Taking inventory.

I am far from any semblance of the quintessential mother/woman. If one were to be defined by their things, I'd say I'm screwed by modern-day's standards of living: Single mom, two baby daddies, trailer by the river, etc. Some days you look at your life sunny-side-down.
If you ever find yourself taking inventory and your list should appear similar to the one above, you may want to just admit one thing to yourself.  

"Self," you'll say, "you done Jerry'd up your life." 

There's really no way to pinpoint the moment that brought me to this state of a Springer life (all right, I'm sure there is, but that would require a nostalgic exegisis and we all know how well those go, don't we?). Regardless of the reasons, I'm in it. I'm neck-deep in the midday televised squalor of humanity.

But on days when one feels particularly worn out and emotionally underwhelmed with life, it's important one takes inventory of the miracles all around you. 

Here's my personal inventory:


One daughter. I am the proud owner of a sweet, pubescent tween who is happy to live out her days atop Mount Whateverest--::ugh::eye roll::--whilst communicating in monosyllabic grunts,  sighs....or worse, Broadway show tunes. 

One son. I never knew how expensive extracting quarters from an esophagus could be until I had this miracle of medicine. I attribute my closest emergency room friendships to him and his fearless appetite for...please, let's not give him any more ideas. 

One cat. This cat plays guess-what-it-feels-like-to-suffocate on a nightly basis when he finds no greater joy than cleaning his delicates while sitting on my sleeping face. 

Three-quarters of a dog. This don Juan of a dog finds joy in humping random dogs where ever he may find them. Having only three legs, my dog is always unsuccessful with his romantic interludes. These botched attempts at romance would be more entertaining if he simply avoided going for dogs that were tethered to their owners. Thanks to him, meeting new friends has never been more awkward. 

Yes, they are eight adorable sacks of childhood
 issues waiting to happen......

Eight baby chickens. I don't think of them as chickens but more severe traumatic events covered in downy adorableness simply waiting to peck-the-bucket. Chickens, like goldfish or sea monkeys, are not known for their longevity. They are obnoxious, flightless pooping machines that affix themselves upon the hearts of young, tenderhearted children only to face death on a daily basis if their downy keisters are not cleaned. It is because of this eminent threat of poop death that there is a toothbrush on my counter in a jar that says "not for faces...OR FOR MOTHERS."

One therapy jar. Because every day there is THAT moment. Because there is only ONE bathroom. Because Mom is still learning how to mom one humiliating mistake at a time. Because sometimes we run out of toiletpaper/peanutbutter/hours in the day/patience. Because on occasion I eff things up. And because I say "fuck" instead of "eff" most of the time...This is why we have a therapy jar.


Because sometime down the line, when my children are old enough to manage themselves, they'll realize that their mother effed things up. They might want to pay someone to talk about it. That is when I will give them a wad of nickels and twenty dollar bills and I'll look them in the eye and say, "I knew this day would come."

One perch. Once place that I can sit and drink coffee/kombucha/gin. It's where books are read and stories are built and then written. It's the place where nighttime jitters are quelled. It's a place where both secrets and giggles are shared. It's that one sweet spot in the house where we don't worry about the things we need to do or what we don't have.

This is not the place for inventory. The joy in a quiet snuggle with a child cannot be quantified in numbers. It's where the world, no matter how Jerry'd up it may be, is just right.

Rutting Season, Year Two: The Cat Lady's Secret Revealed.

Last year I wrote an in-depth expose on small-town dynamics in the Rutting Season where I chided those feeble-minded bonobos of the valley for "hooking up" with unassuming partners. I thought that these poor, single ruralites simply failed to keep their biological tendencies in check.

"Ha!" I scoffed as I walked sololy into the local watering hole this last weekend. "Just look at all of these folks trying to find a suitable bed warmer!"

I was supposed to walk into that bar and watch all of the woodsman figure out which single vixen would be whiskeyed away to their burley bagua. I was. But I couldn't over the din of my own personal biological clock ever-so-gently banging the gong.

In the store the other day while I perused the Thai food section, my son sweetly and discretely bellowed, "MOM, WHY DOES YOUR BODY WANT TO HAVE MORE BABIES?"

I almost couldn't hear him over the whoosh of humiliation throbbing in my ears. (Note: Children obviously DO hear your conversations with your mother after your second glass of wine.)

The biological urge to mate and fork and knife and spoon and make babies apparently does not leave once you have shat forth the next generation as one would assume. It wells up and continues to haunt you well after you've declared you're done spawning.

"Why?" I shout to my womb in my best navel-gazing pose while I jangle my gold retirement watch. "I've delivered two reasonably attractive children into this world! What more do you want from me?!" ::Then shouting to the heavens::"What's wrong with me?!"

Oh yeah. Right. 

I sat at the bar and watched the flocks of happy people making a ruckus over their beers and noticed something: There were no single people in the bar. They all came with their equally jovial counterparts. I did the math. Everybody came out even. Well, except for me. And then I took a further step back and checked out the entire valley. Out of all the single girlfriends I've made over the years, I was the last one solo. They all managed to find partners of some kind or another. Hell, it seems like everyone has either a hunk of meat in their bed or at the very least a slab of something on the side.

And now it's rutting season, but there's not much rutting going on.  It just so happens to be that this one is a little slimmer than the rest.

And to make matters even more bitch-worthy, I got a call. The three-legged cat (whom I already named Emily Dickenson) has already been adopted. Yes, she slipped between my purr-starved, one-cat's-not-enough fingers. 
 Consoling my greedy cat-needing self, I realized that I needed to suck it up, go on without my beloved Emily Dickenson and get another damned cat.

Until I realized something terrifyingly astonishing. I will preface said epiphany with a factoid.

My daughter recently taught me how to age a pine tree. Pine trees grow a tier of branches for every year that they survive. 

It's only logical to assume that for every year a single woman survives the rutting season she acquires a new cat. So you know that crazy old lady with a brazillion cats on your street? Yup. She's prolly been single a brazillion years, poor thing.

I think of this girl in the infancy of her crazy cat lady phase.



She's got so much to offer the cat world.

So, I'm at a crossroads. What do you do when you see the next step in your life? There are a few things that I've clarified to myself recently:1) I won't stoop to whatever's available. 2)I'll not allow myself to dive into the depths of kitten-induced euphoria because we all know that it's laced with the stench of desperation....and cat piss. 

So what the hell is there left to do? What the hell do we do? (royal "we," I assume. I hope).

We trudge the hell forward, that's what. We continue on in our pursuits of careers and child-rearing (if applicable) and supremacy over the deviant mass that is the laundry. 

We stifle the biological gong with pie.

 Sure, it sucks. But the options, being scant, aren't worth the sacrifice. I'll get over this rutting season new cat or no new cat.

Allz I can say is thank gawuduh for pinterest.