Lex tells me not to mix pills and booze. Pick one and stick with it. She says that, from where she is tucked away in the leafy brown silence of her home. It used to be a mechanic’s garage, now it’s a cozy, glorious dump of a place, real wood paneling and bizarrely proportioned rooms. She doesn’t have children. She sits there in her space, beautiful murky art prints and specific jimjaws surrounding her, selling rare books in her online store and taking in ill tempered cats.

She does very well with my kids, my dear dear friend Lex. They sit proprietarily on her long thin lap when she visits, wordlessly pressing closer if she tries to move.  She claims to be frightened of all children and has asked not be left alone with mine. “It’s me,” she insists. “Totally me, not them.” Ha. I live with those children. I know better.

I’m not frightened of my children. I love them. I am just pretty sure that I’m mothering them in the same manner I’ve executed most of my life’s chapters. Wrongly. Ah, but we all think that once or twice, don’t we? Women who mourn their life’s lack of air-freshner-commericial perfection. They worry as they fold their children’s Gymboree underpants that cost $7.99 a pair, and feel guilt that there is HFCS in their squeezable yogurt. 

I am not that mother. When I worry about my failings, it is after screaming at my daughter to just STOP TALKING because I DON’T CARE THAT YOU SAW SPONGEBOB’S BUTT. Or when I decide the sheets can go another…ehh…month? without changing. It is because I sleep too much. Because I will sometimes keep the television spinning out the numbing cotton candy of cartoons all day. Because I don’t like to clean my house, or keep a schedule, or…or…any of it. I do NOT mix pills and booze.  Except when I do, and then it is usually just Bennedryl with the teeniest of Klonopins and rum and it is lovely. Special occasions only. The sweetness of falling straight to sleep without that twilight of thinking, tallying the failings of the day, (wrote nothing, didn’t take kids outside, ate sleeve of Ritz and then another sleeve of Ritz) against the not-so-bads (read about lady who stabbed own children over Xbox dispute…am not her.) Pick one and stick with it. Pick an escape mechanism and ride it straight through this rodeo. So I pick this blog now. Welcome to my mistakes.