Facebook Friday Crap and Stuff. April 5th Edition.

So the email service that I use to send out all of my blogs to subscribers is being a total ball suck. And basically the whole reason that I even write these Facebook Friday blog posts is so that all of my subscribers who aren't on Facebook can catch up with what they missed over the course of a week. BUT since the whole ball suck thing is going on, I don't know if my subscribers are even gonna get this post since they didn't get my last one. 

The point is, I could be wasting my time writing this for nothing. So I'm totally having a beer while I'm writing it. Because I deserve it. And also because any time spent drinking a Modelo is not time wasted.

It's been a long day today.

"Why has it been a long day?" you might be asking me right now. And if you are, rest assured you look ridiculous. Talking to your computer screen like a nutball. News Alert: I can't hear you. You weirdo.

The reason it's been a bad day is because, like I said, my email subscription service is acting like a dick and it forced me to read a whole lotta technical computery stuff that my brain just does not comprehend. ANY time I have to read technical jargon is a day from hell.

And then I had to go poop. 

Let me set the scene for you:

So I have my 4 cups of coffee and make my way into my church to have my morning constitutional. It's going well. While doing my business I get deeply involved in trying to troubleshoot this whole problem I am having on my blog's subscription site (eff you, Feedburner!) so I sit there quite a bit longer than necessary due to the fact that I finally think I might be figuring something out. Turns out I was wrong. So I finally decide that perhaps spending 20 minutes on the potty for absolutely no reason other than I was busy reading, was dumb. Because my left leg is asleep. More than asleep, actually. More like dead. So I stand up and can't feel a thing and my foot is heavy like a Frankenstein foot. So I turn to exit the bathroom and pull that dead leg with a bunch of force. Too much force. And my dead Frankenstein foot rams into the door frame. I don't feel it because it's dead. But I fall down because the force stopped me so hard in my tracks than I fell. It was like I hit a wall. Because I did. I hit a wall. With my Patti-pooped-too-long dead Frankenstein foot. So I dragged myself to my bedroom to sit down and slowly the numbness wore off and I realized that my foot was swelling. And oh yeah, I also realized that it hurt like a holy mofo. So now I'm sitting around with an ice pack on it, popping Advil like candy, hoping that the swelling goes down and I can stand on it because DUH! I have a freaking Mud Dash tomorrow that I have been looking forward to for months! 

"Hey Patti! Why aren't you competing in the mud dash?" 

"Because I pooped for too long and my leg fell asleep like a dead frankenstein foot then I rammed it into a doorjamb and probably broke it without feeling a damn thing, and then I fell down without any pants on. Duh."

And there you have it. Bad. Day.

And even though the chances are slim to none that my subscribers actually see this post, I decided that i would write it anyways. Because you have missed a few things. And if you see me and you're all like 'Why didn't you tell me about the freaking poop foot injury?" I can say "I DID! I posted it in my blog. If you really loved me you would check my blog every day just in case you missed something. Thanks for outing yourself as a total jackhole"

So here's what has happened this week in Facebooklandia and beyond:

The podcast of my interview on Hines' Side Show from Springfield's US 97 went up on their website. You can listen to it HERE if you missed it. You can see how dumb I sound and also how I end most of my sentences as if they were questions when they are so totally not. Yes. When you listen to yourself chit chat for over an hour you notice lots of things about yourself. You can also learn about my plans to get into The White House, start a rock band, smuggle drugs across the boarder, sing, and imitate what giant tortoise sex sounds like. How could you NOT listen? 

Then on another day, I had this thought about a Maroon 5 song:

My alarm clock is set to the radio option cuz if I get awakened my a buzzer I want to kick people in the face, and if I get awakened by music I dance and sing. Unless it's Celine or Mariah then I wanna kick people in the face. Anyhoo...This morning Adam Levine woke me up singing about how when the daylight comes he has to go, and I laid there for a minute thinking about making out with him and then my brain got distracted by the lyrics and I started wondering WTF he's singing about. I have decided that there are two possibilities: (1) He is singing to his booty call girl. The girl he wants to get down with in secret but will pretend that he doesn't know if any of his friends are around, or (2) He is a casanova vampire who gets it on with all the ladies at night but has to be back in his coffin when the sun comes up so he doesn't explode. THEN I was thinking that if I was a single dude on the prowl looking for hot dumb girls to get down with, I'd totally pretend that I was a vampire because girls get all hot and bothered over sexy vampires so it would be easier to get women, PLUS you have the excuse to not deal with boyfriend type stuff during the day. BOOM!

