Being a Mother is a MOTHER.

And as soon as Deidre got her hands on little Frederick, she beat his ass for all of the upcoming pain he would cause her, not to mention the 37-hour natural childbirth and the episiotomy.

I think I’m pretty clear about the fact that I love my children. I tell them both every chance I get, and I frequently think I love my daughters at random times during the day. Aside from the desire to stab out with kebab skewers any remaining hearing I have to escape their whining and the occasional suggestion that they go play in traffic when they annoy me, I have cherished every single second since they were carved out of my flesh. I adore being a mother.

But goddamn. Who the fuck designed this job? How is it that I can be light years away from the scene of a clusterfuck, and yet I am the one who has to fix it? I’m thinking that three years, tops, per child for wiping of, handling of, disposing of, cleaning up shit is puh-lenty. Anything beyond that is clearly in breach of contract, and I want to speak to the manager.

Was I the one who slammed on the brakes and destroyed key components that make my car go? No, I was not. Was I the one who slammed on the brakes of my daughter’s car, destroying key components that make it go? No. I was not. Was I the one who refused to take the dog out to pee, and then placed her on my brand new, $300 comforter so that she could unload her overnight-full bladder? No. I. Was. Not. Was I the one who put the not-securely-closed gallon of milk on its side in the refrigerator so that it pooled and congealed all over every surface below it? What do you think?

But guess who had to haul both daughters around because we only had one car between us? Me. Guess who had loads of spare time to do so? Not me. Guess who had to figure out how to stuff a king-sized comforter into a queen-sized washer? Guess who had to disassemble the entire refrigerator and chisel fucking solid milk off the plastic? The only upside to that is that I don’t have to buy cottage cheese for a while. But the point is that I constantly find myself working like a cat in a sandbox, an image I despise for its reference to God-forsaken cats and the reminder of shit-mixed-with-litter odor.

It’s not like I am fucking June Cleaver, which sounds REALLY wrong like I meant “having sex with June Cleaver.” Ew. I meant it’s not like I am the stay-at-home matron who cooks and cleans and shops and consoles and arranges and manages and doctors and repairs and creates and encourages and takes care of EVERYthing all while sporting heels, a starched skirt and genuine pearls. No, no. I have to be Ward too. Work full time, try to fit in some soul-saving hobby like writing, AND do all of that other shit to boot. It’s some kind of magic that women survive without their brains exploding and splattering all over supper. You know, it just occurred to me that if my head’s contents had exploded during dinner, some of my former husbands would’ve kept right on eating. But that’s another post.

The fucking women’s libbers are to blame for this whole debacle. Yes, women should be able to do alllllll the things a man can do. But when they were planning this great liberation, the bra-burners should have made sure that they’d get equal pay AND that men also had to be able to do everything a woman can do. If you want true equality, it has to be reciprocal. Well. I still detect that glass ceiling on women’s salaries, and the last time I checked, babies still can’t squeeze out of that tiny penis hole. How is that fair? And kiss my ass with your “no one ever said life was fair” bullshit. You sound like someone’s mother.