My seven year old son, Eric hates writing his spelling words three times each, a hateful, mean task I impose because I’m a mean and hateful mother. I loved to spell in grade school and have found I equally enjoy making my children miserable. I know this because they feel the need to tell me anytime I have them do something they don’t want to do. 

Everyone has their burdens to carry… and I carry mine with grace and of course, a sharp tongue.

Tonight, after misspelling ‘multiply’ and ‘fly’ twice, I told Eric to sit down and write his words three times each. Complaining about the cruelty inflicted on him, he sat down and began to write. He came back with his paper and I glanced down at his work.

“Eric, I told you to write your words three times each. You only wrote them twice.”

“No, I didn’t! I wrote them three times!”

I looked at the paper again and saw the words plain as day in rows of only two.

“Eric, I can count! This is only two times each.”

Exasperated, he grabbed the paper and turned it over, exposing each of his spelling words written once. He had wrote his spelling words twice on one side and then very neatly wrote them only once on the other side.

“Why would you do it like that, Eric? To make me crazy?”

Smirking he said, “Crazy. M-O-M. Crazy.”

…but I don’t know many of them ~Sylvia Plath

The other night I had a dream that I looked down at my watch and the glass plate covering the face broke. In horror, I saw the hour hand on my watch fall completely off. The next morning, I googled a dream dictionary to find meaning to this peculiar dream.

Under the subject of watches, I found this brief meaning:

To see or wear a watch in your dream, suggests that you need to be more carefree and spontaneous. You are feeling limited and constrained. 

To see a broken watch in your dream, indicates that you are unsure of your own feelings or how to express yourself. You are experiencing an emotional standstill.

I stared at the words for what seemed to be a very long time. Under my breath, I muttered, “Figures.”

Depression. I read somewhere that nineteen million Americans suffer from depression annually and women are twice as likely to suffer from a bout of depression. Choke on that for a second. I did.

It has only been in the last couple of years that I’ve been so upfront about suffering from depression. There were some good years in which I really believed I had been cured. The reality is you are never really cured from depression. For me, depression is this monster who covers up the real me with it’s dark fangs and gloomy existence. The real me is confident, carefree, and happy. When I’m depressed, I’m sensitive, insecure, and sad. Anxiety takes over and I worry. I cry. I feel guilty because what on earth do I have to be depressed about?

That’s the thing about depression. It doesn’t care. When asked why I’m depressed I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know why I’m depressed. If I did, I wouldn’t be depressed.

I don’t like talking about depression for the main reason it is such a downer. Talk about a buzz kill. Who wants to be around a gloomy depressed person? When you’re depressed, you really don’t care anyway. You want to be alone. When you’re happy again, you don’t want to be reminded of those dark days when the smile was fake and everything you did took serious effort. You don’t want to remember when your mind over analyzed every conversation you had and how you weren’t worthy to be anyone’s friend, wife, and most of all anyone’s mother. It eats away at you. Logically, you are still you. You know better. You know that you are deserving. With depression, knowing isn’t enough.

“Okay, that’s your problem,” a friend told me when I told her I was depressed. “You need to fix it. You have a great husband, great kids and you look good. You’ve got to fix the problem.”

Despite the harshness of her words, she was completely right. I had to make the effort. Faking through life wasn’t working for me. It was just working for everyone else. How I’m doing it…well, it is personal. Importantly, I move forward everyday. No matter what. It isn’t because I’m this big martyr…because believe me, there are these days when the darkness of my bedroom seems so safe and the world is this big scary place. I move forward because life itself is wonderful. I have to get out and LIVE. I can’t let depression stop me.

The truth is I’m really happy. I’m just waiting for the time when I can savor the feelings that happiness brings. It’s there… I see it in my children’s faces, in my husband’s touch, in my real friends’ laughter… and it is those things amongst a million and one things combined that I know depression will never win.

I have always had this strange addiction to coloring my hair. It started when I was fifteen. I remember it fondly, because I was traveling to New York with my sister to visit our Hispanic relatives. Feeling my lighter hair didn’t give me enough ethnicity to fit in with the Latino relatives, I dyed my hair black. In my mind, I thought darker hair would make me look more Puerto-Rican and less like a white girl from Alabama with a thick southern accent. 

I’ve always been a dreamer… OKAY. The result only made me look more white and less likely to be mistaken for Jennifer Lopez… which took a long time to get over, let me tell you.

Turning thirty was a milestone. Not because I’m afraid of growing old as it beats the alternative, but changing my look is fun for me. I like to switch it up a bit. For instance, in my teens I was known for the jet black hair and heavy eyeliner. Late teens, early twenties, I was a redhead. There was also a huge gap in my twenties in which I was completely ambitious with my look and went for the heavy pregnant/nursing mother persona. That was such a cool look. It always got me first in line for the bathroom at the mall and at any grocery store deli. 

I miss those times.

