And he’s right (sort of). My general habit is to write a New Years post full of bullshit. It’s not intentional (the bullshit part), I mean, I believe it at the time. I think amazing things are possible and probable in the new year, and then I’m crushed when the year becomes as tangled and exhausting a knot as the previous 12 months, and despite my optimism, blind determination, and ridiculous schedule, I’m never any closer to getting my shit in order on the last day of the year than I am on the first.

This time of year I set lofty goals for myself – like picking the clothes up off the closet floor, sleeping more, and showering at least every other day. Maybe I’m aiming too high.

On this, the last day of the year, I feel tired more than anything else. I’m not depressed, not cynical (no wait, I am cynical- absolutely I am). But I am proud of many things I’ve achieved this year. Or some things. Actually, one thing.

When I was 8, my best friend at the time lived one street away and owned a small but extremely terrifying poodle. Every day I would go to her house determined to pet it, make nice, and every day it would chase me and bite me in the ass. That’s how I think of New Years.

I am finished with making nice. And rice. I always f-up rice too; I just won’t make it anymore. Anyway, I know after all our disappointments, time will not turn around and spontaneously love me. The slate doesn’t wipe clean at midnight, the bite marks don’t vanish, and while I don’t hate the new year, I am wary as hell. Wary, I say, as I tongue my temporary crown- the one the dentist put on because my molar snapped in half. It had dissolved inside. My tooth dissolved, like a friggin’ meth addict’s (not my dentist’s choice of words).

Today I’m packing my parachute- updating my resume. I’m where I want to be, and feel like I’m working harder, smarter, than I ever have, but it simply may not be enough. So we’ll see. Head is out of the clouds this January. It’s wearing a big helmet, ready for hail.

But this doesn’t mean I won’t be celebrating. I have bubbly, and sparkly hats, and two very excited 3 year old girls. We’re making fairy cakes and bead necklaces and sticker charts with glitter. We’re watching a kid movie, and staying up as late as we want. In the morning I’ll watch my girls feed each other oatmeal and it will make me deliriously happy.

And I don’t want to imply that I don’t have goals for the new year, or that I’ve given up on getting my shit together; I do, and I haven’t. I want to go Thoreau (and rogue) in 2012. I’ve always been into selectively using Thoreau’s advice; traveling, moving to new crazy places, doing ill advised things and telling people to leave me alone because I’m sucking the marrow out of life when they question my judgement. I’ve been all about the marrow sucking, but I’ve never attempted the “simplify, simplify” thing- in fact, I’ve gone to great lengths to do the opposite. I’ve toted useless junk of many kinds all around the globe, and it’s time to clean house.

My goal for the new year is to give away something every day- to find homes for the things I do not need. I thought of selling those things, since I don’t really have any money, but selling takes time away from my children, something altogether more precious, and possibly prevents items from going to the people who need them most. And anyway, they will be doing me the favor- simplifying my life, teaching me to be a more generous, grateful person- and that is payment enough.

So I am more cautious this year, but not without hope, or a plan.

And you never know, maybe I’ll take my novel down from the shelf one of these days…

So what gives? I don’t have time to think about anything 14 times a day, no matter how disgruntled I may be. I think the problem is that there’s no secret to marriage, no revelations really, and all of these diet! marriage! success! books need some phony formula or discovery to get attention and followers. Marriage is awesome, but marriage is work, just like work is work- there’s no weird shortcut through your neighbor’s lawn that will lead to happiness.

One point in the book/article did resonate with me, however. It said the happiest couples are those that have their own individual pursuits, as well as a copasetic partnership; that those who relied on their spouses for fulfillment ended up lonely and bitter.

This is true. I get along better with my spouse, my kids, myself, since I returned to work. If I were smarter, I would have realized this earlier, and made time for my personal passions while I was still a SAHM. And its interesting, because I don’t enjoy work all the time- I find it stressful most of the time, but it is truly what I want to do.

I used to crew on a badly designed, beamy ass schooner off of Long Island (I say badly designed not because I have anything against beaminess  but because the friggin thing couldn’t tack on sail alone) and there was this Relief Captain one week who was telling me about her life in some crazy Caribbean island I can’t even remember the name of, and how much it pissed her off when tourists squealed, “You get to sail for a living! You’re so lucky! You must love it!” and she’d say, “Sailing SUCKS, but it’s all I know how to do.” Sailing was her true marriage, so much so that she wrecked  her actual marriage for it- thus completing the dyslexic version of Looking Glass’s classic 1972 ballad “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).  Hey- you drink enough rum with strangers on creaky old schooners, you learn things…

Anyway, it’s work., it’s all work, what we love. And I think of that Relief Captain chick often nowadays, particularly when people say they envy me for having such an ”easy, stress free job.”One woman actually said that to me, and several, including my own mother, have expressed similar, albeit more tactful sentiments.  And I keep thinking- are you fucking kidding me? You think I have an easy, stree-free job? Are you working all weekend, every weekend? Are you organizing a fundraiser  to support a cause that breaks your heart, with a work load that breaks your back, and shitting yourself because you haven’t sold any tickets and you’re terrified you’ll run the business into the ground and let the cause, the artists, your employer, everyone- down? Because let me tell you, it sucks. But it’s what I want to do.

