If your house is a mess, read this and you'll feel better

When I saw this photo in the Huff Post, I thought, "Hey, my dresser. Why is a picture of my dresser online?" and then I had to read on, because I wanted to know more about the person who has a dresser that looks as deranged and ransacked as mine, and who feels comfortable posting that picture on the world wide web. So I read What Normal Looks Like, and now I'm sharing it. You're welcome.

Too often when I read pieces about parenting, they give me either a headache or a panic attack.  This one, however, did neither. It made me laugh and it made me feel relieved. It injected a healthy and much-needed dose of sanity into my day. Because I am the person who greets you at the door, wildly apologizing for the state of my house, except my house is not immaculate, it's actually filthy. Guests will actually brush crumbs off my bar stools. They will step on tiny Legos and cry out in pain. They will need to wait for a glass of water while I wash them a cup from the overflowing pile in the sink. They will not be able to stop themselves from taking a paper tower and just wiping down the counter because it will only take a second to dispose of the dried Rice Krispies and then they can focus on the conversation.

My apartment is so frequently such a sty that my husband and I refer to it as Das Messen Haus which is  in no way correct German, but a term we invented to add some humor and tension relief into the air because when we look at the state of our house we are, basically, always horrified.

I've written about having people over at my messy house before -- My House is A Pigsty, anyone? It's a problem I can't solve until I  A. have less kids living in my tiny apartment or B. have  enough money to pay for a housecleaner. So, what I really need is permission to let myself off the hook, and assurance that other people are in the same filthy boat. I need this:

"Normal: There is a room in your house that always stays cluttered and messy, and much like Lady Macbeth's hands, will never be clean.

Normal: Your kids' bath toys are right where they left them after the bathwater drained

Normal: Cups and cups and cups. Everywhere. All the time."

Elizabeth Broadbent, you are cordially invited over to play at my place. Just don't wear dry-clean-only clothes.

Signs you're a mom

Last night in my "Happy Hour" (which, as you'll discover in the post, is the 60 minutes between when the kids go to bed and you go to bed) I read Ulli Appelbaum's recent post in the Huff Post, 25 Clear Signs You're A Mom. Alas, they rang true, nearly all of them. My favorites were:

2. You do more in seven minutes than most people do all day.

and

4. A night of drinking requires more recovery time than minor surgery.

Those two, by the way, are not unrelated. After such a highly productive day, one could not help but be obliterated by crushing fatigue, and drinking on top of that deep, incurable exhaustion, well, that'll just do you in. It's necessary, yes, but it will do you in. 

This one, I thought, was a bit misleading:

11. You'd rather have a 103 degree fever than watch one of your kids suffer with it.

Sorts of makes it seem like the primary reason you'd prefer to take the illness upon yourself was a martyr complex, whereas really, when you have an 103 degree fever, you've got a pretty decent shot at GETTING A FUCKING BREAK FOR A FEW HOURS. Whereas if your kids have the fever, you get just the opposite. And the maternal love thing too, yeah, that's a part of it. 

Oh, and this one resonated in particular:

14. Peeing with an audience is part of the daily routine.

I'm so accustomed to peeing with the door open -- to make sure Terza doesn't set the house on fire or get her hands on a cleaver -- that I sometimes worry I will forget that it's customary to close the bathroom door and will leave it open when guests are over. Though I'm betting, if they have young kids, they've due the same. Still, we must cling to whatever shreds of dignity still adhere.