On Wednesday my oldest turned twelve. I could fill up a post on how puberty is making my life a living hell or remember all the times she was a cute little baby. But for twelve years she has filled up my life with joy and wonder, I wouldn’t change her for anything. For her brithday I am going to bore you with twelve facts about my daughter that you may not know;

1. She was born in an Army hospital Wurzburg Germany. Because of this she has the most beautiful consulate birth certificate that is the biggest birth certificate I have ever seen, seriously this thing is like 11 x 17. It really is a work of art.

2. When she was 2 weeks old she got to go on a tour of Cheimsee, Salzburg and Venice. My mom had come for the birth and we couldn’t travel while I was in my last trimester, so afterwards we got in the car and took a tour of the south part of Europe. In fact, on the ferry ride over to Venice a lot of Italian Grandma’s fussed at me for not making her warm enough. I think they were fussing, I don’t speak Italian.  Also, strollers don’t work when walking around Venice. Those bridges don’t have ramps, yo.

3. We didn’t have girls name. We already had a boy’s name (Trace) but that wouldn’t fit for a girl, plus we needed to save it for when we DID have a boy (26 months later). Her name was almost (bourgeois gasp!) Katlin. John and I both hated it, but we couldn’t come up with anything better. While reading a magazine I came across the name Cheyenne. BOOM! Name problem solved.

4. She LOVED Blue’s Clues as a kid, the one with the original Joe, not the one with his ‘brother’ or ‘cousin’ or whatever the new guy’s name was.

5. She was eating spaghetti once and sneezed so hard that spaghetti came out her nose. Good stuff.

6. She likes to fish with my mom’s partner (we call her Nana Kat). She can clean a fish better than I can, and by ‘better than I can’ I mean, I’m not touching that stuff.

7. She loves horror movies, which is proof that she was switched at birth. I HATE horror movies, but she’s all “Can I watch Saw?” and I’m all “Sure, when you move out and get your own TV.”

8. She LOVES animals and, of course, this means I have to too. We currently own 3 cats, one dog, and 4 hermit crabs. At the height of our petzaplooza we had 2 dogs, 4 cats, and a hamster. Even now, I can’t go to PetSmart with her. She wants to be a vet.

9. She loves to write and draw, and isn’t half bad at drawing Anime. She once drew a masterpiece on her brother’s face in marker, I have the picture to prove it. It was from her ‘lines on a face’ period.

10. I put her on a plane to go out West at the age of 9 (maybe it was 8). She’s a great flyer. She loves to go out there and visit my sister and my mom.

11. She can make me smile, feel stabby, proud, and frustrated all at the same time. Just so you know, that’s real talent.

12. No matter what she does or where she goes, she’ll be awesome, wonderful, independent, and successful.

I’m seriously thinking about turning this blog into a complete rant about raising pre-teens, specifically girls. This little pearl of wisdom came from my 11-year-old’s mouth today:

“The only reason you had kids was so you could have someone to boss around.”

Clearly, that was my plan. She’s on to me. I can’t tell you how much joy I get ‘bossing you around’ by telling you to get your ass out of bed 50 times. Morning time looks something like this.

Good times, good times.

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with the sound of a big WTF?! The universe is conspiring against me, I know it. Each day before I wake up, it takes a couple of seconds and says, “How can we make this day even more fun for Amy?” and then proceeds to screw with me- all day long. I get it universe. I owe you for something, now if you would just kindly tell me what my debt is, I’ll pay it and move on. Thankyouverymuch. Here are some of the the things that made me want to crawl back into bed, almost every day.

They canceled Medium. Seriously, I know I was the last one watching that show, but I really liked it. It’s not like I have to go anywhere on the weekends.

My children decided to tag-team me on the meltdowns. Although, for my daughter they are less meltdowns and more screaming matches. And due to these messy episodes, I had to miss an event I was looking forward to. Yay, single parenting!

Oh, and I even sent my husband an email to take the kids this weekend. Which he, of course, neglected to answer. I also demanded (yes, demanded) that before the kids go and see him again that I am allowed to meet the person he is living with currently. You can imagine how well that went over. So I’m thinking I might be doing this whole single parenting thing for a while. The kids have mentioned him less and less, so maybe their hurt is easing, but I now feel this need to find someone to fill this father role for them. Someone to take my son fishing (something he has always wanted to do, but my ex never found time for), someone to teach my daughter about guys (although that may not be necessary, more on that in a second). The ex choronicles continue to be predicatble and maddening.

My daughter announced she was bisexual and likes this girl from the 9th grade in our neighborhood. I don’t really care what her sexual orientation is, I just don’t want her thinking about it OR using the word ‘sexual’ for at least EIGHT MORE YEARS. She’s 11. True, I have tried to be open and honest about sex and all that, but I did NOT need to hear that. Upon more interrogation, I realized that no shenanigans have ensued. BUT STILL.

I have had a raging headache all week, and it isn’t going to get better any time soon.

This week can get off me now, I’m crying uncle.

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I seriously had this conversation today. Needless to say, it ruined my day:

“Trace, study for your test on Wednesday.”

“I can do that, tomorrow.”

