I'm Overthinking This

Epic Tales of Absolutely Nothing

Newsletter and Update Stuff

By Leave a Comment

Hi Everyone,

I had to sift through months worth of dust on here. It’s been awhile.

I’ve been spending most of my writing time working on my book as well as writing for Scary Mommy as a staff writer. I’ve decided to test drive a newsletter to keep anyone interested looped in on all my posts over at Scary Mommy, as well as my book updates and other nonsense. I’m hoping to finish my book in December.

If you’re interested, you can sign up here, or over in the sidebar on the right. Until then, you can still find me on Facebook. That’s where I go when I’m not writing or procrastinating. Which is 98% of the time.

 

signature

Filed Under: :)

Parenting Job Titles

By 6 Comments

butler-965333_960_720

Odd jobs.

That’s what a big part of parenting is comprised of. I went to college to get a degree and skills in a field of study, so I would know how to do all the jobs that were required of me. I had kids, and suddenly a list of new job titles popped up for things I didn’t even know I would have to do, like:

Sippy Cup Lid Fastener
I am the person in charge of making sure this lid is on right, because if it isn’t, that bad boy is going to pop off when someone throws it across the room, or I sit on it in the middle of church and have to go up for communion with a soaking wet ass.

Crumb Collector
Off tables, chairs, out of beds. No place is too big; no crumb is too small.

Pillow Enforcer
This is a bi-hourly issue in my house where my kids run around like a category four hurricane and pull every pillow in our house off their base. Pillows are moving around in mid air like they are controlled by Carrie-like telekinesis.

Cat Rescuer
There is nothing more important to my cats than not being put inside the toilet.
*This applies to all household pets.

Blanket Getter
Everyone always needs a blanket. Even if it’s 97 degrees outside, someone, somewhere in my home, will ask for a blanket. Instead of vibrant, energetic toddlers, my living room often looks like the sitting area of a nursing home. Except instead of people knitting, they are eating Goldfish crackers out of Sippy cups and putting puzzles together with the wrong pieces.

Toilet Paper Re-Roller
Because that four-mile trail of toilet tissue isn’t going to roll itself back around the cardboard tube that someone chewed on before casually tossing into the toilet water.

Vomit Catcher
Whether it’s in a bucket, a trash can, a blanket, a towel, or your bare hands.

Pocket Investigator
It only takes one pocket full of tissue to travel that daunting journey through the wash and dry cycle to make sure you never skip checking a pocket again.

Word Repeater
Sometimes fast, sometimes ridiculously slow, always more than forty times, because the toddler brain does not respond to anything that isn’t presented to them in the form of food, bright colors, or fun sounds.

Snack Deliverer
No one sympathizes more with delivery drivers than parents. Except we don’t get paid, and the request often comes in the second your butt cheek grazes a couch fiber. The tips are also worse: “Mommy, the goldfish taste better when the other side is facing up.”

Back Scratcher
Okay, maybe I don’t mind this one so much. Probably it’s because they’re my babies. But, I draw the line when someone says, “Can you scratch my butt?”

Searcher of Socks
If I had a dollar for every sock that lost a pair, I would be able to keep buying socks instead of wondering when the day will come when I finally find a gigantic pile of discarded singles.

A collective list of useless skills that will be worth very little beyond the first years. A lifetime of memories and the chance to look back on people who have kids after you shake your head and say, “I remember those days. Hey, while you’re up, could you turn my goldfish crackers, so they’re facing the other way?”

signature

December Recap

By Leave a Comment

Happy New Year 2016 - Written With Fireworks

Happy New Year! My December highlights included, but were not limited to:

1. Being on hold with various customer service reps for a total of four decades.

2. Eating from four boxes of chocolates initially purchased as Christmas gifts. For other people.

3. Getting a new Christmas tree two weeks before Christmas.

4. Purchasing candy for myself and putting it in my one-year-old’s stocking.

5. Drinking nearly two gallons of eggnog over a three and a half week period. By myself.

6. Not fixing the three strands of Christmas tree lights that suddenly gave up mid-season.

7. Not baking the sweet potato casserole in a high enough dish. Sending sweet, buttery goodness out of the dish and onto the oven floor creating a La Brea tar pit of sticky so thick it could trap an unsuspecting dinosaur.

