A Mom's Life

I'm not sure if I believe in heaven. I'm not a particularly, traditionally religious person so I don't buy into the pearly gates, yet life, this earth, this universe, amazes me. Too many unexplained, serendipitous events happen for us to just turn into worm food after we die. I started having death panic attacks shortly after Andy and I got married. They come on at the most random times, most often when I am driving. I'll be making a mental to-do checklist and -bam! My brain goes blank and I realize, "I'm going to die. I'm going to die!" My can't breathe very well and I feel light headed. I may even start to cry, overwhelmed because I'm so scared and so sad. And then, the moment is over. Just like that, I'm back to life as I know it, whether it's focusing on the road ahead of me or adding to my to-do list. I mentioned these attacks to a friend and she told me I should be thankful to be at a point in my life that I'm not busy...

I wonder what would happen if I decided to stop parenting? No, I don't mean if I ran away, as I've sometimes considered. Rather, what if I stopped being the primary parent? Have you ever heard the Beyonce song, "If I were a boy"? I have to sit back and consider, what would it be like, :If I were a Dad" or more specifically, "If I were Andy". Some critics have suggested that Andy and I are raising free range chicken. I've even agreed that, at times, little Charlotte seems like a baby goat in a pen but that has less to do with our parenting and more to do with her penchant for dropping her food on the floor then picking it up to eat. I really look up to the militaristic parents whose children go to church and don't make a peep, whose children do what they are told before the end a count to five, and whose children are really, truly limited to 30 minutes of screen time a day. I can't even begin to understand how to run a household like ...

****cue sad violin music************ I was at first thinking that perhaps last week's trip to Massachusetts and nearly running out of gas struck a cord with me because I am neurotic and anything such as this can send me into a tizzy. Or, perhaps it is because almost running out of gas and therefore running on "E" is a perfect metaphor for the last year and a half of my life. Having a second kid has been ten times more work than just having one. (I don't care how those with more than two manage, ok?) It didn't help me that I finally got a boss (which I'm actually very thankful for) and some fire under my butt to make our office the best it can be. As all new moms heading back to work, I didn't have the time to think very much about how hard the transition was and what a drain pumping and nursing was on my body. Not to mention battling winter illnesses, being out of the house for 3/4 of the day, sludging through freezing, snowy weather and terrible roads, an...

In our marriage, not only is my casa his casa but mi coche is his coche. We have swapped cars for years and we have so many it's kinda fun to wake up in the morning and decide which car to drive that day. We like to drive old clunkers and spend less than ten grand, preferably two or three thousand max. It also works out nicely when one doesn't start in the morning (happens more often than I'd like) and we just take our bags and bodies out and hop into the next closest vehicle. Our junkyard and sharing system has generally worked well for both of us. I do have an unwritten policy on car sharing that Andy never honors. When one drives a car, especially when the gas tank is near 1/4 tank at the end of the drive, it is that driver's responsibility to do a courtesy fill. It is that driver's responsibility to re-fill the tank so the next driver doesn't have to immediately fill the car before travel. Since we have so very many cars and we drive all over the place all o...