Guess what?! Hobbs & Hayworth (that’s me, Harmony Hobbs, and my friend Audrey Hayworth of Sass Mouth) landed a regular segment on our favorite online TV show for moms, Mom Cave TV!
Here’s our latest, where we taste-tested bottled water. Enjoy!
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!)
One of my very best friends, Kate, has always encouraged my writing. I love her for it … except that she is also a pack rat and saves everything.
This means that I occasionally receive text messages from her that contain cringe-worthy notes, essays, or newspaper clippings from our college paper accompanied by: “Look what I found!” Or, “Did you write this? It looks like your handwriting.”
YES … I wrote that terrible essay linking fruit flies to the church service requirements at our private, Christian university. Let’s never speak of it again.
YES … I also wrote that opinion piece about Oatmeal Creme Pies. Can you just burn that one?
YES … I wrote that shit, and that shit, and that shit. It’s bad — all of it is so bad — proof that even if you’re born with a talent YOU STILL HAVE TO WORK REALLY HARD AT IT TO GET BETTER.
Most recently, I texted her back and admitted that yes, this trippy poem with the mispelled title was also written by me.
Funny, I don’t recall doing drugs at Bible college. Maybe I was high on life or religion or something. Maybe I wrote this as a joke, or someone dared me to write something that rhymed in under a minute and I scribbled this out as they timed me.
Maybe I was just super weird.
It’s probably that.
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!)
I don’t really know what happened.
When Robbie and I met 12 years ago, I was eating a very clean, almost-vegan diet. I guess because I couldn’t get a date and I was bored, I figured it would be a good idea to snack on raw almonds and green tea. I also did a lot of Pilates.
Those days are over.
Anyway, after weeks of flirting he finally walked up to the Customer Service desk in the Albertson’s grocery store where we worked and said, “I want to take you to lunch.”
He had this charisma and confidence that stopped me in my tracks. Not the gross kind of charisma that televangelists have, and not the overinflated kind of confidence that makes me want to punch someone in the face. This was different. He had pizzazz, and YES, I WANTED TO GO TO LUNCH.
I gathered my purse and he drove me across the street to Applebee’s, where I ordered a vegetable plate because that’s the kind of shit that I ate back then, not because I was trying to impress him with my birdlike eating habits. I remember him staring at me incredulously and me feeling confused as to why he was reacting this way.
It’s just vegetables, I said, as he visibly shuddered.
I eventually learned that Robbie only ate the following vegetables:
The remainder of his diet was comprised of hamburgers, powdered doughnuts, chips, and beer. I was appalled.
Over time, my eating habits changed tremendously as Robbie introduced me to pepperoni pizza, real hamburgers, crab cakes and fudge-flavored Pop-Tarts. I traded steamed vegetables for the gross kind of stuff that you crave when you’re hung over, like tater tots smothered in gravy.
And while I have introduced him to a whole slew of delicacies like pan-fried tofu, veggie dogs, and hummus with pita, nothing I like to eat is quite as fun as Lucky Charms cereal … which really is magically delicious, by the way.
Sometimes I get frustrated because I know I would lose weight if I could just be happy eating a kale salad while the rest of my family dined on pizza, but to me, an extra 10 pounds is worth being able to eat trans fats and unhealthy carbs whenever I please. And also? I cannot believe I lived for 23 years without pepperoni in my life.
WHAT ELSE AM I MISSING OUT ON?!
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!)
Motherhood is turning me into one tough bitch.
I used to be a mild-mannered, non-yeller who embarrassed easily and apologized a lot.
Before I had kids, things really used to get to me. I once had a female boss tell me that I’d gotten to where I was not because I was smart, but because I’d been “skating by on my personality.” I was too shocked and intimidated to tell her she was a dumbass bitch with a shitty personality, and what I’d really like to do is cram her Louis Vuitton bag down her pie hole.
Instead, I quietly nodded my way through the meeting and cried in the car when it was over.
That happened before I was toughened up by the experience of growing and expelling a human being. Is there anything more fortifying than bringing life into the world? Whatever was left of my modesty vanished; I was too busy mothering a squishy, red-faced baby into a spirited, defiant toddler to concern myself with much else.
Two more kids later, I’ve become a person who my old self would have shied away from. The version of me who cried in my car was before I bounced colicky babies for hours, and before I realized that three kids is way more than I have any business handling. Motherhood doesn’t care what you think you can handle.
