I like to think that most of the time I’m not half bad at this whole parenting gig. I have become adept at breaking up kid fights, heading whining off at the pass and navigating my way through excuse-filled attempts at avoiding bedtime. By 8:00 last night, though, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. The kids had been getting progressively whinier and argumentative as the day went on and chose that evening to make bedtime into an ordeal of epic proportions. As I was tucking Lily in for the night, thrilled that I had managed to get her to the tuck-in point at all, she pulled the whole, “I’m hunnnnnngryyyyyy!” routine, complete with dramatic flailing and blanket-kicking. I wanted to scream. Or fling myself out the nearest window. Instead, I pulled a dramatic, flailing scene of my own.

(I’m mature like that.)

“I’m done! Done! I can’t do this anymore tonight!” I exclaimed as I flounced down the hall.

With a sigh, Lucky took over. I could hear his socked feet dragging across the carpet as he reluctantly made his way to Lily’s room, bringing her some crackers and water. When she was finished with her snack, he tucked her in bed amidst complaints of, “I’m not tiiiiiired!”. (Funny how kids fight bedtime the hardest when they’re overtired, isn’t it?) She was still chattering away as he closed her door.

Meanwhile, I had cocooned myself in a blanket on the couch and was watching a recorded episode of Days of Our Lives and trying to forget that I had promised myself a run on the treadmill that night. All I wanted was some time and space to just breathe – to exorcise my aching, spinning head of the sounds of the day.

A full two hours later, I was relaxed and happy. My entire family was in bed, asleep, and I was left alone with my thoughts. I picked up a book – a classic chick lit type involving strong women, strong friendships, and much laughter and tears – and settled in to read for awhile.

Before long I was sitting, teary-eyed and racked with guilt, thinking about my children and the way I’d completely shut down on them at bedtime. One of the characters in the book had spent months at her dying teenaged daughter’s bedside, relentlessly present and completely devoted to her night and day. She appeared to be the perfect mother, ever doting on her children and always putting them first. She lost her daughter to cancer despite her best efforts, leaving me feeling guilty that I had two healthy, happy children and I was letting them down.

I looked in on each of them before I went to bed, as I do every night, lingering longer than usual to marvel at their angelic, sleeping faces. I was filled with a renewed sense of devotion to them and vowed never to let myself get frazzled to the point of walking away from them, no matter what was happening. I would turn myself into the most loving and devoted mother ever. People from far and wide would see my completely selfless parenting and marvel at how very loved my children were. I went to sleep with a smile on my face, knowing that tomorrow would mark the first day of my life as a perfect mother. Better, even, than the one I had just read about.

This morning I woke up to a knee in the kidney and the sounds of screeching in my ear. This is what happens when I try, futilely, to sleep in a little. To use a term coined by Her Bad Mother, my kids were acting like a couple of rabid badgers. In fact, I’m sure she had my kids in mind when she came up with it. (If there is a better term to describe the antics of a 7 and 5 year old left to their own devices for any length of time, I have yet to hear of it.)

After a few minutes of dodging the flailing limbs of my very own rabid badgers and attempting to steel myself against their rambunctious screeches and howls, my self-preservation instinct kicked in and I escaped to the bathroom to take a shower. The kids tumbled down the hall like a couple of puppies and continued their play in the living room.

Huh. Five minutes into my “perfect mother” endeavour and I had already failed. What happened to the endless patience I had promised myself? What was it about those shrieks that managed to pierce through my skull and right into my brain? I rubbed my sore back and stepped into the shower, contemplating.

As the warm water rained down on me, the irritation of being kicked and screamed awake drifted away. I could hear the kids playing down the hall. They were happy, despite the fact that I was in another room and not hovering over them. As I was rinsing the shampoo from my hair, I realized something. It is possible to love your kids absolutely and unconditionally and still take the time to maintain your sanity. Fifteen minutes of silence (or, at least, muted noise) in the shower does wonders for me. I am devoted to my children but as wonderful as they are, they can drive me completely insane at times and it’s okay for me to need a moment to regroup. They don’t seem to mind, at any rate.

I guess sometimes it takes a swift kick in the back to shift things back into their proper perspective. I might not be the perfect mother who ever existed, but I am a good one. Even if I do sometimes escape to the shower or hide in a blanket.

Filed under: Confessions, Keepin' it Real, Me, Offspring by WWS (Lynn) - 3 Comments →

I’m mortally wounded, you guys. I think the end is near. I just wanted to tell you that I love you and explain a little bit about the fateful moment that has brought me to this point…

Lucky, the kids and I had just come in from an afternoon of playing outside and bike riding. Everything was great until I casually closed the bi-fold closet door off the garage and it reached out, unprovoked, and brutally attacked my finger.

