Good Enough, Kinda

Modern Family Values

I don’t like sad shit. And I’m just going to assume my kids don’t like sad shit either.

When their dad and I were getting divorced, all the books I read (okay, skimmed self-righteously and with annoyance) said to sit the kids down and tell them we knew this was sad, and we were sad too, but that we just couldn’t be happy being married to each other anymore, and that it would be hard but we’d work together and blah blah blah.

This seemed like the opening to a difficult conversation sure to involve tears—and questions that I couldn’t answer without telling them about the insane accusations and forged emails and relentless sexual expectations. I’ll save those stories for when they’re older.

So, for now, I went with, “Different families work best in different ways. Ours is going to work best with two houses. It’ll be great! Two houses!” I mean: why use an ugly word like divorce when a nice word like two will do?

(Until this point, they also thought dead bugs were sleeping, that squirt guns were called squirters, and that the firemen took Curious George to a relaxing spa resort without telephones—instead of to prison, for one fucking accidental phone call to the fire station!)

“Different families work in different ways” is how I also explain when a friend has two dads or two moms, when a kid has one parent, or when a kid lives with his grandma because both his parents are at a relaxing spa resort.

All of this has given my kids a very open idea of what a family can be, which seems like a smart idea for a single mom with no solid plans for what family life might look like in a couple of years. But aside from judging me, it also keeps the kids from judging other people. My kids are open to any family situation you might describe.

When we play Barbies, my daughter’s family is regularly adopting new kids, who need homes and have no one to love them; and bringing in additional spouses, who have cool clothes and like to clean and cook. The families never get unreasonably big, though, because she quickly gets rid of the boring people by having them grow up suddenly and move to Yakima, or having them die of gum disease. (In addition to an open view of family values, I’m doing an excellent job of teaching the importance of dental hygiene!)

As of now, my kids have big, elaborate plans that when they grow up they’ll marry each other, and all their best friends, and the kid with the motorized Jeep you can actually ride in (he was a shoe-in the day he pulled up to the playground in that thing).

A friend’s mom once responded to her daughter’s inclusion in this plan with a forced chuckle, “Oh, haha. But you can only marry one person and since you’re a girl you can only marry one boy. And that boy can’t be your brother.” My kids turned to me for the wisdom and guidance they’re used to me providing. I suppose I could have told them the truth. But I don’t want them to know how fucked up the world is (mostly with respect to gay marriage) so I tell them that people can marry whoever they love (mostly without respect to incest).

I actually had a perfect opportunity to stop all this talk of a brother-sister union a couple of weeks ago, when my daughter decided that she loved the 3-year-old in the apartment across from us enough to marry ONLY him. But my heart sank at the thought of my sweet boy being excluded: “Don’t forget your brother! You’re going to marry both of them, remember? It’ll be great! And he promised to pay for the TV!”

It’s possible I’m raising incestuous polygamists, but who cares? They’ll be accepting, open-minded incestuous polygamists.

Really, the plan isn’t so bad: Incest-based genetic defects aren’t an issue, because my daughter is going to adopt her kids so she doesn’t get too fat to wear all her cute clothes. And if they don’t outgrow peeing on each other in the bath, their choices for a respectable spouse besides each other might be slim. And honestly, if they end up working at McDonald’s as planned, they’re going to need to combine multiple incomes to be able to buy any new Wii games.

Fat Genius, Huge Boobs

I just wish I were skinny. All the time, no matter what. I watch very little TV and hardly ever eat potato chips. It seems like that should be enough.

I hate the assholes who can’t gain weight no matter what they eat. I also hate the assholes who preach healthy eating and exercise as the solution. It’s 2010; there has to be a better way.

I’ve exercised plenty. For six months before my wedding, I spent hours a day on the treadmill and only consumed the number of calories it said I burned. That sucked. I also ran track in highschool (what a waste that was, since I was already skinny). Exercise makes me so tired. And anyway, I know that getting my body used to too much activity would just make it adjust so I’d have to keep doing more and more and more exercise every year until I die. I don’t have the energy for that sort of commitment.

I’ve also dieted. I did Atkins even though it made me want to curl up on the floor (sober and starving and bawling) inside the pantry that contained no food I could actually eat. I did Weight Watchers until I ended up having to make 3 separate meals: one for me, one for the kids, and one for the steak-eating then-husband. I did the Master Cleanse lemonade fast until I somehow gained 5 pounds by not eating a single bite of food in five motherfucking days.

Nope. Diet and exercise just don’t work for me.

Just today I ate 200 calories but accidentally drank 960. (Don’t judge me; it’s a holiday and 260 of those were from an alcohol-free energy drink.) And yesterday morning I went to a yoga class, but didn’t lose a single pound.

