I ran across this article this morning while getting my day started at work, you know when I should have been reading emails and making my to-do list. Anyway, I was intrigued by the title and thought I would check it out. You can read it here if you would like.

Evidently the author, Rachel Sarah, had a similiar situation as I when her husband up and left the country when she was 7 months pregnant. I was six months pregnant and he moved to Atlanta.  Oh and I was pregnant with our third not our first, which made it a tad bit suckier.

She asks the top questions on her mind and answers them to give us other single moms some encouragement; things like : Am I up to the challenge? Can I support us? Will people look down on me? Will baby be ok without dad?

Her answers were lovely and flowery and filled with phrases like “Hold your head up high” and “Keep yourself grounded” and “Stay stress free“. Yeah, I almost laughed at that one too.

If I would have thought of this first, and oh yeah, were a journalist with an audience of thousands, my article would have been a little different and my answers would have been alot different. Maybe a little something like this.

The Single Mom Survival Guide : The Realist Edition.

When I was six months pregnant with my youngest daughter their dad left the state and moved to Georgia. At the time we also had a 16 month old and a 2 year old. I was a hormonal and heartbroken woman way too damn young to have three kids in the first place. In between working two jobs I cried and came up with creative ways to change two diapers at once, while feeding a newborn and finding time to shower myself ever now and again. I started to ask myself important questions.  

Am I up to the challenge? Believe me, you’re not. It is harder than you think. And you are going to be very tired and very grumpy and feel sorry for yourself alot. Suck it up. You got kids to take care of now.

Can I support us? Not unless you plan on getting three jobs. Kids are expensive and they have these annoying little needs like food, milk and lots and lots of diapers. You will have trouble getting a second or third job because then you will need a babysitter. Get creative. Get a paper route. Get one of those things you can strap the baby in and get ta steppin.

Will people look down on me? The short answer, yes. Especially if you live in the bible belt or the country. And if your kids are interracial? Oh, it’s a losing battle. Again, suck it up and get over it. Unless those people plan to move in with you and be a surrogate father and help take care of you and your kid, who cares what they have to say, right? It also may help to tell them you could care less what they have to say. That always felt very therapeutic to me. Use your outside voice a couple times too for dramatic effect. That makes it really fun.

Will baby be ok without dad? Well they will just have to be now won’t they? Because he has decided Atlanta is a much better place to live. He has important things to do now like play basketball with his buddies and work part time at Home Depot, because with only himself to support now, he doesn’t really need that much money, so why exert himself more than he has to. Again, you guessed it, suck it up. And oh, some advice. Don’t move every Tom, Dick and Harry you meet into your house to “make up” for dad. This is really never a good idea. Then you just end up supporting another kid, and who needs that right now, huh?

This is the part where I am suppose to encourage you. Here goes: I promise that even though you feel like this whole experience might kill you, it won’t. And one day all the sacrifices you have made and the tears you have shed will all be worth it when your kids see how hard you worked and are forever grateful. Well at least that’s what my mom says. I will get back to you on that one.

And oh yeah, keep your head up. Blah, Blah, Blah.

The end.

When I got laid off at my old job my beautiful sidekick id with internet and email capability went with it. I was forced to choose a new cell phone and *gulp* start paying my own bill. Two of my close friends had recently gone with Cricket so I checked it out. Being that I would not have to sign a 18 year contract like most places, I was sold. I purchased the cheapest phone being that I am both poor and well, cheap. It has been a fine little phone. It doesn’t have cute little avatars that pop up when my friends call me or the ability to turn into a little keyboard or cool games like Ms. Pacman like my Sidekick id, but it has been okay.

 About two months or so ago I started to have issues with the battery on my phone. I would charge the phone at night while I was sleeping and then I would notice after only making one or two short phone calls, my battery would be surprisingly low. I purchased a car charger thinking this would help. Before long the battery would last for shorter and shorter amounts of time. And for those of you with the same phone you know you have very little time to prepare for your phone to cut off. One minute you are talking away and the next minute there is a beep and a message that pops up something like this…. you better say bye and hang up now or whoever you are talking to is going to get hung up on midsente…. and then it dies.

