Someone send this woman a lasagna

Okay, okay. I was wrong to get rid of My-day-sucks-worse than-yours-Wednesday. So very wrong. Did you have to be quite so zealous about letting me know?

This shitty day comes to us from Delana, a fellow mom whose diet needs a little more, um, balancing. And Hubby needs a swift kick to the groin.

6:00 am — Coffee pot starts.

6:15 am — Baby is up and playing in the crib, so I make him a bottle and a daycare bottle and daycare juice.

6:25 am — Heat a blueberry pancake for baby, break it into 100 miniscule pieces, and put it on his tray. Get him a sippy of water. I eat the edges of the pancake.

7:15 am — Finish getting ready.

7:20 am — Get baby. Change a poopy diaper, grab some toys and tell Hubby to get up. Hubby rolls over, grunts and sleeps.

7:30 am — Drive 30 minutes.

8:00 am — Drop baby at daycare.

8:15 am — Drive to work.

9:30 am — Try to teach class to 20 teenagers. Give them back their exams, tell them how crappy they are.

11:00 am — Back to office.

12:30 pm — Lunch.

1:45 pm — Back to work. Can't get motivated.

3:30 pm — Go to a meeting lead by the one person that is the most cluesess in our department. Try not to roll my eyes too many times.

5:00 pm — Get baby at daycare. Make him a bottle in the car and strap him in. He drinks his bottle and falls asleep.

5:35 pm — Get home. Hubby and our daughter are already home (they left after me and got home before me, how is that fair?) Make dinner for baby while Hubby cuts the grass.

6:00 pm — Feed baby (he self feeds, I just slap it on the tray). Ask Hubby to give baby a bath ‘cause I don't feel good. He says, "I don't do baths" and he goes and plays Xbox.

6:15 pm — Give baby a bath.

6:40 pm — Baby spits up and needs new shirt.

7:10 pm — Hubby makes a bottle for baby, then says he is done with baby duty for the day and goes back to Xbox.

7:35 pm — Put him to bed.

7:42 pm — Eat one chicken nugget and one oreo for dinner.

8 pm — Pick out clothes for next day.

9 pm — In bed.

Look at my boobs! Come on!

There's nothing worse than downloading pictures from a picnic and realizing you spent more than half the picnic showing your husband's father your goods.

The nicest nerve

The doctor called my injury “the bed incident,” which sounds far more titillating than it was.

What happened is I pinched a nerve as I was rolling over in the middle of the night. I haven’t been able to turn my head for a few days. Or bend over. Or pick up my 21-pound linebacker son.

All of this has made my husband, Charles, very unhappy. He was supposed to go away with some friends for a long weekend. The funny thing is (well, I think it’s funny anyway), the last time he was supposed to go away with the boys I came down with a terrible cold.

All day he’s been on the phone.

“This is twice now. Twice!” When he hangs up, he looks at me like I’m one of those people who’s trying to scam the government out of workmans comp.

If Charles was the kind of man who didn’t get out of the house often I might feel bad. But I don’t. He enjoys an active social life while I, on the other hand, break out the girl’s night jeans once every few months. It’s my choice—he encourages me to go out—but most times I’m too dang tired.

So here we are. He’s had to use two vacation days—ones he set aside to roam and romp—to watch his son while his wife lies in bed pleasantly doped up on muscle relaxers, snuggled up to the heating pad. When I feel like it, I nap. Or take long leisurely showers. If Junior cries, I go and stand sympathetically over the crib while Charles hoists him up and carries him away.

I know I didn’t plan this. But I’d like to say a little thank you to whichever nerve it was in my neck that has given me the most relaxing two days of my life. It’s almost a Hallmark card.

Complete with lid

You know your husband has changed when you invite a couple over for dinner and they leave behind an expensive Tupperware container and your husband looks at it in the sink and says, "Score!"

Excited about Tupperware. This made me melt.

Dear Laura

My friend Anna and I had barely sat down to lunch before I moaned, “I think I hate my husband.”

(Anna is single right now. No kids. Nice shoe budget.)

I continued: “I’m tired of his dirty socks on the floor, wet towels on chairs, empty milk cartons in the fridge, dusting, vacuuming, washing bottles. He actually had the nerve to tell me—after barely watching the kid all week—that he needs a break!”

Anna proceeded to tell me about her sister, who is a mother to three, and how they had had an almost identical conversation days before. Here I was, thinking I was dropping some kind of bombshell about my husband when all along Anna and her sister had been standing at the signpost, “Men can suck,” waiting for me to arrive.

She wanted to know if I had asked my husband to contribute more. I said yes. About 500 times a week.

“It’s kind of inevitable, isn’t it—that women turn into nags?” she asked.

