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This is the first week in 31 months where I’ve had to make myself look presentable before 7 a.m. Three days in a row. And counting. So now you know it’s true: I’ve made the leap back into paid employment.
KidsVT, that esteemed magazine whose editors kindly publish words I’ve written, printed an essay where I did some reflecting. On my life. And the lessons I’ve learned recently. Follow this link to read it: From Working Mom to Stay-at-Home Mom… and Back Again.
To prepare myself for the shock of reentering the workforce, I spent the last 30 days of my “mommy sabbatical” focused not so much on my family but on myself. I hosted and went to mommy coffees, sweated liters of water during Body Combat, lunched out, went skiing, practiced taekwondo, attempted yoga, caught a few shows, ran a 5K, went on a Downton Abbey sleepover, had more than a few alcoholic beverages and otherwise thoroughly enjoyed the company of an amazingly wide circle of women (and a few men) who I am so incredibly fortunate to call “friends.” It was an amazing month. Thank you all!
Oh, don’t worry. I hardly neglected my family. I also made elaborate dinners (a departure from my usual scrounging around in the fridge for edibles), scrubbed the house, hoed out the kids’ rooms and spent quality time with the OINKdaddy. On three Wednesdays in a row, I let Small, Medium and Large play hooky (One child at a time – I’m not totally insane!). We spent our days together doing whatever they wanted to do (snowboarding, arts and crafts and skeet ball – guess who wanted what). We had a ball and I hope they will forever remember our “Mommy Days.”
Because they weren’t just these last three Wednesdays.
My official number for my 5K.... How did they know?
P.S. My last thought for tonight is a plea for help: I need a new slogan for my acronym, OINK. Suggestions welcome! I’m stuck on “Only Idiots have Numerous Kids.” But that isn’t very nice. Even if it might be true…
I’m a good sleeper and I value my bed time. But when I’m stressed or anxious, sleep’s the first thing to go. For a while, I was spontaneously waking every night at 3:13 a.m. After checking the clock, I’d lie there, listening to the dark – too lazy to read. Too lazy to do last night’s dishes. Too lazy to surf the internet. Too lazy to move.
I thought about the kids and the OINKdaddy. I mentally listed things I needed to do around the house and to the house, starting with cleaning the bathrooms and ending with getting the exterior re-sided. I made resolutions and remembered websites I’ve been meaning to visit. I composed pithy posts (which were forgotten by morning) and considered the deeper meaning of life. But mostly, I laid there and wished that I was sleeping.
Was there a root cause to my insomnia? Was I worried about the health and welfare of those nearest and dearest to me? Was I nervous about the half-marathon I was in training for? Was I freaked about testing for my black belt in Taekwondo? It could have been any of those things, but it wasn’t. It was this: I knew I needed to go back to work.
Change is good, or so they say. It’s the transition that sometimes rubs one raw. We’ll see. More on this later. For now, a promise, to you and to myself: I will keep writing.
I hope you’ll keep reading.
P.S. I’ve decided to keep my blog name. “DINKtales” just doesn’t resonate with me and I’m uninterested in attracting the audience who is looking for that kind of tale. Happy new year!
I’m working on a post that explains my long absence but this news couldn’t wait: Johnson and Johnson has issued a formal apology for creating a run on feminine plugs.
I complained about alerted people to this problem in my post, “What’s the Dealio Johnson and Johnson?” last February. I had hoped that someone at J&J would send me a personal response to my fantastically worded email, but I’ll just have to accept their personalized video apology, instead.
Go to O.B. tampons’ website, type in your name, and voila! A good-looking nerd will croon a “triple sorry” just for you. I watched it twice (the Canadian version doesn’t seem to be different from its U.S. sister). You’ll enjoy the white baby grand piano, rose petals and heart tattoos. Hilariously excellent.
Thanks to astute OINKtales readers, Kaki, for forwarding me the link to the apology and Meredith, who recommended I purchase my feminine hygiene products from drugstore.com. You warm my dove surrounded heart!
“Chop, chop, chippity, chop! Cut off the bottom and cut off the top! Whatever’s left, you put in the pot!”
“Hey! Where’d my butt go?”
When was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe? When was it that you couldn’t speak because your body was in paroxysms of G-rated pleasure? When can you recall being so full of joy nothing else in the world mattered except your own happiness?
My children are in that moment, right now.
It’s a beautiful day outside but the two of them are inside, repeating this obnoxious song ad nauseum, talking about their butts, and laughing and laughing and laughing.
They’re about 30 seconds to one minute away from someone having a meltdown but I don’t have the heart to stop their frivolity. They’ll learn all too soon that moments like these are fleeting and precious and that they should enjoy them whenever they can.
I want to laugh so hard I can’t breathe.
Maybe tomorrow? Will that work for you?
Saw the most ridiculous thing this weekend while I was out and about:
Yup. That’s right. Justin Bieber has his own perfume. Eau de stinky, hormone-laced, teenage boy.
As a woman in her mid-thirties, I have to ask: Why?
I don’t get it (and I read Tiger Beat in high school, too). Back in the day, Kirk Cameron, John Stamos and Patrick Swayze knew better than to hawk ladies’ perfumes. The times, oh my, how they’re a changin’.
Trying to understand why anyone would think a baby-faced teenage boy makes for a compelling spokesperson for a women’s fragrance, I watched the promotional video. The female in it, presumably a representative of Someday by Justin Bieber‘s target audience, looks ten years older as well as ten feet taller than Bieber. One spritz and the pubescent-of-the-moment materializes to nuzzle her neck. She dreamily floats into the air on his kisses. With a stiff wind blowing, they awkwardly embrace. At one point, it looks as though he is trying to give her a piggy back ride (I can too pick you up!) and in another she clasps his head to her breast, which comes off less ‘come hither’ and more ‘breastfed infant’. Pantomined ecstasy over and feet on the ground, they exchange a look – puppy dog longing on his part, circumspect assessment on hers.
Someday, he will be old enough to hold her attention without having to pay her for it. Someday, they will look back on this experience and laugh embarrassedly. Someday, he will have a ghost-writer type his memoir wherein he will whine about having lost his youth and innocence in the media circus that is his world.
Contemplating too-big-for-their-britches teenage boys led me to recall the one I met on a cruise ship last fall. I had spent the day at the beach snorkeling, drinking Tequila, para-sailing, drinking Tequila, swimming and laughing with a fantastic group of women most of whom I had met just days before. By the time dinner was over, though, my buzz had worn off and I was grumpy. Instead of going to bed, I went to the dance party on the lido deck where I promptly parked myself on a lounge chair in a prime people-watching position. Within moments, I noticed a tall boy in a red shirt with a white cross. He looked to be around sixteen years old. His shirt proclaimed he was an “Orgasm Donor.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “Look.” I pointed him out to my friend, the ZumbaQueen.
“Oh my God,” she said, cracking up. “That’s terrible!”
“Where are his parents?” I asked, rhetorically. “Do they know he’s wearing a shirt like that?”
We watched him strut among the people at the party, high-fiving his friends and leering at girls and women alike.
“I’m going to call him over,” I said. “That is not okay.”
“Mary!” she admonished me. “Be nice!”
Throwing off my blanket, I waited until his orbit carried him closer. “Honey,” I called to him, crooking a finger. “C’mere.”
He puffed his chest out, pulled his hat more sideways and sauntered over. When he reached me, he leaned down, all bluff and bravado. I smiled at him, looked him dead in the eye and said, “Are you even old enough to shave?”
Someday.
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