The non-yelling me became a yeller when I gave birth without any pain medication, and my easily embarrassed self disappeared when I experienced the worst case of hemorrhoids, like, ever. I was in so much pain I was unable to explain to my husband that I needed to go to the hospital*. I just laid on the floor wishing I would black out so the pain would stop and he would forever be in my debt for not taking the situation seriously.
Motherhood doesn’t care about your modesty or self-respect.
I am tougher. I am bitchier. Because, let’s face it, motherhood does not care if you only had three hours of sleep. Motherhood does not care if you feel fat. Motherhood says, GET UP OFF YOUR ASS, LADY. YOUR SON IS EATING SILICA PACKETS.
If I have to run outside in mismatched pajamas to chase a naked toddler through the yard or to make sure my oldest gets on the bus, so be it.
If I have to leave a full grocery cart in the store because my kids are making a scene, so be it.
If I have to tell a stranger to back the hell away from my van or please stop touching my baby, so be it.
I don’t have time to be embarrassed.
I don’t have time to apologize for my choices.
I don’t have time to get my feelings hurt if you don’t agree with me.
I don’t have time to poop alone, so I’m probably not going to be able to have an hour-long phone conversation with you this afternoon, remember to pay the bills, or figure out where that smell is coming from.
An onlooker might assume I’m medicated.
Nope.
I am shell-shocked and desensitized, with an ever-present goal of getting through the day.
Motherhood—shushing babies and wiping butts and weathering countless, psychotic tantrums—changed me. And I am grateful.
Motherhood forces me to carry on. It forces me to love when I don’t feel like it. It forces me to keep going when I am exhausted.
Motherhood is a force to be reckoned with.
And now, I am a force to be reckoned with.
* I’m happy to report that my ass did eventually return to normal, but the experience resulted in me having very little patience for my husband when he complains of a headache.
(This post originally ran on Scary Mommy.)
My oldest child started 2nd grade today.
I woke up at 5:30 a.m., a full hour before my alarm was supposed go off, unable to go back to sleep because it felt like Christmas morning.
I did all of the things mothers are supposed to do when their children start 2nd grade. I lovingly fashioned pancakes out of the instant mix that comes in a bottle that you pour water into and shake really hard.
I made sure I had a bra on, just in case the neighbors could see me shaking that bottle of pancake batter.
I laid out Maverick’s navy blue uniform shorts and told him to ignore the lint that blanketed them — clearly, washing them with new towels was a mistake — and made sure that his tennis shoes were double-knotted.
We missed the bus, but I assured him there was plenty of time for us to go through the carpool line. I corralled the other pajamaed children and loaded them all into our van.
Maverick has been telling us for months that he wants to be an “asteroidal physicist.” Last year and the year before that, he just wanted to be a regular scientist. I’m not sure what changed, but I do know that I was Googling “asteroidal physicist” before I had my coffee this morning, and that was intense.
We rounded the corner and waited in the long line of cars at the elementary school, and because I am a good mother who tries to do the right things, I attempted to have a special moment with my child.
You know what I’m talking about. That moment when you and your kid connect on a deeper level, and he or she understands for a fleeting moment the depth of your love, and you relish the feeling that you’re doing a really good job until you find yourself screaming “DON’T EAT THE TOOTHPASTE OUT OF THE BATHROOM SINK!” yet again.
It’s special.
I turned around in my seat to look at him, blinking back tears. “Maverick, I am so proud of you and I hope you have a great day. Your brother and sister are really going to miss you tod—”
This was the precise moment that the teacher who was on carpool duty opened our van door and Maverick yelled “BUH-BYE, SUCKAS!!!!!!” at the top of his lungs as he leapt out.
She stood there for a moment, frozen.
I smiled and yelled “HAVE A GREAT DAY!” as if this was perfectly normal, as though the Hobbs family yells that phrase every time they part ways.
Her face never changed expression as she slid the door closed.
I’ve decided that the next time I drop my children off somewhere, I’ll kiss them all goodbye as usual, and as they smile and wave at me like the little darlings that they are, I will roll down the window of our beat up van and shout “BUH-BYE, SUCKAS!!!!” as I peel the eff out.
Because this is how we do, SUCKAS.
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!)
Somehow I made it through another summer.
I know this because Maverick starts school tomorrow. And I know that because I filled out a bunch of forms today while a toddler pulled on my arm.
2nd grade! How did that happen? And also, isn’t it time for college? They’re all so big and so small and they need so much from me but not quite as much as they used to. So it’s just weird right now. We are all transitioning, I’m sleeping through the night, but there’s still poop all over the toilet seat. So clearly we aren’t out of the woods just yet.