Which got me thinking (I feel like Carrie Bradshaw’s character in “Sex and the City,” clacking away at my laptop, waxing philosophical about women’s tribulations)…are women destined to become nags????

I defer the question to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who recently wrote, “Stop Whining, Start Living.” She answers with another question: “Are you the kind of wife your husband would like to come home to?”

If I’m nagging the answer, obviously, is no. My husband would like to come home to a wife who is waiting at the door in see-through lingerie, a plate of chocolate chip cookies nestled against her hip, a bottle of whiskey between her breasts, her puckered lips purring, “Hello stallion sex machine let’s go set the sheets on fire.” (Or maybe he’d just like me to hand him his Nintendo Wii.)

But there are a few good reasons why I can’t be that woman—very good, legitimate, perfectly acceptable reasons:

1. I’m probably passed out from exhaustion on the floor, gray mop hair stuck to my unmade face, child on my back riding me like some kind of rusty carnival ride.

2. I’m probably simultaneously paying bills, washing my hair, and feeding my son dinner (which sometimes entails whistling the entire time).

3. I’ve probably been eaten by the looming piles of laundry in my husband’s closet—laundry he promised to put away but never did that lying, lazy bastard!

Oh dear, I can’t even make a list without nagging.

Dr. Laura, I would like to be the woman my husband would like to come home to, I really would. But how can I be that women if my needs aren’t being met? Why should I be the one to rise above the proverbial skyscrapers of duty when my husband can’t even remember to throw away the granola bar wrapper that has been sitting on the counter for four days?

Which reminds me, I need to ask him to throw it away. Again.

Hey, it wasn't me

I want to preface this post with the following: Before I had my son, I was barraged by “helpful” tips from parents. I swore I would never, ever inundate any expecting woman with parenting tips.

There, I’ve said it.

Last Saturday morning my husband Charles and I made the spontaneous decision to visit some friends and watch their town’s St Patty’s Day parade. We planned on being out of the house by 8 a.m. to make the 11 a.m. parade. Actual time of departure: 10:35 a.m. Number of bags for baby: 15. Number of bags for parents: two. Junior napped leisurely on the ride while Charles and I stopped for burnt bagels (can the Dunkin' Donuts chain please buy some decent toasters already?!) and coffee.

When we finally arrived, our single, childless friends were already lit. The parade was in full swing a few streets away but they were quite content fishing off their porch with a fishing reel and empty beer cans. When the beer cans fell off they used packs of cigarettes. Then they saw us.

They were nice about meeting the baby and all but come on, no drunk adult who is not tied down to a spouse or child wants to play with a baby in the midst of St. Patty’s Day debauchery. About the same time we finished arranging Junior’s 15 bags in the living room the porch grew very quiet. We went outside and were told by an inebriated straggler that the party had moved to a bar.

We packed up Junior and walked down to the parade, trying to locate a non-rowdy section (i.e., an adults-with-kids section). A radio station once played sound clips of a St. Patty’s Day parade in the adults section and the adults-with-kids section. In the plain old adults section people yelled, screamed, and laughed. They cheered on the parade marchers. Blasted horns. Fell over. In the adults-with-kids section, one sober soul clapped—not out of actual enjoyment but because they were trying to instill in their child some enthusiasm for the Shriners in their mini carts.

That was the section we found ourselves in thanks to our child. It was boring. So back to the house we headed to wait for our other friends, Jan and Eva, to arrive. Why weren’t they at the bar or parade? Because they were pregnant. Very, very pregnant.

We relocated Junior and his 15 bags to Eva’s quieter, more child-friendly home. Remembering my vow, I kept my mouth shut while they waxed idealistic about breastfeeding and pumping for the first five years. I didn’t even laugh out loud when they mentioned the natural, drug-free water birth and birthing plan (not even when Eva’s husband, Rick, commented on my son’s “big fat head” and the fact that he is more attractive than me and Charles combined).

Nope. Not a word. In fact for the rest of the day I didn’t have to worry about saying anything…because Charles would not shut up.

“You guys have to get a swaddler. Do you have a swaddler? Not just a regular swaddler but one with Velcro. What about the Amby bed—have you read about that? And rice cereal. Don’t be afraid to try some rice cereal. Have you interviewed pediatricians? Did you get a breast pump? And what about one of those backpacks—what are they called, honey?”

My darling husband fired more tips at those pregnant woman than the whole series of “What to Expect.” Until that point I hadn’t realized just how much of the parenting experience he had ingested. Ingested and digested and sent merrily through every cavern of his sweet fatherly body. I kept wanting to reign him in—their lids were growing heavy—but I was so impressed by the knowledge he had amassed. It was if the man had given birth himself.

On the ride home I told him about my promise to myself. And do you know what he said?

“I bet they really appreciated that. They seem a little overwhelmed with the whole parenting thing.”

I told him it must have been Junior’s 15 bags.