So last week I bought some pills at Walgreens. I heard the Kardashians hocking them on the radio, so I have pretty high hopes. The box came with a booklet detailing an exercise and diet program, but I threw that part out. And the two days out of six that I’ve managed to remember to take the damn things, I pooped a lot. That’s gotta be good.

I’m also working on a managed bulimia plan. I’m not crazy enough to get a real eating disorder. I’d just like to sometimes be able to count on a nice purge when I accidentally eat a whole pan of brownies while standing in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. The problem is, I haven’t actually been able to make myself puke. Instead of vomiting, with each little gag I just pee my pants. The one time I googled “getting started with bulimia” it didn’t mention anything about that….

Sometimes I wish I were one of those women on “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” so I could just pop out a quick ten pounds of baby.

And why hasn’t anyone bottled the stomach flu?

From one minute to the next, I go from deciding to get all skinny and healthy to deciding to buy flowy hippie dresses and fuck the unrealistic standards of female beauty. Oh, I don’t know. Just thinking about it makes me hungry.

Even I know I can’t go on like this forever. Should the purging and pills fall through, I have a back-up plan that requires even less effort than what I’m putting forth now. Come 2015 I give up all this endless, exhausting nonsense of thinking about being skinny, buy some low-cut tops, and use my newly huge boobs to deflect attention from my newly huge everything else. If the obesity epidemic keeps up, at least I won’t feel alone and ostracized. You’ll be able to find me in the Craigslist personals under the headline “Fat Genius Huge Boobs.” (I think it’s pretty obvious where the genius part comes from.)

Divorcemoon

So you’re going to Costa Rica for two weeks? Have fun. A cruise along Mexico? Bon voyage. Touring Europe for the summer? Good for you.

As for me, my life is a vacation. Nothing glamorous or 5-star, of course. More like a cross between yurt camping, a business trip to Des Moines, and an overpriced rental house that advertises beachside but ends up being 50 fucking blocks from the ocean.

It wasn’t always this way. It took a lot of avoiding problems and ignoring shit to turn the American dream into a whitetrash getaway. First, I had to get rid of my husband, who was always wondering why I never got anything done and asking when I was going to get dressed. Then I had to leave the 4,000 square foot house that came with the chores of home ownership and hassles of lawn maintenance and move into a rented apartment that comes with a team of nice maintenance guys who apparently even change light bulbs. Then I had to trade all my neurotic hang-ups and feelings of inadequacy for some sunglasses and carefree functional alcoholism.

Ahhhh. It feels great to just get away from it all.

Now, I can always find some excuse to screw the diet and eat too much food that someone else prepared.

There are beers at the playground, Mike’s Hard Lemonade sneaked into the pool in water bottles, and champagne just because.

There are dirty little children crashed out in my sandy bed.

There’s showering only when I need to wash off sunscreen or go to a meeting. A huge pile of flip flops and sandals by the front door. And sniffing clothes from the floor to see if they’re clean—or at least clean enough.

There’s the hot random vacation sex with a guy I’ll never have to see again. And the quick trip to the clinic for a herpes culture three days later.

No vacation is perfect.

I might have an occasional breakdown, crying on the floor that I just want to go home. And there’s a growing list of to-dos that I’ll have to take care of when I get back. But I’m making the most of it.

At the bar last night, I hired a friend to come clean this hog’s mess and then I signed up for grocery delivery. It’s not the same as daily maid service and cooked bacon showing up at my door in the morning: this is a poor-ass vacation, and one I can’t cut short when I run out of money.

Anyhow, I forgot to pack a razor or a bra and the weather sucks and I lost my credit card again, but we’re having a great time! It turns out, honeymoons are better with the kids and without the husband. I’ll send postcards via Facebook mobile uploads. Don’t you wish you were here?

The Lazy Parenting Technique

They say that nothing good comes easily. Apparently, they’ve never eaten Easy Mac. Or ordered mimosas from room service. Or had a wet dream.

The truth is, most of my big parenting decisions came as a result of doing the easiest thing, or simply doing nothing at all.

When my first kid was about 6 months old, a friend asked how the sleep training was going. Sleep? Sleep training? I instinctively said “Great”—and then hit Google. Apparently, some babies slept through the night! Some fell asleep without a breast or bottle in their mouths! Some napped longer than 30 minutes! Some even did all this in their own cribs! I had no idea.

So then I started reading about how to make that happen. Letting baby cry it out? Gosh, that would be hard. Gradually letting baby learn to fall asleep on her own by moving a few feet farther from the crib over the course of two weeks? Holy shit, that would take, like, two weeks. Putting baby in her crib and waking up, walking to her room, getting her back to sleep, and then returning to my own bed several times a night? No way could I sleep through that. And so I did…nothing.

