When PigHunter and I were first married, I would get up with him every morning to make him a wonderfully nutritious lunch and a big, fat egg burrito.
I didn’t mind getting up at 3 in the morning, because I could go straight back to bed after he was gone. Ah, the joys of not having to go into work until 1:30 in the afternoon.
Some of my friends thought that I was crazy for getting up that early, but I really didn’t mind. In fact, I enjoyed it. I was young, happy, crazy in love and having The Legal and Jesus Approved Sex at least 3 times a day. I was happier than I had ever been in my 19 years of life on this planet and I woke up excited every morning to express my happiness by making a big, cheesy burrito and a lunch box filled with good food for my man.
A few months into the marriage, the Joy of Scrambling Eggs at 3 in the morning started to wear off and I would dread the sound of the alarm. But still, I’d get up, make him a burrito and a lunch, kiss him goodbye and go right back to sleep.
Then, one morning, I didn’t feel like getting up.
“I’m so tired, babe.”
“It’s ok, you stay in bed my love, I can make my own lunch.”
I can make my own lunch.
Those 5 little words changed everything.
I did get up to make him lunch still, but only a few days a week instead of every single day.
And then a few days turned into one or two days.
Then I just stopped completely.
Every once in a while, I’ll wake up early and surprise him by packing him a lunch and making him breakfast while he’s in the shower, but 16 years and 3 kids later, I really value my sleep, so when I say “every once in a while” I mean, like, 2 times every year.
There are some mornings when Tony will come in here to kiss me goodbye while I’m sleeping, (and sometimes, he’ll left my shirt up and play with My Bobs, and then next thing I know, he’s on top of me and we’re having a 5 am quickie.) but most mornings, he rushes out the door without saying goodbye.
Ever since we received the news that we had to vacate this house, Tony has been coming into the bedroom every morning and kissing me gently while telling me how much he loves me, how much he’s going to miss me and how he can’t wait to come home from work and see me again.
You see, since we were faced with this “life crisis”, we’ve been doing a lot of talking. We’ve been talking about things we normally don’t talk about, like our feelings.
PigHunter has feelings! Who knew!
We’ve had some pretty intense conversations. Some of them have been positive and uplifting and ended up in some Pretty Sweet Boinking. Some of them have been painful and brutal (“I’m SO done with you!” “Oh yeah? I’ve BEEN done with YOU!”). But with each conversation we have, one thing is always evident.
We love each other deeply and we want to keep our family together.
I love my husband more today that I ever have and apparently, he feels the exact same way.
That is why he doesn’t want to leave the house without kissing me and telling me how much he loves me. (He told me this while we were waiting for our burgers and fries in the Wendy’s drive-thru!)
That he has decided he needs to take a few minutes out of his morning to say goodbye to me and tell me how much he’ll miss me while lavishing my sleepy head with kisses is the most precious thing in my life right now.
(I will wait while you go rinse the vomit from your mouth because I know that made you sick.)
It makes me so happy that I almost want to get up early, scramble him some eggs, pack him a lunch and maybe give him a little loving in the form of a, what do the kids call it? A BJ?
Almost.
No Deal!
Today the gravity of it all hit me like a Mack Truck and I had my first panic attack in 4 years.
We shouldn’t be in this position.
Sure, our landlords were cold hearted jerks for doing what they did in the way that they did it, but ultimately, this is our fault.
Entirely our fault.
That’s not to say I’m not angry with them for the lies that they told us.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to kick you out, we’re going to give you plenty of time to find a new place.”
Two days later: Hi, you have 30 days to get the hell out of here.
As I take the pictures of my children down off of the walls, I break down into tears and sob.
I love them more than I could ever express in words, and yet, I’ve failed them in so many ways.
Andrew just wants to graduate from 8th grade with his friends, I can’t promise him he’s going to be able to do that.
That hurts me to the core of my being.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”.
That’s all I can say to them, but it doesn’t make any of this easier.
I don’t want this to turn into the “we got kicked out of our rental house and OMG! What are we going to do?!?” blog, and yet, “we got kicked out of our rental house! OMG! What are we going to do?!?”
Sadly, my AMAZING AND TOTALLY AWESOME plan to get picked to be on Deal or No Deal bombed in the biggest way, so all of my plans to win a sick amount of money by picking the lucky case got flushed down the toilet, along with all of the money we’ve wasted on rent over all of these years.
What? I didn’t tell you that I was going to go to an open casting call for Deal or No Deal? Whoops, must have slipped my mind! Because I totally didn’t keep it from you on purpose because I was worried about being mocked and called a loser! (Or about someone driving there just to stalk me!)
Not quite in the mood to write about it just yet, but because I am a giver and because this makes me laugh when all I want to do is cry, I’ll leave you with the email that Lena sent me the day after we spent 6 damn hours standing in line.
