Come Join: ‘Moms Out Loud’ Oct. 23

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A Night for the Lunch Maker, the Booboo Healer, the Algebra Tutor …

Join Amy Byrnes of “A” My Name is Amy and Teicia Gaupp of JerseyMomsBlog & Cristie Ritz King of JerseyMomsBlog and Reinvention Girl

October 23rd @7pm

River Road Books, 759 River Rd., Fair Haven, NJ

Tickets: $10 (includes wine and light snacks) Prepaid reservations required due to limited space. Save your spot by calling 732-747-9455 or email riverroadbooks@verizon.net.

Popular local bloggers, Byrnes, Gaupp and Ritz King take a hammer to the motherhood myths we ditch in favor of sanity and survival. These women know what it’s like to raise a tribe in Monmouth County and deliver tales of their experience with a joyful and witty poignancy to which we can all relate.


 

Credit: Nicole Martin Photography

Credit: Nicole Martin Photography

Amy is an unemployed single mother of four who spends a lot of time hoping more things will go wrong in her life so she can write about them. She’s afraid of tunafish, math and teenagers (not necessarily in that order) but hearts zombies. When not making sandwiches or wiping the kitchen counter, Amy listens to public radio and thinks a lot about her hair and writing a book some day. She writes about all that and more on her blog ‘A’ My Name is Amy. Her work has appeared on Scary Mommy, Blogher and Single Mom Nation and she is a contributor to Jersey Moms Blog. Her essay about sending her son off to college will appear in an upcoming issue of Family Circle magazine.

~”A” My Name is Amy~

 


 

unnamed-2JerseyMomsBlog is a collaborative, multi-author blog based in New Jersey with a simple mission for “inspiration at every exit.”

Teicia Gaupp and Cristie Ritz King host many writers and media professionals who are NJ parents, and run their own active blog and social communities.  They engage their audience of New Jersey Mothers with recurring editorials, awareness features and giveaway promotions relevant to their lifestyle.  As JerseyMomsMEDIA, they create social partnerships and campaigns through Bloggers who work with them as Key Influencers, helping to amplify real experiences around businesses.  Recent projects include Family Ambassador programs with Jenkinson’s Boardwalk and Liberty Science Center, and a teen driving safety program with Toyota.

Cristie’s experience in Education and Health Coaching and Teicia’s in Media and Marketing have meshed well in cultivating this community.

Also, they’re Jersey Moms.  So you know they have a lot to say.

~JerseyMomsBlog~


 

 

How to Waste Time on the Internet

We breaded our cat. Thanks, Internet.

We breaded our cat. Thanks, Internet.

If I was good at keeping track of things, which we’ve already determined is not the case, I would probably find that I spend more time trolling Facebook each day than I do actually parenting any of my four children. I fall down so many Internet rabbit holes — clicking on headlines like, “15 Things No One Wants to Hear Men Complain About,” or “9 Excuses to Eat More Chocolate” — that sometimes I forget why I even went on Facebook in the first place (usually it’s to see if anyone has “liked” or commented on something I’ve posted).

So, in an effort to help you make better use of your own valuable time, I’ve done the leg work for you and culled what I think are the top 5 must-see links to help ease you into the weekend.

Don’t expect to be any smarter by the end of it, just slightly amused. Like me.

1. I can’t decide if this Hot/Crazy Matrix video is insanely misogynistic or just plain funny. Whatever it is, it makes me laugh my ass off. And in case you’re wondering, I am totally a unicorn. 

2. The kids and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last week and it wasn’t until the end that I realized that Chris Pratt was the same chubby dude from Parks and Rec (“Duh, Mom,” says disgusted children). Officially love him and his version of the ubiquitous ice bucket challenge:

3. And because I have been very snarky about all that pouring of ice over heads, much to my children’s disgust, these Ice Bucket Challenge screw ups really made me laugh.

4. To be filed under “WTF”: A woman goes to the doctor complaining of stomach cramps and they find a 38-year-old baby skeleton inside of her. 

5. I am a sucker for videos with babies and puppies so this made me dream that I had a baby and bought it two kittens. Because that’s just what I need in my life right now, babies and kittens. My mind has officially become as vacuous as the Internet.

Who’s a Scary Mommy?