I just figured I'd add this picture cuz I'm cranky and I need it right now. 

And The Boy said this about the book "I Just Want To Pee Alone":

"I read your chapter in the book while I was taking a crap. You said that when I was a baby I was an a-hole and you talked about my poop. That is just so wrong. You're getting famous because you invented me. I'm the one who should be famous."

Then yesterday I told this story about how I didn't get any sleep because The Hub is a wanker:

I slept like ass last night.
First of all I went to bed way too early. Like an old person. It was still in the nines for Pete's sake. But The Hub was going to bed and there wasn't anything good on tv and I was totally bored so I thought "Hey. I am way behind on my sleep so I might as well catch up." Which was really responsible thinking on my part. But when I went to the bathroom to do my before bed pee, there was a big spider in front of my closet staring at me so I yelled to The Hub "Help! Spider! HELLLLLPPPPP!" and he said "Just hit it with my shoe." And he said it all monotone and exhausted and annoyed like only a total wanker would say it. He said it like his bride's life was NOT in immense danger. But I found my lady balls and killed it with his shoe. And it was disgusting. Then I yelled "Thanks for your help, a-hole!" Then I was totally effed up for the rest of the night due to the fact that I have major spider issues and if I see one before bed it pretty much means that the zzz's ain't gonna happen because all I can think of is being Gulliver's Travelled by an army of spiders while I sleep. So I didn't sleep. At all. Until about 6 am. Then my alarm went off at 7. So yeah. Happy Thursday. The Hub is a turd-hole.

And I also wrote a blog that none of my subscribers got because of the whole email service being a total dick situation. There is a link to that blog post RIGHT HERE if you missed it. It's called  "Square pegs. We may not fit in round holes, but that's okay. Who wants to be in a stupid old hole anyways? Holes are dark and gross and sometimes there are dead or bitey things in there." And I'm told that it actually ended up being kind of inspiring. Yeah. I wrote something inspiring. Suck on that. 

Actually don't suck on it. Read it and share it if you find it inspiring. 

And if you don't, THEN you can suck on it. 

Patticrest Out.

Psst! My friend Angie is having a contest on her website where you can win some scrapbooky stuff. If you want to enter GO TO HERE.

Square pegs. We may not fit in round holes, but that's okay. Who wants to be in a stupid old hole anyways? Holes are dark and gross and sometimes there are dead or bitey things in there.

Last week I got an email from a woman who wanted to know if I have ever had to deal with stick-up-the-butt moms judging me because I am so silly and off-the-wall, and if so, did I worry that my being different would make them unfairly judge my child.

My answer to that is Hell. To. The. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. 

I have had to deal with that on many occasions. 

Way too many occasions to count, actually.

And if any of the uptight Judgy McBitchholes are reading this right now (which let's face it, they sooooo totally are, because the people who claim to hate you are always the ones that obsess over your every single move) I am sure they are now judging me because I used the word "hell" up in here and in their closed little minds the word "hell" is not a word that a respectable mother would use.

What will the neighbors say???

I can tell you with absolute 100% honesty that I do not ask myself that question.

Why?

Because I don't give a flying fuck.

Yes. I just said "fuck." 

My usual "frick" just didn't seem to capture the essence of just how totally and completely zero I care about what people like that think of me.

Was I always this way? No. Like most of us I have gone through stages in my life where I wanted to fit in. 

When I was in 6th grade and I left my cozy little private school to go to public, I suddenly felt the need to fit in and I wanted to dress like everyone, have hair like everyone, be accepted by everyone, look like everyone, and talk like everyone.

That lasted for about a day.

When your mom forces you to get a new hairdo that "all the cool kids are wearing" and you end up being the new kid at school with the hairdo that nobody but the lunch ladies are wearing, then you know that the whole fitting in thing just isn't gonna work out for you:

So what do you do? You say "fuck it" and you start doing your own thing.

Then you meet kids who also said "fuck it" and are doing their own thing.

Those are your people and you are happy with your people.

I spent the next many years doing whatever the heck I wanted to do no matter what anyone else thought of me. You can ask my dad about that. He will totally back me up.

Then one day, years later, I squeezed a screaming little person out of my in-between. 

