Being a parent is hard. It’s time consuming, stressful, exhausting, and a whole bunch of other things that you already know too well. So, for the sake of your time, I’m going to cut to the chase and get to listing all of the things that I've stopped wasting my time worrying about. Maybe you’ll find camaraderie in my words, maybe you’ll think I’m insane. Either way, I’ll be vacuuming the never-ending pile of cracker crumbs out of the couch, not worrying about that either because like everything on this list… ain’t no momma got time for that!
1 | Drinking enough water – We’ve all heard about the benefits of drinking enough water a million times. It aids in metabolism, makes our skin glow, helps us lose weight, keeps those kidneys doing their kidney things, yada yada yada. According to WebMD, we should be drinking between a half to one ounce of water per pound of bodyweight each day, plus more if you exercise or live in warm climates. To which I say again, yada yada yada.Due to the fact that it’s two p.m. and I’m still arguing/bargaining/pleading desperately with my three-year-old to just eat two bites of the mac-and-cheese I prepared for her at noon, my own nutritional intake is way down at the bottom of my priority list. Maybe WebMD could re-evaluate the water-intake formula for mothers. I’m thinking something along the lines of the suggested amount minus forty-five ounces of coffee, divided by the number of uninterrupted hours of sleep the night before – now that may be a target I can actually attempt to hit! Until then, two cans of La Croix a day keeps the doctor away. That’s how it goes, right?
2 | Tweezing my eyebrows in between waxes – Let’s be honest, I’m lucky if they get waxed at all. As much as I want my eyebrows to be on fleek, there are just not enough free moments in a day to methodically stare at tiny hairs growing above my very heavy eyelids while grabbing them ever-so-slightly with two pieces of pointy metal. By the time I finally get to having them waxed again, I may be looking like Chewbacca, and guess what? That’s just fine with me. I love "Star Wars." Everybody loves "Star Wars."
Anyway, doesn’t the thought of a woman who is so tired she may be accused of being under the influence using sharp tools by her eyeballs worry anyone else? Instead of risking it, my overgrown brows and I will be aiming for eyebrows on geek.
3 | Hang drying laundry of any kind – Bras, 100 percent cotton, swimwear, dry-clean only. Sorry guys, you’re all going in the dryer for a plethora of reasons. The first is that I simply don’t have the time to do the laundry for all four people who live in this house as it is, let alone sort through it for delicates that must be hung with care.
Secondly, I think it’s kind of bullshit. My bras have been going through the dryer cycle since before I knew they weren’t supposed to, and they seem to be holding my breast-milk-makers up quite satisfactorily.
Thirdly, how many of us actually have somewhere to hang laundry these days? I, for one, live in a townhouse with virtually no backyard. It might be a little strange for my neighbors if I start lining the driveway with our intimates in the middle of the afternoon. I could look for a solution but due to my fourth and final reason, I’m not going to.
That reason is… drum roll please… I just do not care. No, no, I don’t.
4 | Taking my vitamins – Like drinking enough water, taking vitamins falls into that nutritional intake category that I tend not to really pay attention to anymore. I tried, I really did, but it’s Too. Damn. Hard. Every vitamin has it’s own set of directions: take with food, take with a full glass of water, don’t take in combination with ‘x,y,z’, don’t eat for one hour, only take after petting your unicorn with a comb you hand-made out of rhinoceros horn without harming any animals to make it. Okay, I made the last one up… or did I?
Regardless, there are just too many different sets of instructions that I either don’t have time to follow or don’t have the mental capacity to pay attention to while I’m trying to rationalize with the three-nager about why the blueberry pancakes (she insisted I make) are blue. In the meantime, I’ll be glad the kid chose antioxidant-rich blueberries instead of chocolate chips and take my chances without vitamins.
