“Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter-productivity.”
-Erma Bombeck

When I was a kid I would read anything I could get my hands on. ANYTHING, cover-to-cover. Soup labels, cookbooks, the family medical encyclopedia (not just the dirty bits, but the section on bone cancer, too), the TV Guide, every new bottle of shampoo that came into the house. Last night, much to my shame and embarrassment, I revealed to my companion that I had read the manual to the garbage disposal when I was nine or ten, partly out of curiosity but partly to see if my stepfather was over-exaggerating about what could not but put down it (he was). My mother had boxes and boxes of old books collecting dust in the basement, which I would paw through when I had run through her current novels and self-help books. I read a lot of old fiction that was really popular in its heyday–Diary of a Mad Housewife, Fear of Flying, and The Bell Jar.

I also really liked the funny books that she had. I know there were more, but all I can really remember was reading Erma Bombeck. As a former newspaper columnist, Bombeck’s writing was targeted toward a mixed audience, but she was still funny, much like Dave Barry is. This kind of sarcastic observational humor is old hat now, but I like to think of her as a forerunner of modern snarkiness.

In some ways, though it was intended to be entertainment, reading Erma Bombeck at nine years old shaped my idea of what it was to be a mother. I got two things from her: children are annoying, even if they’re yours and you love them, and you should probably laugh so you don’t start crying. I forget that last point from time to time, but it’s really true. I have to thank Erma Bombeck for disabusing me of the notion that someday I was going to be a wonderful mother who baked and never yelled, surrounded by my doting children who would always be cute and clean, and look, there goes a flying car. Ha ha ha ha!

Most days are actually about survival and remembering the good parts. Right now I am trying to remember the good parts (read: not chew my own leg off) while I am starting to wean Strudel. My goal is to wean her shortly after her first birthday, which is next month. (Fuck, when did that happen?) Currently, she is nursing three, four times a day, tops. As you nurse less, of course, the kid eats more real food and you start getting your freedom back. When you wean her you get big surge of energy, which will almost make up for what will happen to your poor, abused, deflating boobies.

Then one morning you wake up with your boob in your armpit. This is when you realize that the only difference between you and those tribeswomen in National Geographic is that you are wearing a shirt over Support Garments. Unlike those poor women, you can roll up the twins and put them away. However, I am jealous of the fact that most of those women have legal access to some sort of plant-based speed, which keeps them awake and able to fit back into their acacia skirts after only three months. Oh well, we have coffee. Am I right? Am I RIGHT?

After I wrote this, I found this quote, also by Erma Bombeck:

“I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.”

Amen, sister.