Okay, Internet. We have to talk. Again.

You must knock it right the fuck off with your timely and earnest warnings to “moms and dads” to BE ON THE LOOKOUT for Ecstasy pills that “look like candy” and may be put into their kids’ trick-or-treat bags.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Have you never done Ecstasy?

WHERE WERE YOU IN THE 90s?

Okay. Clearly we have different histories. No worries. I’m willing to share. Take a moment to follow me here.

Nobody is going to put Ecstasy in your kids’ fucking Halloween candy.

First, that’s a waste of Ecstasy. Ecstasy is expensive. Nobody gets it so they can dose children. WHERE’S THE FUN IN THAT? The whole point of Ecstasy is to relax in a cuddle puddle of 3-12 dear friends smoking cigarettes, drinking vodka redbull, and expressing deep adoration while stroking each other’s forearms.

NOT THAT I’VE EVER DONE IT.

No but seriously. Please. Pull it together.

They are also not going to accidentally give it to your kid. Why? Because people with drugs know what they look like. Very, very well. Ever get a Valium prescription? Yeah. That shit’s nice, right?

Would you ever confuse your Valium pills with Sweet Tarts and hand them to a tiny lion on your doorstep?

No. Of course you wouldn’t.

BECAUSE THAT IS NOT A THING.

Furthermore, people with illicit substances know where they are located AT ALL TIMES and therefore will never, ever have this happen:

Jane: “Honey, where’s the ecstasy we were going to take tonight?”
Bill: “Oh, shoot. Well sweetie I just don’t know. I brought it in from the car with the Lysol cleaning wipes and put them somewhere but it’s totally slipped my mind!”
Jane: “Darn! Well we need some candy for trick-or-treaters.”
Bill: “Let me look in the pantry……here…”(Comes back with Ecstasy pills). “Hand these out!”

Look. I get it. You were busy building a foundation for life while I spent time gazing into the eyes of my new girlfriend and dancing with glow-sticks. We all have our paths.

But still. There’s no excuse for this sort of fear-mongering weirdness. We don’t just get to MAKE SHIT UP to worry about. We can’t just invent things to post on Facebook because it’s fun to have The Super Critical Safety Message.

You know what I’ve found?

People are generally good. People generally do not want to maim my children or dupe them into taking psychedelics.

People in general want to smile at their costumes and hand them a Kit Kat bar, without even a razor in it.

People are generally good.

Even the monsters with Ecstasy.

Roar.

P.S. I don’t do drugs. I don’t even drink. I did however take a boatload of substances for 10 or so short years there in my 20s. Unless my kids are reading this in which case I did not. In fact this isn’t even Janelle have a nice day bye.

You know I don’t give advice, but there’s this one area of life I have so mastered so fully (SARCASM MOTHERFUCKERS) I feel it would be a disservice to humanity to not share.

And that area is: LOSING WEIGHT.

Look, I don’t want to discuss feminism or women’s bodies or getting comfortable with my fatness or whatever the fuck else we all sit around discussing. I KNOW there are fat yogis balancing on their heads, powerful as hell. I KNOW there are women super okay with the rolls of their belly but I also know that those women are not me.

I am neither a fat yogi nor a woman comfortable with her belly.

I feel like shit. My back hurts. I look at myself naked and sorta want to puke. I KNOW I HAVE INTERNALIZED BODY SHAMING NARRATIVES OF SELF HATRED.

I’m not proud. I’m merely stating the facts: I am overfuckingweight and I don’t like it. I’m overweight because I eat too much and believe in the futility of eating one’s feelings yet do it anyway because THAT’S FUN.

Also, I don’t exercise enough.

I wasn’t always overweight. While they were trying to find what was wrong with me (during my active alcoholism), they gave me a bunch of psychiatric diagnoses and put me on 7 to 11 different psychotropic drugs at the same time. I gained 70 pounds in 3 months.

Um…..

And I’ve never quite been able to regain control. But I can’t blame that completely. Sure, that’s how it started, but once it happened I began the spiral into Fuck It All I’m Already Fat and started eating with wild abandon.

I’m not particularly unhealthy. My blood pressure is low. My blood sugar normal.

But I feel like shit.

This is just me. This is not a statement on all fat women in the world, or America. Or even my town. Or even one single other person.

I’m sure if I were a better, more enlightened human, I would

A. get okay with my body as it is; or,

B. do something about it.

I’m working on B.

But I kinda suck at it.

