My 15-year-old-self never dreamed MTV would do this to me

There are two things I don’t do: go grocery shopping during peak hours, and bring the kids with me to the store. These boundaries are necessary to preserve whatever shreds of my sanity are left. I’m convinced that I have a genuine grocery store disorder, and when I don’t follow these rules, I’m liable to walk out of the store having spent a hundred bucks but without the ingredients to make a single complete meal. Like I’ll have frozen waffles and no syrup; marinara sauce but no pasta.

(This never happens to CC. He can walk into a grocery store at rush hour and walk out in fifteen minutes with our next six meals, all fresh food. He can also pull a meal together for the seven of us with enough for last-minute guests and have it on the table in twenty-five minutes. Husband Contest: I Won It.)

So what does an accidental stepmom do on a rare Sunday off when she discovers there’s no food in the house? If you answered order takeout you would be correct, except for the fact that we have to go look at cakes for #4’s upcoming birthday.

This is how we end up at the Shop Rite at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, along with 22,012 of our closest neighbors.

The aisles are packed. There are no carts left. I can feel my tenuous grip on reality sliding away. Jersey broads are serious and hardcore, not to mention pointy, and they handle their shopping carts like they do their SUV’s. It’s terrifying. I’m from Indiana. I am out of my league here. Thank god my roadie training kicks in and I go into damage control mode.

The first thing I do is decide to make CC deal with the cake tomorrow.

The second thing I do is decide that everyone will be given lunch money because there is no way I can handle the mob scene at the deli counter to get lunch meat.

The third thing I do is let the kids pick dinner. They choose:

frozen pizza

frozen french fries

frozen bagel bites

I manage to pick up fresh salmon and spinach for CC and I. That’s all I can manage.

In the checkout line we wait for a while, and eventually get close enough to read the tabloid headlines. This sparks a lively conversation about Teen Mom, which I’ve never seen, but am vaguely aware of solely due to time spent waiting in checkout lines reading tabloid headlines.

#2: It’s stupid. It totally sends the wrong message.

#3: No, it shows how hard it is to have a baby when you’re, like, sixteen. Like, who would want that?

#2: Yeah, but then they give these idiots a TV show! What kind of message is that?

They proceed to argue about this. They are thirteen and fifteen, and I’m pretty proud of both of them right now.

#5: Julie, how does somebody get pregnant and have a baby when they’re sixteen?

This is the point where I should probably remind you that #5 is our only boy and eight years old.

Me: Because either they have sex without birth control or they have sex and their birth control fails.

He grows very quiet and tilts his head at me. The puppies do this when they’re trying to figure something out.

I turn back around and there’s the cashier, standing there, staring at me with her mouth open.

In my defense, it was a pretty deep question for the checkout line.

Now He Gets It

CC is finally out of production. This means I get to see him more than six minutes a day. It also means that I don’t have to get up with the kids every morning. Both of these are Very Good Things.

This is our conversation the other day:

Me: I am so happy you are home.

CC: Me too.

Me: I’m serious, I nearly wept with joy when you got up this morning with the kids. But then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

CC: Yeah, I know.

Me: You have a lot of children. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not.

CC: I have just the right number of lives in my life. Five kids, you, two crazy dogs. I don’t need any cats or goldfish. I don’t need anything else.

Me: Except maybe a turtle. That would be pretty cool.

CC: A turtle?

Me: Yeah, wouldn’t it? Especially if it was one of those ones with a skateboard?

CC: What the hell are you talking about?

Me: You know, like when they lose a leg and so you strap them to a skateboard so they can still get around?

CC: I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.

Me: It totally does! I saw a picture on the internet! It’s just like that dog that used to live across the street from us that had wheels for back legs.

CC: It didn’t have wheels for back legs. That was a dog wheelchair. It was a Dalmatian with hip dysplasia.

Me: Whatever. A turtle on a skateboard would be badass.

CC: I’m sorry, did you say something?

Me: A TURTLE ON A SKATEBOARD WOULD BE BADASS!

CC: Now I know why no one ever married you before me.

What is even more badass than this turtle is this turtle that I saw on rubberduckiecreations blog, the reason I had turtles on the brain to begin with. This turtle has the most badass name ever, and is so badass it is quite possibly German.

I gotchya meditation right here…

I ran my ass off today.

