It's ok to fail. But failure is not an option!

For facks sake, my head is spinning.  One minute we were at the beach trying to decide whether to eat the watermelon now or at dinner, and the next minute I’m careening through the air, having been shot out of a live cannon.  Welcome to the first week of school. 

When I put the kids to bed last night baby darling hugged me and said, “Thank you for being a good girl today.”  That obviously means I stayed on green all day, without once moving my car to the yellow or red portion of the stoplight behavior chart.  This is more than I can say for my beloved mini-me, who is now in first grade and already missed a recess for misbehaving in music.  “He’s nothing like his older brother!” the teacher chuckled.  Lady, I’ve been trying to warn the establishment of this for five years.

I swear to all things that are holy that I will be a good mom this school year.  Which means that I will now embrace the popular bipolar parenting strategy, otherwise known as “ruining my kids.”  This morning after an hour long conversation with the #2 mutha, it was decided that we should write instructions to ourselves on index cards, for handy reference when that first “D” or “F” test is found hidden in the back of the folder. 

Apparently screaming, “Do you want to live in a filthy ditch under the interstate when you grow up?” is not good for the children’s self esteem.  These types of comments should always be followed by the mixed message goodnight tuck-in, which might go something like this:  “Look, so what, you made an F.  You’re an awesome, smart boy.  Everybody loves you.  Try your best and you’ll pull your grade up in no time.  We’ll study together.”  That’s right.  And if you don’t, you can just live with mommy forever.  Who cares?  I’ll be a lonely, cat lady by then anyway.

Getting this stuff right is so hard.  Especially when ‘what is right’ changes every day.  One day you are to push and encourage and demand that they stand out from the pack.  Be the best!  The next day you are to be accepting and allow the child to establish his own personality and identity.  You are to study with them, and teach them good studying habits.  Oh no!  That was last week.  These children are old enough to be responsible for their own lessons.  Studying with them will make them unable to study on their own.  Just take the video games away so they won’t have violent tendencies.  Great!  Now they don’t have any friends and can’t pick up M&Ms because their hand/eye coordination is so horrible.  Feed them whole grains!  That white bread will make them fat and stupid!  Don’t you know anything, moron?  Grains are the devil!  Stop eating all grains.  Try quinoa.  Whoa, whoa, whoa!  I’m sorry I must draw the line with quinoa.  Especially now that I know it’s not even pronounced kwin-o-a.  It’s keen-wa.  Which is why I can never eat it.  Because I’m not saying “keen wa.”  It’s too stupid.

Outside of extreme circumstances, I think I’ll just do what seems best at any given moment, which means flying by the seat of my pants.  My parents didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing…and look at me.  I’m the sanest person I know.

The only thing that’s really easy is loving them.  It’s so easy and natural.  It feels good.  I’m good at it.  Really, really, really good at it.  Being perfect is too hard.  And besides that, it’s confusing.  Trying my best isn’t that hard, so I’ll keep doing that.  Apologizing when I yell out the ‘f’ word and say that thing about living under the interstate isn’t that hard.  I mean, saying sorry is pretty darn easy.  Plus it teaches them that it’s ok to fail.  I’ve failed a lot and I’m still not living under the interstate. 

Guest Post for HotMessMom.com

‘Mernin’ Hot Messes.  It’s Madwoman here.  The Hot Mess is holding a gun to my head, yelling, “Type, type!   Move your fingers, skinny bitch!”

Ahhh.  Just kidding.  I’m here because I’ve got madwoman lurve for her.  When she first asked for a guest post I said, “Are you facking kidding me?  I don’t even post on my own blog anymore?”

And that’s why this is perfect, right?  Since the topic she suggested was “My love/hate relationship with my blog.”  At first, I decided to just ignore her.  But then I got scared she was going to tackle me and punch me in the tit at the MILF March in September.  I know her type.  She would pretend she was just really drunk.  She would blame it on being butt-ass drunk.

So now I’m here to reluctantly tell the secret of why I rarely post to my blog or my Facebook page anymore.  The truth is going to make me sound like some kind of asshole elitist.  But I’m not good at lying and I’m trying to care even less about what people think.  So here it is. 

