You may regret reading this. I'm almost sorry in advance.

I vacillate regularly between feeling like I'm absolutely fucking winning at life and feeling like I am a complete screw-up who does everything wrong.  I remind myself constantly that I'm doing just fine - I'm not in a competition, and if I was, there are people who do things wrong way more often than I do.  The more I talk to the women in my life, the more I realize that we're all the same, experiencing these same crazy thoughts and emotions.  When are we ever going to be "grown up"?  Is that even a real thing, or just some illusory crap we make up when we're little  - maybe growing up really is just a literal thing.  Maybe we just get bigger, not anymore put-together. 

I know that's not true, of course.  I know some people who appear to have their shit together.  Appear to.  It could all be a farce - they all have secrets I'll never know about that cause them secret guilt and angst, I'm certain.  Because we all do, don't we? 

I almost lost my blog.  Again.  That happened once before, years ago, when I was just home from Texas and trying to get my shit together after my divorce.  I talked a lot of shit about my ex-husband in that blog - no lies or vitriol, just flat out facts as I saw them, even the dirty ones - and, well, he didn't care much for that once he found it.  I have a bad habit of using the same passwords, and he had someone hack my shit and delete it.  I didn't have a backup. I'm still really sad about that when I think about it, which is almost never.  I wrote something about my Granny that I'd really like to still have.  And I'd probably like to reread some of that tripe at some point, maybe.  Maybe not.  It'd be nice to have the option to ignore it. 

This time it wasn't that sort of thing.  This time, I had an expired credit card linked to my domain registration, and then couldn't remember the admin username or password to log in and make the necessary updates.  For weeks, I tried every few days to reset the shit, and for weeks, Google returned the same frustrating message: We cannot verify it's you.  WTF Google?  Did you not just send me a fucking message to this fucking account? 

Whatever.  So my domain expired on July 24.  I got a final notice on Wednesday, and so I decided to make one last-ditch attempt, vowing that I'd then call the helpdesk and talk a live person and make them fix my shit.  I'm not sure what different links I clicked on this time, but there in the middle of the screen I saw what I needed: "Your domain name may be (domainadmin@____)".  What the hell, I figured - I went back to the login screen...sure as shit, there it was.  Ta Da! 

And that's the story of how I secured my domain registration at least through 2019.  Goshdang I tell a great story.  :/


 

I should be sleeping.

It's 11:20 p.m.  I've been home from the gym almost an hour.  I'm baking peanut butter cup cookies, drinking a beer, watching Jimi demonstrate his new workout stretchy band things. 

This is not an average night in the Fowler household. 

I keep telling myself, "You'd probably see quicker results from your gym time if you'd stop eating cookies after working out."  But then I reply with, "But I've EARNED these cookies," and it's true so the argument ends until next time and I eat the cookies and swallow every delicious bite of guilt.  We don't discuss the beer anymore - we all know I'm not giving that up. 

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The highs and lows of parenthood continue to surprise the shit out of me regularly.  Three year olds are so moody I find myself cringing at the idea of dealing with this human as she morphs into a hormonal teenager - how will we survive?  She screams and yells and says, "I don't LIKE you!  I don't WANT you!"  She runs to her room and slams the door behind her. She hits her sister when she's not allowed to have a sucker. And then she says something like, "When I grow up, I want to be just like you Mommy, and drive my green car to Old MacDonald's and say, 'May I please have a large coffee with eight creams and sugars?'" and my heart skips a beat and melts and I just adore everything about this little creature we created who is so awesome and adorable.

The baby, the one who isn't a baby anymore, who is going to be two before Thanksgiving - the baby is the sweetest baby in the entire world, with a smile that lights up the room and the shittiest of moods.  Her temperament makes you forget that it's 3 a.m. when she coos and says "Mama!" and giggles when you walk into her room because she still wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse.  Every night.  But she's sweet and so you forgive...until that moment when you don't give her what she wants at the moment she wants it.  Then she becomes a screaming banshee beast who will scratch and claw and bite and cry until you placate her wants and desires. 

That's all before 6 a.m.  Every day.  This shit is not for those with a weak constitution. 

***********

My new job is so fabulous and amazing and wonderful.  I love my job.  I love the people I work with, I love the work I'm doing, I love my boss.  We can take our dogs to work.  My bonus paid my car payment last month.

**********

Now it's after midnight.  I have heartburn.  I need to go to bed. 

Sweet dreams. 

A bad day.

On nights when I'm a bad mom, I hate myself.  When I've not been patient, not counted to four, not taken a breath, not thought before I spoke, not remembered that the person I'm angry with and yelling at is 3 years old and not exactly working with the same toolbox as I...I hate myself. 

tonight's one of those nights, did you guess?

