Oh well.

With all of the duties, responsibilities and pressures on mothers, why, oh why, must we be subject to this curse of being emotional women?  I’m not talking about PMS either.  PMS is simply adding insult to injury.  And on the subject of PMS… if you are not a woman, here’s a word to the wise: keep your mouth shut.  Men without a medical degree are not allowed to diagnose, offer to treat, or even insinuate PMS when a wife/girlfriend’s opinion, mood, or state of mind differs from that of your own.  Don’t cast stones at her girl-parts or you might end up being justifiably prohibited from using them.

Whoa… back to the subject…

Women are complex creatures. 

We are strong and weak.  We are compassionate and firm.  We are sensitive and unyielding.  We are loving and defensive.   

Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming.

To all of you who have impacted my life this rough week.  Thank you for listening.  Thank you for not thinking I’m crazy.  Thank you for worrying when I didn’t answer your call.  Thank you for being honest. Thank you for not leaving peanut butter fingerprints on the suede couch.  Thank you for giving me space.  Thank you, God, for Colin Farrell. Thank you for suggesting books that make me giggle.  Thank you for always being an inspiration.  Thank you for making me laugh.  Thank you for eating your broccoli without making me yell.  Thank you for being the man that I love and for never accusing my girl-parts of any wrongdoing.

This week he drew me a treasure map at the gym daycare.  On the drive home, he became the captain of our Nissan SUV and commanded the lowly coxswain (Mom) to steer as the treasure map dictated.  Once we were on the interstate and I slowed down to take our exit, the captain began shouting.  “Argh!  The treasure map does not lead to our house!  The treasure is at the beach!”

I like this captain.

Lately, I feel like my personal pirate ship is just drifting in open water.  Sure, there is a destination out there; I’m just on hold getting to it.  Being on hold isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  It is actually helping me to navigate my course with clarity.  Too often, in the past, I have been guilty of letting my feelings call the shots only to arrive somewhere I didn’t want to be. 

Not this time.  I know where I want to be.  Everyday I’m more and more certain of it. 

Sailing toward the destination not only requires determination and hard work, but it requires sacrifice.  I want to do a lot of things in this life like get a glowing degree in literature, coach an Olympic swim team, and write a bestselling novel or ten.  While hopefully I will be able to accomplish some of those dreams, they aren’t what is going to matter to me when I stand on the shore of what is this life looking into the unknown of the next.  What I want to see looking back is a kind of success that isn’t measured in medals or by the New York Times. 

During this quiet season of my life, I’m learning to cut myself some slack.  I may not be holed up in a classroom working on that degree, but I did teach my son how to throw a baseball today.  I still haven’t started competing with the Master’s team, but I did help my daughter pass her swim test this weekend.  I haven’t completed writing a novel in almost nine months, but I did teach my kindergartner how to read. 

As far as I’m concerned, I’m still on course to my destination.  Apparently next, we’re headed to the beach to look for buried treasure.

Thankfully, we received a mild diagnosis of vision problems and my little boy was fitted with the cutest pair of glasses you’ve ever seen on a kid.  My friend’s nephew hasn’t been so lucky.  After a year of battling the disease, exhausting the family’s finances and enjoying a year in remission, at the age of six his cancer has returned.  The prognosis isn’t good.  The doctors are saying that the next course of action will be to remove the eye, it’s surrounding tissue and bone.  Even with those extremes, the odds are against them. 

I’ve never met this little boy and still, I cried today.

Over the past couple of years, I have learned the hard way how very FRAGILE this life is.  In the blink of an eye, our flimsy realities can shatter leaving us with only remnants of what used to be our lives.  The things that used to be important become irrelevant.  Dreams that once were sought after are abandoned.  Everything changes… the way you think, the way you live and certainly, the way you love.  While I never anticipated that I would grow up to be a crazy mom, I am so thankful that I did.  My little family is my whole world and they bring me more joy than all of the freedoms combined that a single life could ever offer me.  Even though my world is nothing short of pure chaos most of the time, it is EXACTLY where I want to be.

Tonight, before my head touches my pillow, I will sneak into my kids’ rooms and watch my babies sleep.  I will lean over their beds, kiss their cheeks and whisper in the dark how much I love them, how thankful I am to be their mom, and I will pray for their health and protection. 

Be thankful.

All joking aside – I LOVE MY KIDS.  They are the reason that I wake up every morning.  Granted, it’s kind of hard not to wake up when your son is holding your eyelid open, breathing onto your eyeball, repeating, “Mama.  Pancakes.”

In our short existence together, my children and I have been through a LOT.  I started this journey as a single mom, then got married and had a son, then lost a baby, then lost a husband.  Now I have simply come full circle and am back to doing the single thing once more – this time throwing in the complications of dating.  So, I think I have earned the right be opinionated about motherhood.  Note that I just said “opinionated” – not all-knowing or even correct.  On a scale of Roseanne Conner to June Cleaver I will always fall on the side of, “I figure if my kids are alive at the end of the day, then I’ve done my job.” – Roseanne.   

One of my best friends looked at me once and said, “You make your life look so easy.”  To which I chuckled, “Yeah, when people are watching.”  There is nothing easy about this job.  It’s long and grueling hours, with little vacation time and the pay sucks.  But we do it anyway.  Phyllis Diller said it best, “It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.”

I don’t think I have ever felt the natural urge to “beget children.”  I did, however, have the natural urge to do other things which led to the begetting of children and as a result, here we are.  Ironically enough, the day I found out I was pregnant with my daughter was during the last snowstorm in our city.  Upon reading the positive result and being in utter denial, I drug my roommate to the pharmacy, three miles on foot in the snow.  Three EPT’s later, I accepted the fact that my life was over.  I was going to be a mom.

Little did I know how wrong I was; life was only just beginning.

My name is eL. and currently I am a stay-at-home, single mom and a writer.  I have two great kids who inspire many of my writings… they are also the inspiration for a lot of typos and the over use of the exclamation point at times, but I digress… 

I began the Your Crazy Mom adventure hoping to create a relevant source of information for real moms. 

Real Mom : (noun) Parental figure of the feminine persuasion who has more than once considered slapping a stamp on her child’s forehead and leaving them for the mailman.  (If you were offended by this definition, the term is not applicable to you.)

I am currently enrolled in the Wing It and Learn University of Parenting where  my major is How To Pull Oneself Up by the Bootstraps with minors in both Wine Studies and the Ups and Downs of Relationships with Adults.  I hope to complete my education in the next 12 years.  All of that to say, I am not a professional and do not claim to be the World’s Greatest Mother.  I am merely one harried mother with a laptop.  Some of the advice found here might be a bit unorthodox, but it is honest – and honesty, in my opinion, is the beginning of good parenting.

This site will be growing and changing over the next few days/weeks/months/decades.  Coming soon you will find a forum for discussion, exchanging advice, free child to a good home classifieds, swapping recipes, and much much more!  I hope that you will join this growing little community and know that you (and all of your maternal flaws) are welcome and accepted here!