Confession: I often chant "don’t stop, baby, don’t stop baby!”

Unfortunately, I only chant this to myself.


Even more unfortunately, it’s not during any sort of self-gratification.


No, as any HMM will understand, I chant this to myself in order to get through the marathon after-school-until-bedtime period. As long as I keep moving, keep doing, never sit down, never lose momentum, never stop, I can get everything done.


And by everything, I DO mean ‘everything’: carpool to and from the day’s after-school activities, make dinner, supervise homework, keep a civil dinner table, clean up dinner and kitchen, bathe children, tidy house, read bedtime stories, get children to actually go to bed. OH, and any other little things that may pop-up on the to-do list.



Doesn’t sound so bad, right? And it isn’t…so long as I just keep on keepin’ on. But if I sit, or pause, or even stop to answer the phone, all hell breaks loose. Jennifer will color on Kathleen’s homework, or the dog will abscond with it and eat it. Which really pisses me off, by the way, because for the past 12 years of teaching, I have made great fun of the ‘my dog ate my homework’ cliché and so, of course, the Universe saw it fit to gift ME with a dog who thinks a sheet of carefully printed first grade spelling words is yummy.



Like so many mommies, I often do this routine without a husband. In fact, I do it so often without a husband that when he’s home, he upsets my rhythm.



And the only thing worse than stopping too soon is having one’s rhythm upset.



I re-learned this fact this week when Stuart threw out his back and I suddenly had 3 children; a type-A neurotic 6 ½-year-old who actually begs to do her homework every night (seriously, one night I was super-tired and told her we could skip homework for a night. She threw a fit as if I had just told her Christmas was canceled. Weird kid.); a manic, manipulative 4 ½-year-old who is actively trying to stage a coup and take over as supreme dictator of our little family (some nights, she achieves success…impressive for a kid who still tops out at 30 inches and 20 pounds); and a cranky, doped-up 37-year-old who is trying to be a helpful husband but was about as useful to me this week as a Cat-5 hurricane is to the Gulf Coast after an oil spill.



Worse, the phrase ‘Stuart threw out his back’ is incorrect. The real version is that Stuart was thrown in Defensive Tactics training and hurt his back as result.



The painfully true version is he was thrown by a girl.



No, not a ‘girl’ as in a ‘man whom we’re trying to insult by implying that he has a vagina’, but an ACTUAL girl.



This has caused every member of his department, from the Sheriff on down, to comment—in great length and increasingly-crass detail--on Stuart’s ‘man-gina’.



Men suck.



They’re funny as fuck, but they still suck.



Because, of course, this means MY man is lying on our couch, reading the text messages from his ‘buddies’ and getting progressively loopier and crankier. He’s on muscle relaxers, which turn him into a middle-class, suburban version of an angry, white, Chris Rock. Only not funny.



Worse, he’s messing up my rhythm. Not by being physically in my way—man can’t move, after all—but mentally he’s screwing me up because he WANTS TO TALK.



What the fuck. This is the man who HATES to talk. In fact, he is fond of ending conversations by either A. walking out of the room or B. mentally leaving the planet and staring blankly into space before slowly blinking at me and grunting to let me know he is now acknowledging my existence again (by the way, the ‘grunt’ only occurs after I’ve stopped chattering away).



Apparently, muscle relaxers also relax his vocal cords. He just babbles on and on and on about lord-knows-what. I could tune this out, but the man actually seems to expect a RESPONSE of some sort to whatever gossip-infused story he’s imparting about the great inner-drama of the sheriff’s department and he won’t accept an ‘uh-huh’, ‘yeah’, or ‘grunt’ as a response. Today, as I’m trying to get chores done, he actually accused me of not caring about his life.



Whatever. I have shit to do. Like clean the toilets and cook dinner and read spelling words and pry paper off the dog’s teeth and keep my youngest from texting naughty words to everyone on my contact list.



Basically, right now, when the Universe has decided to take a big old sloppy dump directly onto my head (did I mention that in addition to a Broken Boy for a husband, our finances are all fucked up, the house next door just sold for $150K less than we paid for ours, the dog needs shots, the girls each need new dance costumes, the roof is leaking, the car is leaking, the garage door won’t go up and there’s a family of field mice holding a grand family reunion under the boxes of Christmas decorations in the broken garage?), I cannot afford to stop for even ONE second. Because if I stop, not only will the hard-water ring around my toilet bowls remain for Sunday Night dinner with my mother (and that is NOT an option), but I may have to acknowledge that my ‘don’t stop’ chant may need to be replaced.



I even know what it should be replaced with: one of my favorite things to say to my children, ‘You’re fine; you’re happy.”



