*Jenni's Law

You know the old saying, Murphy’s Law? Well, here is my version, Jenni’s Law!

- If I get dressed up for any reason, in anything other than jammies, I will have a stain on it before getting the three kids in the car.
- If I buy the kids a new shirt, they will (all 3 of them) wipe their leftover food from their face onto the sleeve!
- If I get Corey to finally take a nap, so I can go to the bathroom in peace, the bird will screech and wake him up.
- When I finally do get to the bathroom, there will not be any toilet paper in there. And if there is by some odd chance, it will fall into the wet bathtub, out of my reach.
- After making sure the cat box is all fresh and clean, she will go in there and take a crap right as someone pulls into the driveway!
- Immediately after bathing my dogs, they will find the one pile of shit in the yard Ariel didn’t pick up, and roll in it!
- After getting all 3 kids and two shopping carts to the far end of Wal-Mart, Joey will tell me he has to go to the bathroom. Even if he went at home!
- If I leave the bathroom door open for even one second, Corey will flush everything in the room, down the toilet!
- If I finish all of the laundry and finally sit down, Ariel will tell me that she forgot to give me her gym uniform.
- If I do take the van to be washed, the largest heard of birds ever seen will shit all over it before I can get home.
- If Joe and I have plans to go out by ourselves, which is almost yearly, I will start my period out of nowhere!
- If I have a horrible migraine and need Joe to rub my neck, he will have hurt his hand or finger at work!
- If I finally get a hold of a movie I really really wanted to see, it will not play in my DVD player.
- If I am trying to get on the freeway, there will be someone in front of me trying to merge into traffic going 30 MPH.
- When I go to a fast food restaurant, I will have the person serve me that hates life, hates me, and most of all, hates working at Taco Bell.
- If I get a chance to take a bubble bath in my Jacuzzi tub, it will get a weird air bubble in the line and shoot water and suds all over the bathroom.
- After freshly bathing and dressing the kids, Corey will poop when we get 5 miles down the road and force me to pull over and change him roadside.
- If I buy Ariel anything, it will be the wrong color, style or fabric.
- If I leave the laptop on the end table, Corey will use it as a stepping stool on the floor.
- If I dare wake up Joe to tell him he is snoring, he will think I want something more!!!
- On the occasion I do want something more, one of my kids will wake up due to a dream, a drink of water or bathroom run.
- If I let Ariel get her clothes ready for the laundry, she will leave in one of her pockets, a lip-gloss, pen or piece of gum.
- If I take my children in public, one of them will say or do something that leads others to believe that they have not been raised in civilization!
- If I do not make sure the cat’s food bowl is full at all times, she will come into my room and bite my forehead while I’m sleeping.
- If a product claims to be unbreakable, one of us in this house will break it!
- After I post this, I will remember something else I meant to say!!

*Old Me

Now that I’m in my 30’s, I’ve been forced to face the fact that I’m not the spry, limber teeny bopper I once was! I try daily to prove this wrong, but daily I am slapped with reality. When I was young, I danced, cheered and could do the splits on command! Oh, the fun I had at competitions and pep rallies! How cute I was with my teeny little skirt and boobs just the right size. Too bad those perfect body days are wasted on the teen years! I mean, no wrinkles, eyelids in the right place, and energy for days…..all wasted on teenagers. What are they supposed to do with that nice rack? I deserve those things now. I’m a little bitter I think. After all the hard work of growing as a person, having my own children and raising them with love and confidence, I get the thanks of wrinkles, low eyelids, boobs that are a likeness of a half deflated basketball, arthritis, and gray hairs (I know this because Joey points out new ones daily).

I feel that the correct thing to do is embrace these well earned ‘flaws’. Well, sorry, I just can’t. No way!! It’s wrong, wrong, wrong!! Damn it, I want my boobs back, tight skin and just once to have sex without my bones cracking like I’m 100. I mean, come on, how sexy is that? The mood is just right; I lean in for a kiss and crack, pop…UHHH….sorry! Joe, with a look of concern, like he has just broken me, asks, “Are you okay?” Shit…”Yeah, I’m okay, I don’t know about our sex life though”! Seriously folks, I even asked Joe if anyone would notice if we installed a handicap bar made for the shower onto our wall as a headboard. Hmmm…maybe if I decorated it somehow, it wouldn’t stand out so much!

