Guest Blogger: TheNextMartha

TheNextMartha is a only blogger in the sense that she has a blog about gifted children and has posted to it. But she would not call herself a blogger so I won’t either.  I’m going to call her a force of Twitter.  EVERYONE follows her.  I think it’s a law that if you have a mommy blog, you must follow TheNextMartha on Twitter.  Which is a good thing.  Because she’s awesome.  Wanna know why?

1. She totally agrees with me that this video of Martha Stewart putting a chicken to sleep is a forerunner to Martha Stewart creating an army of zombie chickens to bring about the Zombie Chicken Apocalypse.

2. She was able to name a lot of the flowers in my garden so I could look up how not to kill them

3. She discovered a blog called No Points For Style, written by the mom of a 7-year-old with severe bi-polar disorder.  She decided to bring the blog to everyone’s attention and waged a Twitter-storm to publicize it.  Her efforts got a lot of traffic to the blog, including the Little Bean coffee and tea company which is now donating $2 to NoStylePoint’s Albuquerque NAMI walk team for each coffee or tea purchase (code NAMI at check-out).  That is called Using Your Powers For Good. And for that she rocks.

So, I thought it would be spectacularly awesome to ask her to write a guest post for me because I want to hear from her in more than 140 characters.  So without further ado, TheNextMartha!

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Texas Balls

Who asks someone to guest post when they don’t even blog?  Someone with Texas balls and in this case it’s Rebekah.  This is my first time doing something like this so I hope I don’t stink up the joint.  Alert:  I am not a writer and do not play one online.

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You know what makes me want to breathe into a paper bag?  Hearing the words “I need to travel next week” from my husband.  He then talks about where he’s going and what he’s doing but I don’t hear him.  My head is only thinking of being alone with my kids for a longer period of time than should be legal.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids.  We all love our kids.  We love our kids for breakfast, clean up, snack, lunch, clean up, nap, no nap, snack, dinner, snack, bath time, reading time, bed time, and on and on.  How many days did you say?  Five, AND you have to leave on Sunday? I need that bag now please.

Truthfully, I can do this.  If you ever find yourself in this position, believe in yourself and stock up on whatever it is that makes you happy.  For me this was a trip to Trader Joes.  They have this incredibly appealing chocolate candy section that I will stock up on.  I also got some pre-packaged meals and flowers.  The flowers are to distract me when I start to yell “Hey will you two stop….oh, look pretty flowers.”  I found out though the flowers don’t work when I’m outside.

On Monday I am in the backyard with my almost 3 year old playing in his sandbox.  I am watching my garden start to grow, waiting for all my hard work from last year to rear its beautiful self.  I catch a glance of sandbox boy with water coming out of his mouth.  Wait, I should clarify: with pond sludge liquid oozing down his chin.  Immediately my mind races with thoughts of giardia.  Then I flip to images of high fever with vomit and nuclear diarrhea that will certainly occur at 3am and 4am and again at 5:30am.  A minor freak out may have happened at which I may have flipped sandbox over to get all pond sludge ecoli water out of it.  We’re in a holding pattern for this outcome

Tuesday we seem o.k. and I’ve cleared him to go to backpacking in Mexico some day.  We pick up school boy and I had to do a quick stop at the store because we were out of juice.  I realized that I forgot my wallet at home and had to go home to get it.  We got the wallet and headed back.  I went for juice and what I left with was 27 items that I like to refer to as “the 2010 tour of snacks.”   As you may know going to the grocery store with kids actually costs you 50% more. Maybe my defenses were already being stressed because chips ahoy, cheetos, drumsticks, taffy apples, mint milanos, and two forms of hotdogs both the corn and bagel variety all made it into the cart.  Upon finishing our “tour” we went to check out.  I don’t know about anyone else but I always feel like I’m being judged by the snacks I buy.  Like my face will be put a poster for “Junk Food Moms.”  So I try and not make eye contact with the check out woman until I hear “declined.”  I look up and say “what? I’m sorry, let me try another card.”  It works and she asks “Do you want cash back?”  Let’s just say no because you already think that I’m paying the minimum $12.00 on this bill this month if you think I pay bills at all.  To clear the air the credit card company put a hold on the joint card that my husband and I use. There were out of state charges due to his traveling and they put a fraud alert on it.  What a great credit card company to be so diligent.  Good for them, but what about me?  To fix my ego next time I’m going to only buy caviar and ask for $200 cash back.  I soldier on the rest of the week and really I’ve already taken up more than enough space on someone else’s blog so……

The next thing you know, you’re reading this on Friday and no doubt the rest of the week went perfectly.  Sandbox boy didn’t get sick (he did).   All the chocolates stayed sealed in packages (they didn’t) and I kept my house perfectly in order (not even close).  If you walk past my house Friday evening you might even see me staring out the window and waiting with my car keys in hand.   You see, I like to reward myself after weeks like these.  I’m thinking shoes with a side of sunglasses.

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I know that it is not easy for Fathers to travel either.  If you want to read the man’s perspective on what it’s like to be a traveling dad visit smonkyou.com for his three part series of “The go to office dad.”