Holy Crap, It’s Nearly March?

I looked at my calendar today and nearly had a fit. It’s almost March and I promised Lotus that I would guest post for her all the way back in December. I mean sure, there was this little thing like me giving birth in the middle of January, but hell, I should have had something put together by now, right?

It’s not like I don’t have the time or anything, Isaac spends most of his days sucking on my boobs, so surely I would be able to tap SOMETHING out. [Heh, kinda like I am doing now while he feeds.]

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

I write a blog called Sleepless Nights. I have a toddler who doesn’t sleep very well and a newborn who isn’t much better. The only difference is the toddler learned to sleep without my nipple in her mouth a little while back. Therefore, I feel sort of qualified to talk about lack of sleep.

You know what drives me batshit insane? When I’m sitting on the couch at 8pm, trying to breastfeed a fussy baby to sleep, occasionally stopping to let him bounce on my stomach/suck on my nose, and the news comes on touting some crap about sleep.

‘Lack of sleep can be extremely detrimental to your health…’

[You think I don't know that Jackass? I haven't slept in 24 hours here]

‘…and new studies have shown that sleeping in of a weekend can actually help reduce the harm lack of sleep causes…’

[Keep going idiot. What about those of us WHO HAVE SMALL CHILDREN AND CANNOT SLEEP IN?! Do we not count?'

'...so take the chance to catch up on sleep whenever you can.'

[Splutter cough cough cough curse]

This is where Nathan broke in and nearly cost himself his manhood.

‘See sweetheart? You can’t complain when I sleep in of a weekend now, because they have proved that it has health benefits!’

WTF? So what, I’m IMMUNE to lack of sleep simply because I pushed a baby out of my vagina 5 weeks ago? You know, lack of sleep doesn’t affect me anymore because I am a mother? Seriously, just call me superfuckingwoman. While I’m at it I will just do all the housework and cooking too, because damn if you don’t work! No matter that I am up all night with a fussy baby and awake all day with a whirlwind toddler.

The bitterness. I have it.

And I suspect I am not the only one.

Sleep deprived, with baby vomit caked in the crook of my arm [I suspect there is some in my ear too, but I'm not game to check] and the day stretching before me; an endless stream of feeds and food prep and housework and ohmyholyhell can you pick that back up and DON’T throw that at Isaac and PICK those books back up and if you tip that potty on the floor again I might just LOSE IT, the grass always looks greener over there.

Sure he might get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, a shower every day and actual conversation with adults, but me? I get to smell the top of my sons head as he nuzzles into my breast. I get to run my hands through soft-as-silk hair. I get toddler kisses and declarations of ‘I love MUMMY!’ I get the soggy cuddles after tantrums and the rare as rare baby smiles.

Even better though? I get to palm off all the crappy toddler nappies ‘because when was the last time you changed one of Isaac’s?’

And that my friends, is priceless and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Sleep or no sleep.

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Veronica is near and dear to my heart. She has been my friend since before the birth of “Sarcastic Mom,” enduring my Myspace Blog posts, and helping me gain the courage to actually start a real website. She was my first commenter, and she has stuck through with me this whole time. She is a beautiful, compassionate, strong, funny, and talented woman. I am honored to call her my friend. Go check in on her at Sleepless Nights – if she’s actually catching a nap for once in a row, just tuck her in, okay?

Hot Babysitter

My daughter is almost two years old. During her life we’ve left her with a babysitter exactly zero times, until last week.

A professional babysitter, I mean. We’ve had family or friends watch her while we stole an evening or even a weekend away on our own. But we could never get our act together enough to actually find some high school or college kid to come over after the kid was sleeping to eat all of our food while inviting his or her friends over to engage in hijinks.

At first it was because she was our baby! How can we leave our baby with a stranger? Later it was because, enh, we’d kind of gotten used to only sporadic alone time. And even later it was because how could anyone be competent at this? We’d been training for two years to take care of a kid our daughter’s age; how was some kid who couldn’t even vote or drink going to be qualified to do this job?