For those of you who are younger…just wait, you’ll see!! For those of you who are older, you know what I’m talking about! For those of you who are ‘embracing’ these new quirks, you must be more mature than me, cause I can not stuff my boobs into a bra, tape up my eyebrows, and wax that unwanted hair quietly!! I can only sit back and patiently wait for these years to pass….the ‘Golden Years’ I think will be better. Granted, by then I will probably have uncontrollable gas and no boobs left at all, but the chances of me not remembering how great my tits used to be are better! That’s the key to embracing the older me, I think! When my memory of that dancer in a leotard has blurred, I will for sure love my wrinkly, gray-headed self!!

* New Disease

Okay, so it has been said many times, we have a generation of laziness, but I’m here to affirm that. I am guilty of contributing to and even enabling this ‘disease’. I call it a disease because everything has to have an excuse and label these days. Overeating, drinking, drugs, smoking, it’s all considered a disease, so; I figured that laziness should be added to that list and here is why…..

My daughter is 12. She is an honor roll student, has been in cheer and plays sports. She runs track, miles at a time. Impressive I think, until I look a little closer. I recently bought a trampoline, a nice fancy one with a net around it and all. She was so happy to get it!! Then she asked where we were going to put it. I pointed to an area in our massive yard about 100 yards behind the house. “I thought that would be a good place for all play stuff”, I said. She got a look on her face like I had just said she was going to eat a piece of crap for dinner, and she said, in her most disgusted tone, “Why there?” I said, “because it’s back behind the house and I don’t have to worry about the boys near the front”. She replied with, “but it is so far away to walk back there”. So, after telling her how lazy that sounded, to not want to walk 100 yards to a trampoline, we agreed on a spot closer to the house. So now, she walks 20 yards to a trampoline that she jumps on for hours!! This goes hand in hand I’d say to the phenomenon of people driving around a parking lot for a half hour to find just the right parking place up close to an entrance, when they will be walking around a store, mall or amusement park for hours, but that extra 50 yards to the entrance is a deal breaker!

My son Joey is 4. He is active and very smart. He can give us the directions to get from our house to anywhere we have been. He is like a walking map! Who needs GPS?! In my amazement of him getting us to my dad’s house 40 miles away in Louisiana from our house in East Texas and being so proud, I still can’t shake the fact that he too is lazy. Anything that is a ‘crap job’ I say, he wants no part of. Helping me make a cake, cutting the grass on a riding lawn mower, and directing Ariel of where to pick up dog shit are great jobs for him. But tell him to clean his toys up, put away clothes or for my sake wipe his own damn ass after taking a dump….forget it!! No way!! I plead with him…”Joey, you are 4 and you’ll be in kindergarten soon. Who will wipe your ass at school?” His reply is, “I’ll wait until I get home to poop!” UGH!! Why do I enable this shit?? This is like the boss at work, you know the one. The one who dictates from his or her high horse of what to do and how you don’t do it good enough, but yet they have no idea of how to do it themselves or even attempt to try. Wiping their own ass would be a huge feat!

My son Corey is 18 months old and yep, you guessed it, is lazy too. He is as smart as a whip. Will understand anything you tell him to do, however complicated you make think it is, he gets it. He knows the name of all animals and toys, he knows if I skip pages in a book that I’m reading him for the 10th time in an hour and he will even go to the bathroom on the toilet and attempt to wipe his ass. This one has to be the ‘different one’ I thought. Well, not so fast, he refuses to talk! Can he? YES!! He said his first words around 10 months old and he physically can speak…no disorders or anything, except that horrible ‘disease’ of laziness. I officially diagnosed him this morning. He points at what he wants and he gets what he wants. I’ve tried the whole, make him tell me and not point thing, yeah, it doesn’t work with him. His personality, to be polite, is a bit abrasive. But, to be perfectly honest here, he’s just an ass sometimes! So, to keep this playful, smart, tiger appeased, I give in to his refusal to speak.

As I sit here writing this on my portable laptop, with a cordless phone next to me and spaghettio’s in a can for the boys for lunch, I can’t help but wonder, am I the cause of the disease? Did I ‘give’ my children this disease, or are they simply born with it? I would appreciate any help with the matter and even welcome support groups to cope with this disease!

*Corey's Birthday

It was August 23, 2006 at 10pm, the air was hot and sticky, and I was going to pop at any moment! Literally pop, I thought. At 3 days shy of my due date with Corey, and having had contractions continually for almost a week, I had had enough! That morning I had gone to my regular check up with the OB and I think he may have actually had some pity for me. He said “Be at the hospital at 10pm tonight, we’ll get this done”. Oh, what a relief…I couldn’t wait, the baby had his eviction notice and I would be at least 15 pounds lighter by tomorrow I thought.

