Sometimes Being a Mom Doesn't Look so Hot or Alone at the California Academy of Sciences with Two Toddlers

 I guess there are some moms who somehow manage to be well-coiffed and kind and calm all the time.  You see them occasionally chatting up their toddlers, their lips glistening with perfectly applied gloss, their shiny, freshly washed locks pulled into stylish ponytails.  Even their strollers are sleek and crumb-free.  Their kids enjoy sushi and clam sauce and 60 Minutes.  

And then there's me today at the California Academy of Sciences, belly pouching uncomfortably over my too-tight jeans, my sticky-faced children arching and thrashing and screaming.  I was the one trying to balance that tray of food in the crowded cafeteria while pushing a double-stroller into the ankles of my fellow diners.  That was me crawling on the floor under the table in an effort to retrieve a runaway water bottle.  And yes, that woman pleading with her two-year-old to try to hold her pee pee while she stuffed an egg roll in her mouth and used her napkin to wipe guacamole off  the other twin's quesadilla?  That was also me.  

And I just want that young, hot guy who rolled his eyes and made that irritated little puff sound when I accidentally cut him off at the napkin dispenser to know that although I look like a nightmare, like every cliched, harried mom that you never, ever wanted to be married to, I am really a pretty nice person. I know I don't make it look easy. But that's only because it's not.

A thing I like 

This would be a very boring video narrated by a balding  geologist with a ponytail if it weren't for the awesomeness of nature.  Watch the whole thing.  It's worth it for the octopus at the end.  

The Dark Night and the Awful Secret

I am dead tired.  Like fall-asleep-and-get-in-a-car-crash tired.  The culprit is insomnia.  The other night I was up for three hours with the darkest, most awful thoughts about my children getting hurt.

The problem is our upcoming (well, not for a month, but it's never too early to start stewing) trip to Mexico to visit my mom.  Her house teeters high on a hill with nothing but a low wall separating my monkey-twins from the abyss.  In the dark of night all I can imagine is them climbing up and over.  And I won't even write what comes to mind next because it is too awful to repeat.

Adding to it all is the damn Secret, which urges you to believe that you can think things into being (everything from new cars, to illness).  And while I think it is absolute self-centered drivel designed to keep people from actually doing anything productive to help others, change the world, or improve their situations, it has somehow wormed its way into my consciousness.  So now, while my worst and darkest mind its doing its whole baroque melodrama, I am not only lying awake praying for sleep, I am bargaining with the Universe not to take my unruly thoughts too seriously.  It's exhausting.

A thing I like

Bargain gift alert: I just ordered the cutest vintage barrettes from Kitchen Table Studios.  $7! You still have time, but hurry!  She enclosed a free pair of earrings as a thank you.  When was the last time Target did that?