty clothes and this is the only place, short of leaving them for the next unfortunate soul to pull into our old parking space.

Or bringing it in my car, which, let's be honest, just ain't fucking happening.

So we walk off to the car, him waddling like a cowboy in chaps who just rode the "mean" horse, to figure something out.

And when we got there, what I soon discovered was that not only did I not have a change of clothes for him, but in all my hurried-dumb-assedness, I had packed one diaper and exactly zero wipes.

Plus, he was so covered head to toe that I did not even know where to start, or how to lay him down in the car without coating my beautiful leather seats in oozing diarrhea.

Now, how in the fuck do I handle this?

Thinking quickly, I checked the trunk for extra supplies. I didn't find any diapers, wipes or pants, but I did find a hooded sweatshirt and a long sleeve shirt that one the kids had thrown off in the car because they were too hot.

No pants? Two shirts? Ok. We will make this work somehow.

We had just left McDonald's, which was definitely the cause of this situation.

Damn you, McDonald's, for your diarrhea inducing fare.
Thankfully, I had stuffed all of the kids empty happy meal bags and a bunch of napkins into the bag containing the survivors of the great chicken nugget massacre of 2012.

We have napkins and some paper bags. Things are looking up.

Trying to act fast, as not to get CPS called to ask where to send my "Parent of the Year" award, or to have to explain why I shouldn't be in the Sex Offenders database to the nice police officers, I opened my passenger side door and stripped him naked.

Sorry to any fellow strip mall shoppers that my son might have offended. I couldn't exactly expect the 19 year old behind the counter in Gamestop to sympathize and let me use the middle of his floor as a changing table.

I wiped the visible yucky parts and stuck the empty paper bags on the car seat as a protective liner. Then I used the napkins and, "Oh God, Yes! I found Purell!", to clean up what I could and get a new diaper on the kid.

Gagging, I stuffed the dripping diaper and poop shrapnel into one of the McDonald's bags.

Ok, he's no longer vomit inducing, but he's still nude. And we need to shop. And I'm sure I would get more looks with a naked kid than I did with Smelly-Mc-Smellypants as my shopping partner.

So I grabbed the old long sleeve shirt and put it on him.

Alright, the top is covered. But again, we don't have any pants. And much as I'm sure my husband would also appreciate the loosening of store policy, I'm fairly certain you cannot shop pantsless.

Well, fuck. A hooded jacket has two arms, that's kinda like legs for pants.

So I zipped up the jacket and stuffed his legs into the arms.

Ok, legs are covered. But he still looks like a neglected CPS case, who is wearing a jacket for pants.

So I grabbed a hairband from my console (the clip kind, not the 80's cheese metal kind, although we could have used some background music) and told him to stand up on the ground.

In a stroke of panic-inspired genius, I pulled the hood from the jacket up between his legs to the waistband of the upside down jacket and then tied the hood and excess waistband into a little knot.

So now, not only did he technically have pants and no longer smell, but we probably created some new thing people are going to start doing on Pinterest.

Pin away my lovelies.

Just remember, when you wear your super cool "Jacket-Pants" that they are diarrhea inspired.

 

The new designer Diarrhea Pants.

Pay Back.

How to install a child's car seat.