The Babe
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Good & Tasty Button Code
The Best Skincare Ever
My Husband’s in the Hospital
Friday night my husband had this “leaving do” (going-away party) for work. They went out for dinner and drinks and I figured he’d be home around 1:30 when the pub closed so I headed up to bed about that time, since that’s my normal bedtime anyway.
When I woke up at three, he still wasn’t home. Highly unlike him. Three-thirty and he still wasn’t home. Really unlike him. I called and it went straight to voicemail, now I was freaked out. He was dead in a ditch and his phone had been run over by the truck which squashed him.
No way does he ever stay out until dawn, not call and then shut his phone off. I was really panicked.
I lay awake staring at the ceiling, steeped in total anxiety. Four oclock and he still isn’t home. That’s it, I’m the crazy wife now and I’m calling the hospital. I come downstairs to get my computer so I can look up the phone number and there he is, asleep, on the living room floor with a pillow and blanket.
Keeping in mind that the movers took all our furniture that morning, there wasn’t a soft spot for him to land. Just my drunk husband and a blanket, so pathetic. I was overwhelmed with anger, anxiety, relief and sadness…. Kind of like when your kid runs out into traffic. I just started crying and I woke him up by shoving him, “I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!”
Huh? What? What the hell?!
You didn’t answer your phone, it was turned off, it’s four in the morning and you weren’t home, I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!!!
I WAS home! I was right here, I was being considerate! I didn’t want to wake you up!
No, you were DEAD!!! What the hell?! By the way, you have a crazy voicemail on your phone.
Then I went upstairs and slept in my son’s single top bunk with him because I was still SO pissed off at my husband for being dead.
*this little interaction may or may not be brought to you courtesy of international move stress. we head down to london tonight to stay overnight and fly out first thing in the morning. Next thing you hear from me will be a stateside update. CRAZY!*
Drunk Packing, I’m Going to Patent that Shit
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you spent Thursday evening getting real-time updates on my final efforts packing the crap that we weren’t sure we wanted to take until we packed the crap we definitely wanted to take… so we could assess the amount of second-string-crap space we had left over.
Here’s my packing pro-tip to you: turn it into a drinking game. One Box One Shot was a screaming success.
Also? Keep track of the weird stuff you uncover while packing the remnants of your life into cardboard boxes. Maybe it’s just me and my super sitcom life, but here are a few things I found:
1. My husband’s Moby CD in his collection… we will never speak of it again.
2. 25 reusable shopping bags. Is this still eco-friendly? Somehow I think not. There’s something about conservation that has failed to sink in here.
3. Packing makes me sweat between my boobs until I felt like I needed a shower when I finished. But it was 2:30 in the morning and it seemed likely I would wake the whole house up. So I went to bed feeling like I’d been to the gym. Bleck!
4. Staying up late to pack isn’t nearly as much fun as staying up late to watch Sex and the City and surf the internet. Which means it’s only slightly more fun than getting jumped into a gang and risking a visit to the emergency room.
5. I found a dildo under my sofa which had been inexplicably missing for almost six months. If you can tell me how it ended up under my sofa, I will give you all the money in my pocket. Which, to be fair, might only be about fifty cents… assuming I’m even wearing pockets today. Life’s a craps shoot.
Go on then, take a guess at how it got under the sofa. Or guess how much money is in my pocket. Or if I’m wearing pockets. Or better yet, what’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to you while packing/moving?
Better Than Kittens
If a video of a three year-old spelling her name, with a slight sibilant S impediment, isn’t the cutest thing you see today… well, then I’m not sure we can still be friends.
Life, Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness
Marriage is so fucking hard. I think when we tell our children fairytales about true love and being swept off your feet in a love bliss that curls your toes… I think we need to tell them that as well. It’s. So. Fucking. Hard.
It’s important to me to be a person of value, a person of my word, a trustworthy person. It’s really important, and I try really hard. I don’t always hit that mark. But my commitment to my family is important to me. The success of my family is important to me.
So we keep getting up every morning, and putting one foot in front of the other. Hoping that today isn’t the day that it all cracks into a million pieces, hoping that the tape can be applied faster than the cracks form. Do I have the strength to keep up? Do any of us? It’s a miracle, a blessing, all those mystical words… every day that a married couple doesn’t commit simultaneous homicide. Seriously.
