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I almost just followed someone on Twitter because in their description it just said “Join, or die.” and I got a real The Ring vibe about it, and I got a little bit freaked out and then I didn’t follow them anyway because I SAW the video and I didn’t die.

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I linked to the above videos but they might not even be right because I know if I watch them I will be too scared to take a shower.

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I took a shower. I was scared anyway.

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I am on a documentary jag. I’ve been watching documentaries about music, art, cults and genocide for months now. Netflix live streaming is the best.

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I have all these notes on my phone. They are supposed to remind me of things. One of them says “Beware of Mr. Baker”. I have no idea if this is a movie or a band or a post idea or a warning.

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Another one of my notes says “funny people are never nice”. I remember why I wrote that one. Some girl said it on an airplane. I remember thinking that this statement wasn’t true. I am funny. I am nice. Then again, I also remember thinking that she was wearing an asshole hat so maybe she had a point after all.

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Speaking of asshole hats.

Last weekend I had the pleasure and the honor of reading an essay I wrote at the Listen to Your Mother Show here in the Washington D.C. area. I sat on the stage with 11 other mothers who told stories that were funny and heartwarming and devastating.  More than 300 people came to watch us talk about motherhood. It was an incredible experience. It was a gift.

The thing about being a mother is that if done even remotely competently it involves a lot of work. It involves a lot of self-sacrifice. You rarely get a day off. Until you have gone three weeks in a row without any REM sleep because you have a colicky baby or your 6th grader gets suspended for vandalism or you spend that Sunday night in the emergency room scared to death you can’t know what it feels like. This is why mothers share a bond. Everyone wants to talk about the “Mommy Wars” but even if I don’t agree with every parenting choice someone makes it doesn’t mean I am at war with them. We are all on the same side here. We all want our kids to grow up happy, healthy and productive. We all sacrifice in our own way. We all do what we think is best for our children.

This is really why there is a Mother’s Day in the first place. Well, this is the reason we celebrate Mother’s Day.

I feel like I need to interrupt myself to tell you that as I am typing this I am taking breaks to have a text conversation with a woman that I have been friends with since 10th grade. We aren’t reminiscing. We aren’t planning a party. We aren’t even talking about football. We are discussing constipation in two year olds. I am drawing on my first hand knowledge about ways to help loosen things up while potty training a little girl who gets backed up because she doesn’t want to poop in a toilet. We have now discussed  enemas, suppositories, stool softener and constipation. I would have been mortified to say even one of those words to her as a joke 20 years ago, but here we are and that is how motherhood is.

This is why people have to give us gifts in May.

My friends at P&G get it. They have expanded their “Thank You, Mom” campaign to really show how much they mean what they say. P&G will be helping more than 800 moms of Team USA athletes make the trip to London this summer with $1,000 gift cards to offset travel costs.  This is more than generous, this is making it financially possible for some of these women to actually get to London to see their children realize their dreams.

You have heard the saying that behind every successful man there is a woman? P&G believes that behind every successful athlete there is an even more amazing mom.

I don’t personally know any parents of olympians from the 2012 games, but I do know the lady that is the president of little league and she works her ass off. I would imagine that getting a kid to the Olympics is even harder.

*tries really hard not to make terrible Cool Runnings joke here*

Ignore that Cool Running business. Look at this.

U.S. media attends a press event announcing P&G “Thank you, Mom” gift for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Cool, right? And it doesn’t make me cry every time I talk about it like that last video.

If you get a chance please “like” the Thank You, Mom page on Facebook. For each like P&G will will donate $1 to the USOC P&G|Team USA Youth Sports fund. That helps moms too. Seriously, for you and me it is one less fundraiser, but for some parents and children it makes the difference between playing soccer or not being able to play anything.

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Disclaimer: I am being compensated for my work with Proctor & Gamble but these words and these stories are my own. Obviously. I don’t think P&G would talk about the enema thing. They have far more class than I do.

Not over scheduling my children but still making sure they end up as well rounded individuals is a constant challenge. As of second grade they both love scouts but I am not requiring them to do it. Scouts are a bonus. The kids are obviously responsible for homework but there are only two things I require – one instrument and one sport. I will tell you why.

The instrument is important for me. As a musician I think that learning how to read music is a massive asset and the younger you learn the easier it is. Right now I am pretty much making my kids take piano lessons. Piano is the easiest and best way to learn how to read music and once they get the hang of it they can switch to guitar or drums or the ukelele, I don’t care, but I want them to become fluent in music.