It feels like they've cried for weeks, from the time they get up until the time they go to bed, over everything and nothing all at the same time.  We've been sick for weeks, all of us.  They started a new daycare.  Life is full of challenges to our daily normal lately, and none of us is handling it well but you'd think at least the grownups could manage to not lose their shit.  And we did, for the first week and a half or so.  By Wednesday this week, though, I was over it, and I asked Mom if they would keep the girls for us tonight so that we could just have a break, have a night to sleep.  (They don't do that, either.  They take turns waking up over and over again through the night - cora cries if she doesn't get milkies, Geneva cries if I won't go lay down with her. It's constant musical beds and demands and whining and I'm just so fucking over it.)  There was a meltdown en route to grandma's, though - G was losing her shit at the idea of staying the night away from us, from me specifically.  She's super clingy like that all of a sudden, in the last 4 or 5 days.  I blame the new daycare situation - it's a huge change.  And the fact that she's also felt like crap, right along with the rest of us, that makes for a volatile situation.  So we didn't go to grandma's, we came home.  We had a plan.  Our plan was to transfer the now-sleeping Cora from the car to the bed and then set G up in the living room on her cot with a movie and we could just chill and let her do her thing until she fell asleep.  Cora woke up on the way into the house, because the firefighters out collecting for crusade for children blew their siren and horn as they drove past our driveway as Jimi was getting her out of the car.  Fuckers.  So then I had to try to nurse her to sleep, because she wasn't down with just laying down with Daddy.  She wouldn't go to sleep. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a bad night. It's over.  We made up before we went to sleep, and we both said sorry as soon as we woke up this morning.  I always hate myself when we fight.

Today is a new day.  I'm a better mom today.  So far, at least.  I went to Walgreens first thing and bought some Sudafed - maybe if my face doesn't hurt and I can actually breathe, I'll be able to be a bit more rational and calm when challenged by toddlers. 

Cora is napping.  She's eating everything she can get her hands on today.  Geneva is sitting next to me eating a lemon lime dumdum sucker and playing with playdoh.  We're friends today.  Jimi is watching something on Amazon and trying not to lose his mind, I think.  I encouraged him to get out and go do something without us today if he needs to, because I get it, and I don't want him to kill us all in our sleep.  I think we've both had moments in the last few weeks where we've thought "what the fuck is this hell that I'm in and how can I escape it?"

Parenting is hard, yo.  Somehow, it's still worth it. 

I'm sitting at the beach.

The moon will be coming up soon...i know that because i can see Mars now, and i know the moon follows shortly after in the lower left of my panoramic oceanfront view. 

This is amazing. It's Tuesday. The girls are finally sleeping. Jimi and mom and dad are all in bed. I'm alone on the balcony with a hard root beer trying to suck up every single possible moment of this vacation.   It's been such a long time coming. I'm so thrilled to be here. I dont want to waste a moment. 

The wind is getting cold.  I should get a jacket or blanket or change into pants or something.   I want to go down to the beach and sit in the little chair hut thing dad rented for the week, but I'm a woman so the idea of going somewhere alone and isolated at night is scary.  Have to weigh the potential experience against the possibility of being raped and murdered, just because, you know, I  have a vagina and that's what society has taught me. Ugh. 

I'll probably stay here. Maybe. Still havent seen the moon, but it's coming.

I downloaded a star chart app last night and it scared me.  Maybe because it was red for night mode.  Maybe the bad new age music. Maybe I was a little too high. But i pointed it down, and it showed me constellations on the other side of the world,  in another sky, and it freaked me out and I had to turn that shit off and sit down.  I felt a little dizzy, a little sick to my stomach. It was odd and strange and a little funny.

I wish there was a cigarette lying around out here somewhere.

I've been swimming and lying in the sun and there's more of that on the agenda for tomorrow. Life is sweet.

Full of awesome and vinegar (chips).

I pretty much love everything about life right now.

My husband is awesome.  My kids are awesome. My job is awesome. There's a lot of awesome.  Guys, my kitchen sink is clean.  My husband did that, cleaned up the dinner dishes after he emptied the dishwasher.  I mean, how much better can it get, I ask you?

As low as I was over the holidays, that's as high as I am right now.  I'm weightless.

Except that i tend to eat when I'm happy and im currently close to 20 pounds heavier than I was in October.   D'oh!  Whatevs.  I'm gonna go eat this pie and ice cream and drink a beer and watch zombies.  With my dish-washin' husband.

Fuck yeah.