The other night, I clicked on the Scary Mommy website and was greeted with this:

Look who's at the top of Scary Mommy.

Look who’s at the top of Scary Mommy.

Yup, that weeping woman clinging to her child is yours truly.

If you’re not in-the-know, Scary Mommy is an insanely popular mom blog that’s become a community for parents to celebrate imperfect parenting. So obviously, as my parenting over the last 21 years has been sketchy at best — I mean, I have been known to do ice luge shots with my older children — I totally belonged there.

So there I was at the top of this site that gets 10-15 million unique pageviews a month (according to Scary Mommy) with my mug in full-on ugly cry mode as I said good-bye to my oldest child when we left him at college for his freshman year three years ago. Luckily, I have no qualms with any of you seeing me not looking my best, as evidenced here (cheetah suit alert).

It was actually the second piece I had appear on Scary Mommy in less than a week. I had submitted one essay last month and got the good news that it was going to be featured on the site, but not until four weeks later. “Wow,” I thought, “who knew all that scariness was being planned so far in advance?”

So I sat and patiently waited until I got the good news that the post was live and was amazed at the kind of traffic it generated and was like, “Holy crow, I need to do that again, stat.”

So I rattled my brain to come up with something good and submitted a piece I had written about my son going off to college and, due to its timeliness, it was posted on Scary Mommy the next day.

Anyway, if you are a parent, do I even need to tell you that the timing could not have been worse as the piece went live in the midst of an emotional crisis going downright next to me on our big red couch. I was like, “I hear you’re really sad,” while watching out of the corner of my eye as a big teardrop rolled down the child’s face, “but do you mind if I just jump on Facebook for a minute?”

Like, can you just hold that thought while I promote myself on social media?

Obviously, no one in the room witnessing the meltdown thought that that was good parenting. I think someone might have even mentioned my insensitivity was slightly scary. “Typical, Mom,” she said.

Ultimately, disaster was averted — thanks to clear thinking and perhaps a little wine — and I did get to enjoy, virtually, the magic of being featured on a big site that garnered me over 150 new Facebook likes, 15.8K Facebook shares, 457 Tweets, a great traffic day for my site while discovering cool new bloggers (if you guys like me, you’ll love The Happy Hausfrau).

So, for all of you sending your babies off to college for the first time — and for the many it seems with 5-year-olds who are already freaking out about that moment — this one’s for you.

Oh, and there’s nothing scary about it.

VIDEO: That Time I Pretended I Was a Successful Writer

Bummed you missed last week’s hot ticket?

I know, I wish I went to see Beyonce at MetLife Stadium, too. And after you finish Googling videos  of her performing “Single Ladies” and “Crazy in Love” in NJ last week, check out the show I put on in a slightly smaller Garden State venue.

Here’s my ode to being a Jersey Girl and the merits of getting a spray tan:

And here’s something a little heavier, reflecting on the stages of divorce:

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Things I Learned From My First Reading

IMG_2002For the three of you left who haven’t heard the news, last week I got to pretend for one night that I was a successful writer.

And it was great.

Some friends had thought it would be fun to invite a bunch of people to come hear me read some of my work in hopes of maybe introducing some new readers to my blog. And plus, it was an excuse to get a bunch of women together to drink wine. Who’s not up for that?

So, they invited a bunch of their friends and about 50 women showed up at a local cheese shop for an event that was billed as “Wine & Words With Amy;” two of my favorite things, all in one room. We stood around and drank some wine and noshed on snacks and then I got up and spoke a little and read a few selections from my blog and then we drank a little bit more.

So fun.

But of course, not everything was perfect. There were a few glitches and things I’d do differently if I ever had the opportunity again to do something akin to it. Herewith, the top five things I learned at my inaugural reading:

