Just Like Celine Dion Says

Perhaps you’re confused by the title.  I’m always trying to stump and mildly irritate my readers.

A NEW DAY HAS COME.

It’s a big, big day here in Piper’s house.  Sloan starts preschool tomorrow.  It seems like yesterday two years ago she was this old and I was attempting to start this blog:

And now here she is, this little lovable, spitting badger who tells me “NO!” and likes to come sleep in my bed at 3:00 am -

The preschool thing is pretty big for me, even though it’s a co-op, which means I will be there helping part of the time.  It is a big deal because some weeks I will get an extra FOUR HOURS to myself.  I’ve thought about this long and hard all summer.  Like, OHMYGOD…what will I do with FOUR HOURS?  You may think I’m being my usual sarcastic self, but I’m not.  Here is what you will NOT find me doing:

1)  grocery shopping

2)  cleaning my house

3)  folding laundry

4)  scrapbooking

5)  making casseroles for the freezer

I’ve decided these activities will be acceptable during my precious free time -

1)  working out at my new gym

2)  writing more often, especially on important topics like pubic hair and Richard Dawson

3)  reading others’ writing more often

4)  figuring out ways to add more work/career/big girl days back into my life

5)  making more rap videos in a bigger and better way

6)  pondering my existence, drinking coffee, and tyring to figure out what I want to do with my life for the next ten years.

I’m not kidding on number four.  I’ve reached that point.

Listen, I’ll bet you fifty million monkey farts in a drum that 80% of most moms would never admit that their ultimate life goal WASN’T to have children and stay at home with them.  I BET YOU.  Because they would feel too guilty and bad and worry about what other people think about this.  Well, fuck that, because me declaring that I love to work and I love to be creative and I love to EARN A DAMN PAYCHECK has nothing to do with my love for my kids.  It just doesn’t.  So I would love for someone to get all judgy on me and leave a comment saying this makes me a mean mom.  If that was their life goal, great.  I applaud them, because being a mom is a hard career.  And more than a little bit boring.

These days, I’m feeling ready to conquer other things.  I’m ready to figure out how to use this brain of mine in new and different ways.  Because it’s a clever, educated, and insatiable-for-many-strange-things brain and it can do much more than organize closets and wash nasty sippy cups.  The daily upkeep things need to be done sometimes, yes.  Just like cleaning the toilet.

I figure my kids are along for the ride.  My ride, that is.  At least until they’re old enough to hop off my crazy train and motor up their own.  I also figure that no matter what I decide to do, I’ll give them a pretty good ride.

BUT…dear friends, if after all that extra gym time I start posting pictures of myself that resemble this,

or you find my children wandering the streets naked, or you run into me at a bar at 11am, you are welcome to tell me that I’ve completely lost my way and not surprisingly taken it a LITTLE TOO FAR.

PS – I would totally scrapbook if I could do it in a bar.