One random day, I was scrolling through my Madwoman Facebook feed, and I suddenly felt extremely BORED and embarrassed.  A wave of something very uncomfortable washed over me, and for once it wasn’t a boy fart.  Meme after meme after meme about drinking vodka, or drinking coffee, or stupid cats, or stepping on legos rushed before my eyes.  I felt assaulted by the repetitiveness.  Good GAWD people, think of something else.   My eyes are bleeding.  This shit is so overdone.  I scanned the list of blogs on Top Mommy Blogs.  I began to feel very sleepy.  Who reads this tired shit?  What if people read my blog and feel sleepy?  I can’t be just another ‘mommy blog’, in fact, that thought makes my asshole quiver uncomfortably.  So I quickly emailed Top Mommy Blogs to remove my blog from the list and I quietly slithered away.  I swore I was quitting. 

What am I?  What am I even doing?

I started Diary of a Madwomanbecause not very long ago I was a pathetic little lost widow, randomly typing weird shit like “my husband is dead” into google.  I could barely see the screen through my tears, and at the time, I felt like a complete madwoman.  You know what my search returned?  A whole lotta jack.  Nothing!  Dear God, I’m the only one!  I got no muthas.  I can relate to NO ONE.  I’m a freak.  Nobody gets it.  NOBODY FUCKING GETS IT, YA HURD ME??!!

And so I started screaming and bashing my fingers into the keyboard.  And the Diary was born.  It was insanely therapeutic.  Immediately, people started showing up, by the thousands.  One morning I spent about 15 minutes writing “How Not to be an Asshole When You Grow Up” while I sat at my kitchen counter.  Ten thousand people had read it by that afternoon.  Watching that page counter flip numbers in rapid succession was like watching the gas pump, except it was incredibly thrilling!  The truth is, I still didn’t think it was good.  700,000 readers later and these numbers impress me zero.  Because some blogs have two million.  Or four million.  

There are some unwritten rules if you wish to be successful in social media.  Relentless marketing helps.  Other rules involve being politically correct, not cursing too much, not being too opinionated, staying in the middle lane, and accepting the fact that facebook censors. 

Gag me with a Volatile flip flop.

I’m not ok with any of that.  I try to be a middle of the road kind of person, but it harms me and I have reason to believe it might give me cancer.  I’m a ‘push the envelope’ type of girl.  What can I say?  Not everyone appreciates that.

So the Diary is sometimes left waning.  A victim of not being perfect.  “You are not the best Diary, so you shall suffer and be neglected.”  Now scram!  Stupid blog.

But I love writing.  My writing is best when I am not trying to please anyone.  Many times I reluctantly decide that the writing is too scary for you.  Sometimes a whole awesome, touching, raw, emotional and funny yet scathing blog cannot be published because I fear the impact it would have on a single certain person.  It’s various people at various times, depending on the subject.  It could be Dave’s family, or his friends, or maybe my own family.  Many times it’s the pearl clutchers.  I imagine them clutching their pearls and speaking in hushed tones when I breeze past them in a dress that might be showing cleavage.  “Did you read what she wrote?”

I mostly don’t care what people think but I’m also a realist.  I have to live with the ramifications of the published words.  It’s easy to step into my Madwoman alter ego and fling the words around.  It’s harder to press the ‘publish’ button when I see my real name sitting up in the corner.  I kick myself every day that I didn’t do this on the sly.  A pseudonym.  Just some random crazy bitch.  But the story of the kidnapping and robbery on the morning of the funeral would have found me.  Because who the fuck else has that ever happened to?  Where’s my gah damn lottery ticket since I’m apparently this one in a jacktillion kind of person?

The blog neglect is shameful because it causes the blog to be buried deeper and deeper into the sea of words that is the internet.  I do fervently WISH for it to be accessible to those who find themselves where I was that fateful evening….eyes red and swollen, throat burning from screaming, desperate to hear the real truth from a real person speaking real words.  I’m humbled that the serious words have saved lives and changed lives.  And tickled that the comical aspect serves as proof that if you maintain a good attitude and a sense of humor you will never suffer longer than necessary.  Because suffering is for pussies.

