Stay at Home Mom

Going for a Stroll in the Neighborhood

Here is why I am real-time sitting in my apartment waiting to start shitting my brains out.

Ruby Jane and I were walking around the neighborhood after her music class, when I heard a male voice use “on fleek” seriously in a sentence.  Obviously, my head snapped up so that I could get a good look at the perpetrator, but then my gaze drifted instead to a young woman wearing an incredibly short skirt without stockings and peep-toed high-heels.  As I tried to figure out what had possessed her to wear this particular outfit to trudge through the toxic sludge that had replaced the once crap-tinged snow, I got to thinking that maybe she was doing a walk of shame and I’m all “that asshole should have called her an uber,” and I started getting mad for her.  I’ve watched enough Vanderpump Rules (#pumprules) to know that he probably didn’t call her an uber because he has a ‘crazy’ girlfriend who’s out of town and he didn’t want her to hack his email and see that he had ordered a car from HER apartment at nine in the morning.  Now I was mad for his girlfriend too, and I was so busy being angry about basically being an accessory after the fact to this sordid tale, I had failed to realize I had come across a man on a ladder fixing some scaffolding.

He told me to try to go around, but there wasn’t enough room for us to squeeze by.  So I had a choice: a) turn around and take the long way home or b) risk seven years bad luck for both me and my baby, and walk underneath the ladder.

I was hungry, so I chose “b.”

As I walked underneath the ladder two things happened:

1) I crossed myself (*spoiler alert* I’m not Catholic)
2) I told the gentleman on the ladder that if anything happened to me or my baby, I would hunt him down, which he thought was hilarious and replied “You ain’t superstitious, are ya?  Thanks for the blessing!”

Almost immediately it started to rain, and I thought, “Fuck.  God is pissed at me and he’s letting me know that crossing yourself when you aren’t religious ain’t kosher.” Then a car pulled up to ask for directions, and I thought “Redemption!” and I gave her CORRECT directions, but I was no match for the universe and turned around just in time for a car to spray shit water all over me as it splashed through a shit puddle.  To make matters even worse, I noticed that yet another one of Ruby’s pacifiers had decided to commit suicide and at some point had leapt from the stroller.

We finally made it home and I fed the baby and put her down for her nap.  For my lunch, I decided to cook myself some chicken stir-fry, but, as luck would have it, I’m pretty sure I forgot to clean the tongs I had used to put the raw chicken in the pan before using them again to take the cooked chicken out of the pan, thus creating a hot-bed of salmonella all over my lunch.  So now my stomach is feeling iffy, and I’m just sitting here hoping that if I do shit my brains out, I do it before Ruby wakes up.

All of this could have been avoided if that fucker knew that saying “on fleek” in a non-ironic way is super fucking lame.

Being a Stay at Home Mom has Totally Improved my Relationship

Now that I am unemployed a stay at home mom, I have this amazing opportunity to spend quality time with my baby, watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hills clean during her afternoon nap, and re-up my cooking game.

Last night, I was preparing a delicious gourmet dinner featuring flash-baked Shake n’ Bake and triple-steamed Rice-A-Roni, smugly congratulating myself on my superior housekeeping skills, when in walked J in from his 10-hour bar manager shift.   Here are a few ways he expressed his gratitude for all I’ve been doing:

  1. On my kitchen organization: Oh good.  The steak knives are in THIS drawer. That’s nice, now I don’t have to get up to get them from where they usually are!
  2. On my meal selection: Thank you SO much for not touching that tenderloin in the refrigerator!
  3. On my meal prep: Oh, wait!–did you know that you shouldn’t put non-stick spray in a non-stick pan?  Ruins it. Oh, well.
  4. On my meal prep Part II: DON’T USE THE KNIVES WITH THE WOODEN HANDLES!!!  YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE THEM RIGHT!!!
  5. On the food: Ahhh-choo! Woah, I guess there is ‘a little’ pepper in this, huh?
  6. On my dinner clean up: Can I show you something? *assume it will be a shark video* I want to show you how to load the dishwasher.
  7. On my baby-food prep: How long did you stick the bottle in for the baby? Oh, not thirty-two seconds? ‘Cause…that’s the magic number. You did twenty-five? Huh.
  8. On my dessert: Does your stomach feel weird?  Mine feels a little weird.  No dessert for me!

I was so grateful for his gracious feedback, I decided to wait until he was asleep before I used the back of a plate to sharpen all of his wooden-handled knives, and then let them soak for an hour in the sink before tossing them in the dishwasher.  It’s the sweet surprises that really keep the romance alive.