After curbing all professional ambition for the last 3.5 years, I wanna play the saxophone BAAAAAD. So I put down the ducky (2 duckies). My husband is holding both duckies (and they are pecking at him furiously) until next week, when he has return to work for the fall term. The girls go back to school, and when they’re not in school, I’m not home, he’s not home, they’ll be with a nanny. 2 nannies (though only one at a time). 2 nannies for two duckies at various times throughout the week. It’s a big, beautiful, hypothetical plan I’m sure will fall to pieces when tested, and then we’ll have to papier mache those pieces back together and try something else.

One of the Nanny’s started weeks ago, and she’s wonderful. She’s not really a Nanny, she’s an art instructor. She’s been picking the girls up from summer school on Mondays, driving them to her house, and helping them paint with acrylics and glitter. They love it. They love her. Silly me, I thought they could only love me that quickly, not some random stranger. But no, and it’s for the best. Oddly, we all miss each other less than we thought we would. When the girls are focused on school, then paint and glitter, they aren’t thinking about me. When I’m focused on my work, I’m not thinking about them. We all find each other at the beginning and end of each day, and we all enjoy what we do in the middle, independent of each other.

But God I hope that second Nanny works out, or I’ll really be up shit creek.

It’s interesting, I played the saxophone for years, but never got any good at it. Mr Hoots could tell you why: “You’ll never find the skill you seek till you pay your dues…” If you learn anything from my blog, let it be this: Take all your parenting advice from owl puppets and Mick Jagger; everyone else is talking rubbish. So anyway, I wasn’t “a natural” at the sax, or parenting, or even my current job. I made, and am making, tons of mistakes in all three pursuits. The only difference with the latter two is a willingness to pay the dues, something mandatory in raising children and starting new jobs.

So my situation isn’t perfect, but it’s working, because we’re all working at it. Not very cleverly put, but I’ll leave the poetry to Mr. Hoots and the Stones- I’ve got work to do.

The abridged version of the whole affair: I started a new job; they hired me to work 1-2 days a week. After I had worked for a week, stuff happened, and suddenly I was offered a full-time position. Sweet.

I love the new job. It’s difficult, it wears me out, it taxes all 3 of my brain cells (the only survivors of the toddler twin parental brain implosion of 2010), but I LOVE it.

It’s in art, which was my field, my life, up until the twins were born. It’s glorious to be back, though to be fair, I cannot currently be called a success in the field, not in any way, shape, or form. I keep reminding myself that it’s been less than a month, and Rome wasn’t built in a day. My strategy is to bust ass (my ass), using every ounce of knowledge, creativity, and determination I can muster, and hope for the best.

And start a blog.

My new employers have given the go ahead, but they don’t have any experience with blogs, and I get the impression they think it will have no impact whatsoever on the business. They’re probably right. I did a fair amount of research within the field, however, and found that just about everyone else has a blog, so it’s certainly worth a go.

I wrote my first post yesterday, puts tons of tags on it, and already it’s had a grand total of……wait for it……1 hit!

Not a promising start, but I will persevere.

And if you are kind-hearted enough to check out my new blog (still under construction, pretend not to notice), thus raising its stats–which let’s face it, could not be worse–I would be most obliged. And if you leave a comment, I will love you forever.

Email me for the link: jungletwins at gmail.com, or leave a comment with your email here, and I’m email it to you

But anyway, it’s all “the blanket,” (am I the only one who loves “I heart Huckbees” ?) so it all comes together and means something important.

Around November I wrote a blog post about how much my life sucked, and how my shitty ass car had broken down at a major intersection and had to be pushed to the nearest place, which happened to be the entry way to the swakiest spa in town and I waited an eternity for the tow truck while all these snooty spa ladies looked down on me.

Thursday night I drove into the parking lot of that spa, walked inside, and got a manicure.  It wasn’t meant to be symbolic, not really. I had a business meeting Friday afternoon and wanted my nails to look reasonable, and after calling around, the spa was the only place with an opening Friday, so I had the first manicure I’ve had since my wedding. I doubt anyone at the meeting noticed, but I felt better about myself, and that counts for something.

