What follows is an old monologue I wrote for a class many years ago - I'm feeling lazy and have so much to do that I'm recyling old material for the blog. I promise to write new stuff soon. I was reminded of it when a friend who's just had her second baby mentioned that she'd love a third arm.
"I have kids.
I know it’s a shocker – with this rock star body and all. But yeah, I have three kids. When people find out that I have 3 kids they ask if we’re done yet…duh…I already have more children than arms.
Now, that would be a useful evolutionary advance – sprouting a new arm with each child instead of a bigger ass.
People are either amazed when I’m out with all three – Wow, you really have your hands full! Or else somehow I turn invisible.
Even though I am pushing a stroller the size of a tank no one will hold the fricking door for me.
See that’s when the extra arm would really come in handy…so I could balance the baby, push the stroller and flip the bird.
G’ah, I suck at being a parent.
I’m the queen of “do as I say and not as I do” parenting. I’m pushing vegetables on the kids while scarfing back a Snickers. I’m not responsible enough to be in charge of their food.
My youngest is 11 months old so he’s at the age where they will put anything they find on the floor in their mouths – I’ve taken to scattering Cheerios around in the hopes that he’ll actually put something nutritious in his mouth.
My husband worries more about their eating habits than I do – that’s because he’s at work all day so the poor man misses out on all the good stuff …playing dress up, finger painting, fishing cornflakes out of their nostrils. He’ll come home from work and ask what they had for lunch and I’ll say “3 rocks, a scoop of play doh and a crayon…” usually I’m only half joking.
As if the food thing wasn’t bad enough I’m apparently supposed to be the guardian of everyone’s bladder. I’ve had three kids…I’m barely able to control my own bladder but there I am “Did you pee, do you need to pee? Everyone go pee before we go, who needs to pee? Please pee…” The bumper sticker on my minivan says “In case of the Rapture, we should all try to pee…”
No, that’s not true. I don’t have a minivan.
You know what else? I don’t care who had it first. It’s hard to break up the fights when I just don’t care who had it first. I tried the King Solomon approach. – you can’t decide who had the Barbie first so we’re going to cut it in half and you’ll each get a half. But they thought that was coooooool. They’re either going to be surgeons or psychopaths.
I think my parenting problems stem from me being the youngest in my family. I never had anyone to taunt, so now my kids seem like the prefect targets. It’s hard to resist holding half a Barbie over each of their angelic little heads and forcing them to jump for it. Now that I have three kids though, someone is getting left out of the mommy taunting.
If only I had that third arm."