Armageddon Calling

It was only the second time we’d been left home alone. At eleven, I was the oldest and charged with keeping my seven year old sister from setting the house on fire.

My grandparents had been specific. “Don’t use the stove. Don’t open the door to strangers.”

I’d already banned my sister from setting foot in the kitchen, but the woman at the door was another matter altogether.

She wasn’t a stranger exactly.

I had to stand on the sofa to see her through the open jalousie windows, but I recognized her immediately. I’d seen her air kiss my mother countless Sundays following services at the church we’d attended. Her name was Eva and I’d always been fascinated by her drawn on eyebrows. They arched comically above her teal shadowed eyes so that she always looked a little startled.

She smiled up at me from the front porch.

“My mother isn’t here,” I told her through the screen.

“It’s okay. Can I talk to your grandmother?”

I hesitated. At school, we’d been taught to lie, pretend a responsible adult was just a shout away, rinsing the shampoo out of their hair or making a quick deposit at the porcelain bank. But I was a terrible liar.

“She’s at the grocery store.”

“Ah. I understand. I don’t want to come inside, but I’d like to leave some magazines with you for your mom.”

I glanced down at my sister, who was shaking her head and mouthing no. I rolled my eyes as I hopped off the furniture then brushed past her to unlock the door. What did she know? She was seven. But already my stomach was squirming with doubt.

Eva stood in the doorway grinning, her eyebrows perfect semicircles, a stack of pamphlets held out at me. She wasn’t as tall as she was wide, her bulk filling the frame as she closed in on me. I could barely see her teenage daughter standing behind her, only her acne ridden face looming just past her mother’s rounded shoulder.

“How old are you now?” she asked me as I reached out for the reading material.

“Eleven.”

“You’re old enough to know what your mother is doing is wrong, aren’t you?”

She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her eyes were grave, her brows not so much.

“It’s your responsibility to save your family from what’s coming. Understand? When God brings Armageddon, just like it says in the Bible.”

I stared at her blankly.

For fifteen interminable minutes she spoke to me about The End. How life as we knew it would crumble, how the dead would rot in the streets, how the living would inherit paradise on Earth. Only after they cleaned up the rancid carcasses of a sinful populace, of course.

I sobbed, envisioning in brilliant detail the carnage of God’s wrath. I knew it was too late for us. My mother had already traded our salvation for the nightclub scene, for Long Island Iced Teas and singles’ nights. Instead of the modest knee length skirts she wore while door to door preaching, her closet consisted solely of slinky mini dresses and skin tight jeans she paired with staggeringly high heels.

We were doomed. Who would listen to me? How would I even begin?

Later, when I described the incidence to my mother, my words were disjointed, the imagery jumbled by a child’s frightened memory.

My mother was unfazed. It was Saturday night after all.

But I carried Armageddon with me.

Despite having no desire to return to the church, I came to accept the end of the world as an eventuality. It colored my existence with a gray ambiguity. I probably wouldn’t attend middle school because the apocalypse would swoop in before then. I didn’t expect to start high school in 1990 because the end of the world was penciled in somewhere before then on my calendar.

Going to college? Getting married? Growing old? I couldn’t see that far ahead. I couldn’t comprehend a future past tomorrow. Maybe next week. Existence seemed temporary, fluid, uncertain.

Even now, when my husband plans for retirement, I shrug. Sure. Plan. We’ll see.

But I have children, so there’s a strange duplicity to my thinking. I can’t imagine their end. My sanity hinges on their safety, their health, their long and winding futures, things that are not guaranteed.

Because there are no guarantees.

There’s always an apocalypse somewhere.

This post was written in response to a memoir prompt at The Red Dress Club. The instructions were to mine our childhood memories, although I don’t think I struck gold, I was surprised at how vivid some of this still is. Those eyebrows in particular.

Use It or Lose It

 

 

Inspiration strikes at the sink, while I’m running the hot water over an egg white encrusted pan.

In my head, the words tumble generously one after the other as I compose an entire essay in the time it takes the steam to rise.

I’ve got to write this down, I think to myself.

My youngest has his little paws wrapped around a hard-boiled egg, engrossed in an episode of Sesame Street that’s just started. I have until Elmo’s World to make the most of the quiet.