Playing a sport is almost more important to me. Team sports are ideal as they offer exercise and amazing lessons about teamwork and sportsmanship. I think that kids get a lot of good life lessons by being on a team. There is something about camaraderie that is special. You know what I am talking about if you have ever been on a team that went to a championship game. Working together with other kids for a common goal and figuring out how to make all of the personalities work and playing a position with specific responsibilities – these are skills you need in real life. Ask anyone who works in an office.

Plus you can’t beat the exercise.

My kids had a tough time with baseball. They were young and growing so fast that coordination was a real problem. How can you hit a baseball with a bat when you don’t even know where your own arms are? They just didn’t enjoy it. This year they chose to switch over to soccer in the spring and the difference is amazing. They are having fun. They are learning new things. They don’t even realize that they are getting tons of cardio.

I told you before that I am working with P&G on their Thank You, Mom campaign, and one of the reasons that I was so eager to work with them was their involvement with and support of youth sports. Procter & Gamble is trying to raise $5 million to improve club sports for kids around the country. The P&G|Team USA Youth Sports Fund will benefit youth sports organizations such as Make a Splash, YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

The fund is important because it gives more children access to sports. You guys can help by liking the “Thank You, Mom” page on Facebook. P&G will donate $1 for every like to the P&G|Team USA Sports Fund up to $100,000. I say that is a pretty good way to thank the moms out there that need a little help.

My kids are lucky. We can afford to sign them up for soccer and tennis and swim team (oh yeah, tennis and swim team season is almost upon us) but I know that a lot of people aren’t as fortunate as we are. This is an easy way to help moms and kids without spending a dime. Please like the page if you get a chance. It is a great cause.

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Disclaimer: I am being compensated for my work with Proctor & Gamble but these words and these stories are my own.

Please understand that I am talking about the actual animal, not an attractive person from the ’80s, although in either case the sentence still works.

I ask because we have this neighborhood fox that gets keeps getting braver. He was no more than sixty feet away from the bus stop this morning. It seemed like an odd choice for a feral animal. He isn’t afraid of people and that makes me nervous. I don’t think he is rabid. I don’t think he is stealing chickens (mostly because I don’t think there is any livestock in my neighborhood) and I don’t think he has attacked any people yet. As far as I can tell he just roams around eating dog food, but still I don’t want him around my kids.

He is a wild animal. People should frighten him. I don’t know why they don’t.

One time I was outside talking to my neighbor and he started walking right between our houses. I yelled at him “Go away, fox!” because I am a writer and I know a lot of words. I yelled at him and he looked me dead in the eye and squatted down like he was going to poop in my side yard.

I was all “Oh no you don’t!” and I started walking toward him.

The mystery here is what I would have actually done if he kept pooping. I don’t know how to fight foxes. I’m scrappy, but not that scrappy. Plus, I would feel like a real jerk for punching an animal. He is way smaller than I am. Looking back, I wonder if my neighbor would have jumped in. I bet she would have. I mean, if she is willing to let me borrow a white dress for Mom 2.0 knowing that I spill everything she must have my back.

Luckily, he ran away and I didn’t have to prove anything.

He looks kind of like this guy, if this guy ate Science Diet and was more of a dick.

Aside: Remember when I said we didn’t have any livestock in my neighborhood? One time these kids from around the corner told my kids that they got a bunch of chicks for Easter and that they accidentally all got loose in the neighbor’s yard. There were seven children and two adults out looking for these chicks for 45 minutes. I felt sick. I knew that the fox or an owl or some other predator was going to eat those poor baby chicks. I worried about them for about a week before I decided to block that memory until Tuesday when my children told me that those same two children got a horse and were keeping it in their back yard. “That is impossible.” I said “They live on a quarter of an acre and I am pretty sure it is against our homeowners policy to have a horse in this neighborhood.” “But Sophia said that she had a horse at her dad’s house!” “Are you sure she is telling the truth?” I asked suddenly remember in the chicks I asked the kids “Do you think they really even had those chicks?” and Claudia said “No, they saw it on an episode of  iCarly. I think the incubator was just a lunchables box.” Then I felt really stupid for worrying about the imaginary chickens.

What would you do? I have already talked to my kids about staying away from the fox, they know that if he comes around they are just supposed to walk away. If I see him eating my neighbor dog’s food I open my window and yell at him (It might be on to me now and know I won’t fight it).  Do I call animal control? I don’t want him to die, I just want him to go live somewhere else. I have seen him four times in the last three days. That is too much. He is far to comfortable with people for a undomesticated animal. What should I do?