Things You Shouldn’t Think About Today
Vi pop-locking in line.
Lena going toe-to-toe with ladies with strollers.
Y’s kidneys failure.
The old man going after the big black booty in his crotch.
The cows from the group home.
What the guy in front of us looked like when he took his shirt off.
Y worrying about The Farting Worm.
Y convinced that the Staff Member with the Bullhorn was “just trying to get us to leave”.
What the bathroom smelled like.
My big ass blisters.
The big band version of “Hollaback Girl”.
Lena shouting out “Deal or No Deal” before hours later deeming them “users”.
Vi crying that “I’m not interesting!”.
Y getting pissy that “they want us to sell ourselves” and then writing 8 paragraphs.
Lena yelling at people to “go home” and getting all angry when they wouldn’t.
And the #1 thing you shouldn’t think about:
That we all got up in the middle of the night.
(Seriously, if I ever email you and say “Hey! Let’s go audition for a game show because, like, we are totally what they’re looking for and it will be so much fun because OMIGOD! We’ll get to spend time together being our wild and cerraaazy selves!!! Tell me to go SCREW MYSELF! I bet you Lena wishes she would have.)
This post has been severely edited because sometimes I need to THINK before I hit “save”
It kind of sucks to be us right now.
A few weeks ago, Ethan’s teacher sent home a copy of a story he had written about “his favorite place.” She told me this story made her cry and that she made copies to show her mother. It was a story about how this house was his favorite place in the whole world.
When I read it, I cried. Cried because all of these years, I’ve hated living in this house, because “the cabinets are ugly.” But my son, he loves it, he loves it because it has been his home. He doesn’t care what the cabinets look like, he only cares about the love and memories these walls hold inside of it. Here is a little portion of what he wrote.
As you walk in, tons of pictures are hanging on the wall. Lots of basketball posters in my room. I just love living where I live today because of all of my memories are held here, from happiness to sadness. This life here will never change.
And
By now you should know how much I love this place. I love everything in my favorite place. It fills me with joy. It is my very own house.
(Excuse me while I sob again.)
When I read that, it changed my entire perspective about this house. I had vowed to never say “I hate this house” ever again and to make sure that it always felt like our home. His words had a real impact on me.
Be grateful for what you DO have, mom..
Well, as of yesterday, we no longer have this house. Our landlord sold it unexpectedly (even though he told us he was going to “wait a year” to put it up for sale. But, I won’t EVEN go there. Bottom line is that it’s his house and he can do what he wants.) This house will belong to someone else very soon. But, what we do have is each other.
Now, we just need to find a home in which to make new memories.
And we will.
Right?
I mean, yes! We will!
(No, seriously, we will, right?)
The wait is going to kill me. (Now with A (really boring) Update!)
In the 16 years that I’ve been married to PigHunter, I’ve never played an April Fool’s joke on him.
That all changed today, because today I got up at 6 in the morning, drove his car around the corner and parked it there. When he wakes up, I’m going to ask him if he’ll pretty please go buy me a coffee. When he sees that his car is not there, he is going to shit his pants and I am going to pretend to be very upset because “OMG! We do not have theft on our insurance policy! What are we going to do because we have no moneeeeeeeey?!”
I realize this isn’t the greatest April Fools Day joke, but I was too lazy to go buy a pregnancy test and draw a purple line in it.
THAT would have been the greatest April Fools Joke because, you know, he had a vasectomy.
Maybe next year.
I do know that he’s going to fuh-reeeeeeeeak out. We had one of our cars stolen when I was pregnant with our first child and oh my God, my husband turned into some kind of Mutant Super Hero.
He was hell bent on finding our car and “the perpetrators” who stole it. We’d be driving and he would think he saw our car traveling in the opposite direction and he’d scream “THERE IT IS!” make an illegal u-turn and start chasing the car. Once he’d realize it wasn’t our car, he’s apologize for giving me whiplash and say really dramatic things like “I’m sorry, hon, I just have to catch whoever did it, they can’t get away with violating us like this. I have to find these assholes.”
One day he actually called the police and asked them this question. “How much force can one use by law when making a citizen’s arrest?”
The dispatcher was like “Sir, why are you asking this question?”
And PigHunter was all “because someone stole my car and if I happen to see them driving around in it, I plan on making a citizen’s arrest and holding them until the police can come.”
Citizen Nerd says “Fuck with my Datsun 210 and I will hunt you down like a pig and CITIZENS ARREST YOU.”
You have no idea how badly I wanted him to find the thugs who stole our car and watch him take them down in a completely legal manner so as not to be sued or arrested him self for taking the arresting of a citizen too far.
God, I can’t wait for him to wake up already.
