My Real Life

So, the cover is set for the book and the publication date has been pushed up to mid-March!

This is so very, very exciting!

Here is the cover:

Check out the awesome blogs on the back cover!  I still can’t believe that I’m associated with them.  They are so very talented!

The person who pulled us all together is Jen from “People I Want to Punch in the Throat.”

Jen and I went to junior high together and then she moved away.

We reconnected through Facebook and I’ve been thrilled to watch as her blog went viral, last year, with her post about Overachieving Moms and the Elf on the Shelf.

She wrote a book and had it published in time for the holidays this year.

Then, she came up with the idea for this anthology.

And here we are!

On another note, in the next few days, we’ll be switching to our new domain: amysreallife.com  It’s not up and running as of today, but it’s scheduled to go live on February 25th, if everything goes as scheduled.  I will not have a post on Monday in order to facilitate the switch, but I’ll be back on Tuesday and we should be set!

So, exciting times around here…good things to come!

1. What is a hobby you would love to learn and why? 

I would love to learn to play the cello.

I’ve thought about it so many times over the years.

Such a soulful instrument.  My favorite of the strings.

I would love to be able to play and play and play.

Maybe…I’m still young.

2. What do you wish you could have delivered to your house but does not deliver?

Really?

Is there still something that they won’t deliver?

I don’t think so.

I mean, I can’t call up and have someone bring me a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup right now, but I can have my groceries delivered and I can put them on the list.

Oh, I see.  I don’t want to wait until I’ve made my list.

So, I guess that would be it.

Chocolate on demand.

3. What’s your favorite snow day activity? Inside and out?

Let’s just get the “out” out of the way right now.

There’s nothing I like to do outside in the snow.

If I could have outside snow fun without being cold and wet, I’d love to go sledding.

I love speed.  Love it.

However, I hate being cold and wet, so that’s the end of that.

Inside?

I love snuggling under a blanket and reading with a hot cup of tea on a snowy day.

Monkey Girl usually gets a book, I get a book, we cover up and lay on the couch together and just read.

The boys wind up playing something next to the couch and it’s all good.

4. Would you meet a stranger from an Internet dating site?

If I wasn’t married, I’m not sure I’d even try an Internet dating site.

People lie enough straight to your face…they can lie that much more online.

That being said, I have quite a few friends who have met their spouses online and they are all very, very happy.

I’m not sure it’s for me.

But that’s not to say that it doesn’t work.
5. If you had to spend 35 hours in a car with 4 other people, who would you choose?

I’d choose 5 and they all live here.

If you mean outside the family, I’d choose Kim, Erin and Michaela.

If you are going to hold me to 4 to be true to the question, I guess we’d leave Tiny with my parents.

Not because I like him any less, but because I think the car would get old for him way earlier than 35 hours.

1.  When left to their own devices, the amount of dirty outfits is always higher than the pairs of dirty underwear in my boys closet.

2.  For the past three months, Baby Monkey has been trying to convince me that he doesn’t sleep at all during the night.  When I tell him that I go check on him and kiss him in the middle of the night and he is fast asleep, he tells me that he’s faking.  I am quite tempted to carry him to another part of the house while he is sleeping just so that I can hear the story he makes up about how he got there.

3.  Today, Baby Monkey started singing “Here Comes the Maid…Here Comes the Maid.”  We watched our wedding video with the kids last night.  Coincidence?

4.  I may be the only viewer of Downton Abbey who wasn’t upset when Matthew Crawley was killed off on Sunday night.  Oh…sorry…spoiler alert.  From the second the actor announced he was leaving, I was annoyed and was ready for his character to meet a fiery death.  So, although I didn’t get the fire, he wound up with a car on top of him and that was fine with me.

Because, see, I like the way the Brits work.  They aren’t so cowed by celebrity that they’ll write a ridiculous storyline to ensure that an actor can come back if he/she changes his mind.  Like, remember on Days of Our Lives when they put Dr. Drake Ramore in a coma so that… wait, hang on…

The Brits, they say “You’re quitting our show because you think you can do better elsewhere?  Fine, have at it.  But, we’re killing you off so you can’t fall back on us when your ‘big break’ doesn’t pan out.”

I respect that.

5.  My Mom is reading this right now and she wants to comment that the reason I love the Brits is because I am part British.  However, let me be clear.  If #4 was about how I like the Germans, she’d say it was because I was part German.  And if it was about how I like the Swahili, she’d say it was because I’m part Swahili, because, according to my Mother, I’m a little bit of everything.  Oh, and I’m related to everyone, as well.  The Roosevelt’s, the Queen of England, perhaps even Sacajawea.  Okay, I made the last one up, but she does say that I get my cheekbones from the native American side of the family.

Yep.

6.  I realize I am not fooling anyone with the demure-sized servings I give myself at dinner every night.  We all know I’m finishing up whatever is left on everyone else’s plates when I clear the table.

7.  Part of the reason I want to be cremated when I die is because I know I won’t be happy with my hair (or my outfit) and eternity is a mighty long time for a bad hair day.