I jog over to the laptop in my bedroom and turn it on, which takes the idiot, overloaded machine ages to do, whirring and stopping and sparking and smoking as it does.

In the garage, the laundry buzzer goes off. I’ve got time to transfer wet clothes to the dryer, dirty to the washer, while the computer resuscitates itself in my absence.

On the way back, I notice the coffee table needs polishing. Desperately. Life hangs in the balance. My children’s future depends solely on my ability to scrape chocolate ice-cream off the splintering wood and buffing the dogged furniture to a glossy sheen.

And if I’m going to whip out the polish for the coffee table, by God, I ought to do the table by the front door, which is streaky with handprints on which a thin layer of dust clings.

So polish polish polish I do.

Then the computer is on, finally, so I settle on my bed, flip my shoes off and cross my legs at the ankle. The laptop is resting comfortably where it belongs when I notice the comforter, uneven and wrinkled, bunched weirdly underneath my thighs. Also my skull is resting awkwardly against the headboard. My neck aches. I’m far too reclined, not poised to write but nap-ready, lethargic, apathy ridden.

Then the boy is done with the egg, he’s licked even the salt remnants from the plate.

I bring the computer to the dinner table. I leave the bed smooth and sit upright in a straight backed chair.

I open Word to begin typing, except the dog is at the door wanting to come in.

Then the dog is at the door wanting to go out.

Then the stupid dog is at the door again wanting to come in because obviously this is some elaborate game where he makes a mental tally of how many times he can get me out of my seat with extra points for profanity and volumes only dogs can hear in the first place.

I can hear the ice machine drop half-moon cubes in to the bin.

I can hear the water filling the tray again.

There’s a lawnmower outside.

Elmo’s World begins, sparking an earsplitting rant from my boy who is adamant about NOT watching it for some unknown reason that has nothing to do with Elmo’s high-pitched chatter.

The boy wants to play. With me. He wants to know what he got for his last birthday. He wants to know when his next birthday is. He wants to tell me what toy to buy him for his next birthday. And when is it again? Soon? When exactly is December anyway?

The words are simply gone.

But these are all excuses, aren’t they?

I need to just remember how to use a fucking pencil.

 

 

Now That Doesn’t Look Awful, Does It?

I might have been feeling just a little cocky.

A few weeks ago I gave my youngest a very basic trim. The results far exceeded my expectations. Armed with only scissors and a comb I went at the boy’s head with reckless abandon.

I made him looked like a rock star. He didn’t even bleed once. It was magical.

So, of course I leapt to the conclusion that I was some kind of hair styling prodigy who could attack anyone’s scalp with a pair of shears and the outcome would be artistic genius fit for the cover of Cosmo or some other magazine that features small boys with bowl haircuts on its cover.

After last week’s school supply shopping spend-a-thon, I thought I would alleviate some of the end of month financial turmoil by saving on haircuts and styling all of the children myself. Except for the teen of course, who would rather give herself a crew cut with a set of dog clippers before letting me have a go at her locks. She is contrary that way.

I set my sights instead on my darling preteen and the two boys, both of which resembled George and Ringo respectively.

“You’re all getting haircuts today,” I declared, thinking if I botched the whole endeavor I could at least run them over to the Hair Cuttery for some clean-up work before they had to endure the public humiliation of attending the first day of school in a lopsided mullet.

Believing I’m capable is always my first mistake.

Yesterday, I wrongly assumed I could navigate a Super Target by myself with all four kids in tow. Stand over here. Stay with me. One hand on the cart. Stop touching each other. Stop shouting. Hand on the cart. Get back here. I can’t see you. Stop crying. Hand on the cart hand on the motherloving cart for the love of Jeezus just stop touching each other for one flapping minute.

I somehow managed not to fling myself in to oncoming traffic, so I will consider that a success.

Today I began with my daughter, whose thick brown hair reached almost all the way down to her waist.

“Not too short, Mom. Please, I don’t want it at my shoulders, okay? I like it long. OKAY?”

Possibly she was a little panicked. She also hates having her hair combed, so for ten grueling minutes I tugged while she howled in blood curdling agony.

