Mommy's Messy Life

Well hello again interwebs,

Have a few minutes to yourself? GREAT!  I envy you right now.  So, to make your few minutes of freedom from laundry, toys, and the endless "Mommy I need..." or "Daddy can I..." here's a fun little story about how you're not alone feeling like being a parent is an endless uphill run on a treadmill with no off switch.

Sit down. Relax. Have some coffee. 
Not this one though...
This is MINE!

In 2010 I made the biggest mistake of my life... I relaxed long enough to fall in love and be happy with a great guy.

Alright, that doesn't sound like such a bad thing does it?  Well, it really isn't, until you consider the timing.  I was three-ish years out of college, living just north of NYC, working at an endless corporate nightmare job doing the best I could to make my payments for my loans, and living with this amazing man who I had the vague feeling would not be the kind to continue the cycle of ending it when the honeymoon period was over and he saw the clear crazy I had stored up from a lifetime of work and self esteem issues.  

Seriously though, you cannot imagine how wonderful it was to know that I could trust him not to give me the stink eye for spending a very rare day off in nothing but ratty pajama pants and a sports bra while I swore at the computer and shot digital zombies like my life depended on it.  This man saved me from living in my car when the relationship I had pretty much given up my dreams for failed from a serious lack of personal responsibility on both sides.  And when he was done saving me from that crap-tazm... he went and proved that the guy I had unintentionally friendzoned was actually the person I should have been dating the whole time.

I'm fairly sure I had unknowingly stamped this on his head years before while dating
Mr. I'm-The-Guy-Your-Parents-Want-You-To Bring-Home. 

Yeah, I fell hard, and I relaxed long enough to think "hey, this getting married someday idea might not be a lost cause like I thought".  So we started looking for an apartment closer to my new job and he apparently started cooking up a scheme to propose on what he knew was routinely the worst day of the year in my relationships.  It was a bumpy but fun little ride up until the point when I went to the doctor about the nausea and stomach cramps that had started plaguing my life thinking I had yet another stomach ulcer from my chronic overachiever lifestyle.

While it was honestly far more technical, I'm fairly sure this is how the doctor's answers actually sounded in my head:

Our son's gigantic kicking feet.

"Surprise, there's something living in your uterus!  That birth control you figured was doing the trick doesn't work so well when you expose yourself to certain photo developing chemicals as part of your line of work.  Cool beans though, you're now home to something cute and tiny and vaguely kidney bean shaped.  Here's some pamphlets on how being a human incubator is going to cause you emotional and physical distress at times.  Now off you go so I can see to the next patient."

So there I was, handing the most amazing guy in the world a pee-stick with two lines and praying he would do something other than freak out.  It took him about ten minutes to compose words but he finally was able to tell me he was happy and that we should figure out what we wanted to do from there.  I admit, I had a bit of an explosion in my brain at that point, but once we both had full use of our vocabulary we took the time to decide if we would go through with being parents or explore other options.

Two years later and we're married, and genuinely happy.  We don't have a perfect life by any means.  There are things I would LOVE to have money for, like paying off those school loans I have piled up or maybe getting a professional manicure for the first time in my life... What?  I've just never had the time or money to get one done, don't give me that look!  And no they are not "man hands" thank you.

As I was saying, our life is good but realistic.  The cat or dog or toddler occasionally pee on our bed and routinely take over the couch so I get to sit on the bean bag chair and watch nothing but endless cartoons.  I go to make a sandwich and find out that somebody ate all the damn tuna without telling me to get more while making a shopping list.  The diaper pail still stinks because apparently the toilet is some sort of soul-sucking demon out to eat my child and though he will pee in the bathtub it is impossible to consider using the potty like the rest of the world.

Life is real.  Messy, confusing, wonderful, and very very real.  So, welcome to the insanity.  You're not alone and I invite you to take a few minutes to laugh at the things I share because that is the beauty of being a parent.  You have your own tiny entertainment to provide hours of stories for others to laugh at while you shake your head and clean up the mess.

- Mommy J