While I’m waiting, I think that you should tell me the greatest April Fools Pranks you’ve ever played on someone, or have had played on you.
*Update*
So, this is how it went down…
Wounded Knees, Wounded Pride: A Water Park Story
The summer of 2002 I had one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever had as a parent.
I got season passes to Raging Waters.
I was only on contract for 10 months out of the year, so I most of the summer off with the kids and most summers were spent trying to think of what to do next so that the boys would not kill each other or so that I would not write to Maury to ask him to send my 5 & 9 year old to boot camp.
Every morning, we’d wake up and as soon as the boys started fighting I’d yell “Get yer trunks on, we’re going on some water slides!”
The first few times there were a blast. We’d go on every slide that they could ride, we’d grab an inner tube and float around the “tropical river”, or we’d just hang out in the wave pool.
It really was the greatest summer vacation we’d ever had.
Until the day I decided to break the rules.
There was this awesome ride that I wanted to take the boys on, but Ethan didn’t meet the height requirement. Every time I’d walk by, I’d be tempted to try to sneak Ethan on because I’m telling you, this ride was The Awesome. I’m trying to think of a way to describe it this ride. You sit on an inner tube and go make your way down through a series of drops, twists and raging waters, kind of like white water rafting? I don’t know, I’m at a loss, but trust me, this ride rules.
One day I decided to sneak Ethan on. I had a great plan. I’d let each of the boys go on their own inner tube, but I would hold onto Ethan’s so that he didn’t get ahead of me, or flip over.
We grabbed our inner tubes, headed up the hill to the front of the line. While we stood in line, we went over “the plan” to make sure nothing bad happened.
Andrew would go first. I would sit next to Ethan, making sure to hold onto his inner tube. If we got separated, we were to all meet at the bottom of the ride.
Perfect. What could go wrong?
Absolutely EVERYTHING, that’s what.
It started off great. No one questioned Ethan’s height and so the hardest part was over (so I thought!) We had successfully broken the rules! Let the fun began!
Five seconds into the ride, I lost my grip on Ethan’s inner tube and he started to float away from me. Andrew was already farther ahead than I would have liked, so I started to freak out. I noticed a big dip was coming up and I panicked. I screamed at Andrew “MEET ME AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIDE IF WE GET SEPARATED!! DO NOT LEAAAAAVE WITHOUT MEEEE!” Then, my Psychotic Over Protective Mother Skills kicked in and I jumped off of my inner tube and tried running to catch Ethan’s tube.
There was just one LEEEETLE problem. It was a WATER SLIDE and um, there was a huge dip coming up and um, it was all slippery and uh, I fell all the way down that huge dip, hitting huge rocks all the way down.
I could hear the people standing in line watching GASP as I flipped, skidded and was tossed down stream with the rushing water. I finally landed in a little area where I caught up to Ethan’s tube. I grabbed onto it. Ethan was crying hysterically, I was bleeding from my knees, arms and back and an employee from the park started shouting at us to exit the ride.
I picked Ethan up, dodged the incoming riders on their tubes and made the walk of shame to a set of rocks that I had to climb up to exit the ride.
People in line were staring, I was bleeding, Ethan was crying and the employee was PRETTY FREAKING PISSED OFF.
He helped us off, asked if we needed first aid (um, howza’bout a couple of bandaids, dude?) and asked us to never do that again.
I started crying because Andrew! My poor Andrew! Where was he? Had he followed “the plan”? Luckily, he had and was standing at the bottom of the ride waiting for me. He was visibly upset because it had taken me so long to get there.
As we made our way to the bathroom so I could clean my bleeding wounds, Andrew began to scold me “that’s why they make rules, mom, so that no one gets hurt!”
I felt like the shittiest mother to have ever expelled children from her vagina.
I had spent my entire life as a mother teaching my children to follow the rules because “rules are made to keep you safe!”
I stood there with gaping holes in my knees and said “You’re right, it was wrong of mommy to try to sneak Ethan on the ride, I’m sorry.”
That one little decision pretty much ruined the rest of our summer at Raging Waters because Ethan was traumatized and refused to go on another slide that wasn’t “for babies”.
I spent the rest of the summer bored to tears watching my boys play in the little kids wading pool, longing for the good ol’ days of speed slides and “Drop Out”. But I was just grateful that our season passes weren’t revoked and that we weren’t banned from the park for breaking the rules and almost dying on the freaking roaring rapids water slide.
Proving that it is possible for me to write about something other than food. (And/or food scented body odors)
The boys are off for Spring break, which means my daily schedule has been completely thrown off, which means naptimes and “computer times” have been moved around or forsaken completely.
There are have been a few times where I wanted to sit down and write about something that The People (that was for YOU, Danny.) just HAD to know, but then the boys would ask me to please do the laundry so that they would have clean socks to wear to play basketball in.