Did I mention we were working out on the back patio, which was registering 98 degrees in the shade? The sweat glued my shirt to my back while trickles of sweat ran down my chest.

Then the fun began. I separated her hair in sections and managed to cut most of it in a straight line, then taking some advice from a neighbor I attempted to layer the front, which licensed hair stylists manage to make look rather effortless.

It’s not. Especially if your subject keeps slouching and reaching up to touch her own hair to make sure it’s still there. Or you’ve been measuring for so long that the hair starts to dry and one side is always longer than the other then the hair from the back which seemed okay at first keeps falling naturally forward so that everything is cut at drastically different lengths and looks like maybe it was hacked on by a blind person.

I mentioned how sweaty I was, right?

“I think I’m going to have to shorten the back more.”

Cringe. Gasp. Groan.

“But whyyyyyyyyy?”

“I messed up, I need this to be even with that.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghh.”

It ended up being three inches past her shoulders but two inches shorter than where she initially wanted. It looked okay…meaning rather than seem like a blind person styled her, it only seems like a near-sighted person did.

Then I drank five gallons of ice water and went to work on the boys, who are younger and much more fidgety. They also flinch like I’m going to snip off their ear lobes, or maybe pop one of their eyeballs out with the tip of the shears.

For another hour I snipped, sweat, and readjusted heads while they whined and squirmed. The hot breeze continually blew their cut hair on to me where it stuck to the perspiration on every square inch of exposed skin. To the roofers installing barrel tile on the back neighbor’s house, I must have looked like some kind of hair obsessed heroin junkie, as I circled the boys with scissors aloft, my head cocked at varying angles, a dirty comb in my mouth as I scratched obsessively at my neck and arms, barking orders at my whimpering kids and emitting my own guttural sounds of frustration.

They actually don’t look that bad.

My seven year old looks a bit like Justin Bieber.

My three year old…well, he’s a little lopsided but it’s not a mullet plus he’s not going to school on Monday so it’s alright.

Nobody ended up bald, so I’ll consider that a success.

Ever attempted a job you were woefully unprepared for?

—–

And per Mama Badger’s request, some photographic evidence.

Yes, he does have giant hands, also he’s being a superhero right now and can’t be bothered to pose.

His hair style strategy: head bang for 30 seconds. Done.

She definitely does not have a mullet. Score!

A Weekend of Firsts?

In less than a week, I will be flying for the first time ever.

I once worked an aircraft maintenance facility and my coworkers, recognizing the novelty that I’d never seen the inside of an airplane, would occasionally take me up to look around the cabin and cockpit while it was parked in the hangar. I was never really impressed. It looked just like it did in the movies. Also it wasn’t hurtling through the air, suspended by nothing but science, like the aerodynamic flying brick the mechanics joked that it was, so there was little to be apprehensive about.

I’m not scared to fly, mind you. I’ve just never had the opportunity. But for a while I believed that perhaps since I’d never flown, maybe it was a sign that I never should. There’s a song somewhere about that, isn’t there?

I’m not married to that superstition though. So next Thursday, I will ditch my family and board a plane by myself, with a note pinned to my tee-shirt, and pray to God we land safely in New York.

This is another first.

Gawrsh. I’ve never been to the big city.

Okay, I lie. I live in a big city. This is just a different big city.

Also, I’m leaving my family for an entire weekend. I don’t know how they’ll get along without me.

Actually, I suspect they will get along without me just fine. They will live and get fed and fight and play and sleep, just all without me. I will miss it and they will forget all about me and possibly adopt a new mother in the time that I’m hurtling through the air to a big, scary city where angry strangers with unhinging jaws are just waiting to swallow me up whole.

Sigh.

It’s going to be my first time at BlogHer too. This is perhaps the scariest of all. Because me? I am not anything resembling a social butterfly, I’m more of a clumsy wall clinging moth. Also, meeting people causes the lining of my stomach to attack itself. The neurosis kicks in to overtime as I nitpick and harangue myself over a slew of features and flaws I have no control over. “Gah! What were you thinking leaving the house with that face, for the love of Jeezus, why have you not eliminated that doozy of a gut that is completely impossible to camouflage? Also, your personality, you should do something about that! Oh God, your feet are disturbingly small. Go home, freak!”