For a month I had to convince my boyfriend it was the phone’s fault and not my own. No really, I told him like a zillion times I was not hanging up on him for no good reason, I just did not have a charge. The phone continued to hang up on people in the most annoying of times. Once I held for my daughter’s doctor to come on the phone for 36 minutes. Guess what happened the minute he picked up and said hello? Yeah, that’s enough to make ya wanna throw it into oncoming traffic.

So one day after hanging up on my mother which, believe me, is never a good idea, I figured it was time to visit my local neighborhood Cricket store. After taking 3 minutes to figure out which door to go in I finally made my way into the teeny tiny store and explained my plight to the salesman, whom happened to look exactly like Drew Carey. He explained to me that I might need a new charger. So being the naive little guppy that I am, I bought one. That worked for all of two days.

Being the procrastinator busy mom that I am, it took me another two weeks to make it back to the Cricket store for further assistance. This trip is when the real fun began.

First let me give you a prelude with a little story of crazy Cricket man. He stands in front of the Cricket store and talks to himself and  the many other people that evidently live in his head. The really interesting thing is, if you listen closely he asks questions and then answers them while quite literally turning his whole body from side to side in order to assume the other “person’s” position. He is harmless unless of course you just try to be polite and Christianly and say hello to him at which point he will curse like the dickens and he may or may not lunge at you with stinky breath and even stinkier clothes.

So today crazy Cricket man was posted in front of the store and imagine my delight when I noticed he was actively drinking from a quite large wine bottle that he was trying to hide with a Kroger circular. Convinced I would either be bashed over the head with said wine bottle or have to wrestle my 6 year old away from him should he engage her in a  cursing match (she is not one to back down from a fight) I said a little prayer and exited the car. We all crammed our way into the Cricket store. Did I mention this place is teeny tiny? Drew Carey looked at me with a total look of annoyance and then proceeded to act like he had no memory of me when I started to explain to him why I was back.

After letting me go on for about 14 minutes about hanging up on my babysitter, boyfriend twice, daughter’s school, friend Jamie, and my mother all in the course of one day, he looked at me blankly and said “I can’t help you.”

I just stared at him. “Huh?”

“You have to go to a corporate store. There is one in Florence.”

“There is a Cricket store on every block.” I said. “Why do I have to go all the way to Florence?”

“Because our Customer Service sucks really bad and we like to make up for our cheap rate plans by making you travel all the way to Florence since gas is 400 dollars a gallon. And we know one of your kids is sick and you still have to go to the grocery store and the pharmacy and the dollar store and the post office today all before your volunteer job meeting tonight at 6PM, but we really don’t care. So yeah, you have to drive all the way to Florence.”

Okay so that isn’t really what he said but he might as well have.

We made our way to Florence where again I had to explain the whole sordid tale to a salesman that strangely enough looked just like the older guy from Scrubs. I was starting to get the creeps a little about the C-list celebrity look-alike salespeople at Cricket, when he explained to me that the calibrated technilico gobbity googlier in my battery seemed to have gone bad or something like that, sort of. Anyhoo, he was gonna replace my battery. Ah, success, I thought and it was almost totally painless, except for the part where I had to drive 15 miles out of my way even though I passed about 27 other Cricket stores on the way.

This battery lasted all of two days as well. To make a very long story short, I ended up with two more batteries in the coures of the next couple of weeks. Yesterday after receving a lovely voice message from my boyfriend, I decided it was time to stop being to passive and demand a new phone. The message went a little something like this: And being that my boyfriend is as big a smart alleck as I, this will not be exaggerated for dramatice effect.