  1. It’s all about the party hair. Of course, when a girl like me is faced with the prospect of getting up in front of a group of people to speak, she immediately worries about how she’s going to look. What to say comes second. So, before I knew exactly what I was going to read and then say in between to tie them all together, I had purchased not one but two dresses from Anthropologie and booked an appointment to have my hair blown out by my guy, who helped me channel my inner-Kelly Ripa and gave me mad party hair for the night. Unfortunately, I also probably should have thought about my failing eyesight and had the same foresight to pack a pair of reading glasses for the night so I didn’t have to hold the paper I was reading from about three inches from my face, thus blocking said party hair for much of the night. Sigh.
  2. Expect things to go wrong: Exhibit A. My two daughters were amazing helpers in the day leading up to the event. The older girl helped shlep stuff into the cheese shop and set up and helped do my eye makeup because she knows I am terrible at that. And my younger daughter helped cobble together a platform for me to perch a stool on and had tracked down a tripod to set up our camera to record the event. Yet despite her best efforts – charging the camera and digging up a memory card – once she started filming she discovered the card was full and had to quickly come up with a Plan B. So the resulting videos are kind of cobbled together – because of course her phone died and my other daughter had to pick up where she left off – and not shot from the best of angles. Like, I may have a “Basic Instinct” moment or two, somewhere along the way. Just don’t look down there.
  3. Expect things to go wrong: Exhibit B. After we unloaded all the junk – like the sound system and platform – from our car, I gave one of my girls the keys and told her to go park while we set up. And at some point, I did notice that she’d been gone for a really long time, but was too caught up in the prep and people arriving to really investigate her absence. The girls quickly packed up and left after the reading part was over, and I lingered and then went out to celebrate with some friends. So it wasn’t until the next morning that I discovered the reason for my daughter’s delay in returning from parking the car: she had sideswiped another car in the parking lot, requiring police and subsequent calls from my insurance company. “I didn’t want to ruin your night,” my girl told me, and she was totally right making that call. “I couldn’t sleep all night,” she added, “I felt so sick about it.” And I knew she felt terrible and we’ll figure out how to pay the deductible and I will ignore how ghetto my car is starting to look because, well, what are my options?
  4. I am an attention whore. I kind of already knew this about myself. I mean, I do have a blog and write about a lot of pretty personal things. And I’m a Leo, so being in the limelight is something I just enjoy. But I haven’t always loved getting up and speaking in public, so was kind of worried about that going into the reading. Right before I got up to talk, the owner of the cheese shop gave me some last-minute words of advice about successful public speaking. “Know your subject and be passionate about it,” he told me, and I was like, “Done and done.” I love to talk about myself. So in the end, it was kind of exhilarating and something I could do every night. Methinks I’ve created a monster.
  5. Surround yourself with friends. So, in theory, the event was supposed to be all about introducing new readers to my blog, it turned out to be a show of support from all my friends who already read the thing. And that felt great. So of course, it was easy getting up in front of big group of friendly and familiar faces who only want to see me succeed. Plus a lot of them enjoy all my cursing. “You say what we’re all thinking,” one woman told me after the reading, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy to do what I do. Because we’re all going through the same shit.

Many thanks to all of you who came out and to the many people who told me they wished they could have come. Perhaps we’ll do it again some day because we always need a reason to get out and drink wine.

In the meantime, check out some videos from the night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emoji Love

So, I was texting with a gentleman about our upcoming second date (I know), when the following conversation occurred with my 17-year-old daughter:

Me (looking down at iPhone): “Dude, do you think it’s too soon?”

Teenager: “Mom, are you crazy? It totally is.”

Me: “I know, you’re probably right. I just really want to.”

Teenager: “He’s gonna think you’re a total weirdo. Do you want that?”

Me: “But he’ll never even begin to know who I am if he doesn’t know how much I love it.”

Teenager: “You really are a weirdo.”

And she’s right, I suppose. Some things – like sex, farting and second dates – really do need to be eased into. It’s common sense. But I was surprised to learn that I had to hold the phone on my liberal use of emojis when texting potential suitors as well. Apparently, it signals weirdness. A definite no-no in the dating world, according to my daughter. The expert.

But I love them, those little cartoon-y images you can insert into your text using an iPad and iPhone. They are, like, magic.

Emojis say it all.

Emojis say it all.

I didn’t know what they were at first. The first time I saw one was in a text from my oldest son a few years ago. He had run into a McDonald’s somewhere in Maryland to use the restroom on our drive down to his college and he sent me a text from inside containing a smiling little pile of poo. Simultaneously cute and disgusting but talk about a picture being worth a thousand words. “Say no more,” I responded.

 

Seriously.

Seriously.

Then, I started getting texts from all my kids that included happy cartoon-y faces with heart eyes or hands clasped in prayer. Finally, one of my girls hooked me up with emojis of my own and my life hasn’t been the same since.