I feel like I’ve come full circle. The SUV is finally in the shop (though its been there over 2 wks, which thoroughly terrifies  me), I have a new wardrobe of business-y clothes and I go to work most days. Things have changed. I have a new job I love, that’s in my field, that makes me excited and confident and able to afford the occasional manicure and babysitter. And it’s becoming such a big part of my life, I now have to extricate myself from my other job, which is tricky, and I feel bad for leaving, but I feel good about feeling wanted, and about not giving up when things were terrible.

And now the house is sold (at a huge loss, but at least it’s gone) and hopefully, with a lot of work, we can buy another. I feel like I have come full circle. There is a lot of work to do, there are many things still to be settled, there is much trauma from the 5000k + miles move still to overcome, but for the first time, I feel like we can have the life, the opportunities, the contentment we hoped we could.

And honestly, I enjoy my children so much more now that I’m working 32 hours + a week. I feel a bit guilty writing it, but it’s true.

First I would show up at her swanky house, go straight to her library, and proceed to break all the spines and pull out all the pages of her fancy doctor books. Then I would brew about 30 pots of coffee and casually knock them over on her lovely living room rug. After that I would systematically break all her fine china by banging it together, before going into her bedroom to smear peanut butter over her fine clothes. I’m kind of hoping my daughters live together as adults, btw, so I can kill two birds with one stone on the revenge thing.

Not satisfied there, I would carry on to the garage and pour a minimum of two gallons of milk into the plush seats of their luxury automobiles, so they could never, ever get the smell out.

After that, I might be rather tired, so I would return to the living room, strip off my clothes, and bare-ass the furniture, farting as much as possible. By then it would be bath time, and I would hope there would be a marble jacuzzi tub for me to poop in.

At this point it would be bed time, which means I would become suddenly invigorated and object in the strongest possible terms to any form of sleep. Instead, I would recline in a red wagon and demand they pull me up every steep hill in town, because by thing point they’d be totally exhausted.

Maybe then I’d agree to sleep for a few minutes, provided they simultaneously rub my back and serenade me on the guitar, but soon I’d be awake again, every hour from 8pm to 5am, screaming about penguins and people stealing my bananas.

At 5am I would show up in their bedrooms, screaming for waffles, and I wouldn’t stop until they got out of bed. When finally, bleary-eyed, they made me waffles, I would scream at them that I wanted pancakes, and pour the maple syrup over my head.

Yet still, we wouldn’t be even…

Why now? Well, it’s mostly about the money, partly about the sanity, but I am legitimately psyched this job; it’s actually in my field. Who knew my degree in art could actually get me a job- in this economy- insanity!

Getting out of this crappy ass apartment is a big motivator for me, as is staying in this town, and both require more income. Our house in the tropics finally sold, but at a huge loss, so we’re at square one.  It’s not the worst place to be, but it requires hard work to move forward. 

I have mixed emotions about going back to work. Everyone says, “How can you work two part-time jobs and still take care of your kids?” and the truth is, I don’t know; I’ll just have to figure it out. I have until the end of the summer to find a sitter, and then we’ll just have to, as the French put it, go with life as it unfurls. No one can ever know what’s going to happen; I’ll just have to be creative and determined. And I’m excited. I’m excited to think about art again. Art used to be my life, yet has had no part of it since the girls were born. It’s time.

But I’m not totally without regret. Before I applied for this job, I was busy making plans to road trip with hubby and twinnies to Florida for the final launch of the space shuttle; we were all about it. In the flurry of juggling the other job with interviews for new job, entertaining in-laws, and subsequent body collapse resulting in horrendous cold and the worst ear infection I’ve had since the age of ten (but I just finished the last of my amoxicillin today, holla!) these plans fell by the wayside. The space shuttle takes off tomorrow morning, and we will not be there to see it. I have curbed my spontaneity and wanderlust; it took me fourteen years, but I did it.

I will watch the shuttle launch from home, drinking a mimosa, enjoying the last Friday I won’t be working outside the home, and toasting my life as a SAHM, which I will miss.

Any suggestions for keeping work/family balance? I am all ears, working Mommas.

We’d thought about it for ages…driving across America. Something we’d always wanted to do, something we knew we’d never do once the children were born. And, I suppose, something we thought we needed to do before leaving the continent (we thought) for good.

My in-laws (they’re still here!) have been begging to see the road trip pictures, so I finally (4 years later) actually got around to organizing them. It’s been exhausting, and delightful. Just like the trip itself. So what did we see out there?

Giant waterfalls

Friendly, sparkly cities

The one room school where the wise Laura Ingalls Wilder taught.

