by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
I fill this thing up every single morning. I swear. But at any point in the day, if I come downstairs to refill my Klean Kanteen, this container will be empty. Every time. Where is all this water going?
My husband blames the kids. My kids blame Daddy. What am I to do with this?
All I know is I’m really tired of doing the heavy lifting here.
Maybe I’ll just get my own and write my name on it with a big, fat permanent marker. “This water belongs to Mama,” it will say. “If you so much as touch it, you will owe me five minutes of alone-time.”
Wait. That’s not such a bad idea.
I’ll be right back.
(All half-joking-about-first-world-problems aside, there really are kids who don’t have access to clean water. If you want to help change that, click here.)
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Welcome to my backyard.
It’s been raining for 30 days here in Texas. It’s bizarre. Usually around this time of year we’re crying about how we need rain because all our gardens are dying. Well, our gardens are still dying, but this time it’s because they’re all drowning.
We haven’t been able to push a lawnmower back here because the ground is a mud pit. The weeds are taller than my kids, which means I can’t sent them out to play. Which means Mama’s losing her head.
Not that I could send them out anyway. Like I said, it’s a mud pit out there, and have you seen what boys can do with mud? They smear it EVERYWHERE. In their hair, between their toes, inside every crack they have.
I know I’ll probably regret this later, when it’s so dry and hot we won’t be able to properly swallow, but I wrote a little ditty for Rain. It goes a little something like this:
Rain, Rain, go away
Help a mom stay sane today.
I love you, Rain, but seriously. Go away.
If it doesn’t stop raining soon, I swear these weeds are going to grow legs and run us out of our house.
On another note, if anyone has a machete we could borrow, we’re going to need it to get through this wilderness. Also, some full-body armor, since there’s no telling what kind of surprises are lurking in such a hostile forest.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Every passage around my house looks like this.
“We wanted to make an ocean with our blankets, Mama,” they say.
“We wanted to make a LEGO carpet, Mama,” they say.
“The laundry basket is still downstairs, so we made a magic path out of our dirty clothes, Mama,” they say. (The laundry basket is still downstairs, by the way. Because my husband, in his words, is really bad at doing laundry, and last week laundry tried to kill me, too.)
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my kids were trying to kill me. This fracture boot is hard enough to walk around in without the added dangers of what’s left out on the floor.
There are so many tripping hazards in my house I can’t even get up from the couch. That’s okay, though. I just started a really good book, and now I have a good excuse to sit and finish it.
Go ahead and swim in your blanket ocean, boys. I’ll see you in a few hours.
(Unless you’re drowning. IT’S A BLANKET OCEAN, REMEMBER?)
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
I got a new shoe.
Remember that time I wrote about how my husband cleans? How he puts things into neat little stacks and LEAVES THE STACKS ON THE STAIRS?
At least he cleans, right?
WRONG.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LEAVE PILES OF CRAP ON THE STAIRS.
Early one morning, before anyone was up, I was taking a load of laundry down the stairs. I saw the pile of crap and thought, I need to avoid that. Somehow, my body didn’t get the message. Instead of stepping over it, I stepped off the last three stairs and fell. Hard.
Laundry flew everywhere. My limbs flew everywhere. Little bubbles of spit flew everywhere as I cursed on the way down (how stupid is it when you know something’s happening but you can’t do anything to stop it?).
I heard something crack.
I wish the story ended here, but it doesn’t. See, I had my cell phone with me. So as my vision was getting black faster than I could dial numbers, I blindly called my husband. I needed so much help. He didn’t answer. I called again. No answer. Again. No answer. EIGHT TIMES AND NO ANSWER. I think I passed out for a minute or two.
I had to crawl back up the stairs with black spots dancing in my line of vision. Then I had to military crawl-it down the hallway and into our room and pull myself up onto the bed before he woke up enough to say, “What happened?” It’s a good thing women are tough, that’s all I can say. If this had happened to a man? Well. I’ll save that for another post.
I now have a broken foot.
So, fair warning. Don’t leave piles of crap on the stairs, or this might happen. And then your Messy Monday will be How the Hell Do I Take a Shower In This Thing?
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
The other day I walked outside to call my boys in for dinner, and this is what I found.
Some men might find this something close to offensive. I am married to a man who does not worry about four of his six sons playing with Barbies and My Little Pony.
We just smiled at the picture of the four of them collaboratively imagining without fighting (miracle of all miracles) and left them to play with the neighbor girls.
This gender issue can get a little messy.
Everywhere you go—stores, schools, libraries, museum gift shops—you don’t have to look far to find gender separation. Girls are pink and purple and frilly and sparkly. Boys are blue and black and matte and dignified. Girls have superstars and bows. Boys have superheroes and cowboy hats.
The implied messages here are “Boys wear this. Girls wear that. Boys play with this. Girls play with that.”
I get a little tired of all this.
We had a birthday yesterday, and my 6-year-old got some superhero LEGOs. The first thing he said, after all his friends left, was “Will you put this together with me, Mama?”
“Mama doesn’t like superhero LEGOs,” my 4-year-old said.
“Yes, she does,” my 6-year-old said.
“No. She likes princess ones,” my 4-year-old said.
So I sat down with both of them and put together Spider-Man’s fight scene with Dr. Octopus like a BOSS.
My boys will know that playing across the gender lines society says we must have is completely acceptable and highly encouraged.
Who says the world has to be so black and white?
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Yesterday I ran into the mom of an old friend from high school, and the whole time we were talking I was thinking, Oh, God, I don’t have any makeup on.
Last week I almost didn’t come down to say hi to my husband’s aunt and uncle, visiting from California, because I didn’t have makeup on.
I have used the excuse of no makeup to not go on a date with my husband, to stay home from church, to hide in the back of an elementary school cafeteria while my boy is singing Christmas songs.
I have never taken family pictures without makeup.
We women learn, at a very young age, that we are born with a deep-down flaw that disqualifies us from claiming the title “Beautiful.” A flaw we must hide. A flaw we must fix.
Fortunately, we can buy the fix—makeup or clothes or push-up bras or stomach-flattening undershirts or jewelry or this one pair of shoes or that brand of shampoo or a specific seven-blade razor or (fill in the blank).
The thing is, though, that flaw is an illusion. It’s simply not true. We were born with no flaw or lack or missing beauty piece.
We were ALL born beautiful.
I’m tired of believing the lie that I cannot be beautiful without mascara and eyeliner or that moisturizing foundation or the light dusting of powder and blush. I’m tired of letting a ridiculous definition of beauty define who I am or should be as a woman.
So here is my bare face. It hasn’t been washed since last night, because I didn’t have time to shower today. I also didn’t comb my hair before I pulled it back into the ponytail. And I need to go brush my teeth.
The point of this bare-faced picture?
Screw society’s definition of beauty. I’m going to make my own.