First of all, why go to the effort to type in “Ok” or “LOL” when you can just tap in a picture of a thumbs up or happy face? And it’s way easier than the couple of keys needed to create those more old-fashioned emoticons. 🙂 It suits my lazy nature but it’s also pretty efficient.

When I was a kid, I loved the book “Cheaper By The Dozen” and checked it out all the time from the tiny library in my Catholic school. Unlike the movie starring Steve Martin as the father to a brood of 12 children, the book focused on how the parents used time management strategies to juggle the chaos of all those kids, like teaching everyone Morse code. Emojis are like the Morse code of texting.

And I’m not alone in my love for sprinkling cartoons into my communiques. Recently, even CBS Sunday Morning’s Mo Rocca profiled the origins of the emoticon and featured one 20-something woman who uses emojis constantly but admitted that her dad’s enthusiastic embrace of them is just “weird.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB9eDKPk7pw

I also think a lot gets lost in translation when you’re texting with someone, and so I use emojis to soften the message. Like, “pls clean ur room” sent to a child is always accompanied by a smiling emoji to convey how happy this Herculean task will make her mom. Or, I plug in a big red heart into a text reminding my son to drive safely home from school, reminding him how much his mother loves him and hopefully sending the subliminal message that if anything bad happened, my big, red heart would surely break.

The only person this approach doesn’t seem to work on is my ex-husband. I used to send him the thumbs up all the time as an affirmative to texts he sent, but he began to take umbrage, thinking I was sending him the middle finger instead.

“Dude,” I said to him later, “I’m obsessed with emojis and am just giving you the okay sign.”

“I can’t really see anything without my glasses,” he confessed, making me wonder why he would just assume the worst in the first place. Sigh.

Anyway, I’ll continue to ease this new guy into my love for emojis. So far, I’m just keeping it to the smiley face. It’s way too soon for cats and crazy eyes.

Am partial to the cats.

Am partial to the cats.

We were texting again last night and I used a few and he told me he didn’t have emojis.

I texted back, “That’s sad. I’ll hook u up. Will make ur life way better.”

And it will. There’s something very pleasing about finding just the right image to communicate an emotion, like a hypodermic needle for something painful — like having to drive a long distance — or a long row of wine glasses for a group chat with your lady friends. He’ll figure it out.

I’ll have his texts looking like a 12-year-old-girl’s in no time. 😉

Who Would Play Your Mom In The Movie Version Of Your Life?

I am a world-class procrastinator. Really, don’t even try to compete with me. You won’t stand a chance.

I’m awesome at rationalizing why I should fold the laundry and make my bed and wipe the kitchen counters before sitting down to write. And chronic indecisiveness often results in a stack of papers collecting in a giant bowl on my kitchen counter and fences still crushed in my backyard 18 months after Hurricane Sandy blew through here.

And my inability to focus on certain tasks at hand has me wondering lately if I suffer from an undiagnosed case of ADD. Except in this case, my squirrel is Facebook. 

So it’s pretty remarkable that I’ve been able to resist all of those stupid quizzes I see on Facebook all the time. You know, the ones that are going to help me determine which state I should live in or what color in the rainbow I’d be or some shit. I think I did one once, like which Arrested Development character I’d be, and swore off those time sucks after that.

Apparently, my oldest daughter is open to these time wasters, as evidenced by our exchange last night.

My phone, lying on the nightstand next to my head, dinged with a text coming in as I was falling asleep and I saw it was from her and I picked it up to read her message.

“Just wanted to let you know that Oprah will be playing you in a movie about my life,” she wrote, and I read the accompanying photo of the quiz results snapped on her laptop screen.

Apparently, Oprah will play me in the movie version of my daughter's life.

Apparently, Oprah will play me in the movie version of my daughter’s life.

I started laughing like crazy and wrote back, “Probably the funniest thing ever.”

“I’m almost died,” she answered.

But actually, it’s perfect because not long ago, my other daughter told me she’d like Beyonce to play her in the movie version of my life, so Oprah’s presence will make that casting decision much more plausible.

But don’t think I don’t love learning that all my cursing and wine drinking serves as an inspiration for the girl or that it’s making the world a better place.

You’re welcome.