It never occurred to me that what I ought to have been worried about was having a hot babysitter. But this is a theme in the suburbs.

Before I do any more typing here I should say that the person about whom I am writing is definitely over 18, and I have every confidence she is also over 21. Not to diminish the general creepy old man factor involved in this post at all, but I hope to at least keep it from landing me in jail. She’s old enough to smoke, and she’s in college. Don’t call the cops.

Anyway….

We had hired her once to help grandma watch the kid at a friend’s house while the friends were also going away for an evening, leaving their daughter in grandma’s care as well. It was a good opportunity to vet a sitter in a controlled environment. But I never met her. My wife took care of the arrangements. Our friends, however, made a point of telling me that she was hot. Because they’re shit-disturbers.

Needing a sitter for an afternoon when our daughter was too sick for daycare we invited her over for a few hours. I was already out of the house when she arrived, but I would be the first one home, so my first meeting with our hot babysitter would be solo.

Well hell.

I walked in the door and my daughter came running over to me, smiling from ear to ear. They’d been watching Nemo and Cars and jumping around the apartment loudly enough that the downstairs neighbour dragged herself out of her sick bed to ask them to keep it down. A grand old time was had by all.

And the babysitter? Yes, hot. Totally smoke-burned voice, though, that I recognized too well from my days of hanging out with the cool kids smoking behind the school.

And the house reeked. It reeked. But not of cigarette smoke.

Not of any kind of smoke. That would have gotten her fired, but I’d at least have understood. Kids are boring sometimes and you just want to help them become interesting by frying your brain a little.

No, the house reeked of a desperate assault on the bathroom. It reeked of gut-rotted, whiskey shits.

Hello babysitter. My my, you are pretty cute. But what the fuck did you do to my bathroom?

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Hey, man. You have a kid. A toddler. She probably just shat herself as she is wont to do, and the sitter just didn’t change the diaper.” But as any parent will tell you, we know what our kid’s shit smells like. We can pick it out in a crowd of toddlers.

It was really hard to reconcile how she looked with how she had clearly violated my plumbing. It was enough to make me suspect that she’d had her boyfriend over and he’d done the number on the pipes.

Guess what. No matter how hot your babysitter is, if you are convinced she has crapped a raccoon you will never be able to have inappropriate thoughts about her.

Damn. Because I’m pretty sure one of the perks of being a dad is the idle, harmless thoughts you’re allowed to have about the babysitter.

No? What are you, an America-hater? Do you want the terrorists to win?

We had a brief introductory conversation about school and the like, but it seemed like she really wanted to get the hell out of there. Wouldn’t you? If you had dropped a deuce in your employer’s can and he’d come home to some ungodly stew of a stench? Yeah, I’d want to leave too. Quickly. And so she did.

Goodbye, hot babysitter. I’m not sure I can hire you again, not because you’re hot, but because oh my god.

After she left I chased my still sniffling daughter around the living room for a while. And I noticed that the smell never dissipated. In fact, it grew stronger.

And sure enough, when I checked the contents of my daughter’s diaper I discovered that I had completely maligned my hot babysitter. Er, her hot babysitter.

Because my daughter was home sick. And part of her sickness was apparently holy Christ on a bicycle what is dying in your intestines? It completely changed the, well, the everything about her elimination, making it totally unrecognizable.

Is this post really about shit? Sick shit at that?

Nope.

This post is about how I have a totally hot babysitter.

Phew.

Although, now I might have to fire her for not changing that fucking diaper before I got home. Jesus. See? Never hire a smoker to babysit; they can’t smell a damned thing.

But, she is hot. How much hotness does it take to make up for anosmia?

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Shawn is a dad with a backpack that his kids ride in, yes. Fortunately, his posts are filled with stories and reflections that go far beyond the simplicity of his own self-description. If you haven’t been entertained by him regularly yet, you should make your way over to Backpacking Dad and hang out. He’s often quite brilliant.

wax a moosh.

Hi. I’m Casey of moosh in indy and I am a loyal Brazilian waxer.