Bi-fold closet doors = the devil

Me: Aaaaaaaaaah!

Lucky, from upstairs: What’s wrong?

Me: Aaaaaah. Ow. Ow.

Logan, also upstairs: Mom, what happened?

Me: Aaah! Can’t talk. Pain. Aaah. Aaah!

I clutched at my pinched finger, which was screaming in agony, and ran to the fridge for some ice. Wrapping a tea towel around the ice, I retreated to my bedroom to read a book and avoid my rambunctious children wait for the nausea to subside.

Do you see the angry red line on the pad of my finger? Look closer. It helps if you squint… Oh, yeah. It’s EVERY bit as bad as it looks.

(Incidentally, I’m not flipping you off. I’m flipping off those possessed bi-fold doors).

It wasn’t until I went to pick up an open deck of cards a couple of hours later that I realized just how terrible and life-threatening my injury really was. It felt like there was a hole in the deck, as if I were holding a puzzle piece by the edges.

Me: Holy crap, Lucky! The end of my finger is numb! I TOLD you it hurt when the door pinched it!

Lucky: Huh. I figured you were just overreacting.

Overreacting? What a loving, caring husband I have. It’s a good thing he now realizes just how grave this injury truly is. I mean, without feeling in the tip of my finger, I could accidentally dismember it without realizing and then, when I’m walking down the street, unaware of the fact that I’m profusely bleeding, people will start screaming and running away. And, because I can’t feel that my finger is missing, I’ll think that they’re screaming and running away because they think I’m ugly or fat or something and my self-esteem will take a huge hit. And while I’m busy stressing out about how horribly grotesque I look, I won’t notice that I’m slowly bleeding to death and I’ll figure that I’m just starting to feel weak because the truth hurts. I’ll become weaker and weaker, assuming that the knowledge of how horrifying I am is crushing my will to live and I’ll end up dying a sad, lonely death, wondering how I managed to make it as long as I did without a paper bag to put over my head.

Seriously, how on Earth is that overreacting? The closet door has killed me. I don’t see how it’s even possible to overreact in a situation like this. It’s positively DIRE. I’m going to need to figure out a survival plan now. I can’t let those bi-fold doors beat me. My future looks bleak.

On a related note, does anyone know how long it takes nerve endings to regenerate?

Filed under: Just My Luck, Keepin' it Real, Me, Pity Party, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

Ever wonder what happens when you give a five-year-old free reign with a camera? This:

It definitely keeps her occupied while we’re waiting for her brother to get out of school!

Filed under: Happy Happy, Offspring by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

I’m in the kitchen of the church where I attend a weekly Ladies Morning Out program. I’m no stranger to this room and I quickly locate the cutlery drawer, reach inside and grab a handful of spoons to bring out to the snack table.

“Wow, it’s a good thing you have such man-sized hands”, says one of the women from my group as she looks over my shoulder.

I smile tightly and give a short laugh, the universal language of, “oh, yeah, that’s right,” but in reality, I’m angry. Man hands? MAN HANDS? I know this woman doesn’t have a filter, but, really? Did it not occur to her at all that informing a woman you barely know that you think she could play baseball without a mitt on account of the fact that she has such GIANT hands might possibly be construed as an insult?

Man, I hate passive-aggressiveness.

Except when it’s coming from me.

You know what, filterless church lady? One day, I may be willing to turn the other cheek, but right now, all I want to do is slap you with my BIG, FAT hand and give you one of these:

______________________

One of my best friends is currently studying to become a Nurse Anesthetist. During one phone conversation, she was describing the job to me and mentioned, in passing, that it is crucial to check the patient’s teeth before inserting the tube down their throat.

“Why do you need to check their teeth before you put them to sleep?” I asked, curious.

“In order to figure out what size and shape of tube to use,” she replied. “For instance, you have tiny little Chiclet teeth, so I could use a regular tube. For people like me, with glorious, big, white, amazing, straight teeth (*cough* that last part may have been dramatized just a touch…), I would need to use a smaller, more curved tube so that I don’t accidently chip one.”

“Ah,” I replied, at a loss of what else to say. It’s not like I can argue, after all. My teeth are square little Chiclets.

At least I’ve learned something new, though: when having surgery requiring general anaesthesia, I have a much higher chance than, say, Gary Busey, of coming out of it with an unscathed smile.

