But when I am, it’s a delusion.

Yeah. Um. A week before spring break in MARCH, my kids got sick and my Superhuman, Worked Retail Handling Money Drenched with Gym Sock and Cleavage Sweat did not protect me.

Then Spring Break started and we built a buggy/bike garage. I estimated it would take a day. Since the structure still lacks a door “FINISHED” is simply not true.

And it’s May.

Then there was the onset of The Great Basement Clean Out, 2013 edition.

Why basement clean out? Book, you were writing? Two (three) reasons.

1. the untapped potential of 1178 square feet of space that doesn’t require air conditioning.
2. I had to sort, rearrange, toss, and clean the whole thing so I could tape off A Fort of One’s Own. Let’s just leave it at I thought I’d be done (back then I wanted walls) the week after Spring Break.
3. it was looking a little hoarders.

It’s May and AFOO is done.  Who needs walls?

We also adopted (stole from the wilds of my mother in law’s porch) a new pet, aptly named Sir Walter TreeFroggy.   That the frog-dude rocks a color coordinated monster truck in his terrarium was all Elliot.

Our anti-vole glue trap caught a 5 lined skink.  He (she?) enjoyed an extra two weeks of well-loved life.

This kid will be done with kindergarten in another week.  I can’t be the only mother that actually looks forward to the end of school?

What else? Um, probably a lot, but who can remember these things? I am killing the Bonbon Ninja– I simply don’t have time to do a different blog. Really, what was I thinking?

Oh right; Optimism vs. Delusion.

I wrote a piece about parenting with ADHD for Momsrising in support of National Women’s Healthcare Week.  You should go read it, not just because I wrote it, but also because the impact of momsrising on  law-creation (and the potential for even MORE impact) is astounding.

You can inform yourself about their goals here.  You can sign up for free email alerts ”on timely issues like health care, flexible work options, paid family leave, child care, living wages.”   You can take action here.

A Fort of One’s Own, or AFOO (äf OO). That’s what I’ve done here.

Virginia Woolf wrote:

“a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

This quote rolled around in my head for a few months, since, um, winning an auction where Chuck Wendig will read a few thousand of my words and, um, critique them.

Damn Stephanie, you haven’t done that yet? Wasn’t that in, like, February? Shut it! I’m uninterested your deserved shock about my craptastic time-management skills.   Anyway, I have almost 21k words– and a complete plot outline– but if my words were dinner, right now I’m 3 and they are the green beans.

Now, back to AFOO.

Certainly, Virginia and I are women of a different age. I have control over my reproduction (today. Who knows what surprises my whack-ass state legislature plan for Wednesday).

I am not financially dependent on my mate (crap, yes I am because this stay at home mom gig pays in crayon drawings and butt wipes.  And love– don’t forget the love).

In the year 2013, unlike 1928, women aren’t harassed for their feminism, regardless of its chosen path.   Women are no longer persecuted for their sexuality, sexual identities, or expected to prevent their own rapes (2013 seemed better in my head then I wrote it all out.  Excuse me while I weep in my tequila).

Okay, skipping how amazing women have it now– sigh– and back to my point.  I type these thoughts on a keyboard and words do whatever they do inside the CPU only to be spit out on my screen.   When I hit save draft all of this gets stored…uh, somewhere interweb-like.  Probably California.

Like Woolf– who, keeping it real here, suffered from her own early-century, first-world problems, I have the opportunity and the space; the chance to write and to create.  The space changes here and there, and some variations are better than others.

But my writing wasn’t limited by a lack of space.  I have a drawer of notes scribbled on a variety of different paper-type products.  Most of my best ideas did not originate in this space of my own, but rather at stoplights, parks, or during the 14th iteration of chutes and ladders.   Never has a lack of a desk stopped me from writing.

So it wasn’t a room that I needed, but permission to abandon what my excuses; reasons for not writing.

No time.  The kids.  Distractions.  Chores.  Obligations. 

So I took my excuses; reasons and imagined what I’d tell someone complaining TO me about the same.  Sheepish, that’s my face right now.

1) No time.  Um, facebook.  Blogs.  Free ebooks that sucked before the end of the first poorly constructed sentence that I READ ANYWAY.

2) The kids.  They live here and I have a responsibility for their care.  However, they do get to watch some TV, and they are capable of bursts of self-entertainment.  Will they interrupt me at some point?  Yep, it’s what they do.  By reasoning that I could expect a future interruption I found myself goofing off instead.  See Item #1.