I used to write about everything that happened, and now it all happens so fast that I don’t have time to write it down, because before I have a chance to form the words on paper another thing happens, followed by another. Days and weeks of hard things and hilarity and the monotonous joy of being a mother to three tiny humans who all know the words to Walk The Moon’s Shut Up And Dance have blended together into a chapter that I’ll just call 2015.
Today I was looking at each of my children, thinking about what makes them special and how I don’t have enough time to dwell on their good qualities because I’m too busy keeping them from blowing up the house, and I realized that my job isn’t to document everything for them to review at a later date. My job is to keep them alive.
Keeping them alive is a full time job.
I wish I had more time to soak up the good things, and I wish the bad things would just stop happening, but that’s what they call denial. I live in reality.
So today, after a very long day of the last day of summer, after I split the boys up because they wouldn’t stop fighting, as I was half-heartedly stirring a pot of Tuna Mac with toddler wedged firmly underneath me, Robbie walked into the house and gave me the kind of kiss where you get dipped backwards.
Right there in the kitchen.
Reality isn’t so bad, you guys.
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook and Twitter!)
As long as I am married to Robbie, which will be until I’m senile or dead, I will never run out of things to write about. Here is a conversation we had this evening:
Me: “We’re out of laundry detergent, so I can’t wash any more clothes until I go to the store.”
Robbie: “Just use that stuff in the blue bottle.”
Me: “What stuff? You mean fabric softener?”
Robbie: “Yeah, that stuff. It’s all the same.”
Me: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT’S ALL THE SAME?!”
Robbie: “It all basically does the same thing. It gets them clean.”
Me: “No … no.”
Robbie: “Yes it does, I washed a few loads awhile back with that stuff.” (He’s referring to the other weekend when I went to the beach.)
Me: (silence)
Robbie: “It got them clean.”
Me: “That explains the weird blue stains on our clothes.”
Robbie: “Oh.”
What’s even MORE amazing is that this exact thing happened when I was 12 years old, and my dad took over laundry duties because my mom returned to the workforce.
Weeks, WEEKS, I TELL YOU, went by with the three of us — me, my mom, and my dad — wondering where all of these grey-blue spots were coming from.
Whoever said that most women end up marrying a man who is just like their father was so, so right.
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook and Twitter!)
This blog post is based on a series of real-life events.
6:30 a.m. Stumble to coffee maker. Mumble good morning to spouse. Wonder how this is happening again already.
7:00 a.m. Breakfast.
7:30 a.m. Tell Robbie goodbye. Hold screaming child back as he tries to run after the car. Brew another cup of coffee.
9:15 a.m. Look out of the kitchen window to see Asher standing naked in the driveway and Maverick on the roof of our vehicle with the water hose. Both are screaming.
9:16 a.m. Choose to ignore staring neighbors.
9:30 a.m. Boys come inside because they both have to poop and we don’t allow them to poop in the yard.
9:45 a.m. Pepper touches my unshaven legs while trying to climb into my lap and gets very upset because they “ouched” her.
9:46 a.m. Took a picture of her subsequent screaming because she wouldn’t stop and I didn’t know what else to do.
This is an actual photo of my child crying because she touched my hairy legs.
10:00 a.m. Take stock of my day.
10:10 a.m. Brew another cup of coffee.
10:15 a.m. Realize that the only method of survival is pool time.
10:45 a.m. Head to the pool.
Asher would wear his goggles 24/7 if we let him.
11:00 a.m. Check Pepper into the nursery.
11:05 a.m. Arrive at pool with the boys and look for a lounge chair. The first two I sit in are broken. Resist urge to scream.
11:07 a.m. Move to chair number three. Notice that the lifeguard is looking at me from behind his smug hipster sunglasses.
Resist urge to scream.
11:09 a.m. OH MY GOD THIS CHAIR IS FUCKING BROKEN TOO.
12:00 p.m. Head home.
12:30 p.m. Prepare lunch that no one is excited about, including me.
1:30 p.m. Decide that the world will not end if Asher wears his Darth Vader costume to the grocery store.
This photo pretty much sums up my entire Summer. A whole lotta Darth.
1:45 p.m. Load kids into the van. Go inside to pee in peace.
1:48 p.m. Return to van and discover emergency brake was pulled while I was inside. No one will own up to it. Both boys are now buckled into their car seats. Realize I have never used the emergency brake in this vehicle. Unable to locate it because three children are yelling.
