Adventures In Motherhood

You haven't lived unless you've traveled to Beatty, NV with a 32 foot RV and bike trailer! California state road 168 headed east was not the route I would've chosen jockeying for speed in Pole Position! Twisting and turning, uphill, downhill in the desert canyon between the posted 25 and 35 miles per hour left me white-knuckled. I remember mounting a hill, trusting that the invisible downhill would not be too steep, bottoming out the RV and leaving our bike rack behind. Road narrows and one-way traffic ahead? You've gotta be frickin' kidding me! I wondered should I sound the horn driving a house on wheels with no shoulder room for error? A BMW sped ahead, leaving me in the desert dust as I tried to maneuver yet another loop de loop. Wheee! Downshifting the recreational vehicle into third gear doesn't pack the same punch. He's surely in pole position now. "I think I'm going to throw up," my daughter shouted from the back of the bus, where ...

We can kiss Walmart parking lot camping goodbye without a generator that hums. So much for the Instagram photo op of us sitting in camping chairs grilling hot dogs and drinking Budweiser! Nevertheless, the steamy turd rolls on... Outdoorsy is a third-rate RV rental shop at best, spewing ‘fake news’ of a purported ‘trusted RV marketplace’ on its website. Tho’ I’ll be the first to admit Outdoorsy can be trusted to take your money!  After waiting two hours to be connected to a member of their ‘customer support team’, I learned a few things. First, my 10-year-old is more knowledgable than an Outdoorsy customer service rep. Second, calling back is not an option. Customer service reps refuse to provide their direct contact phone number or corporate email address, so you are forced to wait on hold for hours on end unless your RV problems are solved. Third, Outdoorsy customer service reps suck at problem solving. For example, driving from Tahoe to Portland in the same day t...

It's been 114 days since the last day of normal, the last day my four kids sat at wooden school desks, the last day they attended baseball or track practice, or played basketball on the playground, and the last time they had lunch with friends. Just how long is 114 days? We'll be buying Halloween candy to trick-or-treat if we survive that long from today. Friday, March 13th was the last day we didn't wear masks or sit six feet apart in social distance, or worry if there would be toilet paper, Clorox wipes or flour at the Safeway grocery store. Dodging manic shoppers in empty grocery store aisles became my new 'Hunger Games' reality buying for a family of six, stripping off my mask and sanitizing after. I've since lowered my expectations, ordering groceries online where substitutions are the luck of the draw and my anxiety at a minimum. In order to feed four growing teenagers and satiate their parent's happy hour thirst, our grocery bills are frickin' r...

My alarm scared me awake at 6:00am. Grabbing my ball cap and brushing my teeth, I snuck out into darkness sacrificing caffeine for the sake of my family. The 'Mission Impossible' I chose to accept was a Supermarket Sweep of Safeway in the wee hours of the morning for my family of six, Corona Style. The empty parking lot at 6:20am was like the Twilight Zone. I breathed a sigh of relief, grabbed my grocery bags and headed for the door with the big yellow sign that read 'Due to Coronavirus, Safeway has revised store hours from 7am to midnight'. Damn! Even Starbucks was locked inside. Reading the headlines of the day back in my warm car, car headlights heightened my sense of urgency. People were lining up at the north entrance sporting facemasks and surgical gloves. It looked like a scene from Contagion. I quickly grabbed my reusable totes and headed for the south door, feeling naked and exposed with only my iPhone in hand. Without a Clorox wipe in sight, I pulled my co...

I don't know what's worse, fist pounding thumps on the dinner table that make flickering candles jump while my heart skips a beat, or the stubborn silence he punishes me with for days, my heart aching for a word of peace or flicker of hope in my child's smirk. Numbness forcing back tears reminds me I have become that parent. "I hate you, you are the worst mom ever…" Slam! An exclamation point door slam on the challenging life I created when I became a mother four times over. Now Coronavirus lock-down. I'm left questioning my every move as a parent, a gaming battle of screen-time vs. stubborn silence. My 7th grade son is desperate for control that gaming rewards him. *********************** The shouts of ear piercing anger mixed with cuss words. I hardly recognized my soon to be thirteen-year-old son in the deep voice declaring, "You control f*&%ing everything." Throwing his Ipad at me amidst his blood curdling screams and F-bomb, the conseq...