I have a friend who has totally become one of my sisters from another mister and I was visiting her this weekend. As I got the train from her house to head toward King’s Cross station to catch my train home, there was a woman with her two daughters and a giant suitcase.
She didn’t look too well put together… she looked like she was falling apart. There was no way she was going to be able to get her youngest daughter (who was in a stroller), her oldest daughter (who was about the same age as Hudson) and that fucking giant suitcase off the train before the doors closed.
I took the older girl’s hand and helped her off the train and up the HUGE set of stairs after the platform while Mom and I were chatting. I said I don’t know how you manage! She said she didn’t. It was their father’s fault, which made me laugh because I thought we were getting ready to embark on that maternal banter about lugging the kids around while the dad is watching football on TV or something.
As soon as I finished laughing she said the father beat her up last night, so she figured it was time to leave. Fuck me for laughing, right? She had no idea how to get where she was going. She had come quite a way, I’m assuming to stay with family or friends, but had gotten turned around a bit and she needed to get to Victoria station.
I needed the same train, but I was getting off five stops sooner, so I held her little girl’s hand while we went down the escalator and got on the tube and went over a few times with her how she should get where she needed to go. I gave her a level-eyed look and wished her luck and wanted to empty my wallet to her, but I didn’t.
I swear to fucking god I don’t know why I didn’t. I don’t know if the urge to have done so, and the regret at not having done, will ever leave me. I should have given her every penny I had on me; because I had more pennies that weren’t on me and she didn’t.
Marriage is so fucking hard, but I promise you that coming home to my husband who is such an honorable man, such a decent person, such a loving father… that didn’t suck at all.
Today I was reminded of something my mother always used to say to me:
Honey, if the whole world put their problems in a pile, you would grab your own and run like hell.
It has to be said, that even a broken clock is right twice a day; and when it came to problems, that bitch knew of what she spoke. I wouldn’t grab mine and run like hell today. Today, I would kick your ass if you tried to stand in the way of me and my problems. They’re MINE! They’re waaaaaaaay better than some people have and pretending they’re not is selfish, childish, ridiculous…
I should have emptied my wallet for her, but the least I can do is honor the lesson she taught me today. Thank you, stranger on the train. Thank you, so much.
I Might Stop Blogging
There’s no right or wrong way to blog. Okay, that’s not entirely true. There are some wrong ways. But as long as it’s compelling to read, there are a whole bunch of right ways. I have gotten a lot of flak for what I write, especially since I started using my real name.
There have been people who think I share too much about myself, especially since I’m a mom. Evidently that means I’m supposed to be a nun, speak like one and project myself like one in my spare time.
But none of that is what really matters to me.
What matters to me is that I actually do have limits about what I’ll write here. I have sacred spaces in my life that are off limits for blogging, as I think all of us crazy people who write our souls out onto the internet have to have. Everyone’s limits are different.
My own limits are being tested this month. If you’ll notice, I’ve barely written since the end of November; I’ve got some shit going on… shit I won’t write about here and without writing that I don’t know what to write.
If I’m really thinking about purple elephants with demon masks and I write about vaginas, that just sucks and pains me to do and wreaks of insincerity. I’m a lot of things, but insincere isn’t one of them. So, I thought to myself, Self, maybe it’s time you stopped this crazy endeavor. You’ve been doing it almost two years and never hit a wall like this. Maybe you’ve shared what you’ve got to share.
But, like breaking up with that boyfriend when I was 19, who treated me like shit but was so great in bed, I’m just not sure I’m ready to do that at the first sign of trouble. I feel compelled to do this on my good days and my not so good days, but right now I feel the absolute truth to my bones that this thing that has become everything shouldn’t be written here and without writing that I am at a loss as to what to write.
So, can you please just bear with me while I find something else inside of me, something else outside of me to write about so that my world doesn’t implode? Otherwise, I’m afraid I will just burn it all down.
Stop Being Such a Bitch
Cattiness, gossip, bitchiness, tearing each other down. It’s the bane of womanhood, right? Why do we do it, and can’t we do better?
