When the Ish Goes Down

I have exactly 15 minutes to spill the contents of my heart all over this post. Then I’ll have to gather up the pieces, put my game-face back on, wake up my daughter from her nap and pick up her brothers from their schools. I apologize ahead of time if I end abruptly or without reaching an actual point here.

Begin rant:

Over the weekend a trusted, respected friend advised me to perhaps look over my blog and spot areas where I could be more balanced, less negative, perhaps less cynical about my life, my career, my children. Basically, my everything.

I agreed with him. “Yes. I’m very negative. Nary a positive post can be found. You’re right. Perhaps I should write some “up” content. Some feel-good commentary.” A positive slant 8cmdeluded makeover might do me and (all 10) of my regular readers some good. Happy, happy. Joy, joy, right? Lest I should alienate anyone who tires of my droning complaint posts.

But you know what? I don’t feel good. I don’t feel up. And I certainly don’t feel positive and perky. So, why can’t I be up-front about it?

Truly I wish I could post more positive reflections on motherhood. Maybe my current situation would feel better and perhaps actually improve if I simply adopted a better attitude. But, shit, the place I’m in right now just won’t allow me to take that leap, needed or not. Plainly put, my attitude sucks.

Just as when I launched this blog six or so months ago, I remain committed to being as brutally honest about my situation as possible, without hurting my children or my spouse. With so much in the media as of late centered around the “how much is too much information” personal and mommy blog debate, I’m beginning to feel that I should hold back more. But holding back is against everything wrapped up in the confessional nature of my blog (and my personality). I refuse to be muzzled because what I have to say sometimes makes others uncomfortable. Isn't some of the best, most compelling art confrontational, challenging to behold at times? (Not that this is bona fide art ...)

I want this blog to be about catharsis, for both myself and those of you in the trenches of mad-crazy motherhood too. Allow me to enlighten you with the dictionary.com definition of catharsis, one of my favorite words/concepts:
1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
2. Medicine/Medical. purgation.
3. Psychiatry. a. psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.
b. discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

If you’re still with me here, let’s get on with it and bust open a super-sized can of catharsis.

Meanwhile, if I had a soundtrack for this cathartic moment, right here right now, it would be Cypress Hill’s “When the Shit Goes Down” from their Black Sunday album, one of my favorites from back in the day. I find myself singing the lyrics a little too often when the kids are out of earshot: “When the shit goes down, you better be ready!” If there was ever a gangster anthem, this song is it. Yes, despite becoming a parent, I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with gangster rap. Blame too much childhood intake of YoMTV Raps! from the 80s and 90s and stations like 105.9 “Where Hip-Hop Lives” and 93.5, good old KDAY.

But I digress, as way too many people say these days ...

Now that you know what’s up musically for the setting of this post, here goes my hopefully cathartic rant, socially acceptable, feel-good or not:

I’m as broke as a joke. Spent the last money I had today at Target and I refuse to be embarrassed about it. Can you feel me? $28.80 on the essentials – bread, milk, eggs, cheese, canned fruit (can't afford the frest kind until pay-day), granola bars, apple and orange juice. Everything store brand or on sale. My kids think peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a food group. A mom’s got to do what a mom’s got to do.

Again - “When the shit goes down, you better be ready!”

Well, if my shit went down, “shit” being something as minute as busting a tire or having to bare the brunt of another ER co-pay (knock on wood that I won't have to suffer either in the near future or ever), I am so NOT ready.

I’m about one flat tire away from financial collapse. One oil change away from not making mortgage.

And no, my husband does not work at 7-Eleven or McCrud. In fact, we both have our degrees. Hell, he’s on the verge of having three college diplomas. He is gainfully white-collar world employed but we choose to live in Southern California.

Some would say you made your bed … No doubt you know the rest of that saying. I agree and we’re lying it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t vent all the while in order to feel better.

“Just what are you doing to better yourselves?” you may ask. I don’t blame you if you’re wondering. Just what ARE we doing? I’m writing a book that will hopefully bring at least some grocery money in the door. Soon my blog will have yet more ads that hardly any one will click on.

(BTW, are any of you ad-incorporating mom bloggers out there making bank off your ads? If so, email me and let me know what your secret is. BlogHer seems the way to go.) Also, I’m trying to take on a couple of mundane writing and editing projects that really don’t interest me but would be irresponsible to say no to at this point.

I wonder how long my hair will get because I can’t afford a haircut. I could be the brunt of a grip of "Yo' Mama" jokes with this one.

Shit, I can’t afford my kids’ haircuts, and they’re starting to look skuzzy and unkempt. So much so that it hurts my pride. My husband cuts his own hair, thank God. I’m not too far from allowing him to buzz the kids’ heads once more. And you know that’s desperate because I nearly castrated him the last time he tried that shit.

“Why would you want people to know how broke you are? Have you no shame?” No. No, I don’t have any. Why don’t we do away with societal shame all together by writing from the insides of our hearts, right from where we are coming from, where we are living. What’s wrong with admitting the “real” stuff from your “real” reality?

Where on the Internet are the voices of the stay-home, part-time working suburban poor mothers like me? The mothers who don’t qualify for assistance because their husbands earn two or three thousand dollars too much to? Why can’t I find them?

Why is it shameful to write about falling hard times? Is it because you expect to hear this from someone who lives in the projects? Someone who never finished high school? Not someone who has her bachelor’s and graduated Magna Cum Laude like me? Someone with a different skin color perhaps?

Chew on these facts for a minute if you’re still perplexed. According to a recent Newsweek article titled “Poor Among Plenty: For the first time, poverty shifts to the U.S. suburbs,” “… for the first time in history, more of America’s poor are living in the suburbs than the cities – 1.2 million more, according to a 2005 study… “The suburban poor defy stereotypes about how and why people slip into poverty.”

Wow. My fifteen minutes are up.

All I can think of to end this is yet more depressing commentary. Even when “money’s too tight to mention” as Simply Red sang it, you smile in front of the kids, keep their young spirits high the best you can. Even if it’s eating at you on the inside. Even when you have to put back the extra pack of gum they asked nicely and politely for at the check-out because it’s $1.25 more than you have in your pocket.

Though it will be hard to click “publish” this time, I want to. I need to. Maybe some of you suburban struggling moms will be able to relate and will somehow find comfort in my situation, knowing you aren’t alone. Keep your chin up, ladies. I'll be chinning up too.

And that, my friends, is how the shit is going down at my house.

(No time to spell check or edit. Sorry.)