I’ll be okay. Luckily I can fake normal pretty well. But sometimes, just so you know, my brain is screaming.

Already, my brain is screaming.

I’m going though.

I’m going.

—–

The Spin Cycle is back.

Booya.

 

Stop Drowning on My Watch, Dammit

My youngest wears water wings to the pool, a pair of giant Speedo arm bands that keep him comfortably above the surface of the water, moving around the perimeter of the pool at something akin to a slow underwater jog. They’re incredibly useful and have given him a certain amount of confidence in the water…they’ve also made me a little complacent.

Recently we’ve started spending late afternoons at a friend’s community pool, killing the latter part of the day with a nice cool dip that serves the dual purpose of burning that last surge of kid energy before dinner and bed.

Me, the four kids, my friend, and her one.

I’m a head counter by nature, having four children of varying swimming abilities, I like to make sure none of them have sunk to the pool floor like the little stones they are. So I count as we chat, routinely scanning the pool for every single head.

Blah blah blah, onetwothreefour.

Blah blah blah, onetwothreefour.

The difficulty arises when the kids (and the friend) all want my attention at the same time. “Look at me!” they cry. “Listen to this!” she insists. I thought I could manage both pretty well. I was wrong.

Last Wednesday, as we did the usual, my youngest and her son who are very close in age, were playing on the steps that led down in to the water in the shallow end. My son had his floaties on and was safely bobbing along right around the time my seven year old begged me to toss him overhead in to the water. I obliged, my friend gabbed on. This all occurred in a span of maybe 30 seconds. When I looked back to my youngest for a head count, I realized that I couldn’t see him anymore, he wasn’t on the stairs. Instead he was just off of them, which would’ve been fine because his arm bands keep him afloat, except my friend’s son (we’ll call him, Bruiser) had gripped my son around the shoulders and was pushing/pulling him under. All I could make out of my baby was the top of his head and his two TERRIFIED eyeballs, rolling around in their sockets, while his open mouth and nose were beneath the water.

“He’s drowning! Bruiser is drowning him!” I shouted, launching myself the two feet across to the boys and lifting my son up out of the water, at which point the open mouth screaming he’d been doing under the surface became an ear piercing shriek of panic and horror, punctuated by coughing and the occasional water logged burp.

I don’t think anything has ever made me feel more inept at parenting than knowing my son was terrified and drowning while I had my back turned. A close second would be when I accidentally slammed the car door on my daughter’s hand. As I held my three-year-old to my chest, I felt on the verge of tears myself.

“It’s okay,” I tried to tell him, as he clung to me, “you’re okay.”

“He’s fine,” I assured my friend, “it was an accident.”

I honestly wasn’t okay or fine. I was a little rattled. Minutes earlier the boys had been fighting over a pair of goggles. Bruiser had put my son in a headlock just outside of the pool and I’d had to pry them apart. Only minutes before that, I’d gone to the bathroom and left them all in the water with my less than attentive friend and her high-spirited son.

I felt like an idiot. I should’ve been watching. It could’ve been so much worse.

Days later I dropped the boys off at swim class with my husband who has been taking the parent/child aquatics with our youngest. Usually I stay and observe poolside, but we had family coming over and I needed foodstuffs from the grocery store. As I drove away I had a twinge of fear, something could happen while I wasn’t there, robbed of my vigilance the potential for tragedy seemed exponentially greater. It was irrational but compelling, a ballooning fear that threatened to send me racing back to the pool, possibly launching me in to the water fully clothed, purse and car keys in hand.

Instead I bit the inside of my cheek and pushed on, did groceries, filled the gas tank, dropped the perishables off at the house, and returned to the pool almost an hour later.

“Hey,” the instructor called out to me, “you missed it, your youngest jumped off the diving board like five times!”

As I stood at the fence, my baby did a last hop in for my benefit, right in to his father’s arms.

I whooped from across the pool, clapping.

“And I taught your seven year old the back stroke,” the instructor continued. He called out to my older son, who had been jumping in to the 9 ft end of the pool from the diving board all morning, and told him to demonstrate his newfound skill.

