Of the 800 television shows I would totally watch if I had a television but I don’t because it would rot my brain and the brains of my beautiful, prodigy-like children – The Mentalist is in the top ten of shows I would totally watch.

But if I did watch television and did love The Mentalist I would tell you that the title of this post is a quote from a recent episode. When I heard the quote I stopped cold and rewound it just a little. Just to, you know, hear it again.

Because if I get my justification (and maybe, just maybe *snort* validation) for my life from a cheesy CBS drama, you know, is that really so wrong?

Not that I’m as messy as other people I know. We have the normal preschool-caused tornado of toys that only get picked up once a day, and the dogs take care of the food messes that other families might have to clean.

But you know, I just like hearing that someone (however fictional) thinks there’s a link between my messy and my awesomeness between the sheets.

I’ll be even more excited about it next time my husband complains about me not picking up around the house. “But it makes me a better lover!” That should work like a charm, right? Right?

For even more entertainment, check out this CBS article titled: Slobs Make Better Lovers

What do you think? Do you agree? Do you think it’s just an excuse?

Most importantly…do you think the dude who plays Patrick Jane in The Mentalist is scary adorable in that vengeful-everything-amuses-me-even-though-i’m-bitter way?

Jen is a stay-at-home mom plaged with a whole bunch of morning sickness and very little patience. She has more work than time, and more love than angst. Barely. She blogs about completely inane crap at Beyond Mom. The picture in this post is from MorgueFile – it wasn’t taken in my house.

We all know that morning sickness is a myth.

Morning my ass.

Mine starts up in between 11am and 1pm and lasts until my gag reflex is safely asleep in bed at night.

But the worst part of morning sickness – the part I was never, ever warned about – was the complete inability to force your way through morning sickness in order to, you know, get some shit done.

Plus, I’m a moron.

So now, I’m not just nauseous and trying to hold back horrible gagging noises while I’m on the phone with clients – I’m also a raging idiot. Someone will ask me a question and I’m all, “Wow, can you ask again. I heard the words but they didn’t really form into anything in my head.”

Conference calls are a blast.

I swear I see brain cells going down the drain every time I flush the toilet. (It might just be corn, which I haven’t eaten in six months.)

But I’m six weeks pregnant, so in four weeks or less I should be back to my  normal crazy but keeping it together self and should stop sounding like someone that got hit several hundred times with the dumbass stick every time I open my mouth.

Here’s Hopin’!

Otherwise I’ll keep barfing and eventually end up on Interviention on A&E for being bulemic. I’ll be all, “No, it’s just morning sickenss!” and they’ll be all, “Your kids are in college!”

But I will tell you, every time I’m clutching my hideous, ugly, robin’s egg blue toilet, I dream of having my very own TOTO Aquia II Dual Flush Toilet Tank in Cotton White to puke in next time I’m pregnant. Because that, my friends, is what I fantasize about now.

Romantic? Perhaps. You be the judge.

Jen is a bitter, pregnant rageaholic that does nothing all day but eat bon-bons, watch Jerry Springer, and pretend she works really, really hard from home. Just like everyone else.

So…you may not know that a few weeks ago I was on ABC News. A report about Twitter and how awesome it is. (Come follow me on Twitter – I’m always looking for new, interesting people!)

After being on the news, I had multiple people call that I hadn’t talked to in a long time. I’d helped each of these people in an unpaid “here’s what you need to know” kind of way and they all ended up spending lots of money with people who told them what they had to do for online business success right now – and they stopped talking to me.

I was happy to talk to each of these people, until I realized the first one pretended she wanted to catch up but really wanted me to redo her MySpace page (she was getting awesome online marketing advice, right?) The second, it turns out, has the exact same problem she did the first time I met her – and I’m currently redoing her website (outsourcing it actually) and will be done soon.

The third? I haven’t called back yet. She was my first networking buddy and it kind of hurt when we drifted apart. I’m afraid to talk to her for fear she is just going to ask me for free advice. Like when these people all saw my face on their TV screens they went, “Oh there’s that dumb chick that will give us free advice we won’t take!”

