Last Sunday on Mother’s Day, I awoke around noon and was greeted with a fantastic breakfast (that means BACON), fresh coffee, gorgeous pink Gerber daisies (my favorite) and the sweetest little treasures from my children.

Accompanying the gifts from my daughter was a card/drawing she made at school that touched my heart—but also made me scratch my head a bit (see highlighted parts).

It read:

I love my mommy sooooo much! Her name is Janet. She is fun and pretty. We like to go to the mall and buy clothing together. It’s fun! Sometimes she plays board games with me. My mommy is a great cook, too. My favorite meal she makes is tater tot casserole. My mom makes dinner, does laundry and cleans the house. I’m glad she takes good care of me.

Is that not the sweetest thing you’ve ever read? I know. It is.

The only thing I don’t understand why she makes me sound like a housewifey mall rat who favors food from the Michelle Duggar cookbook of white trashy recipes?

Allow me to elaborate…

We never go clothes shopping at the mall. Well, actually, I did recently take the kids with me when I went hunting for a purple shirt to wear for the March for Babies but seriously, before that, I can’t remember the last time I dared to take the kids clothes shopping with me. I’M NO MASOCHIST!

Also? I DID a made tater tot casserole — ONCE — but only because I happened to have all the ingredients and I really REALLY didn’t want to make burgers or meatloaf again. It was okay but nobody seemed all that jazzed about it. Yes, I noted the recipe while watching “18 Kids and Counting”  but hello? Tater Tot casserole? That’s just embarrassing and frankly not the sort of thing I’d want the whole world to know about — not including YOU , of course — because I trust that we will never speak of this again. RIGHT???

It was really very generous of my daughter to say I’m a great cook but just like that business about cleaning and doing laundry? It’s kind of not accurate. I’m a bad cook and I really try NOT to clean or do laundry. Must be wishful thinking on her part… Poor kid.

Don’t get me wrong. I thought T’s card was beyond awesome. She said all those nice things (factual errors aside), which I loved—but you have to admit…it’s comedy gold.

Now that part about being fun and pretty?  TOTALLY TRUE :)

(Actually, Walt is turning in his cryogenic chamber thing and you can bet when they finally thaw him out and bring him back to life, he’s gonna be pissed about this)

Every now and then, I feel the need to acknowledge the things I don’t understand. At the top of the list is Disney Eggs. Yes, I said Disney EGGS. Like chicken eggs. With Disney characters stamped on them. Am I the only one who finds this incredibly (and edibly) surreal? And really, just WHY? Are they supposed to be collectible? Heh. Or served whole so kids can see the characters stamped on them and get all excited about eggs?  And since when does Disney dabble in agriculture?

Maybe it’s one of those bizarre licensing agreement situations, like Hannah Montana and High School Musical macaroni and cheese, where you have to wonder…WHO SIGNED OFF ON THIS??? Because it’s just dumb.

Anyway, I’m probably the last person on the planet to know about these, in which case, forgive my ignorance. It’s merely a case of my studiously avoiding the Disney channel—and clearly, if this is what they’re selling, I’m 100% correct in doing so because again…DUMB.

Would you buy these? (And I’m asking all you normal people out there, not the folks who obsessively hoard Disney stuff)

Dear Body,

Happy belated Valentine’s Day. Yes, I was being facetious. You know I don’t subscribe to made-up holidays that leave at least half the population sad and depressed that they don’t have someone to give them some Hallmark-mandated love and a red velvet box of chocolates from the local Walgreens. I prefer my consumerism-on-steroids holidays to at least be FUN, like Halloween!

Anyway, I’m writing to let you know that I’m very disappointed in you today. No, it’s not that last seven pounds I’ve been trying to lose for, like, two years—although we do need to discuss that at some point. I’m actually talking about the hangover that you led me to believe I would NOT be having today. What the hell?

I know, I know…I don’t take you out drinking nearly enough and you’re probably not used to it but that’s no excuse for your behavior today. You had fair warning that when we went out to celebrate the huz’s birthday last night (it was a shitload of fun, no?) that it would be a late night. Christ, we had safe, dependable babysitters for the first time in three years (Thank you, MIL and SIL!) that would be keeping our kids overnight. What did you think I was going to do? Drink soda all night?

All things considered, I think I did pretty good. I took a sip of my first beer at 9pm and finished my last around 2:45am. All together, I probably consumed about four or five high quality beers AND I had some pizza. (Yes, I agree that it was ridiculously salty but I was powerless to stop. You know how hungry I get when I drink). Anyway, the point is that I really didn’t go overboard and I don’t think I abused you that badly. In fact, I observed last night, firsthand, what long term alcohol abuse can do to a body and I’m so glad I got married and stopped clubbing and partying in my mid twenties. I could seriously be a poster girl for the virtues of generally clean, albeit mostly exercise-free, living.