3) Chores.  By the light of the computer monitor, this is an easy one.  Either a) do them during the goofing off time from #2, or b) share them!  A 4-year-old’s earnest attempt at floor mopping counts as the floor being mopped. Same goes with putting away laundry, doing the dishes, cleaning up the toys.   It doesn’t stay clean, because little boys, a big boy, two dogs, a tree frog, and an ADD woman live here.   Bonus to the chores– the little ones want a bearded dragon, for which they first need money.   Not having to scrubbing someone else’s pee off the bathroom wall? That’s worth a dollar.  Them learning the importance of good aim?  Priceless.

4) Distractions.  These are an adult problem, for me it goes one step further into the clinical.  My brain takes a really long to time make it up Motivation Mountain and any interruption sends Engine #9 right off the tracks.  Beyond medication, do you know what else helps?

Discipline:  to train or develop by instruction and exercise especially in self-control.

For example, I know that opening an internet browser to debate people known to piss me off is like choosing to continue to smoke with your oxygen tank hooked up.

5) Obligations.   Meet them and move on.  Volunteer for less.  Don’t let other people guilt you into things that you don’t want to do.  Alternatively, don’t complain about the stuff you have volunteered for.  Busy is bullshit, see #1.

I did not need a room (fort) of my own to write, though the autonomy and freedom gained from cast-off curtain sheers made me absurdly happy.

Upstairs? A couch? A bedroom? Pah– I have this fort, this space that I didn’t need, but makes me feel like a unicorn farting rainbows. WITH BUTTERFLIES.

It was intended that AFOO have walls, doors– you know, room-type things.   Zach and I even discovered a kick-ass antique stained glass window at the reuse store being ignored by a pack of re-modelers in favor of vinyl.  Shudder.    But then I thought– walls, who need walls?  I ain’t got time for no walls!

I like the carved-out-for-myselfness from behind the curtain.  The Being Weird rather than buying mass produced weird.

The once-was-a-box-spring redone into a Mixed Media Abstract Art and Organization Center. No need to be judge-y, it’s a work in progress.

The swelling and explosion of my heart when I re-read The Yellow Wallpaper a few weeks ago.  My silent concession to a long-ago professor who told a classroom full of 20ish year old women that they would “get it someday”.

Making silly art from it?  With craft paper that I bought a decade ago because it reminded me of the story?  Shrug, it’s whom I am.

The refinished desk and credenza.

Yes, I did duck tape my perimeter.  You wouldn’t have?

The various objects that touch my soul or delight me with their whimsy. Here are a few.

A friend welded records together for us one year.  I hung it from my house’s old television, pre-cable lines.  Get it?

Don Quixote, dude.  I always run full tilt- if it ends up being at windmills, so what. Windmills are cool, man.

When my office was upstairs, Elliot made me a megablock Duck statue.Last week he redesigned it.  A few days after that, I noticed he’d been reading a book:

I totally see it– don’t you?

My space.  My choice to create an eclectic, industrially-designed hide-out from the random stuff hanging out in my basement.  Added bonus for getting rid of crap in my basement!

 Or spray painting stuff from the backyard.

You won’t find a pinned inspiration room, because I didn’t copy someone else’s style.

Furthermore, I encourage more of you to build your own semi-permanent forts. To claim some corner as only yours, a place without toys, or paperwork, obligations, or expectations.

2013: The year adults Take Back the Fort.

Mother’s Day, 2013, the sixth year I get this one for my own.

Reading the history of the Mother’s Day holiday in America, understanding the motivation in Julia Ward Howe’s always makes me…rueful.

That this day brings pain to as many people it brings joy hurts my heart in sympathy. It’s hard to watch the giddy folks when you are miserable- whether it be the loss of a child, or a loss of a parent.

I get it. For the many years before I had my own biological distractions, Father’s Day was that holiday for me. Part of my unrepentant selfishness on Mother’s Day has to be the result of how singularly I’ve shifted the focus on Father’s Day from my Dad to Joel.

To my own Mom– the fact that your Mother’s Day card is still upstairs, stampless, does not reflect my love and appreciation. It does reflect my inability to face a post office on a Saturday. And a week full of kid-related obligations, followed by deliberately going in public after stamps made me feel…postal.

So I have carved this holiday into being about me in a way that is slightly tactless.