Today at In the Powder Room: Stop Being Such a Bitch
Do Not Puke on the Baby Seals
I’ve been running around like a headless chicken with a crack habit. Okay, maybe that’s just in my mind. But no, not really.
I have shoveled out the wood chips that were put in place for the chicken coop and shoveled the rocks back into place from whence they came two years ago. My shoulders still ache like I’ve been spent the day jerking off a T-rex.
I’ve sold the chicken coop, listed the Burley bike trailer on ebay (auction finishes today), gone through my closet and whittled my wardrobe down to the absolute bare minimum necessities. (P.S. I need to go shopping once landed in California, I think I might only have one pair of underwear left.) I’ve gotten rid of almost everything I owned. It’s like four years ago, in reverse.
Holy. Shit. Two weeks from today. Two weeks from today I drive down to London to stay overnight and leave the next morning. Hold me.
I’m excited to the very deep, dark depths of me; but I’m a bit melancholy about leaving England too. I didn’t really expect to be. But there really is a lot of things, a handful of people, that I’m going to miss with all of me… like, to the core of everything that beats through my veins. But hey, that’s part of being a grownup, kid. Stiff upper lip and whatnot.
Today, right now, this moment, I am looking at baby grey seals born on the Lincolnshire coast. It’s my final hoorah with my next door neighbor and one of my favorite people in England. She has become a surrogate member of the family. She has a piece of my heart on a silver platter and she is a part of our family. So, we’re looking at baby seals. That’s how normal people say goodbye, right?
Update: I wrote this last night. Currently, the boys are looking at baby seals and I’m on the sofa with a fevered and puking Hudson. Great cuddles, terrible everything else 
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Honesty’s a Bitch
An honest pinup: too good to pass up 
I asked Twitter last night what quality everyone admired in other people. I got some really good answers. It’s nice to read a really long list of the nicest aspects of humanity. It’s hopeful and chipper just by its nature.
The most common answer was honesty.
I found that fascinating. People are never 100% honest. No one. Ever. The nature of human beings is that we’re curious, social and yet private all at the same time. So people around us want to know everything about us while we want to save some space for ourselves. The easiest way to keep that private space is tell lies. We all do it.
I suppose the real goal is to be honest more often than not, as often as humanly possible and when that honesty falters, admit we’re wrong and apologize.
I got one answer that was a really cool variation on honesty: transparency. I really liked that. So, it’s honesty of character, consistency, being genuinely who you are so that it’s easy to see right into the middle of you. Nice.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about who I am, who I want to be: behaviors and habits and choices. One person asked me what my answer to my own question would be. D’oh! I hadn’t thought of my own answer yet. This was my response in 140 characters or less:
“bravery, understanding on a genuine human level, the willingness & desire to grow, ability to admit when wrong and apologize.”
What about you; what do you admire most in other people?
My Secrets Are Weirder Than Yours
We’ve all got our dirty little secrets. Every. Single. One of us.
And I’m talking all about it in my Monday column over In the Powder Room: My Secrets Are Weirder Than Yours.
Get your fine ass over there and weigh in with a comment… if you’re brave enough 
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And So It Begins…
The great Getting-Rid-Of-All-My-Shit-In-Preparation-For-Moving-Halfway-Across-The-World has begun.
I just sold my chicken coop. The Eglu will officially be rehomed on Tuesday. I’m pretty bummed about it. I loved that thing.
I know, it might be dumb to mourn my purple chicken coop, but damn’t that thing is awesome. I might cry when she picks it up.
And yes, we can get another one once we’re there. But it won’t be the same. Seriously, it won’t.
It’s like the episode of Friends where Rachel’s baby falls in love with Joey’s stuffed Penguin and won’t be placated by a look alike. It’s not the same.
Plus I looked on the American site and they don’t have the purple ones over there… yet. What the fuck is up with that?!
*Update* I just spent two hours scrubbing the entire thing down for her to pick it up. At this moment, I never want to see another chicken or particle of chicken shit again in my life. This will change soon, like not wanting any more kids right after you give birth. But for now, BLECK!
