feral

so i'm at this glorious stage of parenting that entails school age children...and all their shenanigans. my doctorate in dirty diapers and late night feedings is hanging on the wall in my home office and i am currently working on my masters degree...in being a chauffeur and making lunches. soccer just started last week, so now monday and wednesday nights are filled with that (also saturday games). oh, and irish dance on tuesdays. keeping up with their schedules is a full time job. my kids are 4 and 6...and busier than me. which is really awesome since they don't have their drivers licenses. now look, i know there are other families that have like 234 extracurricular things to do...a lot more than 4 days a week. some of my mom friends are busy 7 (seven!) nights a week with school age children shenanigans. i'm not even mentioning homework, projects, papers that need to be filled out, packing lunches, feeding, bathing, putting them to bed...insert many other child chores here. let me say i have so much more respect for my own parents now in this regard. (kids are a pain in the private parts.) lest us not forget stuff like show and share for carrie on wednesdays and gym sneakers for ella on monday and friday...and also the "special" dress up days and class parties. the list goes on and on. if that sounds like fun then parenting might be for you. here is what our calendar looks like for april:

see the 21st for a quick summary.

most of the time i think i'm on top of my shit as a mom...and most of the time i don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. however, i try to go day by day so i don't lose my shit. so when my kid brought home the most epic fail picture in the history of first grade, i could only laugh. i laughed hard. i laughed so hard that she heard me from the other room and came to ask me what i was laughing about (oh, balls.) i made something else up and i think she bought it, but i did ask what the hell happened to her hair?! for the record, i knew it was picture day that day, but i was only aware of group CLASS pictures. i wrote the $12 check, pulled her hair half up and sent her on her merry way. i even had "picture day" on the calendar. so when a picture that i've named "feral child gone wild in washington DC" showed up...i was a bit taken aback. i did NOT pick that background, it was the "preview" they sent, but when i pulled up the website there were many other backgrounds to choose from that were equally questionable. one of which looked like she just dropped acid and another one where there was a country wagon wheel? my favorite was just a white background that accentuated her wild child hair. but for real...why the hell does it look like she just rolled around in the tall grasses with julio down by the schoolyard!? i have no idea. if you didn't see the pic on social media...here you go:

so anyway, although i don't have babies at home, parenting starts taking all these other turns that no one tells you about. stuff like your kids schedules will trump your own on so many levels, and although it kinda sucks...it's kinda awesome. when ella was out on the soccer field for the first time the other night and i saw her running around, i immediately remembered all the fun times i had on the field as a kid. hell, i was no irish dancer, but seeing her and her sister learn a new jig each week is awesome, too. you start to live vicariously through your kids, and their happiness becomes your own. actually, when you have kids, you own their happiness, their sadness, their joy, and their disappointment. i think that's what's so hard about having kids in the first place. just keeping them alive is enough work...but wondering if you are doing it right is just plain exhausting. you do the best you can with what you have and hope for the best. that's all you can do. oh, and when you get a school picture like the one above, you laugh long and hard about your successes and failures as a parent. i think the most important thing i've learned in the past 7 (WHOA, i'm a PRO) years of parenting is this...don't take yourself too seriously. if you do, you will be caught up in the shenanigans and miss all the fun. sit back like an uber passenger on a friday night and enjoy the ride...cause rastafarian hair in a first grade photo is just the icing on a cake called parenthood. yeah mon!

blood

so yesterday around noon a package arrived on our front porch and warren informed me that it was "a roof rack for his jeep." since we have said "no" to the minivan, when we travel our SUV looks something like a clown car. it's jam packed to the gills with all the stuff we need to take with us...including two kids and a dog. every square inch is utilized and i usually have some type of bag on my lap, under my feet, and inserted in my ass. forget trying to see out the back window out of caution, cause that's not happening either (completely packed). so anyway, he bought this roof rack to strap all our shit and shenanigans to the top of the car. i immediately had visions of our luggage flying all over northbound route 83 as i watched. i literally would not be surprised if a bungie cord snapped and this happened...cause stuff like that happens in our lives often. as my husband pulled all the pieces out of the big box and laid them across our living room, our offspring got to work playing with the magical piece of cardboard. they pretended it was a car, a boat, a coffin...and then began fighting over the plastic stuff (trash) that was inside. they were running like hell around the house screaming about who got more. about a bazillion toys in the house...but let's play with trash (par for the course). my parents, who were coming into town, happened to arrive in the middle of this show.

when they came in the house, parts of the roof rack were all over the floor and there were screws and metal everywhere. the kids were still running and screaming and letting their imaginations run wild with the trash slash box, as my mom and dad looked on. my dad then (shaking his head) disappeared upstairs to the guest room for an afternoon nap, my mom and i decided to take the kids for some frozen yogurt to get them out of the house (and end the screaming). after about an hour in on this project, butch was exasperated..and he was also like missing parts he needed and stuff. so we exited the premises and hopped on over to sweet frog. for some reason, the whole of my town had the same idea and the place was packed. we all made our sundaes and sat down. after a few seconds my phone rang. it was warren. the conversation went as follows. him: uh...you better come home right now. me: huh? him: i accidentally punched myself in the face...i'm bleeding everywhere. me: what?! him: OUR HOUSE LOOKS LIKE A CRIME SCENE YOU BETTER COME HOME RIGHT NOW. me: *head back, unable to breathe, in an ugly laugh with the phone away from my head so he can't hear* him: *hangs up* so my mom is sitting there staring at me and i said (barely able to speak), "so butch just punched himself in the face and we have to go home..." she jumps up, grabs the girls' coats, and rushes out to the car. although i was hoping he was okay, i kept laughing to myself thinking about him sucker punching...himself.

when we arrived back home, my dad was up from his nap...mopping up blood on our hardwood floor. i still hadn't laid eyes on warren, but there was blood on the porch, the couch, and my father was hard at work getting rid of any evidence with some pine sol and hot water. i said, "what the hell happened!?" to which my father started laughing hysterically and could not get his shit together. i said, "who punches themselves in the FACE!?" butch was in the kitchen looking bewildered as i walked around the corner. he had blood up to his elbows, the sink was filled with blood, paper towels stuffed up his nose, blood spatter on the dishwasher, the cabinets...the house really did look like a crime scene. so he then explained what happened...a story that involved a hammer, a screwdriver, and his own fist slipping and smashing into his own nose. when we established he was okay, i started cleaning up the blood that was all over the place. meanwhile, my dad is standing nearby gagging and telling me i missed some near the trashcan. my mom started a friendly game of monopoly with the girls...like this sort of thing is normal and happens all the time. both my parents asked butch if he was on blood thinners because of the magnitude of it all over the place. i replied that i gave birth two times and didn't see that much blood. so after a shower and a trip to the local bar, he seemed back to normal. he kept recapping his moe, larry, curly episode out loud, which would make all of us laugh all over again. laughter keeps us going around here, cause without it we would be lost. remind me of that when our luggage is in full flight all over northbound 83 as i look on. pretty sure i'll be the one punching myself in the face at that point. on purpose.