JB: “Do you want me to buy that Kindle for Mother’s Day? Or maybe those cowboy boots?”
Me: “I want the three of you to go away in the morning and not come back until at least 3pm.”
JB: “But…”
Me: “No. Really. Y’all have got to get the hell out of here and leave me alone. I need 6 full hours where I can blast my music without explaining why no one should repeat the lyrics. To be silent so the thoughts in my head can escape before they succeed in choking me to death. That’s right, my thoughts are becoming corporeal. Never good, Joel.

I want to “lock” myself in A Fort of My Own, only getting distracted on my own terms. If I have to spend another day* being anyone but Just Stephanie I’m gonna fucking explode.”

Sounds a little psychotic, yeah? Perhaps some anger management issues? Meh, I know myself, what I need, and how much I can take before I crack. Just as I have explained the fact that I drip sweat from May to August in this state– letting the toxins out technically makes me healthier.

This morning as I listened to the… nothing… I tried to even make myself feel a little guilty about it.

I’m thrilled to admit I was not successful. And that I laughed way too hard at many of these e-cards.

May this be a guilt-free, peaceful weekend for you all– regardless of how (or if) you celebrate.

*If one of them had woken up sick, I’d have swallowed that bubble for another day, because that’s what you do for those that you love–especially your children. Or if my good friend needs my internet searching skills. These things don’t count.

I doubt I came up with this trick. But I do use it; it is brilliant; I am a Boss.

Step 1. Notice you have a problem. Step 2: Figure out what to do about that problem.

Setting that solution into motion? Biggest, most important step.

My problem lives over there on the internet. ACK– KNOW ALL THINGS. I love knowing things. I am nosy beyond what feels comfortable to admit.

Okay, I’ll tell you one. Last month I managed to circle my way around the facebook drain to the memorial page for a mid-twenties Australian (or Welsh, maybe— because those country’s are in no way related) climber’s page. He’d died in a climbing accident (saw that coming), and his family and friends do this huge trek once a year.

Now, I had 1) opened a web browser to to check the weather, and 2) SIXTY MINUTES LATER…

My brain goes KAPOWY, my eyes glaze over as each click drags me deeper into the seemingly unconnected connections in the relational database from hell.

I am The Ultimate Gretel, but I ate the cookies, so no crumbs.

Sidebar
That said, let me brag for a minute (hubris to balance out self deprecation) if you [waves mouse-clicking hand] have secrets AND live on the internet? The single-minded dogged persistence of the obsessed when combined with intelligence and unlimited screen time of an adult that scoffs at sleep?

Pffft. You have not a single snowballs chance. Yeah, trifling bitch– Ima looking RIGHT at ya. Winky.

Alright, back to it.

Internet and cookies– not internet cookies (except that’s kinda what those are, right? Little bread crumbs?)– symbolically speaking, are both about the ability to self regulate. And THAT is why these two items rarely enter my house. Seriously, I will eat the two things at the same time. Mixed together, even.

What does all of this have to do with any of you, my fabulously addicted internet friends?
Chrome, which I have just recently switched to because why shouldn’t google own every bit of my data, includes an extension called StayFocusd.

Aww, yeah. Any program delivering smart-ass to this level gets love from me (picture gets bigger if you click it, duh). My daily facebook time limit– across all my devices?

40 minutes. I might add amazon next– the amount of time I can waste searching for that perfect *free* book is time I could spend, you know, writing my own book.

Dear All Moms, Except that One: That mom doesn’t know you and her opinion of you does not matter.

Sweet mercy, was no one listening?

I don’t need to defend why I might be surfing on my phone, or otherwise engaged in my life– you know, the one I didn’t forfeit with my fertility–because I don’t answer to her. Plus, sanctimommy’s post was clearly calling out iphone moms in the park, and I have a nexus.

Plus while she was busy cataloging all the precious childhood moments I missed with my disregard, her precious was choking a little girl on the slide.

Isn’t it always that way?

Now, I have no interest in defending my facebook updating, internet surfing, kindle book reading, or– sometimes when I’m messing with paper– book writing.

But I couldn’t help myself. Pictures. Funnies.

Last week, I talked about why the current generation of moms has developed Stuart Smalley syndrome. This crushing need for constant validation– in kids, other adults, and myself– makes me twitchy.

But. The thing that sets my eyelids twitching so hard that I can feel the breeze? It’s this concept that all women of my generation are suffering because they are mothering without a village.
This ridiculousness that the average 21st century mother has it SO MUCH HARDER.

1) Mothering now is harder than it was 100 years ago? If I were to TARDIS my family back to 1912 to visit one of those super-lucky, village-having moms? Not the romantic one some folks think about, but the real one. You know her, she shucked oysters all day– for a dollar; had a baby every year (birth control, what?); with a husband that didn’t do NONE OF THAT BABY REARING.