________________________

Lucky, the kids and I have just finished a meal of cooked chicken at my parents house. I have just finished removing the last scraps of meat from the chicken to put in a leftovers container. I’m about to throw the remains away when my mom’s hand darts out and grabs something off the cutting board.

“Just need some skin!” she exclaims, popping it into her mouth.

“Oh, gross, Mom!” I cry with a shudder. “That’s a scene straight out of Silence of the Lambs!”

“Thiff, thiff, thiff,” she replies, not missing a beat, and continues chewing happily on the chicken skin.

“Oh!” exclaims my dad with a chuckle. “THAT’s going on the blog for sure!”

Good call, Dad. As it is spoken, so it shall be done.

_____________________

Okay, you guys. I have some really great giveaways on my site right now. $100 worth of gift cards, a children’s book on allowances and money management and a nifty storage solution for your medicine cabinet!

Also, I’ve managed to fix my subscription feed issues, so head on over there, check out my fancy new look and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any giveaways!

Filed under: Uncategorized by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

I made the mistake of looking at my butt in the mirror before taking a shower tonight. Aside from the general size, I also noticed several thumb-shaped bruises – souvenirs of my recent massage. Most people would be all, “Oh! No wonder my butt hurts so much. This deep-tissue massage thing is no joke!”

Being that I am not most people, my first reaction was to run to my husband.

“Look at my butt!”

“Well, heyy….”

“Stop that. I meant look at the bruises on my butt!”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah, wow.”

“I know, right? I told you it was an intense massage! Just look at those purple bruises. Ow!”

“Well, you do bruise pretty easily.”

“Really? That’s all you’ve got? I’m showing you the injuries I’ve sustained on my way to a back-pain-free existance and you’re blowing me off?”

“Good-night, Lynn. And try to come to bed early tonight. Clearly, you need more sleep.”

Filed under: Confessions, Keepin' it Real, Me by WWS (Lynn) - 6 Comments →

Despite the regular treadmill workouts that I’ve been getting in since January, the three compressed disks in my lower back are still flipping me off regularly. If I move wrong, breathe wrong, sneeze or even blink too hard, wham! Pain. Remember the old “flip top head” toothbrush commercials from back in the day where the little cartoon guy hinges his mouth open so he can brush his back teeth? Well, I have a “flip top back”. I’ll just be walking along, get a twinge, and feel like I’m about to hinge backwards at the waist and end up with the back of my head welded to the backs of my knees. Go ahead and make a mental picture of that one. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had a new pain introduced into the mix: sciatic pain. For those who have never had a pinched sciatic nerve, it feels like an electric current of fire starting in your lower back and running across your butt and down your leg. It’s not pretty. This pain will happen in conjunction with the more muted *cough* unless I move *cough* pain of my low back and is excruciating for several days until, somehow, my body manages to heal itself, if only for a few days at a time.

The treadmill workouts are my way of attempting to lose weight, tone my muscles and lessen my back pain. I’m pretty sure it would work if my back pain would kindly fuck off for more than three days at a time so I could actually get the job done!

This afternoon, in an attempt to nudge my body in a more pain-free direction, I had a massage appointment. I had booked it over a month ago during a particularly vengeful attack of pain and had subsequently cancelled it late last week while flying high on a pink, puffy painless cloud of fluffy happiness and blissful joy. (Naturally, I ended up kicking myself the next day when it flared up again.) Luckily for me, the clinic employs a somewhat… hmmm… what’s the nicest way to put this?… flaky receptionist who forgot to actually remove my appointment from the schedule. When she called me to ask if I had been the one who called to cancel last week, I pounced all over the opportunity to keep the appointment after all.

Upon explaining my unfortunate, um, butt pain, to my massage therapist, she informed me that she would indeed be “working on your glutes”. My first reaction was one of barely contained internal abject horror. The thought of paying some young girl to rub oil on my ass wasn’t exactly appealing to me. Fortunately for both of us, “working on your glutes” involves a bedsheet and a distinct lack of oil. While she could feel my rear in all of its squishy glory, it was still hidden from sight. Little did I know that showing off my butt to someone who doesn’t live in my house would be the very least of my concerns.

(Why, hello there, Google pervs. I’m sure by now you’ve realized that this isn’t the type of place you were searching for, but thanks for stopping by all the same.)

Ahem.