At any rate, I decided it was time to go lighter. I’ve been contemplating this for a while now and decided to just do it.

I went all blonde ambition.

The result?

Being able to strike silly poses and totally getting away with it.

At a co-worker’s baby shower breakfast on Friday, I found myself a little disturbed as the discussion turned to childbirth. While I’m very much for a woman deciding what is best for her body, I do not support scheduled C-Sections or scheduled induction of labor for convenient purposes. Have we become so anal about planning every aspect of our lives that we can’t just let our babies come when they’re ready? It doesn’t make sense to me. I am still appalled and a tad bit disgusted with the woman who decided to get induced so her husband wouldn’t miss a football game. One of the many jobs of a parent is sacrifice and putting your child before any selfish recreational activities you enjoyed pre-parent. Yet, before the child is born, parents are already forgetting this important and crucial rule.

I don’t get it. Of course, I’m saying all of this without an eight pound baby in my belly. It is easy for me to go on a rant. I remember being pregnant and telling my doctor or midwife to do something. ANYTHING. But they should stop whatever it was they were doing and make the baby come out NOW. I was feeling uncomfortable and had bouts of paranoia. There is something that happens to a woman’s logic while pregnant. When my son dropped so rapidly, I felt like his head was just dangling between my legs. This scared me. I called my midwife to see if it was okay if I sat down. I thought maybe I would have to stand till I gave birth… because if I sat down? Well, I would decapitate my son. When the midwife stopped laughing, she very kindly told me decapitation by sitting down was the least of my worries.

She was right. People have told me I am overprotective of my children. I don’t think my husband and I are overprotective as much as we are aware. The world is very different than it was twenty years ago. In this day and age, a little extra supervision just makes sense. That doesn’t mean our children always appreciate it. In fact, rarely do any of my children come up to me and say, “Mom, I appreciate you telling me what to do and watching my every move. I feel so safe and secure when you sneak in my room at night to check if I’m still breathing. Thank-You.”  In fact, my kids will sometimes debate with me on my reasoning for denying their requests.

When I refused to allow my seven year old to catapult his five year old brother down the stairs and onto a sofa cushion, I was called mean. “You just don’t get it, Mom! GRAVITY will cause him to come down. He isn’t going to just stay up in the air!”

Parenting isn’t always logical. Believe me. I know.

I worry about parents who start off so early making decisions as scheduled inductions and C-sections NOT based on medical advice, but for their own convenience. Parenting isn’t supposed to be convenient. If it were, all of us Moms and Dads wouldn’t look so… zombie like those first few years. If parenting was a convenience, we wouldn’t need Wiggles. Or Barney. Or that whiny little brat Elmo.

The reality of parenting is simple: Things happen. The important meeting you planned and worried about for weeks? Well, there will be times when you have to leave meetings because the school called and your child is sick. Or he jumped off the jungle gym to fly like Superman. Being a parent is almost like flying by the seat of your pants. You just never know.

Parenting. It is exasperating. It is exhausting. It is hard. Yet, is also rewarding, fun, and  very exciting.

When my kids’ can’t grasp my logic and I can’t grasp theirs, I sometimes have to get old school and shout, “BECAUSE I TOLD YOU SO!” Life in my house can become a circus. When this happens, I think of my son’s argument about gravity. I like to think that is what will happen in my household. When the chaotic debris of utter insanity is everywhere in our house, I think that maybe gravity or just divine intervention will take place and calm life again.

And if it doesn’t? Well, there is always tequila.

I did survive the fast, but I only made it to Day 6. I will be doing it again… and I still recommend it. I will say that if you are a female, I suggest you don’t do it the week before your period. Trust me!  Ian only made it to Day 2 because beer and sushi were calling his name.

Last week, I had decided to spice up the romance department in my marriage by greeting my husband in my wedding dress. This was cute in theory and I totally deserve props for thinking of it. I made sure the kids had a movie to watch and told Ian to come to the room when he got home. As he locked the door and turned to face me, we began to hear the pitter patter of little feet, followed by loud banging upon our door.

Ian looked at me and asked, “Is there like something that triggers in their ear that lets them know we’re about to have sex and they must stop whatever it is they’re doing to disturb us?”

I didn’t answer him, but firmly asked the kids what was it they wanted.

“Uh, Mom? Dad?” This was Eric, the seven year old. “Did you know the door is locked? Did you know?”

“I want to come in!” That was Eden Marie. “I want to watch Dora on the ‘puter. PLEASE.”

Jacob remained silent. We would learn later that he just decided to take a nap. Right outside our door… as you do. Camp out behind the lock door. Fall asleep. Completely normal.

Realizing that nothing was going to happen, I took off the dress, put back on my regular clothes and winked at my husband.

When I opened the door, Eden Marie grabbed my legs and moaned, “MOMMY!! You’re okay!”

I believe God makes our children cute on purpose. For reasons too obvious to explain.