Pass The Compound W

I was reading The Pioneer Woman the other day, fascinated as usual by the goings on at the cattle ranch but curious about her relationship with Marlboro Man. She loves her cowboy but never mentions anything annoying he does and never talks about the stuff he does that ticks her off. Surely, there’s something he does that drives her crazy. It can’t be all roses and sunshine over there. I love Ree and her website, but I’m thinking the stress of ranching for a living, maintaining a famous website and home schooling four kids has got to be crazy. Really crazy. Somebody has to be yelling at somebody every now and then. Maybe not, but I know if the Hula-gen’s lived that life, we’d be less than perfect. There would be lots of “Get your butt down here right now and sweep this manure off the front porch like I asked you to do three hours ago,” and “Stop throwing calf nuts at your sister,” and “Who left the back door open and let all those flies in here?” Somebody would be leaving the toilet paper roll empty for the next person, someone would spill milk at the dinner table every night and we would all be cranky after a week of being cooped up together during a snow storm. Oh, and the swearing. There would probably be swearing. (It’s why Hubby and I can’t be on The Amazing Race.) Mayhem would be around every corner. That’s just family.

I don’t blame Ree for not sharing those moments with the world. Some things are personal. Those of us who blog have things we choose not to share with everyone. We self edit, and that’s okay. I do it, too. We do it to protect our privacy and our relationships. We do it to keep from embarrassing our families. Sometimes we do it because stuff is just too painful to share. We all have our warts, and we have the freedom to reveal as many or as few of them as we desire. The downside to that is that it often leaves our readers with the impression that our lives are jolly and great and that we’re better at handling life than they are. While it’s purely unintentional, it does strike me as a little dishonest. We are all human. We have failures. We have hurts. We make mistakes. We yell at our kids and regret it. We treat our spouses with disrespect and fail to apologize. People in our lives do bad things. We lose our temper and act like an a** in the line at the grocery store (or so I hear).

In the interest of honesty today, I’m sharing a few warts with you; nothing that should embarrass my family (much). Some are silly, and a few are big, but they are enough to show you that it’s more livin’ la Vida loca at my place than it is wine and roses. Tomorrow? We’re back to self editing then, because frankly, when it come to the Hula-gen’s, YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE WARTS!

-I lost my patience and my temper with Teen Angel on the phone the other day and used a pretty ugly tone of voice. I hate it when I do that.

-I forgot to tell Hubby Happy Birthday on my way out the door this morning. He would never forget to tell me that.

-The state of my bras is so bad I would be embarrassed if I were in a wreck and someone had to cut me out of my clothing.

-Running has left calluses on the top of the second toes on both my feet. They are ugly.

-I got so mad at Mama J. last night that I wanted to yank her hair. I’m still mad at her.

-Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be content in my relationship with her.

-Papa T.’s care is wearing all of us out, especially Hubby and Mama J. It’s been a rough week with him, and I don’t know how long we can keep up with his needs.

-I live with the fear that we will find Papa T. or Mama J. dead in their bed one morning. I’ve had two nightmares that involved CPR.

-A crazy woman who got the wrong cell phone number and mistook us for a criminal kept calling us the other night. Near the end of a lengthy conversation with her I told her, “Woman, you have lost your mind.” You’d think a year and a half of Al-Anon would have kept that from coming out of my mouth.

-When Hubby slurps his soup I have an irresistible urge to scream.

-I think I’m on the verge of needing reading glasses. Crap, crap, crap.

-I’m fed up with the dysfunction in Hubby’s family. Seriously.

-I can’t seem to work the DVR correctly every time I record something, and it makes me feel like an idiot.

-My library books are overdue…AGAIN.

-Apparently, I am not responsible when there is leftover butter cream frosting in the fridge. It could account for the five pounds that showed up on my butt recently and refuse to go home.

-I have secretly and slowly eaten all of the pecan perks in that big box of chocolates Hubby got for Christmas, and I am delighted he hasn’t noticed.

Hmmm. That wasn’t so bad. Now then, if you’d care to share one or two of your own that’s okay, too. If not, I’ll just assume you’d rather not tell about the calf nut flinging going on at your place. In the meantime, I’ll be picking up the birthday card I forgot to buy yesterday.