When It Rains It Pours. Grab a Bucket

In the course of 48 hours I have broken the tip of my middle finger, boiled snow and contemplated peeing in a bush.

I'm no longer just the redneck mommy online. I've morphed into a card-carrying member in real life as well. In fact, if my brother were to come over, offer to feed me road kill and bring me a bottle of clean water, I can't say I wouldn't swoon at his feet and offer to marry him.

Okay, yes I can. Sorry Stretch. The dehydration combined with the pain of typing with a broken finger is clearly addling my mind.

This is what happens when I'm left alone with three children, in the middle of nowhere during a Canadian winter. I start to twitch. And invariably, things go wrong. Really wrong. Like our water line mysteriously collapsing. No big deal. It's only buried 25 feet below the surface of the earth, and runs through the middle of my newly landscaped front yard and underneath a very large, very expensive deck we may now have to tear off to gain access to the line. Running water is over rated anyways.

So we're hauling water up from our cistern, like drawing water from a well. Only my daughter dropped the bucket into the giant cement pit of darkness and somehow I have to figure a way on retrieving it without contaminating our entire supply of water. It's cool though, because I like a challenge. I'm not losing my mind or anything. Really. *Twitch.*

It's not all bad. I mean, there is four feet of snow outside my front door. And I have twenty acres covered with the white stuff. I just have to make sure there is no yellow in the snow I collect. I now stand outside on the deck and yell at the dogs, cats and general wild life whenever they wander onto my pristine patch of snow. I'm a crazy lady armed with an air horn yelling at the animals to go pee on someone else's lawn. Someone who has running water.

This is *normal* for me now.

I'm suddenly a woman who has encouraged her son to pee off the back of the deck and then offered her daughter a Go Girl product so she could do the same all so I won't have to lug in water or boil snow to flush the toilets.

I may have encouraged my teenaged children to stay over at random friends' houses to steal their water. I like to think I'm teaching them the invaluable skill of couch surfing. Learning to mooch effectively can never happen early enough. So far neither child has been thirsty enough, or smelly enough to flee the nest, but I'm betting by day five the combined power of our collective stench will soften their stances and send them packing for the first friend they can trick into taking them.

I've taken to waving my throbbing broken middle finger around like it's a magic wand and can magically make water run from my spouts. I swear I'm not just randomly giving the universe the finger or anything.

Okay, yes I am.

I keep telling myself this will end soon enough. By this time next week my husband will be home and one way or another I will have running water. And even if I don't, it won't be my problem for long as I'm fleeing the country with my daughter. My life could be plenty worse. Just ask the people of Japan.

Perspective, I have it, even if I don't have indoor plumbing.

In the meantime, I'm totally knocking on my parents' door.

They have working toilets and a girl needs a place to poop in peace. Even if she has to drive 3 miles to get there.

*Twitch.*

Jumby waving the white flag of surrender. Or my bra. Whatever.

(Also, note to all of you: When a door is being slammed shut, don't use your fingers as a door stop. You know, in case you didn't know.)

A Taste Of My Own Medicine

There isn't a person on this planet that knows me as well as my husband does. He doesn't just know me inside and out because he's occasionally seen me naked. No, Boo and I are six months apart in age and our father's were best friends. We've known each other our entire lives. He remembers me as the little girl who sat on the couch and was too scared to go outside to see the horses and I remember him as the obnoxious sprite with big lips, bad hair and a dirty orange and brown striped shirt who wouldn't leave me alone.

We were destined to be together, much to both of our fathers' mutual horror.

We have grown up together, Boo and I. Literally. We've seen each other through puberty, adulthood, death, disease and marriage. Our very selves have shaped the other into the people we are today. So it comes in handy that we both still like one another. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous.

I have poked fun at Boo in the past here on the blog and he has always taken it with the spirit in which it was intended. He's put up with my over shares and he has learned to live with the fact that more people in our lives read my blog than don't. Even if those people happen to be his boss or his coworkers. My husband is in fact, the picture of grace and acceptance when it comes to me using him as entertainment fodder for the masses.

He should totally get an award for that. Or at least have a wife who will fold his darn laundry.

Other than an irritating habit of not changing the empty rolls of toilet paper and not allowing me to adopt every stray dog that wanders into my field of vision, he's practically a perfect husband. Heck, I don't even have to cook for him most of the time since he only lives here part time due to his job.

Like a good husband, he keeps me on my toes. He keeps me honest, and makes me want to be better.

He also knows how to turn the tables on me and feed me my own medicine when I least expect it but likely warrant it.

Last week my daughter and I received our travel itineraries for our upcoming school travel club holiday. Upon viewing our travel plans, I realized there might be a wee problem with the itinerary regarding arrival times, departure times and only 30 minutes allotted to go through international security. I spoke briefly to our travel advisor at the school about my concerns. I may have also voiced my concerns in a slightly screechy manner to my husband when he called home to check on us.

I must have made an impression on my husband because Saturday morning I woke up to find this in my inbox. An email my husband wrote to the travel advisor and forwarded to me:

 



Clearly my husband loves me and wants our upcoming trip to be spectacularly awesome. And clearly he wants to prevent me maiming anyone inside a crowded airport if we miss our connection. His love and dedication to his family just shines through in this email. Clearly.

There is a moral in here about the shoe being on the other foot. I'm sure of it.

Like I said, my husband keeps me honest. Even when that means blowing my cover to the teacher who will be joining us on the trip and exposing me for the nutter I truly am.

I really liked it better though when *I* was the only one exposing our family's secrets. Please, for the love of God, don't let Boo ever decide to start a blog. I don't think my carefully constructed self-esteem could handle it with the same grace that Boo does.

Nobody Likes a Hypocrite

According to my teenaged daughter, I am a hypocrite.