Ok, they probably didn’t say that. Maybe they even convinced themselves they really wanted to catch up and golly-gee-whiz if they could get that one little question asked… *sigh*

So, as a Bad Mommy Blogger I want to tell them all to go to hell. I don’t need the money, and I don’t really have the time. I’m already entrenched with one, so that’s going to go through, and that’s okay. But what do you do if your networking buddy calls and you find out she only wants to pump you for more free advice?

Do you tell her to go to hell?

What do you do when people ask you for free advice? Advice you know they’d have to pay someone else to get?

Even better, what do you wish you could do?

Jennifer is a mommyblogger, giver of free advice, and budget junkie. She is a stuck-up, horrible person who only talks to people that don’t own televisions and would never, ever watch reality television. Her dream is to write for the Huffington Post one day.

Over on Divine Caroline there is an interesting and entertaining article about a woman who took alternative birthing classes and had an epiphany when she was getting her epidural that there were no second-time moms in the alternative birthing class.

It is assumed in the article that this is because…I’m not sure…maybe the dirty hippies all bail at the last minute.

My point (and I do have one!) is that I’m tired of people thinking having a baby is the same for everyone. Or saying they understand it’s different in that way…you know the way I mean…the way that says they’re saying they know it’s different but they still know the best answer.

I just don’t think there are second-time moms in ANY birthing classes. Once you’ve done it once you know what you did wrong and self-correct. (I would hope that’s how it works. Let me know if I’m wrong. Can  you get a graduate degree in Lamaze?)

I have friends who had epidurals during pregnancy. Actually, everyone I know that has had a baby either had an epi or a c-section.

I am the only woman I know that had two pain-medication-free pitocin-induced births.

You know what? I’m proud of myself.

You know what else? I know I’m a little crazy and don’t think anyone else needs to make the same choice I did to be a great mom or have an awesome birth experience. Me thinking I rock has no bearing on how I feel about you and your life choices. Me having kick-ass self-esteem does not mean you can’t. It’s like some weird logic trap because someone thinks that we should all judge each other. (If you don’t think it’s a trap, why do they call drug-free birth “natural childbirth” – it implies that if you do it another way it’s unnatural. What a load of crap!)

Would I like to have a baby by going out into a forest preserve (the magic one with no bugs, thanks) and squat over a beautiful thatch of soft, long grass and have the baby by myself just like that and catch her on the way out and lay her gently down on the grass and thank the green mother or whatever other hippie deity I could think of for such a spiritual experience? HELL YES!

Will it ever happen that way? Not so much.

Mostly…to be brutally honest…I don’t get pain medication because I’m more scared of a needle in my spine than I am of feeling my hoo-hoo tear (which I didn’t feel with either birth, something about the pressure of the babies head.) My worst childbirth pain was the local anesthetic shot I was given for the stitches for the tear I never felt happen.

So get your drugs if you want them. Just do me a favor and laugh at my birth story if I’ve been awesome enough to listen to yours. Not because mine is better. It’s not. It’s just different, and fun, and involved the most awful, hateful nurse in the world.

The one who threatened to take me bodily from the bathroom back to the bed for fetal monitoring. I told her she could try, but I could still “kick her ass at 8″ (I was dialated to 8 at the time.)

Are you shocked she backed off? Yeah, neither am I.

I think the most important thing to remember when we go into a hospital to have a baby is that we still have our power. We have not given up, we have not given in. We are still the head-honcho in control.

You can always say, “No.”

Sometimes just knowing that makes everything easier and less stressful.

Do you have a fun story about your pregnancy or birth? I’d love to hear about it!

Image Source: stacytodd

I have been trying to figure out for eight years now why the people that can’t sing keep auditioning for American Idol.

I mean, seriously, who is telling these people they sing well enough to compete with a STADIUM full of other people?

They watch the show, they know what kind of voices they’re looking for, they still go and wait hours and hours and hours to be shitcanned with a public verbal thrashing. On national television.

Sure there is the amazing marketing campaign including posters like the one over there that show a waitress becoming a superstar singer in shadow. It’s great marketing.