Yeah, well, Corey had other ideas. He was comfortable in there. I think he may have even rearranged ‘furniture’ to make himself some more room. He was in it for the long haul. Not even budging a little. So, the more stubborn he got, the more aggressive the nurses and doctor got…..that equals me becoming a complete lunatic!! I was so calm and collected with the other two; I thought I was a pro at this.

I was only dilated to a three and stuck, and now it was Friday the 25th. This was the day that no one in that room had signed up for! The nurses checked and said that they would be back in a couple hours to cram their whole arm inside of me to check again. About 10 minutes later, after I had all but given up, I told Joe I had to push. The nurse came in and said that I must have to go to the bathroom, because it wasn’t near close enough to have me push. I asked her to please, please take a peek. She SLOWLY and reluctantly put on some gloves and meandered over to the end of my bed to appease me. She pulled up the sheet and after her mouth dropped open and eyes about pooped out of her head, she put the sheet down and gathered up the ‘crew’. FINALLY, it was time!

At the hospital with me was, Joe, and my sister, Corianne. My best friend Shelly was to be called when it was ‘time’ due to her being at work. Well, it was ‘time’, so Joe called Shelly and said “get over here quick”. No one would let me push, so here I was waiting and waiting…I mean, the time I had been working toward this past 2 days was here, and I couldn’t push??!! UGH!!!! 15 minutes pass and I think, I could have been done by now. Right about then, Shelly rushes through the door and the doctor arrives. It was time now, no more waiting. I’m a pro at pushing and out he’ll pop. Or so I thought!

Joe is at my left, Shelly is at my right, and my poor sister is at the Dr’s right in full view of my glory, camera and all!! What happens next, proves what strong and unconditionally loving, my friend and family are. I’m laying almost flat on my back, pushing away, I tell the nurse that I should be sitting up more, cause that’s how I did with the other two and they were out in just a few pushes! Nope, she says, it’s better this way! Ugh….I felt like I was pushing a Buick up a hill. Right at that moment, I see a look of confusion and denial on Joe’s face. He shoots his eyes towards my sister who, camera in hand, has the same look. Joe then looks to Shelly; someone to say it’s just his imagination. She has a huge smile on her face that does not even let up and quickly nods her head in affirmation. I think what? What? What has happened? Why are they acting so weird? Then the smell hit me! Oh no!! No, way!! Yup, I did, I pooped!! Joe tried to bury his nose in his underarm, but he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. So, they all stood there strong. The nurse did look to my sister and say; “I wouldn’t take a picture if I were you”.

Right after that episode was cleaned up, what more could there possibly be, right?? Wrong!! About that time, the doc decided to take out the catheter that I had, right in the middle of a push!! Yup, you guessed it!! I peed all over the doctor and nurse! The only thing I could say was sorry. What else was I to do?

I finally said firmly that I needed to be raised up so I could push more effectively. The nurse agreed and sat me up. Two pushes later, and there was Corey. All wrinkly, red and pimply, but he was so perfect. Every minute of those agonizing, couple days was worth it.

Joe, Shelly, and Corianne shared more with me that day than they had hoped for, but I wouldn’t have it any other way! I am still reminded of this wonderful experience often, and I smile with pride!! Poop and all, it was a great day!

Corey was born at 5:31pm on August 25, 2006. He was 19 inches long and weighed 6lbs, 13oz, before pooping all over the nurse!!

*Selective Amnesia

Ok, so I am convinced that selective amnesia is inherited from a child’s father. There is no other logical explanation. My children all have it, and I’m sure yours do too. Let me state an example of selective amnesia….You tell your child to clean his or her room before going to the video arcade. He or she conveniently forgets to do so, stating it must have slipped their mind. On the flip side, you tell your child to get $10 out of your wallet before going to arcade….do you think they forget that one??? Hell no! That $10 is gone and so is your kid. Is that room clean? No way! How does this happen?

There has to be some sort of amnesia gene our kids are born with and the defect comes straight from the father. No mother or wife could ever get away with having this problem. Oh, damn honey, sorry I forgot to feed you, but I did get a new duvet. I mean, Joe will completely forget that I had asked him to take some trash to the dump, but he will remember to overhaul his entire car that weekend. He will forget that he left his clothes on the bathroom floor, but he will remember that Jimmy Kimmel comes on at 10:35pm, on channel 3. It will have slipped his mind to have rinsed his hair down the sink after shaving, but the next car show is in September over 200 days away, and if I ask, he’ll tell me down to the minute how much time remains. He has passed this disorder down to my children. I try and correct my boys now, so that they too don’t pass this horrible amnesia to their own, but I fear I am failing.

