I’ve never been one for family beds.
Before you fire off angry hate mail, let me remind you that I said “I” wasn’t one for them. You can sleep as a family all you want. I just happen to value my sleep and when I have an errant toddler kicking my kidneys, oddly enough, I can’t sleep. And shit knows, I’ve had ENOUGH problems sleeping, I don’t need kidney punches to compound them.
So I’ve done everything I can to make sure that my kids never ended up in bed with me.
Until now.
Amelia seems to have caught my mysterious Oregon Trail disease – or she’s teething – and has decided that sleep is bullshit. No. Sleep is FUCKING bullshit.
Which makes me sad in the pants. Because of all the things I love in the world, sleep is at the top of my list, right alongside cheeseburgers, dating television husbands and celebrity gossip magazines. I simply cannot understand how anyone who shares my genetics could be opposed to sleep.
You’d think after Alex I might’ve learned, but no.
So every night, right around midnight, she wakes up tearful and exhausted. Rather than just rolling over and going back to sleep, our conversations go like this:
Aunt Becky: “Are you hurting, baby pants?”
Mimi: “NO.”
Aunt Becky: “Do you need another binkie?”
Mimi: “NO.”
Aunt Becky: “Do you need a blankie?”
Mimi: “NO.”
Aunt Becky: “A million dollars?”
Mimi: “NO.”
Aunt Becky: “A pony?”
Mimi: “NO.”
Aunt Becky: “Okay, what gives?”
Mimi: “BED.”
Aunt Becky: “Girl pants, you ARE in bed.”
Mimi: “MOMMY’S BED.”
Aunt Becky: “Mimi, no.”
Mimi (begins to scream): “MOOOOOOOOOMMMMY’S BED.”
Aunt Becky (fearful the other two will wake up): “Okay, okay.”
And off I go, toddler in arms, to go rest in my bed. And by “rest,” I mean, “get kicked in the vagina” or “get kicked in the face” until she decides that her bed is less bullshit than mine. At which point, I scoop her up and plop her into her own bed.
I wish someone would give ME a pony when I couldn’t sleep. I’d have a pony FARM by now.
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How do you guys handle family bed? Do you do it? Can Mimi join you?
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I wrote this post about the first thing I thought when I held my son for the first time for ABC’s Million Mom Challenge. It’s worth a read. Even my son liked it!
Also: GULP. I cannot believe I actually wrote something my kid would read!
It started last week. Or the week before. Or sometime last year. I don’t know. Time isn’t my strong suit.
Alex, the four-year old, had a double ear infection. This on top of being poked in the eye with a piece of cable from my daughter made for one Unhappy Camper. Can’t really blame the kid for that.
Off to the doctor we went, where I was certain he’d gotten a corneal abrasion or some other eye condition that would squick me the fuck out. You’d think that because I’m a nurse, I’d be immune, but BLECH. No.
Turns out, it wasn’t related to his sister’s gentle, loving caress to the eyeball with a piece of metal. No. Pinkeye. Fuck. Ew. Gross. Nasty.
So we did our course of eye-drops, while I tried not to vomit because EW GROSS EYEBALL and then I got sick with the Mysterious Oregon Train Disease (which I still motherfucking HAVE)(talk about bullshit. Dysentery would be SO much more glamorous than this). Come to think of it, it’s probably from the doctor’s office. Remind me to pick up a hazmat suit, Pranksters.
Yesterday, my day care lady informed me that my daughter woke up with goo in her eye too. She, too, went on the eyedrops. Along with my son, whose eye goo has returned. The universe likes to torture me sometimes.
So now I wait, Pranksters. I wait for the day when I wake up with The Blob on my face. Because anyone who knows me knows I’m twenty-five-niner times more likely to get infected with kid crap than the average bear, I’m certain that when I do, it will be a Blob That Ate My Face. I’m altogether certain, in fact, that my Blob will mutate and become an actual living, breathing Blob, like the pink goo from Ghostbusters II.
Here’s hoping it’ll dance to “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher.”
A couple of weeks ago, Pranksters, I came here and dumped my thoughts all over your screen. In this case, my thoughts were not about SkyMall kitties or why John C. Mayer ruined my life, but about hate.
Specifically, hateful comments.
I took a comment I’d gotten in January of this year and explained that it had caused me to live a [redacted] life.
(sidebar: [redacted] means to edit out sensitive information)
It wasn’t a particularly good post, however, it was one of those things I had to write to get it out. By getting it out, I’d hoped to be able to move on to a non-[redacted] life. I don’t much appreciate having to shit rainbows and kittens when I’m in a shit ON rainbows and kittens kind of mood, and I knew it had impacted me. I also knew why.
But in the comments on that post, I was asked a question. A question that deserves more of an answer than a comment reply could offer. And a question that I’d welcome your opinion about.
The question was simple (pardon me for paraphrasing):
“Do you feel that the negative comments outweigh the positive?”
The answer? Not so simple.
While I haven’t been subject of numerous hateful comments from Internet Mole People (read: trolls), I have gotten a handful, although most about my dog, Auggie. Just FYI, Pranksters, the Internet is sensitive about dogs.
Most of the hateful comments have been of this ilk:
“You’re boring.”
“You’re not funny.”
“This was navel-grazing.”
“You have problems.”
“You should kill yourself.” (from The Twitter)
To which I would heartily agree with all but the last sentiment. After all, the world needs ditch-diggers too.
Not one of those bothered me, except for the “you’re not funny” bit. And that only bothered me because I never SAID I was funny. Funny LOOKING perhaps, but funny? Not so much.
(pointless sidebar too! Who SAYS “I’m funny” about themselves anyway? UN-funny people, that’s who.)(also: your mom)
Anyway. Those type of Internet Mole People comments are fine. Just because you leave them doesn’t mean I have to publish them and just because I publish them doesn’t mean I cry unicorn tears into my pillow at night. You are CERTAINLY welcome to your opinion. And we all know Anonymity + The Internet = Assjackets. The difference is, I don’t have to give you the platform to broadcast it. Sorry, ’bout that.
(also: I am NOT sorry)
But the comment in question, well, it called me an addict. That was not cool. Why? Well, if I didn’t have massive migraines or two alcoholic parents (note: I am not bashing my parents, simply stating the truth. They are recovering addicts)(see also: I am only as sick as my secrets), maybe I’d have laughed. After all, I was the dumbass who named my blog “Mommy Wants Vodka.” What can I expect?
However, it’s something I worry about. Becoming an addict myself, that is, not renaming my blog. I’m not sure how to avoid that one.
So to be called out like that by “someone who knows me, the REAL me,” well, ouch. Condescending + hitting a nerve = hurt. That sort of comment sticks with you.
Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe I was in the wrong for allowing it to hurt me. Maybe I’ll get hit by a bus crossing the street. Who fucking knows?
The point is, though, that sometimes cruelish comments do hurt. I think, though, that they only hurt when they hit a little too close to home.
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So I hope that answers your question, oh wise commenter. And now it’s your turn, Pranksters. How would you answer this question?