My son, brave and confident, jumped in at 5 ft and pushed off on his back, kicking and using his arms until he was in the middle of the pool, then rolled over on to his stomach…and lost his bearings completely. I could see him struggle as he tried to remember what to do, he couldn’t reach the bottom, but as the panic swept over him, he couldn’t remember to put his face in the water and kick to make his way to the edge.

“Swim!” I called out to him. “Face in the water and swim!”

His response as he flailed – “HELP!”

The instructor and the other life guards hesitated for a fraction of a moment before they sprung in to action, diving in like they were trained with their sweats, shoes and sunglasses still on, to rescue my son from the far end of the pool.

He was trembling by the time they pulled him to the edge.

“You’re alright, man, you just panicked.”

I’d been close to diving in myself. He’d had that same look of terror and dismay his younger brother had worn only days before. It made me nauseous. Yes, my children were fine. Yes, every safety measure in place had insured that. No, a little pool water never hurt anyone. But those little scares come too close to the very real fears that bury their claws in to every parent’s psyche, these terrible, awful things that we worry about, and metaphorically wring our hands over, and pray that we’ll never ever know what it’s like.

Those things happen in a blink.

In those moments when you think everything is fine.

Usually everything is.

I’m glad everything is.

Yet I think this week, maybe we’ll take a break from the pool and I’ll set up the Slip n’ Slide instead.

Although I suppose the chances for a head injury or internal bleeding are significantly higher.

I hope they don’t mind being duct taped to the sofa, while I smother my anxiety in chocolate ice-cream. We’ll play the quiet game, it’ll be great.

Because This Started Off Being About Clutter

We tend to get roaches during the summer months, particularly after a heavy rain. I find them occasionally, crawling at a leisurely pace while they examine the snack food remains strewn about the house like a fantastic buggy smorgasbord.

Last week there was one lounging in the kids’ bathroom shower on a day my husband was on shift, which meant I alone was responsible for its execution. The process was further complicated by its sudden flight as it unfurled its delicate wings and hurled itself toward my head. MY HEAD! Because clearly that cockroach had developed a taste for human flesh and my face meat was on the menu. After fifteen minutes of shrieking and ten more of spraying the offending critter with kill-on-contact murder juice (which coincidentally doesn’t as much kill on contact as it does kill after many repeated applications), I finally summoned the courage to crush it underfoot, flush it, then lay down on the floor until my heart could resume its normal tempo.

Days later we detected roach feces in our kitchen cabinets.

Of course.

Because if you see one brazen roach sauntering through your living room in broad daylight, that can only mean that hoards of his wizened kin are lurking in every darkened recess your home has to offer.

So we resolved to empty all our cabinets, discard some of the clutter, and spray poison in every accessible nook and cranny.

I don’t personally consider myself a hoarder. I’m more of a squirrel. I don’t like to see piles of things obstructing surfaces. I like to tuck things away in drawers, closets, and on shelves, where I promptly forget about them. Once they start to spill over in to common areas, I know I have to take stock and throw stuff away but it’s not a chore I particularly enjoy.

It creates a certain amount of anxiety, peering in to a crowded drawer and knowing I have to make decisions. Some are easy. Functional things like screwdrivers and working flashlights, scissors and batteries. I know I need these things. They have a purpose.

Others are more ambiguous. Clothes pins can be used to clip pretzel bags shut, but if I never see them and never use them, do they even technically exist.

The worst of it was my nightstand. Clearing aside a stack of graphic novels and scanning that low, rarely examined shelf, I realized that I do hoard something. I hoard writing books.

I have seventeen different titles altogether, expounding on the creative writing process, offering an abundance of exercises, providing tips to jumpstart creativity, advice on polishing your manuscript, guidelines for getting published.

I’ve never read a single one of them all the way through.

Each represents a very specific spark of hope that I am clearly addicted to. I purchase these books because they are accompanied by the possibility that this publication will change my life. This book might be the one to finally inspire me to write the staggering literary masterpiece which will at last elevate me from my stay-at-home mom, college drop-out, sporadic blogger status to that of acclaimed published author.

Take that absentee dad who predicted I’d end up an unwed teenage mom.

Take that high school peers who think your Masters degree makes you better than me.