“No, you can’t- tomorrow is a school day.”

“No, it isn’t. We’re off of school tomorrow.”

“No, you’re not. That was last Monday.”

“This Monday too, mommy. Here, look on the calendar.”

“You’re pointing to last Mon-….wait, what? WHAT?!?! OH MY GOD, YOU’RE OUT OF SCHOOL TOMORROW?! WHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY???”

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I LOVE to do stuff. LOVE to be in the middle of things I am passionate about, but  sometimes I forget that I need to have some time to do REAL work (the stuff someone actually pays me for) or laundry or sleep.  There have been some nights when my computer is open and work awaits. But I am on the couch, unable to move. The wall has hit me.

Everyday has so many multiple phone calls, meetings, and tasks to accomplish that I don’t have time to stop for something. I REALLY don’t. And then it rains. Not metaphorically. No, it really rained here yesterday. I was totally expecting to see Noah floating down the highway yelling “Suck it BITCHES!!”. And, apparently, so was the school because they dismissed kids THREE HOURS EARLY. For rain, y’all, for RAIN.

Normally, no big deal because she has her key; but she couldn’t find it yesterday morning. I sent her off to school without it, assuring her I would be home when she got there at 2:30. But she didn’t get home then, did she? She got home at 12:25. And where was I at 12:25? In the middle of make-up application (yesterday I took photos for my blogger body calendar shoot). I was waiting for a phone call from her to say “Hey I’m out in the rain, come home.” But I never got it (I figured she found her key or was staying with a friend), so I just went on with my stuff. Then I got home, and there stood my children, on the front steps, soaking wet. Such a proud moment.

There I am in full hair and make-up (which I just want to scrub off, it’s so itchy) the photographer waiting for me, two wet kids on the front step, and I have to get in some sexy bustier/underwear combo and look great.

I need an intern, oh wait, I have one. I think I have one, she may be imaginary. But that’s another post.

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I hate the “What if…?” game, but I can’t help playing it. Especially this week. On Wednesday, for the first time since the divorce, I will hand over my children to my ex-husband. They will stay with him for a week and a half. I need this break desperately, they need time with their dad, plus I am traveling. But that hand over will cause me to have a full scale meltdown.

What if they like being with him better?

What if he says bad things about me (he won’t, he’s a good person, but the What if game isn’t about logic)?

What if they don’t want to come back?

How would I live without my children?

What if he’s a better parent?

What if they think that the person he’s living with is better mom?

What if she’s a better cook (not a stretch considering I hate to cook)?

What if….?

What if…?

Dear God, this is going be hard.

A couple of  years ago, long after my kids stopped being babies, I found myself in an odd minority. It is inevitable at the office or gathering someone will have a baby there, usually a child under 12 months. Obviously this child is the light of their life and the MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY ever, according to the gaggle (yea, I said it- gaggle…shoot me) of women. And all I can think is ‘meh’. It’s not like I have NEVER like cute little babies. I have had two children and as babies I was so in to them that I didn’t even go back to work until my son was 3 years old. But they’re not babies anymore, and I have found myself not liking babies all that much anymore. For a while, I was terrified that I had made a serious life mistake in having children, what if, deep down, I didn’t really like kids? What then?

(My deepest fear has always been that I would turn out like the woman that Cloris Leachman played in the awful movie ‘Hanging Up’. To summarize she left the family while her daughters were still young and during the movie one of the daughters goes to see her. She tries to reconnect over talk of roses, but before they get very far the mother stops her and says “I can’t do this. Be a mother. It just didn’t take.”  I have never forgotten those words. What if I was THAT woman? DEAR GOD, what had I done? Then I realized that I truly, madly, deeply loved my offspring and panic attack over!)

But the problem was soon diagnosed…I simply didn’t care. Now before you start leaving mean comments, it’s not that I don’t care about ANYTHING it’s just that I discovered that I only have a certain amount of caring and most of it was used up on other things (like chocolate). It’s not that I don’t WANT to care but I just can’t, and to force myself to do so would be emotionally exhausting. I think that I have always subconsciously known this. For example, I know many people who are moved by those sponsor-a-child commercials, but not me. I couldn’t bring myself to get worked up. In fact, I would get kind of mad. There are kids in my city that could use money and to me I didn’t know why we send money for kids overseas when kids in our neighborhoods and cities needed money. Perhaps that is another post.

In short, I do not possess an endless amount of caring that some people do. (There is no shame in it, well perhaps there is, but…SURPRISE…I couldn’t care less.) In fact, it’s quite liberating. I can seem callous and unfeeling, but when I tell you that I care about something, you can know I REALLY care about it.

Sometimes, I have to force myself to remember to ask people how their day was if they ask me first. I don’t really want to know how their day was, and I KNOW that they don’t give a shit about mine. Man, small talk is such a waste of time. (This from the person who spends hours typing in 140 characters or less…told ya I was a hypocrite). The point is, forgive me if I forget to ask about your friend’s baby or coo over your new puppy.  But if I ask you how you are doing, you can bet I really want to know.

Bottom line: I don’t like babies and puppies and it’s simply too much work to fake it. Sue me.