It really is amazing when you wake up and think the day might just be a can of dog shit because your legs hairs are so long that they hurt, your hair looks like a mug shot from America’s Most Wanted Top Ten’s Worst Female Criminals and your head feels like you used a steel toe boot as a pillow the night before. Then, it takes a sudden turn when you let go and give in to the fact that you cannot get anything worthwhile done and might as well act like your nearly two-year-old son. When in Rome, shit in your pants and play with trucks until you fall asleep crying into a soft, monkey shaped pillow. I only wish it were that easy.
But, since I hadn’t had a chance to shower and Dave was gone to a meeting where he would be tightly gripping a red pen and trying desperately NOT to plunge the tip into the jugular vein of the other writer in the room, I knew I had to wash off the day before and get moving. I stuck Otto in the bathroom with me, undressed and took a quickie whore’s bath while he played with his Thomas The Train set and gazed at my breasts longingly, relishing the day they provided him with a full Turkey dinner without having to chew or swallow.
We then gathered up our belongings and went over to The Grove, our local outdoor mall complete with rabid, poorly dressed tourists returning from The Price Is Right taping next door and a fountain that plays the oldies while spraying water into the air in forty foot streams. Otto and I then ran around jumping in every puddle we could find and laughing as Frank Sinatra sang “Come Fly With Me” over the loud speakers. It was awesome. I actually did not give a shit if he got wet or if we made it home in time for a nap. The only thing that came close to killing my buzz were the throngs of grown women with their glass eyed, tween daughters who clutched American Girl dolls as if they were rescuing orphaned children in the Kalahari and sad looking vendors who stood at their fancy pushcarts trying their best to stay warm and employed in this economy.
We then followed a path back to the Farmer’s Market area where all the food stalls were and I fed Otto a slice of pepperoni pizza while a new mother sat beside us with her sleeping newborn and her mother. With her tired eyes, huge milky boobs and an ass that was desperately fighting for space inside her baby blue Juicy Couture sweats, she ate her burrito and complained to Grandma about loud Sunday morning neighbors, sleepless nights and maternal memory loss. The motherly complaints really do not vary all that much from the first few months to the toddler years.
But instead of feeling her pain and siding with her mental state, I knew in my heart that we were nothing alike. I would never have purchased anything in baby blue for myself, especially over priced, matching, Juicy Couture cougar wear when Old Navy has the same sweats for a quarter of the price in much cooler colors, even if it disintegrates after twenty washings. If you plan on leaving the house dressed for a soup kitchen giveaway, why would you shell out that kind of money? No matter what you do, you will be covered in breast milk, regurgitated food, tears, feces, spit up, semen, urine and filial disgust at some point in your new motherly day. Slovenly is slovenly, any way you cut it. Spend the money on great porn for your husband and a new Margarita maker.
And for the record, your neighbors will NEVER shut up, the gardeners will continually ruin your piece of mind with leaf blowers and terrible timing, the helicopters will fly right over head chasing a carjacker that never finished middle school whenever you really need a break and a slew of trans-gendered homeless folk will continue to keep your child from napping for months to come with psychotic arguments involving alcohol and old Barbie dolls. So strap on your bag of exhaustion, pull up a chair to bitterness and start shopping for all your matching sportswear at Target. At least there you’ll be able to restock the diaper drawer, purchase overpriced eye cream that will never eradicate those new wrinkles and score a dress made for a teenager that makes you feel just a little bit better than the day before you bought it.
And with that long thought a faint memory, I politely wished the new mother cougar good luck and I walked straight over to Bob’s Donuts, bought Otto a plain doughnut hole and myself a glazed and drove home elated that I had survived the first two years without dying of sleep deprivation or dressing up like one of the ladies from Desperate Housewives. After a quick ride home and a sugar rush, Otto went straight down for his nap and I changed into my ugly, stained, blue gray Old Navy sweatshirt and ate my delicious, shiny, lovely glazed doughnut for lunch. Beat that, Eva Longoria-Parker!
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