Once, a few years ago, when I was about this weight, I got super pissed off and done with not changing and I lost 40 pounds over a year or so and felt amazing.

Then I got pregnant again and gained it all back that was nearly 2 years ago the end.

Nice story, right?

I hate that story. That story can lick donkey balls.

Sorry. I should be more feminine.

I should stop apologizing.

I AM A FAT APOLOGIZING WOMAN FULL OF ANTI-FEMINIST GUILT AND BAD LANGUAGE.

Okay here’s the deal: I’m trying to lose weight to feel stronger and more able-bodied and in less pain AND to feel more comfortable in my body and clothes.

Here’s how it’s going:

4am: Wake up but against my will. Nurse tiny creature next to me and beg him (in silence of course) to go back to fucking sleep

5am: Breathe a sigh of relief that tiny human fell back asleep, roll over to do the same

5:15am: Wonder why I’m not asleep yet

5:30am: Wonder why I’m not asleep yet

5:45am: Meditate with the vigor of a thousand warriors because JESUS FUCK I NEED SLEEP

6am: Fall asleep

6:30am: Hear alarm go off, want to die

6:36: Get out of bed after looking at phone for 6 minutes even though I know that’s a super bad way to start the day

6:40: Do 7-minute workout thing (dude it’s an app and it rocks and I’ve actually been doing it!)

7am: Eat a healthy breakfast because today is going to be a good clean eating day!

7-10am: Drink 47,000 gallons of coffee but without sugar

10:30am: Healthy snack

1pm: healthy lunch

3pm: Drive around 12 small nations to pick up kids

3:15pm: Realize I’m fucking starving

4pm: Realize I’m dizzy from healthy snack deficiency

4:30pm: Get home. Open fridge. Eat something healthy but wish there was something more filling and also healthy

5pm: Start making dinner

6:30pm: GIVE UP BECAUSE IF FOOD DOESN’T GET IN MY MOTHERFUCKING BELLY RIGHT NOW I MAY DIE OR KILL YOU AND I’M SO TIRED AND I CAN’T EAT A DAMN GRILLED CHICKEN BREAST AND SALAD AGAIN BECAUSE BORING AND FOOD IS COMFORT (NO IT ISN’T) BUT IT KIND OF SEEMS LIKE IT IS SO…

6:45pm: EAT IT ALL,REGRET IT

7pm: Realize I basically negated all my day’s efforts because it’s the night calories that REALLY matter and ohmygodJanelle you suck and you’ll always be fat and nobody likes you.

8pm: Get upset with myself for fat shaming body shaming self bashing and blatant lack of self love.

10pm: Resolve to do better tomorrow.

11pm: Go the fuck to sleep

Then, DUDE CHECK THIS SHIT OUT: I do slightly better tomorrow.

That is actually happening and it’s real. I’ve been making tiny changes and little nudges here and there and I’ve lost 10 pounds over the past 6 weeks. What?

Every day, I’m trying to be a little healthier than the last, and if I eat everything in a 5 mile radius during one meal, I try to get back on track for the next without mentally assaulting myself until I’m lying lifeless on a cold stone floor.

And I see now that a big part of this is realizing that I deserve health and attention and wellness and compassion (lord I sound like a fucking life coach), and tiny changes ultimately result in a new place entirely.

And that feels damn good.

So yeah, success. Or something. Fucking rock it.

Slightly more than yesterday.

Do you ever wish you could see yourself the way your kids do?

I fear what will materialize with perfect clarity as a lie on my deathbed. I wonder how I’ll reflect on the 36^th year of life.

The next and the next.

I don’t mean to me morbid. It’s not morbid. Morbid is wasting the one fucking chance we have at life. That’s just my belief, of course. Maybe we get a repeat. That’d be cool, but I’m not willing to risk it.

It usually takes years for my mind to change, but once it does, it feels sudden, jarring. Like a loud knock on a door I never knew existed.

I look over to see who it is and it’s a new truth sitting there like nothing ever happened. Like she’s always been there, chillin’, waiting for me to notice her.

I guess it’s just “getting older” and that’s that. I guess the pack of experiences grows deeper and wider and weirder and we have no choice but to see the world differently and it’s not strange or even interesting.

Except, well, it is.

A couple weeks ago, on the bi-annual date taken WHETHER WE NEED IT OR NOT, Mac and I struck up a conversation with a couple who was just like us: married, with kids, on a date.

Only they were about 60.

They gave us that familiar “I remember those days” look as we told them about our 4 young kids.

The couple was lovely. I liked them.