I didn’t find out until later that “working on your glutes” is massage therapy for “raining down a hellfire of agony and torture upon your ass.” I’m telling you, this girl could have been wailing on me with a pickaxe and I guarantee that it would not have been more painful. My glutes weren’t “worked”. They were “worked OVER.” Who knew the butt was such a sensitive region?

I’d say that I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, considering that I live with a lot of it most of the time. I thrive on the “dig right in there” style of therapeutic massage that would make most men cry out for their mommies. I want a massage therapist who is capable of showing those knots who’s boss and mine fits the bill perfectly, despite the fact that she is just over five feet tall and, by the looks of her, barely a hundred pounds. When she started “working on my glutes”, though, she may as well have been a healthy Swedish behemoth named Helga. I officially became someone’s bitch this afternoon. Normally, I can take anything this girl can dish out without a peep or a flinch but even I have my limits. I challenge anyone to have a deep tissue butt massage and not groan in agony. Seriously.

Me: Uhhh. Wow, that hurts.

Her, giggling: Yeah, it’s not too pleasant, is it?

Me: No-uhhghgh. No-ahaaha. Not pleaaaaaahhhh-sant. Hoo. Wow.

Throughout the gouging and kneading, my inner monologue went something like this: “Ow. Ow, ow, ow! Okay, just let out a little groan. But don’t cry. No crying. Just breathe. What the fu…. is that an elbow? Ow ow! Okay, breathing, breathing… MotherFU“

Her: Hanging in there?

Me: Uh, yeah. I’m goo-uhhh. Good. Wow, that smarts a little!

Her, again with the giggling: Oh, yeah. It can definitely be a little painful!

Me: Well, at lea-owwwww-st I’m still brea-uhhhhh-thing. That cou-owowow-nts for some-ughhh-thing, right?

Her, giggling: Well, in the end it’ll feel better!

(Oh, har freaking HAR, Helga. I’m pretty sure it won’t feel better in MY end.)

When my massage therapist finally relented her brutal ass-beating and moved on to my back, I was literally sighing with relief. I’d wager that anyone who says childbirth is hard has never had their glutes worked. No mere mortal could handle that level of pain for longer than the thirty minutes I had to endure it.

When my hour was up, my therapist handed my ass to me and said she’d be back to show me a couple of stretches after I had gotten dressed. When I rolled to my back and sat up, I was lightheaded and dizzy. I took a couple of calming breaths before I stood up because even after allowing her to become intimately aquainted with my posterior, I wasn’t ready to take the risk of having her find me passed out naked on the floor in her workspace. (She’d have to buy me dinner and AT LEAST five drinks first. I have my standards, you know.)

I am now lying in my bed, propped up with some pillows. My poor, violated butt feels like it’s gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson (if Mike Tyson was wielding a meat tenderizer in his gloved hand) but the sciatic pain is a faint echo of what it was earlier today and my lower back pain has bid me adieu once again. In light of that, I’d have to say that young, small Helga wasn’t just abusing me for her own sadistic pleasure and did, indeed, inflict all of that torturous agony on me for the greater good. I’ll take tender, pliant buns over a stiff, sore back any day of the week.

Just remind me to take a shot of morphine first next time.

Filed under: Keepin' it Real, Me, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

Why is my fabulous bloggy friend Momo Fali balancing a pile of meat in her kitchen?

Yeah, baby. You balance that meat!

Why, it’s because she’s been published in the April issue of Ladies Home Journal, of course! You rule everything, my love!!

Filed under: Happy Happy by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

So, yeah. It’s just about the weekend again and I’m finally getting around to writing about what happened during the last one. I’m awesome.

I spent the weekend with five gorgeous, wonderful and creative women. We had pillow fights in our panties and spent the weekend tickling each other and squirting whipped cream into each other’s mouths.

Wait. That’s what my husband thinks happened. (Keep dreaming, honey.)

Here’s what really happened:

We drove out to a cute little bed and breakfast and, having rented both the top and bottom floors, proceeded to move all the furniture around to create a five table scrapbooking extravaganza of a work space. We talked, laughed, ate homemade pizzas, hummus, fruit and veggies, and drank coolers in the hot tub. Oh, and we scrapbooked, too.

Things in the daylight hours were fantastic. Actually, things in the dark were pretty cool, too. Everyone set up their fabulous little work lights when it got dark outside and continued scrapbooking to the wee hours.

It wasn’t until I got ready for bed each night that I remembered that I have issues.

