Posts tagged best of

I have been under extreme amounts of stress lately. I’m a single mom desperately struggling to make sure I don’t do any long lasting emotional damage to my two beautiful, super smart children. Even though Savannah has chosen to begin adolescence at seven years old, clearly stating her hatred for me every thirty minutes, and Jackson has decided he is done with pull ups but is also terrified of the potty, the same week that I got one of his tiny, pee soaked socks sucked into the washing machine {for all of you without kids, washing machines and little socks mix about as well as potty training and a broken washing machine}. Trying to pay the bills in a failing economy, working in an unpredictable sometimes hostile {especially on my part} environment that is not getting me any closer to any life dreams or goals. Living in a neighborhood where I am constantly afraid that someone is going to break into my car, especially right now when all they would have to do is cut through the hot pink duct tape holding up my passenger side window. Doing my best to live healthier, even though I have evidently hit that magic age where physical fitness becomes a struggle and now, because drinking until I pass out is probably not the healthiest option, I have to face all of my emotional demons. Honestly, I don’t think my liver is worth it but I can’t afford my habit {see failing economy above} and I am so tired of putting on makeup and being nice to psychotic douchebags just for a few beers{dating}. I have tried using  The Secret but as anyone who has read the book or watched the video knows, visualizing violent revenge on others only brings negativity right back to you. I’m sorry but I just can’t believe that Oprah thinks that positively all of the time. Luckily life usually doesn’t give you much choice but to find humor in one disaster by throwing another one twice as big at you, forcing you to realize that the first one wasn’t all that bad .
I do still have my good days every once in a while. Yesterday happened to be one of them. My children were being angels and we decided to go to the pool for the afternoon. All three of us are water babies, especially when it’s almost 100 degrees with 2000% humidity. I think that our swim times are some of our best times together. No fighting or whining and we are always worn out just enough to enjoy just snuggling and quietly reading stories when we get back home. I was in a really good place. The pool was packed, lots of kids for mine to play with and I had just taken my three year old’s swim vest off. That’s his favorite time because he can’t do his “skater jumps” that apparently impress the teenage girls with it on. So imagine my horror when just as Jackson yells “hey big kids, watch this!” I get shoved in the back by an inner tube holding an obviously deceased elderly woman. I freaked! Silently, of course, I know that screaming bloody murder while hustling my kids out of the pool would only cause trauma and frankly, I can’t afford to start dipping into their therapy fund just yet. I was able to calmly lure my kids out of the water with cookies and convince them that there was a bunny in the woods behind the fence so I could turn their chairs away from the grisly scene. I was shocked that no one had gotten this poor woman out of the pool yet! We don’t have a lifeguard, just a pool attendant {or bouncer depending on the day}, who was napping with a towel over his face so had not been alerted of the problem yet. So, still very calm, I went to let him know hoping that he would realize I had two small children that I had to shield from the severe emotional damage of swimming with a decomposing body and that was the most I was capable of helping. Well, this poor guy, who looks put out every time he has to stand up to get a bee out of the water was mortified. I then realized since this wasn’t something he was going to be able to handle with his net on a ten foot pole that someone else might have to take charge. I casually went back to our table to get my phone to call 911. It was so hard not to scream and run. I was shaking and my heart was racing. I do not handle death well. It’s hard for me to deal with dead bugs much less dead PEOPLE floating around. But like I said there were lots of kids there yesterday and you would be amazed how that nurturing mother thing just automatically kicks in under stressfull situations. I still felt the panic setting in and wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to hold up. I had to get out of there, why couldn’t it start thundering so all of these stupid kids would get out of the pool? They were still jumping around, playing marco polo until one kid with his eyes closed pushed the innertube, hard. I thought for sure that the old woman’s tiny fragile body was just going to slump right through under the water. I froze in terror and felt sick to my stomach imagining the heavy thud of her decaying body as she sunk to the bottom of the pool. But instead of vomiting, my heart totally stopped as her eyes popped open and she sprung out of her float flailing her arms like she was possessed. When it finally occured to me that my brain is the last place the undead are going to go for a snack I realized that, surprise, surprise I once again look like a big nutjob and to top it off my kids have eaten all of the cookies.
So, just a caution to the next dummy who decides to get wasted on a Tuesday afternoon and pass out on a frigging innertube, I’m going to take my friend Meriel’s advice and drown you myself so I don’t look like such a fool.

Sometimes as parents we realize that there are important life lessons in all the little things we do.

Two important things I was able to teach my children without even thinking about it:

1.Don’t draw on your face because mommy is going to forget to wash it off in the mad rush to find two matching socks and you will have to go to school that way.

2.Be sure to give me school reminders, don’t expect me to find them in your backpack or you will be wearing that magic marker warpaint in your school pictures or at your spring concert.

I think I’m a natural at this parenting thing.