As they got up to leave while we were finishing our avocado chocolate mousse (which I am normally opposed to on principle because keep your fucking HEALTH FOOD OUT OF MY DESSERT THANKS, but this was delicious), the man looked at me and said: “It goes so fast. Hold onto this.”

I didn’t need to tell you that. You already knew that. You knew he said that because it’s the thing every older parent has said to every younger parent since the dawn of humanity.

I waited for my internal eye roll. The irritation. The IF IT GOES SO FAST WHY ARE THEY STILL HERE feeling. I waited for the old familiar Smile-And-Nod-out-of-politeness.

But it never came.

Instead I saw a flash of sadness in his eyes and knew it as my own. The pain in his voice that might as well have been mine. I felt commiseration. I felt the same. I felt life racing by my head again and powerless and a little stripped.

Later I thought “Well shit, I guess I’ve been around long enough now to see the ‘other side.'” Their side.

Then I banished the thought immediately because I AM TOO YOUNG FOR THIS SHIT.

Or something.

The pain, though, is merely a flash buried beneath a pile of gratefulness for the passing of time, that they’re all still here, that we’re still here to watch them be here.

But it’s there now. And it wasn’t before. Even when I started this blog it wasn’t there. I used to write about dropping my kids off at school and daycare and wanting to scream “FREEEEEEEDOMMMMMMMM!!!!” out the window. I only felt relief. Now I feel more.

There were so many years more to come. There were more kids to come. There was the possibility of more kids to come.

Last June, I had my last baby. In November my first baby turns 14.

I thought when I was 22 and had my first child that 18 years might as well be 90 years because it’s so many years. Shit, it was almost the number of years I had been on earth.

She was young. I was young. We were all young.

What I didn’t realize is that it isn’t the kid LEAVING that filets your heart, it’s the CHANGING and transition from little kid right here playing, to kid at arm’s reach, to kid in carpool without you, to beyond and beyond and that one day you realize that the movement is away, always, as it should be, but always away, and the closeness clarity and simplicity of the early years are over so fast it might as well be 90 days. 90 minutes. 90 fucking seconds.

When you talk about this with people they’ll sometimes say “Oh, well, I enjoyed EVERY phase and never got upset about my kids growing up.”

Well, you clearly love your kids more dearly than I do. Let me run out and make you a cookie with my bare hands and adoration.

OBVIOUSLY.

My point is not that new stages are not wonderful and exciting and dynamic and joyful. Can I tell how rad it is to sit down and have an intelligent, sarcastic banter with my tween? Or how amazing it feels to (legally, ahem) leave her with a sibling or two while I go to the freaking store? My oldest child feels like a dear friend now, sometimes. We laugh and laugh. It’s everything. It’s more than I ever could have imagined.

My point is that the wild abandon of your little one playing in the sand on a beach will not last forever and I, at least, feel a twinge of pain to know that stage has passed.

It’s the first time they refuse to hug you in the car before school.

It’s the first time you realize they’ve sat with you chatting on the blanket rather than played in the surf.

The first time they prefer their room, over you, to talk with friends.

The first time you realize they’re too big for this or that or the other thing and they’re in reality now rather than imaginary land.

The first time you realize that in less than 5 years your kid will be “full grown” (hahaha).

And in a little over 2 years she’ll be driving.

I don’t know when it happened, and it doesn’t feel like me, but every morning when I get Arlo out of his carseat to drop him off at the babysitter’s I damn near cry. Or I do cry. Not weeping. Just a tear or two.

He puts his head on my shoulder as if he knows.

I don’t know where the pain came from. I can’t even make sense of it. Because he’s my last? Because it’s too much time away? Because I’m old? Because I’m a sap now?

Maybe I’m just tired. Worn out? Depressed? Hormonal? Maybe it doesn’t feel worth it anymore. The time away.

Ah, fuck it.

Is this why they say that stuff about “wiser?” I sure hope not. I’m not wise. I’m just 14 years into parenthood and feeling the weight of my baby’s face on my shoulder and going to work anyway because it has to be done, and part of me wants to go, though in this second it seems I’d give anything to get back in the car and drive away with him.

Is this it? Is this what the “old people” are talking about?

My family right now feels so complete. Nobody can ever leave. It’s the six of us. It’s perfection. It’s whole and contained and just right. Soon one will leave, then the next and the next.

It will change. It will get better. It will get worse.

It will just get new.

But this day, this one won’t come again.

I feel that now, whether or not The Old Annoying People are telling me so.