Knowing that I am someone who really appreciates her sleep, my friends put me in the quietest bedroom in the cabin. Otherwise known as the boiler room. (Dun dun DUN!) The picture on the website shows a sweet, cheery room off a charming kitchenette:

You know what? Pictures lie. That room was a house of horrors in my twisted little mind. The floor? Concrete. Windows? What windows? The bunk bed? Homemade (try staring up at particle board and rusted metal hinges all night), lumpy and uncomfortable. What the filthy, lying whore of a picture doesn’t show is the washer and dryer on one side, the giant accordian wall on another (I was too scared to open it and see what was behind it. Torture chamber? A bunch of scurrying rats? Serial killer?) and the mysterious door on the final wall. I felt germy in there. Icky. The feelings were completely and totally irrational, but I’m quirky like that. It’s why I take medication for anxiety. I laid down on my left side, facing the ladder, and didn’t move all night. I tried to keep the blanket over my ear in case something icky fell on me from the bunk above. (I’m thinking rust, bugs, sawdust. You know, the usual things that people think about at night. *cough*) I didn’t lay on my back and didn’t turn to my right side. (I didn’t want to face the wall and certainly wasn’t about to turn my back on the accordian-wall-of-doom because if you’re about to be murdered in your bed, of course you’re going to want to see it happen.).

Luckily, I didn’t spend much time down there. The bulk of my time was spent upstairs in the airy, clean and bright makeshift scrapbook room. I stayed up late each night and fell into bed only when I knew I was too exhausted to stay awake. (During the day, all of my weird little idiosyncrasies seem to melt away.)

On the way home on Sunday evening, we stopped for dinner at a cute little cafe with a crappy waitress. We took a few photos to remember our time there.

When I got home, I was greeted with a package at the door:

It was from Lily and when I opened it up, I found a card that she had written all by herself:

(Aw, you make me happy too, sweetie!)

Then, on the counter in the kitchen, I found this:

Hmm. I’m beginning to sense a theme here.

Lily knows how to work the guilt trips. At least this time it was only cards and gifts. A couple of years ago when I returned from a weeklong trip, I had to change into my pajamas before putting her to bed each night so she could be absolutely positive that I wasn’t going to leave her again. ‘Cause her life is rough without me.

Making living room forts with Daddy, eating seafood, playing at the indoor playground and hanging out with Grandma all weekend. Yep, it’s a tough life all right.

Despite my weird little “don’t feed the gremlin after midnight” germ issues, I had a great time and I am SO going to the next scrapbooking retreat. It’ll be worth it, even if the serial killer behind the accordian door comes out to get me while I’m sleeping.

Filed under: Confessions, Happy Happy, Keepin' it Real, Me, Offspring, Out of the Mouths of Babes by WWS (Lynn) - 7 Comments →

I am blowing this joint for the weekend in order to do some quality drinking scrapbooking and I couldn’t think of a better way to say, “see you in three days, sucker!” than posting a little something-something about my your favourite book and movie franchise, The Twilight Saga, and the bloodsuckers chronicled within it.

(See what I just did there? See you later suckers? And a movie about bloodsuckers? That’s called segueing.)

So, New Moon is coming out on video on March 20th. (Yes, I just said video. I’m old skool like that, yo.) It’s chock-full of angst, mythical creatures and more angst. What it’s not chock-full of is a plot. Yeah, I said it.

The movie poster. Ooh. Angsty.

What the movie poster looked like before the art department got to it. Bahaha.

Overall, I think that Stephenie Meyer did a good job of explaining how vampires are able to live in and amongst humans but she missed one very important point. Approximately half the population is female. With female issues. If the blood from a paper cut is enough to drive a vampire insane with bloodlust, how on earth would he make it through a day out in a world filled with chicks? Well, I think my boyfriend Brandon Routh has figured out how they’re able to do it:

Oh, Brandon. You’re so funny. Can I have your babies?

*cough*

Did I say that out loud?

Speaking of my boyfriend Brandon Routh and his hotness, I ask you this: Why was he not cast as Edward in the real Twilight movies?

Hot…

Hot…

Hey, baby. How YOU doin’?

Instead, they cast this guy:

O-kay.

*crickets*

I think about how Twilight would have gone with my boyfriend Brandon Routh in it and all I can say is, “Bite me, Edward! I’ll have your creepy vampire spawn any day!”

For all you RPattz lovers out there, I’ll go ahead and throw you a bone. I admit that the guy can clean up when he wants to:

Yum.

Too bad you probably smell like moldy cheese.

You’re welcome.

Just don’t expect me to get to the point where I’d buy a pair of these:

Um, ew?

Filed under: Random by WWS (Lynn) - 6 Comments →