My first thought on her reaction?
Something like…

After she handed me (and my kids) some oysters she’d slap me in the face for complaining about things I read, since no one wasted time putting no learning on girls.

Then, her eyes narrowed into furious slits, she’d realize that I had time to 1) worry about something other than physical survival, and 2) had a husband that knew how to change a diaper.

I think we can agree she might not see my life as particularly difficult.

This idea of a village? It’s been a long time since humans lived tribally; that village became diluted and isolated by agriculture– those farms weren’t close and no one had smartphones.

Or cars. Or time.

Oh– when the girl-people got themselves hitched, they moved to their husband’s farm. To the village run by their new mother in law’s.

And the industrial worker village? I guess, since the kids were working with their parents, not pottery barn kitchen work– but actual for-survival work…

This gut-emptying craving mothers have for being reassured? What the hell, ladies?

Check it out. Sometimes I do a great job. I rock the parenting thing like it’s my job (snort, snuffle– because it IS) and my family spends the day grinning and cheerful.

Please note, this rocking of the job almost always happens over the simplest of things, like playing tennis in the driveway. It almost never happens when I let them use power tools, deliver unto them prepaid Great Experiences, or cheerfully allow them to destroy my house with their gluttony of toys.

What my Small People see as parenting successes are the Simple Things. Figuring that out saved me (and later them) thousands in therapy bills.

Saying yes more than I say no. Not talking shit about them to other parents when they are clearly close enough to overhear me (for real–how often do we all do this?). Following through on my promises– and recognizing that Small People hear each utterance of, “yeah, building a sky scraper does sound cool” as “we’ll build a sky scraper RIGHT NOW. This VERY SECOND!” Remembering the importance of reading a particular book, be it the first, or thousandth time. PUTTING DOWN THE DAMN PHONE. Photographing the big stuff and not every single other minute of their lives.

Those are how we all rock it as a parents.

Then the days (weeks, months) I fail. When I’m overtired and cranky. When my head is pounding with a migraine, and they deliberately screech at me like the sociopaths they often resemble. When they are entitled, demanding, and self-absorbed. When they are whiny and belligerent and…

In other words, when they behave like children.

My personal parenting goal isn’t to make sure that they grow up to be adults that never resent a single parenting choice/mistake I’ve ever made. I’m human, my husband is human (I think), my children are human. Part of a child developing an identity separate from the safety net of their childhood requires a certain measure of young adult discontent. Otherwise you risk raising your own Stuart Smalley, then paying for him to lay in bed all day eating fig newtons.

I make mistakes; sometimes I behave badly. I throw temper tantrums. I lose my patience–with them, with my husband. I huff and I puff.

Later I often apologize and then– say it with me people, I let that shit go.

Because that’s what humans in relationships do– they love, they laugh, they fight, they cry.

Anything else is fake-ity fake fake and serves my children no purpose.

My husband’s family doesn’t argue. No screaming matches. Just quiet anger. My family argued, but my Dad preferred stony silence. Not polite passive anger, but Angry Anger that followed him around like the smell of a bad fart.

Neither method teaches actual conflict resolution.

I do crazy things, like accidentally volunteering to sew 25 seat cushion so that ALL KINDERGARTNERS REST THEIR BUTTS ON A SOFT PLACE. Not because I’m “that” mom, trying to outdo everyone else. Not because I’m an expert seamstress.

My only motivation, as it is with most things, is boredom avoidance. Learning new things like, how to sew a seat cushion assembly-line style, prevents that muscle called my brain from atrophying into a gelatinous mess of carefully removed sandwich crusts and dirty yoga pants.

Of course, you can’t then ever un-know how easy it is to sew these things, forever preventing you from spending $11 on any sort of stuffed seating thingy.

Double-edged sword, people.

For example:

I let my kids use some power tools, because I think it’s fun to use power tools and enlisting them as “helpers” means I have a shot of accomplishing something during their waking hours. And do you know what my children think? Because using power tools exists in their reality, they are NOT IMPRESSED WITH USING POWER TOOLS.

Or, despite having spent a full 6 hours completely engaged with him and activities of his choosing; spearing him with the love laser of my undivided attention, I still got attitude for taking an hour to write this post.

Self-absorbed twits, all of them.

I’m almost certain that the mom up there would shove me under a bus, to steal my TARDIS to come enjoy my luxury life of popping hormone therapy and facebooking my discontent. I’m completely certain that I’d be utterly miserable shucking oysters (a shellfish I adore) all day.