I put it in my car right away.

My seven year old twins were sitting in the third row of my minivan (shut up) ostensibly to get as far away from me as possible but also probably because they think it makes them look cooler and so I wasn’t that worried that they could even hear what I was listening to when I noticed that they were absolutely silent.

Two seven year olds are never silent, unless maybe they are sleeping or up to no good.

In this case they were listening intently.

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Jenny Lawson’s New Audio Book with Your Children in the Car – Besides the Obvious Reasons

I could tell for sure when Jenny dropped the F bomb and they started chuckling.

I stopped the CD.

“Do you guys think this is funny?”

“Yeah.” they agreed.

“My friend wrote this and that is her voice reading it. Isn’t that cool?” I said to my rear view mirror.

“Can you turn it back on?” my son asked.

Eh, what is the harm? I thought and then she began telling the story of the magical squirrel.

Without giving too much of the story away, “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel” is about this one time when Jenny’s dad pretended to have a squirrel that understood English and could count but really it was a dead rodent that her father was using as a puppet to mess with his daughters.

It is both funnier and more charming when Jenny tells it, but that is why she has a book and I’m just sitting here at my desk in a towel.

Too much information? Sorry, I always have my best ideas in the shower then I run out here and start typing right away before I forget what I wanted to say. I’m not wearing glasses or contacts either so you can just assume that those are typos and I’m not illiterate.

Once the chapter was over I turned off the radio. “What did you guys think?” I asked.

“That was kind of weird.” said my son.

“She sure knew a lot of bad words when she was eight!” my daughter said.

That, my friends, is a high compliment coming from a child that loves cursing. My kids both think that bad words are about the best thing in the world. The other day my son asked me what my favorite language was and I said “English” and he said that his was “beyond questionable” and then started laughing.

I swear that is 100% true. He is a clever guy.

I am starting to think it is hereditary to love foul language and that my husband and I passed on some weird cursing gene. I credit/blame my mother.

I suppose it is also possible that watching all of those “Deadwood” reruns while nursing could also be responsible for their obsession with colorful language. Really, when you think about it, I should just shut the hell up and be happy that their first word wasn’t cocksucker.

Whenever somebody asks if I am like my blog in real life I say that I am exactly like my blog except I am taller and I curse more. I think it is a pretty accurate description.

I changed the CD to some compilation of punk rock songs which probably had an equal amount of cursing but the lyrics were more obscured by all of the guitars and drums and I think my kids walked away mostly unscathed. While I totally think you should Buy Jenny’s book because it is screamingly funny, I would not recommend listening to it in the car with your kids unless they are grown ups.

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This is not a paid or a sponsored anything. Jenny didn’t even ask me to write it. I just thought you would appreciate my crappy parenting. That being said, those are amazon associate links so if you click on them and buy something I can still get money. Cha ching. 

Stories about me crying (again) plus a lesson on the reason why they stand when a choir sings the Hallelujah Chorus on That’s Right. You Heard Me.

At the time I thought it was cute and also kind of scary and awesome. I understood it in theory, but I didn’t really ‘get it’ until I had children of my own almost exactly one year later.

This summer I am working with P&G as a member of their Blog Brigade. We are supporting the “Thank You, Mom” campaign and 28 US Olympic and Paralympic athletes during London 2012 Olympic Games. When they told me the first topic we were covering was their new Best Job/Hardest Job ad spot Aaron’s statement immediately came to mind.

Parenting is exactly that. I have never done anything that was so exhausting. I have never done anything that was so rewarding.

When my twins were born I didn’t sleep much. When I say I didn’t sleep much what I mean is that I got about 2 nonconsecutive hours of sleep each night. I would finish nursing Claudia and I would lay her back down and what seemed to be the moment my head hit the pillow, Ian would begin to cry. That happened over and over for about 8 weeks. It is the only time in my life I have ever experienced auditory hallucinations. If you have never had any of those consider yourself fortunate. Hearing things that aren’t there is scary and it also makes you  feel crazy.

Did I ever think “Why the heck did I want babies again?” OF COURSE I DID. Did I ever think “If I leave right now, I could go to a hotel and sleep through the night just one time and then I could start over and have another family later when I am more rested.” I am ashamed to say that I did, but I never actually left and a mere two and a half years later both kids began sleeping seven hours in a row on a regular basis.