But I digress…What I wanted to know is WHY did you lead me to believe this morning that I had escaped the hangover I was fully expecting? Even my prim, proper and very Catholic mother-in-law remarked that we didn’t look hungover when she brought the kids home at noon (NOON!!! God bless that woman!) and other than being a bit fuzzy-headed, I felt great. I didn’t begin to feel betrayed by you until about 3pm when the headache and queasy stomach started to kick in. Eventually, I felt so crappy I had to take to my bed for several hours whilst the huz went to the grocery store, fed the kids AND took them out for ice cream. He’s a fricken rockstar dad and I’m the pathetic mom that’s still hungover at six in the evening.

WHY???

Don’t you know how damaging this was to my self-esteem? How loser-ish it made me feel?

I just don’t understand and I anxiously await your explanation.

Yours in suffering,
Janet

One of my numerous New Years Resolutions:
To get more organized—not just with my stuff but in the management of my time (this should probably include not screwing around on the internet so much, yes?) and the running of my household (I know…so lame)

Current Resolution Status:
For three weeks I’ve been rolling this stuff around in my head, trying to make sense of just what it is I want to accomplish and also, more recently, to assess what I’ve accomplished thus far. Well, heh, that second part is gonna be a preeeeety short paragraph because right now, I have more excuses than progress to report. (See? See? Another psychological roadblock to actually getting stuff done…the old “I already know I suck at this, so no need to document” excuse. Gah. I really DO suck at this.)

Ohhh man. This is too hard. Maybe a nap and then we write? Yes? Pleeease?

No? *sigh*

Okay, I’ve been busying myself (because, you know, I have sooo much time to fill and not nearly enough tasks) with reading articles on the internet (THE SOURCE OF ALL KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM) about getting organized, staying organized, and fighting clutter.

The problem? These articles are so…dry. So fact-filled. So utilitarian. So designed-to-actually-help. BLEH! There’s nothing sexy about decluttering in ANY of them. No earth-shatteringly easy secrets to organization that I could employ without even trying, either. And frankly? A distinct lack of of cute acronyms that I could actually remember in the heat of a clutter battle. Who writes this crap?

So yeah, I’ve been on this semi-passive quest for the holy grail of self-help materials; the quest for THE PLAN that will work best for me. That’s lazy person code for…the plan for which I have to merely breathe and be upright in order to execute effectively. As noted, I’m not having much luck—my life is still not organized, my time is still being squandered and frankly, all this domesticity is killing me.

I don’t know how all those Blissfully Domestic folks do it. The more I try to be pro-active and get caught up and be on the ball about stuff and just…DO…all the crap I was probably supposed to be doing anyway, the more made-of-suck I think this whole resolution idea is.

There has GOT to be a better way. But if anyone suggests a cleaning lady or a life coach, I might have to reach across the internet and pistol-whip you. And don’t think I can’t. We’re very high tech around here…

PS: Do men worry about this crap????

PPS: Please share your best get-your-life-and-stuff-under-control advice in the comments. Also feel free to share what DID NOT work for you.

Tagline. Notice I don’t have one. I mean it’s not like a requirement or anything but sometimes it can help illuminate a bit about the author.

So…in keeping with the caffeine/coffee/I-stay-up-way-too-late thing that is the inspiration for this blog’s name, I started mentally toying with taglines.

Best one yet:

Always Up. Always Hot.

lololololol

I crack myself up.

What? Think you can do better?

We’re really not God haters or anything but I do have some issues with organized religion. To clarify, I’m not an atheist but I feel the institutions that commonly interpret and dispense the big guy’s “word” are so flawed that I just cannot, in good conscience, sit in a church and pretend like I’m down with it.

That said, I have tried to impart my own theological and religious philosophies to my daughter while elucidating what it is I cannot abide with organized religions.

Today at the bookstore, she picked out a calendar for herself that was filled with cute pictures of puppies and kitties and I noticed when we got home that each image had some Bible scripture featured on it.

I didn’t say anything about it but later she notices them, too, and starts reading them aloud and kind of musing over each one; deeming them as either making sense or not making sense—remember, she’s eight.

A few minutes later, an ant crawled across her calendar and she says loudly, “You better get outta here, bug, or the Lord’s gonna eat ya!”

I still don’t know the impetus for that statement but I laughed.  A lot.

Good thing I don’t believe in hell :)

——

Edited to Add:

Just some further clarification…

Church is great for those that dig it but I’m just one of them—I just can’t go along with people interpreting the word of God to suit their agendas and the agendas of their institution.

I mean come on…does God REALLY hate homosexuals?

Does God REALLY think women are not equal to men? That a woman should be subservient to her husband?

Does God REALLY believe man has dominion over the earth and thus we can treat it and all it’s non-human inhabitants however we wish?

The hypocrisy. The judgment. The groupthink… I just can’t do it.

I feel strongly that I can partake in everything God has to offer without ever again setting foot in an institution of organized religion. That is all :)