I have always firmly believed that you should put 30 years between you and your kid so that you have enough life experience or something. Of course human biology is like, "f that shiz" and you end up pregnant in your twenties right as your career starts to take off. It's cool, whatever. I was not going to be 'one of those moms' who stayed home. I was going to work and raise my kid and that was the way it was.
And then, once again, human biology was like, "f that shiz" and while my husband happened be out of town (for 10 freakin' days!) and I came down with a serious case of bronchitis. I didn't want to take any time off from work because I wanted to save it unless my kid got sick (hello, priorities!), so instead it escalated to a situation where I infected my entire office with the plague and I had to leave a meeting because I was coughing so hard I almost passed out. I went straight to the doctor, picked up some codeine-laced cough syrup and left my kid with my parents for the next two days while I stayed home in what was pretty much a narcotic induced coma.
Aside from some trippy dreams in which I may or may not have seduced Matthew Mcconaughey, I had some serious revelations. I was not happy where I was. My life was a disaster. I had zero time for my kid or my husband or my dogs and I was visiting Taco Bueno so often that the window guy knew it was me just by my order (vvegetarian black bean burrito, large Diet Coke). And my work was suffering. I'm gonna tout my amazing work ethic here, I pride myself on working my butt off. And I wasn't. I was giving half an effort to my job and even less of an effort to my family. To top it all off, I couldn't get along with ANYONE. And really what is the point of doing a whole bunch of things if you're not going to do a good job at any of them and everyone hates you (and the feeling is mutual). I decided I'd rather fail at being a career woman than fail at being a mother and took the leap into stay-at-home motherhood.
I've been at it a little over a month now, and I must say, I'm doing a bang-up job at this whole domestic house running thing, here are some of the amazing feats of motherhood I've accomplished thus far:
My first ever grease fire! Because, you know, I am the next Julia Child, I decided to make my family a lovely pasta dinner. This started by me warming up a pan with a little olive oil and then promptly forgetting what I was doing because my kid has a fascination with stove knobs and I had to remove him from the situation. When I came back to the task, I poured an entire can diced tomatoes and their juice into that pan and holy thermodynamics we had major combustion. I started screaming "FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!" as I watched the flames leap as high as the ceiling, followed by "WHERE THE F IS MY BAKING SODA?!" My husband calmly walks in, looks at the blaze and says, "Eh, that'll burn out." He was right, it contained itself to the pan and that pasta sauce did turn out lovely, if I do say so myself.
Finding fire extinguishers at Wal-Mart. Is there really any place on earth that is as terrible as Wal-Mart? I think what makes it so bad is that, like death, Sam Walton's big box dream is inevitable. YOU WILL GO TO WAL-MART and YOU WILL SUFFER. This trip in particular started out with the bambino screaming his freakin' head off because he thinks that his 25+ pounds needs to be carried everywhere and to be put in a cart seat is a total insult. Of course everyone in that darn store looked at me like I'm torturing the child and I needed to think fast. I grabbed a JUMBO Push Pop off the shelf and give it to my darling dear and he instantly stopped screaming. I believe in positive reinforcement? Anyway, Push Pops are pretty much the world's greatest vessel for generating/collecting saliva, and combined with the size of the thing and the fact that my kid is composed of 98% drool, we were at turbo speed with this one. The kid was quiet but covered in/leaving a trail of blue goo everywhere. Aside from being paranoid that I was going to get busted for shoplifting as we had not paid for that silencer, I could not find the darn fire extinguishers anywhere. I went through every aisle of that store while my child munched on his unpaid merchandise, finding many many ways to start fires, but none to put them out. I would not give up. Plan B: ask an associate. OH SWEET JESUS TAKE ME NOW. I was directed to camping to automotive to hardware. Finally, taking a chance and heading to what was literally the farthest corner of the the store, beyond the tire department, I found those extinguishers. I picked up two because I didn't know if I'd ever be able to find them again and headed to the check out. The cashier grudgingly scanned the Push Pop with the hand scanner, I think we both knew it would be a disaster if we took it away from the kiddo, and the we got the hell out of there. Worst 2.5 hours of my life. Until the next week...
Locking the kid in the car. I'm told this is a rite of passage and I think I've earned my mommy badge on this one. I was holding my keys in my teeth while buckling the kid into the car seat and I accidentally hit one of the buttons on the remote, and rewarded with a shrill beep. At this point I thought "Ooops! You almost pushed the panic button, better put those keys down." So I threw them on the front seat with my purse and phone, finished buckling in el boyo and slammed his door shut. When I went to open my door, it wouldn't open, it was locked. I had hit "lock" with my teeth. I still had hope. Although I've used the lock function many times, I thought that maybe, this time, it didn't lock ALL the doors and tried in vain to open each door and tired the driver's side door a couple more times, just for good measure. No go. I couldn't get into my house because my house keys were on the key ring that was sitting on the seat of my locked car. My husband had the spare key 30 miles away, and it's not like I could call him because my freakin' phone was in the GD car. At this point I went across the street and asked my neighbor if I could use her phone. I haven't memorized a phone number since 1995, and the only one I knew by heart was my parents. And that is how, on the cusp of 30 years old, I had to have my daddy come rescue me (and his grandchild.) Luckily, my dad has worked with cars his entire life and had not one, but two ways of getting into the car which didn't involve my method of 'throwing a rock through the window.' Luke spent around 20 minutes locked in that car and I'm happy to say that only time he cried through the whole ordeal is when he saw his grandpa and mean ole mommy refused to let him get out and play.
And you know what? I am CRAZY. It would be much easier to stay in my air-conditioned cubicle, doing officey things, avoiding the risk of petty theft/child endangerment, but really, what's the fun in that?