“Mandy, you just hung up on me for the 32nd time this week with that piece of s**t phone of yours. Would ya please take your a** to the friggin Cricket store right this very minute and tell them if they do not replace that stupid cheapa** phone you will be accompanied on your next visit by your very tall, very black (he’s not, maybe more like caramel or like a latte sort of, ok off the subject) very mean and very fed up boyfriend whom has been known to snap a cell phone or two in half out of pure irritation (this part is true). And I don’t really care if the salesman looks like Drew Carey or Howie Mandel or friggin George W. Bush, make them replace your d*mn phone would ya? Please? Please? Ok I love you - call me when you get your new phone.”

Recognizing the “I really mean it this time” voice he was using, I decided to head again to the Cricket store, immediately. I didn’t have my kids with me so I decided to buck up and use my “I am really pissed this time” voice with the salesman. It was a female. Oooooh this was gonna be easy. And she didn’t even resemble a celebrity of any caliber so I was grateful there would be no distractions.

“Can I help you?” she said very sweetly. I took a deep breath.

“Yes as a matter of fact you can. You know I will try not to take this out on you but this is like my eleventh time to this stupid Cricket store 15 miles away from my house because this stupid phone keeps dying on me even though I charge it for an adequate amount of time. You know this is the third battery in this phone and it still is not working right. It is such an inconvenience to try to make an important phone call or even a silly phone call for that matter considering I pay the bill, and have it hang up on you right in the middle of the sentence. Then I have anxiety until I can get it charged thinking that the other person will think that I hung up on them. Twice this thing has died on me in the middle of a heated argument with my boyfriend at which time I have to store up all the clever things I was going to say to make him feel stupid for ever starting the argument in the first place. And so what I am trying to say is, I really am not leaving this store that is 15 miles away from my home until you replace my phone. I have only been with Cricket for 4 months and 2 of those months, my phone has not worked right. This is not a very good first impression of this company you know? Really, I don’t want another stupid battery for this stupid phone. I want a new phone with a brand new battery. Really.”

The saleswoman looked at me blankly and a little like she was ready to call 911 and then said meekly…..

“No problem m’am, your phone has a 1 year warranty. If you can hang on I will just go to the back and get you a new phone.”

Ok, so did she have to make me feel stupid and call me m’am?

I apologize in advance that I left my camera at work on Friday and did not have the ability to take pictures of this awesome day! I will try to be descriptive enough to give this day justice.

If you read the previous post, you know that Emma graduated from the PH program at NorthKey on Friday. After touching base with her therapist on Friday afternoon, I learned that Emma was very excited but also very nervous about what happens next. She even had a hard time expressing her feelings, telling Miss Chrissy that she hated her because it was her fault she was done with the program and could not come back. After making a mental note to talk to Emma about the word hate, I began to brainstorm about ways I could show Emma how being done with the program was a good thing and she should be very proud of herself. Miss Chrissy mentioned encouraging her by telling her how independent she is now to make correct choices after all she learned. Thus was born, Independence Day.

I decided that on Saturday I would let Emma be completely independent. No choosing battles, no “rules” if you will, and she was the “boss” of the day. This of course began with a lengthy disclaimer about the fact that this would be for this ONE day only and the lack of rules did not mean she could be a bossy tyrant and demand things beyond reason.  I should also mention that this “idea” did not begin until about 4PM, knowing I could not take a whole day of this and so it was actually Independence Evening I suppose.

 Anyhoo, we sat in the living room and brainstormed about all the fun things we would do since there would be no regularly scheduled chore-doing going on. The first was dinner. Emma’s choice. What did we have you may be wondering? Well a dinner fit for an independent five year old with no rules of course. Pizza rolls, buttered puffcorn and iced tea, with mini chocolate chip cookies for dessert. The dishes? Well there were none, we ate off of paper towels. In the middle of the living room floor. In front of the TV. While watching Aquamarine on DVD for the 992nd time.

After dinner we played Old Maid and then made paper collages on construction paper. The mess? Left. Remember, no chore-doing instructed Emma. (I secretly cleaned this up while they were putting on pajamas, I could not stand it)

“Do you want to wear pajamas for bed tonight?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said.