Resist urge to scream.
1:50 p.m. Call Robbie at work and ask him to tell me where the emergency brake is. FORBID HIM TO JUDGE ME.
2:00 p.m. Arrive at grocery store. Plunk Pepper into a shopping cart and find that the seat belt is broken. Select another cart. The seat belt is broken on that one, too.
Resist urge to scream.
2:25 p.m. Buy potatoes. Open “share size” bag of M&M’s in the checkout line and cram them furiously into my mouth.
Refuse to share.
3:00 p.m. Make potato salad from scratch. Wonder who fucking makes potato salad from scratch anymore because it’s a lot of fucking work.
3:10 p.m. Spend the next 30 minutes making sure my toddler doesn’t get burned by the pot of boiling water.
4:10 p.m. Verify Asher’s arm is not broken.
4:11 p.m. Remind Maverick that no one wants to see his private parts.
4:15 p.m. Get band-aid and ice pack for injured child. Scream at boys to stop trying to put toys up their behinds. Finish potato salad.
4:20 p.m. Locate a large glass bowl and dump it in. Notice that the bowl is broken and there are shards of glass now mixed into the potato salad.
4:21 p.m. Walk outside to throw broken dish and the potato salad away.
Scream.
No caption needed.
4:25 p.m. Count the days until school starts.
5:00 p.m. Start cooking dinner.
6:00 p.m. Wine.
7:00 p.m. Count the days until school starts again.
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook and Twitter!)
Yesterday, a terrible thing happened.
Let me preface this by saying that I am struggling to adjust to summer break. Struggling. Like … it’s good? But also horrible? Can something be good and horrible all at once? Because I’m pretty sure that is exactly what parenthood is.
Making the transition from having all three kids in school for 6+ hours per day (and working during those hours), to having them home all the time and trying to get my work done in addition to mothering in a loving fashion, is not going great. As I have already established in multiple blog posts from previous years, summer is effing relentless.
Pepper is obsessed with two things: outlets and babies. Here she is showing her baby doll the outlet in her bedroom. #multitasking
Thankfully, this year is somewhat easier than previous years simply because my children are getting older and more independent. Pepper will be 3 next week, so I think we’re finally on the upswing after a very dark time in the Valley of Motherhood.
Yesterday afternoon, we got home from playing at the park. The boys jumped out of the van, heard some kids next door playing, and asked if they could go over to play. I granted them permission and took Pepper inside. Her clothes were filthy — covered in layers of peanut butter and dirt — so I stripped her down to a diaper.
I ran to the bathroom with her trailing behind me, always my little shadow. And then, my mom called. She’s not feeling well and I can barely hear her on the phone. I was straining to understand what she was saying — did she just say she needed to go to the hospital?! — and naturally, my toddler got really loud at exactly that moment. As her shouting drowned out my mother, my stress level started to rise.
I went to my bedroom and closed the door. My daughter cried from the hall, and when she stopped, I was thankful. When I emerged only a few minutes later, the house was quiet. A panicky feeling started to rise in my chest, and then it felt like my heart stopped.
Just.
Stopped.
Beating.
Our back door was standing wide open.
Screaming her name, I ran outside. She was gone. Or hiding. Or missing.
I heard a woman’s voice — our across the street neighbor — yelling at me that she just saw a little girl cut through the fences in the backyard.
“She went that way, sweetheart! I was standing here watching her!”
I was barefoot and it did not matter. I ran. I ran until I found her. I couldn’t feel my feet. I couldn’t feel my body. All I could hear was my own voice screaming her name, and my heartbeat deafening my ears. That is what blind panic feels like.
My 2-year-old was wandering one street over from ours, wearing nothing but her diaper. She was holding a toy pet carrier with a little stuffed dog inside. I will never forget the way her face looked when she saw the horror on mine.
“NEVER AGAIN,” I said to her.
“Not with my dog?” she said.
“NEVER, EVER. Do not ever leave this house without a grown up,” I said, as I wiped away my tears.
I’m sharing this story to demonstrate how quickly children can disappear. How many times have I heard stories of toddlers wandering the streets and thought to myself, WHERE WAS THE MOTHER?
That mother is me. I was right there. It happened anyway.
I’m a damn good mom. I am capable. I am aware. I am not negligent. But children are fast. And sometimes quiet. And things happen. So today I’m hugging my babies tight, grateful for their safety, knowing that sometimes other mamas aren’t so lucky.
(If you liked this post, then you should follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!)
Modern Mommy Madness 