If you are easily offended by adult language, stop reading now because I’m going to say fuck.

I don’t use the F-word aloud very often because it’s unladylike and I wasn’t raised that way. When I was pregnant with my firstborn I told Robbie that I was worried he would say bad words around our kids on accident, and asked him could he please work on his language? Little did I know I would one day be a stay-at-home mom to three children and find myself fighting back F-bombs on the daily. Sometimes, no other word will do. Ah … irony. We meet again.

Sometimes people who have never met me feel like they know me because they read my blog or my articles online, and expect me to be a certain way. Then we meet, and they’re like “Oh.” I’m not that funny, angry, or even smart in person. I’m a calm, mild-mannered Southern girl who has to tamp down her emotions while she’s parenting, and all of that energy has to go somewhere. So I write it out. If I felt like it was acceptable to verbalize my every feeling, such as telling my kids “I hate meal times in this house,” or, “You are annoying the shit out of me right now,” I might not have as much angst to channel through my writing.

Robbie’s last day in the car business was Thursday. He started out as a car salesman at a dealership in Birmingham, AL when Maverick was small, and I was still working at State Farm. I got pregnant with Asher and continued working full-time until he was born. Then, all of the sudden, I was a stay-at-home mom to a three-year-old and a very colicky newborn with a husband that worked 12-hour days. It. Was. Hell.

I remember tearfully telling him I couldn’t go on like this, and he agreed that we needed more help. We moved back to Baton Rouge, our hometown, and he got a job as a salesman at a huge dealership.

He quickly got a reputation as someone who could SELL. I got pregnant with Penelope when Asher was 12 months old, and all the while Robbie was working every holiday (except Christmas and Thanksgiving), every Saturday, and 12-hour days minimum. Pepper was born in June 2013, and Robbie was promoted the next day to Finance Manager. He continued working like he’d been, and I kept on doing what I’d been doing. We were surviving. We were making it work. But it was insanity.

I was grateful to be home with the kids, so I didn’t want to complain … but it was so hard. I kept telling myself it was a season, and all seasons eventually come to an end, right?

And suddenly, it did.

Robbie is now working at the business my grandpa started in 1950, and I don’t think it’s actually hit me yet that he will be home for dinner tonight. We have this entire weekend free! Two consecutive days! This is all new to us.

Here’s what he looked like last night when he got home from his last day. I thought he’d look happier, but I think he was too tired to put effort into it.

Yesterday morning before he left for his last day of work at the dealership, he said, “This is weird, it’s my last day and I’m not sure how I should feel.”

I stopped in my tracks and said, “I’LL TELL YOU HOW I FEEL. I feel like I could walk in there with you and do this.”

A job is a job and I’m grateful that we somehow made it through that impossible few years, but parenting alone all the time? What we’ve been doing?! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK THAT.

Carry on.