Making lemonade out of snowstorms.

I know I’ve said many times before that I started this blog primarily to make people laugh.

And that I also had another goal: to reassure other moms that no one is perfect. Or at least that I’m not.

That my kids’ lunches don’t look like Sesame Street characters, that my house is often a shit hole, that my husband and I have issues, and that my kids are often assholes.

People thanked me even back in the beginning for being “real.”

And then it became more than that for me.

I thought I was writing this blog for other people, but really, I was writing it for me.

The more I shared, the better I felt.

The process of writing was cathartic for me.

But also I felt lighter.

Because I wasn’t carrying around any secrets. I wasn’t pretending to be something that I wasn’t.

I didn’t feel the need to act as though my house or my marriage or my finances or my children or anything else about me was perfect. Or even great. Or good.

I mean, eventually, I plastered pictures of myself in shorts and a workout bra all over the blog.

I didn’t even have to suck in my stomach anymore.

Everyone knew exactly what I looked like.

It was incredibly freeing.

So the blog evolved.

And at this point, I basically talk about whatever the fuck I feel like talking about.

If I have a funny story to tell, I tell it.

If I feel like I fucked up somehow, I talk about it.

If my kids do something awesome I write about it.

And if they do something really fucking annoying, I write about that too.

If I’m trying to lose weight, I’ll write about that.

If I’m training for a marathon, that shit will be in there.

Basically whatever bubbles up to the surface when I sit down at the computer is what I write about.

And I go through phases.

Sometimes I’m heavy on the no yelling.

Or the therapy sessions.

Or organizing my house. Or whatever.

That’s how my life goes. In spurts.

And again, I put it out there for two reasons.

The first, like I said before, is purely selfish.

It’s for me.

And the second reason is for anyone else who may either be entertained or comforted or inspired by whatever it is that I happen to be going through at that particular moment.

Now I am never going to be perfect. And that’s not my goal.

But I will always try to evolve.

Like with the no yelling thing.

I haven’t yelled at the kids since last summer.

And I wrote a series of posts about how I had managed to do that and one of them was published on Scary Mommy.

And it was largely well received.

But there were some people who were really pissed off by it.

And one woman made a comment about how she used to read the blog, but doesn’t anymore because “it had turned into this kind of a thing.”

Hmmm.

This kind of thing?

Yes, I may have originally set off to write a blog where I said fuck a lot and drove home the screw perfection message and posted lots of pictures of laundry piles and my kids being douchey.

But there is more to me than that.

There is more to all of us than that.

At least I would hope so.

So anyway, my point.

What is my point today?

Well, yesterday I wrote a post and I put it all out there.

I set some pretty big goals for myself.

I went to bed fired up and motivated and ready to attack today.

Today being Thursday. Which is my one big work day.

The day where my dad comes at 8:30 to get Number 6 and 7 and he takes them to his house until after nap time. So I have from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 when the other kids get home from school to get shit done.

Seven hours of productivity. And heaven.

And then, the fucking snow came.

Followed by the email that there was a 2 hour delay.

Fuck.

There went two hours of work time.

But all was not lost.

I just had to get the kids to school and then I could get to work.

And then it started snowing harder.

And then the second email came.

All schools are now CLOSED.

Are you shitting me?

Then my dad called.

“I’m not going to drive up there in this weather.”

Fucking fuck.

And then, I started stewing.

And fuming.

And really wanting to just fucking rip the head off of every human being within ten feet of me.

And then I went on Facebook and told March to suck a big one.

And then I thought about my post yesterday.

I thought about my goals.

I thought about Zig Ziglar’s face.

(I’ve been sort of obsessed with him recently).

And I thought to myself, Zig Ziglar would not condone throwing a snow induced temper tantrum.

Plus, I thought about the fact that sulking wasn’t going to get me any closer to my goals.

And then I thought about that chick who left the comment about how since the blog had evolved, she didn’t want to read it anymore.

And instead of looking for a FUCK YOU WINTER AND FUCK YOU SNOW!!! image to post on Facebook, I packed up the kids’ snow gear, loaded them into the Suburban (which could pretty much climb Mount Everest in a blizzard), and I drove to my parents’ house.

And when I got to my parents’ house, I stood in the kitchen with my mom, who looked out the window into the backyard and said, “Isn’t it beautiful out there?”

And instinctively I said, “No. It would be beautiful if it was about 70 degrees warmer.”

And then I thought about goddamn Zig again.

And my goals. Which I had written down.

And the bitchy Scary Mommy commenter.

And then I looked outside again.

It was beautiful.

Fucking cold. But beautiful.

I don’t have energy to waste right now.

And stewing and fuming and being fucking miserable is no fun. And it’s tiring. And pointless.

So, as my yoga instructor encouraged a week or so ago, I embraced the mothereffing cold.

And I went outside with the kids.

I watched Number 6 just plop himself down in a hole in the snow and start chowing down on chunks of it by the handful.

He wasn’t just embracing the snow. He was devouring it.

Then, I grabbed a shovel, helped my dad dig out a kick ass luge track, embraced the snow some more, and did a little sledding with the kids.

And then, after I was done embracing, I came inside, warmed up, and got to work on those goals.

I didn’t have seven hours. But I also didn’t have zero hours.

Today could have gone two ways.

I chose the path less shoveled.

And I’m glad I did.

Cause I’m closer to those goals now than I was this morning.

And if I can do that shit on snow day, then the non snow days should be a piece of cake.

 

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