Who would play your mom in the movie about your life?

Prince Swears Off Cursing. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.

210px-No_gesture.svgI remember the first time I heard my mother curse.

I was about 10, eating breakfast at the big, round table that took up much of our small kitchen and she was opening a box of Devil Dogs – presumably to put in our school lunches and not to serve for breakfast, but this was the 70s – when all of a sudden I heard her bark, “Shit!”

Of course, back then, you didn’t try to engage with an angry parent and ask what was wrong, so I just assumed she cut herself opening the box, and went back to my Cocoa Puffs. But inside I was thinking, “Wow. Mom just used a really bad curse word.”

That never happened.

Other than getting my hands on a George Carlin comedy album around 1976 and listening over and over to his infamous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” I don’t remember hearing anyone around me using controversial language on a daily basis. It was a G-rated world.

So when something PG-13 was uttered, I took note. Once, my dad told a story and its punch line, in which he told one of his employees at a Burger King in Yonkers to get his “Puerto Rican ass off the counter and get back to work,” was so hilarious, I decided to retell it while having dinner at my friend Katy Leary’s house. And while that punch line received uncontrollable laughter at my grandparents’ house one Saturday night when my father told the story over a table littered with Budweiser cans and ashtrays, it garnered icy silence and nervous stares from my friend’s family and a follow-up phone call to my parents from Mrs. Leary.

Probably around the same time – I guess you could call this my profanity awakening – I heard some older boys, maybe 7th or 8th graders, at my tiny Catholic school using the F-word and couldn’t believe my ears.

“How could they say that about a woman’s body?” I thought, because at that point, I was under the impression that all forbidden words had something to do with the female reproductive system.

I remember standing on the quiet street in front of my suburban New Jersey house with other kids in my neighborhood, trying to work out just where the “shit” and “fuck” were located.

Almost 40 years later, I’d bet that my 11-year-old son has a better understanding of what a lot of those naughty words mean. Today, we are surrounded by expletives. They jump out at us at every corner. They’re all over the radio and on TV. In fact, last night on The New Girl one of the characters compared a folded napkin to a vagina, which isn’t one of those dirty words (although used in this case improperly) but the visual just seemed to cross a line. I was like, “Wow.”

And Jimmy Kimmel hosted his first annual Celebrity Curse Off the other night between Julia Roberts and Sally Field and you should’ve heard the mouth on Gidget. After Sally unloaded a big fat “motherfucker,” poor Julia looked at the audience and said, “Why am I in a curse-off with the Flying Nun?”

Not that I am any language prude. In fact, I have a tendency to sprinkle much of my day-to-day conversation with salty talk. It worked back in college, when my freshman roommate – a cute little blonde debutante from Baltimore – cursed like a sailor. We got along great, swearing and filling up a two-foot ashtray with Marlboro cigarette butts.

Over the years, I’ve developed enough sense to know when I needed to clean up my act, like at work and around my little children. Back in the day, “stupid” and “dummy” were on the list of words you weren’t allowed to say around our house and I think I might have washed a little mouth or two out for employing such offensive language.

But now that they’re bigger, well most of them, I seem to have lightened up my restrictions on cursing around the kids. I have confessed to yelling, “Fuck you” into a phone at my 21-year-old and was cursing to high heaven during a drive to Virginia two weeks ago. Just ask my daughter, who was sitting next to me in the car when I learned, via a text sent by my girlfriend, that I had not only missed my fifth grader’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) graduation but that his essay had been selected as the best in his class and he got to read it out loud at the assembly.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted, thinking of all the DARE graduations I’d attended not only for my other children but covering as a local reporter. “Do you mean to fucking tell me after all these fucking years, one of my kids finally fucking wins and I’m not fucking there?”

“Motherfucker!” I howled.

My daughter pretty much kept quiet during the expletive-riddled outburst but later that night at dinner, she reported my bad behavior to the rest of our family. “You should have heard Mom,” she told them over a giant tower of onion rings. “She had, like, a total temper tantrum driving down here.”

“What a diva,” they all concurred, as I sat picking at a salad while they plowed their way through the spire of fried rings.

But sometimes, nothing gets the point across quite like a well-placed expletive. I do tend to employ curse words probably more than the average person in my everyday conversations — which I consider a part of my charm — and that carries over into the blog. And let’s face it; the blog is just like one giant conversation in which I get to do all of the talking.