This isn't the first time she's called me on my hypocrisy, but for the most part, I rarely feel any guilt about it. Pardon me if I wear eyeliner and don't want my 14 year-old kid wearing it. I have no desire to be the parent to a raccoon-eyed heathen who looks like she is a hooker in training.

But last night, as my boys fled for safety, the two of us once again engaged in what is becoming a routine power struggle; she hurled the dreaded H word.

"Hypocrite," she seethed under her breath, half daring me to hear, half hoping I wouldn't.

All of this over the fact I informed her that if she wanted to have her girl friend spend the night this weekend, she'd have to clean up the pig sty otherwise known as her bedroom.

Pardon me for not wanting some stranger's kid entering my house, having to spend her night in filth and squalor and then run back home to tell her parents how the Redneck family doesn't believe in keeping a tidy home. I live in a rural, small community. These people talk. About everything. And on a slow gossip day, the fact my kid likes to throw half eaten apple cores under her bed and keeps stacks of dirty dishes lined up on her desk like a hoarder in training, you suddenly have the recipe for me quickly becoming a social pariah.

I manage that quite nicely on my own, thank you very much, without any help from my slovenly children.

"You're always lecturing us to keep things real. Telling us not to pretend we are something we aren't! Well I'm not tidy and my friend knows this! And you should see all my friend's bedrooms! They are way worse than mine! I'm too busy living life Mom, to clean my bedroom." (Picture me rolling my eyes so hard I hurt myself upon hearing this.)

Did I ever mention my daughter didn't start to speak until she was well past 2 and a half years old? At one point, we actually thought she might be deaf because she was so slow to verbalize. I agonized for months over her quietness, convinced there was something wrong with her.

Then one day, she opened her mouth to speak and clearly, years later, she has yet to close it. It is in moments like these, I miss those days of silence.

Most of the time, I encourage and appreciate when my children engage in pointless arguments with me. I don't agree with the old saying, 'kids are meant to be seen and not heard.' I'm not raising sheep over here. I like the fact my children are becoming critical thinkers, even if it means being called out on the carpet every now and then for my reasoning. My children keep me on my toes as they grow into smarter adults than I will ever be.

I just thought I'd have a few more years before they actually became smarter than me.

"Keeping it real does not mean being lazy. Pick up your trash, sort your laundry and make your bed! For crying out loud, I'm not asking you to wash your walls with your tongue or anything!"

Her argument held no merit with me; doing simple chores is expected in our house, it's called part of being in a family. We all have our own separate duties we perform to keep the peace of having five people under one roof and not throttling one another. If I can keep my room clean as I juggle being a freelance writer, blogger, mother, wife, taxi driver, accountant, personal chef, nurse, therapist, and human being then I expect my older children to do the same.

Fair is fair. And nothing in life is free, baby. Consider a clean room your rent for being allowed to live in this palace of ours.

Fric could sense she was losing an unwinnable battle and quickly retreated to her inner sanctum, garbage bag in tow. After a few minutes, I felt a little bad about coming down on her so harshly so I knocked gently on her door and asked to come in.

She was kneeling beside her bed, arms extended as she fished crap out from under her bed. She looked up at me warily.

"Look kid, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but you really need to keep this room clean if you want to invite people into your space and share it. Otherwise it is kinda gross. And no one wants to be known as the gross kid, right?"

She nodded in agreement. I helped her for a few minutes and then stood up to go check on the boys.

"You know Mom, you are worse than me."

"Really, how so? My bedroom is clean."

"Maybe, but every day you invite people into our home, into our lives, every time you write on the internet. You post pictures of us, and yourself and sometimes even the house. You do skype interviews and television segments from our kitchen."

Clearly she was going somewhere with this and I had a feeling I wasn't going to like where she was headed.

"You tell some of the story, but you don't share everything. You edit. You tell us to keep things real, to be ourselves, but I have never read a post of yours stating how you left a week of laundry unfolded on the kitchen couch."

"No one wants to hear about that stuff kid. That's not interesting."

"But it's real. The unvarnished, honest truth. Wouldn't it be better if we just let our friends know we were slobs and find out if they liked us anyways?"

I looked at her, and I swear I could see the gears in her brain spinning like her hamster's exercise wheel used to in the dead of the night.

"Nice try kid. Clean up your room or your friend doesn't come over," I laughed as I walked out of her room and into the kitchen.

"Well you can't blame a girl for trying!" she called back.

She's right. Not that I'm going to tell her I'm a hypocrite. That would be like shooting myself in the foot and handing her the gun to beat me with it afterwards. I'm guilty, internet. I don't tell you everything, like the fact my dog yakked on the floor five minutes ago and I'm walking around it, hoping it will magically disappear while waiting for the kids to get home in a few hours to clean it up. Because dog vomit? Gross.

And my bed? It hasn't been made in days. Why bother? I'm the only one in it other than my puking dog and I like wrinkled linens.

My bathroom needs to be cleaned. Like now. And yet I have no immediate plans on scrubbing that toilet. I'm hoping I can convince a child to do it for me.

I routinely invite you into our lives and I never tell you that I need to clean the leftovers out from the refrigerator.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Tanis.

So welcome to my kitchen. The counters are clean, the dishes are done, but you can't sit on my couch.

Because it's covered in laundry that I need to fold.

I should also share with you, since we're being so honest, that I haven't showered in two days and I'm sitting here in a ratty bathrobe typing this.

Welcome to my real life. A life filled with a house that constantly needs cleaning and a woman who constantly falls behind in getting it done. It feels good to be honest, to keep things real. But it feels even better knowing my kid's bedroom is finally clean.

Hypocrisy for the parental win.

Now excuse me, I have some laundry to avoid folding.