I pat his back and kiss his little head, pass him into the arms of another. I wonder if she sees my tears.

I get in the car, drive away, and write to you. I’m not sure I know what else to do, today.

so many years here.

Dear Children,

There are four of you. I adore you all. I want the best for you. I want you to become the people you were meant to become.

And yet, I have never carved your sandwiches into the shape of trains.

Maybe you’ll never care. Maybe you’ll live your whole life without ever mumbling to yourself in the wee hours of a heartless morning “Where was MY baby carrot shaped into an owl with little raisins for eyes? WHAT ABOUT MY BENTO BOX?”

But just in case, I’d like to offer an explanation of what may appear a deficiency, and may in fact be a deficiency, but isn’t entirely without thought either way.

In short, I want you to eat the sandwich because it’s a sandwich, recognizing that as such it has merit all on its own, even if it isn’t round like the wheels on the bus. It has bread, maybe some meat, lettuce, mustard or mayonnaise. These things feed our bodies. Feeding our bodies is amazing. Cute sandwiches do not actually feed our bodies better than non-cute ones.

I want you to get used to this. I want you to eat the sandwich because it’s a motherfucking sandwich, not because it looks like a fish.

Eat the motherfucking sandwich because it’s a motherfucking SANDWICH.

Sorry.

Yeah, I know. I get it. It’s more fun to eat a sandwich that looks like a baby bear. That sounds fun to me too. I love small furry animals. But the thing is, nobody is going to make turkeys out of your cheese balls in your adult life. Nobody is going to make the boring yet necessary parts of life more compelling through Pinterest-inspired sculpting.

Someday you’ll have to sit in meetings while the office manager discusses for the 27^th time how everybody is putting the mail in the mail thing upside down and you’ll be like THIS DOES NOT MATTER HOW IS THIS MY LIFE MAYBE I COULD KILL ALL OF YOU but there will be no way out of it because you need the money and this is your job.

Nobody’s going to make the office manager’s speech more amusing by removing his clothes or putting a donkey headband on him or sticking him in a unicorn suit with the butt part removed.

Nobody’s going to have him discuss how long food should be in the refrigerator via haiku and interpretive dance.

Take a moment and imagine how rad that would be. But will it happen?

No. Never.

You get Boring As Fuck. You get office casual, large table, legal pads, old coffee and general malaise.

A Powerpoint. If you’re lucky. Probably without fun slide transitions.

Nobody cares if you’re entertained.

You get the square sandwich with stuff inside. Probably even with crust.

You see? The minute I start making food AMUSING is the minute you start expecting food to be amusing. Why the hell would I sign myself up for that shit? Get used to bananas as bananas not centipedes and apricots as apricots not clownfish. Why?

Because there are some things we do because they need to be done even though they may not be our favorite.

Like eating, for example.

Although, how is eating not your favorite? How is eating ALL THE THINGS not your favorite? What the fuck is wrong with you?

EAT THE MOTHERFUCKING SANDWICH.

Sorry, again. You know how I struggle with potty mouth.

Okay, are you with me so far? Carving sandwiches into cute fuzzy shit when you’re two is a slippery slope to “Oh, Johnny, you don’t like grapes? What if I turn them into a waterfall cascading into a large Brazilian swimming hole?”

“Oh, no celery? What if I make it into a lion eating a hyena but in our front yard? Wouldn’t you like a lion in the front yard? Lions are amazing! Lemme hear you roar!”

Well, that’s how it is in my brain, at least. I see myself getting pulled around by a tiny ass dictator shouting I ONLY EAT APPLES WITH THE WINGS OF GREAT BALD EAGLES and that terrifies me.

Y’all are annoying enough without demanding artistic enhancement of food items.

Or, I’m lazy.

That’s probably it to be honest. My goal each day is to get food INTO your bag. Its spot on the adorable spectrum is 3,000% not what I care about.

But hey, we all have our talents. I once told you I went to Julliard so many times you told your kindergarten teacher and she invited me to do a presentation at the school on singing and dance.

Tell me that shit isn’t better than a blackberry lamb with a kiwi sun.

That’s creative as fuck.

Anyway, I hope you have a nice life. I love you. I also love trains, baby bears, eagles and clownfish, but not in food form, unless it’s a party, and I’m not throwing it.

Eat the motherfucking sandwich.

Sincerely,

Mom

Although, remember that one time we made a rainbow cake to celebrate marriage equality? fucking NAILED it. Crafty as shit.