Below is one of the best comments I’ve received thus far, it just happens to be about Brazilian waxing.

Because body hair  jokes make everything funnier:

(Original Comment) Jessica: My waxer found a mole. It was humiliating.

Me: I apparently have a skin tag. A BIG ONE. She asked if I had ever shaved it off. I win.

Jessica: Oh that’s hideous. I’m happy to admit defeat.

Me: Let’s replace hideous with hilarious.

Can anyone beat THAT?

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This woman is classy, brave, beautiful, witty, hilarious, and intelligent. I don’t think I could be any prouder than I am having a guest post that is clearly about Casey’s Hot Spot on my website. Well, there was that time that she slept with my bewbs. Go check Casey out at moosh in indy (if you’ve been under a rock and have not done so already). She’s peachy.

That Sarah, She’s a Classy Gal

When Lotus asked me to guest post I immediately said yes.

And then I remembered that I am not a very good writer. And right after that I remembered that I had completely run out of things to write about on my own blog. And then I felt stupid.

Not that feeling like an idiot is a new emotion for me by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh! That gives me an idea. I could tell you my fart story. This seems like an appropriate venue for a good fart story. Wouldn’t you agree? Here goes nothing.

One time my husband and I were in Orlando for homecoming (I went to The University of Central Florida, and yes actually Daunte Culpepper was a Freshman when I was a Senior.) and we had been drinking like crazy all weekend and eating total garbage. It was after the football game and the plan was that we would all go to our rooms and get cleaned up for dinner. My stomach was a mess. I’d been drinking Miller Light in plastic bottles all day. You know what that can do to a person.

Our good friends Tammy and Ritch were staying two doors down the hall from us and we were going to just meet them in the hall and go down to the lobby to meet the rest of the gang. Gabe opened up the door to our hotel room and I said “Are they out there yet?” He said “No” and then I let out the loudest, raunchiest fart of all time. Then Gabe closed the door.

He said “No, Tammy and Ritch aren’t out there, but other people are. Apparently these “other people” all turned to look at him when the event occurred.

This is one of those things that when it happened I was so glad that it was only me and the person that already promised to spend the rest of his life with me that witnessed the event. (Well, and the others, I suppose but unless they are reading this right now they have no idea it was me.) Of course 40 seconds later when Tammy and Ritch actually came out of their room I immediately blabbed the entire story.

Then I told the internet.

I have no shame.

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If Sarah entertained you today, feel free to check her other stuff out at Sarah and the Goon Squad, Loser Moms, Draft Day Suit, BlogHer, MamaPop… she pretty much writes everywhere.

In Which I Reveal My Unbridled Hatred For Dora

My youngest daughter is 4 and still drinks the sickeningly sweet Dora Kool Aid served up with a side of oddly shaped football head and the incapacity to speak without yelling.

We’ve acquired a motley crew of Dora dolls that talk (thank God for hard to find batteries that mysteriously “die” and cannot be replaced) plus a talking Dora cash register. Thankfully we do have one doodle pad Dora theme toy that is blissfully silent. The Dora dolls, however, have those creepy eyes half-rolled back into their heads while they wait to be recharged in the corner of my daughter’s room perched on, what else, a Dora chair. I’m not sure what’s worse…hearing Wishing Fairy Dora sing over and over again or seeing her passed out like a nightmarish Latina Bride of Chucky doll ready to kill me with “Where Are We Going…TO HELL…mwaa haa haa haa.”

Seriously. The dolls are nightmare inducing. It’s enough for me to grab them one by one, shake them, and scream, “Dora, Shut The Fuck Up!!!!”

I guess I’ve watched one too many episodes of Dora where I find myself secretly rooting for her and Boots, the dumb as a box of taco shells monkey, because I know it will come out, “Dora, Shut The Fuck Up… Por Favor!!!”

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Jamie has been writing about the more humorous, and messier, moments of life in the dog hair/estrogen filled vortex she calls home at BlondeMomBlog since 2005, but has never used the real F word on her blog. Muchas gracias, Lotus.