8.  If it was socially acceptable for me to go to bed at 7:00 pm, I totally would.

9. I haven’t gotten my car washed in over a year because I just don’t have the energy to clean it out first.

10. My kids feet stink.  Like, seriously, stinky funky stank.  They are cute feet.  But they stink.

I told her that as soon as she got it down, I’d post it.

Not only did she get it down, she also learned the second verse.

So, here’s Monkey Girl and the cup song from “Pitch Perfect,” which I still won’t let her watch.

That’sa my girl.

So, Monkey Girl got a text from a friend inviting her to spend the night.

She was in church when the text came, so she didn’t get it until she got home.

She texted back a request for a little more information, like times, etc. but her friend didn’t text back for awhile.

Monkey Girl is a child of the information and instant gratification age, so she immediately decided that her friend must have already invited someone else.

I immediately told her to be patient, but, of course, that didn’t make her feel better.

So, I started with the stories.

Erin, Kim and Michaela can tell you, my history with making up nonsensical stories to explain things goes way back.

Monkey Girl:  I think she invited someone else and doesn’t know how to tell me.

Me:  Maybe, she’s in church now and her ring tone is a Justin Bieber song and she didn’t have her phone on vibrate and in the middle of church, you texted her back and suddenly “Swag, swag, swag on you, chillin’ by the fire while we eatin’ fondue,” went ringing out through the church and so her parents confiscated her phone for a week.

Monkey Girl:  Or, maybe she invited someone else and she doesn’t know how to tell me.

Me:  Maybe, just maybe, when you texted her back, she was taking her dog for a walk, and her ringtone is the sound of a small mouse and it went off just as a hawk was circling overhead and the hawk heard it, swooped down and snatched it right out of her hand.

Monkey Girl:  Or, maybe she invited someone else and she doesn’t know how to tell me.

Me:  Maybe she got your text and went to ask her Mom for some more details, but her Mom is in the shower and in HER house, no one bothers the Mom when she’s in the shower.

(That one got a big laugh out of Real Man)

Monkey Girl:  Or, maybe she invited someone else and she doesn’t know how to tell me.

Me:  Maybe, she had a problem with biting her nails and she underwent hypnosis to stop and her ringtone is the trigger to undo the hypnosis, and when you texted, the ringtone went off, undid the hypnosis and she went on a nail biting frenzy and actually chewed her fingers off so she can’t text you back.

Monkey Girl:  You can imagine her response.

Me:  Maybe, she was in the car when you texted her back and her ringtone is a digital signal sound, and as your text came in, the digital sound went off, but she happened to be driving by a nuclear power plant and the digital sound deactivated their computerized safety controls and the plant went into nuclear meltdown and they were stopped by military police and her phone was confiscated.

Monkey Girl:  Maybe.

So, regular readers know that I’ve been alternately coming to terms with and completely devastated by the fact that my kids are getting older and I’m not having any more babies.

Some days are better than others, and I’m not always weeping into my decaf tea over the idea.

This post by You’re My Favorite Today has helped me tremendously, because it reminds me that, while there is much to miss, there is also much to which I can look forward.

Enjoy, and if you have older kids, feel free to leave me some other reasons why older kids are better than younger kids in the comments  here on my page!

So, the other night, we took the kids to Friendly’s for dinner to celebrate Monkey Girl’s stellar report card.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was exhausted and just didn’t want to cook.

Baby Monkey decided he didn’t feel well and didn’t want dessert (which is how I knew he meant it) so, since Real Man had met us there after work with his Jeep, I took Baby and Tiny home while RM stayed with the two big kids and stuffed them silly with ice cream.

As Baby and I were walking out into the parking lot, he missed the step off of the curb and fell flat on his face on the gravel.

I stopped, turned and said, “You okay?”

He lay there for a second and said, “I think I might be broken.”

I said, “If you were broken, you wouldn’t have to wonder.  I think you’re okay buddy.  Let’s get up and keep going.”

He stood up, brushed himself off, took my hand and kept walking.

All of this was witnessed by a family of five who were also leaving the restaurant at the same time.

The mother of this tribe looked at me as if I was the worst mother in the world.

She was honestly shooting daggers out of her eyes at me for not dropping Tiny, racing to Baby’s side and cooing to him.

I just looked at her and smiled.

And, as I did, her daughter, who was trying to climb into their van missed a step and fell on her knees.

Softly.  Gracefully.  Quietly.

The mother screamed “Oh my goodness!  Hannah!  Are you okay?  Did you hurt yourself?  Oh, honey, come here!  Hannah fell!”

As she yelled, she kept looking at me, as if to say “This is how you take care of a child, lady.”

Hannah was quiet for a second or two and then scrunched up her face and began to yell.

The kid was not hurt.

I promise you.

Yet, because her Mom made a major case out of it, Hannah made a major case out of it.

Trust me, when my kids are actually hurt, I’m the first one to cuddle, soothe, kiss away the boo-boo.

But kids fall and trip and slip and slide and 9 times out of 10…they are just fine.

So, teaching them the difference between a real emergency and a non-emergency is something that I’ve always thought was important.

