Deep South Moms

Leopards and Boob Jobs and Bears, Oh My!

Why does everyone want to be something they are not?  My daughter has a bear that is dressed in a leopard costume.  And there’s the line in “Best in Show” where a frantic Parker Posey tries to find her dog’s busy bee toy and is appalled when she is presented with a substitute:  “No, that's a bear in a, in a bee costume.”  What’s with all these cross-dressing stuffed bears? This brings me to Heidi Montag.  Her image is plastered all over the tabloids and try as I might, I cannot avert my eyes from FrankenHeidi.  I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m celeb-obsessed.  However, the main reason I can’t stop chicken-necking at this particular train wreck is that I am truly sickened by what is happening to this girl.  And I do mean girl.  She is only 23.  When I was 23, I didn’t make the wisest decisions, but thankfully they did not have life-long, mostly irreversible consequences.

So Heidi went under the knife and had ten procedures in one day that lasted a total of ten hours.  She almost died because they gave her too much Demerol which interfered with her breathing.  At 23, this is the second time that she’s undergone plastic surgery.  Before, she had a tasteful breast augmentation and subtle nose job.  Now she looks like an alien Barbie.  In no way does she resemble the person she was before.  In addition to another nose job, she now has DDD breasts (but wants bigger), a brow lift, butt enhancement and the list goes on and on.

With Kids, You Never Know

I am the queen of pushing the envelope.  Fortunately, this is tempered by my very cautious husband.  His tendency to over-analyze and approach everything in an uber-methodical way is the yin to my yang.  We make a good pair that way and he has prevented several of my hair-brained schemes from ever coming to fruition (and kept at bay any unfortunate consequences).

When I was single, I would kind of live on the edge.  I say “kind of” because it was never super radical.  But I did do things like up and quit my job in Orange County and move to San Francisco without a permanent job offer, just a free-lance gig.  Also, when the go-go days of dot.com went south and I was laid off, I up and went to Africa for a month, fulfilling a life-long dream.  When I couldn’t find a job in the horrific job market of 2000, I decided I would either go to Peru and do volunteer work or move in with Barton, rather than continue to pay the exorbitant rent that was sucking up all my savings.  (You all know how that turned out.)  In my mind (aka Fantasy Land), things just always seem to work out so why not just go for it?

The Hard Stuff

My husband and I were watching a preview for Desperate Housewives and he remarked “Wow, they’re getting kinda dark on that show?”  “Oh, they always do that for their cliffhangers,” I breezily replied.  This was a preview of the episode where they reveal the characters that were killed in the freak plane crash.  There was a brief cut of Lynette holding her belly saying “I think there’s something wrong with the babies.”  This should have been a red flag for me, but I brushed it off, thinking, “Hey, this is Desperate Housewives.  Morbidity is not really their game.  Or at least it’s always off-set by the quirky, light-hearted scenes.”  Maybe I was in denial, but when the moment came where Tom told Lynette that she had lost one of her twins, I broke down in hysterics.  This all hit a little too close to home.

I’ll back-track by talking about a nightmare I had the night before I watched this episode.  I dreamed that my former step-mom was pregnant at an extremely advanced age with my father’s baby.  We all thought she was crazy for having a baby well into her 40’s (think Michelle Duggar).  When my dad called me to say that the baby was born, but wouldn’t make it due to extreme disabilities, I literally woke myself up crying from the nightmare.  Cut to a scene in Desperate Housewives where Lynette imagines a life with a son with disabilities.  They go through physical therapy with their child at a young age.  Lynette practices tough love with her son so as not to enable his weaknesses.  The son (in crutches) eventually graduates from law school with honors, thanking his mother for believing in him.  But then Lynette wakes up from her dream to Tom telling her that she lost this very baby who’s life she so vividly imagined.  I lose it.

Mommy's Not So Irie

I just finished watching “Marley & Me.”  Although, to be honest, I had to fast-forward through a lot of the movie because it gave me anxiety.  It hit a little too close to home.  How doth this movie relate to my life?  Let me count the ways:

One, there is a creature (the dog, Marley, named after Bob) who is constantly wreaking havoc in the movie.  I have three of these creatures, but instead of a dog, they are children.  Those who follow my Facebook posts are entertained by my anecdotes, but although they are sometimes funny in retrospect, these entertaining tidbits are “streaming live” in my life.  Whether it’s the twins putting a whole package of disposable diapers in the washing machine and turning it on, pouring powdered garlic in the oatmeal canister or spilling maple syrup all over everything in the pantry, most of these escapades equal one thing for mommy … work!  I hate cleaning up these messes!!  Not to mention how wasteful it all is.  So you can imagine that watching a dog chew up furniture or eat a necklace would make me nervous.

Twilight & the Midlife Crisis

We are all familiar with the cliché of the male mid-life crisis.  A guy gets into his 40’s or 50’s and suddenly has the need to acquire a trophy wife and/or trophy car.  But right now we’re seeing  a different manifestation of the midlife crisis, among women in their 30’s and 40’s.  There are many symptoms of this crisis, but nowhere is it more evident than in the female obsession with Twilight.

I have to admit that I am one of the few women on the planet who cares nothing for Twilight.  I guess you could say I already went through that phase in my 20’s when I was obsessed with the Ann Rice vampire books.  I did read Twilight, but yawned my way through the clunky, juvenile and clichéd writing.  However, even though I’m not one of the rabid, I get it.

Twilight seems to be speaking to the part of women, especially moms, that has been lost in the shuffle with all this parenting stuff.  We want to feel passion, unrequited love and crushes on cute young things, whether they be vampires or Justin Timberlake.  We want to have something outside of the role of mommy/wife/glorified servant.   Most of this is just harmless fun.  It’s a fantasy perfect for those with huge responsibilities (raising kids) and little time for themselves.

Cinemas Interruptus … Is my child ready for the movie theater?

I’m often bemoaning the lack of spacing between my children.  We went from zero to three in 19 months (a singleton & twins).  Like anything, you can always look on the bright side of life (to quote “Life of Brian.”)  Bright side = the kids have somewhat similar interests since they are so close in age; they can share gender-neutral clothing & shoes; they sometimes play nicely together.  On the dark side, it’s HARD! 

I equate having three kids who are virtually triplets to a long-distance relationship where the loved-one lives, oh, not more than an hour away.  It’s tough and draining, but do-able.  Whereas, having quintuplets (as do our neighbors) is like that long-distance relationship where the loved one lives across the ocean and the only way you’re getting there is by flying.  Not so do-able, but maybe not as draining because you don’t even attempt to bring all five kiddo’s to the grocery store.  The family with the quintuplets (plus singleton) has out of necessity embraced the “it takes a village” mentality and has volunteers manning the house 24/7.  They are coping on the scaled-down level that their situation demands.  I’m not saying it’s easy for them, but just different.