I usually throw out this pithy statement when they are discontent, bickering, fighting or generally acting like spoiled brats. Most recently, I busted it out when, after a day that involved a parade, a carnival and a pool party, all with some of our closest friends, Kathleen demanded to know what we were doing next and then announced that I’m ‘not a fun mommy’ when I answered that we had done everything; it was time to go home.



I am such a hypocrite for snapping at her. I know just how Kathleen feels. I have everything I ever desired, and many things I never even thought to dream of and yet find myself vaguely discontent.



It’s really quite obnoxious.



I have a gorgeous, strong, smart husband who is devoted to me and our kids. He even has a cool job. Or, it’s at least cool to say to people when they ask what my husband does…has a better ‘chicks dig it’ factor than my friend Cheryl whose husband is an accountant. In reality, I’d rather be married to an accountant…being married to a cop is primarily a lonely pain in my ass (and, apparently, his back if he has to fight a girl). Still, we’ve been married for over a decade, which is a major accomplishment these days. A bigger accomplishment is that we still love each other. In fact, we even like each other most of the time. Perhaps even more importantly, we still have stuff to say to each other at the dinner table every night. And things to do with each other in bed later in the night.



I have two smart, beautiful, wonderful daughters who are the spitting image of me, both in looks and temperament. They’re well-adjusted, happy kids. I know this because they are full of sass, vinegar, spit and all the other things well-adjusted kids are full of. They can be polite in company, well-behaved at school and perfect little monsters at home. They are all I ever wanted and I feel blessed to have them.



I have a career that is consistently satisfying, often frustrating and never lucrative. Still, once I’m there--and have inhaled at least 24 ounces of dark, rich, strong coffee--I realize I’m happier working there than in any other career choice. Besides, I have the added bonus of being a trust fund baby. The fund isn’t so big that I can fly around in my own jet and party with Paris Hilton, but it supplements our meager public servants’ salaries enough that we can probably fix the leaking roof and still take the kids to Disneyland every once in a while.



I have a cute little house located at the back of a cul-de-sac in a nice neighborhood. Sure, it’s lost all of its equity in this piss-poor economy, but it does have blue shutters and a white picket fence. I have actual, real furniture inside. Walls with color schemes, rooms with focal points. Sure, the back yard landscaping leaves something to be desired—the focal point is a bright blue above-ground pool and a rusting swing set—but the panoramic view of the Sierra mountains from my slightly-battered patio chairs is priceless.



My parents and my sister live close by, the friends whom I am blessed to have live both close by and in exotic, fun-to-visit locations. None of these people is crippled, ill or a poor influence upon me. I managed to be born smart, pretty and rich and have held on to two of those three attributes.



Have you vomited yet?



By all accounts, I have succeeded. And I did it by chanting ‘don’t stop baby, don’t stop baby’ all the way up to the dreaded age of 30-ish.



And then I asked, “what now?” See, in my Life List, I kinda forgot to figure out what to do once I accomplished everything.



“I’m fine; I’m happy”.



Except sometimes I’m not. Tonight I'm standing in my pretty kitchen, holding a damp sponge wondering, “what now?”



Do I finally ‘stop’? Do I just maintain what I have? Do I learn, like some Buddhist novice, to be content? Do I tackle new goals; run a marathon, earn a PhD, watch all of my DVR que, finish Moby Dick? Do I take a cue from my mother and grandmother and all of the sisters and women in history who have asked the same question as they tidied up from the family meal and simply BE, live for my kids and my husband and the happy little home I have worked so hard for?



Be fine. Be Happy.



Fine I can handle. Happy is elusive. Fine is easy, content is fairly consistent. But there is an aching, a gnawing, a deep pulling emptiness within me that swells up and overwhelms and proclaims, “you’re no fun, Kate.”



I never did put ‘fun’ on my Life List. I guess I kinda assumed it would happen, bippity-boppity-boo style when I got all the other things Cinderella wanted. It’s not that I don’t HAVE fun. I do. Lots. It’s just that I’m not sure I myself AM fun.



Which brings to mind something else I’m always telling my kids, “Not everything is fun.”



Tonight, I find myself asking their most common response, “Why not?”



Why don’t I find the fact that I have now crossed almost every--Matt Damon continues to elude me--blessed item off my Life List at least satisfying, hopefully amazing and certainly fun?



I don’t want to be discontent. I don’t really want to just be complacent, either. It’s just that now that I’ve accomplished everything, maintaining it has become a full-time job and I just don’t have any time left to add anything new to my list. I guess I could maybe run a marathon, but I’ve heard that makes your toe-nails fall off, and then all my glass slippers would look funny.



So, tonight—before I ‘stop’ for the evening--I’m going to go into Excel and open up my Life List and add a new goal and a new little chant for myself:



“You’re Fine; Be Happy.”