Perspective. It makes the world go ’round.

“Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit people like me!”

Y’all, SNL intended that Stuart Smalley’s incessant need for Daily Affirmation be a joke.

Yet whenever I turn on the internet (aka Facebook as it delivers most of my important information, and yes, I am painfully embarrassed about this) these viral articles, some of which moved me to tears of appreciation*, sound a lot like a Daily Affirmation.

*Being told by some ubiquitous stranger that I’m an amazing mom after a day that has ended with any one (or all) of us slamming doors and screaming feels… nice.

“That’s just stinkin’ thinkin!”

Trend: Mothers declaring themselves as non-compete in this pinworthy (seriously folks, the non-words rebranding into verbs? Too much) world.

Um, Duh? Look, I like pinterest; I thought a visual bulletin board to be an amazing concept for organizing the obscurity on the internet. I don’t like that it turned into a popularity contest.

BUT, not liking the hostile takeover of my bookmarking site, and spending more than 4 minutes typing out why I don’t like it are different.

Ain’t nobody got time for that shit.

“Compare and despair.”

Too many moms spending too much time comparing themselves, worrying if they measure up.

Yes. And simultaneously, no.

I compare the mother I am today with the mother of two years ago and… dude, what a screw up she was.

The mother I am right now wouldn’t exist without those mistakes that still, even now, I keep stored in a clear glass specimen jar– a la 9th grade biology.

Obviously I can’t quit my mom-job and I don’t want to. Wanting a vacation isn’t quitting.

But I will, without an ounce of apology, declare the day null and count continued lung function as a measurable parenting success.

However when those unprovoked mini-breaks (illness and pregnancy count as provoked) morph into a recognizable slack-assness habit?

A quiet whisper with the mothering equivalent of “you know that whole pizza wasn’t 200 calories” is the absolutely right voice for the moment.

Mom bloggers reassure us that our concerns are unfounded, which go viral (of course) because, dammit, that’s what we all want to hear. Whether it’s true or not.

Check it out, not only am I sometimes the antithesis of awesome, sometimes I’m SO not-awesome that a group hug affirming how fantastic I am in my not-awesomeness perpetuates fraud.

I consider my personal parenting style a fluctuation between too-awesome-for-this-sauce and skirting the edge of benign negligence.

My kids absolutely need both– and every point in between.

Awesome mom smiles while singing Everyone was Kung Fu Farting, complete with mouth-farting noises.

Benign negligence mom pretends not to see them digging a lake in the backyard.

However, I’ve been rolling around in my derision of my personal favorite– but that one will have to wait until Monday.

“I’m in a shame spiral.”

Franklin Graham, dilute progeny of Billy Graham and head dude of Samaritan’s Purse fixes Bosnian Children with shoe boxes full of miracles. My kindergartner got this religious book in public school library.

Deep breaths, censorship is bad, no wonder he was in such a foul mood yesterday, mumbling about being depressed and stuff.

Then I read it.

A mother lives with her two kids, 9 and 3 in the cellar of a bombed out building. The 9 year old forages for food in the streets at night, while dodging machine gun fire. He sleeps on a chair. His 3 year old sister used to have a doll, but she lost it in the street, running from sniper fire.

Above text? NOT EXAGGERATED; that’s what it says.

Where’s Dad? you ask.

That’s a great question, I’m glad you mentioned it. The family assumes Dad is still alive, but since he’s in jail they just aren’t sure. No worries though, part of the miracle included busloads full of prisoners being delivered back home just in time for their shoe box dinner.

In the meantime, poor mom is certainly whoring herself, but Graham leaves those details out- the only real miracle in this shoe box of disaster.

Thanks to this stupid book I spent an hour of my evening trying to explain my distaste for Franklin Graham. Without cursing and keeping a complicated bit of truth understandable to a 6 year old. Go(?) me.

It’s not like FG’s raking in the big bucks being CEO or anything.

Will I always knee jerk about the religious stuff available in public, government-supported schools?

Duh.

Hey, at least my state continues to sneak religion (Christianity only, please) into schools through sponsored legislation.

Aw, dammit; never-mind.

The Bosnian sniper fire book did provide a brilliant segue into Zach’s next question about black history month and “how exactly were they able to purchase, um, people? And why only the brown-skinned people? And, while we’re at it, why didn’t they pay them for doing the work?”

Well see, because the bible told ‘em so, that’s why.