8. Smacking myself in the head with the car door in the grocery store parking lot and actually seeing tweeting birds and stars. Then, hitting it again forty minutes later on the cabinet door.

9. Made my first ever monster spray for my three-year-old to fend off a three week stand against the dangers of a spooky wall reflection created by the bathroom light.

10. Running out of wrapping paper at the ninth hour leaving only parts of tissue paper and plastic grocery bags for my husband to use.

Happy 2016 to you and yours! May your new year be filled with less misfortunes than my December.

signature

The Next Big Thing

By 5 Comments

Antique brass compass over wooden background

The winds have changed. They’ve been blowing around me for the last year and a half, and I’m finally ready for the direction they’ve been trying to push me in.

For me, the next big thing is tackling the piles of laundry in the room next to me. I can see them out of the corner of my eye as I type. I can certainly smell them. Laundry, life, and everything in between has gotten in the way of my blogging schedule. A once constant thing that I was able to commit to on a weekly, sometimes even daily, basis has become so few and far between for me that it’s in direct competition with flossing.

For me, blogging has always been a hobby. A fun thing to do, a way to practise my writing, a place to connect with people who might be having a day like mine. It’s always been a home for nonsense and smiles. As I move deeper into the weeks and months that lay ahead, I’ll be getting into the thick of a much bigger project: a book. My first one.

This is something that doesn’t allow me to share my time with blogging, unfortunately. As you all well know, time is a precious commodity. Unlike laundry, there’s never enough of it. Kids are busy doing things that take up time. They are busy making laundry. They are busy playing in the laundry. They are busy scattering the laundry. My time is spent chasing them and discarded socks that probably aren’t even dirty, but ended up in the bin with yesterday’s ninth outfit change.

My writing time is limited, extremely. I simply can’t divide myself as many ways as I would like. Having said that, I’m letting myself off the hook from “having” to write blog posts. It means I’m giving myself the peace of mind I need to freely put what little time I have into writing my book. I hope you understand that this will give me the ability to put the best of myself, my writing, and my humor into a collection of essays for you to read at your leisure. If you’re lucky, you might even find a rogue sock or two in between the pages. If you do, let me know which one. I’m sure I’ve got the match in the toy box upstairs.

So, I’ll still see you around here, when I get the chance. In the meantime, you can always find me procrastinating on Facebook.

signature

My Super-Sized Baby and The Unison Newborn Carrier

By 2 Comments

infantino

Today’s topic is baby wearing. Because babies are in fashion all year round. They have to be. If they aren’t, they become one more thing to haul around and take up space in your grocery cart. Ultimately preventing you from buying xx amount of gallons of ice cream—which you’ll need to wallow in the fact that you just ripped your pants because they aren’t maternity, and you still are.

So, the only other alternatives to baby wearing are:

  • Prop the baby in the front seat of the cart, holding them with one hand while using the other hand to try and steer a cart that only turns left.
  • Put the car seat carrier in the cart and kiss any room for your ice cream goodbye. In fact, kiss anything that isn’t a few apples and a bag of baby carrots goodbye, because carriers today are large enough to safely transport a baby elephant.
  • Wear your baby. Unless it’s an elephant.

This is The Unison Newborn Carrier by Infantino, and I’ve spent the last several months test driving this to see how it worked. Despite the challenges of toting around a baby the size of a sumo wrestler, I found it easy to use and extremely comfortable. Here’s what I loved most about it:

It’s made with the same stretchy, snuggly material as a Moby or Ergobaby. So, you can snug your baby like you have your very own marsupial pouch, but without the goo inside. Or a joey. Because nothing would be more upsetting to an over-exhausted parent than having a baby kangaroo jump out of their baby carrier.

It’s structured with buckles. It was nice to be able to quickly get the carrier on and off without having to perform an interpretive dance of the ever-frustrated parent.

It has adjustable panels on the side that create a narrow seat for a newborn. As baby grows, the panels expand making more room for your baby and his joey. Panel adjusting is important for two reasons:

  1. If you have an itty bitty five-pound baby, she can be tight and snug against your body.
  2. If your baby was like mine and was a newborn around 30 weeks gestation, the panels stretch out. This means you can keep him close enough for snuggles, but far enough away that you both don’t generate enough body heat to start a fire.