I had a completely worthless session with my trainer (worthless on my part, not hers- down from 17-pound dumbbells to 5; dizzy, winded and cranky), had a meeting, ran errands, walked the puppies, ran out of time to eat, and picked up #3 from school to take her to an eye doctor’s appointment, where I congratulated myself on getting her there with thirty seconds to spare, at which point they told me I was actually fifteen minutes late.

The eye doctor always takes approximately half a day longer than you think it will. Our first time there I made the mistake of taking all the kids at once, thinking we’d just hammer it all out in one afternoon.

That was the last time I did that with any kid appointments.

(My dentist is always trying to accommodate all of the kids at once and doesn’t seem to understand when I say it’s unnecessary. This is probably why all of my children always have at least one cavity, and why I always owe the dentist about five hundred dollars.)

By the time we were heading home from the eye doctor today, I was having serious nap fantasies. One of my very favorite things in the world is napping with the puppies. They are intense nappers.

It may be the only they thing do really well. They have assigned places. It’s like being bookended by two small, furry furnaces. Except they sort of lay on you too. CC calls them the sleep weights. Any attempt to come out of your nap is thwarted by the extra effort of trying to move 17 (Jack) or 24 (Casey) pounds of puggle off your arms and legs.

I knew that if I napped today, I’d be out for hours, so I decided to meditate instead.

I don’t know why I thought I was going to be able to sneak off and do a thirty minute meditation after all the kids got out of school.

I got turned on to this cheating meditation thing. I love it. I totally live for it now. It uses sine waves to force your brain into specific brain wave patterns like pro meditators get into- you know, those dudes that can walk on hot coals or sleep on nails or calmly answer emails without losing their train of thought while sitting at the dining room table in a household with five children and two dogs.

Being a soundguy, I love both that it uses sound, and that it’s kind of a cheat. Instant gratification on the spiritual plane, sign me up! I tried for about twelve years to develop a regular meditation practice and mostly found reasons why I couldn’t meditate. But these soundtracks work for me because I gave myself permission to screw it up. It took the pressure off. Lots of times I put on the headphones and instead of meditating, I fall asleep. I call this a win also, because bonus naps are always a win.

But in order to meditate, I first must clean up my room. I can’t possibly zen out with the bed unmade, plus the chair I want to sit in is piled with a guitar, sweaters, and a Book of Mormon opening night poster. During this time #3 comes in and asks me if she can use my iPad, which of course, she can’t, because that’s where my meditation soundtracks are and if I ever get my room cleaned up I’m going to use it.

Next, I can’t find my beads. Stupid meditation beads. I need them. Round things comfort me. They’re missing. Who would swipe meditation beads for god’s sake? Oh wait, I can think of at least five people that live here besides me who might be distracted by something shiny. Nevermind. I dig around long enough and come up with the spares.

Whatever it is, always carry a spare.

I sit down with the beads and the iPad and the headphones in the newly-cleared chair and put my feet up on the newly-made bed and think that it would be really really nice to have a cup of tea and light a candle. I get back up. #1 and/or #2 have swiped all my matches again for their own candles (let’s hope). I have to go hunting down matches. I nuke a cup of tea. I go back in, light the candle, sit back down. Put the iPad on my lap and start cueing up a soundtrack and suddenly, there are three kids and two dogs on my bed.

#2 has found Casey’s tickle spot. #3 is trying to find Jack’s. #5 wants to jump on #3. Jack runs off and comes back with his tug (or as we call it, the grrrr). He then launches into a loud, fierce, and drawn out game of grrrr with #2. Casey watches in an agitated state. #5 jumps on #3. #3 screams and tickles #5. Jack peaks in a frenzy with the grrrr and in his momentary attention lapse, Casey swipes it from him and now they are racing in circles around and under the bed, over and over again.

Me: I like how you guys are all out there in the dining room, doing homework, having a snack, minding your own business, and I come in here to meditate and suddenly everybody’s in my room. Being loud.

#2: Yeah, meditation doesn’t really work in our house.

I kicked them all out. The dogs busted the door down and chased each other around, unmaking the bed. I was interrupted no less than four times by #5, and once by #3. My candle went out. My tea got cold. I never dozed off, though halfway through I noticed that the dogs had, in a small pile on the newly-unmade bed.

But I got through a thirty minute soundtrack and if I didn’t necessarily feel like a zen master when I finished, I checked something off my list and I did get a moment’s peace and several moments of amusement.

Maybe that’s the whole point of it anyway.