But does that mean me, with my “good for lullabies” voice (that’s what I call it) should really go up against thousands of sixteen year olds for my shot at a recording contract?

No. I shouldn’t. Because I’m. Not. Good. Enough.

Now, if I were deluded enough to think I was good enough I could see how I could be screwed.

I just asked my husband and he said, “Based on how dynamic and demanding they are I don’t think your voice is strong enough or well-trained enough.”

So maybe I wouldn’t be one of the losers telling the camera that all my friends and family think my voice is awesome when it’s really great for singing to my kids.

But yeah, do THAT many people in America have shitty friends that will back them up even when they are warbling and moaning their way straight to the shame reel? It seems so.

The one surprise was last night’s contestant Rose Flack

She’s the crazy-awkward totally awesome “contestant I’d most like to be” for this season. She has the weirdest voice I’ve ever heard, but is strangely familiar. I could picture someone listening to it.

Did I mention I want to, you know, just be her? If not, I’d settle for weighing 85lbs and having awesomely bleached and dreadlocked hair.

That’s not too much to ask for, right?

My teenage self would think I am the coolest person ever:

• I work from home
• as a writer
• of non-fiction (I’ve always hated fiction writing, just not my thing)
• Have a husband who cleans
• and cooks
• My kids are pretty well behaved
• and smart
• and cute
• even the one with the slight lazy eye works it like a runway model
• Most of all? I’m living my teenage dream. Which was, “To be in a position where I would never be forced to have conversations with people who are ignorant again.”

My dream has always been to be able to walk away from any conversation at my control and choosing.

‘Cause I have oodles of patience for:

• People not born smart (they still have life experience and other things that make these people good to know)
• The handicapped
• Sick people (including the terminally ill)
• The elderly
• The very religious trying to convert me (They’re just doing their biblical job)

But racists, bigots, and people that can’t have a conversation because they’re too deep believing in some bullshit that makes no sense? The ignorant? They are not worth my time.

Which is funny because owning my own business has given me access to more idiots than you would have ever believed. When people own businesses sometimes it makes them think that their opinion is RIGHT regardless of reality. My all time favorite (in a sarcastic, “are you kidding me” way) was the small business owner guy that said, “I love hiring sand niggers from those internet sites – they work for peanuts.”

Yes, teenage self, I did not have to smile and nod to make sure my grade or job or anything stayed intact.

I looked at him, said, “Wow, that was wildly inappropriate” and walked away.

I’m a grownup – I can do that kind of thing.

Thanks to Crissy at IndieBizChicks for asking the question and giving me a great reason to share that awful, but triumphant, story.

How about you? Would your teenage self think you’re cool?

Do you have the mom friend that says, “Oh my gosh I’m going nuts with these crazy kids and don’t have time to breathe and I just might eat one because I don’t have time to eat…but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!”

The mom who sounds like she’s kind of about to crack but she’s keeping herself from going completely insane by reminding herself (by reminding you) that being a mom is the BEST JOB IN THE WORLD™ and then they kind of get the crazy eye look and you find a way to get the hell away from them and back to your house?

Ok, maybe you’re not lucky enough to know the mom that gets crazy eyes (no B, I don’t mean you) but you have heard the wouldn’t trade it for the world crap, right? Ok.

Well here is my list of jobs that are way better than being a mom (in my opinion)

• Ice cream taster
• America’s Test Kitchen Baker
• The rude woman that works in my doctor’s office behind the counter that’s always snarky until she remembers me and then she smiles and it makes me feel good.
• Drug dealer (I’m still working through this one, but it’s my theory and I want to pretend I could be a dirty hippie selling weed out of the side of a Scooby-Doo van instead of the reality which is my cousin-in-law and a safe in his bedroom bolted to the floor and a whole lotta paranoia. Oops did I say that out loud?)
• The receptionist at the sperm donation clinic. I’d just laugh. All day.
• Dolphin trainer – because dolphins are cool, even if it is neither cool nor original to dig on dolphins.
• A trust fund baby! WooHOO!
  

