Au Naturel

I discover it’s Bloggers Without Makeup Day late on today and am instantly intrigued. An event started by Jodie at Mummy Mayhem, it challenges bloggers to post pictures of themselves makeup free in an effort to expose themselves their true selves to the blogiverse at large. I generally don’t wear much makeup on a daily basis. In the morning after I wash my face I’ll usually pencil in a bit of eye liner to reduce what I call zombie glare. But apart from that I don’t put much effort in to my appearance, also because I’m clueless when it comes to makeup application.

So going without makeup isn’t a stretch for me.

What does wrest me from my comfort zone is the idea of photographing myself. As a mom, I tend to be on the clicking side of the lens, not the flashing side. Part of it is because it’s in my job description to document all moments of cuteness and otherwise, in photographic form. Part of it is also because I hate the way I look in pictures.

But it goes beyond that.

The camera isn’t at fault. It doesn’t skew the way I look. I can’t blame it for darkening circles beneath my eyes, putting creases in my forehead, of peppering my face with subtle acne scars. The lens doesn’t make my lips too thin, or my chin too pointed. That’s my face. And most days, I don’t like it. Sure, I walk around with it, look at people with it, scowl, smile, kiss people with it. But I don’t think about it much, because I’m not crazy about it.

Stupid face.

My insecurities run deep.

Because it’s not my face’s fault either. It is what it is, an amalgamation of genetics and time and experiences that is singularly me. And it’s the only face I have.

And it deserves to be loved.

And appreciated.

It’s my stupid brain that needs a readjustment with a tire iron, for making me insecure and neurotic and an emotional eater.

But I have no problem spewing that truth across the blogiverse, right?

My emotional baggage can suck it.

Enjoy my naked face.

And also a picture of my son and his snake who could not resist being photographed once they realized someone was snapping a flash willy-nilly.

Keeping It Real(ish) Holiday(ish)

Holiday Newsletter – Draft 1

Dear Friends and Family:

We hope the holidays find you all in good spirits and good health.

2008 2009 has been an amazing year for our family.

A fight breaks out in the living room, someone lets out a blood curdling scream, then someone else shouts an insult, this is followed by a series of loud bangs, after which the two feuding parties simultaneously call out MOMMYMOMMYMOMMAMOMMYMOM and barrel in to the computer head first.

After a talking-through-my-teeth mediation I return to my thoughts:

The children are growing and changing every day, showing glimmers of the adults they will one day be. They are always surprising us with their intelligence and insight, engaging us with their humor, and warming our hearts with their compassion.

Gurg. That’s crap.

Holiday Newsletter – Draft 2

Dear Friends and Family:

We hope the holiday season finds you all in good health.

2009 has been a roller coaster a whirlwind a blur an exercise in futility

I sneak a cookie (or two or seven) from the pantry while the kids fight over the Wii controllers, then someone gets clocked in the head with a nunchuk. I think about cooking dinner then put everyone on time-out which prompts a new wave of shrieking and complaining. I lock myself in the garage.

When I come out:

2008 2009 has held both its share of achievements and challenges for all of us.

The dog is whining, there’s a squirrel on the power line.

The teen started high school this year and

Whine, whine, whine, scratch at the door, whine, whine, whine, can’t think.

The tween is learning to play the

Bark, bark, whine, whine, scratch. “Can someone please let that dog out?” Silence from the kids.

The first-grader has joined

Whimper, whine, scratch. “Oh for the love of PETE.” I let the dog out, sit down again.

The three-year-old is

“Waaaaahhh. I play Star Wars. I be Chewbacca. My brother not let me be Chewbacca. Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.”

Holiday Newsletter – Draft 3

Dear Friends and Family:

Please send help. These kids are sucking the life out of me.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

Holiday Newsletter – Draft 4

Dear Friends, Family, and People We Don’t Care Enough to Call on a Regular Basis (Mostly the Last Group):

Happy (Insert Your Holiday of Choice).

We hope you are.

The kids are fabulous. The four of them. We have four.

For those of you who flatter us with the occasional “We don’t know how you do it?” remark when marveling at the size of our brood and our relative sanity, we’d like to say suck it. Is it really that miraculous that our we haven’t lost any of the children to date or that we manage to walk out of the house with shoes on properly?

I suppose it is.

Holiday Newsletter – Draft 5

The Choose Your Own Newsletter Newsletter

Dear (friends) (family) (acquaintances) (complete strangers),

Happy (Christmas) (Hannukah) (Kwanza) (Non-Religious Type Celebration).