That is when I went off the rails. Or back on the rails. I guess it depends on your definition of rails.

If you are a mother then you know what happens when you have your first baby: You get a little cuckoo majuckoo. 

You want to do the right thing so bad that you sometimes overdo it. I was obsessed with being the perfect mom and making sure that The Boy became the perfect boy.

I read all the parenting books that told me all of the things that I had to do so that I wouldn't screw up my kid. I joined all the headachey mommy and me kinda classes and I met other moms and I tried to fit in and be perfect like them. I tried to wear what everyone was wearing and carry the purse that everyone was carrying and feed my family the foods that everyone was feeding their families and push the stroller that everyone was pushing and throw the awesome birthday parties that everyone was throwing for their kids and be accepted into The Sisterhood of Motherhood.

It sucked.

It took me awhile to let it all go. To realize that if I loved The Boy and took care of him then I was a good mom. End of story. Nothing else mattered. I didn't need every other mom in a 50-mile radius to agree that I was a good mom. I knew. The Hub knew. The Boy knew. Everyone else can fuck off.

Oops! I said it again.

After I dragged my ass out of the Stepford Motherhood I started to speak my mind and be my weird little self again.

One day when The Boy was about 4 I took him to a McDonalds playland and he got into a little scuffle with another boy in the dreaded tunnel of germs.

I was sitting at a cluster of tables with a bunch of other moms and The Boy came up to me crying and telling me that some kid was hitting him. I told him to go back into the germ tunnel and tell that kid that it isn't nice to hit people and that he wanted to be friends. A few minutes later he came back to the table and told me that he did what I said and the kid hit him again. I told him to try again. He did. The kid hit him again. And he came to the table to tell me again. So I asked the women at the tables which of them was the mother of that kid. One woman said that she was, so I asked her if she would talk to him about hitting The Boy and she said "Boys will be boys." Okay. Sure. And pissed off moms will be pissed off moms. So this pissed off mom told The Boy to go back in the tunnel and if that kid touched him again he should hit him, kick him, push him, scratch him, do whatever he had to do because that boy's mom says it's ok for boys to do that. 

That's when all the women at the tables let out a collective gasp and that mother said I had problems and I said "No. Actually I don't. I have a super sweet kid who is nice to everyone. You are the one who has a problem, and some day that problem will be bigger than you. So good luck with that."

Even the women at the table who were my friends, were horrified with me. Actually I think they were more embarrassed that I had spoken my mind and stood up to a table-o-bitches, because they wanted to fit in with them. I didn't care about fitting in anymore. I wasn't 16 and trying to get in with the cool crowd like in some John Hughes movie. I'm not a mindless suck-up and I don't care about your Mercedes SUV and your million dollar house and your full time maid. If you're an asshole I really don't mind telling you so.

This was a turning point for me. It made me realize that I was still the person I had always been. I have been an independent thinker since birth (again, ask my parents) and I have never been afraid to go my own way or speak my mind and motherhood didn't have to change that. Trying to fit in with the herd was going to make me a worse mother, not a better one, because that would be teaching my son that it's not okay to be yourself. It would be teaching him that you have to do what the "popular" people are doing. It would be teaching him that you have to fit in. 

Guess what? Trying to force yourself to fit in super sucks.

It's much more awesome to find the people who are gonna like you for you. It's freeing to just say what you think and do what you do and not worry about someone getting all butthurt about it. 

I deal with this in my own neighborhood sometimes. I deal with this on my Facebook page too.

There are people who don't like me because I make jokes about something they might not think is funny. There are people who don't like me because I drop an "F" bomb now and then. There are people who don't like me because I talk about nonsense. There are people who don't like me because I talk about poop. There are people who don't like me because I think that sometimes kids are assholes. There are people who don't like me because I act immature or silly or weird. There are people who don't like me because I want gay people to be able to get married. There are people who don't like me because I want women to have the right to choose. And guess what? I don't really mind if people don't like me for those things. Because those are my things. 

And that's what I want to teach The Boy.

That as long as you are being true to yourself, it doesn't matter. 

If people don't like who you are, that's okay. Anyone who doesn't like you for being yourself isn't worth knowing anyway. You will find your people. And they will be people who like you for you and not for the things you have or for the person you are pretending to be. And in the meantime you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of who you see. You are with yourself 24/7 until the day you die so it's kind of important that you like yourself or shit can get old really fast. 

End of story.