God. They’re so demanding.
Actually, this has been a very enjoyable, stress free spring break. Now that they’re older and a little more mature, they don’t fight as much, they aren’t eternally bored and bonus! They like to go spend all of their time at their friend’s house!
There was a time where, as much as I loved having them home all day to do things like go to Chuck E Cheeses or Discovery Zone, I would feel like ripping my hair out by the second day of vacation because they would fight every second of every day and cry that they were “bored” and had “nothing to do.”
It would seem that those days are long gone and as much as I miss them being little, it’s kind of nice being able to enjoy their company without having to listen to “Moooom, I’m so boooooooored.”
Speaking of bored…
Last night I decided to go to the gym early to get ma’ free weights and ma’ crunches on before Aerobic Dance class.
The area designated for “ab work” was being hogged up by two little teenagers who were doing more talking (and texting) then they were actual ab work. I thought I’d go ahead and do all of my leg weights since it looked like they were going to be there a while.
When I was finished, those little hos were STILL laying there, gossiping, giggling and sending text messages on their totally awesome cellular devices.
I wanted to walk up to them and say “So, hi. I really need to do some ab work and you’re taking up all of the room and I noticed you’re not actually doing sit ups, but socializing and while I realize you have all of the time in the world because you’re young with perky tits, I don’t. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m old. And also fat and as I’m talking to you I could be developing diabetes, or have a stroke, or go blind so if you don’t mind, I’d really appreciate it if you got your tight little asses up off of this floor and take your conversation elsewhere because I’ve got 50 pounds to lose and it aint going to happen if I can’t do some mother fucking crunches.
But, being the kind and loving soul that I am, I just walked by and gave them dirty looks whilst letting out one of those “OH MY GOD, YOU’RE SO ANNOYING” sighs and headed for Aerobic Dance class.
AD class was better than it’s been the past few weeks. She lightened up on the “grapevines” and added some actual dance moves like “the mambo” and the “one where you run forward for three steps and then do this really awesome kick jump” (and not to brag, but I totally nailed it.) However, it still wasn’t the same Aerobic Dance that I fell in love with back in 2005. Gone are the days of “The Monkey” and “The Dirty Dance.” It’s all “Grapevines” and “V-steps” and I’m sorry, that’s so 1985.
I hate to say it, but I do believe that my love for Aerobic Dance has begun to wither and I think I may be done with it.
All good things must come to an end, I suppose. But damn, it was fun while lasted.
Maybe I’ll take up pole dancing. I’m just not quite ready to stop “spending my husband’s hard earned money on ridiculous things like dance lessons.”
Mmmmmmm Duncan Hines.
So, I have this “friend” who is a little worried because whenever she works out, her under boob sweat smells exactly like yellow cake mix.
She is concerned that it might not be “normal” so she asked her husband, who thinks he is very funny but is actually NOT and he told her that she was probably just “sweating out” all of that “extra caramel” she gets on her “fancy lattes”.
I told her I’d ask The Internet, because that’s what a good friend would do.
So, um, is it normal for underboob sweat to smell like yellow cake mix?
My friend really wants to know.
Dear Internet,
I need your help.
How do you define “mommy blog”?
Is it simply a blog written by a woman who happens to be a mom?
Or is it a mom who writes about her kids most of the time?
Or is it something else?
Also, do you consider this blog a “mommy blog”?
I have had a post swirling around inside of my brain for a while now and I’d love to hear the answers to those questions before I write it.
Thank you.
Random Thoughts From Tonight’s Aerobic Dance Class (Which, for the “record”, totally sucked)
Is this Aerobic Dance class or kickboxing? WTF?
Hey, lady. Ever heard of a little thing called “personal space?”
Um, doing a “hop” at the end of The Grapevine does not make “cool”, so please stop doing it.
Who sharted?
No. Seriously. WHO SHARTED?
Who forgot their deodorant?
I WILL CUT YOU.
What’s with all of the Grapevines?
Niiiiiice buttocks.
Oh no she di’int.
Grandma, please.
Ha ha ha ha. QUEEFER.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm hummus and pita chips with wine.
When are we doing some pelvic thrusts, dude? ENOUGH WITH THE GRAPEVINES.
Ok. Your hand just brushed up against my arm and I am trying to be nice, but WHY DO YOU INSIST ON BEING ALL UP ON MY JOCK?
Dumbest.Moves.Ever.
Two can play this game, heffer.
Whoops! Did my hand just hit the back of your head? I’m sorry, but if you weren’t all up IN MY PERSONAL SPACE, that might not have happened.
I hate to be cocky, but damn, my Bunny Hop was off the CHAIN.
Bean dip.
Is it over yet?
God.