When I first started posting, I used foul language pretty liberally but now I try to save the really big ones for where they’re going to have an impact on the story. I’m trying to keep it classy over here in the blogosphere. But I can’t tell you how many people have commented to me about how I described my ex-husband’s shoveling skills. Not to brag, but it’s goddamn poetry.

But after a weekend of driving almost 18 hours and contending with the terrible drivers south of the Mason-Dixon line, I pulled as many expletives that I could think of out of the bad-word arsenal when I wrote about the experience for the blog. 

And that post prompted a very nice e-mail from one of my Internet boyfriends – which is what I like to call my guy friends who follow my blog mostly because, even though they’re all married and there’s nothing romantic or unseemly involved whatsoever, I think it sounds really funny – suggesting that all the cursing detracted from my writing.

At first I thought, “Fuck him.”

But then I saw on the Today Show that Prince – and if you really know me, you know I loved that weirdo so much I had a poster of him hanging in my freshman dorm – had sworn off cursing. The Purple One recently told Essence magazine that he quit all the cussing out of respect to others. “Would you curse in front of your kids? To your mother?” he asked.

This from the man who sang “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and “Sexy M.F.”?

[Here is where I spent countless minutes trying to find a YouTube video of either of these songs, which apparently do not exist in this country. Trust me, they’re racy.]

And so, out of deference to my own mom and the few of my children who read the blog, along with a handful of local officials, colleagues and other folks I’ve known on a professional level who’ve found my blog and read along, I think I might have to follow suit.

Don’t get me wrong: Some drivers will always have to be called out for their douchy ways and some guys will always shovel like, well, you know how they do it.

But I’m going to make an effort to keep things a little cleaner. I mean, they are just words, upon which we’ve decided arbitrarily to attach negative connotations, making them a threat to society. But there is something appealing about trying to preserve a sense of civility. I mean, it’s either that or we chuck it all out the window and start wearing jeans to church and chewing with our mouths open. Licking of fingers would not be far behind followed by sweatpants at the office.

I will be one small blogger trying to maintain some level of dignity in an increasingly undignified world.

And really, if I can give up pizza and bagels, cursing should be no fu… um, no problem. No problem at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s What She Said

photo-17So, lately I’ve drawn much of my inspiration for this blog from things going on in the news, mostly because there’s absolutely nothing going on in my life. Absolutely. Nothing.

It’s so bad that in the five-year memory book I try to write in at the end of every day, just a quick recap of what transpired in the previous 24 hours, I actually noted: Picked Nick up from karate.

Actually, the entire post read: Still sick. Still fat. Spin Class. Whole Foods. Drove Nick to karate.

I mean, what the fuck? I used to have a life. I used to really do somewhat important-ish things. Now I am relegated to karate carpooling and steaming turnips.

But while there’s currently not much going on in my life, there does seem to be a bunch of things going on in the rest of the world. So much, in fact, that I really can’t get to writing about everything that’s caught my eye of late.

So I thought I’d share some links to interesting articles I’ve stumbled upon in the paper or trolling Facebook (which I now spend an inordinate amount of time on).

Herewith, some rabbit holes to jump down:

– Like, a day after I write about turning 50 (some day), I discover I’m not the only one wringing my hands about it. 

– And if you missed the reference to crying about a future big birthday, here’s a refresher.

– As if turning 50’s not bad enough, a doctor will try to stick something where?

– Just when you thought Snapchat was the most worrisome app on your middle schooler’s iPhone, now there’s this.

– Although some media people can build a whole career out of that kind of stuff.

–  Will you go ape shit if you read one more contradictory piece on parenting? You’re not alone.

“Conscious Uncoupling” gets a blast of fresh air.

If you’re still looking for something to do, why don’t you subscribe to the blog via email to get new posts delivered straight to your inbox? Just look for the box here that encourages you to do just that. Easy. Peasy. 

Am I Stupid?

IMG_3742It happened again this week. For maybe the fifth time in his life, I left my youngest child some place he wasn’t supposed to be.

And he’s getting tired of it and frankly, I can’t say I really blame the kid.

Someone should take away my mom license.