There’s no strategy involved. You just slide baby’s legs right into the leg holes. You don’t have to spend forty minutes awkwardly moving baby legs around, playing “Is this a leg hole or just a space between a snap and a strap?”

It’s light weight. Which makes it less bulky. Which is good. Because my baby has the bulk of many carriers. Millions.

It’s comfortable. It’s serious business when you have a baby carrier that straps on like a Nascar harness. The harness straps are for support and comfort. In addition, there’s also a band that wraps around your waist for stability, comfortable, and confidence boosting—while hiding your post-baby muffin fat.

It’s washable. Really, what parent doesn’t love that?

My super-sized son has maxed out the length and weight limit. So, our time with The Unison Newborn Carrier has come to an end. The Unison Newborn Carrier now joins me at the grocery store so that I can tote around a couple gallons of ice cream.

Disclosure: All products used above were sent from Infantino. I was not compensated for this post, and all thoughts—as ridiculous as they are—are my own.

signature

 

Sugar Detox and the Trans Fat Fairy

By 10 Comments

 chocolates

I wanted to set my cupcake on the counter and see an entire chunk on my fatty midsection simply fall to the floor. As if resisting the cupcake had some magical power to biologically take me back fifteen years to a skinnier place. I wasn’t really invested in the idea of working for it. After all, I didn’t have to do anything to get fat, why should I have to work twice as hard to get un-fat?

If you don’t know what clean eating is, it goes far beyond just washing your vegetables and making sure your chicken isn’t still dirty from the processing plant it came from. The entire idea behind clean eating is to be mindful of the journey your food took from the farm to your GI tract. It includes foods that are:

Unprocessed. Your chicken comes straight from the farm. Still clucking and with another chicken’s poo on its beak.

Minimally processed. Your chicken still comes straight from the farm, but may have been slightly—but naturally—altered. For example, if it had to be frozen for the shipping process, someone made sure it had a sweater on.

Handled in a way that keeps it as natural as possible. Your chicken comes straight from the farm with its original feathers still intact hand delivered by the farmer who has chicken poo on his boot.

Paleo. Your chicken is so natural it hasn’t even evolved yet.

Clean eating is a challenge because it’s impossible to find any donuts that aren’t full of preservatives, sugar and saturated fat. If you’ve ever set foot inside a Krispy Kreme donut shop, I don’t have to tell you what’s in that boiling vat of hot greasy goodness. We all know that donuts that haven’t been blessed by a trans fat fairy are simply called dinner rolls.

Sadly, a huge part of clean eating is detox. This means, no donuts bathed in a luxurious warm grease bath. No sugar of any kind. Detox means you inhale anything in your house that has the potential to be yummy. When you’ve successfully added about five pounds to your midsection and decreased the lifespan of your arteries, you’ve successfully completed detox.

The word detox makes me want to eat pie, because when pairing it with the word sugar, it just feels wrong. And if detoxing from sugar is right, well, then I want to be wrong.

But, that didn’t stop me from trying it.

The first day was easy. The first day is always easy because you’re motivated and pumped. You can resist anything to have a healthier body inside and out. I floated through the day happily snacking on celery and bird seeds.

The second day was okay. I continued with celery and bird seeds, but I might have added some peanut butter on the celery and soaked the bird seeds in liquid sugar.

The third day I started to hallucinate. I saw taffy on the floor—a group of discarded Lego parts still connected. From the corner of my eye, a baby shoe resembled a rogue eclair sitting abandoned and lonely on the shoe rack.

By the fourth day, I was sad. So, I added some M&Ms on the celery and peanut butter. And some sprinkles. Possibly some mini-chocolate chips. Okay! There was no celery. Or peanut butter.

At the end of the first week I caved. Whatever was left in my house was fair game. Kids cereal, sugar packets, even the little coffee creamer cups. I was like a starving raccoon in a dumped over trash can full of jelly beans and frosted animal cookies. I had crumbs and melted chocolate chips smeared all over my face like a wolf would have blood from a fresh kill.

I was so happy I was crying.

For me, clean eating is just going to be making sure everything is properly washed, cooked, and the five-second rule is adhered to. It’s making sure that donut gets a nice clean distribution of sweetness as it glides through the frosting waterfall, and that my kids eat broccoli florets immediately after a meal of cookies and processed spaghetti. It’s making sure I get plenty of sugar and that my chicken is featherless, headless, and poo free.

signature