Badlands

Prairies

 And all the lovely places in between

Saw the deer

and the antelope

and the devil

and his buffalo, play.

Saw four dead presidents

one dead chief,

and the town where my mother was born.

Little geysers,

big geysers

huge canyons

and Zion.
America was, and is, astonishingly beautiful. I loved sharing it with my British husband of only one year; we learned so much about the nation and ourselves.

I’ve loved all my road trips, but this one, our last great adventure as a twosome, was the best.

Still, the people I like best are the ones who break the rules. And I lived through the 80s, I’m as susceptible to the “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints” syndrome as the next girl, and feel that gives me the right to talk some serious smack about my MIL. Yeah, I know it’s stupid. Petty. Reckless. What. Friggin. Evs. I’m still anonymous (kind of). I survived my bad perm. I’m ready to vent.

But where to begin…

How do you explain a woman who accuses you of trying to give her tuberculosis by offering her artisanal cheese?

Who demands to see a doctor when she discovers moderately chapped lips. Who says, “No one in England has ever had chapped lips.”

And this little voice inside me goes, “Really? Seriously? I’d say half the country has chapped lips at this very moment… A doctor? Really? Over a little chapping?”

But that’s minor. The stuff that really gets my goat is the crazy shit that relates to parenting. MY parenting. Like her awesome theory that vaccinations “weaken” the immune system. She put my husband through measles, mumps, rubella and whooping-cough as a child to test this wiggedy-whack theory, yet feels no qualms about accusing us of “reckless indifference” towards our children because we don’t flip out every time either daughter picks up a fork. A FORK! They’re 3!!!

They don’t eat enough, they’re not watched enough, they’re this, they’re that… it really pisses me off. I’m living in a crappy ass apartment so the girls can go to the best school district I know. I make all their foods from scratch. They’ve had no real injuries, ONE minor ear infection, TWO fevers, in the last THREE YEARS, despite being tiny preemies. I work my friggin ass off. I’m up night and day. I can’t sign those damn vaccination consent forms fast enough. I love them, and I give them everything. And I know it shouldn’t matter what my MIL (or anyone) thinks, but it does. And it’s nice to have a place to say openly that it does bother me, without being hushed or feeling guilty.

My children haven’t slept in six months; I’m not the person to ask. That was my first thought. Then my mind scrambled to come up with multiple convincing arguments, or…one, because I do want her to have children, I think she’d be a great Mom.

But kids don’t really lend themselves to pros and cons lists. Neither, for that matter, does parenting. If you try to tally it up, Mommyhood seems like a pretty thankless job. You bust ass, you wipe ass, you kiss ass. You get your ass handed back to you.

See, I’m not good at this; this is why I’m not in sales. Or why I haven’t sold my book- I can’t sell anything, not even things I love. And I do love being a Mom, it’s just difficult to describe.

Everyone talks about the love, and yeah, that is the big thing. But “the love” is vague. How do you explain the difference between the love you feel for your children and the love you feel for anyone else? You can’t.

I’m not sure what I said to my friend, I think I just mentioned little things that sprang to mind, the first of which, that kids are hilarious. Kids are fucking hysterical. Kids say crazy, crazy shit (and apparently, kids make you swear a lot…) Like when I asked Mumu, “Don’t you think Lulu is singing beautifully?” and she replied, “No, she sounds like a mermaid tootling.” Christ, this kid should write for Rolling Stone!

And kids make you get over yourself. No one’s looking at you, they’re looking at your adorable children. It doesn’t matter if you look like crap. Get used to looking like crap.

Yeah, I am totally not selling this. I was better at descriptions of parental love and bonding when I was lactating/teeming with gushy hormones. Back then, I actually made someone cry when describing what Motherhood meant to me. I should really have written it down, yo.

I’ve forgotten most of what I said, most of everything from the breastfeeding days, but I remember telling this person (the one who cried) that one of the greatest things about my two tiny little people was the purity of their motives, of their love. All they wanted was us.  To spend time with us. To be loved, entertained, fed, by us- their parents.  They lit up when we walked in a room. They fell over laughing when we stuck out our tongues. They didn’t care what we owned, how we looked, or even what we said. We were the coolest, smarted, most hilarious people they knew, and they fell over themselves to get to us.

It’s great to be needed, to be loved. To have people who make you laugh, that surprise you constantly, that push you to your limits, that break you down and pick you up, all on a daily basis.

So that’s my pros list, which you won’t be reading in Hallmarks anytime soon. But my best friend reads this blog, and I’m hoping you clever Mommies out there can do a better job than me.

What do you like about parenthood? We need some more pros.