But…there is something being a mom does get you that none of those jobs can. Do you know what the ultimate win is?

THE BEST EXCUSE IN THE WORLD™

The ability to blame any business or personal failure in your life on having kids and being a good mom. It’s the ultimate excuse (even if it does happen to be true) for why you didn’t meet your deadline…for why you didn’t call back….why you won’t have sex…why you just can’t talk to your mother-in-law…for why you didn’t do, well, anything!

Here’s to you. To me. To all of us – and our awesome little runny-nosed excuses. What a good idea they turned out to be!

Image Source: vancity197

I’m guilty of lying to my children.

All. The. Time.

Seriously – if it’s easier for me, it comes rolling off my tongue without a second thought.

I got sick of giving my kids juice all the time and wanted them to drink more water. They didn’t want water, they wanted juice. So….I just started calling my water juice. The kids now call water “water juice” and drink it up like it was going out of style.

If I don’t feel like making macaroni and cheese, we are mysteriously out of it until daddy next goes to the store. They’re short – it’s not like they can check the cabinets. (Hey, this stuff doesn’t last forever, why not make my life easier while I still can?)

I’ve been known to call anything “magic” if I need it to happen more smoothly.

• Magic ponies live in dreamland (and will lose their magic if you don’t visit them so get your butt in bed, kid.)
• Toothpaste is magic and makes you prettier and smarter if you use it correctly. If you use too much, all the magic goes away, so don’t overdo it.
• The hairbrush is magic because it helps you learn how to count and read.
• Of course, medicine uses magic to make the cough or sniffles go away. Why explain science when you don’t have to? A sniffly 4-year-old could care less what acetaminophen is. (I don’t know if that’s what’s actually in my kid’s medicine – it’s made for kids.)

Magic just makes boring or bad things suck a little less. I wish my husband would tell me some stuff was magic. Sure, I’d call him out on it in a heartbeat, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate it.

What lies do you tell your children that you will inevitably hear about when they’re 19 and screaming that you lie about everything?

Image Source: Zela

Ok – maybe not all of them, but I sure as hell am.

Seriously though, if you try and convince me that you are able to keep your house clean, interact with your children effectively, not keep the television on all day, plus you’re the most successful mommy on the block with your business…

…I call bullshit.

You either have a maid, nanny, husband not working, or you’re lying about your business success. (Or all of the above.) You know how I know that? Because sister, something’s gotta give.

There are 24 hours in a day, and everything we choose to do takes some amount of time. I cannot feed my kids a meal in less than ten minutes – no matter what. It takes at least a half-hour to fill the dishwasher, put soap in, and hit “clean.”

Now it might not take you the same amount of time it takes me to do things, but you know what I’m saying here, everything takes time.

On days when I have more work than time, the television is on all day. You know why? Because I have to get shit done, that’s why. But then having to turn around and hear some self-righteous WAHM try and spout off about how she made food from scratch while teaching her children how to add and subtract from birth while being rock-star successful and getting twelve new clients? No. Way. But you can’t go spouting off at the little angel or her cadre of wannabes will attack you and give you the litany of “how dare you”s for having the audacity to question the honesty of the statements.

I’m not jealous, either. I work from home very successfully – I just know that there are sacrifices I have to make every day – with every new level of success come more sacrifices. The more meetings I have to be on over the phone, the more I stagger when my kids eat so I know they are hungry – and their little mouths will be full and quiet – when that call happens. I’m not starving my kids, but they may not get fed the very minute they realize they are hungry.

Sure it sounds kind of shitty to deny the kids food for an hour, but you know what, if I don’t take those calls they don’t get fed at all. What do you think is better for their overall sense of well being and self-esteem? Living in a car and scoring food from food banks? I think not.

My only real fear is that I won’t know when it’s time to back off and plateau for a minute. I don’t want to keep sacrificing more and more and more until I don’t know what my kids look like, but I also want them to have a great life, and hearing people say that all my kids need is my love aned time…well…I had lots of love and time from my mom and I’m still bitter I didn’t get a pony, so yeah, way to look back with that nostalgic hindsight.

Image Credit: graphiteBP