The beginning was hard but it paled in comparison to the time they both got rotavirus.

Oh yes they did. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

I will talk about the time I went to a parent teacher conference and my daughter’s teacher called Claudia a role model. I was shocked, but I was also proud. I am proud when I watch them sing, or read or do math. My heart almost burst during their first swim meet or when he scored his first goal or when she got her first hit in baseball. Their first steps rocked my world – in a good way.

None of that is anything compared to the feeling of two little arms wrapped around your neck with that warm breath right your eye whispering “I love you, Mommy.” I am also a total sucker for a snuggly little thing climbing in to bed with me in the morning.

Of course we all fit better in my bed when they were two years old. Now that they are almost eight it is a much tighter fit. They also seem to have more elbows and knees than they used to, but they look normal when they stand up so that can’t be right.

P&G knows that being a mom is the hardest and best job. I woke up this morning to a child that was crying because he stepped in cat vomit. The very first thing I did this morning was wipe cat puke off of my son’s foot, but 30 minutes later he hugged me and told me I was the best mom in the world.

I couldn’t agree more so it is no surprise at all that this ad my me cry like a baby.

P&G wants to recognize the moms of athletes and ALL moms around the world for doing what we do every single day. Please share this video with your friends and if you “like” the Thank You, Mom page on Facebook P&G will will donate $1 to the USOC P&G|Team USA Youth Sports fund, so please do that too.

And if you can, go thank your mom.

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Disclaimer: I am being compensated for my work with Proctor & Gamble but these words and these stories are my own.

Sort of out of nowhere (sort of not, Facebook and old pictures stir up dusty old memories that we’ve worked so hard to suppress) a guy that dicked me over in 10th grade sent me an apology.

A boy that cheated on me in 1989 apologized to me yesterday.

Wrap your head around that.

He said “…and not that it matters much now, should of been said many, many years ago but I am truly sorry Sarah if I ever hurt you, treated you disrespectfully or rudely. I can only claim complete and utter immaturity. Believe me, I wish I would have made better choices back then.”

And I say OF COURSE it matters now. Of course it does.

Apologies always matter.

Facebook is so weird. A friend once said that Facebook was evil. That there are some people who are just supposed to disappear out of our lives forever. I think she is probably right. Some skeletons should just stay in closets. Some memories are too painful. Some people affect us in crazy ways.

When I was 23 I dated a guy that was all wrong for me. We were both really busy and when I went to the movies one night and he was there with another girl that was the end of that. We did have that conversation afterward just for closure and also because I had a book that he wanted back, but what I remember most about that whole relationship was telling him that when I was with him I didn’t like myself. And it was true. He made me that crazy, raving girlfriend who guys have in buddy movies. He turned me into that yelly thing that everyone hates.

I am not friending that guy on Facebook.

The thing is that apologies do matter.  The guy who apologized to me yesterday is a good guy that made bad decisions when he was 18, or at least one bad decision.

I was way hotter than the other girl.

We all make poor choices and I forgive him. I was stupid when I was a teenager too.  I am not that great at forgiveness, but his apology seemed genuine and maybe even like something he had been thinking about for a while. Either way, it seems like a weight off of my shoulders that I hadn’t even realized I was still carrying around.

Now I can let go of that grudge that was old enough to legally drink and it feels good. We all do stupid things sometimes and saying sorry goes a long way.

Even 22 years later.

1) One time I thought I peed the bed, but really my cat had poked some holes in my waterbed with his claws and that is why my underthings were all wet.

2) I am currently reading “Catching Fire” the second book in The Hunger Games series and I’m having trouble putting it down.

3) When I was in 6th grade I was the singer in an air band for the talent show. We mimed “We Got the Beat.”

That didn’t take nearly as long as I was expecting. I figured my kids would at least be in Middle School before it came down to that, but no. I am nothing if not ahead of my time.

Ahead of my time and prolific.

Even though I spent most of today looking at pictures of old high school parties on Facebook I found the time to write some other things. For example:

On Babble I talked about quoting lines from ’80s movies to my children (who never get my jokes).

On Draft Day Suit I wonder if Peyton Manning is going to Favre everything up in Denver.

On Aiming Low I dropped some knowledge.

And I talked about busted brackets (or the March Madness kind) on BlogHer.

Just for kicks here is one of the Facebook pictures that brought me so much joy today.

This is me with Dana and Jill circa 1991. You are welcome.