We hope you’re well.

Here are some highlights of what 2009 has held.

The teen:

(a) excelled academically in all of her subject areas.

(b) tanked her first quarter of Algebra 2.

(c) became obsessed with a bus riding boy she later threw up on.

(d) both b and c.

The tween:

(a) started middle school.

(b) learned to play the trumpet.

(c) adopted her older sister’s penchant for complex hygiene rituals and incomprehensibly long bathroom times.

(d) all of the above.

The first grader:

(a) joined the Boy Scouts and earned his Bobcat badge.

(b) bashed his head on the edge of an widely ignored exercise bike.

(c) is a breeding ground for cold and flu viruses and a walking talking ball of mucuous.

(d) all of the above.

The three year old:

(a) has successfully learned to use the toilet without hesitation.

(b) can recite Poe’s The Raven from memory.

(c) never throws tantrums during which he produces a series of sounds that can only be described as rabid chimpanzee on crack.

(d) none of the above.

We, their parents, are:

(a) metally and physically exhausted beyond our ability to function on a daily basis.

(b) glassy eyed and suffering from some sort of vitamin deficiency.

(c) hoping to win the lottery so we can ship the kids to boarding school.

(d) who cares?

We hope this letter has brought you much (joy) (indifference) (dread) (irritation).

Much (love) (like) (indifference) (hostility)

Our family.

—–

We don’t do Holiday Newsletters in our family, so I really have no idea what one actually looks like. For this week’s Spin Cycle I took a stab at it, you know, without getting all butcher’s knife – ish.

Care to show us how it’s done? Join the fun?

Crushed Digits and Random Tuesday Thoughts

• We took the kids to see Where the Wild Things are this weekend. It was a good movie overall but not something that really held the younger kids’ attention. It touched upon some of the complexities of childhood and its all-or-nothing emotional states. I almost shed a few tears at the end, but thankfully my youngest climbing in and out of my lap and elbowing me repeatedly in the boob kept those intense feelings at bay. See, I was savvy enough to bring a zip-lock full of Halloween candy, which made it that much easier to keep my cranky, impatient, almost three year old in check, because everyone knows sugar is nature’s sedative. The only positive was. Okay, I’ll get back to you when I think of the positive.

• Candy calories ingested under extreme duress are negligible.

• After the movie we swung by the hardware store to pick up a shower head. My darling son got his finger caught and crushed in a shower stall door while my husband and I debated over pulse settings. The scream that kid let out was brain piercing, employees and customers alike flocked to glare at us while we administered first aid to a still shrieking child and his bloodied index finger. I think at one point a floor manager attempted to make contact with us, but between the noise and the band-aids, he figured he’d be more useful disappearing in to a different aisle, possibly tile or toilets. Smart move hardware store employee.

• Yes my son has full use of his finger. No bones were broken in the making of this random thought.

• An indicator that your children might be playing too many video games is when you’re driving on the highway and one of them begins to shout, “Race, mommy, be in a race.” Then every time you pass another car, they shout “Yay, you won, you beat a level 3 car.” It does make driving a little more fun when there’s that much at stake.

• If you can’t remember eating something, then the calories clearly don’t apply.

• My watch’s Indiglo function isn’t working. How the heck am I supposed to know what time it is in the dark? I need to know what time it is in the dark!

• According to my teenager, who is an expert on everything, boys that don’t have cute faces should not wear skinny jeans. It is some kind of fashion travesty. Please pass this information along to your loved ones. It’s crucial, life altering stuff.

• Also for future reference, a movie based on an old 70s family television series, does not make it by default appropriate for children. Do not assume it’s rated PG when it clearly states PG-13 on the box, when the tiny type under the box says “sexual content and language including a drug reference.”

• In my defense, it did have dinosaurs in it. Luckily for me the kids didn’t get most of the innuendo and so far my youngest has yet to repeat the word asshole in conversation. I know, I’m a bad mother. It keeps me up at night, truly.

—–

Go Random. Go Un-Mom. Go Random. Go Un-Mom.

Angry on the Inside and Random Tuesday Thoughts

• Even though my mother never stated so explicitly, I try to adhere to the general rule of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” So, generally, in my real life, there is a lot of tongue biting occurring when people say thoughtless things or complain unnecessarily or repeatedly or go on and on about themselves and their smart purchases or their glorious vacations or their incredible children who can do extraordinary things to the point they have to repeat every utterance of said child at least seventeen times in a conversation so that your husband has to fake an injury just to get you off the telephone because you’ve got your tongue clamped between your teeth and you’re probably giving yourself an ulcer too…

• Sometimes I reconsider that particular conversation strategy.