Take that unrelenting insecurities and defeatist mentality.

I beat you all.

Except I never even begin. I barely make it out of the gate because the reality is too daunting, the risk of failure far too high. Those unrelenting insecurities inevitably adopt the voice of my absentee father and high school peers then proceed to beat me about the face and neck with their stacks of post secondary degree certificates.

It makes it difficult to focus.

Also, I think I might need therapy.

Because this post started out being about cockroaches and junk drawers and suddenly I have the overwhelming urge to log on to Amazon and run a search for “1,001 Writing Prompts to Help You Overcome Your Neurosis and Draw From the Untapped Well of Your Literary Genius”.

Someone should write that book.

Swim, Little Fish, but Tell Mom to Keep Her Shirt On

About a month ago my three year old and I registered for a Parent & Child Aquatics class at the local swimming pool. Last Saturday was our first lesson together.

We were running a couple of minutes behind schedule despite my hustle, and as I approached the pool, already apprehensive about shedding my outer layers before a throng of previously immersed moms, it slowly dawned on me that there were no other parents in the pool. A group of more experienced kids were swimming laps, several fully clothed adults were sitting poolside, but the only other people in swim suits were tanned, sculpted and very young swim instructors.

I felt a little sick.

We approached the office to ask if we were mixed up about the start date and they knew my son’s name right off the bat. They were expecting us.

“Yes,” the office manager said, scrutinizing her list, “you guys are the only ones in the class.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.”

Just dandy.

Our personal instructor Joey, hopped easily in to the pool and looked at us expectantly. My darling son, slipped out of his sandals and looked at me expectantly. Behind me, at least five other conveniently dressed parents watched the scene unfold expectantly. From the pool office, even the other instructors now stood at the door watching and waiting.

I had an audience.

Awesome.

I took a deep breath, peeled off the skirt that was a little too tight at my waist, slipped off the flowered shirt which was more outdated than I cared to admit, crossed my arms over my chest like a petulant child and stomped my way toward the pool, wondering why I hadn’t opted for a wet suit instead of my several years old tankini which was not only unflattering but really, really unflattering. It clung to bulges, exposed dimpled skin, puckered where it should have been smooth, bit in where it should have hugged.

Sure all these factors existed when I squeezed in to the suit earlier that morning but I fully expected to be surrounded by other soft mom shapes, bodies lovingly marked by childbirth, time and an appreciation of cheesecake. The only other mom shapes in the vicinity were sitting on the benches, fully clothed and fanning themselves in the shade. “You are on your own, sister,” they seemed to say.

Indeed I was.

I plopped myself clumsily in to the water at the 4 ft depth and tried to avoid eye contact with pretty much everyone within a ten foot radius except my child who I was “helping” feel more “comfortable” in the water.

“I want my floaties,” he wailed as I lifted him under his arms and pried him away from the edge.

“Do you know how to make bubbles in the water?” the instructor asked him.

“Make some bubbles, baby, like this,” I dipped my face in to the water and blew.

My son put his lips to the water and sipped.

“We have to try to get him used to going under. Maybe we can sing ‘ring around the rosy,’” Joey offered. He was being helpful, I’m sure.

At “all-fall-down”, I held my breath and with my darling, trusting boy in my arms, I went completely under.

Of course it ended well…

If by “well” you mean both me and my youngest snorted down gallons of chlorinated water then came up gasping with our noses draining fluids, followed by him screeching like an injured baboon and accusing me of unintelligible crimes against monkey-kind.

“That was fun,” I assured him as I rubbed pool water out of my eyes, “that didn’t hurt you.”

“YES IT DID!!!”

“Where does it hurt?”

“IT HURTS MY FACE!!! IT HURTS ALL MY FACE!!! NO MORE RING AROUND THE ROSY!!!NOT AGAIN!!!”

Some people were snickering, others were awww-ing sympathetically. In his ire, my three year old was exceedingly adorable. To everyone else. To me it was like putting a fish hook through my open eye.

There was no convincing that kid, after the start we’d just had, that putting his face in the water would ever be a good idea. I’d have better luck talking him in to eating a live cockroach.

“But you’re a big boy!”

“No, I’m not a big boy. I’m only a little bit big. I’m not really, really big. I wanna go home.”