I ask Joey to please pick up his legos so I do not permanently imprint the bottom of my foot, as I am trying to keep my cursing to a minimum (stepping on legos is an immediate deal breaker). Walk, walk, walk, oh shit, damn, damn, damn…”AHHH!!!!! Joey, I told you to pick these up!” His reply in his tiny 4-year-old voice, “Oh, yeah, sorry mommy, I forgot”. Never mind that I had asked him 5 times in the past hour, he plain forgot. But, tell him that he will see Sesame Street Live next week, and he remembers the whole plan. “We will take Ariel to school, then take Corey to Papa’s house, then we will go to the show at 10:30, then after have McDonalds and maybe a vanilla shake.” Poor kid…he has this horrible mutated gene, and it’s Joe’s fault.

I took partial fault in the lazy disease, this one is all Joe! I can have no part in this. I somehow remember to change diapers, clean the bathtub and check email almost simultaneously. How can they not remember step-by-step instructions? They will entirely omit one of the steps due to amnesia.

As you can see this is frustrating for me, and I’m sure all other moms and wives worldwide. So, what do we do about it? I’ll tell you….urge congress to fund a research for this gene mutation and stop it in its tracks. I did write a formal letter myself, but have had no response. I’m sure the receiver of my request was a man and he ‘forgot ‘ to respond.

*OK, I admit it

I once was asked to say something good about myself that no one else knew about. I knew what I could say, what I wanted to say, but I was embarrassed. I quickly thought of a back up good trait. I was scared that if I said I was an in the closet hero, people would think I was a sucker! OK, so I am sometimes, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t stop my quest to be a hero! I really do have a huge heart, for people, animals and even inanimate objects that I swear have feelings too. Joe says that he realized I was the one for him when one day, an out of the blue rainfall poured down as we were driving. At a street corner, there was an elderly couple walking hand in hand in the pouring rain. I wanted to pull over and give them my umbrella. At that moment, Joe fell in love.

I have given money to those who seem to need it, even when I really don’t have any to spare. I have taken in and cared for people and animals even when they don’t appreciate it, but yet I still keep going. That endearing quality I had 6 years ago, has since become a roll the eyes, “you did what?” type thing. I can’t help it. That poor dog outside in 20-degree weather and one eye that is closed shut, makes me want to cry! I want to make him better, feed him and make him warm, but he won’t let me near him. So every day, I feed him and attempt to bribe him with little treats just so he’ll come close enough to me so I can see his poor, painful eye. I never succeed in even touching him, but I think if I keep it up, he too will fall in love!

Every week on the news, they profile a child that needs a home. Some are quiet, some are full of life, and some are siblings, all looking to have a home together. I don’t care what their ages or races are, I want every last one of them. I try, often, to convince Joe that somehow we could make it work…all we need is a bigger house and tons of money for adoption….I know it would be great!! I would be like the ‘little old lady who lived in a shoe’!!

We pulled things out of our old barn from years past. Things that did not belong to us and had no value to us personally, but somehow, I felt responsible for these things. We couldn’t just burn these memories from other people that have somehow left them here, so out they came, into our shed, safe and sound from the fire. I felt like these things deserved a home too. Just another example of my save the world, no matter what a sucker I look like, but couldn’t have it any other way life!

So, I’ve lived in the closet for a long time, and now it’s time to come out! I AM A HERO!!!! At least that’s what I tell myself. There are a lot of closet heroes in my life! I will not ‘out them’, they know who they are! I just want to let them know that they inspire me to be this hero! I don’t want a prize for my acts of random kindness; I just want others to feel empowered to do the same. There is nothing like that feeling of a heart melting….give it a try, you’ll see!

Well, that’s it for now, I have to go feed the one eyed dog, dream up plans for my one day adopted kids, and wash my hero costume!

*Finally at Peace

What am I ‘supposed to be’ doing as a parent? Specifically, a stay at home parent. This is a question I have struggled with for a couple months now. My day, before all of this quiet chaos I presently live with, consisted of: waking up very early, going to my overly stimulating job where I personally encountered 60 to 90 patients a day and took care of each and every one with precision and love. I walked about 7 miles a day at work (according to the pedometer I purchased at Wal-Mart due to a patient’s curiosity). On top of the almost insane patient load I had, I also had to oversee flow of the practice and do almost all of the billings of insurances for the practice. I was like a circus organ grinder monkey, feed me caffeine all day and watch me go. The autopilot was only disabled when everything came to a screeching halt due to the ‘office manager’s’ personal crisis of the day. It was always dramatic and definitely this time, it was the end of the world. So, sometimes I also got to pick up her kid from school or take the big boss’ car to be washed. Forget that I couldn’t even make it to my own daughter’s assembly at school for good grades or that I hadn’t even washed my own car in about 6 months, I got to take care of theirs.