If everything is treated like a big deal, how do you ever really know when something happens that IS a big deal?

So, as Hannah is wailing and her parents are both, now, trying to clip her into her car seat, Mom and I met eyes once again.

It took everything I had not to glance down at my non-crying child who fell WAY harder than her child did and then glance at her with the look, but I don’t play that way, so imagine my surprise when I realized she was giving ME the look.

I guess she does play that way.

The nerve.

Then I figured, she can give me the look all she wants.  Her hysterics mean that she’s gotta drive home with a screaming kid in the back seat.  My calm means I got to drive home with a delightful boy who asked a million questions about nothing at all.

I win.

Not that it’s a competition or anything.

Yesterday, one of the amazing women bloggers who is a co-contributer to the anthology I am part of, posted this Valentine’s Day post on her blog, Funny is Family.

I loved it, and decided to share it with you today, along with some of my reasons for why Real Man continues to be my Valentine after  almost 15 years of marriage, 19 years of dating, and 25 years of knowing each other.

1.  He puts up with my overactive DVR schedule.  He even watches many of my shows with me.  And, some shows, like The New Girl, he doesn’t watch with me.  Even when he’s laughing at the jokes.  He’s not watching.  Even when he puts down his tablet and moves his eyes to the screen, he’s not watching.

2.  He is willing to drive to the Quik Chek to pick me up one of the ridiculous milkshakes they have there at 9:30 on a school night.  And I’m not pregnant.  Just wishing for a milkshake.

3.  He never gets tired of reading the same books, singing the same songs, going through the same bedtime routines every single night with the monkeys.  Never.  I’ve heard him say “Stand up.  Zip up.  Night-night world.  Shut the door.  Turn out the light.  I love you so much.  You’re a good boy,” more times than I can even begin to count.  And he never says “Seriously?  Again?”

4.  He eats everything I cook with a smile.  Which is nice, considering the monkeys don’t.  But, Real Man…he eats it, makes appreciative noises and pretends I’m Giada Laurentis.  (I choose to believe that he’s only pretending I cook like her…not pretending that I look like her.)  The only time he has ever not eaten what I’ve made was in our first year of marriage when I made pork chops and applesauce in the crockpot, like my Mom used to make.  Except, it wasn’t anything like when my Mom made it and I threw it all in the garbage before he could be sweet and eat it anyway.

5.  He loves me.  Like, he seriously loves me.  He doesn’t care that I don’t look the way I did when we met at 16.  He doesn’t care that I fall asleep in the middle of movies I made him rent. He doesn’t care that I start reading a book and become completely unable to complete any other task around the house until I finish the book.  He just loves me.

Good stuff.

I’ve been waiting to share some news with all of you, but I wanted to wait until I got the official okay.

I got it yesterday, and so I am thrilled to tell you that I’ve written a piece to be included in an anthology that will be released around Mother’s Day.

It’s an anthology of funny essays on motherhood, and I am beyond thrilled to be included.

There are 35+ hysterical women writers who are featured in the book, and they are all amazing bloggers.

As I am getting to know them, I definitely don’t feel worthy to be included in their company, but I’m working on it.

I’ve been starting to share some links to their blogs on my Facebook page, and I am going to be featuring some of my favorite posts here, on the blog.

Another exciting change, that has been prompted by the book, is the fact that I will be changing over to a self-hosting blog in the next few weeks.

I’m making the change for several reasons, like wanting some more freedom over format, style, font, layout.

It will also allow me to have ads on the blog and will allow me to become an Amazon affiliate, so around Mother’s Day, be looking for the link to buy the book.

Self-promotion.  Gotta do it.

These are exciting times at My Real Life, and I hope you all come on the journey with me!

Recently, I’ve found myself in a situation where I am getting to know, and thoroughly enjoy, some amazingly funny women bloggers.

They are effortlessly funny, and, as a woman and as a mother, I find that I can relate to most of what they write.

Yesterday was a long day.

We had a delayed opening for school, which was a nice treat, and then when we got there, we hit the ground running listening to presentations in all of my classes, then to play rehearsal, then to the post office, to the pharmacy, then home to cook Baby’s birthday dinner, then the party, the presents, the cake, and then as a birthday treat, he wanted to watch an episode of Dr. Who before bedtime.

I finally sat down around 9 pm to get online and click around for a bit.

I came across this post on “Bad Parenting Moments” and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Someone said to me, just this morning, “You cook four different birthday dinners in a two week span?  Why not just let the kids pick a restaurant and take them out?”

My response was “I would rather swallow a hot coal than take the kids out to dinner four times in a two week span.”

And then I shared the story of Tiny and me in church about a month ago.

We lasted for ten minutes.

Why?

Because he sat on my lap and screamed “Help!” from our pew for that exact amount of time, and then I finally called it quits.

The rest of the monkeys are fairly well-behaved in restaurants, but Tiny is in a screaming stage that we never experienced with the other three, and along with the screams goes the tossing of everything on the table on the floor.

So, again, when I read the post, I laughed until my sides hurt.

Because I can relate.

And, if you have kids, I bet you can, too.