• Where the heck does all that venom go? I must have a pocket of it somewhere near my spleen, where it throbs dully and is fit to burst.

• My mother-in-law is a charming individual whom I love dearly, she also sometimes gets me on the telephone for 45 minutes spouting about random things like how people who eat bunny rabbits should be shot or the story about how the cockroach she was going to smash displayed very human- like survival instincts.

• Luckily over the fifteen years I’ve known her I’ve developed somewhat of a coping mechanism. My brain goes into autopilot, my eyes glaze over, and a series of practiced responses are recited at the appropriate lull in conversation. It’s quite restful actually, it’s almost like sleeping with your eyes open.

• It doesn’t work very well on husbands…You’re not even listening to me are you?

• One of my mother-in-law’s brainstorms – paper one-use clothing, to spare oneself the dreaded laundry process. This from a woman who hand washes disposable plates and saves them for future use.

• I only reuse plastic spoons sometimes. That makes me somehow better?

• Is it possible to bite your tongue with your foot in your mouth?

• I love hot coffee. I love iced coffee. But when that last sip of steaming java gets cold in my mug and I try to drink it because I assume it’s still warm, I always have to force myself to choke it down because I find it completely appalling.

• How feuds begin in a middle school science class:

Why didn’t you get the map out? *said with a slight edge of annoyance*

Cause your book bag is on the table. *said with a mild touch of belligerence*

Don’t give me attitude. *stated with moderate agitation*

I’m not giving you attitude. *stated with unrestrained irritation*

Stop yelling at me. *shouted with building animosity*

I’m not yelling, why do you think I’m always yelling. *shouted with deliberate rancor*

I can’t believe you. You’re just like that other girl. She’s totally brainwashed you and now you’re acting just like she does. *hissed with overwhelmed indignation*

What are you even talking about? OMG. F-U. *barked with absolute fury*

F-U. *ditto on the fury*

*The rest of the day spent varying from angry tears to hateful glares across hallways, desktops, and lunch tables. Oh where will it end?*

• Aren’t you glad you’re not in middle school anymore?

Visit Keely, The Un-Mom at the heart of the Random to get a full dose of what Tuesday is all about. Do it. I mean it.

Toilet Non-Humor and Random Tuesday Thoughts

• My apple juice is lumpy. I picked up some Simply Apple at the store today, all looking forward to some wholesome apple goodness in cool liquid form. But when I brought it home and shook it vigorously just like the bottle instructed, I noticed it was full of huge brown chunks of something I’m almost positive I didn’t want sliding down my throat. It might have been decomposed apple chunks, it might have been chicken livers, I just didn’t know. The part of me that wasn’t dry heaving actually wanted to close my eyes and choke it down. I opted for OJ instead.

• Saturday I lost my mind. I recovered it quickly, but not before frightening my children in to a complete and totally silent submission. I suppose insanity has its rewards.

• The reason I went off the deep end involved fecal matter, an overflowed toilet, and flip flops. Really, is there any possible way to keep it together when your bare toesies are getting inundated with dirty crap water? If there is, please, please enlighten me.

• For those of you who don’t know what coming unhinged looks like, it entails a long string of profanities spewed in a combination of shrieks, whines, whispers, and bellows, lasting approximately the 45 minutes it takes said nut-job to disinfect her children’s bathroom.

• Also there might have been some hysterical crying involved every time she caught sight of the lone poop nugget swimming carelessly at the very top of the overfilled bowl. I still say it was mocking me.

• Possibly it was that pair of boxers trapped in the drain that backed up the entire shebang. Possibly it was the fact that my girls use an entire roll of toilet paper in one sitting and still expect the toilet to flush their deposit. Either way it was me elbow deep in human waste and them trying like hell to be invisible. Is it any wonder that by the time I walked out of the bathroom, sweaty and wild-eyed, they had somehow pooled their efforts and cleaned my entire living room top to bottom, even going so far as to light a scented candle and polish the furniture?

• I had five more gray hairs this morning than I did last Friday. I blame the toilet debacle. It makes me think of this song…

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

For less toilet-related nonsense, visit The Un-Mom now. Go, before it’s too late.