But not just any pajamas, oh no. These were handpicked pajamas by an independent five year old with no rules, of course. First she started with pink and purple striped pajama pants and then a white silky nightgown with purple and blue flowers. On top of that, her favorite pajama shirt. Pink with light pink hearts and heart buttons. Then came the pink and white cheetah print robe. Next, mismatched slippers. She looked hilarious but at least she dressed responsibly - the putting of something on her feet surprised even me.  

“Lets do our hair mama,” was the next suggestion. Emma settled for the princess leia look. Two braided knobs on the side of her head with a sprig of a ponytail right on top of her head because she desparately wanted to wear her new Frog barette that she asked I fasten to the end of the ponytail.

After her sisters were respectively dressed in their mismatched-I-get-to-wear-whatever-I-want-pajamas, we were ready to head back downstairs for some more fun according to Emma.

We put together their new Scooby Doo puzzle and aggravated played with the dog. At about 7 o’clock, I asked Emma were we still having our regularly scheduled snacktime. Nope. We will wait one hour for snack, she replied. MMMkay, I said.

Next we played school for which Emma was the teacher, and Grocery Store for which Emma was the cashier and the manager.  We played house for which Emma was the mommy and Disney Monopoly for which Emma was the banker (with a little help from her big sister). I know this sounds like an awful lot of activities but don’t forget this child has ADHD — none of these activities held her attention for more than 13 minutes a piece.

Next Emma decided we should just watch a movie for a while, which turned into a tickle fest on the hardwood floor of the living room. After laughing so hard she and her sisters could barely breathe and me peeing my pants a little (sorry I know that is alot of info, but you know you are a mom and you know have done it too) we quit and piled onto the couch for some movie viewing. High School Musical 2 this time. Because obviously we have only seen this movie 991 times and so another viewing was necessary.

After about 10 minutes Emma sat straight up and yelled and i do mean yelled…”Snack! We almost forgot snack mama” Looking at my watch and realizing it was 10PM and already an hour and a half past bedtime, I nearly cringed for not setting a time limit on this independence thing. “Snack it is” I said as I prepared myself for the next sentence from her mouth. I was envisioning an ice cream sundae with chocolate syrup and gummy bears when she said “How bout apples and peanut butter” Ah, a healthy snack (one of which my sister would be very proud, she and Emma share quite the love for PB) I almost got a little teary at my independent five year old with no rules’ choice of a evening snack.

I excused myself to the kitchen to start cutting up apples for snack time. I forgoed the usual paper plate and got down the plastic tinkerbell plates from the top shelf. I even made a little presentation putting the peanut butter in the middle and strategically placing the apple slices around it in a cute little circle (my Chef boyfriend would be proud).

“So uh, what time is bedtime” I asked Emma from the kitchen, knowing if I had to hear Troy and Gabrille sing one more goofy love song to eachother might make me ill.

No answer.

“Emma…….Olivia…..Cori……” I called from the kitchen.

 No answer.

I teetered the plate of apple slices on my hand and carried the three small cups of milk I made in my other hand and walked into the living room. I instantly melted into a big puddle of mommy love right there on the spot. All three of them had fallen asleep on the couch in a mangled mess of arms and legs and crazazy hairdos and mismatched pajamas.

I turned the channel on the TV and sat down in the recliner and just looked at them for a while. I watched the news and was just about to go upstairs when  I heard a little rustling and looked over just as Emma was opening her eyes.

“Liv’s foot is in my face mama” she said.

“I see that baby, you wanna go up to your bed?”

“mm hmmm, will you carry me?”

“You’re the boss remember?” 

She rolled off the couch and I carried her up to her bed.

“Did you have a fun time being in charge?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered sleepily, “but tomorrow you can be in charge again mama, that made me really tired, being in charge.”

Puddle of mommy love all over again.

“Okay noodle, you got it” I said.

I may just be a single mom making it up as I go along but right then in that moment I remembered a quote I heard years ago that I loved so much I painted it on the play room wall…..

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.