Blogs

Last week my son's sixth grade science class was scheduled to dissect a sheep's eye. Though he loves science, Jack was not looking forward to the dissection, as he tends to get easily grossed out by things of that sort (as does his mother). Driving home from school that day I asked him about how the dissection went.

"It was actually really, really cool," he replied. "It was so cool that I asked my teacher if I could keep a piece of the sheep's eye and he let me."

"What do you mean KEEP a piece of the eye? Like to take home?"

"Yup."

"So you have it right now? Where is it?"

"In my lunchbox."

"In your LUNCHBOX?!"

"Yeah, why?"

"How could you put a sheep's eye in your lunchbox? That's disgusting. Is it in a bag? Is it wrapped up?"

"No. And it's not the whole eye, it's just the lens."

"So there is the lens of a sheep's eye just rolling around your lunchbox where your food goes?"

Yes, there was. My son did not see anything wrong with this scenario. And he also could not locate the piece of the eye when I asked him to get it out so I could sterilize his lunchbox. So now here I was, frantically looking through his lunchbox and backpack for THE LENS OF A SHEEP'S EYE. And I thought to myself, "this is one of those moments of motherhood where you realize what a crazy a** job this is." I mean, I could not even think of another job in life where I would ever even come across the eye of a sheep.

Here are a few other things I never thought would happen...before I was a mom:

1. I never thought I would walk around in public for an entire day with postage stamps stuck on my back because my 2-year-old used me as a sticker book while I was distractedly working on the computer. I did not think my husband would be the only person to tell me this when he got home from work, after he stopped laughing, of course. Did people think I was making some sort of statement walking around like that? Or that I was planning to mail myself somewhere?

2. I never thought I would be lying constantly. "The tooth fairy didn't come last night? Oh, right…that's because it was the third Tuesday of the month and that's her only night off so everybody knows that if you lose a tooth on the third Tuesday of the month, then she comes on Wednesday and leaves you twice as much money! So you're actually super lucky. Sorry, I forgot to mention that yesterday." Or, "I wish we could go to Disneyland right now, too, but they actually had to close the park today because it was too crowded so nobody else can go in." Or, "I don't know why all the Kit Kats and Snickers bars are missing from your Halloween candy…that's really weird."

3. I never thought that I would be asked such a wide range of constant questions by my children, at least half of which I had no acceptable answer for. Questions such as, "Can I see heaven, but not die first?" (Jack, age 4) to "Mom, what's the population of Greenland?" (Jack, last night)

4. I never thought I'd consider waking up at 8:30 a.m. on the weekends to be "sleeping in."

5. I never thought I would let my child nap in a dog bed.

6. I never thought to not allow my 2-year-old to play with expensive luggage in a luggage store. Luggage is fun, right? They can roll it, they can ride on it. They can also stick their head through the rectangular pull-up handle of the suitcase and not be able to get it out. And once they realize their head is stuck, they can scream and cry so hard in the nice luggage store that they proceed to vomit all over the expensive luggage while their head is still stuck through the handle of the lovely suitcase. No, I never thought THAT would happen.

7. I never thought I'd be so calm and collected when my son ran into a parked car while playing tag on our street and cut his eyebrow badly, blood gushing everywhere. Yes, I was proud of how calm I remained as I cleaned the wound, stuck a Band-Aid on it, and sent him back outside to play. Not so proud later on that night when it turned out that the kid actually needed 12 stitches, not a Spiderman Band-Aid. Oops.

8. I never thought I would feel so comfortable peeing in front of other people. I never thought my greatest goal in life would be to someday pee alone in my bathroom.

9. I never thought that watching my daughter go on an extreme roller coaster ride would be more terrifying than going on it myself.

10. And I never thought the old parenting adage would hold so true, "The days are long, but the years are short…and I never thought I'd have a job I loved so much.

- Janene Dutt

Janene Dutt is brand-new blogger who has no legitimate writing experience to speak of and was, therefore, panicked when asked to write this bio. She recently relocated from Southern California to a small island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and three children. Her mother said her blog was funny so she now has grandiose and delusional dreams of becoming the next Erma Bombeck. You can read about her experiences at www.imightbefunny.com.