The fart that shook the earth

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Originally  posted 10/16/2009

Every morning my husband Dennis emerges from the bathroom at 5:30 am and blasts me with a shock of light.

I roll over and take my Levothyroid (I do this as soon as humanly possible since I am then required to wait for an hour before having food and *gasp* coffee) and then, as was the way of the past, fall back to sleep until 7:00 am.

The good old days came to a hasty halt last week when our two year old son Joseph realized that he can open the door of his room at his temporal discretion, scamper into the hallway and proclaim, "Mommy! Mommy! I want light on! I want my vitamin! It will make me strong!"

This usually happens at seven minutes of 6:00 am.

But not this morning. This morning at the callow hour of 5:31 am I tooted a squall so high in pitch and extensive in duration that folks buried at the local cemetery were prompted to tear at the earth above them and re-birth, zombified, on a beeline for the Tastee Freeze and long overdue coffee and jelly donuts.

Since I sleep in earplugs as defense against my husband's garbage truckian snores, it was not until I rolled over to check Joseph's baby monitor (yes I realize he's no longer a baby, if it were up to me I'd have that monitor on him well into high school) that I detected the fuss and caught Dennis gaping at me in wide-eyed sanctimonious husband-fury.

"You woke him up! That fart woke him up!" He pointed towards the monitor. "When I came out of the bathroom he was lying right there."

"I woke him up?"

Dennis corrected, "Your fart woke him up!"

Time to pay the piper. I slithered out of bed in search of Joseph's gummy Flintstones.

A whale of a greeting

Does Motherhood Make Us Bossy?

I've never been bossy.

I can distinctly remember several times when, as a girl, my Mom took one playmate or another aside and lectured her about bossing me around. Nobody's Mom ever took me aside and gave me the bossy girl lecture. In retrospect my Mom has mentioned quite a few times that she wishes she'd let me handle my own problems more often as a child, but that's another issue. (There are many, many issues.)

I've always been a sidekick, an appendage.

Until I became a Mother.

I don't know what did it. It could have been the complete exhaustion. Or the full arms. Or the ever-present current of panic and drama tinged with love and responsibility. All the forces of nature came at me in just the right quantities and suddenly I was *gasp* asking for help. (Can you believe that? I know, it's so unlike me.)

I was pointing, pleading, prodding. Phrases like "Honey, can you grab me a towel?" were reverberating off of my lips in such an inexcusably smooth manner that I began to wonder what sort of monster I'd have turned out to be had I birthed my first child at a sensibly young age.

The other day when my stepson Brian was over I asked my husband if he wouldn't be more comfortable in a pair of shorts and held them up for his consideration. He retaliated with, "You're not the boss of me, Devil Woman!" and a sideways conspiratorial grin at Brian.

Have I taken things too far?

I don't want to become like Kate Gosselin who publicly berated her imbecilic husband Jon (Why not John? But that's another issue.) on a routine basis. I refuse to give in to the temptation to martyr myself, and then lash out at my husband for not anticipating and undertaking what I needed him to be doing at the exact second and in the manner I thought best.

I say "Please?" a lot. And "Would you mind...", "Since you're over there, do you think you can...". I wince. I overcompensate.

Men have no clue what help we want and need. Yes, to us it seems flagrantly obvious, but to our guys it would be insulting for them to insinuate us to that we don't have things perfectly in hand. Or they've attempted to anticipate our needs and crashed and burned so many times that they're afraid to even try anymore. Or perhaps they're just as exhausted as we are. Or feeling lazy that day.

Should any Dads be reading this, please know that we won't be insulted, and we think it's refreshingly cute when you try to help but miss the mark. We catalog. We remember. We appreciate. We understand . We love.

And we know that you do too. ♥