5 | Stretching, yoga, meditation – I need zen badly, so badly that I've purchased the outfits and the mat, followed other yogis on Instagram, and looked up when classes are in all of my surrounding gyms. I am here to report that I am still the inflexible, shoulder-hunching stress ball that I was before I did all of those things. Sure, some may say you have to actually practice yoga before reaping its benefits, but each time I’ve rolled out a mat of any kind, my children have flocked to practice their somersaults.
Countless times my nighttime-self has naively convinced me to set an alarm for 15 minutes earlier than usual in hopes of fitting in some stretches and a little deep breathing prior to the circus that each day becomes. Then my morning-self has kindly told my nighttime self to “shove it.” Every single time.
6 | Watching the news – If it wasn’t hard enough to get my children to turn off surprise egg videos long enough to watch the "Housewives," I might consider watching the news on a more regular basis. No guarantees though because, frankly, each time I hear a politician say, “It’s going to be great, we….” my eyes roll so far back in my head that they may require surgery to come around again. It’s like when my toddlers insist they’re not tired as they freak out about their juice being in the wrong cup. To both I utter, “Okay lunatic, I’ll be waiting for the madness and misery that’s about to ensue.” At least if I use my allotted 40 minutes of TV time on Bravo, I know I won’t want to sink into a depression afterward.
7 | Changing my air filter monthly – I like clean air. I like lower energy bills. I apparently don’t like them enough to remember what size air filter belongs in my house, or enough to go back to the store after getting home without it, or enough to put it on a list for the next time I’ll be in a store so that I don’t forget its size again.
In the world I live in, it's only crucial to remember to purchase juice boxes and goldfish. Without them we shall falter, but with them, we can do all things (except remember the size of our air filter, apparently). Everything else on store runs is optional, and likely forgotten, as the chants for Tsum Tsum blind bags get louder.
Besides, if I didn’t let the air filter become blackened with soot, it wouldn’t feel as authentic when I sing, “Chim chim cher-ee! A sweep is as lucky as lucky can be,” while changing it. Priorities, people!
8 | Squats – Ever since Sir Mix-A-Lot made it cool to like big butts, we’re all expected to squat our tiny butts off to make them bigger. Pre-child-me may have cared but present-day-me is perfectly content to accept not having an apple bottom because I don’t have time for stuff I hate, and I hate squats and I cannot lie.
I’m not sure my sentiment is shared on this one because my social media feeds are full of people biggering and biggering their derrières faster than the Once-ler and his factory. This, however, does not discourage me and my scrawny-booty-swimsuit pics followed by the hashtag, #GirlsWhoDontLift.
I mean, have you ever attempted to squat with thirty pounds of monkey-child hanging on your bicep? Not worth it, not even for a Kim K. booty.
9 | Yearly physicals, dental cleanings, eye exams, etc – Put more simply, for any appointment that is not pediatric in nature, I will probably not be there. Lord knows there are enough of those to keep me busy the whole year round. As important as my own health is, there are just too many obstacles keeping me from having my gums prodded with a piece of metal that is strikingly similar to the tweezers that I already said I don’t have time for.
For starters, all of these offices are closed on weekends and at night when my spouse would be home to stay with the kiddos, and (also as previously discussed, see stretching) your girl is just not limber enough to spring out of the gyno-stirrups fast enough to wrangle the tiny human who is trying to swallow a cotton ball or catch the glass jar it came from before it crashes to the ground.
The absolute only appointment I make religiously is my manicure, a glorious child-free hour in the salon that is within walking distance of my house in the event that the miniatures start World War III over a Shopkin. Therefore, health-related checkups are just not in the cards at this time.
If I wanted air blown in my eye I’d just attempt to nap on the couch while holding the remote and wait until Doc McStuffins ended. If I had to take bets, I’d say Disney-fueled toddlers will get that eyeball opened quicker than anything else.
Oh, did I say 10 things? I did, but number 10 is that I don’t finish lists anymore. I usually can’t even find the list, you know, the one that I didn’t write the air filter size on. List is gone, mind is gone, time is gone. Come to think of it, it probably ended up in the dryer with the other stuff that wasn’t supposed to be there.
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