Life as you can see was rich! How could I have possibly wanted more? I mean, I got a whole 2 weeks off for maternity leave. Oh, and I also was 1099’d on my Christmas and birthday gifts!! Woo-Hoo! Now, that is love! My evenings and sometimes uninterrupted weekends consisted of coffee, cleaning a house, making meals and carting the kids from one place to another all in a blur. Oh shit, I forgot to say, that at times, there was actually a few minutes for me to squeeze in a shower, but shaving, that was only for special occasions.

So, it’s 6pm and I was supposed to leave work a half hour ago, and the kids are excited and cranky at the same time. Kick off my shoes, whip up a dinner that Betty Crocker would have been ashamed of and plop it on the table. “Eat… hurry….we need to get the boys bathed, read to, teeth brushed and in bed; Ariel we need to work on your 5th science project for the year!” Okay, now it is 8pm and Joey refuses bedtime, he’d rather lie in the hallway and stare at us. Corey, only a few months old, decides to go to the bathroom again, but this time all over his clothes, bed and somehow hair. “Ugh, Ariel, you try and figure out how to draw an illustration for AIDS on a giant poster board of a timeline, while I go bathe, re-clothe, and change bedding for Corey.” Now, its 8:30pm, Ariel is getting tired and still needs to shower, but we still haven’t decided on how to draw this damn picture. I tell her to shower and I would figure it out. As I sit there for a half hour wondering how this could be a real project, my mind races….did I pay the phone bill? I swear I did, I remember writing the check, but I can’t remember actually mailing it. Oh shit, now we aren’t gonna have a phone. Well, if the phone still works, I can call the bank to see if the check cleared…that’s what I’ll do! By now, it’s 9pm and Ariel is ready for bed. I hand her the poster board with a smile of accomplishment. She said, “mom, all you did was write AIDS in red, fancy”. I could tell that she was disappointed in my artwork, hoping I would have come up with something spectacular. She said, “What am I going to tell my teacher of why I didn’t draw an actual picture”? I then thought for a minute, there has to be an answer to this question, after all, moms know all. I had it!! I told her to ask her teacher to tell her what she would have drawn for AIDS, what could she possibly have thought of? Nothing better than me I was sure! So, now it’s 9:30 and I have to sign that permission slip and write a check for $20 for that field trip…ugh, now where is my checkbook? It has to be around here somewhere….not in my purse, not with the bills, was it behind Joey’s toy box with the mail that he hides?

Well, I better shower myself; maybe I’ll remember what I did with that checkbook while in there. While taking my luxurious 5 minute shower, I think of all that I need to do for the upcoming weekend of camping. Shit, did I get the marshmallows? I don’t think I did. I walk into the kitchen and open the cupboard to get some Tums for my stressed out and overly caffeinated stomach, and there I also find the checkbook. Why the hell is it with the medicine? In the kitchen? Well, I did buy the marshmallows and I did send off the phone payment. Whew!! Now, let me scoop Joey up off of the hallway floor and put him in bed. 10pm and in bed myself, Joe does the whole, throw his arm over me and sleepily rub my backside. I say, “give it up Joe and go back to sleep, I’m too tired to even brush my teeth, plus, I didn’t even shave!”

Fast-forward 6 months. Here I am with all of the time in the world to go to those school assemblies, volleyball games and back-to-school nights. I can play with the kids out in the rain, bake a loaf of bread and take that oh so missed bubble bath. And I wonder, am I supposed to be doing more? Should I have gone over Joey’s ABC’s again? Should I have made Ariel do her own laundry? Should I not have let Corey bathe in his mashed potatoes at dinner? Well, now it’s almost midnight and I realize that what ever I do or don’t do, it’s right! Joey is happy to go to bed in his own bed, excited that tomorrow he’ll help me make homemade pizza. Corey is sleeping without a care in the world. Ariel is dreaming about what her little boyfriends at school might get her for Valentine’s Day. Joe is snoring, but I don’t care, at least he is cozy. Just them knowing that I have an available hour or two for just them, is enough to make them sleep soundly. Although, that meatloaf I made for dinner might have given me some heartburn, I am good too. Peaceful I would say! Knowing that tomorrow is a new day and it’s all about my kids is enough for me. Well, time for me to go get that Tums and get lost in my own dreams!! Oh, and that science project; after asking her teacher what she would have drawn, Ariel received a big fat A!! And, I actually shaved my legs!!