I dropped him off yesterday afternoon at the elementary school in town about a mile and a half away from our house for what I thought was a 4:00 basketball practice.

I even had a nagging feeling while doing so — because practices are usually on Wednesdays — but I checked my iPhone and, yup, I was in the right place at the right time, according to my calendar.

I waited as he slowly made the walk from my car to the gym door, a sulky trip since he was mad at me because in his mind, I was somehow the reason kids had homework. Yes, that’s right: I’m the culprit. He’s resisting doing his homework lately, which is really out of character, but he’s busy blaming me, his teacher and really just THE MAN for the nightly 30 minutes of work that takes him away from looking at one screen or another or bouncing a Nerf basketball off his bedroom wall.

I returned home to my laptop, which I spent so much time looking at while working for my former employer that now that I’m out of work, find myself automatically opening up and wondering what to do with myself.

About a half hour later, the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find my 11-year-old standing there on the front step, his big blue eyes brimming with tears.

“Did I mess up the time?” I asked, and he burst past me and stomped up the stairs to his room.

By the time I got him to unlock the door for me, I found him sitting on his bed rubbing his legs, which were bright pink from making the long walk home in his basketball shorts with nothing more than a sweatshirt on top.

Did I mention it was about 20 degrees in my part of New Jersey yesterday afternoon?

I held out some cozy sweatpants to cover his freezing legs and brought him downstairs to the den to lie down on the couch in front of the fire and tucked his favorite blanket around him and left him alone.

After he had some time to pretend to fall asleep, I came in with a big mug of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows and a big splash of half and half, just the way he likes it.

“How about you do your homework in here tonight by the fire?” I suggested, and he took a sip of his cocoa and nodded his head.

His body and his mood thawed and eventually, he was happily showing me how good he was solving the evening’s math problems.

I apologized for the hundredth time as he was getting ready for bed later that night.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said, but really, it’s not. If his dad kept leaving him the wrong place, I’d be all like, “What’s his problem?”

What the hell is my problem?

So far, I’ve left him alone in the neighbor’s basement when he was about four while we all went out to deliver Thanksgiving dinners (he told me he jumped on their trampoline to keep busy until we got back), and at the wrong baseball practice that left him sitting on the curb until I returned some 90 minutes later. I even bought him a cell phone last year to avoid these mixups.

I’ve also left his older sister off the wrong time for a basketball game and left my oldest son, who was probably around 5 at the time, playing outside on the swing set in the backyard while I drove his two younger sisters to a babysitter for the day.

I remember looking into the back of the minivan through my rearview mirror about 10 minutes into the trip and not seeing his head, told him to sit up in his seat.

“He’s not here,” piped up one of the sisters.

Really, you didn’t think this was important information to share with me?

And I don’t know what to cite as the cause. Certainly, it can’t be because I have too many kids (since half are away at school right now). And it’s certainly not because I’m a working mom (because I am currently unemployed).

It’s not even because I was busy making dinner (since the kids went to their dad’s last night for that).

Methinks perhaps I’m stupid.

Which was confirmed earlier today when I loaded about three months worth of New York Times daily papers, all bundled and tied, into the back of my minivan to drop off at town recycling center on my way to the grocery store first thing this morning.

They’d been tied up and sitting on my mudroom floor for about a week and I just couldn’t look at them one more second.

I had noticed on our town website that there would be no recycling pickup on my usual day this week – Wednesday – because of Lincoln’s Birthday (I mean, what?) and the center would be closed as well.

But I forgot today was Wednesday. I thought it was Tuesday. I’m all mixed up in the head.

So I went not once but twice to the recycling center this morning, sitting in my minivan and staring at the locked gate blocking the entrance while mentally composing the snippy phone call I was going to make to borough hall when I returned home.

And then I realized that it was Wednesday.

I drove home and saw my neighbor Susan had put a bunch of cardboard boxes out for recycling pick up and instead of texting her that there was no pick up today, I went and dragged a giant box out of my garage and added it to her pile.

So, what can I chalk this all up to? Super-early dementia? Dumb-dumbiness? I am alarmed.

However, since I was so encouraged to learn the other day that I wasn’t the only one hoarding baby teeth, I’m hoping maybe you guys can share some of your own not-so-stellar-moments in scheduling. Or parenting, I suppose.

I’d like to feel like less of a dope.