Cue the pearl clutching.

Random funny ecard courtesy of The Klonopin Chronicles

 

If It Purrs, RUN!

Welp.  D-Day is behind us. We survived unscathed. I am getting so good at this, and I feel proud of myself. This year, I just simply refused to let it bother me. Refused to get anxious over it. Refused to give it air time.  So take that, universe.  This mutha will not be held hostage by the calendar. We'll see how the next few days go. Sometimes the gods trick me into thinking I’ve escaped their wrath, only to reach down low and grab me by the ankle after I get a few steps away. 

Things were getting sort of monotonous around here, and I also have a strict rule against staying here on D-Day, just in case I suddenly lose my faculties and decide to lie down on the garage floor where he died to practice my crying, choking and screaming. So we booked a last minute vacation to a very overbooked part of the world.  The beach. When I say overbooked I mean that I had the CEO of 15,000 rental properties personally looking for a cancellation.  At 11:08 a.m. I was alerted by one of the futha’s to the very last condo available all the way from Orange Beach, AL to Panama City Beach, FL and by 4:00 p.m. we had toes in the sand.  Don’t ever get in a packing race with me. 

I made several observations at the beach. First of all, some of you men folk still have not read the memo regarding back hair.  Women hate it.  Shave that shaggy shoulder fro. Also, people need to get better tattoos. Getting tattoos is like designing and decorating your home, permanently.  Mostly that’s best left to the professionals. You can’t just throw random shit all over and expect it to look nice.  Also, I was the only woman my age wearing a two piece bikini bathing suit.  This causes me to feel slightly uncomfortable and whorish.  For about 2 seconds. 

I thought a lot about my own fuckups too. Lord knows there are many to choose from involving much more than cosmetic flaws. Where did I go wrong with Dave? What red flags did I ignore?

The very first red flag is kind of funny, and Dave would kick my ass for telling this story if he were alive, but alas, this is what you get when you leave yourself defenseless against a scorned woman who likes to bang her fingers into a keyboard. 

It was very early in our dating. We were both about 30 I guess. He had practically moved in with me from the beginning…not really his stuff but himself. I never asked him to stay or any of that…but I guess it didn’t bother me very much or I would have said something, like please leave.  Anyway, I had plans with friends one night. He wasn’t invited or didn’t want to go, I can’t really remember. So I went out and had a good time and returned home around midnight or one to find his mom running around my house like a chicken with her head cut off. “He spiked a fever!” she is exclaiming in a very fast and nervous tone.  Mind you, he is fucking 30. 

Oh my God. I’m immediately thinking this wussy ass better be dead or dying, or this is really, really a bad sign. First of all, spiked a fever? Who says that? I hate that saying. Please just say he has fever. I quickly ascertained that he was mildly ill with a slight fever. Oh No.  Disastrous.  He has called his mommy.  This is not exactly tough guy material.  No.  This is immediate break up material is what this is! Why is this mother here? Did this kitty cat really call his mom to come over because he didn't feel well? 

She has brought soup, and a thermometer, and he is on the couch, wrapped up in blankets. She is hovering all over him, and I’m extremely alarmed. I’m not alarmed that he is sick. I am alarmed that I think I suddenly hate him. She is talking so fast and I’m working overtime in a rather inebriated state to just block out everything she is saying. I’m catching bits and pieces of the drama. He called…he said you went out….he needed help….he felt so bad. 

I’m pretty sure I just stared at them.  My annoyed stare face is not very subtle.  She finally left and I went to bed and closed the door. In the morning I didn’t ask him how he felt. As soon as he felt better, I think I told him I needed a break and he needed to go home for a while. 

When I tell this story to other women, they laugh like there is no tomorrow. Why is this funny?

I can’t imagine that I didn’t break up with him.  Luckily he had some overriding good traits.  He never knew that one moment was almost a deal breaker. 

Let that be a lesson to you young girls.  And mental note to teach baby darling that once he starts dating he must never call me unless he’s in an ambulance.