I’d like to say I appreciated the personalized attention that our instructor Joey was able to give us. He was very patient and considerate and tan, which are all traits that make for an attractive resume. But I almost wished they’d just cancelled the class.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and someone will enroll late.

Maybe I’ll get smart and send my husband instead.

Fear of a Blank Page

This is me trying to bulldoze through my block, my bothersome blogging blight, if you prefer alliteration.

It started on a Tuesday two weeks ago. I was in a funk when I sat down at my keyboard, willing myself to write. Nothing came.

Nothing.

The impatient blinkblinkblink of the cursor. The stark white page staring me down, daring me, “write something, you coward.”

I wouldn’t.

At the time I felt that I couldn’t, but that would be a fallacy. Everything is a choice, isn’t it?

I didn’t want to. I’m not entirely sure why either. The long answer would probably sounds like so much psychobabble, more than I’m willing to explore in a single tenuous blog post.

The short answer is probably depression.

Also, my inner critic is somewhat of a psychopath.

“You suck,” it tells me, rather nonchalantly. “What you’re thinking about writing, is trash. It is simply not good enough, even in theory. Quit while you’re ahead, you nitwit.”

My inner critic frequently calls me a nitwit. It will then proceed to burn my thoughts in a steel drum, crap on the ashes, then laugh maniacally before disappearing to get itself a tall steaming latte.

It might pop back in to tell me I’m ugly or to note how my pant size is steadily increasing.

Jerk.

Every time I thought about writing, I didn’t.

There is always something else that needs to get done. Laundry, dishes, floors. Someone is always demanding my attention. It’s not like there was a glaring opening in my schedule that invited creativity. It was easy to busy myself with other things.

Sadly, not-writing is self perpetuating. The longer I stayed away, the easier it was. The less I ventured to create, the less I felt inspired to. Yet, it wasn’t like I was giving myself a break, there was always this anxiety. I missed writing. I needed to do it.

So, I’m doing it. For me. Because it actually makes me less crazy, if that’s possible.

I had a writing teacher tell me once, there is no such thing as a block. There is doing and not doing.

I’m doing.

But he didn’t say anything about doing it WELL.

Sigh. Stupid inner critic.

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.

Reason #857 Why I’m a Terrible Mother

It was just going to be a quick trim to get the hair out of his eyes.

So I went at the kid with a pair of scissors and this happened…

At the time he recoiled and whimpered briefly. Caught up in my enthusiasm, I continued to hack away at his gorgeous tresses sure I could still fix what was quickly becoming a styling fiasco.

My husband wandered over and I sought validation, passive/aggressively of course.

“Oh my God, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“He looks like one of those medieval squires or something. Friar Tuck?”

“Thanks a lot!”

“What? You’re clearly outside of your scope of abilities in the hair cutting field.”

“Crap!”

I turned to my teenage daughter to help with the damage control.

And she promptly took an abundant chop right out of the hair in the top middle of the boy’s head.

“What did you do?! He’s not one of those stylist dummy heads!”

“I can fix it.”

“No! Don’t! You’re making it worse.”

“Uh-uh! I can fix it.”

“Put down the scissors!”

In the meantime, my customer was making every possible attempt to escape. Alternately freaking out every time a chunk of his damp locks landed on his pant legs.

I combed, I trimmed, I stepped back and stared at my work from varying angles, tilting my head, taking a snip, cursing my arrogance one minute, promising myself it would grow back the next.

“Okay, lets go wash the hair off you and see if it looks any better.”

That’s when I noticed the little bleeding chunk I’d taken out of the side of his head.

I did what any good mother would do, I snapped a picture.

“Let me see!”

Then I did what any other, slightly idiotic mother would do, I showed him the shot on the digital screen.

Seeing the side of his face with that glistening bit of red prompted this:

of which I also snapped a picture, because, well why not? Proof of my asinine parenting will be useful for the case against me when my children get taken in to protective custody.

In the end he was no worse for the wear. I might have to do a little cleaning up around the edges, but all in all, he looks pretty good.

Less medieval friar, more 70s bob.

Then again, this kid would look good in an orange clown wig.

And a band-aid of course.