10 Reasons Why Moms Should Do ALL The Laundry

A really smart blogger mom-friend of mine once posted on the Facebook, "If you have a kid who is old enough to operate a tablet/video game/smart phone and you are still doing their laundry for them, you're doing this parent thing wrong." 

Humph!  I thought. After 21 years of parenting, I suppose I'll never have this mom-thing figured out.

But, as I was tenderly bleaching my son's socks yesterday, it finally came to me. And you know what, my highly respected mom-diva friend, washing my kid's laundry actually makes me an even more better parent-and wife! 

(And by "more-better," I mean, better than "less-gooder.")


Here's why:

Conquering The Dread Gremlins

Oh, they are real, let me tell you!  If I don't hit that pillow dead-dog-tired and I allow myself one iota of contemplative reflection, those little demons rise up from under my bed and plunge their claws of damnation right into my soul.

It happened again last night. I knew better than to read that article before bed! *Face-palm.* The snarly sadistic voices went into a rage, this time lambasting me for throwing my kids into the lions-den of public schoolery only to have them brainwashed by our government into narcissistic, co-dependent little communist trolls. WHAT HAVE I DONE, what am I doing??!!

Then I caught myself. 

Lisa, BE NICE! Stop talking like that. Wait for the morning, it'll be OK. It took about an hour of convincing myself to step away from the ledge before I fell asleep, concluding yet another episode of what I call the "Night Dreads."

You see, during the day, I'm a pretty optimistic and reasonable person. I usually make informed, prayerful decisions concerning my personal life and family. Though I tend to fly by the seat of my pants, I trust my gut, lean towards logic, follow the golden rule and try not to sweat the small stuff. I think I have pretty great coping skills and I'm generally even-tempered. But at night, when the gremlins creep in, I transform into a confused, irrational, self-loathing crybaby.

When I start to hear their sneering accusations, I become instantly rigid. My gut balls up, a slight sweat breaks out and my heart begins to race. My mind starts flashing scenes from everything I'd screwed up in the last 24 hours. In those moments, anything can be challenged-- my beliefs, my convictions, I become utterly hornswoggled that all my major life decisions were wrong-Wrong-WRONG!

The gremlins stand over my bed tormenting me, whispering that all my kids are going to rebel and reject everything we ever taught them. They predict that one day our house will burn down and that I'll probably get murdered in my sleep. I start believing no one will ever buy or sell another house through me, that ship has sailed, sister!  I need to start applying for a REAL job...but nobody's gonna hire me. And by-the-way, my silly dreams and trifle hobbies are pointless, I'm wasting my life. The gremlins remind me how unorganized, inconsistent, uncultured, uneducated, mediocre, not-enough and emotionally incapable I am of sharing my deepest, truest self with anyone, it's no wonder I have no friends. I don't even have my own 401K and Oh my Gawd, I haven't hugged my middle child in over a week! And guess what else, Lisa, YOU forgot to pay the sewer bill and we're probably not going to have running water in the morning. Not to mention, Armageddon is upon us and we are SO. Unprepared.

"Regret" Is Not A Dirty Word

Word studies. I have been doing a few of  them lately because there is such rampant embracing and regurgitation of  totally ignorant and socially accepted sentiments running a muck in social media. I keep coming across these picture memes and quotables that I imagine were generated by entitled, hormonal, co-dependant teens or college kids who've never encountered a dictionary. What really blows my mind though, is how the social masses lap up these trite little proverbs as "truth."  Seems like everyone is drinking the koolaid so I realize challenging popular word-sentiments could incite an onslaught of hater feedback but this needs to be done, people. Words are powerful and vocabulary sometimes has to be rescued from our abuse and lackadaisical tossing it about. So the first word I'd like to unpack is none other than, REGRET.  

re·gret

  [ri-gret] verb, re·gret·ted, re·gret·ting, noun

verb (used with object)

1.

to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.): He no sooner spoke than he regretted it.

2.

to think of with a sense of loss: to regret one's vanished youth.

noun

3.

a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc.

4.

  a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc.

Notice, self-hate, self pity, feeling shame, condemnation or a belief I am less-than is not in this definition?!  So, what exactly, is so wrong about feeling sorrow or remorseful for something we've done? Has humanity degenerated so much that it's considered demeaning to feel disappointed in ourselves?  I've heard it said "never regret" because the choices we've made are what "make us into the person we are." Well, aren't sorrow, disappointment, remorse, admitting fault the very convictions that spurn us to do and behave better, to learn and grow from our actions, which in turn "make us who we are"? I thought life lessons were a good thing.

To illustrate my frustration, I've put a few of these picture memes into personal context. (I hope you'll still respect me after I've exposed myself.)

• I'll never regret throwing that puppy down a flight of stairs, over and over again, because at one time it was exactly what I wanted. What 6yo wouldn't think that was hilarious?
• I'll never regret that time I stole swimsuits from a department store after drinking that classy Boones Farm Strawberry Hill, getting strip-searched, handcuffed, arrested and fined because at one time it was exactly what I wanted. I did my time in the slammer, why do you think I'm so hard, durr.