Blog Posts by Manic Motherhood

From the journal of Manic Motherhood:

Spring Break Day 1: Planned day filled with adventure and fun. Ended up with day that started at oh-dark-hundred when the dog escaped from Junior's room, entered mine and gleefully woke me up by sticking her tongue up my nose. On the plus side, will not need to use nose hair trimmers for several months, if ever again. On the not-so-plus-side, every time I take a breath I smell dog food. Need aspirin to make it through the day.

Spring Break Day 2: Thank goodness today is Saturday. Plan to abandon the kid with the husband so I can go shopping and get some desperately needed retail therapy. Plan is foiled by husband who determines that kid should clean up after dog and mow lawn. Do not understand why this prevents me from stimulating the economy but go along with it because I'm too lazy to protest. Also, think the aspirin I took as a precaution this morning has numbed my brain.

Afternoon update: After stepping in dog doo for the 12,00th

A German woman has divorced her husband because she was sick and tired of him cleaning all the time. Now I ask you-what the heck is wrong with that woman? Is she insane? Who does that? Does she even know what I would give to have anyone-man, woman, child, alien creature from Mars-come and clean my house?

Does she not understand that the sparkle of clean toilets is much more…well, sparkly when someone else has scrubbed them? I swear I just don't get this-who wouldn't want his or her house cleaned by someone else? But apparently the woman (who was not named in news reports) hated the fact that her husband rearranged the furniture, cleaned the house and kept every thing neat and clean. And the final straw was when he knocked down a wall and rebuilt it because it was dirty.

Okay, I can understand the last part being a bit annoying. Possibly, coming home and finding your walls knocked down is a bit obsessive. I mean, I could just see my hubby's face when he walked in from work

Another April 15 is here-and I still don't understand taxes. Oh, I get the part about contributing to the running of our government-but there are so many rules. At last count, there's like 40 billion rules about taxes. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration-but not by much. And I don't think anyone-alive, dead or serving in congress-knows all of the rules. I am positive that somewhere in Washington there's one guy sitting in an IRS cubicle making up the tax laws. And he's the most evil man on the planet. But the government balances out evil guy by giving us deductions. I love deductions. In fact, when my tax preparer says the word "deductions" I get all happy-it's almost like hearing the words "shoe sale."

The problem is, my happiness is pretty short-lived. I mean, sure I get deductions-but not enough, frankly. There's the home one and the kid one and the people-in-your-family one, but after that we're pretty much deduction-free. It's kind of like going to a shoe sale that

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. You know those days-everyone has them. No matter what you do, the day is doomed to stink. Unfortunately, science has been unable to find a cause for those days; they're just a mystery.

Take the day I had last week. I bounced out of bed. I felt…lighter. Like maybe a miracle had occurred overnight and my metabolism had sped up and I had actually lost weight while I slept. Or maybe I just laid off the Cheetos for a week-who can tell? In any event, I felt nearly thin.

And then I put my jeans on.

My trusty, always able to fit even on the fattest day jeans. And they were tight. Unbearably tight. You know the kind of tight I'm talking about. The kind where your spare tire morphs into a complete set of steel-belted radials and you can't quite get the zipper past them. Yeah, that kind of tight. Let me tell you, that's a very depressing tight. And it only gets worse.

Because you know once I tried to zip those pants up, I leaped

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where Junior's science fair project is.

Anonymous as reinterpreted by me

Woo-hoo, it's spring. Yes, I know most people are admiring fresh blooms, mowing lawns and listening to the birds sing. And me? Well, I'm a parent. So that means I am celebrating the official end of the Science Fair Project from heck.

If you have a child in school, you are no doubt familiar with the dreaded science fair project. Parents all over the country tremble in fear whenever it's mentioned. Oh, it always starts with good intentions. Sometime in November or so, the teachers start peppering students with contracts and forms and ideas for projects.

And your little Sally or Sam comes home from school excited and happy. After all, science fair projects are just great big bundles of fun! Yeah, no. They aren't. In fact, they are actually an instrument of torture designed by teachers to get revenge on parents for not teaching their little darlings

After several years of living and breathing on this planet, I have discovered something momentous. Men are afraid of purses. I mean truly, deeply, horrifyingly afraid. In fact, I have a theory that men are more afraid of purses than they are of man-eating lions. Or getting bit by a cobra. Or of being seen in a Speedo in public. Yes, men are THAT afraid.

Oh, sure, there are a few brave souls who wear man purses. But I think these are mainly European men and frankly, those are men who voluntarily wear Speedos even when they are far too old and hairy to get away with it. In comparison, a man purse is nothing to threaten their masculinity.

But see, to me, a purse is just a purse. It's a holder of stuff and most people carry around a lot of stuff. Take my purse for example. Today I am carrying a smaller purse, mainly because I went on vacation two months ago and forgot to change from my little travel purse to my normal everyday bag. Inside are approximately 570 receipts from

A few weeks ago, we decided that sadly, we had failed in training our dog. And by "we," I mean me. Of course there is a silver lining to this-while Kirby may not be trained, she's actually done a fantastic job of training me.

For example, I am completely potty-trained. Yes, our dog has done a fantastic job of training me in this area. She did so using a clever system of rewards and consequences. First, she would stand next to the backdoor and wouldn't make a single sound. She'd just stand still, staring into the yard. If I did not notice her-and most of the time I didn't--she would provide a consequence for my behavior and silently make her way upstairs to Junior's room, which was filled with clean, fluffy, white carpet. Then she would bark like a crazed animal to get me to go into Junior's room and step in my reward.

Pretty smart, eh?

Of course, I needed training in more areas than simply indoor/outdoor bathrooms and advanced stain removal. Take walking, for example. It

So all over the middle school my son attends is the whole Chris Brown beat down on Rihanna. Allegedly, Brown beat the holy crap out of his girlfriend, choked her until she nearly passed out, threatened her and then abandoned her when she pretended to call an assistant.

I cannot tell you what a pig that man is. Words cannot express what I think of Chris Brown. Or maybe they can.

Anyway, today I learned that Brown is up for a Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Award. And apparently, Nick, as the cable channel is known, hasn't rescinded the award. In fact, when asked, a Nick spokesperson said, Brown "was nominated by kids several months ago, and the kids who vote will ultimately decide who wins in the category." Parents are, understandably, up in arms over this. They do not want a man who beat the heck out of a woman he supposedly "loves" to receive an award from children. They don't feel he is a good role model for the children.

And I agree, as a role model this guy sucks. I do not