Next came potty training. Cleaning up accidents, repeatedly asking the kid if she was listening to her body, all that laundry. No, thanks. I just kept the kids in their disposable diapers until the day they decided they were done with them all on their own. (And honestly, I don’t see why anyone pushes potty training. Once the kid is out of diapers, you have to clean out that gross little potty; and remember to remind them to use the bathroom before you leave the house; and get off the highway and to a gas station on a moment’s notice; and start going in public restrooms, at the least convenient times, in the most disgusting places.)

Then there’s discipline. They say consistency and follow-through are critical. Well, I consistently did nothing, and always followed-through with wine.

When it was time to choose preschools, I “chose” the one that was closest to our house. When it was time to enter lotteries for all the best kindergarten programs, I talked to other moms about what a difficult and important decision it was…until the deadlines quietly slipped away and my daughter was enrolled by default in the local school.

The thing is, though, there are enough parenting theories out there that I could get away with my laziness without anybody knowing I wasn’t making well-considered decisions:

I really like the closeness and bonding of the family bed.

I read that pushing children to potty train can lead to resistance.

I think it’s best to let kids discover the natural consequences of their actions.

I love the sense of community that comes from going to the school in our own neighborhood.

And the other thing is: it has worked. My kids sleep well (though my bar on “well” is admittedly low); they’ve only ever had potty accidents when trying to beat a hard level on Mario Bros; they go to great schools; and they’re nice and well-behaved and actually listen to me.

Maybe it’s because all that time I could have spent worrying and thinking and doing productive parenting work was instead spent sitting on the floor dressing Polly Pockets and crashing Hot Wheels into walls. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe there’s something to the idea of handing control over to the universe. Or maybe it’s just still too soon to tell what sort of maladjusted little monsters I’m throwing into society. Who knows.

Either way, had I worked for those successes, I’m sure the joy I feel would only be mitigated by exhaustion.

And I’m not saying there haven’t been casualties. Having babies at my side and on my boob 24 hours a day and defending it as a well-thought-out philosophy probably didn’t help my marriage—but that had a 50% chance of failing anyway. Probably higher if you factor in that I cried when my husband made me leave our wedding to go to the honeymoon suite.

Because Excellence is Exhausting

Lately just reading my Facebook news feed makes me tired. People are doing, making, growing, and thinking all sorts of big, exciting things. And not only am I not doing those things, but I also don’t even feel like aspiring to do those things.

If you’re among those happily doing stuff with your life: carry on. I mean, someone has to, I guess—and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me. There are a gazillion blogs and sites out there that you can read to inspire you to your next great achievement. This is not that kind of blog.

Nope. This blog is for the underachievers. For the people who don’t plan on running a marathon. Ever. For the people who don’t grow anything, except mold and leg hair. For people who would rather sip a cocktail and watch America’s Next Top Model than sew, bejewel, or marinate anything.

Expectations have gotten out of hand, I think. We’re expected to actually like (and connect with, and communicate with, and even have sex with) our spouses. We’re encouraged to grow our own vegetables and make delicious, healthy dinners out of them and then compost the scraps. We should turn our old clothes into new clothes and then sell those new clothes on Etsy. We’re supposed to not only raise children, but also raise chickens. (Seriously? Chickens? What the fuck?) AND we should do it all without the valium and cigarettes that helped our own mothers get through the day.

Well, I say: to hell with excellence.  Good enough is good enough. If it weren’t, they shouldn’t have called it “good enough.”

So I will shamelessly (usually) and unapologetically (mostly) continue to do absolutely nothing blog-worthy or inspiring with my life. I’ll buy my food at the regular old grocery store—not even the farmer’s market; not even organic. I won’t bother to sort my laundry into separate loads or put pairs of socks together before I throw them into drawers. I’ll settle for walking home from the bar as quite enough exercise for the week, thank you. And I’ll quickly kill any plant the kids give me for Mother’s Day.

I’ve often said that two kids, two cats, and one plant are all I can keep alive. And I have the dead fish, the empty snail shell, and the withered cactus to prove it.

I can’t promise you that this blog will be excellent, or thought-provoking, or interesting. But I give you my word that I will make a half-assed attempt at making it mediocre. And don’t go getting any big ideas about daily or weekly or regular updates of any kind. I’ll commit to “occasional,” and that’s it.

One thing you can count on, though: It’ll probably make you feel better about yourself. Maybe that can be my own big contribution to the world?

(Disclaimer to all clients and potential clients: Don’t worry. My mediocrity doesn’t extend to the work I do or would do for you. In fact, it’s possible that my dedication to my clients and my work is what makes me so mediocre at everything else. Really.)